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Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’

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Title: A Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’
Author: Norman Kemp Smith
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A
COMMENTARY TO KANT’S ‘CRITIQUE OF PURE
REASON’ ***
 Every attempt has been made
to replicate the original as
printed.
Some typographical errors
have been corrected;
a list follows the text.
The footnotes follow the
text.
—
Contents.
Index: A, B, C, D, E, F, G,
H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q,
R, S, T, U, V, W, Z.
(etext transcriber’s note)

A COMMENTARY
TO
K A N T’S ‘C R I T I Q U E
OF
P U R E R E A S O N’
BY
NORMAN KEMP SMITH, D.PHIL.
McCOSH PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
AUTHOR OF
‘STUDIES IN THE CARTESIAN PHILOSOPHY’

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1918
 COPYRIGHT

TO THE MEMORY

OF

ROBERT ADAMSON

WISE IN COUNSEL, IN FRIENDSHIP UNFAILING

GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
 PREFACE
The Critique of Pure Reason is more obscure and difficult than
even a metaphysical treatise has any right to be. The
difficulties are not merely due to defects of exposition; they
multiply rather than diminish upon detailed study; and, as I
shall endeavour to show in this Commentary, are traceable to
two main causes, the composite nature of the text, written at
various dates throughout the period 1772-1780, and the
conflicting tendencies of Kant’s own thinking.
The Commentary is both expository and critical; and in
exposition no less than in criticism I have sought to
subordinate the treatment of textual questions and of minor
issues to the systematic discussion of the central problems.
Full use is made of the various selections from Kant’s private
papers that have appeared, at intervals, since the publication of
his Lectures on Metaphysics in 1821. Their significance has
not hitherto been generally recognised in English books upon
Kant. They seem to me to be of capital importance for the
right understanding of the Critique.
Some apology is perhaps required for publishing a work of
this character at the present moment. It was completed, and
arrangements made for its publication, shortly before the
outbreak of war. The printers have, I understand, found in it a
useful stop-gap to occupy them in the intervals of more
pressing work; and now that the type must be released, I trust
that in spite of, or even because of, the overwhelming
preoccupations of the war, there may be some few readers to
whom the volume may be not unwelcome. That even amidst
the distractions of actual campaigning metaphysical
speculation can serve as a refuge and a solace is shown by the
memorable example of General Smuts. He has himself told us
that on his raid into Cape Colony in the South African War he
carried with him for evening reading the Critique of Pure
Reason. Is it surprising that our British generals, pitted against
so unconventional an opponent, should have been worsted in
the battle of wits?
 The Critique of Pure Reason is a philosophical classic that
marks a turning-point in the history of philosophy, and no
interpretation, even though now attempted after the lapse of a
hundred years, can hope to be adequate or final. Some things
are clearer to us than they were to Kant’s contemporaries; in
other essential ways our point of view has receded from his,
and the historical record, that should determine our judgments,
is far from complete. But there is a further difficulty of an
even more serious character. The Critique deals with issues
that are still controversial, and their interpretation is possible
only from a definite standpoint. The limitations of this
standpoint and of the philosophical milieu in which it has been
acquired unavoidably intervene to distort or obscure our
apprehension of the text. Arbitrary and merely personal
judgments I have, however, endeavoured to avoid. My sole
aim has been to reach, as far as may prove feasible, an
unbiassed understanding of Kant’s great work.
Among German commentators I owe most to Vaihinger,
Adickes, B. Erdmann, Cohen, and Riehl, especially to the first
named. The chief English writers upon Kant are Green, Caird,
and Adamson. In so far as Green and Caird treat the Critical
philosophy as a half-way stage to the Hegelian standpoint I
find myself frequently in disagreement with them; but my
indebtedness to their writings is much greater than my
occasional criticisms of their views may seem to imply. With
Robert Adamson I enjoyed the privilege of personal
discussions at a time when his earlier view of Kant’s teaching
was undergoing revision in a more radical manner than is
apparent even in his posthumously published University
lectures. To the stimulus of his suggestions the writing of this
Commentary is largely due.
My first study of the Critique was under the genial and
inspiring guidance of Sir Henry Jones. With characteristic
kindliness he has read through my manuscript and has
disclosed to me many defects of exposition and argument. The
same service has been rendered me by Professor G. Dawes
Hicks, whose criticisms have been very valuable, particularly
since they come from a student of Kant who on many
fundamental points takes an opposite view from my own.
 I have also to thank my colleague, Professor Oswald
Veblen, for much helpful discussion of Kant’s doctrines of
space and time, and of mathematical reasoning.
Mr. H. H. Joachim has read the entire proofs, and I have
made frequent modifications to meet his very searching
criticisms. I have also gratefully adopted his revisions of my
translations from the Critique. Similar acknowledgments are
due to my colleague, Professor A. A. Bowman, and to my
friend Dr. C. W. Hendel.
I have in preparation a translation of the Critique of Pure
Reason, and am responsible for the translations of all passages
given in the present work. In quoting from Kant’s other
writings, I have made use of the renderings of Abbott,
Bernard, and Mahaffy; but have occasionally allowed myself
the liberty of introducing alterations.
Should readers who are already well acquainted with the
Critique desire to use my Commentary for its systematic
discussions of Kant’s teaching, rather than as an
accompaniment to their study of the text, I may refer them to
those sections which receive italicised headings in the table of
contents.
NORMAN KEMP SMITH.
LONDON, January 1918.
 CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
I. TEXTUAL—
Kant’s Method of composing the
Critique of Pure Reason xix
II. HISTORICAL—
Kant’s Relation to Hume and to Leibniz xxv
III. GENERAL—
1. The Nature of the a priori xxxiii
2. Kant’s Contribution to the Science of
Logic xxxvi
3. The Nature of Consciousness xxxix
4. Phenomenalism, Kant’s Substitute
for Subjectivism xlv
5. The Distinction between Human and
Animal Intelligence xlvii
6. The Nature and Conditions of Self-
Consciousness l
7. Kant’s threefold Distinction between
Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason lii
8. The place of the Critique of Pure
Reason in Kant’s Philosophical System lv
THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON[1]
Title 1
Motto 4
Dedication to Freiherr von Zedlitz 6
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 8
Comment on Preface 10
Dogmatism, Scepticism, Criticism 13
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 17
The Copernican Hypothesis 22
Introduction 26
Comment upon the Argument of Kant’s
Introduction 33
 How are Synthetic a priori Judgments 43
possible?
The Analytic and Synthetic Methods 44
Purpose and Scope of the Critique 56
Kant’s relation to Hume 61
Meaning of the term Transcendental 73
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS
Part I. THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC 79-
166
Definition of Terms 79
Kant’s conflicting Views of Space 88
Section I. SPACE 99
Kant’s Attitude to the Problems of
Modern Geometry 117
Section II. Time 123
Kant’s Views regarding the Nature of
Arithmetical Science 128
Kant’s conflicting Views of Time 134
General Observations on the
Transcendental Aesthetic 143
The Distinction between Appearance
and Illusion 148
Kant’s Relation to Berkeley 155
The Paradox of Incongruous
Counterparts 161
Part II. THE TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC 167
Introduction 167
I. Logic in General 167
II. Transcendental Logic 170
III. The Division of General Logic into
Analytic and Dialectic 172
Division I. THE TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC 174
Book I. THE ANALYTIC OF CONCEPTS 175
Chapter I. THE CLUE TO THE DISCOVERY OF
ALL PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING 175
Section I. The Logical Use of the
Understanding 176
Comment on Kant’s Argument 176
 Stages in the Development of Kant’s 186
Metaphysical Deduction
Section II. The Logical Function of the
Understanding in Judgment 192
Section III. The Categories on Pure
Concepts of the Understanding 194
Distinction between Logical Forms
and Categories 195
Chapter II. DEDUCTION OF THE PURE
CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING 202
Analysis of the Text: the Four Stages in 202-
the Development of Kant’s Views 234
I. Enumeration of the Four Stages 203
II. Detailed Analysis of the Four Stages 204
Kant’s Doctrine of the Transcendental
Object 204
III. Evidence yielded by the
“Reflexionen” and “Lose Blätter” in
Support of the Analysis of the Text 231
IV. Connected Statement and Discussion
of Kant’s Subjective and Objective
Deductions in the First Edition 234
Distinction between the Subjective and
the Objective Deductions 235
The Subjective Deduction in its initial
empirical Stages 245
Objective Deduction as given in the
First Edition 248
The later Stages of the Subjective
Deduction 263
The Distinction between
Phenomenalism and Subjectivism 270
Transcendental Deduction of the
Categories in the Second Edition 284
The Doctrine of Inner Sense 291
Kant’s Refutations of Idealism 298
Inner Sense and Apperception 321
Book II. The Analytic of Principles 332
 Chapter I. THE SCHEMATISM OF PURE 334
CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING
Chapter II. SYSTEM OF ALL PRINCIPLES OF
PURE UNDERSTANDING 342
1. The Axioms of Intuition 347
2. The Anticipations of Perception 349
3. The Analogies of Experience 355
A. First Analogy 358
B. Second Analogy 363
Schopenhauer’s Criticism of Kant’s
Argument 365
Kant’s Subjectivist and Phenomenalist
Views of the Causal Relation 373
Reply to Further Criticisms of Kant’s
Argument 377
C. Third Analogy 381
Schopenhauer’s Criticism of Kant’s
Argument 387
4. The Postulates of Empirical Thought
in General 391
Chapter III. ON THE GROUND OF THE
DISTINCTION OF ALL OBJECTS WHATEVER INTO
PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA 404
Relevant Passages in the Section on
Amphiboly 410
Alterations in the Second Edition 412
Comment on Kant’s Argument 414
Appendix. The Amphiboly of the
Concepts of Reflection 418
Division II. THE TRANSCENDENTAL
DIALECTIC 424
Introductory Comment upon the
composite Origin and conflicting
Tendencies of the Dialectic 425
The History and Development of
Kant’s Views in regard to the Problems of
the Dialectic 431
Introduction 441
 I. Transcendental Illusion 441
II. Pure Reason as the Seat of
Transcendental Illusion 442
Book I. THE CONCEPTS OF PURE REASON 446
Section I. Ideas in General 447
Section II. The Transcendental Ideas 450
Section III. System of the
Transcendental Ideas 453
Book II. THE DIALECTICAL INFERENCES OF
PURE REASON 455
Chapter I. THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE
REASON 455
First Paralogism: of Substantiality 457
Second Paralogism: of Simplicity 458
Third Paralogism: of Personality 461
Fourth Paralogism: of Ideality 462
Second Edition Statement of the
Paralogisms 466
Is the Notion of the Self a necessary
Idea of Reason? 473
Chapter II. THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON 478
Section I. System of the Cosmological
Ideas 478
Section II. Antithetic of Pure Reason 480
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 481
First Antinomy 483
Second Antinomy 488
Third Antinomy 492
Fourth Antinomy 495
Section III. The Interest of Reason in this
Self-Conflict 498
Section IV. Of the Transcendental
Problems of Pure Reason in so far as they
absolutely must be capable of Solution 499
Section V. Sceptical Representation of
the Cosmological Questions 501
Section VI. Transcendental Idealism as 503
the Key to the Solution of the
Cosmological Dialectic
Section VII. Critical Decision of the
Cosmological Conflict of Reason with
itself 504
Section VIII. The Regulative Principle of
Pure Reason in regard to the Cosmological
Ideas 506
Section IX. The Empirical Employment
of the Regulative Principles of Reason in
regard to all Cosmological Ideas 508
Solution of the First and Second
Antinomies 508
Remarks on the Distinction between the
Mathematical-Transcendental and the
Dynamical-Transcendental Ideas 510
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 510
Solution of the Third Antinomy 512
Possibility of harmonising Causality
through Freedom with the Universal Law
of Natural Necessity 513
Explanation of the Relation of Freedom
to Necessity of Nature 514
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 517
Solution of the Fourth Antinomy 518
Concluding Note on the whole
Antinomy of Pure Reason 519
Concluding Comment on Kant’s
Doctrine of the Antinomies 519
Chapter III. THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON 522
Section I. and II. The Transcendental
Ideal 522
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 524
Section III. The Speculative Arguments 525
in Proof of the Existence of a Supreme
Being
Section IV. The Impossibility of an
Ontological Proof 527
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 528
Section V. The Impossibility of a
Cosmological Proof of the Existence of
God 531
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 533
Discovery and Explanation of the
Transcendental Illusion in all
Transcendental Proof of the Existence of a
necessary Being 534
Comment on Kant’s Method of
Argument 535
Section VI. The Impossibility of the
Physico-Theological Proof 538
Section VII. Criticism of all Theology
based on speculative Principles of Reason 541
Concluding Comment 541
APPENDIX TO THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC 543
The Regulative Employment of the Ideas
of Pure Reason 543
Hypotheses not permissible in Philosophy 543
On the Final Purpose of the Natural
Dialectic of Human Reason 552
Concluding Comment on the Dialectic 558
APPENDIX A.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF
METHODS 563
Chapter I. THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON 563
Section I. The Discipline of Pure Reason
in its Dogmatic Employment 563
Section II. The Discipline of Pure
Reason in its Polemical Employment 567
Section III. The Discipline of Pure
Reason in regard to Hypotheses 568
 Section IV. The Discipline of Pure 568
Reason in regard to its Proofs
Chapter II. THE CANON OF PURE REASON 569
Section I. The Ultimate End of the Pure
Use of our Reason 569
Section II. The Ideal of the Highest
Good, as a Determining Ground of the
Ultimate End of Pure Reason 570
Section III. Opining, Knowing, and
Believing 576
Chapter III. THE ARCHITECTONIC OF PURE
REASON 579
Chapter IV. THE HISTORY OF PURE REASON 582
APPENDIX B.
A more detailed Statement of Kant’s
Relations to his Philosophical
Predecessors 583
INDEX: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M,
N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, Z 607

NOTE
In all references to the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft I have
given the original pagings of both the first and second editions.
References to Kant’s other works are, whenever possible, to
the volumes thus far issued in the new Berlin edition. As the
Reflexionen Kants zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft had not been
published in this edition at the time when the Commentary was
completed, the numbering given is that of B. Erdmann’s
edition of 1884.
 ABBREVIATIONS
Berlin edition of Kant’s works W
Pagings in the first edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft
A
Pagings in the second edition B
Adickes’ edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1889) K
INTRODUCTION
 I. TEXTUAL
KANT’S METHOD OF COMPOSING THE ‘CRITIQUE OF PURE
REASON’

SELDOM, in the history of literature, has a work been more

conscientiously and deliberately thought out, or more hastily
thrown together, than the Critique of Pure Reason. The
following is the account which Kant in a letter to Moses
Mendelssohn (August 16, 1783) has given of its composition:
”[Though the Critique is] the outcome of reflection which
had occupied me for a period of at least twelve years, I
brought it to completion in the greatest haste within some four
to five months, giving the closest attention to the content, but
with little thought of the exposition or of rendering it easy of
comprehension by the reader—a decision which I have never
regretted, since otherwise, had I any longer delayed, and
sought to give it a more popular form, the work would
probably never have been completed at all. This defect can,
however, be gradually removed, now that the work exists in a
rough form.”[2]
These statements must be allowed the greater weight as
Kant, in another letter (to Garve, August 7, 1783), has given
them in almost the same words:
“I freely admit that I have not expected that my book should
meet with an immediate favourable reception. The exposition
of the materials which for more than twelve successive years I
had been carefully maturing, was not composed in a
sufficiently suitable manner for general comprehension. For
the perfecting of its exposition several years would have been
required, whereas I brought it to completion in some four to
five months, in the fear that, on longer delay, so prolonged a
labour might finally become burdensome, and that my
increasing years (I am already in my sixtieth year) would
perhaps incapacitate me, while I am still the sole possessor of
my complete system.”[3]
The twelve years here referred to are 1769-1780; the phrase
“at least twelve years” indicates Kant’s appreciation of the
continuity of his mental development. Hume’s first influence
upon Kant is probably to be dated prior to 1760. The choice,
however, of the year 1769 is not arbitrary; it is the year of
Kant’s adoption of the semi-Critical position recorded in the
Inaugural Dissertation (1770).[4] The “four to five months”
may be dated in the latter half of 1780. The printing of the
Critique was probably commenced in December or January
1780-1781.
But the Critique is not merely defective in clearness or
popularity of exposition. That is a common failing of
metaphysical treatises, especially when they are in the German
language, and might pass without special remark. What is
much more serious, is that Kant flatly contradicts himself in
almost every chapter; and that there is hardly a technical term
which is not employed by him in a variety of different and
conflicting senses. As a writer, he is the least exact of all the
great thinkers.
So obvious are these inconsistencies that every
commentator has felt constrained to offer some explanation of
their occurrence. Thus Caird has asserted that Kant opens his
exposition from the non-Critical standpoint of ordinary
consciousness, and that he discloses the final position, towards
which he has all along been working, only through repeated
modifications of his preliminary statements. Such a view,
however, cannot account either for the specific manner of
occurrence or for the actual character of the contradictions of
which the Critique affords so many examples. These are by no
means limited to the opening sections of its main divisions;
and careful examination of the text shows that they have no
such merely expository origin. The publication of Kant’s
Reflexionen and Lose Blätter, and the devoted labours of
Benno Erdmann, Vaihinger, Adickes, Reicke and others, have,
indeed, placed the issue upon an entirely new plane. It can
now be proved that the Critique is not a unitary work, and that
in the five months in which, as Kant tells us, it was “brought to
completion” (zu Stande gebracht), it was not actually written,
but was pieced together by the combining of manuscripts
written at various dates throughout the period 1772-1780.
 Kant’s correspondence in these years contains the repeated
assertion that he expected to be able to complete the work
within some three or six months. This implies that it was
already, at least as early as 1777, in great part committed to
writing. In 1780 Kant must therefore have had a large body of
manuscript at his disposal. The recently published Lose Blätter
are, indeed, part of it. And as we shall have constant occasion
to observe, the Critique affords ample evidence of having been
more or less mechanically constructed through the piecing
together of older manuscript, supplemented, no doubt, by the
insertion of connecting links, and modified by occasional
alterations to suit the new context. Kant, it would almost seem,
objected to nothing so much as the sacrifice of an argument
once consecrated by committal to paper. If it could be inserted,
no matter at what cost of repetition, or even confusion, he
insisted upon its insertion. Thus the Subjective and Objective
Deductions of the first edition can, as we shall find, be broken
up into at least four distinct layers, which, like geological
strata, remain to the bewilderment of the reader who naturally
expects a unified system, but to the enlightenment of the
student, once the clues that serve to identify and to date them
have been detected. To cite another example: in the Second
Analogy, as given in the first edition, the main thesis is
demonstrated in no less than five distinct proofs, some of
which are repetitions; and when Kant restated the argument in
the second edition, he allowed the five proofs to remain, but
superimposed still another upon them. Kant does, indeed, in
the second edition omit some few passages from various parts
of the Critique; but this is in the main owing to his desire to
protect himself against serious misunderstanding to which, as
he found, he had very unguardedly laid himself open. The
alterations of the second edition are chiefly of the nature of
additions.
Adickes’ theory[5] that Kant in the “four to five months”
composed a brief outline of his entire argument, and that it
was upon the framework of this outline that the Critique was
elaborated out of the older manuscript, may possibly be
correct. It has certainly enabled Adickes to cast much light
upon many textual problems. But his own supplementary
hypothesis in regard to the section on the Antinomies, namely,
that it formed an older and separate treatise, may very
profitably be further extended. Surely it is unlikely that with
the expectation, continued over many years, of completion
within a few months, Kant did not possess, at least for the
Aesthetic, Dialectic, and Methodology, a general outline, that
dated further back than 1780. And doubtless this outline was
itself altered, patched, and recast, in proportion as insight into
the problems of the Analytic, the problems, that is to say,
which caused publication to be so long deferred, deepened and
took final form.
The composite character of the Critique is largely concealed
by the highly elaborate, and extremely artificial, arrangement
of its parts. To the general plan, based upon professedly
logical principles, Kant has himself given the title,
architectonic; and he carries it out with a thoroughness to
which all other considerations, and even at times those of
sound reasoning, are made to give way. Indeed, he clings to it
with the unreasoning affection which not infrequently attaches
to a favourite hobby. He lovingly elaborates even its minor
detail, and is rewarded by a framework so extremely
complicated that the most heterogeneous contents can be tidily
arranged, side by side, in its many compartments. By its
uniformity and rigour it gives the appearance of systematic
order even when such order is wholly absent.
But we have still to consider the chief reason for the
contradictory character of the contents of the Critique. It is
inseparably bound up with what may perhaps be regarded as
Kant’s supreme merit as a philosophical thinker, especially as
shown in the first Critique,—namely, his open-minded
recognition of the complexity of his problems, and of the
many difficulties which lie in the way of any solution which
he is himself able to propound. Kant’s method of working
seems to have consisted in alternating between the various
possible solutions, developing each in turn, in the hope that
some midway position, which would share in the merits of all,
might finally disclose itself. When, as frequently happened,
such a midway solution could not be found, he developed his
thought along the parallel lines of the alternative views.
 “You know that I do not approach reasonable objections
with the intention merely of refuting them, but that in thinking
them over I always weave them into my judgments, and afford
them the opportunity of overturning all my most cherished
beliefs. I entertain the hope that by thus viewing my judgments
impartially from the standpoint of others some third view that
will improve upon my previous insight may be obtainable….
Long experience has taught me that insight into a subject
which I am seeking to master is not to be forced, or even
hastened, by sheer effort, but demands a fairly prolonged
period during which I return again and again to the same
concepts, viewing them in all their aspects and in their widest
possible connections, while in the intervals the sceptical spirit
awakens, and makes trial whether my conclusions can
withstand a searching criticism.”[6] “In mental labour of so
delicate a character nothing is more harmful than
preoccupation with extraneous matters. The mind, though not
constantly on the stretch, must still, alike in its idle and in its
favourable moments, lie uninterruptedly open to any chance
suggestion which may present itself. Relaxations and
diversions must maintain its powers in freedom and mobility,
so that it may be enabled to view the object afresh from every
side, and so to enlarge its point of view from a microscopic to
a universal outlook that it adopts in turn every conceivable
standpoint, verifying the observations of each by means of all
the others.”[7] “I am not of the opinion of the well-meaning
writer who has recommended us never to allow doubts in
regard to a matter upon which we have once made up our
minds. In pure philosophy that is not feasible. Indeed the
understanding has in itself a natural objection to any such
procedure. We must consider propositions in all their various
applications; even when they may not seem to require a
special proof, we must make trial of their opposites, and in this
way fight for delay, until the truth becomes in all respects
evident.”[8]
That these are no mere pious expressions of good intention,
but represent Kant’s actual method of working, is amply
proved by the contents of the Critique. We find Kant
constantly alternating between opposed standpoints, to no one
of which he quite definitely commits himself, and constantly
restating his principles in the effort to remove the objections to
which, as he recognises, they continue to lie open. The
Critique, as already stated, is not the exposition of a single
unified system, but is the record of Kant’s manifold attempts
to formulate and to solve his many-sided problems. Even those
portions of the Critique which embody his latest views show
that Kant is still unwilling to sacrifice insight to consistency.
When he is guilty of special pleading—for he cannot be
altogether absolved even from that charge—it is in the
interests of his logical architectonic, for which, as I have said,
he cherishes a quite unreasoning affection, and not of his
central principles. So far from concealing difficulties, or
unduly dwelling upon the favouring considerations, Kant
himself emphasises the outstanding objections to which his
conclusions remain subject. If his teaching is on certain points
very definite, it is in other hardly less important respects
largely tentative.
The value of Kant’s Critique as an introduction to modern
philosophy is greatly enhanced by this method of procedure.
The student who has steeped himself in the atmosphere of the
Critique, however dissatisfied he may perhaps be with many
of its doctrines, has become familiar with the main
requirements which a really adequate metaphysics must fulfil,
or at least will have acquired a due sense of the complexity of
the problems with which it deals.
Recognition of the composite nature of the text will
safeguard us in two ways. In the first place, citation of single
passages is quite inconclusive. Not only must all the relevant
passages be collated; they must be interpreted in the light of an
historical understanding of the various stages in Kant’s
development. We must also be prepared to find that on certain
main questions Kant hesitates between opposed positions, and
that he nowhere definitively commits himself to any quite final
expression of view.
Secondly, we cannot proceed on the assumption that Kant’s
maturest teaching comes where, had the Critique been a
unitary work, composed upon a definite and previously
thought out plan, we should naturally expect to find it, namely,
in its concluding portions. The teaching of much of the
Dialectic, especially in its account of the nature of the
phenomenal world and of its relation to the knowing mind, is
only semi-Critical. This is also true of Kant’s Introduction to
the Critique. Introductions are usually written last; and
probably Kant’s Introduction was written after the completion
of the Aesthetic, of the Dialectic, and of the Analytic in its
earlier forms. But it bears all the signs of having been
composed prior to the working out of several of his most
characteristic doctrines in the central parts of the Analytic.
Thus both Kant’s introductory statements of the aims and
purposes of the Critique, and his application of his results in
the solution of metaphysical problems, fail to represent in any
adequate fashion the new and revolutionary principles to
which he very gradually but successfully worked his way. The
key to the Critique is given in the central portions of the
Analytic, especially in the Deduction of the Categories. The
other parts of the Critique reveal the Critical doctrines only as
gradually emerging from the entangling influence of pre-
Critical assumptions. Their teaching has to be radically
remodelled before they can be made to harmonise with what,
in view both of their intrinsic character and of the
corresponding alterations in the second edition, must be
regarded as Kant’s maturest utterances.
This was a task which Kant never himself attempted. For no
sooner had he attained to comparative clearness in regard to
his new Critical principles and briefly expounded them in the
Analytic of the first edition, than he hastened to apply them in
the spheres of morality, aesthetics, and teleology. When the
Critique appeared in 1781 he was fifty-seven years of age; and
he seems to have feared that if he allowed these purely
theoretical problems, which had already occupied his main
attention for “at least twelve years,” to detain him longer, he
would be debarred from developing and placing on permanent
record the new metaphysics of ethics which, as the references
in the first Critique show, had already begun to shape itself in
his mind. To have expended further energy upon the perfecting
of his theoretical philosophy would have endangered its own
best fruits. Even the opportunity in 1787 of a second edition of
the Critique he used very sparingly, altering or adding only
where occasional current criticism—his puzzled
contemporaries having still for the most part maintained a
discreet silence—had clearly shown that his modes of
exposition were incomplete or misleading.
 II. HISTORICAL
KANT’S RELATION TO HUME AND TO LEIBNIZ

Kant’s manner of formulating his fundamental problem—

How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?—may well
seem to the modern reader to imply an unduly scholastic and
extremely rationalistic method of approach. Kant’s reasons for
adopting it have, unfortunately, been largely obscured, owing
to the mistaken interpretation which has usually been given to
certain of his personal utterances. They have been supposed to
prove that the immediate occasion of the above formula was
Hume’s discussion of the problem of causality in the Enquiry
into the Human Understanding. Kant, it is argued, could not
have been acquainted with Hume’s earlier and more elaborate
Treatise on Human Nature, of which there was then no
translation; and his references to Hume must therefore concern
only the later work.
Vaihinger has done valuable service in disputing this
reading of Kant’s autobiographical statements. Kant does not
himself make direct mention of the Enquiry, and the passages
in the Critique and in the Prolegomena[9] in which Hume’s
teaching is under consideration seem rather to point to the
wider argument of the Treatise. This is a matter of no small
importance; for if Vaihinger’s view can be established, it will
enable us to appreciate, in a manner otherwise impossible,
how Kant should have come to regard the problem of a priori
synthesis as being the most pressing question in the entire field
of speculative philosophy.
The essential difference between the Treatise and the
Enquiry, from the standpoint of their bearing upon Critical
issues, lies in the wider scope and more radical character of
the earlier work. The Enquiry discusses the problem of
causality only in the form in which it emerges in particular
causal judgments, i.e. as to our grounds for asserting that this
or that effect is due to this or that cause. In the Treatise, Hume
raises the broader question as to our right to postulate that
events must always be causally determined. In other words, he
there questions the validity of the universal causal principle,
that whatever begins to exist must have a cause of existence;
and he does so on the explicit ground that it demands as
necessary the connecting of two concepts, that of an event and
that of an antecedent cause, between which no connection of
any kind can be detected by the mind. The principle, that is to
say, is not self-evident; it is synthetic. The concept of an event
and the concept of a cause are quite separate and distinct ideas.
Events can be conceived without our requiring to think
antecedent events upon which they are dependent. Nor is the
principle capable of demonstration. For if it be objected that in
questioning its validity we are committing ourselves to the
impossible assertion that events arise out of nothing, such
argument is only applicable if the principle be previously
granted. If events do not require a cause, it is as little
necessary to seek their source in a generation out of nothing as
in anything positive. Similarly, when it is argued that as all the
parts of time and space are uniform, there must be a cause
determining an event to happen at one moment and in one
place rather than at some other time or place, the principle is
again assumed. There is no greater difficulty in supposing the
time and place to be fixed without a cause than in supposing
the existence to be so determined. The principle, Hume
concludes, is non-rational in character. It is an instrument
useful for the organisation of experience; and for that reason
nature has determined us to its formation and acceptance.
Properly viewed, it expresses a merely instinctive belief, and is
explicable only in the naturalistic manner of our other
propensities, as necessary to the fulfilling of some practical
need. “Nature has determined us to judge as well as to breathe
and feel.”
From this naturalistic position Hume makes a no less
vigorous attack upon the empirical philosophies which profess
to establish general principles by inductive inference from the
facts of experience. If the principles which lie at the basis of
our experience are non-rational in character, the same must be
true of our empirical judgments. They may correctly describe
the uniformities that have hitherto occurred in the sequences of
our sensations, and may express the natural expectations to
which they spontaneously give rise; but they must never be
regarded as capable of serving as a basis for inference. In
eliminating a priori principles, and appealing exclusively to
sense-experience, the empiricist removes all grounds of
distinction between inductive inference and custom-bred
expectation. And since from this standpoint the possibility of
universal or abstract concepts—so Hume argues—must also
be denied, deductive inference must likewise be eliminated
from among the possible instruments at the disposal of the
mind. So-called inference is never the source of our beliefs; it
is our fundamental natural beliefs, as determined by the
constitution of our nature in its reaction upon external
influences, that generate those expectations which, however
they may masquerade in logical costume, have as purely
natural a source as our sensations and feelings. Such, briefly
and dogmatically stated, is the sum and substance of Hume’s
teaching.[10]
Now it was these considerations that, as it would seem,
awakened Kant to the problem of a priori synthesis. He was,
and to the very last remained, in entire agreement with Hume’s
contention that the principle of causality is neither self-evident
nor capable of logical demonstration, and he at once realised
that what is true of this principle must also hold of all the other
principles fundamental to science and philosophy. Kant further
agreed that inductive inference from the data of experience is
only possible upon the prior acceptance of rational principles
independently established; and that we may not, therefore,
look to experience for proof of their validity. Thus with the
rejection of self-evidence as a feature of the a priori, and with
the consequent admission of its synthetic character, Kant is
compelled to acquiesce in the inevitableness of the dilemma
which Hume propounds. Either Hume’s sceptical conclusions
must be accepted, or we must be able to point to some
criterion which is not subject to the defects of the rationalist
and empirical methods of proof, and which is adequate to
determine the validity or invalidity of general principles. Is
there any such alternative? Such is Kant’s problem as
expressed in the formula: How are synthetic a priori
judgments possible?
 It is a very remarkable historical fact that notwithstanding
the clearness and cogency of Hume’s argument, and the
appearance of such competent thinkers as Thomas Reid in
Scotland, Lambert and Crusius in Germany, no less than thirty
years should have elapsed before Hume found a single reader
capable of appreciating the teaching of the Treatise at its true
value.[11] Even Kant himself was not able from his reading of
the Enquiry in 1756-1762 to realise the importance and
bearing of the main problem.[12] Though in the Enquiry the
wider issue regarding the general principle of causality is not
raised, the bearing of Hume’s discussion, when interpreted in
the light of Kant’s own teaching, is sufficiently clear; and
accordingly we cannot be absolutely certain that it was not a
re-reading of the Enquiry or a recalling of its argument[13] that
suggested to Kant the central problem of his Critical
philosophy. The probability, however, is rather that this
awakening took place only indirectly through his becoming
acquainted with the wider argument of the Treatise as revealed
in James Beattie’s extremely crude and unsympathetic
criticism of Hume’s philosophy.[14] Beattie had great natural
ability, and considerable literary power. His prose writings
have a lucidity, a crispness, and a felicity of illustration which
go far to explain their widespread popularity in the latter half
of the eighteenth century. Their literary quality is, however,
more than counterbalanced by the absence of any genuine
appreciation of the deeper, speculative implications and
consequences of the problems discussed. And this being so, he
is naturally at his worst in criticising Hume. In insisting, as he
does, upon the absurd practical results[15] that would follow
from the adoption of Hume’s sceptical conclusions, he is
merely exploiting popular prejudice in the philosophical arena.
That, however, may be forgiven him, if, as would seem to be
the case, the quotations which he gives verbatim from Hume’s
Treatise really first revealed to Kant the scope and innermost
meaning of Hume’s analysis of the causal problem.
The evidence in support of this contention is entirely
circumstantial. The German translation of Beattie’s Essay on
the Nature and Immutability of Truth was published at Easter
1772, i.e. in the year in which Kant, in the process of his own
independent development, came, as is shown by his famous
letter to Herz,[16] to realise the mysterious, problematic
character of a priori knowledge of the independently real. He
was then, however, still entirely unconscious of the deeper
problem which at once emerges upon recognition that a priori
principles, quite apart from all question of their objective
validity, are synthetic in form. We know that Kant was
acquainted with Beattie’s work; for he twice refers to Beattie’s
criticism of Hume.[17] What more probable than that he read
the translation in the year of its publication, or at least at some
time not very long subsequent to the date of the letter to Herz?
The passages which Beattie quotes from the Treatise are
exactly those that were necessary to reveal the full scope of
Hume’s revolutionary teaching in respect to the general
principle of causality. There seems, indeed, little doubt that
this must have been the channel through which Hume’s
influence chiefly acted. Thus at last, by a circuitous path,
through the quotations of an adversary, Hume awakened
philosophy from its dogmatic slumber,[18] and won for his
argument that appreciation which despite its cogency it had for
thirty years so vainly demanded.
Let us now turn our attention to the rationalist philosophy in
which Kant was educated. Hume’s contention that experience
cannot by itself justify any inductive inference, forms the
natural bridge over which we can best pass to the contrasting
standpoint of Leibniz. Hume and Leibniz find common ground
in denouncing empiricism. Both agree in regarding it as the
mongrel offspring of conflicting principles. If rationalism
cannot hold its own, the alternative is not the finding of firm
foothold in concrete experience, but only such consolation as a
sceptical philosophy may afford.[19] The overthrow of
rationalism means the destruction of metaphysics in every
form. Even mathematics and the natural sciences will have to
be viewed as fulfilling a practical end, not as satisfying a
theoretical need. But though Leibniz’s criticism of empiricism
is, in its main contention, identical with that of Hume, it is
profoundly different both in its orientation and in the
conclusions to which it leads. While Hume maintains that
induction must be regarded as a non-rational process of merely
instinctive anticipation, Leibniz argues to the self-legislative
character of pure thought. Sense-experience reveals reality
only in proportion as it embodies principles derived from the
inherent character of thought itself. Experience conforms to a
priori principles, and so can afford an adequate basis for
scientific induction.
There is a passage in Hume’s Enquiry which may be
employed to illustrate the boldly speculative character of
Leibniz’s interpretation of the nature and function of human
thought. “Nothing … [seems] more unbounded than the
thought of man, which not only escapes all human power and
authority, but is not even restrained within the limits of nature
and reality…. While the body is confined to one planet, along
which it creeps with pain and difficulty, the thought can in an
instant transport us into the most distant regions of the
universe…. What never was seen, or heard of, may yet be
conceived; nor is anything beyond the power of thought,
except what implies an absolute contradiction.” This passage
in which Hume means to depict a false belief, already
sufficiently condemned by the absurdity of its claims,
expresses for Leibniz the wonderful but literal truth. Thought
is the revealer of an eternal unchanging reality, and its validity
is in no way dependent upon its verification through sense.
When Voltaire in his Ignorant Philosopher remarks that “it
would be very singular that all nature, all the planets, should
obey eternal laws, and that there should be a little animal, five
feet high, who, in contempt of these laws, could act as he
pleased, solely according to his caprice,”[20] he is forgetting
that this same animal of five feet can contain the stellar
universe in thought within himself, and has therefore a dignity
which is not expressible in any such terms as his size may
seem, for vulgar estimation, to imply. Man, though dependent
upon the body and confined to one planet, has the sun and
stars as the playthings of his mind. Though finite in his mortal
conditions, he is divinely infinite in his powers.
Leibniz thus boldly challenges the sceptical view of the
function of reason. Instead of limiting thought to the
translating of sense-data into conceptual forms, he claims for it
a creative power which enables it out of its own resources to
discover for itself, not only the actual constitution of the
material world, but also the immensely wider realm of
possible entities. The real, he maintains, is only one of the
many kingdoms which thought discovers for itself in the
universe of truth. It is the most comprehensive and the most
perfect, but still only one out of innumerable others which
unfold themselves to the mind in pure thought. Truth is not the
abstracting of the universal aspects in things, not a copy of
reality, dependent upon it for meaning and significance. Truth
is wider than reality, is logically prior to it, and instead of
being dependent upon the actual, legislates for it. Leibniz thus
starts from the possible, as discovered by pure thought, to
determine in an a priori manner the nature of the real.
This Leibnizian view of thought may seem, at first sight, to
be merely the re-emergence of the romantic, rationalistic ideal
of Descartes and Malebranche. So to regard it would, however,
be a serious injustice. It was held with full consciousness of its
grounds and implications, and reality was metaphysically
reinterpreted so as to afford it a genuine basis. There was
nothing merely mystical and nothing undefined in its main
tenets. Leibniz differs from Malebranche in being himself a
profound mathematician, the co-discoverer with Newton of the
differential calculus. He also differs from Descartes in
possessing an absorbing interest in the purely logical aspects
of the problem of method; and was therefore equipped in a
supreme degree for determining in genuinely scientific fashion
the philosophical significance and value of the mathematical
disciplines.
Hume and Leibniz are thus the two protagonists that dwarf
all others. They realised as neither Malebranche, Locke, nor
Berkeley, neither Reid, Lambert, Crusius, nor Mendelssohn
ever did, the really crucial issues which must ultimately decide
between the competing possibilities. Each maintained, in the
manner prescribed by his general philosophy, one of what then
appeared to be the only two possible views of the function of
thought. The alternatives were these: (a) Thought is merely a
practical instrument for the convenient interpretation of our
human experience; it has no objective or metaphysical validity
of any kind; (b) Thought legislates universally; it reveals the
wider universe of the eternally possible; and prior to all
experience can determine the fundamental conditions to which
that experience must conform. Or to interpret this opposition
in logical terms: (a) The fundamental principles of experience
are synthetic judgments in which no relation is discoverable
between subject and predicate, and which for that reason can
be justified neither a priori nor by experience; (b) all
principles are analytic, and can therefore be justified by pure
thought.
The problem of Kant’s Critique, broadly stated, consists in
the examination and critical estimate of these two opposed
views. There is no problem, scientific, moral, or religious,
which is not vitally affected by the decision which of these
alternatives we are to adopt, or what reconciliation of their
conflicting claims we hope to achieve. Since Kant’s day,
largely owing to the establishment of the evolution theory, this
problem has become only the more pressing. The naturalistic,
instrumental view of thought seems to be immensely
reinforced by biological authority. Thought would seem to be
reduced to the level of sense-affection, and to be an instrument
developed through natural processes for the practical purposes
of adaptation. Yet the counter-view has been no less
powerfully strengthened by the victorious march of the
mathematical sciences. They have advanced beyond the limits
of Euclidean space, defining possibilities such as no
experience reveals to us. The Leibnizian view has also been
reinforced by the successes of physical science in determining
what would seem to be the actual, objective character of the
independently real. Kant was a rationalist by education,
temperament, and conviction. Consequently his problem was
to reconcile Leibniz’s view of the function of thought with
Hume’s proof of the synthetic character of the causal principle.
He strives to determine how much of Leibniz’s belief in the
legislative power of pure reason can be retained after full
justice has been done to Hume’s damaging criticisms. The
fundamental principles upon which all experience and all
knowledge ultimately rest are synthetic in nature: how is it
possible that they should also be a priori? Such is the problem
that was Kant’s troublous inheritance from his philosophical
progenitors, Hume and Leibniz.[21]
 III. GENERAL
In indicating some of the main features of Kant’s general
teaching, I shall limit myself to those points which seem most
helpful in preliminary orientation, or which are necessary for
guarding against the misunderstandings likely to result from
the very radical changes in terminology and in outlook that
have occurred in the hundred and thirty years since the
publication of the Critique. Statements which thus attempt to
present in outline, and in modern terms, the more general
features of Kant’s philosophical teaching will doubtless seem
to many of my readers dogmatic in form and highly
questionable in content. They must stand or fall by the results
obtained through detailed examination of Kant’s ipsissima
verba. Such justification as I can give for them will be found
in the body of the Commentary.
I. THE NATURE OF THE A PRIORI

The fundamental presupposition upon which Kant’s

argument rests—a presupposition never itself investigated but
always assumed—is that universality and necessity cannot be
reached by any process that is empirical in character. By way
of this initial assumption Kant arrives at the conclusion that
the a priori, the distinguishing characteristics of which are
universality and necessity, is not given in sense but is imposed
by the mind; or in other less ambiguous terms, is not part of
the matter of experience but constitutes its form. The matter of
experience is here taken as equivalent to sensation; while
sensation, in turn, is regarded as being the non-relational.
The explanation of Kant’s failure either to investigate or to
prove this assumption has already been indicated. Leibniz
proceeds upon the assumption of its truth no less confidently
than Hume, and as Kant’s main task consisted in reconciling
what he regarded as being the elements of truth in their
opposed philosophies, he very naturally felt secure in rearing
his system upon the one fundamental presupposition on which
they were able to agree. It lay outside the field of controversy,
and possessed for Kant, as it had possessed for Hume and for
Leibniz, that authoritative and axiomatic character which an
unchallenged preconception tends always to acquire.
The general thesis, that the universal and necessary
elements in experience constitute its form, Kant specifies in
the following determinate manner. The form is fixed for all
experience, that is to say, it is one and the same in each and
every experience, however simple or however complex. It is to
be detected in consciousness of duration no less than in
consciousness of objects or in consciousness of self. For, as
Kant argues, consciousness of duration involves the capacity
to distinguish between subjective and objective succession,
and likewise involves recognition[22] with its necessary
component self-consciousness. Or to state the same point of
view in another way, human experience is a temporal process
and yet is always a consciousness of meaning. As temporal, its
states are ordered successively, that is, externally to one
another; but the consciousness which they constitute is at each
and every moment the awareness of some single unitary
meaning by reference to which the contents of the successive
experiences are organised. The problem of knowledge may
therefore be described as being the analysis of the
consciousness of duration, of objectivity, and of self-
consciousness, or alternatively as the analysis of our
awareness of meaning. Kant arrives at the conclusion that the
conditions of all four are one and the same.[23]
Kant thus teaches that experience in all its embodiments and
in each of its momentary states can be analysed into an
endlessly variable material and a fixed set of relational
elements. And as no one of the relational factors can be absent
without at once nullifying all the others, they together
constitute what must be regarded as the determining form and
structure of every mental process that is cognitive in character.
Awareness, that is to say, is identical with the act of judgment,
and therefore involves everything that a judgment, in its
distinction from any mere association of ideas, demands for its
possibility.
Kant’s position, when thus stated, differs from that of
Leibniz only in its clearer grasp of the issues and difficulties
involved, and consequently in the more subtle, pertinacious,
and thoroughgoing character of the argument by which it is
established. Its revolutionary character first appears when
Kant further argues, in extension of the teaching of Hume, that
the formal, relational elements are of a synthetic nature. The
significance and scope of this conclusion can hardly be
exaggerated. No other Kantian tenet is of more fundamental
importance.[24] With it the main consequences of Kant’s
Critical teaching are indissolubly bound up. As the principles
which lie at the basis of our knowledge are synthetic, they
have no intrinsic necessity, and cannot possess the absolute
authority ascribed to them by the rationalists. They are
prescribed to human reason, but cannot be shown to be
inherently rational in any usual sense of that highly ambiguous
term. They can be established only as brute conditions,
verifiable in fact though not demonstrable in pure theory (if
there be any such thing), of our actual experience. They are
conditions of sense-experience, and that means of our
knowledge of appearances, never legitimately applicable in the
deciphering of ultimate reality. They are valid within the realm
of experience, useless for the construction of a metaphysical
theory of things in themselves. This conclusion is reinforced
when we recognise that human experience, even in its
fundamental features (e.g. the temporal and the spatial), might
conceivably be altogether different from what it actually is,
and that its presuppositions are always, therefore, of the same
contingent character. Even the universality and necessity
which Kant claims to have established for his a priori
principles are of this nature. Their necessity is always for us
extrinsic; they can be postulated only if, and so long as, we are
assuming the occurrence of human sense-experience.
Thus Kant is a rationalist of a new and unique type. He
believes in, and emphasises the importance of, the a priori.
With it alone, he contends, is the Critique competent to deal.
But it is an a priori which cannot be shown to be more than
relative. It does, indeed, enable us to conceive the known as
relative, and to entertain in thought the possibility of an
Absolute; but this it can do without itself possessing
independent validity. For though the proof of the a priori is
not empirical in the sense of being inductive, neither is it
logical in the sense of being deduced from necessities of
thought. Its “transcendental” proof can be executed only so
long as experience is granted as actual; and so long as the
fundamental characteristics of this experience are kept in view.
Lastly, the a priori factors are purely relational. They have
no inherent content from which clues bearing on the
supersensible can be obtained. Their sole function is to serve
in the interpretation of contents otherwise supplied.
The a priori, then, is merely relational, without inherent
content; it is synthetic, and therefore incapable of independent
or metaphysical proof; it is relative to an experience which is
only capable of yielding appearances. The a priori is as merely
factual as the experience which it conditions.
Even in the field of morality Kant held fast to this
conviction. Morality, no less than knowledge, presupposes a
priori principles. These, however, are never self-evident, and
cannot be established by any mere appeal to intuition. They
have authority only to the extent to which they can be shown
to be the indispensable presuppositions of a moral
consciousness that is undeniably actual.[25]
That the a priori is of this character must be clearly
understood. Otherwise the reader will be pursued by a feeling
of the unreality, of the merely historical or antiquarian
significance, of the entire discussion. He may, if he pleases,
substitute the term formal or relational for a priori. And if he
bears in mind that by the relational Kant is here intending
those elements in knowledge which render possible the
relations constitutive of meaning, he will recognise that the
Critical discussion is by no means antiquated, but still remains
one of the most important issues in the entire field of
philosophical enquiry.
2. KANT’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE SCIENCE OF LOGIC

The above conclusions have an important bearing upon

logical doctrine. Just as modern geometry originates in a
sceptical treatment of the axiom of parallels, so modern,
idealist logic rests upon Kant’s demonstration of the
revolutionary consequences of Hume’s sceptical teaching. If
principles are never self-evident, and yet are not arrived at by
induction from experience, by what alternative method can
they be established? In answer to this question, Kant outlines
the position which is now usually entitled the Coherence
theory of truth.[26] That theory, though frequently ascribed to
Hegel, has its real sources in the Critique of Pure Reason. It
expresses that modification in the Leibnizian rationalism
which is demanded by Hume’s discovery of the synthetic
character of the causal axiom. Neither the deductive methods
of the Cartesian systems nor the inductive methods of the
English philosophies can any longer be regarded as correctly
describing the actual processes of scientific proof.
General principles are either presuppositions or postulates.
If a priori, they are presupposed in all conscious awareness; as
above indicated, they have a de facto validity within the
experience which they thus make possible. If more special in
nature, they are the postulates to which we find ourselves
committed in the process of solving specific problems; and
they are therefore discovered by the method of trial and
failure.[27] They are valid in proportion as they enable us to
harmonise appearances, and to adjudicate to each a kind of
reality consistent with that assigned to every other.
Proof of fact is similar in general character. The term fact is
eulogistic, not merely descriptive; it marks the possession of
cognitive significance in regard to some body of knowledge,
actual or possible. It can be applied to particular appearances
only in so far as we can determine their conditions, and can
show that as thus conditioned the mode of their existence is
relevant to the enquiry that is being pursued. The convergence
of parallel lines is fact from the standpoint of psychological
investigation; from the point of view of their physical
existence it is merely appearance. Ultimately, of course,
everything is real, including what we entitle appearance;[28]
but in the articulation of human experience such distinctions
are indispensable, and the criteria that define them are
prescribed by the context in which they are being employed.
Thus facts cannot be established apart from principles, nor
principles apart from facts. The proof of a principle is its
adequacy to the interpretation of all those appearances that can
be shown to be in any respect relevant to it, while the test of an
asserted fact, i.e. of our description of a given appearance, is
its conformity to the principles that make insight possible.
Though the method employed in the Critique is entitled by
Kant the “transcendental method,” it is really identical in
general character with the hypothetical method of the natural
sciences. It proceeds by enquiring what conditions must be
postulated in order that the admittedly given may be explained
and accounted for.[29] Starting from the given, it also submits
its conclusions to confirmation by the given. Considered as a
method, there is nothing metaphysical or high-flying about it
save the name. None the less, Kant is in some degree justified
in adopting the special title. In view of the unique character of
the problem to be dealt with, the method calls for very careful
statement, and has to be defended against the charge of
inapplicability in the philosophical field.
The fundamental thesis of the Coherence theory finds
explicit formulation in Kant’s doctrine of the judgment: the
doctrine, that awareness is identical with the act of judging,
and that judgment is always complex, involving both factual
and interpretative elements. Synthetic, relational factors are
present in all knowledge, even in knowledge that may seem,
on superficial study, to be purely analytic or to consist merely
of sense-impressions. Not contents alone, but contents
interpreted in terms of some specific setting, are the sole
possible objects of human thought. Even when, by forced
abstraction, particulars and universals are held mentally apart,
they are still being apprehended through judgments, and
therefore through mental processes that involve both. They
stand in relations of mutual implication within a de facto
system; and together they constitute it.
This is the reason why in modern logic, as in Kant’s
Critique, the theory of the judgment receives so much more
attention than the theory of reasoning. For once the above
view of the judgment has been established, all the main points
in the doctrine of reasoning follow of themselves as so many
corollaries. Knowledge starts neither from sense-data nor from
general principles, but from the complex situation in which the
human race finds itself at the dawn of self-consciousness. That
situation is organised in terms of our mental equipment; and
this already existing, rudimentary system is what has made
practicable further advance; to create a system ab initio is
altogether impossible. The starting-point does not, however,
by itself alone determine our conclusions. Owing to the
creative activities of the mind, regulative principles are active
in all consciousness; and under their guidance the experienced
order, largely practical in satisfaction of the instinctive desires,
is transformed into a comprehended order, controlled in view
of Ideal ends. Logic is the science of the processes whereby
this transformation is brought about. An essentially
metaphysical discipline, it cannot be isolated from the general
body of philosophical teaching; it is not formal, but
transcendental; in defining the factors and processes that
constitute knowledge, its chief preoccupation is with ultimate
issues.
In calling his new logic “transcendental” Kant, it is true,
also intends to signify that it is supplementary to, not a
substitute for, the older logic, which he professes to accept.[30]
Moreover his intuitional theory of mathematical science, his
doctrine of the “pure concept,” his attributive view of the
judgment—all of them survivals from his pre-Critical
period[31]—frequently set him at cross-purposes with himself.
His preoccupation, too, with the problem of the a priori leads
him to underestimate the part played in knowledge by the
merely empirical. But despite all inconsistencies, and
notwithstanding his perverse preference for outlandish modes
of expression, he succeeds in enforcing with sufficient
clearness the really fundamental tenets of the Coherence view.
3. THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

I shall now approach Kant’s central position from another

direction, namely, as an answer to the problem of the nature of
consciousness. We are justified, I think, in saying that Kant
was the first in modern times to raise the problem of the nature
of awareness, and of the conditions of its possibility. Though
Descartes is constantly speaking of consciousness, he defines
it in merely negative terms, through its opposition to matter;
and when he propounds the question how material bodies can
be known by the immaterial mind, his mode of dealing with it
shows that his real interest lies not in the nature of
consciousness but in the character of the existences which it
reveals. His answer, formulated in terms of the doctrine of
representative perception, and based on the supposed teaching
of physics and physiology, is that material bodies through their
action on the sense-organs and brain generate images or
duplicates of themselves. These images, existing not in outer
space but only in consciousness, are, he asserts, mental in
nature; and being mental they are, he would seem to conclude,
immediately and necessarily apprehended by the mind. Thus
Descartes gives us, not an analysis of the knowing process, but
only a subjectivist interpretation of the nature of the objects
upon which it is directed.
Quite apart, then, from the question as to whether
Descartes’ doctrine of representative perception rests on a
correct interpretation of the teaching of the natural sciences—
Kant was ultimately led to reject the doctrine—it is obvious
that the main epistemological problem, i.e. the problem how
awareness is possible, and in what it consists, has so far not so
much as even been raised. Descartes and his successors
virtually assume that consciousness is an ultimate,
unanalysable form of awareness, and that all that can
reasonably be demanded of the philosopher is that he explain
what objects are actually presented to it, and under what
conditions their presentation can occur. On Descartes’ view
they are conditioned by antecedent physical and physiological
processes; according to Berkeley they are due to the creative
activity of a Divine Being; according to Hume nothing
whatsoever can be determined as to their originating causes.
But all three fail to recognise that even granting the objects to
be of the character asserted, namely, mental, the further
problem still remains for consideration, how they come to be
consciously apprehended, and in what such awareness
consists.
Certain interpretations of the nature of the knowing process
are, of course, to be found in the writings of Descartes and his
successors. But they are so much a matter of unexamined
presupposition that they never receive exact formulation, and
alternate with one another in quite a haphazard fashion. We
may consider three typical views.
 1. There is, Descartes frequently seems to imply—the same
assumption is evident throughout Locke’s Essay—a self that
stands behind all mental states, observing and apprehending
them. Consciousness is the power which this self has of
contemplating both itself and its ideas. Obviously this is a
mere ignoring of the issue. If we assume an observer, we ipso
facto postulate a process of observation, but we have not
explained or even defined it.
2. There is also in Descartes a second, very different, view
of consciousness, namely, as a diaphanous medium analogous
to light. Just as light is popularly conceived as revealing the
objects upon which it falls, so consciousness is regarded as
revealing to us our inner states. This view of consciousness,
for reasons which I shall indicate shortly, is entirely
inadequate to the facts for which we have to account. It is no
more tenable than the corresponding view of light.
3. In Hume we find this latter theory propounded in what
may at first sight seem a more satisfactory form, but is even
less satisfactory. Sensations, images, feelings, he argues, are
states of consciousness, one might almost say pieces of
consciousness, i.e. they are conceived as carrying their own
consciousness with them. Red, for instance, is spoken of as a
sensation, and is consequently viewed both as being a sense-
content, i.e. something sensed or apprehended, and also at the
same time as the sensing or awareness of it. This view is
unable to withstand criticism. There is really no more ground
for asserting that red colour carries with it consciousness of
itself than for saying that a table does. The illegitimacy of the
assertion is concealed from us by the fact that tables appear to
exist when there is no consciousness present, whereas redness
cannot be proved to exist independently of consciousness—it
may or may not do so. Many present-day thinkers, continuing
the tradition of the English associationists, hold to this pre-
Kantian view. Sensations, feelings, etc., are, it is implied,
pieces of consciousness, forms of awareness; through their
varying combinations they constitute the complex experiences
of the animal and human mind.
Kant’s teaching is developed in direct opposition to all such
views. If we discard his antiquated terminology, and state his
position in current terms, we find that it amounts to the
assertion that consciousness is in all cases awareness of
meaning. There is no awareness, however rudimentary or
primitive, that does not involve the apprehension of meaning.
Meaning and awareness are correlative terms; each must be
studied in its relation to the other. And inasmuch as meaning is
a highly complex object of apprehension, awareness cannot be
regarded as ultimate or as unanalysable. It can be shown to
rest upon a complexity of generative conditions and to involve
a variety of distinct factors.
There are thus, from the Kantian standpoint, two all-
sufficient reasons why the diaphanous view of consciousness,
i.e. any view which treats consciousness merely as a medium
whereby the existent gets itself reported, must be regarded as
untenable. In the first place, as already remarked, it is based on
the false assumption that consciousness is an ultimate, and that
we are therefore dispensed from all further investigation of its
nature. Kant claims to have distinguished successfully the
many components which go to constitute it; and he also
professes to have shown that until such analysis has been
made, there can be no sufficient basis for a philosophical
treatment either of the problems of sense-perception or of the
logical problems of judgment and inference. The diaphanous
view, with its mirror-like mode of representation, might allow
of the side-by-sideness of associated contents; it can never
account for the processes whereby the associated contents
come to be apprehended.
Secondly, the diaphanous view ignores the fundamental
distinction between meaning and existence. Existences rest, so
to speak, on their own bottom; they are self-centred even at the
very moment of their reaction to external influences. Meaning,
on the other hand, always involves the interpretation of what is
given in the light of wider considerations that lend it
significance. In the awareness of meaning the given, the
actually presented, is in some way transcended, and this
transcendence is what has chiefly to be reckoned with in any
attempt to explain the conscious process. Kant is giving
expression to this thesis when he contends that all awareness,
no matter how rudimentary or apparently simple, is an act of
judgment, and therefore involves the relational categories. Not
passive contemplation but active judgment, not mere
conception but inferential interpretation, is the fundamental
form, and the only form, in which our consciousness exists.
This, of course, commits Kant to the assertion that there is no
mode of cognition that can be described as immediate or
unreflective. There is an immediate element in all knowledge,
but our consciousness of it is always conditioned and
accompanied by interpretative processes, and in their absence
there can be no awareness of any kind.
By way of this primary distinction between existence and
meaning Kant advances to all those other distinctions which
characterise our human experience, between appearance and
reality, between the real and the Ideal, between that which is
judged and the criteria which control and direct the judging
process. Just because all awareness is awareness of meaning,
our human experience becomes intelligible as a purposive
activity that directs itself according to Ideal standards.
The contrast between the Kantian and the Cartesian views
of consciousness can be defined in reference to another
important issue. The diaphanous view commits its adherents to
a very definite interpretation of the nature of relations. Since
they regard consciousness as passive and receptive, they have
to maintain that relations can be known only in so far as they
are apprehended in a manner analogous to the contents
themselves. I do not, of course, wish to imply that this view of
relational knowledge is in all cases and in all respects
illegitimate. Kant, as we shall find, has carried the opposite
view to an impossible extreme, assuming without further
argument that what has been shown to be true of certain types
of relation (for instance, of the causal and substance-attribute
relations) must be true of all relations, even of those that
constitute space and time. It cannot be denied that, as William
James and others have very rightly insisted, such relations as
the space-relations are in some degree or manner
presentational. This does not, however, justify James in
concluding, as he at times seems inclined to do, that all
relations are directly experienced. Such procedure lays him
open to the same charge of illegitimate reasoning. But even if
we could grant James’s thesis in its widest form, the all-
important Critical question would still remain: in what does
awareness, whether of presented contents or of presented
relations, consist, and how is it possible? In answering this
question Kant is led to the conclusion that consciousness must
be regarded as an activity, and as supplying certain of the
conditions of its own possibility. Its contribution is of a
uniform and constant nature; it consists, as already noted, of
certain relational factors whose presence can be detected in
each and every act of awareness.
There is one other respect in which Kant’s view of
consciousness differs from that of his Cartesian predecessors.
[32] Consciousness, he maintains, does not reveal itself, but
only its objects. In other words, there is no awareness of
awareness. So far as our mental states and processes can be
known at all, they are known in the same objective manner in
which we apprehend existences in space.[33] Now if that be so,
a very important consequence follows. If there is no awareness
of awareness, but only of meanings all of which are objective,
there can be no consciousness of the generative, synthetic
processes that constitute consciousness on its subjective side.
For consciousness, being an act of awareness in which
meaning is apprehended, has a twofold nature, and must be
very differently described according to the aspect which at any
one time we may have in view. When we regard it on its
objective side as awareness of meaning, we are chiefly
concerned with the various factors that are necessary to
meaning and that enter into its constitution. That is to say, our
analysis is essentially logical. When, on the other hand, we
consider consciousness as an act of awareness, our problem is
ontological or as it may be entitled (though the term is in this
reference somewhat misleading, since the enquiry as defined
by Kant is essentially metaphysical) psychological in
character. Between these two aspects there is this very
important difference. The logical factors constitutive of
meaning can be exhaustively known; they are elements in the
meanings which consciousness reveals; whereas the synthetic
processes are postulated solely in view of these constituent
factors, and in order to account for them. The processes, that is
to say, are known only through that which they condition, and
on Kant’s teaching we are entirely ruled out from attempting
to comprehend even their possibility.[34] They must be thought
as occurring, but they cannot be known, i.e. their nature cannot
be definitely specified. The postulating of them marks a gap in
our knowledge, and extends our insight only in the degree that
it discloses our ignorance. As consciousness rests upon, and is
made possible by, these processes, it can never be explained in
terms of the objective world to which our sense-experience,
and therefore, as Kant argues, our specific knowledge, is
exclusively limited. The mind can unfold its contents in the
sunshine of consciousness, only because its roots strike deep
into a soil that the light does not penetrate. These processes,
thus postulated, Kant regards as the source of the a priori
elements, and as the agency through which the synthetic
connections necessary to all consciousness are brought about.
According to Kant’s Critical teaching, therefore,
consciousness, though analysable, is not such as can ever be
rendered completely comprehensible. When all is said, it
remains for us a merely de facto form of existence, and has to
be taken just for what it presents itself as being. It is actually
such as to make possible the logical processes of judgment and
inference. It is actually such as to render possible a satisfactory
proof of the scientific validity, within the field of sense-
experience, of the principle of causality, and of such other
principles as are required in the development of the positive
sciences. It is also such as to render comprehensible the
controlling influence of Ideal standards. But when we come to
the question, how is consciousness of this type and form
possible, that is, to the question of its metaphysical
significance and of the generative conditions upon which it
rests, we find, Kant maintains, that we have no data sufficient
to justify any decisive answer.
The ontological, creative, or dynamical aspect of
consciousness, I may further insist, must be constantly borne
in mind if the Critical standpoint is to be properly viewed. The
logical analysis is, indeed, for the purposes of the central
portions of the Critique much the more important, and alone
allows of detailed, exhaustive development; but the other is no
less essential for an appreciation of Kant’s attitude towards the
more strictly metaphysical problems of the Dialectic.
Hegel and his disciples have been the chief culprits in
subordinating, or rather in entirely eliminating, this aspect of
Kant’s teaching. Many of the inconsistencies of which they
accuse Kant exist only if Kant’s teaching be first reduced to a
part of itself. To eliminate the ontological implications of his
theory of consciousness is, by anticipation, to render many of
his main conclusions entirely untenable, and in particular to
destroy the force of his fundamental distinction between
appearance and reality. If consciousness knows itself in its
ultimate nature—and such is Hegel’s contention—one half of
reality is taken out of the obscurity in which, on Kant’s
reading of the situation, it is condemned to lie hidden. Man is
more knowable than nature, and is the key to nature; such is
Hegel’s position, crudely stated. Contrast therewith the
teaching of Kant. We can know nature more completely
(though still very incompletely) than we can ever hope to
comprehend the conditions that make possible and actual
man’s spiritual life. The moral consciousness is an
autonomously acting source of independent values, and though
a standing miracle, must be taken for all that on independent
and separate enquiry it is found to be. Hegel, in his endeavour
to establish an intellectual monism, does violence to some of
the highest interests which he professes to be safeguarding.
Kant, while outlining in Idea a Kingdom of Ends, remains
satisfied with a pluralistic distinction between the intellectual
and the moral categories. The antithesis of the two
philosophies is in some degree the ancient opposition between
Aristotle and Plato, restated in modern terms.
4. PHENOMENALISM, KANT’S SUBSTITUTE FOR SUBJECTIVISM

The revolutionary character of the above conclusions is

shown by the difficulty which Kant himself found in breaking
away from many of the presuppositions that underlie the views
which he was renouncing; and this is nowhere more evident
than in his constant alternation throughout the Critique
between a subjectivism[35] that is thoroughly Cartesian—we
might almost, allowing for his rationalism, say Berkeleian—in
character, and a radically different position which may be
entitled phenomenalism. The latter is alone genuinely Critical,
and presents Kant’s teaching in its maturest form. For though
first formulated only in those portions of the Analytic that are
late in date of writing, and in those passages of the second
edition which supplement them, it would seem to be the only
logical outcome of Kant’s other main doctrines.
I have especially in mind Kant’s fundamental distinction
between appearance and reality; it has an all-important bearing
upon the Cartesian opposition between the mental and the
material, and especially upon the question as to what view
ought to be taken of our so-called subjective experiences. The
objective is for the Cartesians the independently real; the
subjective is asserted to have an altogether different kind of
existence in what is named the field of consciousness. Kant’s
phenomenalist restatement of this distinction is too complex
and subtle to be made intelligible in the brief space available
in this Introduction—it is expounded in the body of the
Commentary[36]—but its general character I may indicate in a
few sentences. All subjectivist modes of stating the problem of
knowledge, such as we find in Hume and in Leibniz no less
than in Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley, are, Kant finally
concluded, illegitimate and question-begging. Our so-called
subjective states, whether they be sensations, feelings, or
desires, are objective in the sense that they are objects for
consciousness.[37] Our mental states do not run parallel with
the system of natural existences; nor are they additional to it.
They do not constitute our consciousness of nature; they are
themselves part of the natural order which consciousness
reveals. They compose the empirical self which is an objective
existence, integrally connected with the material environment
in terms of which alone it can be understood. The subjective is
not opposite in nature to the objective, but a sub-species within
it. While, however, the psychical is thus to be regarded as a
class of known appearances, and as forming together with the
physical a single system of nature, this entire order is, in
Kant’s view, conditioned by an underlying realm of noumenal
existence; and when the question of the possibility of the
knowing, that is, of the experiencing of such a comprehensive
natural system, is raised, it is to this noumenal sphere that we
are referred. Everything experienced, even a sensation or
feeling, is an event, but the experiencing of it is an act of
awareness, and calls for an explanation of an altogether
different kind.
Thus the problem of knowledge, stated in adequate Critical
terms, is not how we can advance from the merely subjective
to knowledge of the independently real,[38] but how, if
everything known forms part of a comprehensive natural
system, consciousness and the complex factors which
contribute to its possibility are to be interpreted. On this latter
question, as already indicated, Kant, though debarring both
subjectivism and materialism, otherwise adopts a non-
committal attitude. So long as we continue within the purely
theoretical domain, there are a number of alternatives between
which there are no sufficient data for deciding. To debar
subjectivism is not to maintain the illusory or phenomenal
character of the individual self; and to rule out materialism is
not to assert that the unconscious may not generate and
account for the conscious. In other words, they are ruled out
not for any ulterior reasons derived from their supposed
metaphysical consequences, but solely because they are based
on palpable misinterpretations of the cognitive situation that
generates those very problems to which they profess to be an
answer.
5. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN HUMAN AND ANIMAL
INTELLIGENCE

The inwardness of Kant’s Critical standpoint may perhaps

be made clearer by a brief consideration of his view of animal
intelligence. We are accustomed nowadays to test a
psychology of human consciousness by its capacity to render
conceivable an evolution from lower forms. How does Kant’s
teaching emerge from such a test?
It may at once be admitted that Kant has made no special
study of animal behaviour, and was by no means competent to
speak with authority in regard to its conditions. Indeed it is
evident that anything which he may have to say upon this
question is entirely of the nature of a deduction from results
obtained in the human sphere. But when this has been
admitted, and we are therefore prepared to find the problems
approached from the point of view of the difference rather than
of the kinship between man and the animals, we can recognise
that, so far as the independent study of human consciousness is
concerned, there is a certain compensating advantage in Kant’s
pre-Darwinian standpoint. For it leaves him free from that
desire which exercises so constant, and frequently so
deleterious an influence, upon many workers in the field of
psychology, namely, to maintain at all costs, in anticipation of
conclusions not yet by any means established, the fundamental
identity of animal and human intelligence. This besetting
desire all too easily tends to the minimising of differences that
may perhaps with fuller insight be found to involve no breach
of continuity, but which in the present state of our knowledge
cannot profitably be interpreted save in terms of their
differentiating peculiarities.
The current controversy between mechanism and vitalism
enforces the point which I desire to make. Biological
problems, as many biologists are now urging, can be most
profitably discussed in comparative independence of ultimate
issues, entirely in view of their own domestic circumstances.
For only when the actual constitution of organic compounds
has been more completely determined than has hitherto been
possible can the broader questions be adequately dealt with. In
other words, the differences must be known before the exact
nature and degree of the continuity can be defined. They
cannot be anticipated by any mere deduction from general
principles.
The value of Kant’s analysis of human consciousness is thus
closely bound up with his frank recognition of its inherent
complexity. Not simplification, but specification, down to the
bedrock of an irreducible minimum of correlated factors, is the
governing motive of his Critical enquiries. His results have
therefore the great advantage of being inspired by no
considerations save such as are prescribed by the actual
subject-matter under investigation. As already noted, Kant
maintains that human consciousness is always an awareness of
meaning, and that consequently it can find expression only in
judgments which involve together with their other factors the
element of recognition or self-consciousness.
 This decides for Kant the character of the distinction to be
drawn between animal and human intelligence. As animals, in
his view, cannot be regarded as possessing a capacity of self-
consciousness, they must also be denied all awareness of
meaning. However complicated the associative organisation of
their ideas may be, it never rises to the higher level of logical
judgment. For the same reason, though their ideas may be
schematic in outline, and in their bearing on behaviour may
therefore have the same efficiency as general concepts, they
cannot become universal in the logical sense. “Animals have
apprehensions, but not apperceptions, and cannot, therefore,
make their representations universal.”[39] In support of this
position Kant might have pointed to the significant fact that
animals are so teachable up to a certain point, and so
unteachable beyond it. They can be carried as far as
associative suggestion will allow, but not a step further. To this
day it remains true—at least I venture the assertion—that no
animal has ever been conclusively shown to be capable of
apprehending a sign as a sign. Animals may seem to do so
owing to the influence of associated ideas, but are, as it would
appear, debarred from crossing the boundary line which so
sharply distinguishes associative suggestion from reflective
knowledge.
But Kant is committed to a further assertion. If animals are
devoid of all awareness of meaning, they must also be denied
anything analogous to what we must signify by the term
consciousness. Their experience must fall apart into events,
that may, perhaps, be described as mental, but cannot be taken
as equivalent to an act of awareness. “Apprehensio bruta
without consciousness,”[40] such is Kant’s view of the animal
mind. Its mental states, like all other natural existences, are
events in time, explicable in the same naturalistic fashion as
the bodily processes by which they are conditioned; they can
not be equated with that human consciousness which enables
us to reflect upon them, and to determine the conditions of
their temporal happening.
The distinction which Kant desires to draw is ultimately that
between events and consciousness of events. Even if events
are psychical in character, consisting of sensations and
feelings, there will still remain as fundamental the distinction
between what is simply a member of the causal series of
natural events and the consciousness through which the series
is apprehended. Kant’s most explicit statements occur in a
letter to Herz.[41] He is referring to data of the senses which
cannot be self-consciously apprehended:
 “I should not be able to know that I have them, and they
would therefore be for me, as a cognitive being, absolutely
nothing. They might still (if I conceive myself as an animal)
exist in me (a being unconscious of my own existence) as
representations …, connected according to an empirical law of
association, exercising influence upon feeling and desire, and
so always disporting themselves with regularity, without my
thereby acquiring the least cognition of anything, not even of
these my own states.”[42]
As to whether Kant is justified in maintaining that the
distinction between animal and human consciousness
coincides with the distinction between associative and logical
or reflective thinking, I am not concerned to maintain. This
digression has been introduced solely for the purpose of
defining more precisely the central tenets of Kant’s Critical
teaching.
6. THE NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

We have still to consider what is perhaps the most serious of

all the misunderstandings to which Kant has laid himself open,
and which is in large part responsible for the widespread belief
that his Critical principles, when consistently developed, must
finally eventuate in some such metaphysics as that of Fichte
and Hegel. I refer to the view that Kant in postulating
synthetic processes as conditioning consciousness is
postulating a noumenal self as exercising these activities, and
is therefore propounding a metaphysical explanation of the
synthetic, a priori factors in human experience.[43]
Kant’s language is frequently ambiguous. The Leibnizian
spiritualism, to which in his pre-Critical period he had
unquestioningly held, continued to influence his terminology,
and so to prevent his Critical principles from obtaining
consistent expression. This much can be said in support of the
above interpretation of Kant’s position. But in all other
respects such a reading of his philosophy is little better than a
parody of his actual teaching. For Kant is very well aware that
the problem of knowledge is not to be solved in any such easy
and high-handed fashion. In the Critique he teaches quite
explicitly that to profess to explain the presence of a priori
factors in human experience by means of a self assumed for
that very purpose would be a flagrant violation, not only of
Critical principles, but even of the elementary maxims of
scientific reasoning. In the first place, explanation by reference
to the activities of such a self would be explanation by
faculties, by the unknown; it is a cause that will explain
anything and everything equally well or badly.[44] Self-
consciousness has, indeed, to be admitted as a fact;[45] and
from its occurrence Kant draws important conclusions in
regard to the conditions which make experience possible. But,
in so doing, Kant never intends to maintain that we are
justified in postulating as part of those conditions, or as
condition of those conditions, a noumenal self. The conditions
which make experience possible, whatever they may be, are
also the conditions which make self-consciousness possible.
Since the self is known only as appearance, it cannot be
asserted to be the conditioning ground of appearance.
This first objection is not explicitly stated by Kant, but it is
implied in a second argument which finds expression both in
the Deduction of the Categories and in the chapter on the
Paralogisms. The only self that we know to exist is the
conscious self. Now, as Kant claims to have proved, the self
can be thus conscious, even of itself, only in so far as it is
conscious of objects. Consequently we have no right to
assume that the self can precede such consciousness as its
generating cause. That would be to regard the self as existing
prior to its own conditions, working in darkness to create itself
as a source of light.
But there is also a third reason why Kant’s Critical solution
of the problem of knowledge must not be stated in spiritualist
terms. Self-consciousness, as he shows, is itself relational in
character. It is a fundamental factor in human experience, not
because the self can be shown to be the agency to which
relations are due, but solely because, itself a case of
recognition, it is at the same time a necessary condition of
recognition, and recognition is indispensably presupposed in
all consciousness of meaning.[46] Awareness of meaning is the
fundamental mystery, and retains its profoundly mysterious
character even when self-consciousness has been thus detected
as an essential constituent. For self-consciousness does not
explain the possibility of meaning; it is itself, as I have just
remarked, only one case of recognition, and so is itself only an
instance, though indeed the supreme and most important
instance, of what we must intend by the term meaning. All
awareness, not excepting that of the knowing self, rests upon
noumenal conditions whose specific nature it does not itself
reveal. Only on moral grounds, never through any purely
theoretical analysis of cognitive experience, can it be proved
that the self is an abiding personality, and that in conscious,
personal form it belongs to the order of noumenal reality.
7. KANT’S THREEFOLD DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSIBILITY,
UNDERSTANDING, AND REASON

Even so summary a statement of Critical teaching as I am

attempting in this Introduction would be very incomplete
without some reference to Kant’s threefold distinction between
the forms of sensibility, the categories of the understanding,
and the Ideas of Reason.
On investigating space and time Kant discovers that they
cannot be classed either with the data of the bodily senses or
with the concepts of the understanding. They are sensuous (i.e.
are not abstract but concrete, not ways of thinking but modes
of existence), yet at the same time are a priori. They thus
stand apart by themselves. Each is unique in its kind, is single,
and is an infinite existence. To describe them is to combine
predicates seemingly contradictory. In Kant’s own phrase, they
are monstrosities (Undinge), none the less incomprehensible
that they are undeniably actual. To them, primarily, are due
those problems which have been a standing challenge to
philosophy since the time of Zeno the Eleatic, and which Kant
has entitled “antinomies of Reason.”
In contrast of sensibility Kant sets the intellectual faculties,
understanding and Reason. In the understanding originate
certain pure concepts, or as he more usually names them,
categories. The chief of these are the categories of
“relation”—substance, causality and reciprocity. They
combine with the forms of sensibility and the manifold of
sense to yield the consciousness of an empirical order,
interpretable in accordance with universal laws.
 To the faculty of Reason Kant ascribes what he entitles
Ideas. The Ideas differ from space, time, and the categories in
being not “constitutive” but “regulative.” They demand an
unconditionedness of existence and a completeness of
explanation which can never be found in actual experience.
Their function is threefold. In the first place, they render the
mind dissatisfied with the haphazard collocations of ordinary
experience, and define the goal for its scientific endeavours.
Secondly, they determine for us the criteria that distinguish
between truth and falsity.[47] And thirdly, in so doing, they
likewise make possible the distinction between appearance and
reality, revealing to us an irreconcilable conflict between the
ultimate aims of science and the human conditions, especially
the spatial and temporal conditions under which these aims are
realised. The Ideas of Reason are the second main factor in the
“antinomies.”
The problem of the Critique, the analysis of our awareness
of meaning, is a single problem, and each of the above
elements involves all the others. Kant, however, for reasons
into which I need not here enter, has assigned part of the
problem to what he entitles the Transcendental Aesthetic, and
another part to the Transcendental Dialectic. Only what
remains is dealt with in what is really the most important of
the three divisions, the Transcendental Analytic. But as the
problem is one and indivisible, the discussions in all three
sections are condemned to incompleteness save in so far as
Kant, by happy inconsistency, transgresses the limits imposed
by his method of treatment. The Aesthetic really does no more
than prepare the ground for the more adequate analysis of
space and time given in the Analytic and Dialectic, while the
problem of the Analytic is itself incompletely stated until the
more comprehensive argument of the Dialectic is taken into
account.[48] Thus the statement in the Aesthetic that space and
time are given to the mind by the sensuous faculty of
receptivity is modified in the Analytic through recognition of
the part which the syntheses and concepts of the understanding
must play in the construction of these forms; and in the
Dialectic their apprehension is further found to involve an Idea
of Reason. Similarly, in the concluding chapter of the Analytic,
in discussing the grounds for distinguishing between
appearance and reality, Kant omits all reference to certain
important considerations which first emerge into view in the
course of the Dialectic. Yet, though no question is more vital
to Critical teaching, the reader is left under the impression that
the treatment given in the Analytic is complete and final.
Partly as a consequence of this, partly owing to Kant’s
inconsistent retention of earlier modes of thinking, there are
traceable throughout the Critique two opposed views of the
nature of the distinction between appearance and reality. On
the one view, this distinction is mediated by the relational
categories of the understanding, especially by that of causality;
on the other view, it is grounded in the Ideas of Reason. The
former sets appearance in opposition to reality; the latter
regards the distinction in a more tenable fashion, as being
between realities less and more comprehensively conceived.
[49]

A similar defect is caused by Kant’s isolation of immanent

from transcendent metaphysics.[50] The former is dealt with
only in the Analytic, the latter only in the Dialectic. The
former, Kant asserts, is made possible by the forms of
sensibility and the categories of the understanding; the latter
he traces to an illegitimate employment of the Ideas of Reason.
Such a mode of statement itself reveals the impossibility of
any sharp distinction between the immanent and the
transcendent. If science is conditioned by Ideals which arouse
the mind to further acquisitions, and at the same time reveal
the limitations to which our knowledge is for ever condemned
to remain subject; if, in other words, everything known, in
being correctly known, must be apprehended as appearance
(i.e. as a subordinate existence within a more comprehensive
reality), the distinction between the immanent and the
transcendent falls within and not beyond the domain of our
total experience. The meaning which our consciousness
discloses in each of its judgments is an essentially
metaphysical one. It involves the thought, though not the
knowledge, of something more than what the experienced can
ever itself be found to be. The metaphysical is immanent in
our knowledge; the transcendent is merely a name for this
immanent factor when it is falsely viewed as capable of
isolation and of independent treatment. By Kant’s own
showing, the task of the Dialectic is not merely to refute the
pretensions of transcendent metaphysics, but to develop the
above general thesis, in confirmation of the positive
conclusions established in the Analytic. The Critique will then
supply the remedy for certain evils to which the human mind
has hitherto been subject.
“The Critique of Pure Reason is a preservative against a
malady which has its source in our rational nature. This
malady is the opposite of the love of home (the home-
sickness) which binds us to our fatherland. It is a longing to
pass out beyond our immediate confines and to relate
ourselves to other worlds.”[51]
8. THE PLACE OF THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON IN KANT’S
PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM

The positive character of Kant’s conclusions cannot be

properly appreciated save in the wider perspectives that open
to view in the Critique of Practical Reason and in the Critique
of Judgment. Though in the Critique of Pure Reason a
distinction is drawn between theoretical and moral belief, it is
introduced in a somewhat casual manner, and there is no clear
indication of the far-reaching consequences that follow in its
train. Unfortunately also, even in his later writings, Kant is
very unfair to himself in his methods of formulating the
distinction. His real intention is to show that scientific
knowledge is not coextensive with human insight; but he
employs a misleading terminology, contrasting knowledge
with faith, scientific demonstration with practical belief.
As already indicated, the term knowledge has, in the
Critical philosophy, a much narrower connotation than in
current speech. It is limited to sense-experience, and to such
inferences therefrom as can be obtained by the only methods
that Kant is willing to recognise, namely, the mathematico-
physical. Aesthetic, moral and religious experience, and even
organic phenomena, are excluded from the field of possible
knowledge.
 In holding to this position, Kant is, of course, the child of
his time. The absolute sufficiency of the Newtonian physics is
a presupposition of all his utterances on this theme. Newton,
he believes, has determined in a quite final manner the
principles, methods and limits of scientific investigation. For
though Kant himself imposes upon science a further limitation,
namely, to appearances, he conceives himself, in so doing, not
as weakening Newton’s natural philosophy, but as securing it
against all possible objections. And to balance the narrow
connotation thus assigned to the term knowledge, he has to
give a correspondingly wide meaning to the terms faith, moral
belief, subjective principles of interpretation. If this be not
kept constantly in mind, the reader is certain to misconstrue
the character and tendencies of Kant’s actual teaching.
But though the advances made by the sciences since Kant’s
time have rendered this mode of delimiting the field of
knowledge altogether untenable, his method of defining the
sources of philosophical insight has proved very fruitful, and
has many adherents at the present day. What Kant does—
stated in broad outline—is to distinguish between the
problems of existence and the problems of value, assigning the
former to science and the latter to philosophy.[52] Theoretical
philosophy, represented in his system by the Critique of Pure
Reason, takes as its province the logical values, that is, the
distinction of truth and falsity, and defining their criteria
determines the nature and limits of our theoretical insight.
Kant finds that these criteria enable us to distinguish between
truth and falsity only on the empirical plane. Beyond making
possible a distinction between appearance and reality, they
have no applicability in the metaphysical sphere.
The Critique of Practical Reason deals with values of a
very different character. The faculty of Reason, which, as
already noted,[53] renders our consciousness a purposive
agency controlled by Ideal standards, is also, Kant maintains,
the source of the moral sanctions. But whereas in the
theoretical field it subdues our minds to the discipline of
experience, and restrains our intellectual ambitions within the
limits of the empirical order, it here summons us to sacrifice
every natural impulse and every secular advantage to the
furtherance of an end that has absolute value. In imposing
duties, it raises our life from the “pragmatic”[54] level of a
calculating expediency to the higher plane of a categorical
imperative.
The categorical imperative at once humbles and exalts; it
discloses our limitations, but does so through the greatness of
the vocation to which it calls us.
“This principle of morality, just on account of the
universality of the legislation which makes it the formal
supreme determining principle of our will, without regard to
any subjective differences, is declared by the Reason to be a
law for all rational beings…. It is, therefore, not limited to
men only, but applies to all finite beings that possess Reason
and Will; nay, it even includes the Infinite Being as the
Supreme Intelligence.”[55]
Consequently, in employing moral ends in the interpretation
of the Universe, we are not picturing the Divine under human
limitations, but are discounting these limitations in the light of
the one form of value that is known to us as absolute.
“Duty! … What origin is worthy of thee and where is to be
found the root of thy noble descent … a root to be derived
from which is the indispensable condition of the only worth
that men can give themselves.”[56]
In his earlier years Kant had accepted the current,
Leibnizian view that human excellence consists in intellectual
enlightenment, and that it is therefore reserved for an élite,
privileged with the leisure and endowed with the special
abilities required for its enjoyment. From this arid
intellectualism he was delivered through the influence of
Rousseau.
“I am by disposition an enquirer. I feel the consuming thirst
for knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and
the delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed
that this is what confers real dignity upon human life, and I
despised the common people who know nothing. Rousseau has
set me right. This imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to
honour men, and should regard myself as of much less use
than the common labourer, if I did not believe that my
philosophy will restore to all men the common rights of
humanity.”[57]
These common rights Kant formulates in a purely
individualist manner. For here also, in his lack of historic
sense and in his distrust alike of priests and of statesmen, he is
the child of his time. In the education and discipline of the soul
he looks to nothing so artificial and humanly limited—Kant so
regards them—as religious tradition and social institutions.
Human rights, he believes, do not vary with time and place;
and for their enjoyment man requires no initiation and no
equipment beyond what is supplied by Nature herself. It is
from this standpoint that Kant adduces, as the twofold and
sufficient inspiration to the rigours and sublimities of the
spiritual life, the starry heavens above us and the moral law
within. They are ever-present influences on the life of man.
The naked eye reveals the former; of the latter all men are
immediately aware. In their universal appeal they are of the
very substance of human existence. Philosophy may avail to
counteract certain of the hindrances which prevent them from
exercising their native influence; it cannot be a substitute for
the inspiration which they alone can yield.
Thus the categorical imperative, in endowing the human
soul with an intrinsic value, singles it out from all other natural
existences, and strengthens it to face, with equanimity, the
cold immensities of the cosmic system. For though the
heavens arouse in us a painful feeling of our insignificance as
animal existences, they intensify our consciousness of a
sublime destiny, as bearers of a rival, and indeed a superior,
dignity.
In one fundamental respect Kant broke with the teaching of
Rousseau, namely, in questioning his doctrine of the natural
goodness and indefinite perfectibility of human nature.[58]
Nothing, Kant maintains, is good without qualification except
the good will; and even that, perhaps, is never completely
attained in any single instance. The exercise of duty demands a
perpetual vigilance, under the ever-present consciousness of
continuing demerit.
 “I am willing to admit out of love of humanity that most of
our actions are indeed correct, but if we examine them more
closely we everywhere come upon the dear self which is
always prominent….”[59] “Nothing but moral fanaticism and
exaggerated self-conceit is infused into the mind by
exhortation to actions as noble, sublime and magnanimous.
Thereby men are led into the delusion that it is not duty, that
is, respect for the law, whose yoke … they must bear, whether
they like it or not, that constitutes the determining principle of
their actions, and which always humbles them while they obey
it. They then fancy that those actions are expected from them,
not from duty, but as pure merit…. In this way they engender a
vain high-flying fantastic way of thinking, flattering
themselves with a spontaneous goodness of heart that needs
neither spur nor bridle, nor any command….”[60]
In asserting the goodness and self-sufficiency of our natural
impulses Rousseau is the spokesman of a philosophy which
has dominated social and political theory since his day, and
which is still prevalent. This philosophy, in Kant’s view, is
disastrous in its consequences. As a reading of human nature
and of our moral vocation, it is hardly less false than the
Epicurean teaching, which finds in the pursuit of pleasure the
motive of all our actions. A naturalistic ethics, in either form,
is incapacitated, by the very nature of its controlling
assumptions, from appreciating the distinguishing features of
the moral consciousness. Neither the successes nor the failures
of man’s spiritual endeavour can be rightly understood from
any such standpoint. The human race, in its endurance and
tenacity, in its dauntless courage and in its soaring spirit,
reveals the presence of a prevenient influence, non-natural in
character; and only if human nature be taken as including this
higher, directive power, can it assume to itself the eulogy
which Rousseau so mistakenly passes upon the natural and
undisciplined tendencies of the human heart. For as history
demonstrates, while men are weak, humanity is marvellous.
“There is one thing in our soul which, when we take a right
view of it, we cannot cease to regard with the highest
astonishment, and in regard to which admiration is right and
indeed elevating, and that is our original moral capacity in
general…. Even the incomprehensibility of this capacity,[61] a
capacity which proclaims a Divine origin, must rouse man’s
spirit to enthusiasm and strengthen it for any sacrifices which
respect for his duty may impose on him.”[62]
We are not here concerned with the detail of Kant’s ethical
teaching, or with the manner in which he establishes the
freedom of the will, and justifies belief in the existence of God
and the immortality of the soul. In many respects his argument
lies open to criticism. There is an unhappy contrast between
the largeness of his fundamental thesis and the formal,
doctrinaire manner in which it is developed. Indeed, in the
Critique of Practical Reason the individualist, deistic,
rationalistic modes of thinking of his time are much more in
evidence than in any other of his chief writings; and
incidentally he also displays a curious insensibility—again
characteristic of his period—to all that is specific in the
religious attitude. But when due allowances have been made,
we can still maintain that in resting his constructive views
upon the supreme value of the moral personality Kant has
influenced subsequent philosophy in hardly less degree than
by his teaching in the Critique of Pure Reason.[63]
The two Critiques, in method of exposition and argument,
in general outcome, and indeed in the total impression they
leave upon the mind, are extraordinarily different. In the
Critique of Pure Reason Kant is meticulously scrupulous in
testing the validity of each link in his argument. Constantly he
retraces his steps; and in many of his chief problems he halts
between competing solutions. Kant’s sceptical spirit is awake,
and it refuses to cease from its questionings. In the Critique of
Practical Reason, on the other hand, there is an austere
simplicity of argument, which advances, without looking to
right or left, from a few simple principles direct to their
ultimate consequences. The impressiveness of the first
Critique consists in its appreciation of the complexity of the
problems, and in the care with which their various, conflicting
aspects are separately dealt with. The second Critique derives
its force from the fundamental conviction upon which it is
based.
 Such, then, stated in the most general terms, is the manner
in which Kant conceives the Critique of Pure Reason as
contributing to the establishment of a humanistic philosophy.
It clears the ground for the practical Reason, and secures it in
the autonomous control of its own domain. While preserving
to the intellect and to science certain definitely prescribed
rights, Kant places in the forefront of his system the moral
values; and he does so under the conviction that in living up to
the opportunities, in whatever rank of life, of our common
heritage, we obtain a truer and deeper insight into ultimate
issues than can be acquired through the abstruse subtleties of
metaphysical speculation.
I may again draw attention to the consequences which
follow from Kant’s habitual method of isolating his problems.
Truth is a value of universal jurisdiction, and from its criteria
the judgments of moral and other values can claim no
exemption. Existences and values do not constitute
independent orders. They interpenetrate, and neither can be
adequately dealt with apart from the considerations
appropriate to the other. In failing to co-ordinate his problems,
Kant has over-emphasised the negative aspects of his logical
enquiries and has formulated his ethical doctrines in a
needlessly dogmatic form.
These defects are, however, in some degree remedied in the
last of his chief works, the Critique of Judgment. In certain
respects it is the most interesting of all Kant’s writings. The
qualities of both the earlier Critiques here appear in happy
combination, while in addition his concrete interests are more
in evidence, to the great enrichment of his abstract argument.
Many of the doctrines of the Critique of Pure Reason,
especially those that bear on the problems of teleology, are
restated in a less negative manner, and in their connection with
the kindred problems of natural beauty and the fine arts. For
though the final decision in all metaphysical questions is still
reserved to moral considerations, Kant now takes a more
catholic view of the field of philosophy. He allows, though
with characteristic reservations, that the empirical evidence
obtainable through examination of the broader features of our
total experience is of genuinely philosophical value, and that it
can safely be employed to amplify and confirm the
independent convictions of the moral consciousness. The
embargo which in the Critique of Pure Reason, in matters
metaphysical, is placed upon all tentative and probable
reasoning is thus tacitly removed; and the term knowledge
again acquires the wider meaning very properly ascribed to it
in ordinary speech.
 A COMMENTARY TO KANT’S “CRITIQUE OF
PURE REASON”
TITLE: KRITIK DER REINEN VERNUNFT

THE term critique or criticism, as employed by Kant, is of

English origin. It appears in seventeenth and eighteenth
century English, chiefly in adjectival form, as a literary and
artistic term—for instance, in the works of Pope, who was
Kant’s favourite English poet. Kant was the first to employ it
in German, extending it from the field of aesthetics to that of
general philosophy. A reference in Kant’s Logic[64] to Home’s
Elements of Criticism[65] would seem to indicate that it was
Home’s use of the term which suggested to him its wider
employment. “Critique of pure reason,” in its primary
meaning, signifies the passing of critical judgments upon pure
reason. In this sense Kant speaks of his time as “the age of
criticism (Zeitalter der Kritik).” Frequently, however, he takes
the term more specifically as meaning a critical investigation
leading to positive as well as to negative results. Occasionally,
especially in the Dialectic, it also signifies a discipline applied
to pure reason, limiting it within due bounds. The first
appearance of the word in Kant’s writings is in 1765 in the
Nachricht[66] of his lectures for the winter term 1765-1766.
Kant seldom employs the corresponding adjective, critical
(kritisch). His usual substitute for it is the term transcendental.
Pure (rein) has here a very definite meaning. It is the
absolutely a priori. Negatively it signifies that which is
independent of experience. Positively it signifies that which
originates from reason itself, and which is characterised by
universality and necessity.[67] By “pure reason” Kant therefore
means reason in so far as it supplies out of itself,
independently of experience, a priori elements that as such are
characterised by universality and necessity.
Reason (Vernunft) is used in the Critique in three different
meanings. In the above title it is employed in its widest sense,
as the source of all a priori elements. It includes what is a
priori in sensibility as well as in understanding (Verstand). In
its narrowest sense it is distinct even from understanding, and
signifies that faculty which renders the mind dissatisfied with
its ordinary and scientific knowledge, and which leads it to
demand a completeness and unconditionedness which can
never be found in the empirical sphere. Understanding
conditions science; reason generates metaphysic.
Understanding has categories; reason has its Ideas. Thirdly,
Kant frequently employs understanding and reason as
synonymous terms, dividing the mind only into the two
faculties, sensibility and spontaneity. Thus in A 1-2,
understanding and reason are used promiscuously, and in place
of reine Vernunft we find reiner Verstand. As already stated,
the term reason, as employed in Kant’s title, ought properly to
be taken in its widest sense. Sensibility falls within reason in
virtue of the a priori forms which it contains. Kant does not
himself, however, always interpret the title in this strict sense.
The triple use of the term is an excellent example of the
looseness and carelessness with which he employs even the
most important and fundamental of his technical terms. Only
the context can reveal the particular meaning to be assigned in
each case.
The phrase “of pure reason” (der reinen Vernunft) has, as
Vaihinger points out,[68] a threefold ambiguity. (1) Sometimes
it is a genitive objective. The critical enquiry is directed upon
pure reason as its object. This corresponds to the view of the
Critique as merely a treatise on method. (2) Sometimes it is a
genitive subjective. The critical enquiry is undertaken by and
executed through pure reason. This expresses the view of the
Critique as itself a system of pure rational knowledge. (3) At
other times it has a reflexive meaning. Pure reason is subject
and object at once. It is both subject-matter and method or
instrument. Through the Critique it attains to self-knowledge.
The Critique is the critical examination of pure reason by
itself. The first view would seem to be the original and
primary meaning of the title. The second view very early took
its place alongside it, and appears in many passages. The third
view must be taken as representing Kant’s final interpretation
of the title; it is on the whole the most adequate to the actual
content and scope of the Critique. For the Critique is not
merely a treatise on method; it is also a system of pure rational
knowledge. It professes to establish, in an exhaustive and final
manner, the a priori principles which determine the possibility,
conditions, and limits of pure rational knowledge.[69]
 MOTTO
DE nobis ipsis silemus: De re autem, quae agitur, petimus: ut
homines eam non opinionem, sed opus esse cogitent; ac pro
certo habeant, non sectae nos alicuius, aut placiti, sed utilitatis
et amplitudinis humanae fundamenta moliri. Deinde ut suis
commodis aequi … in commune consulant … et ipsi in partem
veniant. Praeterea ut bene sperent, neque instaurationem
nostram ut quiddam infinitum et ultra mortale fingant, et
animo concipiant; quum revera sit infiniti erroris finis et
terminus legitimus.
This motto, which was added in the second edition, is taken
from the preface to Bacon’s Instauratio Magna, of which the
Novum Organum is the second part. As the first part of the
Instauratio is represented only by the later, separately
published, De Augmentis Scientiarum, this preface originally
appeared, and is still usually given, as introductory to the
Novum Organum.
The complete passage (in which I have indicated Kant’s
omissions) is rendered as follows in the translation of Ellis and
Spedding:[70]
“Of myself I say nothing; but in behalf of the business
which is in hand I entreat men to believe that it is not an
opinion to be held, but a work to be done; and to be well
assured that I am labouring to lay the foundation, not of any
sect or doctrine, but of human utility and power. Next, I ask
them to deal fairly by their own interests [and laying aside all
emulations and prejudices in favour of this or that opinion], to
join in consultation for the common good; and [being now
freed and guarded by the securities and helps which I offer
from the errors and impediments of the way] to come forward
themselves and take part [in that which remains to be done].
Moreover, to be of good hope, nor to imagine that this
Instauration of mine is a thing infinite and beyond the power
of man, when it is in fact the true end and termination of
infinite error.”
 The opening sentence of Bacon’s preface might also have
served as a fitting motto to the Critique:
“It seems to me that men do not rightly understand either
their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate
the other.”
Or again the following:
“I have not sought nor do I seek either to enforce or to
ensnare men’s judgments, but I lead them to things themselves
and the concordances of things, that they may see for
themselves what they have, what they can dispute, what they
can add and contribute to the common stock…. And by these
means I suppose that I have established for ever a true and
lawful marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty,
the unkind and ill-starred divorce and separation of which has
thrown into confusion all the affairs of the human family.”

DEDICATION

TO

FREIHERR VON ZEDLITZ

KARL ABRAHAM, FREIHERR VON ZEDLITZ had been entrusted, as
Minister (1771-1788) to Frederick the Great, with the
oversight and direction of the Prussian system of education.
He held Kant in the highest esteem.[71] In February 1778 we
find him writing to thank Kant for the pleasure he had found in
perusing notes of his lectures on physical geography, and
requesting the favour of a complete copy.[72] A week later he
invited Kant to accept a professorship of philosophy in Halle,
[73] which was then much the most important university centre
in Germany. Upon Kant’s refusal he repeated the offer, with
added inducements, including the title of Hofrat.[74] Again, in
August of the same year, he writes that he is attending, upon
Mendelssohn’s recommendation (and doubtless also in the
hope of receiving from this indirect source further light upon
Kant’s own teaching in a favourite field), the lectures on
anthropology of Kant’s disciple and friend, Marcus Herz. The
letter concludes with a passage which may perhaps have
suggested to Kant the appropriateness of dedicating his
Critique to so wise and discerning a patron of true philosophy.
“Should your inventive power extend so far, suggest to me
the means of holding back the students in the universities from
the bread and butter studies, and of making them understand
that their modicum of law, even their theology and medicine,
will be immensely more easily acquired and safely applied, if
they are in possession of more philosophical knowledge. They
can be judges, advocates, preachers and physicians only for a
few hours each day; but in these and all the remainder of the
day they are men, and have need of other sciences. In short,
you must instruct me how this is to be brought home to
students. Printed injunctions, laws, regulations—these are
even worse than bread and butter study itself.”[75]
A Minister of Education who thus ranks philosophy above
professional studies, and both as more important than all
academic machinery, holds his office by divine right.
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION
DETAILED discussion of the Prefaces is not advisable. The
problems which they raise can best be treated in the order in
which they come up in the Critique itself. I shall dwell only on
the minor incidental difficulties of the text, and on those
features in Kant’s exposition which are peculiar to the
Prefaces, or which seem helpful in the way of preliminary
orientation. I shall first briefly restate the argument of the
Preface to the first edition, and then add the necessary
comment.
Human reason is ineradicably metaphysical. It is haunted by
questions which, though springing from its very nature, none
the less transcend its powers. Such a principle, for instance, as
that of causality, in carrying us to more and more remote
conditions, forces us to realise that by such regress our
questions can never be answered. However far we recede in
time, and however far we proceed in space, we are still no
nearer to a final answer to our initial problems, and are
therefore compelled to take refuge in postulates of a different
kind, such, for instance, as that there must be a first
unconditioned cause from which the empirical series of causes
and effects starts, or that space is capable of existing as a
completed whole. But these assumptions plunge reason in
darkness and involve it in contradictions. They are the sources
of all the troubles of the warring schools. Error lies somewhere
concealed in them—the more thoroughly concealed that they
surpass the limits of possible experience. Until such error has
been detected and laid bare, metaphysical speculation must
remain the idlest of all tasks.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century metaphysics had
fallen, as Kant here states, into disrepute. The wonderful
success with which the mathematical and natural sciences
were being developed served only to emphasise by contrast the
ineffectiveness of the metaphysical disciplines. Indifference to
philosophy was the inevitable outcome, and was due, not to
levity, but to the matured judgment of the age, which refused
to be any longer put off with such pretended knowledge. But
since the philosophical sciences aim at that knowledge which,
if attainable, we should be least willing to dispense with, the
failure of philosophy is really a summons to reason to take up
anew the most difficult of all its tasks. It must once and for all
determine either the possibility or the impossibility of
metaphysics. It must establish
“…a tribunal which will assure to reason its lawful claims,
and which will also be able to dismiss all groundless
pretensions, not by despotic decrees, but in accordance with its
own eternal and unalterable laws. This tribunal is no other than
the Critique of Pure Reason.”[76] “Our age is, in especial
degree, the age of criticism (Kritik), and to such criticism
everything must submit. Religion, through its sanctity, and
law-giving, through its majesty, may seek to exempt
themselves from it. But they then awaken just suspicion, and
cannot claim the sincere respect which reason accords only to
that which has been able to sustain the test of free and open
examination.”[77]
As has already been emphasised in the preceding historical
sketch, Kant had learnt to trust the use of reason, and was a
rationalist by education, temperament, and conviction. He here
classifies philosophies as dogmatic and sceptical; and under
the latter rubric he includes all empirical systems.
‘Empiricism’ and ‘scepticism’ he interprets as practically
synonymous terms. The defect of the dogmatists is that they
have not critically examined their methods of procedure, and
in the absence of an adequate distinction between appearance
and reality have interpreted the latter in terms of the former.
The defect of the empiricists and sceptics is that they have
misrepresented the nature of the faculty of reason, ignoring its
claims and misreading its functions, and accordingly have
gone even further astray than their dogmatic opponents. All
knowledge worthy of the name is a priori knowledge. It
possesses universality and necessity, and as such must rest on
pure reason. Wherever there is science, there is an element of
pure reason. Whether or not pure reason can also extend to the
unconditioned is the question which decides the possibility of
constructive metaphysics. This is what Kant means when he
declares that the Critique is a criticism of the power of reason,
in respect of all knowledge after which it may strive
independently of experience. Pure reason is the subject-matter
of the enquiry; it is also the instrument through which the
enquiry is made.[78] Nothing empirical or merely hypothetical
has any place in it, either as subject-matter or as method of
argument.
From this position Kant draws several important
consequences. First, since pure reason means that faculty
whereby we gain knowledge independently of all experience,
it can be isolated and its whole nature exhaustively
determined. Indeed pure reason (Kant seeks to prove) is so
perfect a unity that if “its principle” should be found
insufficient to the solution of a single one of all the questions
which are presented to it by its own nature, we should be
justified in forthwith rejecting it as also incompetent to answer
with complete certainty any one of the other questions. In
metaphysics it must be either all or nothing,[79] either final and
complete certainty or else absolute failure.
“While I am saying this I can fancy that I detect in the face
of the reader an expression of indignation mingled with
contempt at pretensions seemingly so arrogant and
vainglorious; and yet they are incomparably more moderate
than the claims of all those writers who on the lines of the
usual programme profess to prove the simple nature of the
soul or the necessity of a first beginning of the world.”[80]
In so doing they pretend to define realities which lie beyond
the limits of possible experience; the Critique seeks only to
deal with that faculty of reason which manifests itself to us
within our own minds. Formal logic shows how completely
and systematically the simple acts of reason can be
enumerated. Aristotle created this science of logic complete at
a stroke. Kant professes to have established an equally final
metaphysics; and as logic is not a science proper, but rather a
propaedeutic to all science, metaphysics, thus interpreted, is
the only one of all the sciences which can immediately attain
to such completeness.
“For it is nothing but the inventory of all our possessions
through pure reason, systematically arranged. In this field
nothing can escape us. What reason produces entirely out of
itself cannot lie concealed, but is brought to light by reason
itself immediately the common principle has been
discovered.”[81]
Secondly, the Critique also claims certainty. With the
removal of everything empirical, and the reduction of its
subject-matter to pure reason, all mere opinion or hypothesis is
likewise eliminated. Probabilities or hypotheses can have no
place in a Critique of Pure Reason.[82] Everything must be
derived according to a priori principles from pure conceptions
in which there is no intermixture of experience or any special
intuition.

This Preface to the first edition, considered as introductory

to the Critique, is misleading for two reasons. First, because in
it Kant is preoccupied almost exclusively with the problems of
metaphysics in the strict ontological sense, that is to say, with
the problems of the Dialectic. The problems of the Analytic,
which is the very heart of the Critique, are almost entirely
ignored. They are, it is true, referred to in A x-xi, but the
citation is quite externally intercalated; it receives no support
or extension from the other parts of the Preface. This results in
a second defect, namely, that Kant fails to indicate the more
empirical features of his new Critical standpoint. Since
ultimate reality is supersensuous, metaphysics, as above
conceived, can have no instrument save pure reason. The
subjects of its enquiry, God, freedom, and immortality, if they
are to be known at all, can be determined only through a priori
speculation. This fact, fundamental and all-important for Kant,
was completely ignored in the popular eclectic philosophies of
the time. They professed to derive metaphysical conclusions
from empirical evidence. They substituted, as Kant has
pointed out,[83] “a physiology of the human understanding” for
the Critical investigation of the claims of reason, and
anthropology for ethics. They were blind to the dogmatism of
which they are thereby guilty. They assumed those very points
which most call for proof, namely, that reason is adequate to
the solution of metaphysical problems, and that all existence is
so fundamentally of one type that we can argue from the
sensuous to the supersensuous, from appearance to reality.
When they fell into difficulties, they pleaded the insufficiency
of human reason, and yet were all the while unquestioningly
relying upon it in the drawing of the most tremendous
inferences. Such, for instance, are the assumptions which
underlie Moses Mendelssohn’s contention that since animals
as well as men agree in the apprehension of space, it must be
believed to be absolutely real.[84] These assumptions also
determine Priestley’s assertion that though every event has its
cause, there is one causeless happening, namely, the creative
act to which the existence of the world is due.[85] On such
terms, metaphysics is too patently easy to be even plausible.
“Indifference, doubt, and, in final issue, severe criticism, are
truer signs of a profound habit of thought.”[86] The matter of
experience affords no data for metaphysical inference. In the a
priori forms of experience, and there alone, can metaphysics
hope to find a basis, if any basis is really discoverable.
This is Kant’s reason for so emphatically insisting that the
problem of the Critique is to determine “how much we can
hope to achieve by reason, when all the material and assistance
of experience is taken away.”[87] But in keeping only this one
point in view Kant greatly misrepresents the problems and
scope of the Critique. Throughout the Preface he speaks the
language of the Aufklärung. Even in the very act of limiting
the scope of reason, he overstresses its powers, and omits
reference to its empirical conditions. It is well to contrast this
teaching with such a passage as the following:
“The position of all genuine idealists from the Eleatics to
Berkeley is contained in this formula: ‘All cognition through
the senses and experience is nothing but mere illusion, and
only in the ideas of pure understanding and Reason is there
truth.’ The fundamental principle ruling all my idealism, on
the contrary, is this: ‘All cognition of things solely from pure
understanding or pure Reason is nothing but mere illusion, and
only in experience is there truth.’”[88]
But that passage is equally inadequate as a complete
expression of Kant’s Critical philosophy. The truth lies
midway between it and the teaching of the Preface to the first
edition. Pure reason is as defective an instrument of
knowledge as is factual experience. Though the primary aim
of metaphysics is to determine our relation to the absolutely
real, and though that can only be done by first determining the
nature and possible scope of a priori principles, such
principles are found on investigation to possess only empirical
validity. The central question of the Critique thus becomes the
problem of the validity of their empirical employment. The
interrelation of these two problems, that of the a priori and
that of experience, and Kant’s attitude towards them, cannot be
considered till later. The defects of the Preface to the first
edition are in part corrected by the extremely valuable Preface
substituted in the second edition. But some further points in
this first Preface must be considered.
Prescribed by the very nature of reason itself.[89]—
Metaphysics exists as a “natural disposition,” and its questions
are not therefore merely artificial.
“As natural disposition (Naturanlage) … metaphysics is
real. For human reason, without being moved merely by the
idle desire for extent and variety of knowledge, proceeds
impetuously, driven on by an inward need, to questions such
as cannot be answered by any empirical employment of
reason, or by principles thence derived. Thus in all men, as
soon as their reason has become ripe for speculation, there has
always existed and will always continue to exist some kind of
metaphysics.”[90]
Hence results what Kant entitles transcendental illusion.
“The cause of this transcendental illusion is that there are
fundamental rules and maxims for the employment of Reason,
subjectively regarded as a faculty of human knowledge, and
that these rules and maxims have all the appearance of being
objective principles. We take the subjective necessity of a
connection of our concepts, i.e. a connection necessitated for
the advantage of the understanding, for an objective necessity
in the determination of things in themselves. This is an illusion
which can no more be prevented than we can prevent the sea
from appearing higher at the horizon than at the shore, since
we see it through higher light rays; or to cite a still better
example, than the astronomer can prevent the moon from
appearing larger at its rising, although he is not deceived by
this illusion…. There exists, then, a natural and unavoidable
dialectic of pure Reason, not one in which a bungler might
entangle himself through lack of knowledge, or one which
some sophist has artificially invented to confuse thinking
people, but one which is inseparable from human Reason, and
which, even after its deceiving power has been exposed, will
not cease to play tricks with it and continually to entrap it into
momentary aberrations that will ever and again call for
correction.”[91]
Dogmatism.[92]—According to Kant there are three
possible standpoints in philosophy—the dogmatic, the
sceptical, and the critical. All preceding thinkers come under
the first two heads. A dogmatist is one who assumes that
human reason can comprehend ultimate reality, and who
proceeds upon this assumption. He does not, before
proceeding to construct a metaphysics, enquire whether it is
possible. Dogmatism expresses itself (to borrow Vaihinger’s
convenient mode of definition[93]) through three factors—
rationalism, realism, and transcendence. Descartes and
Leibniz are typical dogmatists. As rationalists they hold that it
is possible to determine from pure a priori principles the
ultimate nature of God, of the soul, and of the material
universe. They are realists in that they assert that by human
thought the complete nature of objective reality can be
determined. They also adopt the attitude of transcendence.
Through pure thought they go out beyond the sensible and
determine the supersensuous. Scepticism (Kant, as above
stated,[94] regards it as being in effect equivalent to
empiricism) may similarly be defined through the three terms,
empiricism, subjectivism, immanence. A sceptic can never be a
rationalist. He must reduce knowledge to sense-experience.
For this reason also his knowledge is infected by subjective
conditions; through sensation we cannot hope to determine the
nature of the objectively real. This attitude is also that of
immanence; knowledge is limited to the sphere of sense-
experience. Criticism has similarly its three constitutive
factors, rationalism, subjectivism, immanence. It agrees with
dogmatism in maintaining that only through a priori principles
can true knowledge be obtained. Such knowledge is, however,
subjective[95] in its origin, and for that reason it is also only of
immanent application; knowledge is possible only in the
sphere of sense-experience. Dogmatism claims that knowledge
arises independently of experience and extends beyond it.
Empiricism holds that knowledge arises out of sense-
experience and is valid only within it. Criticism teaches that
knowledge arises independently of particular experience but is
valid only for experience.
The following passages in the Methodology give Kant’s
view of the historical and relative values of the two false
methods:
“The sceptic is the taskmaster who constrains the dogmatic
reasoner to develop a sound critique of the understanding and
reason. When the latter has been made to advance thus far, he
need fear no further challenge, since he has learned to
distinguish his real possessions from that which lies entirely
beyond them, and to which he can therefore lay no claim….
Thus the sceptical procedure cannot of itself yield any
satisfying answer to the questions of reason, but none the less
it prepares the way by awakening its circumspection, and by
indicating the radical measures which are adequate to secure it
in its legitimate possessions.”[96] “The first step in matters of
pure reason, marking its infancy, is dogmatic. The second step
is sceptical, and indicates that experience has rendered our
judgment wiser and more circumspect. But a third step, such
as can be taken only by fully matured judgment, is now
necessary…. This is not the censorship but the critique of
reason, whereby not its present bounds but its determinate
[and necessary] limits, not its ignorance on this or that point,
but in regard to all possible questions of a certain kind, are
demonstrated from principles, and not merely arrived at by
way of conjecture. Scepticism is thus a resting-place for
human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic
wanderings and make survey of the region in which it finds
itself, so that for the future it may be able to choose its path
with more certainty. But it is no dwelling-place for permanent
settlement. That can be obtained only through perfect certainty
in our knowledge, alike of the objects themselves and of the
limits within which all our knowledge of objects is
enclosed.”[97]
Locke.[98]—Cf. A 86 = B 119; A 270 = B 327; B 127.
On the unfavourable contrast between mathematics and
metaphysics.[99]—Cf. Ueber die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze
(1764), erste Betrachtung, and below, pp. 40, 563 ff.
The age of criticism.[100]—Kant considered himself as
contributing to the further advance of the eighteenth century
Enlightenment.[101] In view, however, of the contrast between
eighteenth and nineteenth century thought, and of the real
affiliations and ultimate consequences of Kant’s teaching, it
seems truer to regard the Critical philosophy as at once
completing and transcending the Aufklärung. Kant breaks with
many of its most fundamental assumptions.
The Critique of Pure Reason.[102]—Kant here defines the
Critique as directed upon pure reason.[103] Further, it is a
criticism of knowledge which is “independent of all
experience,” or, as Kant adds “free from all experience.” Such
phrases, in this context, really mean transcendent. The
Critique is here taken as being a Critical investigation of
transcendent metaphysics, of its sources, scope, and limits.[104]
Opinion or hypothesis not permissible.[105]—Cf. below, p.
543 ff.
I know no enquiries, etc.[106]—The important questions
raised by this paragraph are discussed below, p. 235 ff.
Jean Terrasson (1670-1750).[107]—The quotation is from
his work posthumously published (1754), and translated from
the French by Frau Gottsched under the title Philosophie nach
ihrem allgemeinen Einflusse auf alle Gegenstände des Geistes
und der Sitten (1762). Terrasson is also referred to by Kant in
his Anthropologie, §§ 44 and 77. Terrasson would seem to be
the author of the Traité de l’infini créé which has been falsely
ascribed to Malebranche. I have translated this latter treatise in
the Philosophical Review (July 1905).
Such a system of pure speculative reason.[108]—The
relation in which this system would stand to the Critique is
discussed below, pp. 71-2. Speculative does not with Kant
mean transcendent, but merely theoretical as opposed to
practical. Cf. B 25, A 15 = B 29, A 845 = B 873.
Under the title: Metaphysics of Nature.[109]—No such
work, at least under this title, was ever completed by Kant. In
the Kantian terminology “nature” signifies “all that is.” Cf.
below, p. 580.
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION
I SHALL again give a brief explanatory paraphrase, before
proceeding to detailed comment. The main points of the
preface of the first edition are repeated. “Metaphysics soars
above all teaching of experience, and rests on concepts only.
In it reason has to be her own pupil.”[110] But Kant
immediately proceeds to a further point. That logic should
have attained the secure method of science is due to its
limitation to the mere a priori form of knowledge. For
metaphysics this is far more difficult, since it “has to deal not
with itself alone, but also with objects.”[111]
The words which I have italicised form a very necessary
correction of the first edition preface, according to which the
Critique would seem to “treat only of reason and its pure
thinking.” A further difference follows. The second edition
preface, in thus emphasising the objective aspect of the
problem, is led to characterise in a more complete manner the
method to be followed in the Critical enquiry. How can the
Critique, if it is concerned, as both editions agree in insisting,
only with the a priori which originates in human reason, solve
the specifically metaphysical problem, viz. that of determining
the independently real? How can an idea in us refer to, and
constitute knowledge of, an object? The larger part of the
preface to the second edition is devoted to the Critical solution
of this problem. The argument of the Dialectic is no longer
emphasised at the expense of the Analytic.
Kant points out that as a matter of historical fact each of the
two rational sciences, mathematics and physics, first entered
upon the assured path of knowledge by a sudden revolution,
and by the adoption of a method which in its general
characteristics is common to both. This method consists, not in
being led by nature as in leading-strings, but in interrogating
nature in accordance with what reason produces on its own
plan. The method of the geometrician does not consist in the
study of figures presented to the senses. That would be an
empirical (in Kant’s view, sceptical) method. Geometrical
propositions could not then be regarded as possessing
universality and necessity. Nor does the geometrician employ
a dogmatic method, that of studying the mere conception of a
figure. By that means no new knowledge could ever be
attained. The actual method consists in interpreting the
sensible figures through conceptions that have been rigorously
defined, and in accordance with which the figures have been
constructively generated. The first discovery of this method,
by Thales or some other Greek, was “far more important than
the discovery of the passage round the celebrated Cape of
Good Hope.”[112]
Some two thousand years elapsed before Galileo formulated
a corresponding method for physical science. He relied neither
on mere observation nor on his own conceptions. He
determined the principles according to which alone concordant
phenomena can be admitted as laws of nature, and then by
experiment compelled nature to answer the questions which
these principles suggest. Here again the method is neither
merely empirical nor purely dogmatic. It possesses the
advantages of both.
Metaphysics is ripe for a similar advance. It must be
promoted to the rank of positive science by the transforming
power of an analogous method. The fundamental and
distinguishing characteristic of mathematical and physical
procedure is the legislative power to which reason lays claim.
Such procedure, if generalised and extended, will supply the
required method of the new philosophy. Reason must be
regarded as self-legislative in all the domains of our possible
knowledge. Objects must be viewed as conforming to human
thought, not human thought to the independently real. This is
the “hypothesis” to which Kant has given the somewhat
misleading title, “Copernican.”[113] The method of procedure
which it prescribes is, he declares, analogous to that which
was followed by Copernicus, and will be found to be as
revolutionary in its consequences. In terms of this hypothesis a
complete and absolutely certain metaphysics, valid now and
for all time, can be created at a stroke. The earliest and oldest
enterprise of the human mind will achieve a new beginning.
Metaphysics, the mother of all the sciences, will renew her
youth, and will equal in assurance, as she surpasses in dignity,
the offspring of her womb.
From this new standpoint Kant develops phenomenalism on
rationalist lines. He professes to prove that though our
knowledge is only of appearances, it is conditioned by a priori
principles. His “Copernican hypothesis,” so far from
destroying positive science, is, he claims, merely a
philosophical extension of the method which it has long been
practising. Since all science worthy of the name involves a
priori elements, it can be accounted for only in terms of the
new hypothesis. Only if objects are regarded as conforming to
our forms of intuition, and to our modes of conception, can
they be anticipated by a priori reasoning. Science can be a
priori just because, properly understood, it is not a rival of
metaphysics, and does not attempt to define the absolutely
real.
But such a statement at once suggests what may at first
seem a most fatal objection. Though the new standpoint may
account for the a priori in experience and science, it can be of
no avail in metaphysics. If the a priori concepts have a mental
origin, they can have no validity for the independently real. If
we can know only what we ourselves originate, things in
themselves must be unknown, and metaphysics must be
impossible. But in this very consequence the new hypothesis
first reveals its full advantages. It leads to an interpretation of
metaphysics which is as new and as revolutionary[114] as that
which it gives to natural science. Transcendent metaphysics is
indeed impossible, but in harmony with man’s practical and
moral vocation, its place is more efficiently taken by an
immanent metaphysics on the one hand, and by a metaphysics
of ethics on the other. Together these constitute the new and
final philosophy which Kant claims to have established by his
Critical method. Its chief task is to continue “that noblest
enterprise of antiquity,”[115] the distinguishing of appearances
from things in themselves. The unconditioned is that which
alone will satisfy speculative reason; its determination is the
ultimate presupposition of metaphysical enquiry. But so long
as the empirical world is regarded as true reality, totality or
unconditionedness cannot possibly be conceived—is, indeed,
inherently self-contradictory. On the new hypothesis there is
no such difficulty. By the proof that things in themselves are
unknowable, a sphere is left open within which the
unconditioned can be sought. For though this sphere is closed
to speculative reason, the unconditioned can be determined
from data yielded by reason in its practical activity. The
hypothesis which at first seems to destroy metaphysics proves
on examination to be its necessary presupposition. The
“Copernican hypothesis” which conditions science will also
account for metaphysics properly conceived.
Upon this important point Kant dwells at some length. Even
the negative results of the Critique are, he emphasises, truly
positive in their ultimate consequences. The dogmatic
extension of speculative reason really leads to the narrowing
of its employment, for the principles of which it then makes
use involve the subjecting of things in themselves to the
limiting conditions of sensibility. All attempts to construe the
unconditioned in terms that will satisfy reason are by such
procedure ruled out from the very start. To demonstrate this is
the fundamental purpose and chief aim of the Critique. Space
and time are merely forms of sensuous intuition; the concepts
of understanding can yield knowledge only in their connection
with them. Though the concepts in their purity possess a quite
general meaning, this is not sufficient to constitute knowledge.
The conception of causality, for instance, necessarily involves
the notion of time-sequence; apart from time it is the bare,
empty, and entirely unspecified conception of a sufficient
ground. Similarly, the category of substance signifies the
permanent in time and space; as a form of pure reason it has a
quite indefinite meaning signifying merely that which is
always a subject and never a predicate. In the absence of
further specification, it remains entirely problematic in its
reference. The fact, however, that the categories of the
understanding possess, in independence of sensibility, even
this quite general significance is all-important. Originating in
pure reason they have a wider scope than the forms of sense,
and enable us to conceive, though not to gain knowledge of,
things in themselves.[116] Our dual nature, as being at once
sensuous and supersensuous, opens out to us the apprehension
of both.
Kant illustrates his position by reference to the problem of
the freedom of the will. As thought is wider than sense, and
reveals to us the existence of a noumenal realm, we are
enabled to reconcile belief in the freedom of the will with the
mechanism of nature. We can recognise that within the
phenomenal sphere everything without exception is causally
determined, and yet at the same time maintain that the whole
order of nature is grounded in noumenal conditions. We can
assert of one and the same being that its will is subject to the
necessity of nature and that it is free—mechanically
determined in its visible actions, free in its real supersensible
existence. We have, indeed, no knowledge of the soul, and
therefore cannot assert on theoretical grounds that it possesses
any such freedom. The very possibility of freedom transcends
our powers of comprehension. The proof that it can at least be
conceived without contradiction is, however, all-important.
For otherwise no arguments from the nature of the moral
consciousness could be of the least avail; before a palpable
contradiction every argument is bound to give way. Now, for
the first time, the doctrine of morals and the doctrine of nature
can be independently developed, without conflict, each in
accordance with its own laws. The same is true in regard to the
existence of God and the immortality of the soul. By means of
the Critical distinction between the empirical and the
supersensible worlds, these conceptions are now for the first
time rendered possible of belief. “I had to remove knowledge,
in order to make room for belief.”[117] “This loss affects only
the monopoly of the schools, in no respect the interests of
humanity.”[118]
Lastly, Kant emphasises the fact that the method of the
Critique must be akin to that of dogmatism. It must be rational
a priori. To adopt any other method of procedure is “to shake
off the fetters of science altogether, and thus to change work
into play, certainty into opinion, philosophy into
philodoxy.”[119] And Kant repeats the claims of the preface of
the first edition as to the completeness and finality of his
system. “This system will, as I hope, maintain through the
future this same unchangeableness.”[120]
Logic.[121]—For Kant’s view of the logic of Aristotle as
complete and perfect, cf. below, pp. 184-5. Kant compares
metaphysics to mathematics and physics on the one hand, and
to formal logic on the other. The former show the possibility
of attaining to the secure path of science by a sudden and
single revolution; the latter demonstrates the possibility of
creating a science complete and entire at a stroke. Thanks to
the new Critical method, metaphysics may be enabled, Kant
claims, to parallel both achievements at once.
Theoretical and practical reason.[122]—Such comment as
is necessary upon this distinction is given below. Cf. p. 569 ff.
Hitherto it has been supposed that all knowledge must
conform to the objects.[123]—This statement is historically
correct. That assumption did actually underlie one and all of
the pre-Kantian philosophies. At the same time, it is true that
Kant’s phenomenalist standpoint is partially anticipated by
Hume, by Malebranche and by Leibniz, especially by the first
named. Hume argues that to condemn knowledge on the
ground that it can never copy or truly reveal any external
reality is to misunderstand its true function. Our sense
perceptions and our general principles are so determined by
nature as to render feasible only a practical organisation of
life. When we attempt to derive from them a consistent body
of knowledge, failure is the inevitable result.[124] Malebranche,
while retaining the absolutist view of conceptual knowledge,
propounds a similar theory of sense-perception.[125] Our
perceptions are, as he shows, permeated through and through,
from end to end, with illusion. Such illusions justify
themselves by their practical usefulness, but they likewise
prove that theoretical insight is not the purpose of our sense-
experience. Kant’s Copernican hypothesis consists in great
part of an extension of this view to our conceptual, scientific
knowledge. But he differs both from Malebranche and from
Hume in that he develops his phenomenalism on rationalist
lines. He professes to show that though our knowledge is only
of the phenomenal, it is conditioned by a priori principles. The
resulting view of the distinction between appearance and
reality has kinship with that of Leibniz.[126] The phenomena of
science, though only appearances, are none the less bene
fundata. Our scientific knowledge, though not equivalent to
metaphysical apprehension of the ultimately real, can be
progressively developed by scientific methods.
The two “parts” of metaphysics.[127]—Kant is here
drawing the important distinction, which is one result of his
new standpoint, between immanent and transcendent
metaphysics. It is unfortunate that he does not do so in a more
explicit manner, with full recognition of its novelty and of its
far-reaching significance. Many ambiguities in his exposition
here and elsewhere would then have been obviated.[128]
The unconditioned which Reason postulates in all things
by themselves, by necessity and by right.[129]—Points are
here raised the discussion of which must be deferred. Cf.
below, pp. 429-31, 433-4, 558-61.
The Critique is a treatise on method, not a system of the
science itself.[130]—Cf. A xv.; B xxxvi.; and especially A 11 =
B 24, below pp. 71-2.
The Copernican hypothesis.[131]—Kant’s comparison of
his new hypothesis to that of Copernicus has generally been
misunderstood. The reader very naturally conceives the
Copernican revolution in terms of its main ultimate
consequence, the reduction of the earth from its proud position
of central pre-eminence. But that does not bear the least
analogy to the intended consequences of the Critical
philosophy. The direct opposite is indeed true. Kant’s
hypothesis is inspired by the avowed purpose of neutralising
the naturalistic implications of the Copernican astronomy. His
aim is nothing less than the firm establishment of what may
perhaps be described as a Ptolemaic, anthropocentric
metaphysics. Such naturalistic philosophy as that of Hume
may perhaps be described as Copernican, but the Critical
philosophy, as humanistic, has genuine kinship with the Greek
standpoint.
Even some of Kant’s best commentators have interpreted
the analogy in the above manner.[132] It is so interpreted by T.
H. Green[133] and by J. Hutchison Stirling.[134] Caird in his
Critical Philosophy of Kant makes not the least mention of the
analogy, probably for the reason that while reading it in the
same fashion as Green, he recognised the inappropriateness of
the comparison as thus taken. The analogy is stated in
typically ambiguous fashion by Lange[135] and by Höffding.
[136] S. Alexander, while very forcibly insisting upon the
Ptolemaic character of the Kantian philosophy, also endorses
this interpretation in the following terms:
“It is very ironical that Kant himself signalised the
revolution which he believed himself to be effecting as a
Copernican revolution. But there is nothing Copernican in it
except that he believed it to be a revolution. If every change is
Copernican which reverses the order of the terms with which it
deals, which declares A to depend on B when B had before
been declared to depend on A, then Kant—who believed that
he had reversed the order of dependence of mind and things—
was right in saying that he effected a Copernican revolution.
But he was not right in any other sense. For his revolution, so
far as it was one, was accurately anti-Copernican.”[137]
As the second edition preface is not covered by the
published volumes of Vaihinger’s Commentary, the point has
not been taken up by him.
Now Kant’s own statements are entirely unambiguous and
do not justify any such interpretation as that of Green and
Alexander. As it seems to me, they have missed the real point
of the analogy. The misunderstanding would never have been
possible save for our neglect of the scientific classics. Kant
must have had first-hand acquaintance with Copernicus’ De
Revolutionibus, and the comparison which he draws assumes
similar knowledge on the part of his readers. Copernicus by
his proof of the “hypothesis” (his own term) of the earth’s
motion sought only to achieve a more harmonious ordering of
the Ptolemaic universe. And as thus merely a simplification of
the traditional cosmology, his treatise could fittingly be
dedicated to the reigning Pope. The sun upon which our
terrestrial life depends was still regarded as uniquely distinct
from the fixed stars; and our earth was still located in the
central region of a universe that was conceived in the
traditional manner as being single and spherical. Giordano
Bruno was the first, a generation later, to realise the
revolutionary consequences to which the new teaching,
consistently developed, must inevitably lead. It was he who
first taught what we have now come to regard as an integral
part of Copernicus’ revolution, the doctrine of innumerable
planetary systems side by side with one another in infinite
space.
Copernicus’ argument starts from the Aristotelian principle
of relative motion. To quote Copernicus’ exact words:
“All apprehended change of place is due to movement either
of the observed object or of the observer, or to differences in
movements that are occurring simultaneously in both. For if
the observed object and the observer are moving in the same
direction with equal velocity, no motion can be detected. Now
it is from the earth that we visually apprehend the revolution
of the heavens. If, then, any movement is ascribed to the earth,
that motion will generate the appearance of itself in all things
which are external to it, though as occurring in the opposite
direction, as if everything were passing across the earth. This
will be especially true of the daily revolution. For it seems to
seize upon the whole world, and indeed upon everything that
is around the earth, though not upon the earth itself…. As the
heavens, which contain and cover everything, are the common
locus of things, it is not at all evident why it should be to the
containing rather than to the contained, to the located rather
than to the locating, that a motion is to be ascribed.”[138]
The apparently objective movements of the fixed stars and
of the sun are mere appearances, due to the projection of our
own motion into the heavens.
“The first and highest of all the spheres is that of the fixed
stars, self-containing and all-containing, and consequently
immobile, in short the locus of the universe, by relation to
which the motion and position of all the other heavenly bodies
have to be reckoned.”[139]
Now it is this doctrine, and this doctrine alone, to which
Kant is referring in the passages before us, namely,
Copernicus’ hypothesis of a subjective explanation of
apparently objective motions. And further, in thus comparing
his Critical procedure to that of Copernicus, he is concerned
more with the positive than with the negative consequences of
their common hypothesis. For it is chiefly from the point of
view of the constructive parts of the Aesthetic, Analytic, and
Dialectic that the comparison is formulated. By means of the
Critical hypothesis Kant professes on the one hand to account
for our scientific knowledge, and on the other to safeguard our
legitimate metaphysical aspirations. The spectator projects his
own motion into the heavens; human reason legislates for the
domain of natural science. The sphere of the fixed stars is
proved to be motionless; things in themselves are freed from
the limitations of space and time. “Copernicus dared, in a
manner contradictory of the senses but yet true, to seek the
observed movements, not in the heavenly bodies, but in the
spectator.”[140]
In view of Kant’s explicit elimination of all hypotheses from
the Critique[141] the employment of that term would seem to
be illegitimate. He accordingly here states that though in the
Preface his Critical theory is formulated as an hypothesis only,
in the Critique itself its truth is demonstrated a priori.

Distinction between knowing and thinking.[142]—Since

according to Critical teaching the limits of sense-experience
are the limits of knowledge, the term knowledge has for Kant
a very limited denotation, and leaves open a proportionately
wide field for what he entitles thought. Though things in
themselves are unknowable, their existence may still be
recognised in thought.
 INTRODUCTION
I SHALL first[143] give a restatement, partly historical and partly
explanatory, of Kant’s main argument as contained in the
enlarged Introduction of the second edition.
There were two stages in the process by which Kant came to
full realisation of the Critical problem. There is first the
problem as formulated in his letter of 1772 to Herz: how the a
priori can yield knowledge of the independently real.[144] This,
as he there states it, is an essentially metaphysical problem. It
is the problem of the possibility of transcendent metaphysics.
He became aware of it when reflecting upon the function
which he had ascribed to intellect in the Dissertation. Then,
secondly, this problem was immeasurably deepened, and at the
same time the proper line for its treatment was discovered,
through the renewed influence which Hume at some date
subsequent to February 1772 exercised upon Kant’s thought.
[145] Hume awakened Kant to what may be called the
immanent problem involved in the very conception of a priori
knowledge as such. The primary problem to be solved is not
how we advance by means of a priori ideas to the
independently real, but how we are able to advance beyond a
subject term to a predicate which it does not appear to contain.
The problem is indeed capable of solution, just because it
takes this logical form. Here as elsewhere, ontological
questions are viewed by Kant as soluble only to the extent to
which they can be restated in logical terms. Now also the
enquiry becomes twofold: how and in what degree are a priori
synthetic judgments possible, first in their employment within
the empirical sphere (the problem of immanent metaphysics)
and secondly in their application to things in themselves (the
problem of transcendent metaphysics). The outcome of the
Critical enquiry is to establish the legitimacy of immanent
metaphysics and the impossibility of all transcendent
speculation.
The argument of Kant’s Introduction follows the above
sequence. It starts by defining the problem of metaphysical
knowledge a priori, and through it leads up to the logical
problem of the a priori synthetic judgment. In respect of time
all knowledge begins with experience. But it does not
therefore follow that it all arises from experience. Our
experience may be a compound of that which we receive
through impressions, and of that which pure reason supplies
from itself.[146] The question as to whether or not any such a
priori actually exists, is one that can be answered only after
further enquiry. The two inseparable criteria of the a priori are
necessity and universality. That neither can be imparted to a
proposition by experience was Kant’s confirmed and
unquestioned belief. He inherited this view both from Leibniz
and from Hume. It is one of the presuppositions of his
argument. Experience can reveal only co-existence or
sequence. It enables us only to assert that so far as we have
hitherto observed, there is no exception to this or that rule. A
generalisation, based on observation, can never possess a
wider universality than the limited experience for which it
stands. If, therefore, necessary and universal judgments can
anywhere be found in our knowledge, the existence of an a
priori that originates independently of experience is ipso facto
demonstrated.[147]
The contrast between empirical and a priori judgments, as
formulated from the dogmatic standpoint, is the most
significant and striking fact in the whole range of human
knowledge. A priori judgments claim absolute necessity. They
allow of no possible exception. They are valid not only for us,
but also for all conceivable beings, however different the
specific conditions of their existence, whether they live on the
planet Mars or in some infinitely remote region of stellar
space, and no matter how diversely their bodily senses may be
organised. Through these judgments a creature five feet high,
and correspondingly limited by temporal conditions, legislates
for all existence and for all time. Empirical judgments, on the
other hand, possess only a hypothetical certainty. We recognise
that they may be overturned through some addition to our
present experience, and that they may not hold for beings on
other planets or for beings with senses differently constituted.
Whereas the opposite of a rational judgment is not even
conceivable, the opposite of an empirical judgment is always
possible. The one depends upon the inherent and inalienable
nature of our thinking; the other is bound up with the
contingent material of sense. The one claims absolute or
metaphysical truth: the other is a merely tentative résumé of a
limited experience.
The possibility of such a priori judgments had hitherto been
questioned only by those who sought to deny to them all
possible objective validity. Kant, as a rationalist, has no doubt
as to their actual existence. In the Introduction to the second
edition he bluntly asserts their de facto existence, citing as
instances the propositions of mathematics and the fundamental
principles of physical science. Their possibility can be
accounted for through the assumption of a priori forms and
principles.[148] But with equal emphasis he questions the
validity of their metaphysical employment. For that is an
entirely different matter. We then completely transcend the
world of the senses and pass into a sphere where experience
can neither guide nor correct us. In this sphere the a priori is
illegitimately taken as being at once the source of our
professed knowledge and also the sole criterion of its own
claims.
This is the problem, semi-Critical, semi-dogmatic, which is
formulated in the letter of 1772 to Herz.[149] What right have
we to regard ideas, which as a priori originate from within, as
being valid of things in themselves? In so doing we are
assuming a pre-established harmony between our human
faculties and the ultimately real; and that is an assumption
which by its very nature is incapable of demonstration. The
proofs offered by Malebranche and by Leibniz are themselves
speculative, and consequently presuppose the conclusion
which they profess to establish.[150] As above stated, Kant
obtained his answer to this problem by way of the logical
enquiry into the nature and conditions of a priori judgment.
One of the chief causes, Kant declares, why hitherto
metaphysical speculation has passed unchallenged among
those who practise it, is the confusion of two very different
kinds of judgment, the analytic and the synthetic. Much the
greater portion of what reason finds to do consists in the
analysis of our concepts of objects.
 “As this procedure yields real knowledge a priori, which
progresses in secure and useful fashion, reason is so far misled
as surreptitiously to introduce, without itself being aware of so
doing, assertions of an entirely different order, in which reason
attaches to given concepts others completely foreign to them
—and moreover attaches them a priori. And yet one does not
know how reason comes to do this. This is a question which is
never as much as thought of.”[151]
The concepts which are analytically treated may be either
empirical or a priori. When they are empirical, the judgments
which they involve can have no wider application than the
experience to which they give expression; and in any case can
only reveal what has all along been thought, though
confusedly, in the term which serves as subject of the
proposition. They can never reveal anything different in kind
from the contents actually experienced. This limitation, to
which the analysis of empirical concepts is subject, was
admitted by both empiricists and rationalists. The latter
sought, however, to escape its consequences by basing their
metaphysics upon concepts which are purely a priori, and
which by their a priori content may carry us beyond the
experienced. But here also Kant asserts a non possibile. A
priori concepts, he seeks to show, are in all cases purely
logical functions without content, and accordingly are as little
capable as are empirical concepts of carrying us over to the
supersensible. This is an objection which holds quite
independently of that already noted, namely, that their
objective validity would involve a pre-established harmony.
What, then, is the nature and what are the generating
conditions of synthetic judgments that are also a priori? In all
judgments there is a relation between subject and predicate,
and that can be of two kinds. Either the predicate B belongs to
the subject A, or B lies outside the sphere of the concept A
though somehow connected with it. In the former case the
judgment is analytic; in the latter it is synthetic. The one
simply unfolds what has all along been conceived in the
subject concept; the other ascribes to the concept of the subject
a predicate which cannot be found in it by any process of
analysis. Thus the judgment ‘all bodies are extended’ is
analytic. The concept of body already contains that of
extension, and is impossible save through it. On the other
hand, the judgment ‘all bodies are heavy’ is synthetic. For not
body as such, but only bodies which are in interaction with
other bodies, are found to develop this property. Bodies can
very well be conceived as not influencing one another in any
such manner.
There is no difficulty in accounting for analytic judgments.
They can all be justified by the principle of contradiction.
Being analytic, they can be established a priori. Nor, Kant
here claims, is there any difficulty in regard to synthetic
judgments that are empirical. Though the predicate is not
contained in the subject concept, they belong to each other
(though accidentally) as parts of a given empirical whole.
Experience is the x which lies beyond the concept A, and on
which rests the possibility of the synthesis of B with A. In
regard, however, to synthetic judgments which are likewise a
priori, the matter is very different. Hitherto, both by the
sensationalists and by the rationalists, all synthetic judgments
have been regarded as empirical, and all a priori judgments as
analytic. The only difference between the opposed schools lies
in the relative value which they ascribe to the two types of
judgment. For Hume the only really fruitful judgments are the
synthetic judgments a posteriori; analytic judgments are of
quite secondary value; they can never extend our knowledge,
but only clarify its existing content. For Leibniz, on the other
hand, true knowledge consists only in the analysis of our a
priori concepts, which he regards as possessing an intrinsic
and fruitful content; synthetic judgments are always empirical,
and as such are purely contingent.[152]
Thus for pre-Kantian philosophy analytic is interchangeable
with a priori, and synthetic with a posteriori. Kant’s Critical
problem arose from the startling discovery that the a priori
and the synthetic do not exclude one another. A judgment may
be synthetic and yet also a priori. He appears to have made
this discovery under the influence of Hume, through study of
the general principle of causality—every event must have a
cause.[153] In that judgment there seems to be no connection of
any kind discoverable between the subject (the conception of
an event as something happening in time) and the predicate
(the conception of another event preceding it as an originating
cause); and yet we not merely ascribe the one to the other but
assert that they are necessarily connected. We can conceive an
event as sequent upon a preceding empty time; none the less,
in physical enquiry, the causal principle is accepted as an
established truth. Here, then, is a new and altogether unique
type of judgment, of thoroughly paradoxical nature. So
entirely is it without apparent basis, that Hume, who first
deciphered its strange character, felt constrained to ascribe our
belief in it to an unreasoning and merely instinctive, ‘natural’
habit or custom.
Kant found, however, that the paradoxical characteristics of
the causal principle also belong to mathematical and physical
judgments. This fact makes it impossible to accept Hume’s
sceptical conclusion. If even the assertion 7 + 5 = 12 is both
synthetic and a priori, it is obviously impossible to question
the validity of judgments that possess these characteristics. But
they do not for that reason any the less urgently press for
explanation. Such an enquiry might not, indeed, be necessary
were we concerned only with scientific knowledge. For the
natural sciences justify themselves by their practical successes
and by their steady unbroken development. But metaphysical
judgments are also of this type; and until the conditions which
make a priori synthetic judgment possible have been
discovered, the question as to the legitimacy of metaphysical
speculation cannot be decided. Such judgments are plainly
mysterious, and urgently call for further enquiry.
The problem to be solved concerns the ground of our
ascription to the subject concept, as necessarily belonging to it,
a predicate which seems to have no discoverable relation to it.
What is the unknown x on which the understanding rests in
asserting the connection? It cannot be repeated experience; for
the judgments in question claim necessity. Nor can such
judgments be proved by means of a logical test, such as the
inconceivability of the opposite. The absence of all apparent
connection between subject and predicate removes that
possibility. These, however, are the only two methods of proof
hitherto recognised in science and philosophy. The problem
demands for its solution nothing less than the discovery and
formulation of an entirely novel method of proof.
The three main classes of a priori synthetic judgments are,
Kant proceeds, the mathematical, the physical, and the
metaphysical. The synthetic character of mathematical
judgments has hitherto escaped observation owing to their
being proved (as is required of all apodictic certainty)
according to the principle of contradiction. It is therefrom
inferred that they rest on the authority of that principle, and are
therefore analytic. That, however, is an illegitimate inference;
for though the truth of a synthetic proposition can be thus
demonstrated, that can only be if another synthetic principle is
first presupposed. It can never be proved that its truth, as a
separate judgment, is demanded by the principle of
contradiction. That 7 + 5 must equal 12 does not follow
analytically from the conception of the sum of seven and five.
This conception contains nothing beyond the union of both
numbers into one; it does not tell us what is the single number
that combines both. That five should be added to seven is no
doubt implied in the conception, but not that the sum should
be twelve. To discover that, we must, Kant maintains, go
beyond the concepts and appeal to intuition. This is more
easily recognised when we take large numbers. We then
clearly perceive that, turn and twist our concepts as we may,
we can never, by means of mere analysis of them, and without
the help of intuition, arrive at the sum that is wanted. The
fundamental propositions of geometry, the so-called axioms,
are similarly synthetic, e.g. that the straight line between two
points is the shortest. The concept ‘straight’ only defines
direction; it says nothing as to quantity.
As an instance of a synthetic a priori judgment in physical
science Kant cites the principle: the quantity of matter remains
constant throughout all changes. In the conception of matter
we do not conceive its permanency, but only its presence in
the space which it fills. The opposite of the principle is
thoroughly conceivable.
Metaphysics is meant to contain a priori knowledge. For it
seeks to determine that of which we can have no experience,
as e.g. that the world must have a first beginning. And if, as
will be proved, our a priori concepts have no content, which
through analysis might yield such judgments, these judgments
also must be synthetic.
Here, then, we find the essential problem of pure reason.
Expressed in a single formula, it runs: How are synthetic a
priori judgments possible? To ask this question is to enquire,
first, how pure mathematics is possible; secondly, how pure
natural science is possible; and thirdly, how metaphysics is
possible. That philosophy has hitherto remained in so
vacillating a state of ignorance and contradiction is entirely
due to the neglect of this problem of a priori synthesis. “Its
solution is the question of life and death to metaphysics.”
Hume came nearest to realising the problem, but he discovered
it in too narrow a form to appreciate its full significance and
its revolutionary consequences.
“Greater firmness will be required if we are not to be
deterred by inward difficulties and outward opposition from
endeavouring, through application of a method entirely
different from any hitherto employed, to further the growth
and fruitfulness of a science indispensable to human reason—a
science whose every branch may be cut away but whose root
cannot be destroyed.”[154]
These statements are decidedly ambiguous, owing to Kant’s
failure to distinguish in any uniform and definite manner
between immanent and transcendent metaphysics.[155] The
term metaphysics is used to cover both. Sometimes it signifies
the one, sometimes the other; while in still other passages its
meaning is neutral. But if we draw the distinction, Kant’s
answer is that a genuine and valid immanent metaphysics is
for the first time rendered possible by his Critique; its positive
content is expounded in the Analytic. Transcendent
metaphysics, on the other hand, is criticised in the Dialectic; it
is never possible. The existing speculative sciences transgress
the limits of experience and yield only a pretence of
knowledge. This determination of the limits of our possible a
priori knowledge is the second great achievement of the
Critique. Thus the Critique serves a twofold purpose. It
establishes a new a priori system of metaphysics, and also
determines on principles equally a priori the ultimate limits
beyond which metaphysics can never advance. The two
results, positive and negative, are inseparable and
complementary. Neither should be emphasised to the neglect
of the other.
COMMENT ON THE ARGUMENT OF KANT’S INTRODUCTION

This Introduction, though a document of great historical

importance as being the first definite formulation of the
generating problem of Kant’s new philosophy, is extremely
unsatisfactory as a statement of Critical teaching. The
argument is developed in terms of distinctions which are
borrowed from the traditional logic, and which are not in
accordance with the transcendental principles that Kant is
professing to establish. This is, indeed, a criticism which may
be passed upon the Critique as a whole. Though Kant was
conscious of opening a new era in the history of philosophy,
and compares his task with that of Thales, Copernicus, Bacon
and Galileo, it may still be said that he never fully appreciated
the greatness of his own achievement. He invariably assumes
that the revolutionary consequences of his teaching will not
extend to the sphere of pure logic. They concern, as he
believed, only our metaphysical theories regarding the nature
of reality and the determining conditions of our human
experience. As formal logic prescribes the axiomatic
principles according to which all thinking must proceed, its
validity is not affected by the other philosophical disciplines,
and is superior to the considerations that determine their truth
or falsity. Its distinctions may be securely relied upon in the
pioneer labours of Critical investigation. This was, of course, a
very natural assumption for Kant to make; and many present-
day thinkers will maintain that it is entirely justified. Should
that be our attitude, we may approve of Kant’s general method
of procedure, but shall be compelled to dissent from much in
his argument and from many of his chief conclusions. If, on
the other hand, we regard formal logic as in any degree
adequate only as a theory of the thought processes involved in
the formation and application of the generic or class concept,
[156] we shall be prepared to find that the equating of this
highly specialised logic with logic in general has resulted in
the adoption of distinctions which may be fairly adequate for
the purposes in view of which they have been formulated, but
which must break down when tested over a wider field. So far
from condemning Kant for departing in his later teaching from
these hard and fast distinctions, we shall welcome every sign
of his increasing independence.
Kant was not, of course, so blind to the real bearing of his
principles as to fail to recognise that they have logical
implications.[157] He speaks of the new metaphysics which he
has created as being a transcendental logic. It is very clear,
however, that even while so doing he does not regard it as in
any way alternative to the older logic, but as moving upon a
different plane, and as yielding results which in no way
conflict with anything that formal logic may teach. Indeed
Kant ascribes to the traditional logic an almost sacrosanct
validity. Both the general framework of the Critique and the
arrangement of the minor subdivisions are derived from it. It is
supposed to afford an adequate account of discursive thinking,
and such supplement as it may receive is regarded as simply
an extension of its carefully delimited field. There are two
logics, that of discursive or analytic reasoning, and that of
synthetic interpretation. The one is formal; the other is
transcendental. The one was created by Aristotle, complete at
a stroke; Kant professes to have formulated the other in an
equally complete and final manner.
This latter claim, which is expressed in the most unqualified
terms in the Prefaces to the first and second editions, is
somewhat startling to a modern reader, and would seem to
imply the adoption of an ultra-rationalistic attitude, closely
akin to that of Wolff.
“In this work I have made completeness my chief aim, and I
venture to assert that there is not a single metaphysical
problem which has not been solved, or for the solution of
which the key at least has not been supplied. Reason is,
indeed, so perfect a unity that if its principle were insufficient
for the solution of even a single one of all the questions to
which it itself gives birth, we should be justified in forthwith
rejecting it as incompetent to answer, with perfect certainty,
any one of the other questions.”[158] “Metaphysics has this
singular advantage, such as falls to the lot of no other science
which deals with objects (for logic is concerned only with the
form of thought in general), that should it, through this
Critique, be set upon the secure path of science, it is capable
of acquiring exhaustive knowledge of its entire field. It can
finish its work and bequeath it to posterity as a capital that can
never be added to. For metaphysics has to deal only with
principles, and with the limits of their employment as
determined by these principles themselves. Since it is a
fundamental science, it is under obligation to achieve this
completeness. We must be able to say of it: nil actum reputans,
si quid superesset agendum.”[159]
These sanguine expectations—by no means supported by
the after-history of Kant’s system—are not really due to Kant’s
immodest over-estimate of the importance of his work. They
would rather seem to be traceable, on the one hand to his
continuing acceptance of rationalistic assumptions proper only
to the philosophy which he is displacing, and on the other to
his failure to appreciate the full extent of the revolutionary
consequences which his teaching was destined to produce in
the then existing philosophical disciplines. Kant, like all the
greatest reformers, left his work in the making. Both his
results and his methods call for modification and extension in
the light of the insight which they have themselves rendered
possible. Indeed, Kant was himself constantly occupied in
criticising and correcting his own acquired views; and this is
nowhere more evident than in the contrast between the
teaching of this Introduction and that of the central portions of
the Analytic. But even the later expressions of his maturer
views reveal the persisting conflict. They betray the need for
further reconstruction, even in the very act of disavowing it.
Not an additional logic, but the demonstration of the
imperative need for a complete revisal of the whole body of
logical science, is the first, and in many respects the chief,
outcome of his Critical enquiries.
The broader bearings of the situation may perhaps be
indicated as follows. If our account of Kant’s awakening from
his dogmatic slumber[160] be correct, it consisted in his
recognition that self-evidence will not suffice to guarantee any
general principle. The fundamental principles of our
experience are synthetic. That is to say, their opposite is in all
cases conceivable. Combining this conclusion with his
previous conviction that they can never be proved by induction
from observed facts, he was faced with the task of establishing
rationalism upon a new and altogether novel basis. If neither
empirical facts nor intuitive self-evidence may be appealed to,
in what manner can proof proceed? And how can we make
even a beginning of demonstration, if our very principles have
themselves to be established? Principles are never self-evident,
and yet principles are indispensable. Such was Kant’s
unwavering conviction as regards the fundamental postulates
alike of knowledge and of conduct.
This is only another way of stating that Kant is the real
founder of the Coherence theory of truth.[161] He never himself
employs the term Coherence, and he constantly adopts
positions which are more in harmony with a Correspondence
view of the nature and conditions of knowledge. But all that is
most vital in his teaching, and has proved really fruitful in its
after-history, would seem to be in line with the positions which
have since been more explicitly developed by such writers as
Lotze, Sigwart, Green, Bradley, Bosanquet, Jones and Dewey,
and which in their tenets all derive from Hegel’s restatement
of Kant’s logical doctrines. From this point of view principles
and facts mutually establish one another, the former proving
themselves by their capacity to account for the relevant
phenomena, and the latter distinguishing themselves from
irrelevant accompaniments by their conformity to the
principles which make insight possible. In other words, all
proof conforms in general type to the hypothetical method of
the natural sciences. Kant’s so-called transcendental method,
the method by which he establishes the validity of the
categories, is itself, as we have already observed,[162] of this
character. Secondly, the distinction between the empirical and
the a priori must not be taken (as Kant himself takes it in his
earlier, and occasionally even in his later utterances) as
marking a distinction between two kinds of knowledge. They
are elements inseparably involved in all knowledge. And
lastly, the contrast between analysis and synthesis becomes a
difference not of kind but of degree. Nothing can exist or be
conceived save as fitted into a system which gives it meaning
and decides as to its truth. In the degree to which it can be
studied in relative independence of the supporting system
analysis will suffice; in the degree to which it refers us to this
system it calls for synthetic interpretation. But ultimately the
needs of adequate understanding must constrain us to the
employment of both methods of enquiry. Nothing can be
known save in terms of the wider whole to which it belongs.
There is, however, one important respect in which Kant
diverges in very radical fashion from the position of Hegel.
The final whole to which all things must be referred is
represented to us only through an “Idea,” for which no
corresponding reality can ever be found. The system which
decides what is to be regarded as empirically real is the
mechanical system of natural science. We have no sufficient
theoretical criterion of absolute reality.
These somewhat general considerations may be made more
definite if we now endeavour to determine in what specific
respects the distinctions employed in the Introduction fail to
harmonise with the central doctrines of the Analytic.
In the first place, Kant states his problem in reference only
to the attributive judgment. The other types of relational
judgment are entirely ignored. For even when he cites
judgments of other relational types, such as the propositions of
arithmetic and geometry, or that which gives expression to the
causal axiom, he interprets them on the lines of the traditional
theory of the categorical proposition. As we shall find,[163] it is
with the relational categories, and consequently with the
various types of relational judgment to which they give rise,
that the Critique is alone directly concerned. Even the
attributive judgment is found on examination to be of this
nature. What it expresses is not the inclusion of an attribute
within a given group of attributes, but the organisation of a
complex manifold in terms of the dual category of substance
and attribute.
Secondly, this exclusively attributive interpretation of the
judgment leads Kant to draw, in his Introduction, a hard and
fast distinction between the analytic and the synthetic
proposition—a distinction which, when stated in such extreme
fashion, obscures the real implications of the argument of the
Analytic. For Kant here propounds[164] as an exhaustive
division the two alternatives: (a) inclusion of the predicate
concept within the subject concept, and (b) the falling of the
predicate concept entirely outside it. He adds, indeed, that in
the latter case the two concepts may still be in some way
connected with one another; but this is a concession of which
he takes no account in his subsequent argument. He leaves
unconsidered the third possibility, that every judgment is both
analytic and synthetic. If concepts are not independent entities,
[165] as Kant, in agreement with Leibniz, still continues to
maintain, but can function only as members of an articulated
system, concepts will be distinguishable from one another, and
yet will none the less involve one another. In so far as the
distinguishable elements in a judgment are directly related, the
judgment may seem purely analytic; in so far as they are
related only in an indirect manner through a number of
intermediaries, they may seem to be purely synthetic. But in
every case there is an internal articulation which is describable
as synthesis, and an underlying unity that in subordinating all
differences realises more adequately than any mere identity the
demand for connection between subject and predicate. In other
words, all judgments will, on this view, be of the relational
type. Even the attributive judgment, as above noted, is no mere
assertion of identity. It is always expressed in terms of the dual
category of substance and attribute, connecting by a relation
contents that as contents may be extremely diverse.
This would seem to be the view to which Kant’s Critical
teaching, when consistently developed, is bound to lead. For in
insisting that the synthetic character of a judgment need not
render it invalid, and that all the fundamental principles and
most of the derivative judgments of the positive sciences are
of this nature, Kant is really maintaining that the justification
of a judgment is always to be looked for beyond its own
boundaries in some implied context of coherent experience.
But though the value of his argument lies in clear-sighted
recognition of the synthetic factor in all genuine knowledge,
its cogency is greatly obscured by his continued acceptance of
the possibility of judgments that are purely analytic. Thus
there is little difficulty in detecting the synthetic character of
the proposition: all bodies are heavy. Yet the reader has first
been required to admit the analytic character of the
proposition: all bodies are extended. The two propositions are
really identical in logical character. Neither can be recognised
as true save in terms of a comprehensive theory of physical
existence. If matter must exist in a state of distribution in order
that its parts may acquire through mutual attraction the
property of weight, the size of a body, or even its possessing
any extension whatsoever, may similarly depend upon specific
conditions such as may conceivably not be universally
realised. We find the same difficulty when we are called upon
to decide whether the judgment 7 + 5 = 12 is analytic or purely
synthetic. Kant speaks as if the concepts of 7, 5, and 12 were
independent entities, each with its own quite separate
connotation. But obviously they can only be formed in the
light of the various connected concepts which go to constitute
our system of numeration. The proposition has meaning only
when interpreted in the light of this conceptual system. It is
not, indeed, a self-evident identical proposition; but neither is
the connection asserted so entirely synthetic that intuition will
alone account for its possibility. That, however, brings us to
the third main defect in Kant’s argument.
When Kant states[166] that in synthetic judgments we
require, besides the concept of the subject, something else on
which the understanding can rely in knowing that a predicate,
not contained in the concept, nevertheless belongs to it, he
entitles this something x. In the case of empirical judgments,
this x is brute experience. Such judgments, Kant implies, are
merely empirical. No element of necessity is involved, not
even in an indirect manner; in reference to empirical
judgments there is no problem of a priori synthesis. Now in
formulating the issue in this way, Kant is obscuring the
essential purpose of his whole enquiry. He may, without
essential detriment to his central position, still continue to
preserve a hard-and-fast distinction between analytic and
synthetic judgments. In so doing he is only failing to perceive
the ultimate consequences of his final results. But in viewing
empirical judgments as lacking in every element of necessity,
he is destroying the very ground upon which he professes to
base the a priori validity of general principles. All judgments
involve relational factors of an a priori character. The appeal
to experience is the appeal to an implied system of nature.
Only when fitted into the context yielded by such a system can
an empirical proposition have meaning, and only in the light of
such a presupposed system can its truth be determined. It can
be true at all, only if it can be regarded as necessarily holding,
under the same conditions, for all minds constituted like our
own. Assertion of a contingent relation—as in the proposition:
this horse is white—is not equivalent to contingency of
assertion. Colour is a variable quality of the genus horse, but
in the individual horse is necessarily determined in some
particular mode. If a horse is naturally white, it is necessarily
white. Though, therefore, in the above proposition, necessity
receives no explicit verbal expression, it is none the less
implied.
In other words, the distinction between the empirical and
the a priori is not, as Kant inconsistently assumes in this
Introduction, a distinction between two kinds of synthesis or
judgment, but between two elements inseparably involved in
every judgment. Experience is transcendentally conditioned.
Judgment is in all cases the expression of a relation which
implies an organised system of supporting propositions; and
for the articulation of this system a priori factors are
indispensably necessary.
But the most flagrant example of Kant’s failure to live up to
his own Critical principles is to be found in his doctrine of
pure intuition. It represents a position which he adopted in the
pre-Critical period. It is prefigured in Ueber die Deutlichkeit
der Grundsätze (1764),[167] and in Von dem ersten Grunde des
Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume (1768),[168] and is
definitely expounded in the Dissertation (1770).[169] That Kant
continued to hold this doctrine, and that he himself regarded it
as an integral part of his system, does not, of course, suffice to
render it genuinely Critical. As a matter of fact, it is really as
completely inconsistent with his Critical standpoint as is the
view of the empirical proposition which we have just been
considering. An appeal to our fingers or to points[170] is as
little capable, in and by itself, of justifying any a priori
judgment as are the sense-contents of grounding an empirical
judgment. Even when Kant is allowed the benefit of his own
more careful statements,[171] and is taken as asserting that
arithmetical propositions are based on a pure a priori intuition
which can find only approximate expression in sensuous
terms, his statements run counter to the main tendencies of his
Critical teaching, as well as to the recognised methods of the
mathematical sciences. Intuition may, as Poincaré and others
have maintained, be an indispensable element in all
mathematical concepts; it cannot afford proof of any general
theorem. The conceptual system which directs our methods of
decimal counting is what gives meaning to the judgment 7 + 5
= 12; it is also what determines that judgment as true. The
appeal to intuition in numerical judgments must be regarded
only as a means of imaginatively realising in a concrete form
the abstract relations of some such governing system, or else
as a means of detecting relations not previously known. The
last thing in the world which such a method can yield is
universal demonstration. This is equally evident in regard to
geometrical propositions. That a straight line is the shortest
distance between two points, cannot be proved by any mere
appeal to intuition. The judgment will hold if it can be
assumed that space is Euclidean in character; and to justify
that assumption it must be shown that Euclidean concepts are
adequate to the interpretation of our intuitional data. Should
space possess a curvature, the above proposition might cease
to be universally valid. Space is not a simple, unanalysable
datum. Though intuitionally apprehended, it demands for its
precise determination the whole body of geometrical science.
[172]

The comparative simplicity of Kant’s intuitional theory of

mathematical science, supported as it is by the seemingly
fundamental distinction between abstract concepts of
reflective thinking and the construction of concepts[173] in
geometry and arithmetic, has made it intelligible even to those
to whom the very complicated argument of the Analytic makes
no appeal. It would also seem to be inseparably bound up with
what from the popular point of view is the most striking of all
Kant’s theoretical doctrines, namely, his view that space and
time are given subjective forms, and that the assertion of their
independent reality must result in those contradictions to
which Kant has given the title antinomy. For these reasons his
intuitional theory of mathematical science has received
attention out of all proportion to its importance. Its pre-Critical
character has been more or less overlooked, and instead of
being interpreted in the light of Critical principles, it has been
allowed to obscure the sounder teaching of the Analytic. In this
matter Schopenhauer is a chief culprit. He not only takes the
views of mathematical science expounded in the Introduction
and Aesthetic as being in line with Kant’s main teaching, but
expounds them in an even more unqualified fashion than does
Kant himself.
There are thus four main defects in the argument of this
Introduction, regarded as representative of Critical teaching.
(1) Its problems are formulated exclusively in terms of the
attributive judgment; the other forms of relational judgment
are ignored. (2) It maintains that judgments are either merely
analytic or completely synthetic. (3) It proceeds in terms of a
further division of judgments into those that are purely
empirical and those that are a priori. (4) It seems to assert that
the justification for mathematical judgments is intuitional. All
these four positions are in some degree retained throughout the
Critique, but not in the unqualified manner of this
Introduction. In the Analytic, judgment in all its possible forms
is shown to be a synthetic combination of a given manifold in
terms of relational categories. This leads to a fourfold
conclusion. In the first place, judgment must be regarded as
essentially relational. Secondly, the a priori and the empirical
must not be taken as two separate kinds of knowledge, but as
two elements involved in all knowledge. Thirdly, analysis and
synthesis must not be viewed as co-ordinate processes;
synthesis is the more fundamental; it conditions all analysis.
And lastly, it must be recognised that nothing is merely given;
intuitional experience, whether sensuous or a priori, is
conditioned by processes of conceptual interpretation. Though
the consequences which follow from these conclusions, if fully
developed, would carry us far beyond any point which Kant
himself reached in the progressive maturing of his views, the
next immediate steps would still be on the strict lines of the
Critical principles, and would involve the sacrifice only of
such pre-Critical doctrines as that of the intuitive character of
mathematical proof. Such correction of Kant’s earlier positions
is the necessary complement of his own final discovery that
sense-intuition is incapable of grounding even the so-called
empirical judgment.

The Introduction to the first edition bears all the signs of

having been written previous to the central portions of the
Analytic.[174] That it was not, however, written prior to the
Aesthetic seems probable. The opening sections of the
Aesthetic represent what is virtually an independent
introduction which takes no account of the preceding
argument, and which redefines terms and distinctions that have
already been dwelt upon. The extensive additions which Kant
made in recasting the Introduction for the second edition are in
many respects a great improvement. In the first edition Kant
had not, except when speaking of the possibility of
constructing the concepts of mathematical science, referred to
the synthetic character of mathematical judgments. This is
now dwelt upon in adequate detail. Kant’s reason for not
making the revision more radical was doubtless his
unwillingness to undertake the still more extensive alterations
which this would have involved. Had he expanded the opening
statement of the second edition Introduction, that even our
empirical knowledge is a compound of the sensuous and the a
priori, an entirely new Introduction would have become
necessary. The additions made are therefore only such as will
not markedly conflict with the main tenor of the argument of
the first edition.
HOW ARE SYNTHETIC A PRIORI JUDGMENTS POSSIBLE?

Treatment of detailed points will be simplified if we now

consider in systematic fashion the many difficulties that
present themselves in connection with Kant’s mode of
formulating his central problem: How are synthetic a priori
judgments possible? This formula is less definite and precise
than would at first sight appear. The central phrase ‘synthetic a
priori’ is sufficiently exact (the meaning to be attached to the
a priori has already been considered[175]), but ambiguities of
the most various kinds lurk in the seemingly innocent and
simple terms with which the formula begins and ends:
 A. ‘How’ has two very different meanings:
(a) How possible = in what manner possible = wie.
(b) How possible = in how far possible, i.e. whether
possible = ob.
In connection with these two meanings of the term ‘how,’
we shall have to consider the distinction between the synthetic
method employed in the Critique and the analytic method
employed in the Prolegomena.
B. ‘Possible’ has a still wider range of application.
Vaihinger[176] distinguishes within it no less than three pairs of
alternative meanings:
(a) Psychological and logical possibility.
(b) Possibility of explanation and possibility of existence.
(c) Real and ideal possibility.
A. Kant personally believed that the possibility of valid a
priori synthetic judgment is proved by the existing sciences of
mathematics and physics. And that being so, there were for
Kant two very different methods which could be employed in
accounting for their possibility, the synthetic or progressive,
and the analytic or regressive. The synthetic method would
start from given, ordinary experience (in its simplest form, as
consciousness of time), to discover its conditions, and from
them to prove the validity of knowledge that is a priori. The
analytic method would start “from the sought as if it were
given,” that is, from the existence of a priori synthetic
judgments, and, assuming them as valid, would determine the
conditions under which alone such validity can be possible.
The precise formulation of these two methods, the
determination of their interrelations, of their value and
comparative scope, is a matter of great importance, and must
therefore be considered at some length.
The synthetic method may easily be confounded with the
analytic method. For in the process of its argument it makes
use of analysis. By analysing ordinary experience in the form
in which it is given, it determines (in the Aesthetic and in the
Analytic of Concepts) the fundamental elements of which
knowledge is composed, and the generating conditions from
which it results. From these the validity of the a priori
principles that underlie mathematics and physics can (in the
Analytic of Principles) be directly deduced. The fundamental
differentiating feature, therefore, of the so-called synthetic
method is not its synthetic procedure, since in great part, in the
solution of the most difficult portion of its task, it employs an
analytic method, but only its attitude towards the one question
of the validity of a priori synthetic knowledge. It does not
postulate this validity as a premiss, but proves it as a
consequence of conditions which are independently
established. By a preliminary regress upon the conditions of
our de facto consciousness it acquires data from which it is
enabled to advance by a synthetic, progressive or deductive
procedure to the establishment of the validity of synthetic a
priori judgments. The analytic method, on the other hand,
makes no attempt to prove the validity of a priori knowledge.
It seeks only to discover the conditions under which such
knowledge, if granted to exist, can possess validity, and in the
light of which its paradoxical and apparently contradictory
features can be viewed as complementary to one another. The
conditions, thus revealed, will render the validity of
knowledge conceivable, will account for it once it has been
assumed; but they do not prove it. The validity is a premiss;
the whole argument rests upon the assumption of its truth. The
conditions are only postulated as conditions; and their reality
becomes uncertain, if the validity, which presupposes them, is
itself called in question. Immediately we attempt to reverse the
procedure, and to prove validity from these conditions, our
argument must necessarily adopt the synthetic form; and that,
as has been indicated, involves the prior application of a very
different and much more thorough process of analysis. The
distinction between the two methods may therefore be stated
as follows. In the synthetic method the grounds which are
employed to explain a priori knowledge are such as also at the
same time suffice to prove its validity. In the analytic method
they are grounds of explanation, but not of proof. They are
themselves proved only in so far as the assumption of validity
is previously granted.
 The analytic procedure which is involved in the complete
synthetic method ought, however, for the sake of clearness, to
be classed as a separate, third, method. And as such I shall
henceforth regard it. It establishes by an independent line of
argument the existence of a priori factors, and also their
objective validity as conditions necessary to the very
possibility of experience. So viewed, it is the most important
and the most fundamental of the three methods. The argument
which it embodies constitutes the very heart of the Critique. It
is, indeed, Kant’s new transcendental method; and in the
future, in order to avoid confusion with the analytic method of
the Prolegomena, I shall refer to it always by this title. It is
because the transcendental method is an integral part of the
complete, synthetic method, but cannot be consistently made a
part of the analytic method, that the synthetic method alone
serves as an adequate expression of the Kantian standpoint.
This new transcendental method is proof by reference to the
possibility of experience. Experience is given as psychological
fact. The conditions which can alone account for it, as
psychological fact, also suffice to prove its objective validity;
but at the same time they limit that validity to the phenomenal
realm.
We have next to enquire to what extent these methods are
consistently employed in the Critique. This is a problem over
which there has been much controversy, but which seems to
have been answered in a quite final manner by Vaihinger. It is
universally recognised that the Critique professes to follow the
synthetic method, and that the Prolegomena, for the sake of a
simpler and more popular form of exposition, adopts the
analytic method. How far these two works live up to their
professions, especially the Critique in its two editions, is the
only point really in question. Vaihinger found two
diametrically opposed views dividing the field. Paulsen, Riehl,
and Windelband maintain the view that Kant starts from the
fact that mathematics, pure natural science, and metaphysics
contain synthetic a priori judgments claiming to be valid.
Kant’s problem is to test these claims; and his answer is that
they are valid in mathematics and pure natural science, but not
in metaphysics. Paulsen, and those who follow him, further
contend that in the first edition this method is in the main
consistently held to, but that in the second edition, owing to
the occasional employment (especially in the Introduction) of
the analytic method of the Prolegomena, the argument is
perverted and confused: Kant assumes what he ought first to
have proved. Fischer, on the other hand, and in a kindred
manner also B. Erdmann, maintain that Kant never actually
doubted the validity of synthetic a priori judgments; starting
from their validity, in order to explain it, Kant discovers the
conditions upon which it rests, and in so doing is able to show
that these conditions are not of such a character as to justify
the professed judgments of metaphysics.
Vaihinger[177] combines portions of both views, while
completely accepting neither. Hume’s profound influence upon
the development and formulation of Kant’s Critical problem
can hardly be exaggerated, but it ought not to prevent us from
realising that this problem, in its first form, was quite
independently discovered. As the letter of 1772 to Herz clearly
shows,[178] Kant was brought to the problem, how an idea in
us can relate to an object, by the inner development of his own
views, through reflection upon the view of thought which he
had developed in the Dissertation of 1770. The conformity
between thought and things is in that letter presented, not as a
sceptical objection, but as an actual fact calling for
explanation. He does not ask whether there is such conformity,
but only how it should be possible. Even after the further
complication, that thought is synthetic as well as a priori,
came into view through the influence of Hume, the problem
still continued to present itself to Kant in this non-sceptical
light. And this largely determines the wording of his
exposition, even in passages in which the demands of the
synthetic method are being quite amply fulfilled. Kant, as it
would seem, never himself doubted the validity of the
mathematical sciences. But since their validity is not beyond
possible impeachment, and since metaphysical knowledge,
which is decidedly questionable, would appear to be of
somewhat similar type, Kant was constrained to recognise
that, from the point of view of strict proof, such assumption of
validity is not really legitimate. Though, therefore, the analytic
method would have resolved Kant’s own original difficulty,
only the synthetic method is fully adequate to the situation.
Kant accordingly sets himself to prove that whether or not
we are ready (as he himself is) to recognise the validity of
scientific judgments, the correctness of this assumption can be
firmly established. And being thus able to prove its
correctness, he for that very reason does not hesitate to employ
it in his introductory statement. The problem, he says, is that
of ‘understanding’ how synthetic a priori judgments can be
valid. A ‘difficulty,’ a ‘mystery,’ a ‘secret,’ lies concealed in
them. How can a predicate be ascribed to a subject term which
does not contain it? And even more strangely (if that be
possible), how can a priori judgments legislate for objects
which are independent existences? Such judgments, even if
valid beyond all disputing, would still call for explanation.
This is, indeed, Kant’s original and ground problem. As
already indicated, no one, save only Hume, had hitherto
perceived its significance. Plato, Malebranche, and Crusius
may have dwelt upon it, but only to suggest explanations still
stranger and more mystical than the mysterious fact itself.[179]
Paulsen is justified in maintaining that Kant, in both
editions of the Critique, recognises the validity of mathematics
and pure natural science. The fact of their validity is less
explicitly dwelt upon in the first edition, but is none the less
taken for granted. The sections transferred from the
Prolegomena to the Introduction of the second edition make
no essential change, except merely in the emphasis with which
Kant’s belief in the existence of valid a priori synthetic
judgments is insisted upon. As has already been stated, only
by virtue of this initial assumption is Kant in position to
maintain that there is an alternative to the strict synthetic
method. The problem from which he starts is common to both
methods, and for that reason the formulation used in the
Prolegomena can also be employed in the Introduction to the
Critique. Only in their manner of solving the problem need
they differ.[180] Kant’s Critical problem first begins with this
presupposition of validity, and does not exist save through it.
[181] He does not first seek to discover whether such judgments
are valid, and then to explain them. He accepts them as valid,
but develops a method of argument which suffices for proof as
well as for explanation. The argument being directed to both
points simultaneously, and establishing both with equal
cogency, it may legitimately be interpreted in either way,
merely as explanation, or also as proof. Kant does not profess
or attempt to keep exclusively to any one line of statement.
Against the dogmatists he insists upon the necessity of
explaining the validity of a priori synthetic judgments, against
the sceptics upon the possibility of proving their validity. And
constantly he uses ambiguous terms, such as ‘justification’
(Rechtfertigung), ‘possibility,’ that may indifferently be read
in either sense. But though the fundamental demand which
characterises the synthetic method in its distinction from the
analytic thus falls into the background, and is only
occasionally insisted upon, it is none the less fulfilled. So far
as regards the main argument of the Critique in either edition,
the validity of synthetic a priori judgments is not required as a
premiss. It is itself independently proved.
The manner in which Kant thus departs from the strict
application of the synthetic method may be illustrated by an
analysis of his argument in the Aesthetic.[182] Only in the
arguments of the first edition in regard to space and time is the
synthetic method employed in its ideal and rigorous form. For
the most part, even in the first edition, instead of showing how
the a priori character of pure and applied mathematics follows
from conclusions independently established, he assumes both
pure and applied mathematics to be given as valid, and seeks
only to show how the independently established results of the
Aesthetic enable him to explain and render comprehensible
their recognised characteristics. This is not, indeed, any very
essential modification of the synthetic method; for his
independently established results suffice for deducing all that
they are used to explain. The validity of mathematics is not
employed as a premiss. Kant’s argument is, however, made
less clear by the above procedure.
Further difficulty is caused by Kant’s occasional
employment, even in the first edition, of the analytic method.
He several times cites as an argument in support of his view of
space the fact that it alone will account for the existing science
of geometry. That is to say, he employs geometry, viewed as
valid, to prove the correctness of his view of space.[183]
Starting from that science as given, he enquires what are the
conditions which can alone render it possible. These
conditions are found to coincide with those independently
established. Now this is a valid argument when employed in
due subordination to the main synthetic method. It offers
welcome confirmation of the results of that method. It
amounts in fact to this, that having proved (by application of
the transcendental method) the mathematical sciences to be
valid, everything which their validity necessarily implies must
be granted. Kant’s reasoning here becomes circular, but it is
none the less valid on that account. This further complication
of the argument is, however, dangerously apt to mislead the
reader. It is in great part the cause of the above division among
Kant’s commentators. The method employed in the
Prolegomena is simply this form of argument systematised
and cut free from all dependence upon the transcendental
method of proof.[184]
The whole matter is, however, still further complicated by
the distinction, which we have already noted, between real and
ideal possibility. Are the given synthetic a priori judgments
valid? That is one question. Can the Critical philosophy
discover, completely enumerate, and prove in a manner never
before done, all the possible synthetic a priori principles? That
is a very different problem, and when raised brings us to the
further discussion of Kant’s transcendental method. The
question at issue is no longer merely whether or not certain
given judgments are valid, and how, if valid, they are to be
accounted for. The question is now that of discovering and of
proving principles which have not been established by any of
the special sciences. This shifting of the problem is concealed
from Kant himself by his omission to distinguish between the
undemonstrated axioms of the mathematical sciences and their
derivative theorems, between the principles employed by the
physicist without enquiry into their validity and the special
laws based upon empirical evidence.
As regards the mathematical axioms, the problem is fairly
simple. As we shall see later, in the Aesthetic, they do not
require a deduction in the strict transcendental sense. They
really fall outside the application of the transcendental method.
They require only an “exposition.” But in regard to the
fundamental principles of natural science we are presented
with the problem of discovery as well as of proof. Unlike the
axioms of the mathematician, they are frequently left
unformulated. And many postulates, such as that there is a lex
continui in natura, are current in general thought, and claim
equal validity with the causal principle. Kant has thus to face
the question whether in addition to those principles employed
more or less explicitly by the scientist, others, such as might
go to form an immanent metaphysics of nature, may not also
be possible.
B. (a)[185] Psychological and logical possibility.—Both
have to be recognised and accounted for. Let us consider each
in order.
(1) Psychological possibility.—What are the subjective
conditions of a priori synthetic judgments? Through what
mental faculties are they rendered possible? Kant replies by
developing what may be called a transcendental psychology.
They depend upon space and time as forms of sensibility, upon
the a priori concepts of understanding, and upon the synthetic
activities by which the imagination schematises these concepts
and reduces the given manifold to the unity of apperception.
This transcendental psychology is the necessary complement
of the more purely epistemological analysis.[186] But on this
point Kant’s utterances are extremely misleading. His Critical
enquiry has, he declares, nothing in common with psychology.
In the Preface to the first edition we find the following
passage: “This enquiry … [into] the pure understanding itself,
its possibility and the cognitive faculties upon which it rests
…, although of great importance for my chief purpose, does
not form an essential part of it.”[187] The question, he adds,
“how is the faculty of thought itself possible?… is as it were a
search for the cause of a given effect, and therefore is of the
nature of an hypothesis [or ‘mere opinion’], though, as I shall
show elsewhere, this is not really so.” The concluding words
of this passage very fairly express Kant’s hesitating and
inconsistent procedure. Though he has so explicitly eliminated
from the central enquiry of the Critique all psychological
determination of the mental powers, statements as to their
constitution are none the less implied, and are involved in his
epistemological justification alike of a priori knowledge and
of ordinary experience. If we bear in mind that Kant is here
attempting to outline the possible causes of given effects, and
that his conclusions are therefore necessarily of a more
hypothetical character than those obtained by logical analysis,
we shall be prepared to allow him considerable liberty in their
formulation. But in certain respects his statements are precise
and definite—the view, for instance, of sensations as non-
spatial, of time as a form of inner sense, of the productive
imagination as pre-conditioning our consciousness, of
spontaneity as radically distinct from receptivity, of the pure
forms of thought as not acquired through sense, etc. No
interpretation which ignores or under-estimates this
psychological or subjective aspect of his teaching can be
admitted as adequate.[188]
(2) Logical or epistemological possibility.—How can
synthetic a priori judgments be valid? This question itself
involves a twofold problem. How, despite their synthetic
character, can they possess truth, i.e. how can we pass from
their subject terms to their predicates? And secondly, how, in
view of their origin in our human reason, can they be
objectively valid, i.e. legislate for the independently real? How
can we pass beyond the subject-predicate relation to real
things? This latter is the Critical problem in the form in which
it appears in Kant’s letter of 1772 to Herz.[189] The former is
the problem of synthesis which was later discovered.
(b) (1) Possibility of explanation and (2) possibility of
existence.—(1) How can synthetic a priori judgments be
accounted for? How, despite their seemingly inconsistent and
apparently paradoxical aspects, can their validity (their
validity as well as their actuality being taken for granted) be
rendered comprehensible? (2) The validity of such judgments
has been called in question by the empiricists, and is likewise
inexplicable even from the dogmatic standpoint of the
rationalists. How, then, can these judgments be possible at all?
These two meanings of the term ‘possible’ connect with the
ambiguity, above noted, in the term ‘how.’ The former
problem can be solved by an analytic method; the latter
demands the application of the more radical method of
synthetic reconstruction.
(c) Real and ideal possibility.[190]—We have to distinguish
between the possible validity of those propositions which the
mathematical and physical sciences profess to have established
and the possible validity of those principles such as that of
causality, which are postulated by the sciences, but which the
sciences do not attempt to prove, and which in certain cases
they do not even formulate. The former constitute an actually
existent body of scientific knowledge, demonstrated in
accordance with the demands of scientific method. The latter
are employed by the scientist, but are not investigated by him.
The science into which they can be fitted has still to be
created; and though some of the principles composing it may
be known, others remain to be discovered. All of them demand
such proof and demonstration as they have never yet received.
[191] This new and ideal science is the scientific metaphysics
which Kant professes to inaugurate by means of the Critique.
In reference to the special sciences, possibility means the
conditions of the actually given. In reference to the new and
ideal metaphysics, possibility signifies the conditions of the
realisation of that which is sought. In view of this distinction,
the formula—How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?
—will thus acquire two very different meanings. (1) How are
the existing a priori synthetic judgments to be accounted for?
(2) How may all the really fundamental judgments of that type
be exhaustively discovered and proved? Even in regard to
immanent metaphysics Kant interprets the formula in both
ways. This is due to his frequent confusion of immanent
metaphysics with the principles of natural science. Its
propositions are then regarded as given, and only their general
validity calls for proof. It is, however, in the problem of ideal
possibility that the essential problem of the Critique lies; and
that is a further reason why it cannot be adequately dealt with,
save by means of the synthetic method.
 Experience.—Throughout the Introduction the term
experience[192] has (even at times in one and the same
sentence) two quite distinct meanings, (1) as product of sense
and understanding acting co-operatively, and (2) as the raw
material (the impressions) of sense. Considerable confusion is
thereby caused.
Understanding and reason[193] are here, as often
elsewhere in the Critique, used as equivalent terms.
Throughout the entire two first sections of the Introduction to
the second edition the term reason does not occur even once.
As first mentioned,[194] it is taken as the source of
metaphysical judgments.
General (a priori) truths have an inner necessity and
must be clear and certain by themselves.[195]—These
statements are not in accordance with Kant’s new Critical
teaching.[196] They have remained uncorrected from a previous
way of thinking. This must be one reason for the recasting of
this paragraph in the second edition.
Even with (unter) our experiences there is mingled
knowledge which must be of a priori origin.[197]—Kant is
here distinguishing the immanent a priori, such as that
involved in any causal judgment, from the transcendent a
priori dwelt upon in the next paragraph. The latter is expressed
through metaphysical judgments, such as ‘God exists,’ ‘the
soul is immortal.’
Original concepts and judgments derived from them.
[198]—Cf. B 5-6.

Pure.—In the title of the section the term pure[199] (rein) is,
as the subsequent argument shows, taken as exactly equivalent
to a priori. As Vaihinger notes, the adjective apriorisch had
not yet been invented. The opposite of pure is here empirical
(empirisch).[200]
All our knowledge begins with experience.[201]—This is a
stronger statement than any in the corresponding paragraphs of
the first edition. Had Kant proceeded to develop its
consequences, he would have had to recast the entire
Introduction, setting the problem of empirical knowledge
alongside that of the a priori.[202] As it is, he is forced[203] to
subdivide the absolutely a priori into the pure and the mixed.
[204]

By objects which affect (rühren) our senses. The raw

material of sensuous impressions.[205]—These incidental
statements call for discussion. Cf. below, pp. 80-8, 120-1, 274
ff.
A knowledge of objects which we call experience.[206]—
Kant does not keep to this definition. The term experience is
still used in its other and narrower sense, as in the very next
paragraph, when Kant states that knowledge does not, perhaps,
arise solely from experience (= sense impressions).
In respect of time.[207]—This statement, taken as an
account of Kant’s teaching in the Critique, is subject to two
reservations. In the Aesthetic[208] Kant sometimes claims a
temporal antecedence for the a priori. And secondly, the a
priori is not for Kant merely logical. It also possesses a
dynamical priority.[209]
Even experience itself is a compound.[210]—The “even”
seems to refer to the distinction drawn in A 2 between the
immanent and the transcendent a priori.[211]
It is therefore a question whether there exists such
knowledge independent of experience.[212]—This question
was not raised in the first edition.[213] The alternative methods,
analytic and synthetic, are discussed above, p. 44 ff.
Such knowledge is called a priori and is distinguished
from empirical knowledge.[214]—Throughout the
Introduction, in both editions equally, Kant fails to state the
problems of the Critique in a sufficiently comprehensive
manner. He speaks as if the Critique dealt only with the
absolutely a priori, in its two forms, as immanent scientific
knowledge and as transcendent speculation. It also deals with
the equally important and still more fundamental problem of
accounting for the possibility of experience.[215] Our empirical
knowledge involves an a priori element, and may not
therefore be opposed to a priori knowledge in the manner of
the passage before us.
 This term a priori is not yet definite enough.[216]—It is
frequently employed in a merely relative sense. Thus we can
say of a person who undermines the foundations of his house
that he might have known a priori that it would collapse, that
is, that he need not wait for the experience of its actual fall.
But still he could not know this entirely a priori; he had first to
learn from experience that bodies are heavy, and will fall when
their supports are taken away. But as dealt with in the Critique
the term a priori is used in an absolute sense, to signify that
knowledge which is independent, not of this or that experience
only, but of all impressions of the senses. Thus far Kant’s
position is comparatively clear; but he proceeds to distinguish
two forms within the absolutely a priori, namely, mixed and
pure. The absolutely a priori is mixed when it contains an
empirical element, pure when it does not. (“Pure” is no longer
taken in the meaning which it has in the title of the section.
[217] It signifies not the a priori as such, but only one
subdivision of it.) Thus after defining absolutely a priori
knowledge as independent of all experience, Kant takes it in
one of its forms as involving empirical elements. The example
which he gives of an absolutely a priori judgment, which yet
is not pure, is the principle: every change has its cause.
“Change” is an empirical concept, but the synthetic relation
asserted is absolutely a priori. In the next section[218] this
same proposition is cited as a pure judgment a priori—“pure”
being again used in its more general meaning as synonymous
with a priori. This confusion results from Kant’s exclusive
preoccupation with the a priori, and consequent failure to give
due recognition to the correlative problem of the empirical
judgment. The omitted factor retaliates by thus forcing its way
into Kant’s otherwise clean-cut divisions. Also, it is not true
that the relative a priori falls outside the sphere of the Critical
enquiry. Such judgment expresses necessity or objectivity, and
for that reason demands a transcendental justification no less
urgently than the absolutely a priori. The finding of such
justification is, indeed, the central problem of the Analytic.[219]
The subdivisions of the a priori may be tabulated thus:
A priori Relative, e.g. every unsupported house
knowledge— must fall.
 Absolute Mixed, e.g. every change has its
— cause.
Pure, e.g. a straight line is the
shortest
distance between two points.
The term pure (rein) thus acquires a second meaning
distinct from that defined above.[220] It is no longer employed
as identical with a priori, but as a subdivision of it, meaning
unmixed. Its opposite is no longer the empirical, but the
impure or mixed. Owing, however, to the fact that “pure” (in
its first meaning) is identical with the a priori, it shares in all
the different connotations of the latter, and accordingly is also
employed to denote that which is not relative. But “pure” has
yet another meaning peculiar to itself. The phrase
“independent of experience” has in reference to “pure” an
ambiguity from which it does not suffer in its connection with
“a priori” (since mathematical knowledge, whether pure or
applied, is always regarded by Kant as a priori). It may signify
either independence as regards content and validity, or
independence as regards scope. The latter meaning is narrower
than the former. By the former meaning it denotes that which
originates, and can possess truth, independently of experience.
By the latter it signifies that which is not only independent of
sense but also applies to the non-sensuous. In this latter
meaning pure knowledge therefore signifies transcendent
knowledge. Its opposite is the immanent. The various
meanings of “pure” (four in number) may be tabulated as
follows:
(a) (1) A priori: independent of experience as regards origin
and validity. (Its opposite = empirical.)
(2) Absolutely independent of experience. (Its opposite =
relative.)
(3) Unmixed with experience. (Its opposite = impure or
mixed.)
(b) (4) Independent of experience as regards scope =
transcendent. (Its opposite = immanent.)
All these varied meanings contribute to the ambiguity of the
title of the Critique. Kant himself employs the title in all of the
following senses:
1. Critique of absolutely pure a priori knowledge,
determination of its sources, conditions, scope and limits.
2. Critique of all a priori knowledge, relative as well as
absolute, in so far as it depends upon a priori principles,
determination, etc.
3. Critique of all knowledge, whether a priori or empirical,
determination, etc.
4. Critique of transcendent knowledge, its sources and
limits.
Further meanings could also be enumerated but can be
formulated by the reader for himself in the light of the
ambiguities just noted.[221] The special context in each case
can alone decide how the title is to be understood. If a really
adequate definition of the purpose and scope of the Critique is
sought by the reader, he must construct it for himself. The
following may perhaps serve. The Critique is an enquiry into
the sources, conditions, scope and limits of our knowledge,
both a priori and empirical, resulting in the construction of a
new system of immanent metaphysics; in the light of the
conclusions thus reached, it also yields an analysis and
explanation of the transcendental illusion to which
transcendent metaphysics, both as a natural disposition and as
a professed science, is due.
Kant further complicates matters by offering a second
division of the absolutely a priori,[222] viz. into the original
and the derivative. Also, by implication, he classes relative a
priori judgments among the propositions to be reckoned with
by the Critique; and yet in B 4 he speaks of the proposition, all
bodies are heavy, as merely empirical.[223]
A criterion.[224]—Necessity and universality are valid
criteria of the a priori (= the non-empirical). This follows
from Kant’s view[225] of the empirical as synonymous with the
contingent (zufällig). Experience gives only the actual; the a
priori alone yields that which cannot be otherwise.
 “Necessity and strict universality are thus safe criteria of a
priori knowledge, and are inseparable from one another. But
since in the employment of these criteria the empirical
limitation of judgments is sometimes more easily shown than
their contingency, or since, as frequently happens, their
unlimited universality can be more convincingly proved than
their necessity, it is advisable to use the two criteria separately,
each being by itself infallible.”[226]
Now Kant is here, of course, assuming the main point to be
established, namely, that experience is incapable of accounting
for such universality and necessity as are required for our
knowledge, both ordinary and scientific. We have already
considered this assumption,[227] and have also anticipated
misunderstanding by noting the important qualifications to
which, from Kant’s new Critical standpoint, the terms
‘necessity’ and ‘universality’ become subject.[228] The very
specific meaning in which Kant employs the term a priori
must likewise be borne in mind. Though negatively the a
priori is independent of experience, positively it originates in
our human reason. The necessity and universality which
differentiate the a priori distinguish it only from the humanly
accidental. The a priori has no absolute validity. From a
metaphysical standpoint, it is itself contingent. As already
stated,[229] all truth is for Kant merely de facto. The necessary
is not that which cannot be conceived to be otherwise, nor is it
the unconditioned. Our reason legislates only for the world of
appearance. But as yet Kant gives no hint of this revolutionary
reinterpretation of the rationalist criteria. One of the chief
unfortunate consequences of the employment in this
Introduction of the analytic method of the Prolegomena is that
it tends to mislead the reader by seeming to commit Kant to a
logical a priori of the Leibnizian type.
To show that, if experience is to be possible, [pure a
priori propositions] are indispensable, and so to prove
their existence a priori.[230]—At first sight Kant would seem
to be here referring to the alternative synthetic method of
procedure, i.e. to the transcendental proof of the a priori. The
next sentence shows, however, that neither in intention nor in
fact is that really so. He argues only that a priori principles,
such as the principle of causality, are necessary in order to
give “certainty” to our experience; such a principle must be
postulated if inductive inference is to be valid. Experience
could have no [scientific] certainty, “if all rules according to
which it proceeds were themselves in turn empirical, and
therefore contingent. They could hardly be regarded as first
principles.” There is no attempt here to prove that empirical
knowledge as such necessarily involves the a priori. Also the
method of argument, though it seeks to establish the necessity
of the a priori, is not transcendental or Critical in character. It
is merely a repetition of the kind of argument which both
Hume and Leibniz had already directed against the
sensationalist position.[231] Very strangely, considering that
these sentences have been added in the second edition, and
therefore subsequent to the writing of the objective deduction,
Kant gives no indication of the deeper problem to which he
finally penetrated. The explanation is, probably, that to do so
would have involved the recasting of the entire Introduction.
Even on the briefest reference, the hard-and-fast distinction
between the a priori and the empirical, as two distinct and
separate classes of judgment, would have been undermined,
and the reader would have been made to feel the insufficiency
of the analysis upon which it is based.[232] The existence of the
deeper view is betrayed only through careless employment of
the familiar phrase “possibility of experience.” For, as here
used, it is not really meant. “Certainty of experience”—a very
different matter—is the meaning that alone will properly fit
the context.
Reason and understanding.[233]—They are here
distinguished, having been hitherto, in A 1-2, employed as
synonymous. The former carries us beyond the field of all
possible experience; the latter is limited to the world of sense.
Thus both Reason and understanding are here used in their
narrowest meaning.
These inevitable problems of pure Reason itself are God,
freedom, and immortality. The science which, with all its
methods, is in its final intention directed solely to the
solution of these problems, is called metaphysics.[234]—
These sentences are characteristic of the second edition with
its increased emphasis upon the positive results of the Critique
on the one hand, and with its attitude of increased favour
towards transcendent metaphysics on the other. The one
change would seem to be occasioned by the nature of the
criticisms passed upon the first edition, as, for instance, by
Moses Mendelssohn who describes Kant as “the all-destroyer”
(der alles zermalmende). The other is due to Kant’s
preoccupation with the problems of ethics and of teleology.
The above statements are repeated with even greater emphasis
in B 395 n.[235] The definition here given of metaphysics is not
strictly kept to by Kant. As above noted,[236] Kant really
distinguishes within it two forms, immanent and transcendent.
In so doing, however, he still[237] regards transcendent
metaphysics as the more important. Immanent metaphysics is
chiefly of value as contributing to the solution of the
“inevitable problems of pure Reason.”
A 3-4 = B 7-8.—The reasons, here cited by Kant, for the
failure of philosophical thinking to recognise the difference
between immanent and transcendent judgments are: (1) the
misunderstood character, and consequent misleading
influence, of a priori mathematical judgments; (2) the fact that
once we are beyond the sensible sphere, experience can never
contradict us; (3) natural delight in the apparent enlargement
of our knowledge; (4) the ease with which logical
contradictions can be avoided; (5) neglect of the distinction
between analytic and synthetic a priori judgments. Vaihinger
points out[238] that in the Fortschritte[239] Kant adds a sixth
reason—confusion of the concepts of understanding with the
Ideas of Reason. Upon the first of the above reasons the best
comment is that of the Methodology.[240] But the reader must
likewise bear in mind that in B xvi Kant develops his new
philosophical method on the analogy of the mathematical
method. The latter is, he claims, mutatis mutandis, the true
method of legitimate speculation, i.e. of immanent
metaphysics. The one essential difference (as noted by
Kant[241]), which has been overlooked by the dogmatists, is
that philosophy gains its knowledge from concepts,
mathematics from the construction of concepts.
Remain investigations only.[242]—Cf. Prolegomena, § 35.
 The analysis of our concepts of objects.[243]—Vaihinger’s
interpretation, that the concepts here referred to are those
which we “form a priori of things,”[244] seems correct.[245]
The rationalists sought to deduce the whole body of rational
psychology from the a priori conception of the soul as a
simple substance, and of rational theology from the a priori
conception of God as the all-perfect Being.
Analytic and synthetic judgments.[246]—“All analytic
judgments depend wholly on the law of contradiction, and are
in their nature a priori cognitions, whether the concepts that
supply them with matter be empirical or not. For the predicate
of an affirmative analytic judgment is already contained in the
concept of the subject, of which it cannot be denied without
contradiction. In the same way its opposite is necessarily
denied of the subject in an analytic, but negative, judgment by
the same law of contradiction…. For this very reason all
analytic judgments are a priori even when the concepts are
empirical, as, for example, gold is a yellow metal; for to know
this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a
yellow metal: it is, in fact, the very concept, and I need only
analyse it, without looking beyond it elsewhere…. [Synthetic
judgments, a posteriori and a priori] agree in this, that they
cannot possibly spring solely from the principle of analysis,
the law of contradiction. They require a quite different
principle. From whatever they may be deduced, the deduction
must, it is true, always be in accordance with the principle of
contradiction. For that principle must never be violated. But at
the same time everything cannot be deduced from it.”[247]
In A 594 = B 622 analytic judgments are also spoken of as
identical; but in the Fortschritte[248] this use of terms is
criticised:
“Judgments are analytic if their predicate only represents
clearly (explicite) what was thought obscurely (implicite) in
the concept of the subject, e.g. all bodies are extended. Were
we to call such judgments identical only confusion would
result. For identical judgments contribute nothing to the
clearness of the concept, and that must be the purpose of all
judging. Identical judgments are therefore empty, e.g. all
bodies are bodily (or to use another term material) beings.
Analytic judgments do, indeed, ground themselves upon
identity and can be resolved into it; but they are not identical.
For they demand analysis and serve for the explanation of the
concept. In identical judgments, on the other hand, idem is
defined per idem, and nothing at all is explained.”
Vaihinger[249] cites the following contrasted examples of
analytic and synthetic judgments:
Analytic.—(a) Substance is that which exists only as subject
in which qualities inhere.[250] (b) Every effect has a cause.[5]
(c) Everything conditioned presupposes a condition.
Synthetic.—(a) Substance is permanent. (b) Every event has
a cause.[251] (c) Everything conditioned presupposes an
unconditioned.
B 11-12.—The first half of this paragraph is transcribed
practically word for word from the Prolegomena.[252] The
second half is a close restatement of an omitted paragraph of
the first edition. The chief addition lies in the concluding
statement, that “experience is itself a synthetic connection of
intuitions.” This is in keeping with statements made in the
deduction of the categories in the second edition,[253] and in
the paragraph inserted in the proof of the second analogy in
the second edition.[254] The x has strangely been omitted in the
second edition in reference to empirical judgments, though
retained in reference to synthetic a priori judgments.
The proposition: everything which happens has its
cause.[255]—As we have already observed,[256] Hume
influenced Kant at two distinct periods in his philosophical
development—in 1756-1763, and again at some time (not
quite definitely datable) after February 1772. The first
influence concerned the character of concrete causal
judgments; the second related to the causal axiom. Though
there are few distinctions which are more important for
understanding the Critique than that of the difference between
these two questions, it has nowhere been properly emphasised
by Kant, and in several of the references to Hume, which
occur in the Critique and in the Prolegomena, the two
problems are confounded in a most unfortunate manner. The
passages in the Introduction[257] are clear and unambiguous;
the influence exercised by Hume subsequent to February 1772
is quite adequately stated. The causal axiom claims to be a
priori, and is, as Hume asserts, likewise synthetic.
Consequently there are only two alternatives, each decisive
and far-reaching. Either valid a priori synthesis must, contrary
to all previous philosophical belief, be possible, or “everything
which we call metaphysics must turn out to be a mere delusion
of reason.” The solution of this problem is “a question of life
and death to metaphysics.” To this appreciation of Hume, Kant
adds criticism. Hume did not sufficiently universalise his
problem. Had he done so, he would have recognised that pure
mathematics involves a priori synthesis no less necessarily
than do the metaphysical disciplines. From denying the
possibility of mathematical science “his good sense would
probably have saved him.” Hume’s problem, thus viewed,
finds its final and complete expression in the formula: How
are synthetic a priori judgments possible?
In A 760 = B 788 the account differs in two respects: first, it
discusses the metaphysical validity of the causal axiom as well
as its intrinsic possibility as a judgment; and secondly,
reference is made to the conception of causality as well as to
the axiom. The implied criticism of Hume is correspondingly
modified. Otherwise, it entirely harmonises with the passages
in the Introduction.
“Hume dwelt especially upon the principle of causality, and
quite rightly observed that its truth, and even the objective
validity of the concept of efficient cause in general, is based on
no insight, i.e. on no a priori knowledge, and that its authority
cannot therefore be ascribed to its necessity, but merely to its
general utility in the course of experience and to a certain
subjective necessity which it thereby acquires, and which he
entitles custom. From the incapacity of our reason to make use
of this principle in any manner that transcends experience he
inferred the nullity of all pretensions of reason to advance
beyond the empirical.”
Now so far, in these references to Hume, Kant has had in
view only the problems of mathematical and physical science
and of metaphysics. The problems involved in the possibility
of empirical knowledge are left entirely aside. His account of
Hume’s position and of his relation to Hume suffers change
immediately these latter problems are raised. And
unfortunately it is a change for the worse. The various
problems treated by Hume are then confounded together, and
the issues are somewhat blurred. Let us take the chief passages
in which this occurs. In A 764 = B 792 ff. Kant gives the
following account of Hume’s argument. Hume, recognising
the impossibility of predicting an effect by analysis of the
concept of the cause, or of discovering a cause from the
concept of the effect, viewed all concrete causal judgments as
merely contingent, and therefrom inferred the contingency of
the causal axiom. In so doing Hume, Kant argues, confuses the
legitimate and purely a priori inference from a given event to
some antecedent with the very different inference, possible
only through special experience, to a specific cause. Now this
is an entire misrepresentation of Hume’s real achievement, and
may perhaps be explained, at least in part, as being due to the
fact that Kant was acquainted with Hume’s Treatise only
through the indirect medium of Beattie’s quotations. Hume
committed no such blunder. He clearly recognised the
distinction between the problem of the validity of the causal
axiom and the problem of the validity of concrete causal
judgments. He does not argue from the contingency of
concrete causal laws to the contingency of the universal
principle, but shows, as Kant himself recognises,[258] that the
principle is neither self-evident nor demonstrable a priori. And
as necessity cannot be revealed by experience, neither is the
principle derivable from that source. Consequently, Hume
concludes, it cannot be regarded as objectively valid. It must
be due to a subjective instinct or natural belief. (The two
problems are similarly confounded by Kant in A 217 = B 264.)
In the Introduction to the Prolegomena there is no such
confusion of the two problems, but matters are made even
worse by the omission of all reference to Hume’s analysis of
the causal axiom. Only Hume’s treatment of the concept of
causality is dwelt upon. This is the more unfortunate, and has
proved the more misleading, in that it is here that Kant makes
his most explicit acknowledgment of his indebtedness to
Hume. In §§ 27 ff. of the Prolegomena both problems
reappear, but are again confounded. The section is preceded by
sentences in which the problem of experience is emphasised;
and in keeping with these prefatory remarks, Kant represents
“Hume’s crux metaphysicorum” as concerning only the
concept of causality (viewed as a synthetic, and professedly a
priori, connection between concrete existences). Yet in § 30
the causal axiom is also referred to, and together they are
taken as constituting “Hume’s problem.”
Now if we bear in mind that Hume awakened Kant to both
problems—how a priori knowledge is possible, and how
experience is possible—this confusion can easily be
understood. Kant had already in the early ‘sixties studied
Hume with profound admiration and respect.[259] In the period
subsequent to 1772 this admiration had only deepened; and
constantly, as we may believe, Kant had returned with fresh
relish to Hume’s masterly analyses of causality and of
inductive inference. It is not, therefore, surprising that as the
years passed, and as the other elements in Hume’s teaching
revealed to him, through the inner growth of his own views,
their full worth and significance, he should allow the
contribution that had more specifically awakened him to fall
into the background, and should, in vague fashion, ascribe to
Hume’s teaching as a whole the specific influence which was
really due to one particular part. By 1783, the date of the
Prolegomena, Kant’s first enthusiasm over the discovery of
the fundamental problem of a priori synthesis had somewhat
abated, and the problem of experience had more or less taken
its place. This would seem to be the reason why in the
Prolegomena he thus deals with both aspects of Hume’s
problem, and why in so doing he gives a subordinate place to
Hume’s treatment of the causal axiom. But though the
misunderstanding may be thus accounted for, it must none the
less be deplored. For the reader is seriously misled, and much
that is central to the Critical philosophy is rendered obscure.
The influence which Kant in the Prolegomena thus ascribes to
Hume was not that which really awakened him from his
dogmatic slumber, but is in part that which he had assimilated
at least as early as 1763, and in part that which acted upon him
with renewed force when he was struggling (probably between
1778 and 1780) with the problems involved in the deduction
of the categories. It was Hume’s treatment of the causal axiom,
and that alone, which, at some time subsequent to February
1772, was the really effective influence in producing the
Copernican change.[260]
Purely a priori and out of mere concepts.[261]—
Vaihinger’s comment seems correct: Kant means only that
neither actual experience nor pure intuition can be resorted to.
This does not contradict the complementary assertion,[262] that
the principle, everything which happens has its cause, can be
known a priori, not immediately from the concepts involved
in it, but only indirectly[263] through the relation of these
concepts to possible experience. “Possible experience,” even
though it stands for “something purely contingent,” is itself a
concept. Vaihinger[264] quotes Apelt upon this “mysterious”
type of judgment.
“Metaphysics is synthetic knowledge from mere concepts,
not like mathematics from their construction in intuition, and
yet these synthetic propositions cannot be known from bare
concepts, i.e. not analytically. The necessity of the connection
in those propositions is to be apprehended through thought
alone, and yet is not to rest upon the form of thought, the
principle of contradiction. The conception of a kind of
knowledge which arises from bare concepts, and yet is
synthetic, eludes our grasp. The problem is: How can one
concept be necessarily connected with another, without also at
the same time being contained in it?”
The paragraphs in B 14 to B 17 are almost verbal transcripts
from Prolegomena, § 2 c, 2 ff.
Mathematical judgments are one and all (insgesammt)
synthetic.[265]—This assertion is carelessly made, and does
not represent Kant’s real view. In B 16 he himself recognises
the existence of analytic mathematical judgments, but unduly
minimises their number and importance.
All mathematical conclusions proceed according to the
principle of contradiction.[266]—To the objection made by
Paulsen that Kant, in admitting that mathematical judgments
can be deduced from others by means of the principle of
contradiction, ought consistently to have recognised as
synthetic only axioms and principles, Vaihinger replies as
follows:[267]
“The proposition—the angles of a triangle are together
equal to two right angles—Kant regards as synthetic. It is
indeed deduced from the axiom of parallels (with the aid of
auxiliary lines), and to that extent is understood in accordance
with the principle of contradiction…. The angles in the
triangle constitute a special case of the angles in the parallel
lines which are intersected by other lines. The principle of
contradiction thus serves as vehicle in the deduction, because
once the identity of A and A´ is recognised, the predicate b,
which belongs to A, must also be ascribed to A´. But the
proposition is not for that reason itself analytic in the Kantian
sense. In the analytic proposition the predicate is derived from
the analysis of the subject concept. But that does not happen in
this case. The synthetic proposition can never be derived in
and by itself from the principle of contradiction; … but only
with the aid of that principle from other propositions. Besides,
in this deduction intuition must always be resorted to; and that
makes an essential difference. Without it the identity of A and
A´ cannot become known.”
Pure mathematics.[268]—“Pure,” as thus currently used, is
opposed only to applied, not to empirical. Kant here arbitrarily
reads the latter opposition into it. Under this guise he begs the
point in dispute.
7 + 5 = 12.[269]—Though 7 + 5 = 12 expresses an identity or
equality, it is an equality of the objects or magnitudes, 7 + 5
and 12, not of the concepts through which we think them.[270]
Analysis of the concepts can never reveal this equality. Only
by constructing the concepts in intuition can it be recognised
by the mind. This example has been already cited in the first
edition.[271] It is further elaborated in the Prolegomena, § 2 c,
and is here transcribed. Kant’s mode of stating his position is
somewhat uncertain. He alternates between “the representation
of 7 and 5,” “the representation of the combination of 7 and
5,”[272] and “the concepts 7 and 5.”[273] His view would seem
to be that there are three concepts involved. For the concept of
7 we must substitute the intuition of 7 points, for the concept
of 5 the intuition of 5 points, and for the concept of their sum
the intuitive operation of addition.
Call in the assistance of intuition, for instance our five
fingers.[274]—This statement, repeated from the Prolegomena,
[275] does not represent Kant’s real position. The views which
he has expressed upon the nature of arithmetical science are of
the most contradictory character,[276] but to one point he
definitely commits himself, namely, that, like geometrical
science, it rests, not (as here asserted) upon empirical, but
upon pure intuition.[277] Except indirectly, by the reference to
larger numbers, Kant here ignores his own important
distinction between image and schema.[278] The above
statement would also make arithmetic dependent upon space.
Segner: Anfangsgründe der Arithmetik,[279] translated
from the Latin, second edition, Halle, 1773.
Natural science (physica) contains synthetic a priori
judgments.[280]—There is here a complication to which
Vaihinger[281] has been the first to draw attention. In the
Prolegomena[282] Kant emphasises the distinction between
physics and pure or universal science of nature.[283] The latter
treats only the a priori form of nature (i.e. its necessary
conformity to law), and is therefore a propaedeutic to physics
which involves further empirical factors. For two reasons,
however, this universal natural science falls short of its ideal.
First, it contains empirical elements, such as the concepts of
motion, impenetrability, inertia, etc. Secondly, it refers only to
the objects of external sense, and not, as we should expect in a
universal science, to natural existences without exception, i.e.
to the objects of psychology as well as of physics.[284] But
among its principles there are, Kant adds, a few which are
purely a priori and possess the universality required: e.g. such
propositions as that substance is permanent, and that every
event has a cause. Now these are the examples which ought to
have been cited in the passage before us. Those actually given
fall entirely outside the scope of the Critique. They are treated
only in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe. They belong to the
relatively, not to the absolutely, pure science of nature. The
source of the confusion Vaihinger again traces to Kant’s failure
to hold fast to the important distinction between immanent and
transcendent metaphysics.[285] His so-called pure or universal
natural science (nature, as above noted, signifying for Kant
“all that is”) is really immanent metaphysics, and the
propositions in regard to substance and causality ought
therefore to be classed as metaphysical. This, indeed, is how
they are viewed in the earlier sections of the Prolegomena.
The distinction later drawn in § 15 is ignored. Pure natural
science is identified with mathematical physics, and the
propositions which in § 15 are spoken of as belonging to pure
universal natural science are now regarded as metaphysical.
“Genuinely metaphysical judgments are one and all
synthetic…. For instance, the proposition—everything which
in things is substance is permanent—is a synthetic, and
properly metaphysical judgment.”[286] In § 5 the principle of
causality is also cited as an example of a synthetic a priori
judgment in metaphysics. But Kant still omits to draw a
distinction between immanent and transcendent metaphysics;
and as a consequence his classification of synthetic a priori
judgments remains thoroughly confused. They are taken as
belonging to three spheres, mathematics, physics (in the
relative sense), and metaphysics. The implication is that this
threefold distinction corresponds to the threefold division of
the Doctrine of Elements into Aesthetic, Analytic, and
Dialectic. Yet, as a matter of fact, the propositions of
mathematical physics, in so far as they are examples of applied
mathematics, are dealt with in the Aesthetic, and in so far as
they involve concepts of motion and the like fall entirely
outside the scope of the Critique, while the Analytic deals with
those metaphysical judgments (such as the principle of
causality) which are of immanent employment.[287]
As the new paragraphs in the Introduction to the second
edition are transferred without essential modification from the
Prolegomena, they are open to the same criticism. To
harmonise B 17 with the real teaching of the Critique, it must
be entirely recast. Instead of “natural science” (physica) we
must read “pure universal natural science [= immanent
metaphysics],” and for the examples given we must substitute
those principles of substance and causality which are dealt
with in the Analytic. The next paragraph deals with
metaphysics in its transcendent form, and accordingly states
the problem peculiar to the Dialectic.
Metaphysics.[288]—This paragraph deals explicitly only
with transcendent judgments, but as the terms used are
ambiguous, it is possible that those of immanent metaphysics
are also referred to. The paragraph is not taken from the
Prolegomena. The corresponding passage[289] in the
Prolegomena deals only with the judgments of immanent
metaphysics.
The real problem of pure reason is contained in the
question: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?
[290]—Cf. above, pp. 26 ff., 33 ff., 43 ff.

David Hume.[291]—Cf. above, pp. 61 ff.

A theoretical knowledge.[292]—i.e. Kant explicitly leaves
aside the further problem, whether such judgments may not
also be possible in the practical (moral) and other spheres.
How is pure natural science possible?[293]—The note
which Kant appends shows that he is here taking natural
science in the relative sense.[294] The same irrelevant instances
are again cited.
As these sciences really exist.[295]—Cf. below, p. 44 ff.
The poor progress which metaphysics has hitherto
made.[296]—Cf. Preface to the second edition; Prolegomena, §
4, and A 175 ff.
How is metaphysics as a science possible?[297]—We may
now consider how this and the three preceding questions are
related to one another and to the various divisions of the
Critique.[298] The four subordinate questions within the main
problem—How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?—
are here stated by Kant as:
1. How is pure mathematics possible?
2. How is pure natural science possible?
3. How is metaphysics as natural disposition possible?
4. How is metaphysics as science possible?
 There is little difficulty as regards 1 and 2. The first is dealt
with in the Aesthetic, and the second[299] in the Analytic,
though, owing to the complexity of the problems, the Aesthetic
and Analytic are wider than either query, and cannot be
completely separated. Applied mathematics is dealt with in the
Analytic as well as in the Aesthetic, and in both the
determination of the limits of scientific knowledge is equally
important with that of accounting for its positive acquisitions.
The third and fourth questions raise all manner of difficulties.
Notwithstanding the identical mode of formulation, they do
not run on all fours with the two preceding. The first two are
taken as referring to actually existing and valid sciences. It is
the ground of their objective validity that is sought. But what is
investigated in the third question falsely lays claim to the title
of science; we can enquire only as to the ground of its
subjective possibility. In the fourth question, the problem takes
still another form. Kant now seeks to determine whether a
new, not yet existing, science of metaphysics is possible, and
in what manner it can be validly constructed. The
manifoldness of the problems is thus concealed by the fixity of
the common formula.[300] Now with what divisions of the
Critique are the two last questions connected? It has been
suggested[301] that the third question is dealt with in the
Dialectic and the fourth in the Methodology, the four questions
thus corresponding to the four main divisions of the Critique.
But this view is untenable, especially in its view of the fourth
question. The division of the Critique is by dichotomy into
doctrine of elements and doctrine of methods, the former
including the Aesthetic and Logic, and the Logic being again
divided into Analytic and Dialectic. Its problems stand in an
equally complex subordination; they cannot be isolated from
one another, and set merely side by side. Secondly, it has been
maintained[302] that the third question is dealt with in the
introduction to the Dialectic (in its doctrine of Ideas), and the
fourth in the Dialectic proper. This view is fairly satisfactory
as regards the third question, but would involve the conclusion
that the fourth question refers only to transcendent
metaphysics, and that it therefore receives a negative answer.
But that is not Kant’s view of metaphysics as a science. The
Critique is intended to issue in a new and genuine body of
metaphysical teaching.
The key to the whole problem of the four questions is not to
be found in the Critique. This section is transcribed from §§ 4-
5 of the Prolegomena, and is consequently influenced by the
general arrangement of the latter work. This fourfold division
was indeed devised for the purposes of the argument of the
Prolegomena, which is developed on the analytic method, and
for that reason it cannot be reconciled with the very different
structure of the Critique. Yet even the Prolegomena suffers
from confusion, due[303] to Kant’s failure to distinguish
between universal and relative natural science on the one
hand, and between immanent and transcendent metaphysics on
the other. The four questions do not coincide with those of the
Critique. Instead of the third—how is metaphysics as natural
disposition possible?—we find: how is metaphysics in general
possible? In §§ 4, 5, Kant’s argument is clear and
straightforward. Pure mathematical science and mathematical
physics are actually existing sciences. The synthetic a priori
judgments which they contain must be recognised as valid.
Metaphysics makes similar claims. But, as is sufficiently
proved by the absence of agreement among philosophers, its
professions are without ground. It transgresses the limits of
possible experience, and contains only pretended knowledge.
This false transcendent metaphysics is refuted in the Dialectic.
Kant was, however, equally convinced that an immanent
metaphysics is possible, and that its grounds and justification
had been successfully given in the Analytic. His problem as
formulated in the Prolegomena is accordingly threefold: (1)
how are the existing rational sciences, mathematical and
physical, possible? (2) in the light of the insight acquired by
this investigation, what is the origin and explanation of the
existing pretended sciences of transcendent metaphysics? and
(3) in what manner can we establish a positive metaphysics
that will harmonise with reason’s true vocation? So far all is
clear and definite. But the unresolved difficulty, as to the
relation in which natural science and immanent metaphysics
stand to one another, brings confusion in its train. As already
noted,[304] in § 15 natural science is displaced by immanent
metaphysics (though not under that name); and as a result the
fourth question reduces to the second, and the above threefold
problem has to be completely restated. The Prolegomena has,
however, already been divided into four parts; and in the last
division Kant still continues to treat the fourth question as
distinct from that which has been dealt with in the second
division, though, as his answer shows, they are essentially the
same. The answer given is that metaphysics as a science is
possible only in and through the Critique, and that though the
whole Critique is required for this purpose, the content of the
new science is embodied in the Analytic.
In the second edition of the Critique the confusion between
natural science and immanent metaphysics still persists, and a
new source of ambiguity is added through the reformulation of
the third question. It is now limited to the problem of the
subjective origin of metaphysics as a natural disposition. The
fourth question has therefore to be widened, so as to include
transcendent as well as immanent, the old as well as the new,
metaphysics. But save for this one alteration the entire section
is inspired by considerations foreign to the Critique; this
section, like B 17, must be recast before it will harmonise with
the subsequent argument.
Every kind of knowledge is called pure, etc.[305]—These
sentences are omitted in the second edition. They have been
rendered unnecessary by the further and more adequate
definition of “pure” given in B 3 ff.
Reason is the faculty which supplies the principles of
knowledge a priori.[306]—This statement should, as Vaihinger
points out, be interpreted in the light of A 299 = B 355.
“Reason, like understanding, can be employed in a merely
formal, i.e. logical manner, wherein it abstracts from all
content of knowledge. But it is also capable of a real use,[307]
since it contains within itself the source of certain concepts
and principles, which it does not borrow either from the senses
or from the understanding.”
Reason is taken in the first of the above meanings. Reason
in its real use, when extended so as to include pure sensibility
and understanding,[308] is the pure reason referred to in the
next sentence of the Critique. A priori is here used to signify
the relatively a priori; in the next sentence it denotes the
absolutely a priori.
An Organon of pure reason.[309]—What follows, from this
point to the middle of the next section, is a good example of
Kant’s patchwork method of piecing together old manuscript
in the composition of the Critique. There seems to be no way
of explaining its bewildering contradictions save by accepting
Vaihinger’s[310] conclusion that it consists of three separate
accounts, written at different times, and representing different
phases in the development of Kant’s views.
I. The first account, beginning with the above words and
ending with “already a considerable gain” (schon sehr viel
gewonnen ist), is evidently the oldest. It reveals the influence
of the Dissertation. It distinguishes:
1. Critique of pure reason ( = Propaedeutic).
2. Organon of pure reason.
3. System of pure reason.
1. Critique is a critical examination (Beurtheilung) of pure
reason, its sources and limits. The implication (obscured by
the direct relating of Critique to System) is that it prepares the
way for the Organon.
2. Organon comprehends all the principles by which pure
knowledge can be acquired and actually established.
3. System is the complete application of such an Organon.
This classification is, as Paulsen[311] was the first to remark,
an adaptation of the Dissertation standpoint.
II. The second account begins: “I entitle all knowledge
transcendental,” but is broken by the third account—from
“Such a Critique” to the end of the paragraph—which has
been inserted into the middle of it. It is then continued in the
next section. It distinguishes:
1. Critique of pure reason.
2. Transcendental philosophy.
 1. Critique contains the principles of all a priori synthetical
knowledge, tracing an architectonic plan which guarantees the
completeness and certainty of all the parts.
2. Transcendental philosophy contains their complete
analytic development, and is therefore the system of such
knowledge.
III. The third account (“Such a Critique” to end of
paragraph) in its main divisions follows the first account: 1.
Critique, 2. Organon or Canon, 3. System. But they are now
defined in a different manner. Critique is a propaedeutic for
the Organon. But Organon, which signifies the totality of the
principles through which pure knowledge is attained and
extended,[312] may not be possible. In that case the Critique is
a preparation only for a Canon, i.e. the totality of the
principles of the proper employment of reason.[313] The
Organon or Canon, in turn, will render possible a System of
the philosophy of pure reason, the former yielding a system in
extension of a priori knowledge, the latter a system which
defines the limits of a priori knowledge.
It is impossible to reduce these divergencies to a single
consistent view. They illustrate the varying sense in which
Kant uses the term “metaphysics.” In the first account, even
though that account is based on a distinction drawn in the
Dissertation, the system of metaphysics is immanent; in the
second it is also transcendent; in the third it is neutral.[314]
Propaedeutic.[315]—That the Critique is only propaedeutic
to a System of pure reason was later denied by Kant in the
following emphatic terms:
“I must here observe that I cannot understand the attempt to
ascribe to me the view that I have sought to supply only a
Propaedeutic to transcendental philosophy, not the System of
this philosophy. Such a view could never have entered my
thoughts, for I have myself praised the systematic
completeness (das vollendete Ganze) of the pure philosophy in
the Critique of Pure Reason as the best mark of its truth.”[316]
Kant thus finally, after much vacillation in his use of the
terms, came to the conclusion that Critique, Transcendental
Philosophy, and System all coincide. Meantime he has
forgotten his own previous and conflicting utterances on this
point.
As regards speculation negative only.[317]—“Speculation”
here signifies the theoretical, as opposed to the practical.[318]
The qualifying phrase is in line with other passages of the
second edition, in which it is emphasised that the conclusions
of the Critique are positive in their practical (moral) bearing.
[319]

Transcendental—transcendent.[320]—Kant was the first to

distinguish between these two terms. In the scholastic period,
in which they first appear, they were exactly synonymous, the
term transcendent being the more usual. The verb, to
transcend, appears in Augustine in its widest metaphysical
sense. “Transcende et te ipsum.” “Cuncta corpora
transcenderunt [Platonici] quaerentes Deum; omnem animam
mutabilesque omnes spiritus transcenderunt quaerentes
summum Deum.”[321] The first employment of the term in a
more specific or technical sense occurs in a treatise, De natura
generis, falsely ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. In this treatise
ens, res, aliquid, unum, bonum, verum are entitled
transcendentia. To understand the meaning in which the word
is here used, we have, it would seem,[322] to take account of
the influence exercised upon Aquinas by a mystical work of
Arabian origin, entitled De causis. It contained reference to the
Neo-Platonic distinction between the Aristotelian categories,
which the Neo-Platonists regarded as being derivative, and the
more universal concepts, ens, unum, verum, bonum. To these
latter concepts Aquinas gave a theological application. Ens
pertains to essence, unum to the person of the Father, verum to
the person of the Son, bonum to the person of the Holy Ghost.
In the De natura generis the number of these supreme
concepts is increased to six by the addition of res and aliquid,
and as just stated the title transcendentia is also now applied
for the first time. In this meaning the term transcendent and its
synonym transcendental are of frequent occurrence in
Scholastic writings. The transcendentia or transcendentalia
are those concepts which so transcend the categories as to be
themselves predicable of the categories. They are the “termini
vel proprietates rebus omnibus cuiusque generis
convenientes.” Thus Duns Scotus speaks of ens as the highest
of the “transcendental” concepts. The term also occurs in a
more or less similar sense in the writings of Campanella,
Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon, and Spinoza. The last named
gives a psychological explanation of the “termini
Transcendentales … ut Ens, Res, Aliquid” as standing for
ideas that are in the highest degree confused owing to the
multiplicity of the images which have neutralised one another
in the process of their generation.[323] Berkeley also speaks of
the “transcendental maxims” which lie outside the field of
mathematical enquiry, but which influence all the particular
sciences.[324] Evidently the term has become generalised
beyond its stricter scholastic meaning. Lambert employs
transcendent in an even looser sense to signify concepts which
represent what is common to both the corporeal and the
intellectual world.[325] We may, indeed, assert that in Kant’s
time the terms transcendent and transcendental, while still
remaining synonymous, and though used on the lines of their
original Scholastic connotation, had lost all definiteness of
meaning and all usefulness of application. Kant took
advantage of this situation to distinguish sharply between
them, and to impose upon each a meaning suitable to his new
Critical teaching.
“Transcendental” is primarily employed by Kant as a name
for a certain kind of knowledge. Transcendental knowledge is
knowledge not of objects, but of the nature and conditions of
our a priori cognition of them. In other words, a priori
knowledge must not be asserted, simply because it is a priori,
to be transcendental; this title applies only to such knowledge
as constitutes a theory or science of the a priori.[326]
Transcendental knowledge and transcendental philosophy
must therefore be taken as coinciding; and as thus coincident,
they signify the science of the possibility, nature, and limits of
a priori knowledge. The term similarly applies to the
subdivisions of the Critique. The Aesthetic is transcendental in
that it establishes the a priori character of the forms of
sensibility; the Analytic in that it determines the a priori
principles of understanding, and the part which they play in
the constitution of knowledge; the Dialectic in that it defines
and limits the a priori Ideas of Reason, to the perverting
power of which all false metaphysics is due. That this is the
primary and fundamental meaning common to the various uses
of the term is constantly overlooked by Max Müller. Thus in A
15 = B 30 he translates transcendentale Sinnenlehre “doctrine
of transcendental sense” instead of as “transcendental doctrine
of sense.” In transforming transcendentale Elementarlehre
into “elements of transcendentalism” he avoids the above
error, but only by inventing a word which has no place in
Kant’s own terminology.
But later in the Critique Kant employs the term
transcendental in a second sense, namely, to denote the a
priori factors in knowledge. All representations which are a
priori and yet are applicable to objects are transcendental. The
term is then defined through its distinction from the empirical
on the one hand, and from the transcendent on the other. An
intuition or conception is transcendental when it originates in
pure reason, and yet at the same time goes to constitute an a
priori knowledge of objects. The contrast between the
transcendental and the transcendent, as similarly determined
upon by Kant, is equally fundamental, but is of quite different
character. That is transcendent which lies entirely beyond
experience; whereas the transcendental signifies those a priori
elements which underlie experience as its necessary
conditions. The transcendent is always unknowable. The
transcendental is that which by conditioning experience
renders all knowledge, whether a priori or empirical, possible.
The direct opposite of the transcendent is the immanent, which
as such includes both the transcendental and the empirical.
Thus while Kant employs the term transcendental in a very
special sense which he has himself arbitrarily determined, he
returns to the original etymological meaning of the term
transcendent. It gains a specifically Critical meaning only
through being used to expound the doctrine that all knowledge
is limited to sense-experience. The attempt to find some
similar etymological justification for Kant’s use of the term
transcendental has led Schopenhauer and Kuno Fischer to
assert that Kant entitles his philosophy transcendental because
it transcends both the dogmatism and the scepticism of all
previous systems![327] Another attempt has been made by
Stirling[328] and Watson,[329] who assert, at least by
implication, that the transcendental is a species of the
transcendent, in that while the latter transcends the scope of
experience, the former transcends its sense-content. Kant
himself, however, nowhere attempts to justify his use of the
term by any such argument.
A third meaning of the term transcendental arises through
its extension from the a priori intuitions and concepts to the
processes and faculties to which they are supposed to be due.
Thus Kant speaks of the transcendental syntheses of
apprehension, reproduction, and recognition, and of the
transcendental faculties of imagination and understanding. In
this sense the transcendental becomes a title for the conditions
which render experience possible. And inasmuch as processes
and faculties can hardly be entitled a priori, Kant has in this
third application of the term departed still further from his first
definition of it.[330]
The distinction between the transcendental and the
transcendent may be illustrated by reference to the Ideas of
reason. Regarded as regulative only, i.e. merely as ideals
which inspire the understanding in the pursuit of knowledge,
they are transcendental. Interpreted as constitutive, i.e. as
representing absolute realities, they are transcendent. Yet,
despite the fundamental character of this distinction, so
careless is Kant in the use of his technical terms that he also
employs transcendental as exactly equivalent in meaning to
transcendent. This is of constant occurrence, but only two
instances need here be cited. In the important phrase
“transcendental ideality of space and time” the term
transcendental is used in place of the term transcendent. For
what Kant is asserting is that judged from a transcendent point
of view, i.e. from the point of view of the thing in itself, space
is only subjectively real.[331] The phrase is indeed easily
capable of the orthodox interpretation, but, as the context
clearly shows, that is not the way in which it is actually being
used by Kant. Another equally surprising example is to be
found in the title “transcendental dialectic.” Though it is
defined in A 63-4 = B 88 in correct fashion, in A 297 = B 354
and A 308-9 = B 365-6 it is interpreted as treating of the
illusion involved in transcendent judgments, and so virtually
as meaning transcendent dialectic.[332]
Not a Critique of books and systems.[333]—Kant here
inserts a statement from the omitted Preface to the first
edition.[334] He now adds that the Critique will supply a
criterion for the valuation of all other systems.
A 13 = B 27.—Kant’s reason for omitting the title of
Section II in the second edition was no doubt its inconsistency
with the assertion of its opening sentence, viz. that the
Critique is not transcendental philosophy, but only a
preparation for it. Instead of it, Kant has introduced the more
appropriate heading placed over the preceding paragraph.
The highest principles of morals do not belong to
transcendental philosophy.[335]—Cf. A 801 = B 829. The
alteration made in this passage in the second edition[336]
indicates a transition towards the opposite view which Kant
developed in the Critique of Practical Reason.[337]
The division of this science.[338]—Kant in this paragraph
alternates in the most bewildering fashion between the
Critique and Transcendental Philosophy. In this first sentence
the Critique seems to be referred to. Later it is Transcendental
Philosophy that is spoken of.
Doctrine of Elements and Doctrine of Methods.[339]—Cf.
A 707 ff. = B 735 ff., and below, pp. 438, 563.
Two stems, sensibility and understanding, which may
perhaps spring from a common root.[340]—Kant sometimes
seems to suggest[341] that imagination is this common root. It
belongs both to sensibility and to understanding, and is passive
as well as spontaneous. But when so viewed, imagination is
virtually regarded as an unknown supersensuous power,
“concealed in the depths of the soul.”[342] The supersensuous
is the point of union of our disparate human faculties, as well
as of nature and freedom, mechanism and teleology.
The transcendental doctrine of sense would necessarily
constitute the first part of the Science of Elements.[343]
—“Necessarily constitute the first part” translates zum ersten
Theile gehören müssen. This Vaihinger explains as an archaic
mode of expression, equivalent to ausmachen. The point is
important because, if translated quite literally, it might seem to
conflict with the division actually followed, and to support the
alternative division given in the Critique of Practical Reason.
The first Critique is divided thus:
I. Doctrine of Elements.
1. Aesthetic.
2. Logic.
(a) Analytic.
(b) Dialectic.
II. Doctrine of Methods.
In the Critique of Practical Reason[344] a much more
satisfactory division is suggested:
I. Doctrine of Elements.
1. Analytic.
(a) Aesthetic (Sense).
(b) Logic (Understanding).
2. Dialectic.
II. Doctrine of Methods.
The first division rests on somewhat irrelevant distinctions
derived from the traditional logic; the other is more directly
inspired by the distinctions which naturally belong to Kant’s
own philosophical system.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF
ELEMENTS
 PART I

THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC

THE Aesthetic opens with a series of definitions. Intuition
(Anschauung) is knowledge (Erkenntnis) which is in
immediate relation to objects (sich auf Gegenstände
unmittelbar bezieht). Each term in this definition calls for
comment. Anschauung etymologically applies only to visual
sensation. Kant extends it to cover sensations of all the senses.
The current term was Empfindung. Kant’s reason for
introducing the term intuition in place of sensation was
evidently the fact that the latter could not be made to cover
space and time. We can speak of pure intuitions, but not of
pure sensations. Knowledge is used in a very wide sense, not
strictly consistent with A 50-1 = B 74-5.[345] The phrase sich
bezieht is quite indefinite and ambiguous. Its meaning will
depend upon the interpretation of its context. Object is used in
its widest and most indefinite meaning. It may be taken as
signifying content (Inhalt, a term which does not occur in this
passage, but which Kant elsewhere employs[346]). That, at
least, is the meaning which best fits the context. For when
Kant adds that intuition relates itself to objects immediately, it
becomes clear that he has in mind its distinction from
conception (Begriff) which as expressing the universal is
related to objects only indirectly, representing some one or
more attributes of the given objects. Ultimately the whole
content of conception must be given.[347] The phrase “relates
itself to objects” may, therefore, be paraphrased “has some
content, such as red or cold, as its immediate object.” Through
the content of intuition the whole material of thought is
supplied. Intuition in itself is blind, but not empty. “Thoughts
without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are
blind.”[348]
But the phrase “is in relation to objects” has also for Kant a
second meaning, implied in the above, but supplementary to it.
As he states in the very next sentence, intuition can have an
object, meaning thereby a content, only in so far as that
content is given. The material of thought must be supplied; it
cannot be invented.[349] The only mode, however, in which it
can be supplied, at least to the human mind, is through the
affecting of the mind by “the object.” This is an excellent
instance of Kant’s careless mode of expressing himself. In the
first part of the sentence object means object of intuition. In
the latter part it signifies the cause of intuition. And on Kant’s
view the two cannot coincide. The object which affects the
mind is independently real; the immediate object of the
intuition is a sense-content, which Kant, following the
universally accepted view of his time, regards as purely
subjective. The term object is thus used in two quite distinct
meanings within one and the same sentence.
Kant’s definition of intuition, when stated quite explicitly,
and cleared of all ambiguity, is therefore as follows. Intuition
is the immediate apprehension of a content which as given is
due to the action of an independently real object upon the
mind. This definition is obviously not meant to be a
description of intuition as it presents itself to introspection, but
to be a reflective statement of its indispensable conditions.
Also it has in view only empirical intuitions. It does not cover
the pure intuitions space and time.[350] Though space and time
are given, and though each possesses an intrinsic content,
these contents are not due to the action of objects upon the
sensibility.
“An intuition is such a representation as immediately
depends upon the presence of the object. Hence it seems
impossible originally to intuit a priori because intuition would
in that event take place without either a former or a present
object to refer to, and by consequence could not be
intuition.”[351]
This interpretation is borne out by Kant’s answer to Beck
when the latter objected that only through subsumption under
the categories can a representation become objective. Kant
replies in a marginal note, the meaning of which, though
difficult to decipher, admits of a fairly definite interpretation.
“The determining of a concept through intuition so as to
yield knowledge of the object falls within the province of the
faculty of judgment, but not the relation of the intuition to an
object in general [i.e. the view of it as having a content which
is given and which is therefore due to some object], for that is
merely the logical use of the representation, whereby it is
thought as falling within the province of knowledge. On the
other hand, if this single representation is related only to the
subject, the use is aesthetic (feeling), and the representation
cannot be an act of knowledge.”[352]
Mind (Gemüt) is a neutral term without metaphysical
implications.[353] It is practically equivalent to the term which
is substituted for it in the next paragraph, power of
representation (Vorstellungsfähigkeit). Representation
(Vorstellung) Kant employs in the widest possible meaning. It
covers any and every cognitive state. The definition here given
of sensibility—“the capacity (receptivity) to obtain
representations through the mode in which we are affected by
objects”—is taken directly over from the Dissertation.[354] In
this definition, as in that of intuition, Kant, without argument
or question, postulates the existence of independently existing
objects. The existence of given sensations presupposes the
existence of things in themselves. Sensibility is spoken of as
the source both of objects and of intuitions. This is legitimate
since object and intuition mutually imply one another; the
latter is the apprehension of the former. By “objects” is
obviously meant what in the third paragraph is called the
matter of appearances, i.e. sensations in their objective aspect,
as qualities or contents. The term “object” is similarly
employed in the last line of this first paragraph.
Understanding (Verstand) is defined only in its logical or
discursive employment. Kant wisely defers all reference to its
more fundamental synthetic activities. In us (bei uns) is an
indirect reference to the possibility of intellectual (non-
sensuous) intuition which is further developed in other parts of
the Aesthetic.[355] Sensuous intuition is due to affection by an
object. In intellectual intuition the mind must produce the
object in the act of apprehending it.[356]
Kant’s definition of intuition applies, as already noted, only
to empirical intuition. He proceeds[357] to define the relation in
which sensation (Empfindung) stands to empirical intuition.
What he here says amounts to the assertion that through
sensation intuition acquires its object, i.e. that sensation is the
content of intuition. And that being so, it is also through
sensation that empirical intuition acquires its relation to the
object (= thing in itself) which causes it. (That would seem to
be the meaning of the ambiguous second sentence; but it still
remains uncertain whether the opposition intended is to pure
or to intellectual intuition.) If this interpretation of the
paragraph be correct, sensation is counted as belonging
exclusively to the content side of subjective apprehension. But
Kant views sensation in an even more definite manner than he
here indicates. Though sensation is given, it likewise involves
a reaction of the mind.
“Whatever is sensuous in knowledge depends upon the
subject’s peculiar nature, in so far as it is capable of this or that
modification upon the presence of the object.”[358]
Thus for Kant sensation is a modification or state of the
subject, produced by affection through an object. The affection
produces a modification or state of the subject, and this
subjective modification is the sensation.
“Sensation is a perception [Perception] which relates itself
solely to the subject as the modification of its state.”[359]
This view of sensation, as subjective, was universally held
in Kant’s day. He accepts it without argument or question.
That it could possibly be challenged never seems to have
occurred to him. He is equally convinced that it establishes the
existence of an actually present object.
“Sensation argues the presence of something, but depends
as to its quality upon the nature of the subject.”[360] “Sensation
presupposes the actual presence of the object.”[361]
Kant’s view of sensation, as developed in the Aesthetic,[362]
thus involves three points: (1) It must be counted as belonging
to the content side of mental apprehension. (2) Though a
quality or content, it is purely subjective, depending upon the
nature of our sensibility. (3) It is due to the action of some
object upon the sensibility.
 Kant distinguishes between sensation (Empfindung) and
feeling (Gefühl).[363] It had been usual to employ them as
synonyms.
“We understand by the word sensation an objective
representation of the senses; and in order to preclude the
danger of being misunderstood, we shall denote that which
must always remain merely subjective and can constitute
absolutely no representation of an object by the ordinary (sonst
üblichen) term feeling.”[364]
Appearance (Erscheinung) is here defined as the
undetermined object of an intuition. By undetermined object is
meant, as we have seen, the object in so far as it consists of the
given sense contents. When these contents are interpreted
through the categories they become phenomena.
“Appearances so far as they are thought as objects
according to the unity of the categories are called
phenomena.”[365]
But this distinction between appearance and phenomenon is
not held to by Kant. He more usually speaks of the categorised
objects as appearances. The term phenomenon is of
comparatively rare occurrence in the Critique. This has been
concealed from English readers, as both Meiklejohn and Max
Müller almost invariably translate Erscheinung phenomenon.
The statement that appearance is the object of an empirical
intuition raises a very fundamental and difficult question,
namely, as to the relation in which representation stands to the
represented.[366] Frequently Kant’s argument implies this
distinction, yet constantly he speaks and argues as if it were
non-existent. We have to recognise two tendencies in Kant,
subjectivist and phenomenalist.[367] When the former tendency
is in the ascendent, he regards all appearances, all phenomena,
all empirical objects, as representations, modifications of the
sensibility, merely subjective. When, on the other hand, his
thinking is dominated by the latter tendency, appearances gain
an existence independent of the individual mind. They are
known through subjective representations, but must not be
directly equated with them. They have a genuine objectivity.
To this distinction, and its consequences, we shall have
frequent occasion to return.
The phenomenalist standpoint is dominant in these first two
paragraphs of the Aesthetic, and it finds still more pronounced
expression in the opening of the third paragraph. “That in the
appearances which corresponds (correspondirt) to sensation, I
call its matter.” This sentence, through the use of the term
corresponds, clearly implies a distinction between sensation
and the real object apprehended in and through it. That, in
turn, involves a threefold distinction, between sensation as
subjective content (= appearance in the strict sense), the real
enduring object in space (= phenomenon, the categorised
object, appearance in its wider and more usual sense), and the
thing in itself.[368] Yet in the immediately following sentence
Kant says that “the matter of all appearance is given a
posteriori.” By “matter of appearance” Kant must there mean
sensations, for they alone are given a posteriori.[369] On this
view the phenomena or empirical objects reduce to, and
consist of, sensations. The intermediate term of the above
threefold distinction is eliminated. The matter of appearance
does not correspond to, but itself is, sensation. Thus in these
successive sentences the two conflicting tendencies of Kant’s
teaching find verbal expression. They intervene even in the
preliminary definition of his terms. This fundamental conflict
cannot, however, be profitably discussed at this stage.
The manifold of appearance (das Mannichfaltige der
Erscheinung). The meaning to be assigned to this phrase must
depend upon the settlement of the above question.[370] But in
this passage it allows only of a subjectivist interpretation,
whereby sensations are appearance. The given sensations as
such constitute a manifold; as objects in space they are already
ordered. Kant’s more usual phrase is “the manifold of
intuition.” His adoption of the term “manifold” (the varia of
the Dissertation) expresses his conviction that synthesis is
indispensable for all knowledge, and also his correlative view
that nothing absolutely simple can be apprehended in sense-
experience. By the manifold Kant does not mean, however, as
some of his commentators would seem to imply, the chaotic or
disordered. The emphasis is on manifoldness or plurality, as
calling for reduction to unity and system. The unity has to be
found in it, not introduced into it forcibly from the outside.
The manifold has to be interpreted, even though the principles
of interpretation may originate independently of it. Though,
for instance, the manifold as given is not in space and time, the
specific space and time relations assigned by us are
determined for us by the inherent nature of the manifold itself.
[371]

The form of appearance is defined—if the definition given

in the first edition be translated literally—as “that which
causes (dasjenige, welches macht dass) the manifold of
appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations.” This
phrase is employed by Kant in other connections, and, as
Vaihinger points out,[372] need not necessarily indicate activity.
“Sensation is that in our knowledge which causes it to be
called a posteriori knowledge.”[373] In the second edition Kant
altered the text from “geordnet angeschaut wird” to “geordnet
werden kann.” The reason probably was that the first edition’s
wording might seem to imply that the form is (as the
Dissertation taught) capable in and by itself of ordering the
manifold. Throughout the second edition Kant makes more
prominent the part which understanding plays in the
apprehension of space.[374]
This distinction between matter and form is central in
Kant’s system.[375] As he himself says:
“These are two conceptions which underlie all other
reflection, so inseparably are they bound up with all
employment of the understanding. The one [matter] signifies
the determinable in general, the other [form] its
determination.”[376]
On the side of matter falls the manifold, given, empirical,
contingent material of sense; on the side of form fall the
unifying, a priori, synthetic, relational instruments of
sensibility and thought. For Kant these latter are no mere
abstractions, capable of being distinguished by the mind; they
differ from the matter of experience in nature, in function, and
in origin. Upon this dualistic mode of conceiving the two
factors depends the strength as well as the weakness of his
position. To its perverting influence most of the unsatisfactory
features of his doctrine of space and time can be directly
traced. But to it is also due his appreciation of the new Critical
problems, with their revolutionary consequences, as developed
in the Analytic.
Kant proceeds to argue: (a) that the distinction is between
two elements of fundamentally different nature and origin. The
matter is given a posteriori in sensation; the form, as distinct
from all sensation, must lie ready a priori in the mind. (b)
Kant also argues that form, because of its separate origin, is
capable of being contemplated apart from all sensation. The
above statements rest upon the unexpressed assumption that
sensations have no spatial attributes of any kind.[377] In
themselves they have only intensive, not extensive, magnitude.
[378] Kant assumes this without question, and without the least
attempt at proof.[379] The assumption appears in Kant’s
writings as early as 1768 as a self-evident principle;[380] and
throughout the Critique is treated as a premiss for argument,
never as a statement calling for proof. The only kind of
supporting argument which is even indirectly suggested by
Kant is that space cannot by itself act upon the senses.[381]
This would seem to be his meaning when he declares[382] that
it is no object, but only an ens imaginarium. “Space is no
object of the senses.”[383] Such argument, however,
presupposes that space can be conceived apart from objects. It
is no proof that an extended object may not yield extended
sensations. Kant completely ignores the possibility that formal
relations may be given in and with the sensations. If our
sensibility, in consequence of the action of objects upon it, is
able to generate qualitative sensations, why, as Vaihinger very
pertinently enquires,[384] should it be denied the power of also
producing, in consequence of these same causes, impressions
of quantitative formal nature? Sensations, on Kant’s view, are
the product of mind much more than of objects. Why, then,
may not space itself be sensational?[385] From the point of
view of empirical science there is no such radical difference
between cause and effect in the latter case as exists in the
former. As Herbert Spencer has remarked,[386] Kant makes the
enormous assumption
 “…that no differences among our sensations are determined
by any differences in the non-ego (for to say that they are so
determined is to say that the form under which the non-ego
exists produces an effect upon the ego); and as it similarly
follows that the order of coexistence and sequence among
these sensations is not determined by any order in the non-ego;
we are compelled to conclude that all these differences and
changes in the ego are self-determined.”
Kant’s argument in the Dissertation is exactly of this nature.
 “Objects do not strike the senses by their form. In order,
therefore, that the various impressions from the object acting
on the sense may coalesce into some whole of representation,
there is required an inner principle of the mind through which
in accordance with stable and innate laws that manifold may
take on some form.”[387]
In the paragraph before us Kant may, at first sight, seem to
offer an argument. He is really only restating his premiss.
“That wherein alone sensations can be arranged (sich
ordnen[388]) and placed in a certain form cannot itself again be
sensation.” Now, of course, if the term sensation is to be
limited to the sense qualities, i.e. to content or matter,
conceived as existing apart from all formal relations, the
formal elements cannot possibly be sensational. The
legitimacy of that limitation is, however, the question at issue.
It cannot be thus decided by an arbitrary verbal distinction.
“Were the contention that the relations of sensations are not
themselves sensed correct, the inference to the pure apriority
of the form of our perception would be inevitable. For
sensation is the sole form of interaction between
consciousness and reality…. But that contention is false. The
relations of sensations, their determined coexistence and
sequence, impress consciousness, just as do the sensations. We
feel this impression in the compulsion which the
determinateness of the empirical manifolds lays upon the
perceiving consciousness. The mere affection of consciousness
by these relations does not, indeed, by itself suffice for their
apprehension; but neither does it suffice for the apprehension
of the sensation itself. Thus there is in these respects no
difference between the matter and the form of
appearance.”[389]
In this way, then, by means of his definition of sensation,
Kant surreptitiously introduces his fundamental assumption.
That assumption reappears as the conclusion that since the
form of appearance cannot be sensation, it does not arise
through the action of the object, and consequently must be a
priori. Though the paragraph seems to offer an argument in
support of the apriority of space and time, it is found on
examination merely to unfold a position adopted without the
slightest attempt at proof.[390]
The form of appearance must lie ready in the mind.[391]
—Comment upon this, in order to be adequate, had best take
the form of a systematic discussion of Kant’s views, here and
elsewhere, of space as an a priori form of intuition. As already
stated, the definition which Kant gives of intuition—as
knowledge which stands in immediate relation to objects—
applies only to empirical intuition. Though by the term object
Kant, in so far as he is definite, means content, that content is
such as can arise only through the action of some independent
object upon the sensibility. In other words, the content
apprehended must be sensuous. Now such a view of intuition
obviously does not apply to pure intuition. As the concluding
line of the paragraph before us states, pure intuition “can be
contemplated in separation from all sensation;” and as the next
paragraph adds, it exists in the mind “without any actual object
of the senses.” Yet Kant does not mean to imply that it is
without content of any kind. “This pure form of sensibility
may also itself be called pure intuition.”[392] “It can be known
before all actual perception, and for that reason is called pure
intuition.”[393] Though, therefore, pure intuition has an
intrinsic content, and is the immediate apprehension of that
content, it stands in no relation to any actual independent
object. The content as well as the form is a priori. That,
however, raises wider questions, and these we must now
discuss.
Here, as in most of his fundamental positions, Kant
entertains divergent and mutually contradictory doctrines.
Only in his later utterances does he in any degree commit
himself to one consistent view. The position to which he
finally inclines must not, however, be allowed to dominate the
interpretation of his earlier statements. The Aesthetic calls for
its own separate exegesis, quite as if it formed by itself an
independent work. Its problems are discussed from a
standpoint more or less peculiar to itself. The commentator has
the twofold task of stating its argumentation both in its conflict
with, and in its relation to, the other parts of the Critique.
 One essential difference between Kant’s earlier and later
treatments of space is that in his earlier utterances it is viewed
almost exclusively as a psychological a priori. The logical
aspect of the problem first receives anything like adequate
recognition in the Analytic. If we keep this important fact in
mind, two distinct and contradictory views of the
psychological nature of space intuition can be traced
throughout the Aesthetic. On one view, it antedates experience
as an actual, completed, conscious intuition. On the other
view, it precedes experience only as a potential disposition.
We rule ourselves out from understanding Kant’s most explicit
utterances if we refuse to recognise the existence of both
views. Kant’s commentators have too frequently shut their
eyes to the first view, and have then blamed Kant for using
misleading expressions. It is always safer to take Kant quite
literally. He nearly always means exactly what he says at the
time when he says it. Frequently he holds views which run
completely counter to present-day psychology, and on several
occasions he flatly contradicts what he has with equal
emphasis maintained in other contexts. The aspects of Kant’s
problems are so complex and various, and he is so preoccupied
in doing complete justice to each in turn, that the question of
the mutual consistency of his results is much less considered
than is ideally desirable.
The two views can be more explicitly formulated. The first
view alone is straightforward and unambiguous. Space lies
ready (liegt bereit) in the mind, i.e. it does not arise. Prior even
to sense-experience it exists as a conscious intuition. For this
reason it can be contemplated apart from all sensation. It still
remains when all sense content is thought away, and yet is not
a mere form. In independence of the sensuous manifold it
possesses a pure manifold of its own. The ground thesis of the
second view—that space, prior to sense-experience, exists
only as a permanent endowment of the mind—is likewise
unambiguous. But in its development Kant throws consistency
to the winds. The possible ways in which, on the second view,
consciousness of space may be gained, can be tabulated as
follows:
(a) By reflection upon the activity of the mind in the
construction of experience, yielding the intuition of a pure
manifold; or (b) by reflection upon the space-endowed
products of experience.[394] The latter mode of reflection may
reveal:
(α) A pure manifold distinct from the manifold of sense; or
(β) Space as a form of the sensuous manifold.
There are thus three different ways (a, α, β) in which the
second view can be developed: (a) represents the view of the
Dissertation (1770), of the reply to Eberhard (1790), and of
those parts of the first edition’s deduction of the categories
which are of very early origin; (α) represents the final
standpoint of the Analytic; (β), the prevailing view of the
present day, is nowhere accepted by Kant.[395]
Kant’s utterances in the Aesthetic are all of them coloured
by the first main view. We can best approach them by way of
the contrasted teaching of the Dissertation of 1770. The
teaching there formulated practically coincides, as above
stated, with (a) of the second main view. Space, he maintains,
is neither innate nor acquired from sense-experience.
“Certainly both conceptions [of time and of space] are
undoubtedly acquired, not indeed by abstraction from our
sensations of objects (for sensation gives the matter, not the
form of human cognition), but from the mind’s own action in
co-ordinating its sensations in accordance with unchanging
laws. Each represents, as it were, an immutable type, and so
can be known intuitively. Sensations excite this act of mind
but do not contribute to the intuition. There is here nothing
innate except this law of the mind according to which it
conjoins in a certain manner the sensations derived from the
presence of some object.”[396]
How this view is to be reconciled with the contention, no
less explicitly maintained,[397] that space is not only a form of
intuition but itself a pure intuition, Kant does not make clear.
Reflection upon an activity of the mind may yield the
representation of space as a form; it is difficult to comprehend
how it should also yield an a priori content.
Kant nowhere in the Critique directly discusses the question
whether the representation of space is innate or acquired. Such
suggestions as occur refer (with the solitary exceptions of A
196 = B 241 and B 166 ff.)[398] only to the categories,[399] or
as in the Prolegomena[400] to the Ideas of reason. But in 1790
Kant in his reply to Eberhard[401] again formulates the view of
the Dissertation. The Critique allows, he there says, of no
innate representations. All, without exception, are acquired.
But of certain representations there is an original acquisition
(ursprüngliche Erwerbung). Their ground (Grund) is inborn.
In the case of space this ground is the mind’s peculiar capacity
for acquiring sensations in accordance with its subjective
constitution.[402]
“This first formal ground is alone inborn, not the space
representation itself. For it always requires impressions to
determine the faculty of knowledge to the representation of an
object (which in every case is its own action). Thus arises the
formal intuition, which we name space, as an originally
acquired representation (the form of outer objects in general),
the ground of which (as mere receptivity) is likewise inborn,
and the acquisition of which long antedates the determinate
conception of things which are in accordance with this
form.”[403]
That last remark is confusing. Kant cannot mean that the
representation of space is acquired prior to sense-experience,
but only that since the mind gains it by reflection upon its own
activity, it is among the first things to be apprehended—an
extremely questionable assertion, could the premisses be
granted. If “the determinate conception of things” comes late,
still later must come the determinate conception of anything so
abstract as pure space. The above passage thus repeats without
essential modification the teaching of the Dissertation, and is
open to the same objections. This teaching coincides with that
of Leibniz in his Nouveaux Essais; and in formulating it in the
Dissertation Kant was very probably influenced by Leibniz.
Though it is an improvement upon the more extreme forms of
the Cartesian doctrine of innate ideas, it does not go
sufficiently far.
Now while Kant thus in 1770 and in 1790 so emphatically
teaches that the representation of space is not innate, he none
the less, in the intermediate period represented by the
Aesthetic, would seem to maintain the reactionary view. Space
is no mere potential disposition. As a conscious representation
it lies ready in the mind. What, then, were the causes which
constrained Kant to go back upon his own better views and to
adopt so retrograde a position? The answer must be
conjectural, but may perhaps be found in the other main point
in which the teaching of the Aesthetic is distinguished from
that of the Dissertation. Throughout the Critique Kant insists
that space is a form of receptivity. It is given to the mind. It has
nothing to do with spontaneity or understanding, and therefore
cannot be acquired by reflection upon any activity of the mind.
But neither can it, as a priori, be acquired from without.
Consequently it cannot be acquired at all. But if given, and yet
not acquired, it must as a representation lie ready in the mind
from the very birth of consciousness. Constrained by such
reasoning, Kant views it as given in all its completeness just as
truly as is a sensation of colour or sound. This conclusion may
not be satisfactory. Kant’s candid recognition of it is, however,
greatly preferable to the blurring of the issue by most of his
commentators.
Kant came, no doubt, to the more consistent position of the
Aesthetic chiefly through further reflection upon the arguments
of the Dissertation,[404] and especially by recognition of the
fact that though reflection upon an activity of the mind may be
regarded as yielding a form of intuition, it can hardly be
capable of yielding a pure manifold which can be substituted
for, and take the place of, the manifold of sense. There are for
Kant only two ways of escape from this unhappy quandary:
(a) Either he must return to the Dissertation position, and
admit that the mind is active in the construction of space. This
he does in the 1790 reply to Eberhard, but only by
misrepresenting his own teaching in the Critique. In order
consistently to maintain that space is acquired by reflection
upon an activity of the mind, he would have to recast the entire
Aesthetic, as well as much of the Analytic, and to do so in
ways which cannot genuinely harmonise with the main
tendencies of his teaching.[405] (b) No such obstacle lay in the
way of an alternative modification of his position. Kant might
very easily have given up the contention that space is a pure
intuition. If he had been willing to recognise that the sole
possible manifold of intuition is sensuous, he could then have
maintained that though space is innate as a potential form of
receptivity, it is acquired only through reflection upon the
space-endowed products of sensibility. So obvious are the
advantages of this position, so completely does it harmonise
with the facts of experience and with the teaching of modern
psychology, and so obscure are the various passages in which
Kant touches on this central issue, that many of his most
competent commentators are prepared to regard it as being the
actual teaching of the Critique. The evidence[406] seems to me,
however, to refute this interpretation of Kant’s position. The
traditional, Cartesian, semi-mystical worship of mathematical
truth, as altogether independent of the contingencies of sense-
experience, and as a body of knowledge absolutely distinct in
origin from the merely empirical sciences, influences Kant’s
thinking even at the very moment when he is maintaining, in
opposition to the Cartesians, that its subject matter is a merely
subjective intuition. Kant, as it would seem, still maintains that
there is a pure manifold of intuition distinct from the manifold
of sense; and so by the inevitable logic of his thought is
constrained to view space as innate in conscious form. This is
not, of course, a conclusion which he could permanently stand
by, but its elimination would have involved a more radical
revision of his whole view of pure intuition and of
mathematical science than he was willing to undertake.
Though in the Analytic he has come to recognise[407] that it is
acquired by reflection upon objects, to the end he would seem
to persist in the difficult contention that such reflection yields
a pure manifold distinct from the manifold of sense.[408] His
belief that mathematical science is based upon pure intuition
prevented him from recognising that though space may be a
pure form of intuition, it can never by itself constitute a
complete intuition. Its sole possible content is the manifold of
sense. But even apart from the fact that our apprehension of
space is always empirically conditioned, Kant’s view of
mathematical propositions as grounded in intuition is, as
already observed, not itself tenable. For though intuitions may
perhaps be the ultimate subject matter of geometry, concepts
are its sole possible instruments. Intuitions yield scientific
insight in exact proportion to our powers of restating their
complex content in the terms of abstract thought. Until the
evidence which they supply has been thus intellectually tested
and defined, they cannot be accepted as justifying even the
simplest proposition.[409]
The complicated ambiguities of Kant’s treatment of space
may be illustrated and further clarified by discussion of
another difficulty. Is space a totum analyticum or a totum
syntheticum? Does the whole precondition the parts, or does it
arise through combination of the parts? Or to ask another but
connected question, do we intuit infinitude, or is it
conceptually apprehended only as the presupposition of our
limited intuitions? To these questions diametrically opposite
answers can be cited from the Critique. As we have above
noted, Kant teaches in the Aesthetic that space is given as a
whole, and that the parts arise only by limitation of it. But in A
162 = B 203 we find him also teaching that a magnitude is to
be entitled extensive
“…when the representation of the parts makes possible, and
therefore necessarily precedes, the representation of the whole.
I cannot represent to myself a line, however small, without
drawing it in thought, i.e. generating from a point all its parts
one after another, and thus for the first time recording this
intuition.”[410]
He adds in the second edition[411] that extensive magnitude
cannot be apprehended save through a “synthesis of the
manifold,” a “combination of the homogeneous.”
The note which Kant appends to B 136 is a very strange
combination of both views. It first of all reaffirms the doctrine
of the Aesthetic that space and time are not concepts, but
intuitions within which as in a unity a multitude of
representations are contained; and then proceeds to argue that
space and time, as thus composite, must presuppose an
antecedent synthesis. In A 505 = B 533 we find a similar
attempt to combine both assertions.
“The parts of a given appearance are first given through and
in the regress of decomposing synthesis (decomponirenden
Synthesis).”
 The clash of conflicting tenets which Kant is striving to
reconcile could hardly find more fitting expression than in this
assertion of an analytic synthesis. The same conflict appears,
though in a less violent form, in A 438 = B 466.
“Space should properly be called not compositum but totum,
since its parts are possible only in the whole, not the whole
through the parts. It might, indeed, be said to be a compositum
that is ideale, but not reale. That, however, is a mere
subtlety.”[412]
The arguments by which Kant proves space to be an a priori
intuition rest upon the view that space is given as infinite, and
that its parts arise through limitation of this prior-existent
whole. But a principle absolutely fundamental to the entire
Critique is the counter principle, that all analysis rests upon
and presupposes a previously exercised synthesis. Synthesis or
totality as such can never be given. Only in so far as a whole is
synthetically constructed can it be apprehended by the mind.
Representation of the parts precedes and renders possible
representation of the whole.
The solution of the dilemma arising out of these diverse
views demands the drawing of two distinctions. First, between
a synthesised totality and a principle of synthesis; the former
may involve a prior synthesis; the latter does not depend upon
synthesis, but expresses the predetermined nature of some
special form of synthesis. Secondly, it demands a distinction
between the a priori manifolds of space and time and the
empirical manifold which is apprehended in and through them.
This, as we have already noted, is a distinction difficult to take
quite seriously, and is entirely unsupported by psychological
evidence. But it would seem to be insisted upon by Kant, and
to have been a determining factor in the formulation of several
of his main doctrines.
In terms of the first distinction we are compelled to
recognise that the view of space which underlies the Aesthetic
is out of harmony with the teaching of the Analytic. In the
Aesthetic Kant interprets space not merely as a form of
intuition but also as a formal intuition, which is given
complete in its totality, and which is capable of being
apprehended independently of its empirical contents, and even
prior to them. That would seem to be the view of space which
is presupposed in Kant’s explanation of pure mathematical
science. The passages from the Analytic, quoted above, are,
however, its express recantation. Space, as the intuition of a
manifold, is a totum syntheticum, not a totum analyticum. It is
constructed, not given. The divergence of views between the
Aesthetic and the Analytic springs out of the difficulty of
meeting at once the logical demands of a world which Kant
conceives objectively, and the psychological demands which
arise when this same world is conceived as subjectively
conditioned. In principle, the whole precedes the parts; in the
process of being brought into existence as an intuition, the
parts precede the whole. The principle which determines our
apprehension of any space, however small or however large, is
that it exists in and through universal space. This is the
principle which underlies both the synthetic construction of
space and also its apprehension once it is constructed. In
principle, therefore, i.e. in the order of logical thought, the
whole precedes the parts.[413] The process, however, which
this principle governs and directs, cannot start with space as a
whole, but must advance to it through synthesis of smaller
parts.
But Kant does not himself recognise any conflict between
this teaching and the doctrine of the Aesthetic. He seems to
himself merely to be making more definite a position which he
has consistently held all along; and this was possible owing to
his retention and more efficient formulation of the second of
the two distinctions mentioned above, viz. that between the
manifold of sense and the manifold of intuition. This
distinction enables him to graft the new view upon the old, and
so in the very act of insisting upon the indispensableness of the
conceptual syntheses of understanding, none the less to
maintain his view of geometry as an intuitive science.[414]
“Space and time contain a manifold of pure a priori
intuition, but at the same time are conditions of the receptivity
of our mind—conditions under which alone it can receive
representations of objects, and which therefore must also
affect the concept of them. But if this manifold is to be known,
the spontaneity of our thinking requires that it be gone through
in a certain way, taken up, and connected. This action I name
synthesis…. Such a synthesis is pure, if the manifold is not
empirical, but is given a priori, as is that of space and of
time.”[415]
Thus Kant recognises that space, as apprehended by us, is
constructed, not given, and so by implication that the
infinitude of space is a principle of apprehension, not a given
intuition. But he also holds to the view that it contains a pure,
and presumably infinite, manifold, given as such.[416] In what
this pure manifold consists, and how the description of it as a
manifold, demanding synthesis for its apprehension, is to be
reconciled with its continuity, Kant nowhere even attempts to
explain. Nor does he show what the simple elements are from
which the synthesis of apprehension and reproduction in pure
intuition might start. The unity and multiplicity of space are,
indeed, as he himself recognises,[417] inseparably involved in
one another; and recognition of this fact must render it
extremely difficult to assign them to separate faculties. For the
same reason it is impossible to distinguish temporally, as Kant
so frequently does, the processes of synthesis and of analysis,
making the former in all cases precede the latter in time. The
very nature of space and time, and, as he came to recognise,
the very nature of all Ideas of reason, in so far as they involve
the notion of the unconditioned, conflict with such a view.
Even when Kant is dealing with space as a principle of
synthesis, he speaks with no very certain voice. In the Analytic
it is ascribed to the co-operation of sensibility and
understanding. In the Dialectic it is, by implication, ascribed
to Reason; and in the Metaphysical First Principles it is
explicitly so ascribed.
“Absolute space cannot be object of experience; for space
without matter is no object of perception, and yet it is a
necessary conception of Reason, and therefore nothing but a
mere Idea.”[418] “Absolute space is not necessary as a
conception of an actual object, but as an Idea which can serve
as rule….”[419]
 Kant’s teaching in the Critique of Judgment is a further
development of this position.
“The mind listens to the voice of Reason which, for every
given magnitude—even for those that can never be entirely
apprehended, although (in sensible representation) they are
judged as entirely given—requires totality…. It does not even
except the infinite (space and past time) from this requirement;
on the contrary, it renders it unavoidable to think the infinite
(in the judgment of common reason) as entirely given (in its
totality). But the infinite is absolutely (not merely
comparatively) great. Compared with it everything else (of the
same kind of magnitudes) is small. But what is most important
is that the mere ability to think it as a whole indicates a faculty
of mind which surpasses every standard of sense…. The bare
capability of thinking the given infinite without contradiction
requires in the human mind a faculty itself supersensible. For
it is only by means of this faculty and its Idea of a noumenon
… that the infinite of the world of sense, in the pure
intellectual estimation of magnitude, can be completely
comprehended under one concept…. Nature is, therefore,
sublime in those of its phenomena, whose intuition brings with
it the Idea of its infinity…. For just as imagination and
understanding, in judging of the beautiful, generate a
subjective purposiveness of the mental powers by means of
their harmony, so imagination and Reason do so by means of
their conflict.”[420]
Kant has here departed very far indeed from the position of
the Aesthetic.[421]
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC

SECTION I

SPACE

METAPHYSICAL EXPOSITION OF THE

CONCEPTION OF SPACE[422]
Space: First Argument.—“Space is not an empirical
concept (Begriff) which has been abstracted from outer
experiences. For in order that certain sensations be related to
something outside me (i.e. to something in another region of
space from that in which I find myself), and similarly in order
that I may be able to represent them as outside [and alongside]
[423] one another, and accordingly as not only [qualitatively]
different but as in different places, the representation of space
must be presupposed (muss schon zum Grunde liegen). The
representation of space cannot, therefore, be empirically
obtained at second-hand from the relations of outer
appearance. This outer experience is itself possible at all only
through that representation.”[424]
The first sentence states the thesis of the argument: space is
not an empirical concept abstracted from outer experiences.
The use of the term Begriff in the title of the section, and also
in this sentence, is an instance of the looseness with which
Kant employs his terms. It is here synonymous with the term
representation (Vorstellung), which covers intuitions as well as
general or discursive concepts. Consequently, the
contradiction is only verbal, not real, when Kant proceeds to
prove that the concept of space is an intuition, not a concept.
But this double employment of the term is none the less
misleading. When Kant employs it in a strict sense, it signifies
solely the general class concept.[425] All true concepts are for
Kant of that single type. He has not re-defined the term
concept in any manner which would render it applicable to the
relational categories. For unfortunately, and very strangely, he
never seems to have raised the question whether categories are
not also concepts. The application to the forms of
understanding of the separate title categories seems to have
contented him. Much that is obscure and even contradictory in
his teaching might have been prevented had he recognised that
the term concept is a generic title which includes, as its sub-
species, both general notions and relational categories.
Kant’s limitation of the term concept to the merely generic,
[426] and his consequent equating of the categorical proposition
with the assertion of the substance-attribute relation,[427]
would seem in large part to be traceable to his desire to
preserve for himself, in the pioneer labours of his Critical
enquiries, the guiding clues of the distinctions drawn in the
traditional logic. Kant insists on holding to them, at least in
outward appearance, at whatever sacrifice of strict consistency.
Critical doctrine is made to conform to the exigencies of an
artificial framework, with which its own tenets are only in
very imperfect harmony. Appreciation of the ramifying
influence, and, as regards the detail of exposition, of the far-
reaching consequences, of this desire to conform to the time-
honoured rubrics, is indeed an indispensable preliminary to
any adequate estimate whether of the strength or of the defects
of the Critical doctrines. As a separate and ever-present
influence in the determining of Kant’s teaching, this factor
may conveniently and compendiously be entitled Kant’s
logical architectonic.[428] We shall have frequent occasion to
observe its effects.[429]
The second sentence gives expression to the fact through
which Kant proves his thesis. Certain sensations, those of the
special senses as distinguished from the organic sensations,
[430] are related to something which stands in a different region
of space from the embodied self, and consequently are
apprehended as differing from one another not only in quality
but also in spatial position. As is proved later in the Analytic,
thought plays an indispensable part in constituting this
reference of sensations to objects. Kant here, however, makes
no mention of this further complication. He postulates, as he
may legitimately do at this stage, the fact that our sensations
are thus objectively interpreted, and limits his enquiry to the
spatial factor. Now the argument, as Vaihinger justly points
out,[431] hinges upon the assumption which Kant has already
embodied[432] in his definition of the “form” of sense, viz. that
sensations are non-spatial, purely qualitative. Though this is an
assumption of which Kant nowhere attempts to give proof, it
serves none the less as an unquestioned premiss from which he
draws all-important conclusions. This first argument on space
derives its force entirely from it.
The proof that the representation of space is non-empirical
may therefore be explicitly stated as follows. As sensations are
non-spatial and differ only qualitatively, the representation of
space must have been added to them. And not being supplied
by the given sensations, it must, as the only alternative, have
been contributed by the mind. The representation of space, so
far from being derived from external experience, is what first
renders it possible. As a subjective form that lies ready in the
mind, it precedes experience and co-operates in generating it.
This proof of the apriority of space is thus proof of the priority
of the representation of space to every empirical perception.
In thus interpreting Kant’s argument as proving more than
the thesis of the first sentence claims, we are certainly reading
into the proof more than Kant has himself given full
expression to. But, as is clearly shown by the argument of the
next section, we are only stating what Kant actually takes the
argument as having proved, namely, that the representation of
space is not only non-empirical but is likewise of subjective
origin and precedes experience in temporal fashion.
The point of view which underlies and inspires the
argument can be defined even more precisely. Kant’s
conclusion may be interpreted in either of two ways. The form
of space may precede experience only as a potentiality.
Existing as a power of co-ordination,[433] it will come to
consciousness only indirectly through the addition which it
makes to the given sensations. Though subjective in origin, it
will be revealed to the mind only in and through experience.
This view may indeed be reconciled with the terms of the
proof. But a strictly literal interpretation of its actual wording
is more in keeping with what, as we shall find, is the general
trend of the Aesthetic as a whole. We are then confronted by a
very different and extremely paradoxical view, which may
well seem too naive to be accepted by the modern reader, but
which we seem forced,[434] none the less, to regard as the view
actually presented in the text before us. Kant here asserts, in
the most explicit manner, that the mind, in order to construe
sensations in spatial terms, must already be in possession of a
representation of space, and that it is in the light of this
representation that it apprehends sensations. The conscious
representation of space precedes in time external experience.
Such, then, would seem to be Kant’s first argument on space.
It seeks to establish a negative conclusion, viz. that space is
not derived from experience. But, in so doing, it also yields a
positive psychological explanation of its origin.
Those commentators[435] who refuse to recognise that
Kant’s problem is in any degree psychological, or that Kant
himself so regards it, and who consequently seek to interpret
the Aesthetic from the point of view of certain portions of the
Analytic, give a very different statement of this first argument.
They state it in purely logical terms.[436] Its problem, they
claim, is not that of determining the origin of our
representation of space, but only its logical relation to our
specific sense-experiences. The notion of space in general
precedes, as an indispensable logical presupposition, all
particular specification of the space relation. Consciousness of
space as a whole is not constructed from consciousness of
partial spaces; on the contrary, the latter is only possible in and
through the former.
Such an argument does of course represent a valuable truth;
and it alone harmonises with much in Kant’s maturer teaching;
[437] but we must not therefore conclude that it is also the
teaching of the Aesthetic. The Critique contains too great a
variety of tendencies, too rich a complexity of issues, to allow
of such simplification. It loses more than it gains by such
rigorous pruning of the luxuriant secondary tendencies of its
exposition and thought. And above all, this procedure involves
the adoption by the commentator of impossible
responsibilities, those of deciding what is essential and
valuable in Kant’s thought and what is irrelevant. The value
and suggestiveness of Kant’s philosophy largely consist in his
sincere appreciation of conflicting tendencies, and in his
persistent attempt to reduce them to unity with the least
possible sacrifice. But in any case the logical interpretation
misrepresents this particular argument. Kant is not here
distinguishing between space in general and its specific
modifications. He is maintaining that no space relation can be
revealed in sensation. It is not only that the apprehension of
any limited space presupposes the representation of space as a
whole. Both partial and infinite space are of mental origin;
sensation, as such, is non-spatial, purely subjective. And lastly,
the fact that Kant means to assert that space is not only
logically presupposed but is subjectively generated, is
sufficiently borne out by his frequent employment elsewhere
in the Aesthetic of such phrases as “the subjective condition of
sensibility,” “lying ready in our minds,” and “necessarily
preceding [as the form of the subject’s receptivity] all
intuitions of objects.”
Second Argument.—Having proved by the first argument
that the representation of space is not of empirical origin, Kant
in the second argument proceeds to establish the positive
conclusion that it is a priori.[438] The proof, when all its
assumptions are rendered explicit, runs as follows. Thesis:
Space is a necessary representation, and consequently is a
priori. Proof: It is impossible to imagine the absence of space,
though it is possible to imagine it as existing without objects to
fill it. A representation which it is impossible for the mind to
be without is a necessary representation. But necessity is one
of the two criteria of the a priori. The proof of the necessary
character of space is therefore also a proof of its being a
priori.
The argument, more freely stated, is that what is empirically
given from without can be thought away, and that since space
cannot be thus eliminated, it must be grounded in our
subjective organisation, i.e. must be psychologically a priori.
The argument, as stated by Kant, emphasises the apriority, not
the subjectivity, of space, but none the less the asserted
apriority is psychological, not logical in character. For the
criterion employed is not the impossibility of thinking
otherwise, but our incapacity to represent this specific element
as absent. The ground upon which the whole argument is made
to rest is the merely brute fact (asserted by Kant) of our
incapacity to think except in terms of space.
The argument is, however, complicated by the drawing of a
further consequence, which follows as a corollary from the
main conclusion. From the subjective necessity of space
follows its objective necessity. Space being necessary a priori,
objects can only be apprehended in and through it.
Consequently it is not dependent upon the objects
apprehended, but itself underlies outer appearances as the
condition of their possibility. This corollary is closely akin to
the first argument on space, and differs from it only in
orientation. The first argument has a psychological purpose. It
maintains that the representation of space precedes external
experience, causally conditioning it. The corollary has a more
objective aim. It concludes that space is a necessary
constituent of the external experience thus generated. The one
proves that space is a necessary subjective antecedent; the
other that it is a necessary objective ingredient.[439]
To consider the proof in detail. The exact words which Kant
employs in stating the nervus probandi of the argument are
that we can never represent (eine Vorstellung davon machen)
space as non-existent, though we can very well think (denken)
it as being empty of objects. The terms Vorstellung and denken
are vague and misleading. Kant himself recognises that it is
possible to conceive that there are beings who intuit objects in
some other manner than in space. He cannot therefore mean
that we are unable to think or conceive space as non-existent.
He must mean that we cannot in imagination intuit it as absent.
It is the necessary form of all our intuitions, and therefore also
of imagination, which is intuitive in character. Our
consciousness is dependent upon given intuitions for its whole
content, and to that extent space is a form with which the mind
can never by any possibility dispense. Pure thought enables it
to realise this de facto limitation, but not to break free from it.
Even in admitting the possibility of other beings who are not
thus constituted, the mind still recognises its own ineluctable
limitations.
 Kant offers no proof of his assertion that space can be
intuited in image as empty of all sensible content; and as a
matter of fact the assertion is false. Doubtless the use of the
vague term Vorstellung is in great part responsible for Kant’s
mistaken position. So long as imagination and thought are not
clearly distinguished, the assertion is correspondingly
indefinite. Pure space may possibly be conceived, but it can
also be conceived as altogether non-existent. If, on the other
hand, our imaginative power is alone in question, the asserted
fact must be categorically denied. With the elimination of all
sensible content space itself ceases to be a possible image.
Kant’s proof thus rests upon a misstatement of fact.
In a second respect Kant’s proof is open to criticism. He
takes the impossibility of imagining space as absent as proof
that it originates from within. The argument is valid only if no
other psychological explanation can be given of this necessity,
as for instance through indissoluble association or through its
being an invariable element in the given sensations. Kant’s
ignoring of these possibilities is due to his unquestioning
belief that sensations are non-spatial, purely qualitative. That
is a presupposition whose truth is necessary to the cogency of
the argument.
Third Argument.—This argument, which was omitted in
the second edition, will be considered in its connection with
the transcendental exposition into which it was then merged.
Fourth (in second edition, Third) Argument.—The next
two arguments seek to show that space is not a discursive or
general concept but an intuition. The first proof falls into two
parts, (a) We can represent only a single space. For though we
speak of many spaces, we mean only parts of one and the same
single space. Space must therefore be an intuition. For only
intuition is thus directly related to a single individual. A
concept always refers indirectly, per notas communes, to a
plurality of individuals. (b) The parts of space cannot precede
the one all-comprehensive space. They can be thought only in
and through it. They arise through limitation of it. Now the
parts (i.e. the attributes) which compose a concept precede it
in thought. Through combination of them the concept is
formed. Space cannot, therefore, be a concept. Consequently it
must, as the only remaining alternative, be an intuition. Only
in an intuition does the whole precede the parts. In a concept
the parts always precede the whole. Intuition stands for
multiplicity in unity, conception for unity in multiplicity.
The first part of the argument refers to the extension, the
second part to the intension of the space representation. In
both aspects it appears as intuitional.[440]
Kant, in repeating his thesis as a conclusion from the above
grounds, confuses the reader by an addition which is not
strictly relevant to the argument, viz. by the statement that this
intuition must be non-empirical and a priori. This is simply a
recapitulation of what has been established in the preceding
proofs. It is not, as might at first sight appear, part of the
conclusion established by the argument under consideration.
The reader is the more apt to be misled owing to the fact that
very obviously arguments for the non-empirical and for the a
priori character of space can be derived from proof (b). That
space is non-empirical would follow from the fact that
representation of space as a whole is necessary for the
apprehension of any part of it. Empirical intuition can only
yield the apprehension of a limited space. The apprehension of
the comprehensive space within which it falls must therefore
be non-empirical.
“As we intuitively apprehend (anschauend erkennen) not
only the space of the object which affects our senses, but the
whole space, space cannot arise out of the actual affection of
the senses, but must precede it in time (vor ihr
vorhergehen).”[441]
But in spite of its forcibleness this argument is nowhere
presented in the Critique.
Similarly, in so far as particular spaces can be conceived
only in and through space as a whole, and in so far as the
former are limitations of the one antecedent space, the
intuition which underlies all external perception must be a
priori. This is in essentials a stronger and more cogent mode
of formulating the second argument on space. But again, and
very strangely, it is nowhere employed by Kant in this form.
 The concluding sentence, ambiguously introduced by the
words so werden auch, is tacked on to the preceding argument.
Interpreted in the light of § 15 C of the Dissertation,[442] and
of the corresponding fourth[443] argument[444] on time, it may
be taken as offering further proof that space is an intuition.
The concepts of line and triangle, however attentively
contemplated, will never reveal the proposition that in every
triangle two sides taken together are greater than the third. An
a priori intuition will alone account for such apodictic
knowledge. This concluding sentence thus really belongs to
the transcendental exposition; and as such ought, like the third
argument, to have been omitted in the second edition.
Kant’s proof rests on the assumption that there are only two
kinds of representation, intuitions and concepts, and also in
equal degree upon the further assumption that all concepts are
of one and the same type.[445] Intuition is, for Kant, the
apprehension of an individual. Conception is always the
representation of a class or genus. Intuition is immediately
related to the individual. Conception is reflective or discursive;
it apprehends a plurality of objects indirectly through the
representation of those marks which are common to them all.
[446] Intuition and conception having been defined in this
manner, the proof that space is single or individual, and that in
it the whole precedes the parts, is proof conclusive that it is an
intuition, not a conception. Owing, however, to the narrowness
of the field assigned to conception, the realm occupied by
intuition is proportionately wide, and the conclusion is not as
definite and as important as might at first sight appear. By
itself, it amounts merely to the statement, which no one need
challenge, that space is not a generic class concept.
Incidentally certain unique characteristics of space are, indeed,
forcibly illustrated; but the implied conclusion that space on
account of these characteristics must belong to receptivity, not
to understanding, does not by any means follow. It has not, for
instance, been proved that space and time are radically distinct
from the categories, i.e. from the relational forms of
understanding.
In 1770, while Kant still held to the metaphysical validity of
the pure forms of thought, the many difficulties which result
from the ascription of independent reality to space and time
were, doubtless, a sufficient reason for regarding the latter as
subjective and sensuous. But upon adoption of the Critical
standpoint such argument is no longer valid. If all our forms of
thought may be subjective, the existence of antinomies has no
real bearing upon the question whether space and time do or
do not have a different constitution and a different mental
origin from the categories. The antinomies, that is to say, may
perhaps suffice to prove that space and time are subjective;
they certainly do not establish their sensuous character.
But though persistence of the older, un-Critical opposition
between the intellectual and the sensuous was partly
responsible for Kant’s readiness to regard as radical the very
obvious differences between a category such as that of
substance and attribute and the visual or tactual extendedness
with which objects are endowed, it can hardly be viewed as
the really decisive influence. That would rather seem to be
traceable to Kant’s conviction that mathematical knowledge is
unique both in fruitfulness and in certainty, and to his further
belief that it owes this distinction to the content character of
the a priori forms upon which it rests. For though the
categories of the physical sciences are likewise a priori, they
are exclusively relational,[447] and serve only to organise a
material that is empirically given. To account for the
superiority of mathematical knowledge Kant accordingly felt
constrained to regard space and time as not merely forms in
terms of which we interpret the matter of sense, but as also
themselves intuited objects, and as therefore possessing a
character altogether different from anything which can be
ascribed to the pure understanding. The opposition between
forms of sense and categories of the understanding, in the
strict Kantian mode of envisaging that opposition, is thus
inseparably bound up with Kant’s doctrine of space and time
as being not only forms of intuition, but as also in their purity
and independence themselves intuitions. Even the sensuous
subject matter of pure mathematics—so Kant would seem to
contend—is a priori in nature. If this latter view be questioned
—and to the modern reader it is indeed a stone of stumbling—
much of the teaching of the Aesthetic will have to be modified
or at least restated.
Fifth (in second edition, Fourth) Argument.—This
argument is quite differently stated in the two editions of the
Critique, though the purpose of the argument is again in both
cases to prove that space is an intuition, not a general concept.
In the first edition this is proved by reference to the fact that
space is given as an infinite magnitude. This characteristic of
our space representation cannot be accounted for so long as it
is regarded as a concept. A general conception of space which
would abstract out those properties and relations which are
common to all spaces, to a foot as well as to an ell, could not
possibly determine anything in regard to magnitude. For since
spaces differ in magnitude, any one magnitude cannot be a
common quality. Space is, however, given us as determined in
magnitude, namely, as being of infinite magnitude; and if a
general conception of space relations cannot determine
magnitude, still less can it determine infinite magnitude. Such
infinity must be derived from limitlessness in the progression
of intuition. Our conceptual representations of infinite
magnitude must be derivative products, acquired from this
intuitive source.
In the argument of the second edition the thesis is again
established by reference to the infinity of space. But in all
other respects the argument differs from that of the first
edition. A general conception, which abstracts out common
qualities from a plurality of particulars, contains an infinite
number of possible different representations under it; but it
cannot be thought as containing an infinite number of
representations in it. Space must, however, be thought in this
latter manner, for it contains an infinite number of coexisting
parts.[448] Since, then, space cannot be a concept, it must be an
intuition.
The definiteness of this conclusion is somewhat obscured
by the further characterisation of the intuition of space as a
priori, and by the statement that it is the original
(ursprüngliche) representation which is of this intuitive nature.
The first addition must here, again, just as in the fourth
argument, be regarded as merely a recapitulation of what has
already been established, not a conclusion from the present
argument. The introduction of the word ‘original’ seems to be
part of Kant’s reply to the objections which had already been
made to his admission in the first edition that there is a
conception as well as an intuition of space. It is the original
given intuition of space which renders such reflective
conception possible.
The chief difficulty of these proofs arises out of the
assertion which they seem to involve that space is given as
actually infinite. There are apparently, on this point, two views
in Kant, which were retained up to the very last, and which are
closely connected with his two representations of space, on the
one hand as a formal intuition given in its purity and in its
completeness, and on the other hand as the form of intuition,
which exists only so far as it is constructed, and which is
dependent for its content upon given matter.
Third Argument, and Transcendental Exposition of
Space.—The distinction between the metaphysical and the
transcendental expositions, introduced in the second edition of
the Critique,[449] is one which Kant seems to have first made
clear to himself in the process of writing the Prolegomena.[450]
It is a genuine improvement, marking an important distinction.
It separates out two comparatively independent lines of
argument. The terms in which the distinction is stated are not,
however, felicitous. Kant’s reason for adopting the title
metaphysical is indicated in the Prolegomena:[451]
“As concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition, its very
concept implies that they cannot be empirical…. For it must
not be physical but metaphysical knowledge, i.e. knowledge
lying beyond experience…. It is therefore a priori knowledge,
coming from pure understanding and pure Reason.”
The metaphysical exposition, it would therefore seem, is so
entitled because it professes to prove that space is a priori, not
empirical, and to do so by analysis of its concept.[452] Now by
Kant’s own definition of the term transcendental, as the theory
of the a priori, this exposition might equally well have been
named the transcendental exposition. In any case it is an
essential and chief part of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Such
division of the Transcendental Aesthetic into a metaphysical
and a transcendental part involves a twofold use, wider and
narrower, of one and the same term. Only as descriptive of the
whole Aesthetic is transcendental employed in the sense
defined.
Exposition (Erörterung, Lat. expositio) is Kant’s substitute
for the more ordinary term definition. Definition is the term
which we should naturally have expected; but as Kant holds
that no given concept, whether a priori or empirical, can be
defined in the strict sense,[453] the substitutes the term
exposition, using it to signify such definition of the nature of
space as is possible to us. To complete the parallelism Kant
speaks of the transcendental enquiry as also an exposition. It
is, however, in no sense a definition. Kant’s terms here, as so
often elsewhere, are employed in a more or less arbitrary and
extremely inexact manner.
The distinction between the two expositions is taken by
Kant as follows. The metaphysical exposition determines the
nature of the concept of space, and shows it to be a given a
priori intuition. The transcendental exposition shows how
space, when viewed in this manner, renders comprehensible
the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge.
The omission of the third argument on space from the
second edition, and its incorporation into the new
transcendental exposition, is certainly an improvement. In its
location in the first edition, it breaks in upon the continuity of
Kant’s argument without in any way contributing to the further
definition of the concept of space. Also, in emphasising that
mathematical knowledge depends upon the construction of
concepts,[454] Kant presupposes that space is intuitional; and
that has not yet been established.
The argument follows the strict, rigorous, synthetic method.
From the already demonstrated a priori character of space,
Kant deduces the apodictic certainty of all geometrical
principles. But though the paragraph thus expounds a
consequence that follows from the a priori character of space,
not an argument in support of it, something in the nature of an
argument is none the less implied. The fact that this view of
the representation of space alone renders mathematical science
possible can be taken as confirming this interpretation of its
nature. Such an argument, though circular, is none the less
cogent. Consideration of Kant’s further statements, that were
space known in a merely empirical manner we could not be
sure that in all cases only one straight line is possible between
two points, or that space will always be found to have three
dimensions, must meantime be deferred.[455]
In the new transcendental exposition Kant adopts the
analytic method of the Prolegomena, and accordingly presents
his argument in independence of the results already
established. He starts from the assumption of the admitted
validity of geometry, as being a body of synthetic a priori
knowledge. Yet this, as we have already noted, does not
invalidate the argument; in both the first and the last
paragraphs it is implied that the a priori and intuitive
characteristics of space have already been proved. From the
synthetic character of geometrical propositions Kant
argues[456] that space must be an intuition. Through pure
concepts no synthetic knowledge is possible. Then from the
apodictic character of geometry he infers that space exists in
us as pure and a priori;[457] no experience can ever reveal
necessity. But geometry also exists as an applied science; and
to account for our power of anticipating experience, we must
view space as existing only in the perceiving subject as the
form of its sensibility. If it precedes objects as the necessary
subjective condition of their apprehension, we can to that
extent predetermine the conditions of their existence.
In the concluding paragraph Kant says that this is the only
explanation which can be given of the possibility of geometry.
He does not distinguish between pure and applied geometry,
though the proof which he has given of each differs in a
fundamental respect. Pure geometry presupposes only that
space is an a priori intuition; applied geometry demands that
space be conceived as the a priori form of external sense.
Only in reference to applied geometry does the Critical
problem arise:—viz. how we can form synthetic judgments a
priori which yet are valid of objects; or, in other words, how
judgments based upon a subjective form can be objectively
valid. But any attempt, at this point, to define the nature and
possibility of applied geometry must anticipate a result which
is first established in Conclusion b.[458] Though, therefore, the
substitution of this transcendental exposition for the third
space argument is a decided improvement, Kant, in extending
it so as to cover applied as well as pure mathematics,
overlooks the real sequence of his argument in the first edition.
The employment of the analytic method, breaking in, as it
does, upon the synthetic development of Kant’s original
argument, is a further irregularity.[459]
It may be noted that in the third paragraph Kant takes the
fact that geometry can be applied to objects as proof of the
subjectivity of space.[460] He refuses to recognise the
possibility that space may be subjective as a form of
receptivity, and yet also be a mode in which things in
themselves exist. This, as regards its conclusion, though not as
regards its argument, is therefore an anticipation of Conclusion
a. In the last paragraph Kant is probably referring to the views
both of Leibniz and of Berkeley.
CONCLUSIONS FROM THE ABOVE CONCEPTS[461]

Conclusion a.—Thesis: Space is not a property of things in

themselves,[462] nor a relation of them to one another. Proof:
The properties of things in themselves can never be intuited
prior to their existence, i.e. a priori. Space, as already proved,
is intuited in this manner. In other words, the apriority of space
is by itself sufficient proof of its subjectivity.
This argument has been the subject of a prolonged
controversy between Trendelenburg and Kuno Fischer.[463]
Trendelenburg was able to prove his main point, namely, that
the above argument is quite inconclusive. Kant recognises
only two alternatives, either space as objective is known a
posteriori, or being an a priori representation it is subjective in
origin. There exists a third alternative, namely, that though our
intuition of space is subjective in origin, space is itself an
inherent property of things in themselves. The central thesis of
the rationalist philosophy of the Enlightenment was, indeed,
that the independently real can be known by a priori thinking.
Even granting the validity of Kant’s later conclusion, first
drawn in the next paragraph, that space is the subjective form
of all external intuition, that would only prove that it does not
belong to appearances, prior to our apprehension of them;
nothing is thereby proved in regard to the character of things
in themselves. We anticipate by a priori reasoning only the
nature of appearances, never the constitution of things in
themselves. Therefore space, even though a priori, may
belong to the independently real. The above argument cannot
prove the given thesis.
Vaihinger contends[464] that the reason why Kant does not
even attempt to argue in support of the principle, that the a
priori must be purely subjective, is that he accepts it as self-
evident. This explanation does not, however, seem satisfactory.
But Vaihinger supplies the data for modification of his own
assertion. It was, it would seem, the existence of the
antinomies which first and chiefly led Kant to assert the
subjectivity of space and time.[465] For as he then believed that
a satisfactory solution of the antinomies is possible only on the
assumption of the subjectivity of space and time, he regarded
their subjectivity as being conclusively established, and
accordingly failed to examine with sufficient care the validity
of his additional proof from their apriority. This would seem to
be confirmed by the fact that when later,[466] in reply to
criticisms of the arguments of the first edition, he so far
modified his position as to offer reasons in support of the
above general principle, even then he nowhere discussed the
principle in reference to the forms of sense. All his discussions
concern only the possible independent reality of the forms of
thought.[467] To the very last Kant would seem to have
regarded the above argument as an independent, and by itself a
sufficient, proof of the subjectivity of space.
The refutation of Trendelenburg’s argument which is
offered by Caird[468] is inconclusive. Caird assumes the chief
point at issue, first by ignoring the possibility that space may
be known a priori in reference to appearances and yet at the
same time be transcendently real; and secondly by ignoring the
fact that to deny spatial properties to things in themselves is as
great a violation of Critical principles as to assert them. One
point, however, in Caird’s reply to Trendelenburg calls for
special consideration, viz. Caird’s contention that Kant did
actually take account of the third alternative, rejecting it as
involving the “absurd” hypothesis of a pre-established
harmony.[469] Undoubtedly Kant did so. But the contention has
no relevancy to the point before us. The doctrine of pre-
established harmony is a metaphysical theory which
presupposes the possibility of gaining knowledge of things in
themselves. For that reason alone Kant was bound to reject it.
A metaphysical proof of the validity of metaphysical
judgments is, from the Critical point of view, a contradiction
in terms. As the validity of all speculations is in doubt, a proof
which is speculative cannot meet our difficulties. And also, as
Kant himself further points out, the pre-established harmony,
even if granted, can afford no solution of the Critical problem
how a priori judgments can be passed upon the independently
real. The judgments, thus guaranteed, could only possess de
facto validity; we could never be assured of their necessity.
[470] It is chiefly in these two inabilities that Kant locates the
“absurdity” of a theory of pre-established harmony. The
refutation of that theory does not, therefore, amount to a
disproof of the possibility which we are here considering.
Conclusion b.—The next paragraph maintains two theses:
(a) that space is the form of all outer intuition; (b) that this fact
explains what is otherwise entirely inexplicable and
paradoxical, namely, that we can make a priori judgments
which yet apply to the objects experienced. The first thesis,
that the pure intuition of space is only conceivable as the form
of appearances of outer sense, is propounded in the opening
sentence without argument and even without citation of
grounds. The statement thus suddenly made is not anticipated
save by the opening sentences of the section on space.[471] It is
an essentially new doctrine. Hitherto Kant has spoken of space
only as an a priori intuition. The further assertion that as such
it must necessarily be conceived as the form of outer sense
(i.e. not only as a formal intuition but also as a form of
intuition), calls for the most definite and explicit proof. None,
however, is given. It is really a conclusion from points all too
briefly cited by Kant in the general Introduction, namely, from
his distinction between the matter and the form of sense. The
assertions there made, in a somewhat casual manner, are here,
without notification to the reader, employed as premisses to
ground the above assertion. His thesis is not, therefore, as by
its face value it would seem to profess to be, an inference from
the points established in the preceding expositions. It interprets
these conclusions in the light of points considered in the
Introduction; and thereby arrives at a new and all-important
interpretation of the nature of the a priori intuition of space.
The second thesis employs the first to explain how prior to
all experience we can determine the relations of objects. Since
(a) space is merely the form of outer sense, and (b)
accordingly exists in the mind prior to all empirical intuition,
all appearances must exist in space, and we can predetermine
them from the pure intuition of space that is given to us a
priori. Space, when thus viewed as the a priori form of outer
sense, renders comprehensible the validity of applied
mathematics.
As we have already noted,[472] Kant in the second edition
obscures the sequence of his argument by offering in the new
transcendental exposition a justification of applied as well as
of pure geometry. In so doing he anticipates the conclusion
which is first drawn in this later paragraph. This would have
been avoided had Kant given two separate transcendental
expositions. First, an exposition of pure mathematics, placed
immediately after the metaphysical exposition; for pure
mathematics is exclusively based upon the results of the
metaphysical exposition. And secondly, an exposition of
applied mathematics, introduced after Conclusion b. The
explanation of applied geometry is really the more essential
and central of the two, as it alone involves the truly Critical
problem, how judgments formed a priori can yet apply to
objects. Conclusion b constitutes, as Vaihinger rightly insists,
[473] the very heart of the Aesthetic. The arrangement of Kant’s
argument diverts the reader’s attention from where it ought
properly to centre.
The use which Kant makes of the Prolegomena in his
statement of the new transcendental exposition is one cause of
the confusion. The exposition is a brief summary of the
corresponding Prolegomena[474] sections. In introducing this
summary into the Critique Kant overlooked the fact that in
referring to applied mathematics he is anticipating a point first
established in Conclusion b. The real cause, however, of the
trouble is common to both editions, namely Kant’s failure
clearly to appreciate the fundamental distinction between the
view that space is an a priori intuition and the view that it is
the a priori form of all external intuition, i.e. of outer sense.
He does not seem to have fully realised how very different are
those two views. In consequence of this he fails to distinguish
between the transcendental expositions of pure and applied
geometry.[475]
Third paragraph.—Kant proceeds to develop the
subjectivist conclusions which follow from a and b.
“We may say that space contains all things which can
appear to us externally, but not all things in themselves,
whether intuited or not, nor again all things intuited by any
and every subject.”[476]
This sentence makes two assertions: (a) space does not
belong to things in and by themselves; (b) space is not a
necessary form of intuition for all subjects whatsoever.
The grounds for the former assertion are not here
considered, and that is doubtless the reason why the oder nicht
is excised in Kant’s private copy of the Critique. As we have
seen, Kant does not anywhere in the Aesthetic even attempt to
offer argument in support of this assertion. In defence of (a)
Kant propounds for the first time the view of sensibility as a
limitation. Space is a limiting condition to which human
intuition is subject. Whether the intuitions of other thinking
beings are subject to the same limitation, we have no means of
deciding. But for all human beings, Kant implies, the same
conditions must hold universally.[477]
In the phrase “transcendental ideality of space”[478] Kant, it
may be noted, takes the term ideality as signifying subjectivity,
and the term transcendental as equivalent to transcendent. He
is stating that judged from a transcendent point of view, i.e.
from the point of view of the thing in itself, space has a merely
subjective or “empirical” reality. This is an instance of Kant’s
careless use of the term transcendental. Space is empirically
real, but taken transcendently, is merely ideal.[479]
KANT’S ATTITUDE TO THE PROBLEMS OF MODERN GEOMETRY

This is an appropriate point at which to consider the

consistency of Kant’s teaching with modern developments in
geometry. Kant’s attitude has very frequently been
misrepresented. As he here states, he is willing to recognise
that the forms of intuition possessed by other races of finite
beings may not coincide with those of the human species. But
in so doing he does not mean to assert the possibility of other
spatial forms, i.e. of spaces that are non-Euclidean. In his pre-
Critical period Kant had indeed attempted to deduce the three-
dimensional character of space as a consequence of the law of
gravitation; and recognising that that law is in itself arbitrary,
he concluded that God might, by establishing different
relations of gravitation, have given rise to spaces of different
properties and dimensions.
“A science of all these possible kinds of space would
undoubtedly be the highest enterprise which a finite
understanding could undertake in the field of geometry.”[480]
But from the time of Kant’s adoption, in 1770, of the
Critical view of space as being the universal form of our outer
sense, he seems to have definitely rejected all such
possibilities. Space, to be space at all, must be Euclidean; the
uniformity of space is a presupposition of the a priori certainty
of geometrical science.[481] One of the criticisms which in the
Dissertation[482] he passes upon the empirical view of
mathematical science is that it would leave open the possibility
that “a space may some time be discovered endowed with
other fundamental properties, or even perhaps that we may
happen upon a two-sided rectilinear figure.” This is the
argument which reappears in the third argument on space in
the first edition of the Critique.[483] The same examples are
employed with a somewhat different wording.
“It would not even be necessary that there should be only
one straight line between two points, though experience
invariably shows this to be so. What is derived from
experience has only comparative universality, namely, that
which is obtained through induction. We should therefore only
be able to say that, so far as hitherto observed, no space has
been found which has more than three dimensions.”
But that Kant should have failed to recognise the possibility
of other spaces does not by itself point to any serious defect in
his position. There is no essential difficulty in reconciling the
recognition of such spaces with his fundamental teaching. He
admits that other races of finite beings may perhaps intuit
through non-spatial forms of sensibility; he might quite well
have recognised that those other forms of intuition, though not
Euclidean, are still spatial. It is in another and more vital
respect that Kant’s teaching lies open to criticism. Kant is
convinced that space is given to us in intuition as being
definitely and irrevocably Euclidean in character. Both our
intuition and our thinking, when we reflect upon space, are, he
implies, bound down to, and limited by, the conditions of
Euclidean space. And it is in this positive assumption, and not
merely in his ignoring of the possibility of other spaces, that
he comes into conflict with the teaching of modern geometry.
For in making the above assumption Kant is asserting that we
definitely know physical space to be three-dimensional, and
that by no elaboration of concepts can we so remodel it in
thought that the axiom of parallels will cease to hold.
Euclidean space, Kant implies, is given to us as an unyielding
form that rigidly resists all attempts at conceptual
reconstruction. Being quite independent of thought and being
given as complete, it has no inchoate plasticity of which
thought might take advantage. The modern geometer is not,
however, prepared to admit that intuitional space has any
definiteness or preciseness of nature apart from the concepts
through which it is apprehended; and he therefore allows, as at
least possible, that upon clarification of our concepts space
may be discovered to be radically different from what it at first
sight appears to be. In any case, the perfecting of the concepts
must have some effect upon their object. But even—as the
modern geometer further maintains—should our space be
definitely proved, upon analytic and empirical investigation, to
be Euclidean in character, other possibilities will still remain
open for speculative thought. For though the nature of our
intuitional data may constrain us to interpret them through one
set of concepts rather than through another, the competing sets
of alternative concepts will represent genuine possibilities
beyond what the actual is found to embody.
Thus the defect of Kant’s teaching, in regard to space, as
judged in the light of the later teaching of geometrical science,
is closely bound up with his untenable isolation of the a priori
of sensibility from the a priori of understanding.[484] Space,
being thus viewed as independent of thought, has to be
regarded as limiting and restricting thought by the unalterable
nature of its initial presentation. And unfortunately this is a
position which Kant continued to hold, despite his increasing
recognition of the part which concepts must play in the various
mathematical sciences. In the deduction of the first edition we
find him stating that synthesis of apprehension is necessary to
all representation of space and time.[485] He further recognises
that all arithmetical processes are syntheses according to
concepts.[486] And in the Prolegomena[487] there occurs the
following significant passage.
“Do these laws of nature lie in space, and does the
understanding learn them by merely endeavouring to find out
the fruitful meaning that lies in space; or do they inhere in the
understanding and in the way in which it determines space
according to the conditions of the synthetical unity towards
which its concepts are all directed? Space is something so
uniform and as to all particular properties so indeterminate,
that we should certainly not seek a store of laws of nature in it.
That which determines space to the form of a circle or to the
figures of a cone or a sphere, is, on the contrary, the
understanding, so far as it contains the ground of the unity of
these constructions. The mere universal form of intuition,
called space, must therefore be the substratum of all intuitions
determinable to particular objects, and in it, of course, the
condition of the possibility and of the variety of these
intuitions lies. But the unity of the objects is solely determined
by the understanding, and indeed in accordance with
conditions which are proper to the nature of the
understanding….”
Obviously Kant is being driven by the spontaneous
development of his own thinking towards a position much
more consistent with present-day teaching, and completely at
variance with the hard and fast severance between sensibility
and understanding which he had formulated in the
Dissertation and has retained in the Aesthetic. In the above
Prolegomena passage a plasticity is being allowed to space,
sufficient to permit of essential modification in the conceptual
processes through which it is articulated. But, as I have just
stated, that did not lead Kant to disavow the conclusions which
he had drawn from his previous teaching.
This defect in Kant’s doctrine of space, as expounded in the
Aesthetic, indicates a further imperfection in his argument. He
asserts that the form of space cannot vary from one human
being to another, and that for this reason the judgments which
express it are universally valid. Now, in so far as Kant’s initial
datum is consciousness of time,[488] he is entirely justified in
assuming that everything which can be shown to be a
necessary condition of such consciousness must be uniform
for all human minds. But as his argument is not that
consciousness of Euclidean space is necessary to
consciousness of time, but only that consciousness of the
permanent in space is a required condition, he has not
succeeded in showing the necessary uniformity of the human
mind as regards the specific mode in which it intuits space.
The permanent might still be apprehended as permanent, and
therefore as yielding a possible basis for consciousness of
sequence, even if it were apprehended in some four-
dimensional form.

Fourth Paragraph.—The next paragraph raises one of the

central problems of the Critique, namely, the question as to the
kind of reality possessed by appearances. Are they subjective,
like taste or colour? Or have they a reality at least relatively
independent of the individual percipient? In other words, is
Kant’s position subjectivism or phenomenalism? Kant here
alternates between these positions. This fourth paragraph is
coloured by his phenomenalism, whereas in the immediately
following fifth paragraph his subjectivism gains the upper
hand. The taste of wine, he there states, is purely subjective,
because dependent upon the particular constitution of the
gustatory organ on which the wine acts. Similarly, colours are
not properties of the objects which cause them.
“They are only modifications of the sense of sight which is
affected in a certain manner by the light…. They are
connected with the appearances only as effects accidentally
added by the particular constitution of the sense organs.”[489]
Space, on the other hand, is a necessary constituent of the
outer objects. In contrast to the subjective sensations of taste
and colour, it possesses objectivity. This mode of
distinguishing between space and the matter of sense implies
that extended objects are not mere ideas, but are sufficiently
independent to be capable of acting upon the sense organs, and
of thereby generating the sensations of the secondary qualities.
Kant, it must be observed, refers only to taste and colour.
He says nothing in regard to weight, impenetrability, and the
like. These are revealed through sensation, and therefore on
his view ought to be in exactly the same position as taste or
colour. But if so, the relative independence of the extended
object can hardly be maintained. Kant’s distinction between
space and the sense qualities cannot, indeed, be made to
coincide with the Cartesian distinction between primary and
secondary qualities.
A second difference, from Kant’s point of view, between
space and the sense qualities is that the former can be
represented a priori, in complete separation from everything
empirical, whereas the latter can only be known a posteriori.
This, as we have seen, is a very questionable assertion. The
further statement that all determinations of space can be
represented in the same a priori fashion is even more
questionable. At most the difference is only between a
homogeneous subjective form yielded by outer sense and the
endlessly varied and consequently unpredictable contents
revealed by the special senses. The contention that the former
can be known apart from the latter implies the existence of a
pure manifold additional to the manifold of sense.
Fifth Paragraph.—In the next paragraph Kant emphasises
the distinction between the empirical and the transcendental
meanings of the term appearance. A rose, viewed empirically,
as a thing with an intrinsic independent nature, may appear of
different colour to different observers.
“The transcendental conception of appearances in space, on
the other hand, is a Critical reminder that nothing intuited in
space is a thing in itself, that space is not a form inhering in
things in themselves … and that what we call outer objects are
nothing but mere representations of our sensibility, the form of
which is space.”
In other words, the distinction drawn in the preceding
paragraph between colour as a subjective effect and space as
an objective existence is no longer maintained. Kant, when
thus developing his position on subjectivist lines, allows no
kind of independent existence to anything in the known world.
Objects as known are mere Ideas (blosse Vorstellungen
unserer Sinnlichkeit), the sole correlate of which is the
unknowable thing in itself. But even in this paragraph both
tendencies find expression. “Colour, taste, etc., must not
rightly be regarded as properties of things, but only as changes
in the subject.” This implies a threefold distinction between
subjective sensations, empirical objects in space, and the thing
in itself. The material world, investigated by science, is
recognised as possessing a relatively independent mode of
existence.
Substituted Fourth Paragraph of second edition.—In
preparing the second edition Kant himself evidently felt the
awkwardness of this abrupt juxtaposition of the two very
different points of view; and he accordingly adopts a non-
committal attitude, substituting a logical distinction for the
ontological. Space yields synthetic judgments a priori; the
sense qualities do not. Only in the concluding sentence does
there emerge any definite phenomenalist implication. The
sense qualities, “as they are mere sensations and not intuitions,
in themselves reveal no object, least of all [an object] a
priori.”[490] The assertion that the secondary qualities have no
ideality implies a new and stricter use of the term ideal than
we find anywhere in the first edition—a use which runs
counter to Kant’s own constant employment of the term. On
this interpretation it is made to signify what though subjective
is also a priori. Here, as in many of the alterations of the
second edition, Kant is influenced by the desire to emphasise
the points which distinguish his idealism from that of
Berkeley.
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC

SECTION II

TIME

METAPHYSICAL EXPOSITION OF THE

CONCEPTION OF TIME
Time: First Argument.—This argument is in all respects
the same as the first argument on space. The thesis is that the
representation[491] of time is not of empirical origin. The proof
is based on the fact that this representation must be previously
given in order that the perception of coexistence or succession
be possible. It also runs on all fours with the first argument in
the Dissertation.
“The idea of time does not originate in, but is presupposed
by the senses. When a number of things act upon the senses, it
is only by means of the idea of time that they can be
represented whether as simultaneous or as successive. Nor
does succession generate the conception of time; but
stimulates us to form it. Thus the notion of time, even if
acquired through experience, is very badly defined as being a
series of actual things existing one after another. For I can
understand what the word after signifies only if I already
know what time means. For those things are after one another
which exist at different times, as those are simultaneous which
exist at one and the same time.”[492]
Second Argument.—Kant again applies to time the
argument already employed by him in dealing with space. The
thesis is that time is given a priori. Proof is found in the fact
that it cannot be thought away, i.e. in the fact of its subjective
necessity. From this subjective necessity follows its objective
necessity, so far as all appearances are concerned. In the
second edition Kant added a phrase—“as the general condition
of their possibility”—which is seriously misleading. The
concluding sentence is thereby made to read as if Kant were
arguing from the objective necessity of time, i.e. from its
necessity as a constituent in the appearances apprehended, to
its apriority. It is indeed possible that Kant himself regarded
this objective necessity of time as contributing to the proof of
its apriority. But no such argument can be accepted. Time may
be necessary to appearances, once appearances are granted.
This does not, however, prove that it must therefore precede
them a priori. This alteration in the second edition is an
excellent, though unfortunate, example of Kant’s invincible
carelessness in the exposition of his thought. It has contributed
to a misreading by Herbart and others of this and of the
corresponding argument on space.
“Let us not talk of an absolute space as the presupposition
of all our constructed figures. Possibility is nothing but
thought, and it arises only when it is thought. Space is nothing
but possibility, for it contains nothing save images of the
existent; and absolute space is nothing save the abstracted
general possibility of such constructions, abstracted from it
after completion of the construction. The necessity of the
representation of space ought never to have played any rôle in
philosophy. To think away space is to think away the
possibility of that which has been previously posited as actual.
Obviously that is impossible, and the opposite is
necessary.”[493]
Were Kant really arguing here and in the second argument
on space solely from the objective necessity of time and space,
this criticism would be unanswerable. But even taking the
argument in its first edition form, as an argument from the
psychological necessity of time, it lies open to the same
objection as the argument on space. It rests upon a false
statement of fact. We cannot retain time in the absence of all
appearances of outer and inner sense. With the removal of the
given manifold, time itself must vanish.
Fourth Argument.[494]—This argument differs only
slightly, and mainly through omissions,[495] from the
fourth[496] of the arguments in regard to space; but a few minor
points call for notice. (a) In the first sentence, instead of
intuition, which alone is under consideration in its contrast to
conception, Kant employs the phrase “pure form of intuition.”
(b) In the third sentence Kant uses the quite untenable phrase
“given through a single object (Gegenstand).” Time is not
given from without, nor is it due to an object. (c) The
concluding sentences properly belong to the transcendental
exposition. They are here introduced, not in the ambiguous
manner of the fourth[1] argument on space, but explicitly as a
further argument in proof of the intuitive character of time.
The synthetic proposition which Kant cites is taken neither
from the science of motion nor from arithmetic. It expresses
the nature of time itself, and for that reason is immediately
contained in the intuition of time.
Fifth Argument.—This argument differs fundamentally
from the corresponding argument on space, whether of the first
or of the second edition, and must therefore be independently
analysed. The thesis is again that time is an intuition. Proof is
derived from the fact that time is a representation in which the
parts arise only through limitation, and in which, therefore, the
whole must precede the parts. The original (ursprüngliche)
time-representation, i.e. the fundamental representation
through limitation of which the parts arise as secondary
products, must be an intuition.
To this argument Kant makes two explanatory additions. (a)
As particular times arise through limitation of one single time,
time must in its original intuition be given as infinite, i.e. as
unlimited. The infinitude of time is not, therefore, as might
seem to be implied by the prominence given to it, and by
analogy with the final arguments of both the first and the
second edition, a part of the proof that it is an intuition, but
only a consequence of the feature by which its intuitive
character is independently established. The unwary reader,
having in mind the corresponding argument on space, is
almost inevitably misled. All reference to infinitude could, so
far as this argument is concerned, have been omitted. The
mode in which the argument opens seems indeed to indicate
that Kant was not himself altogether clear as to the cross-
relations between the arguments on space and time
respectively. The real parallel to this argument is to be found
in the second part of the fourth[1] argument on space. That
part was omitted by Kant in his fourth argument on time, and
is here developed into a separate argument. This is, of course,
a further cause of confusion to the reader, who is not prepared
for such arbitrary rearrangement. Indeed it is not surprising to
find that when Kant became the reader of his own work, in
preparing it for the second edition, he was himself misled by
the intricate perversity of his exposition. In re-reading the
argument he seems to have forgotten that it represents the
second part of the fourth[497] argument on space. Interpreting it
in the light of the fifth[498] argument on space which he had
been recasting for the second edition, it seemed to him
possible, by a slight alteration, to bring this argument on time
into line with that new proof.[499] This unfortunately results in
the perverting of the entire paragraph. The argument demands
an opposition between intuition in which the whole precedes
the parts, and conception in which the parts precede the whole.
In order to bring the opposition into line with the new
argument on space, according to which a conception contains
an infinite number of parts, not in it, but only under it, Kant
substitutes for the previous parenthesis the statement that
“concepts contain only partial representations,” meaning,
apparently, that their constituent elements are merely
abstracted attributes, not real concrete parts, or in other words,
not strictly parts at all, but only partial representations. But
this does not at all agree with the context. The point at issue is
thereby obscured.
(b) The main argument rests upon and presupposes a very
definite view as to the manner in which alone, according to
Kant, concepts are formed. Only if this view be granted as true
of all concepts without exception is the argument cogent. This
doctrine[500] of the concept is accordingly stated by Kant in the
words of the parenthesis. The partial representations, i.e. the
different properties which go to constitute the object or content
conceived, precede the representation of the whole. “The
aggregation of co-ordinate attributes (Merkmale) constitutes
the totality of the concept.”[501] Upon the use which Kant thus
makes of the traditional doctrine of the concept, and upon its
lack of consistency with his recognition of relational
categories, we have already dwelt.[502]
 Third Argument and the Transcendental Exposition.—
The third argument ought to have been omitted in the second
edition, and its substance incorporated in the new
transcendental exposition, as was done with the corresponding
argument concerning space. The excuse which Kant offers for
not making the change, namely, his desire for brevity, is not
valid. By insertion in the new section the whole matter could
have been stated just as briefly as before.
The purpose of the transcendental exposition has been
already defined. It is to show how time, when viewed in the
manner required by the results of the metaphysical deduction,
as an a priori intuition, renders synthetic a priori judgments
possible.
This exposition, as it appears in the third argument of the
first edition, grounds the apodictic character of two axioms in
regard to time[503] on the proved apriority of the representation
of time, and then by implication finds in these axioms a fresh
proof of the apriority of time.
The new transcendental exposition extends the above by
two further statements: (a) that only through the intuition of
time can any conception of change, and therewith of motion
(as change of place), be formed; and (b) that it is because the
intuition of time is an a priori intuition that the synthetic a
priori propositions of the “general doctrine of motion” are
possible. To take each in turn. (a) Save by reference to time
the conception of motion is self-contradictory. It involves the
ascription to one and the same thing of contradictory
predicates, e.g. that an object both is and is not in a certain
place. From this fact, that time makes possible what is not
possible in pure conception, Kant, in his earlier rationalistic
period, had derived a proof of the subjectivity of time.[504] (b)
In 1786 in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural
Science Kant had developed the fundamental principles of the
general science of motion. He takes the opportunity of the
second edition (1787) of the Critique to assign this place to
them in his general system. The implication is that the doctrine
of motion stands to time in the relation in which geometry
stands to space. Kant is probably here replying, as Vaihinger
has suggested,[505] to an objection made by Garve to the first
edition, that no science, corresponding to geometry, is based
on the intuition of time. For two reasons, however, the analogy
between mechanics and geometry breaks down. In the first
place, the conception of motion is empirical; and in the second
place, it presupposes space as well as time.[506]
Kant elsewhere explicitly disavows this view that the
science of motion is based on time. He had already done so in
the preceding year (1786) in the Metaphysical First Principles.
He there points out[507] that as time has only one dimension,
mathematics is not applicable to the phenomena of inner
sense. At most we can determine in regard to them (in
addition, of course, to the two axioms already cited) only the
law that all these changes are continuous. Also in Kant’s
Ueber Philosophie überhaupt (written some time between
1780 and 1790, and very probably in or about the year 1789)
we find the following utterance:
“The general doctrine of time, unlike the pure doctrine of
space (geometry), does not yield sufficient material for a
whole science.”[508]
Why, then, should Kant in 1787 have so inconsistently
departed from his own teaching? This is a question to which I
can find no answer. Apparently without reason, and contrary to
his more abiding judgment, he here repeats the suggestion
which he had casually thrown out in the Dissertation[509] of
1770:
“Pure mathematics treats of space in geometry and of time
in pure mechanics.”
But in the Dissertation the point is only touched upon in
passing. The context permits of the interpretation that while
geometry deals with space, mechanics deals with time in
addition to space.
KANT’S VIEWS REGARDING THE NATURE OF ARITHMETICAL
SCIENCE

In the Dissertation, and again in the chapter on Schematism

in the Critique itself, still another view is suggested, namely,
that the science of arithmetic is also concerned with the
intuition of time. The passage just quoted from the
Dissertation proceeds as follows:
“Pure mathematics treats of space in geometry and of time
in pure mechanics. To these has to be added a certain concept
which is in itself intellectual, but which demands for its
concrete actualisation (actuatio) the auxiliary notions of time
and space (in the successive addition and in the juxtaposition
of a plurality). This is the concept of number which is dealt
with in Arithmetic.”[510]
This view of arithmetic is to be found in both editions of the
Critique. Arithmetic depends upon the synthetic activity of the
understanding; the conceptual element is absolutely essential.
“Our counting (as is easily seen in the case of large
numbers) is a synthesis according to concepts, because it is
executed according to a common ground of unity, as, for
instance, the decade (Dekadik).”[511] “The pure image … of all
objects of the senses in general is time. But the pure schema of
quantity, in so far as it is a concept of the understanding, is
number, a representation which combines the successive
addition of one to one (homogeneous). Thus number is
nothing but the unity of the synthesis of the manifold of a
homogeneous intuition in general, whereby I generate time
itself in the apprehension of the intuition.”[512]
This is also the teaching of the Methodology.[513] Now it
may be observed that in none of these passages is arithmetic
declared to be the science of time, or even to be based on the
intuition of time. In 1783, however, in the Prolegomena, Kant
expresses himself in much more ambiguous terms, for his
words imply that there is a parallelism between geometry and
arithmetic.
“Geometry is based upon the pure intuition of space.
Arithmetic produces its concepts of number through
successive addition of units in time, and pure mechanics
especially can produce its concepts of motion only by means
of the representation of time.”[514]
The passage is by no means explicit; the “especially”
(vornehmlich) seems to indicate a feeling on Kant’s part that
the description which he is giving of arithmetic is not really
satisfactory. Unfortunately this casual statement, though never
repeated by Kant in any of his other writings, was developed
by Schulze in his Erläuterungen.
“Since geometry has space and arithmetic has counting as
its object (and counting can only take place by means of time),
it is evident in what manner geometry and arithmetic, that is to
say pure mathematics, is possible.”[515]
Largely, as it would seem,[516] through Schulze, whose
Erläuterungen did much to spread Kant’s teaching, this view
came to be the current understanding of Kant’s position. The
nature of arithmetic, as thus popularly interpreted, is
expounded by Schopenhauer in the following terms:
“In time every moment is conditioned by the preceding. The
ground of existence, as law of the sequence, is thus simple,
because time has only one dimension, and no manifoldness of
relations can be possible in it. Every moment is conditioned by
the preceding; only through the latter can we attain to the
former; only because the latter was, and has elapsed, does the
former now exist. All counting rests upon this nexus of the
parts of time; its words merely serve to mark the single steps
of the succession. This is true of the whole of arithmetic,
which throughout teaches nothing but the methodical
abbreviations of counting. Every number presupposes the
preceding numbers as grounds of its existence; I can only
reach them through all the preceding, and only by means of
this insight into the ground of its existence do I know that,
where ten are, there are also eight, six, four.”[517]
Schulze was at once challenged to show that this was really
Kant’s teaching, and the passage which he cited was Kant’s
definition of the schema of number, above quoted.[518] It is
therefore advisable that we should briefly discuss the many
difficulties which this passage involves. What does Kant mean
by asserting that in the apprehension of number we generate
time? Does he merely mean that time is required for the
process of counting? Counting is a process through which
numerical relations are discovered; and it undoubtedly
occupies time. But so do all processes of apprehension, in the
study of geometry no less than of arithmetic. That this is not
Kant’s meaning, and that it is not even what Schulze,
notwithstanding his seemingly explicit mode of statement,
intends to assert, is clearly shown by a letter written by Kant to
Schulze in November 1788. Schulze, it appears, had spoken of
this very matter.
“Time, as you justly remark, has no influence upon the
properties of numbers (as pure determinations of quantity),
such as it may have upon the nature of those changes (of
quantity) which are possible only in connection with a specific
property of inner sense and its form (time). The science of
number, notwithstanding the succession which every
construction of quantity demands, is a pure intellectual
synthesis which we represent to ourselves in thought. But so
far as quanta are to be numerically determined, they must be
given to us in such a way that we can apprehend their intuition
in successive order, and such that their apprehension can be
subject to time….”[519]
No more definite statement could be desired of the fact that
though in arithmetical science as in other fields of study our
processes of apprehension are subject to time, the quantitative
relations determined by the science are independent of time
and are intellectually apprehended.
But if the above psychological interpretation of Kant’s
teaching is untenable, how is his position to be defined? We
must bear in mind the doctrine which Kant had already
developed in his pre-Critical period, that mathematical differs
from philosophical knowledge in that its concepts can have
concrete individual form.[520] In the Critique this difference is
expressed in the statement that the mathematical sciences
alone are able to construct their concepts. And as they are pure
mathematical sciences, this construction is supposed to take
place by means of the a priori manifold of space and of time.
Now though Kant had a fairly definite notion of what he meant
by the construction of geometrical figures in space, his various
utterances seem to show that in regard to the nature of
arithmetical and algebraic construction he had never really
attempted to arrive at any precision of view. To judge by the
passage already quoted[521] from the Dissertation, Kant
regarded space as no less necessary than time to the
construction or intuition of number. ”[The intellectual concept
of number] demands for its concrete actualisation the auxiliary
notions of time and space (in the successive addition and in
the juxtaposition of a plurality)” A similar view appears in the
Critique in A 140 = B 179 and in B 15. In conformity,
however, with the general requirements of his doctrine of
Schematism, Kant defines the schema of number in exclusive
reference to time; and, as we have noted, it is to this definition
that Schulze appeals in support of his view of arithmetic as the
science of counting and therefore of time. It at least shows that
Kant perceived some form of connection to exist between
arithmetic and time. But in this matter Kant’s position was
probably simply a corollary from his general view of the
nature of mathematical science, and in particular of his view of
geometry, the “exemplar”[522] of all the others. Mathematical
science, as such, is based on intuition;[523] therefore
arithmetic, which is one of its departments, must be so
likewise. No attempt, however, is made to define the nature of
the intuitions in which it has its source. Sympathetically
interpreted, his statements may be taken as suggesting that
arithmetic is the study of series which find concrete expression
in the order of sequent times. The following estimate, given by
Cassirer,[524] does ample justice both to the true and to the
false elements in Kant’s doctrine.
”[Even discounting Kant’s insistence upon the conceptual
character of arithmetical science, and] allowing that he derives
arithmetical concepts and propositions from the pure intuition
of time, this teaching, to whatever objections it may lie open,
has certainly not the merely psychological meaning which the
majority of its critics have ascribed to it. If it contained only
the trivial thought, that the empirical act of counting requires
time, it would be completely refuted by the familiar objection
which B. Beneke has formulated: ‘The fact that time elapses in
the process of counting can prove nothing; for what is there
over which time does not flow?’ It is easily seen that Kant is
only concerned with the ‘transcendental’ determination of the
concept of time, according to which it appears as the type of
an ordered sequence. William [Rowan] Hamilton, who adopts
Kant’s doctrine, has defined algebra as ‘science of pure time or
order in progression.’ That the whole content of arithmetical
concepts can really be obtained from the fundamental concept
of order in unbroken development, is completely confirmed by
Russell’s exposition. As against the Kantian theory it must, of
course, be emphasised, that it is not the concrete form of time
intuition which constitutes the ground of the concept of
number, but that on the contrary the pure logical concepts of
sequence and of order are already implicitly contained and
embodied in that concrete form.”
Much of the unsatisfactoriness of Kant’s argument is
traceable to his mode of conceiving the “construction”[525] of
mathematical concepts. All concepts, he seems to hold, even
those of geometry and arithmetic, are abstract class concepts—
the concept of triangle representing the properties common to
all triangles, and the concept of seven the properties common
to all groups that are seven. Mathematical concepts differ,
however, from other concepts in that they are capable of a
priori construction, that is, of having their objects represented
in pure intuition. Now this is an extremely unfortunate mode
of statement. It implies that mathematical concepts have a dual
mode of existence, first as abstracted, and secondly as
constructed. Such a position is not tenable. The concept of
seven, in its primary form, is not abstracted from a variety of
particular groups of seven; it is already involved in the
apprehension of each of them as being seven. Nor is it a
concept that is itself constructed. It may perhaps be described
as being the representation of something constructed; but that
something is not itself. It represents the process or method
generative of the complex for which it stands. Thus Kant’s
distinction between the intuitive nature of mathematical
knowledge and the merely discursive character of conceptual
knowledge is at once inspired by the very important distinction
between the product of construction and the product of
abstraction, and yet at the same time is also obscured by the
quite inadequate manner in which that latter distinction has
been formulated. Kant has again adhered to the older logic
even in the very act of revising its conclusions; and in so doing
he has sacrificed the Critical doctrines of the Analytic to the
pre-Critical teaching of the Dissertation and Aesthetic.
Mathematical concepts are of the same general type as the
categories; their primary function is not to clarify intuitions,
but to make them possible. They are derivable from intuition
only in so far as they have contributed to its constitution. If
intuition contains factors additional to the concepts through
which it is interpreted, these factors must remain outside the
realm of mathematical science, until such time as conceptual
analysis has proved itself capable of further extension.
I may now summarise this general discussion. Though Kant
in the first edition of the Critique had spoken of the
mathematical sciences as based upon the intuition of space and
time, he had not, despite his constant tendency to conceive
space and time as parallel forms of existence, based any
separate mathematical discipline upon time. His definition of
number, in the chapter on Schematism, had recognised the
essentially conceptual character of arithmetic, and had
connected it with time only in a quite indirect manner. A
passage in the Prolegomena is the one place in all Kant’s
writings in which he would seem to assert, though in brief and
quite indefinite terms, that arithmetic is related to time as
geometry is related to space. No such view of arithmetic is to
be found in the second edition of the Critique. In the
transcendental exposition of time, added in the second edition,
only pure mechanics is mentioned. This would seem to
indicate that Kant had made the above statement carelessly,
without due thought, and that on further reflection he found
himself unable to stand by it. The omission is the more
significant in that Kant refers to arithmetic in the passages
added in the second edition Introduction. The teaching of these
passages, apart from the asserted necessity of appealing to
fingers or points,[526] harmonises with the view so briefly
outlined in the Analytic. Arithmetic is a conceptual science;
though it finds in ordered sequence its intuitional material, it
cannot be adequately defined as being the science of time.
CONCLUSIONS FROM THE PRECEDING CONCEPTS[527]

These Conclusions do not run parallel with the

corresponding Conclusions in regard to space. In the first
paragraph there are two differences. (a) Kant takes account of
a view not considered under space, viz. that time is a self-
existing substance. He rejects it on a ground which is difficult
to reconcile with his recognition of a manifold of intuition as
well as a manifold of sense, namely that it would then be
something real without being a real object. In A 39 = B 57 and
B 70 Kant describes space and time, so conceived, as
unendliche Undinge. (b) Kant introduces into his first
Conclusion the argument[528] that only by conceiving time as
the form of inner intuition can we justify a priori synthetic
judgments in regard to objects.
Second Paragraph (Conclusion b).—This latter statement
is repeated at the opening of the second Conclusion. The
emphasis is no longer, however, upon the term “form” but
upon the term “inner”; and Kant proceeds to make assertions
which by no means follow from the five arguments, and which
must be counted amongst the most difficult and controversial
tenets of the whole Critique. (a) Time is not a determination of
outer appearances. For it belongs neither to their shape nor to
their position—and prudently at this point the property of
motion is smuggled out of view under cover of an etc. Time
does not determine the relation of appearances to one another,
but only the relation of representations in our inner state.[529]
It is the form only of the intuition of ourselves and of our inner
state.[530] Obviously these are assertions which Kant cannot
possibly hold to in this unqualified form. In the very next
paragraph they are modified and restated. (b) As this inner
intuition supplies no shape (Gestalt), we seek to make good
this deficiency by means of analogies. We represent the time-
sequence through a line progressing to infinity in which the
manifold constitutes a series of only one dimension. From the
properties of this line, with the one exception that its parts are
simultaneous whereas those of time are always successive, we
conclude to all the properties of time.
The wording of the passage seems to imply that such
symbolisation of time through space is helpful but not
indispensably necessary for its apprehension. That it is
indispensably necessary is, however, the view to which Kant
finally settled down.[531] But he has not yet come to clearness
on this point. The passage has all the signs of having been
written prior to the Analytic. Though Kant seems to have held
consistently to the view that time has, in or by itself, only one
dimension,[532] the difficulties involved drove him to
recognise that this is true only of time as the order of our
representations. It is not true of the objective time
apprehended in and through our representations. When later
Kant came to hold that consciousness of time is conditioned
by consciousness of space, he apparently also adopted the
view that, by reference to space, time indirectly acquires
simultaneity as an additional mode. The objective spatial
world is in time, but in a time which shows simultaneity as
well as succession. In the Dissertation[533] Kant had criticised
Leibniz and his followers for neglecting simultaneity, “the
most important consequence of time.”
“Though time has only one dimension, yet the ubiquity of
time (to employ Newton’s term), through which all things
sensuously thinkable are at some time, adds another dimension
to the quantity of actual things, in so far as they hang, as it
were, upon the same point of time. For if we represent time by
a straight line extended to infinity, and simultaneous things at
any point of time by lines successively erected [perpendicular
to the first line], the surface thus generated will represent the
phenomenal world both as to substance and as to accidents.”
Similarly in A 182 = B 226 of the Critique Kant states that
simultaneity is not a mode of time,[534] since none of the parts
of time can be simultaneous, and yet also teaches in A 177 = B
219 that, as the order of appearances, time possesses in
addition to succession the two modes, duration and
simultaneity. The significance of this distinction between time
as the order of our inner states, and time as the order of
objective appearances, we shall consider immediately.
A connected question is as to whether or not Kant teaches
the possibility of simultaneous apprehension. In the Aesthetic
and Dialectic he certainly does so. Space is given as
containing coexisting parts, and[535] can be intuited as such
without successive synthesis of its parts. In the Analytic, on
the other hand, the opposite would seem to be implied.[536]
The apprehension of a manifold can only be obtained through
the successive addition or generation of its parts.
 (c) Lastly, Kant argues that the fact that all the relations of
time can be expressed in an outer intuition is proof that the
representation of time is itself intuition. But surely if, as Kant
later taught, time can be apprehended at all only in and
through space, that, taken alone, would rather be a reason for
denying it to be itself intuition. In any case it is difficult to
follow Kant in his contention that the intuition of time is
similar in general character to that of space.[537]
Third Paragraph (Conclusion c).—Kant now reopens the
question as to the relation in which time stands to outer
appearances. As already noted, he has argued in the beginning
of the previous paragraph that it cannot be a determination of
outer appearances, but only of representations in our inner
state. External appearances, however, as Kant recognises, can
be known only in and through representations. To that extent
they belong to inner sense, and consequently (such is Kant’s
argument) are themselves subject to time. Time, as the
immediate condition of our representations, is also the mediate
condition of appearances. Therefore, Kant concludes, “all
appearances, i.e. all objects of the senses, are in time, and
necessarily stand in time-relations.”
Now quite obviously this argument is invalid if the
distinction between representations and their objects is a real
and genuine one. For if so, it does not at all follow that
because our representations of objects are in time that the
objects themselves are in time. In other words, the argument is
valid only from the standpoint of extreme subjectivism,
according to which objects are, in Kant’s own phraseology,
blosse Vorstellungen. But the argument is employed to
establish a realist conclusion, that outer objects, as objects,
stand in time-relations to one another. In contradiction of the
previous paragraph he is now maintaining that time is a
determination of outer appearances, and that it reveals itself in
the motion of bodies as well as in the flux of our inner states.
The distinction between representations and their objects
also makes it possible for Kant both to assert and to deny that
simultaneity is a mode of time. “No two years can be
coexistent. Time has only one dimension. But existence (das
Dasein), measured through time, has two dimensions,
succession and simultaneity.” There are, for Kant, two orders
of time, subjective and objective. Recognition of the latter
(emphasised and developed in the Analytic)[538] is, however,
irreconcilable with his contention that time is merely the form
of inner sense.
We have here one of the many objections to which Kant’s
doctrine of time lies open. It is the most vulnerable tenet in his
whole system. A mere list of the points which Kant leaves
unsettled suffices to show how greatly he was troubled in his
own mind by the problems to which it gives rise. (1) The
nature of the a priori knowledge which time yields. Kant
ascribes to this source sometimes only the two axioms in
regard to time, sometimes pure mechanics, and sometimes also
arithmetic. (2) Whether time only allows of, or whether it
demands, representation through space. Sometimes Kant
makes the one assertion, sometimes the other. (3) Whether it is
possible to apprehend the coexistent without successive
synthesis of its parts. This possibility is asserted in the
Aesthetic and Dialectic, denied in the Analytic. (4) Whether
simultaneity is a mode of time. (5) Whether, and in what
manner, appearances of outer sense are in time. Kant’s answer
to 4 and to 5 varies according as he identifies or distinguishes
representations and empirical objects.
The manifold difficulties to which a theory of time thus lies
open are probably the reason why Kant, in the Critique,
reverses the order in which he had treated time and space in
the Dissertation.[539] But the placing of space before time is
none the less unfortunate. It greatly tends to conceal from the
reader the central position which Kant has assigned to time in
the Analytic. Consciousness of time is the fundamental fact,
taken as bare fact, by reference to which Kant gains his
transcendental proof of the categories and principles of
understanding.[540] In the Analytic space, by comparison, falls
very much into the background. A further reason for the
reversal may have been Kant’s Newtonian view of geometry
as the mathematical science par excellence.[541] In view of his
formulation of the Critical problem as that of accounting for
synthetic a priori judgments, he would then naturally be led to
throw more emphasis on space.
 To sum up our main conclusions. Kant’s view of time as a
form merely of inner sense, and as having only one dimension,
connects with his subjectivism. His view of it as inhering in
objects, and as having duration and simultaneity as two of its
modes, is bound up with his phenomenalism. Further
discussion of these difficulties must therefore be deferred until
we are in a position to raise the more fundamental problem as
to the nature of the distinction between a representation and its
object.[542] Motion is not an inner state. Yet it involves time as
directly as does the flow of our feelings and ideas. Kant’s
assertion that “time can no more be intuited externally than
space can be intuited as something in us,”[543] if taken quite
literally, would involve both the subjectivist assertion that
motion of bodies is non-existent, and also the phenomenalist
contention that an extended object is altogether distinct from a
representation.
The fourth and fifth paragraphs call for no detailed analysis.
[544]Time is empirically real, transcendentally ideal—these
terms having exactly the same meaning and scope as in
reference to space.[545] The fourth sentence in the fifth
paragraph is curiously inaccurate. As it stands, it would imply
that time is given through the senses. In the concluding
sentences Kant briefly summarises and applies the points
raised in these fourth and fifth paragraphs.
ELUCIDATION

First and Second Paragraphs.—Kant here replies to a

criticism which, as he tells us in his letter of 1772 to Herz, was
first made by Pastor Schulze and by Lambert.[546] In that letter
the objection and Kant’s reply are stated as follows.
 “In accordance with the testimony of inner sense, changes
are something real. But they are only possible on the
assumption of time. Time is, therefore, something real which
belongs to the determinations of things in themselves. Why,
said I to myself, do we not argue in a parallel manner: ‘Bodies
are real, in accordance with the outer senses. But bodies are
possible only under the condition of space. Space is, therefore,
something objective and real which inheres in the things
themselves.’ The cause [of this differential treatment of space
and of time] is the observation that in respect to outer things
we cannot infer from the reality of representations the reality
of their objects, whereas in inner sense the thought or the
existing of the thought and of myself are one and the same.
Herein lies the key to the difficulty. Undoubtedly I must think
my own state under the form of time, and the form of the inner
sensibility consequently gives me the appearance of changes.
Now I do not deny that changes are something real any more
than I deny that bodies are something real, but I thereby mean
only that something real corresponds to the appearance. I may
not even say the inner appearance undergoes change
(verändere sich), for how could I observe this change unless it
appeared to my inner sense? To the objection that this leads to
the conclusion that all things in the world objectively and in
themselves are unchangeable, I would reply that they are
neither changeable nor unchangeable. As Baumgarten states
in § 18 of his Metaphysica, the absolutely impossible is
hypothetically neither possible nor impossible, since it cannot
be mentally entertained under any condition whatsoever; so in
similar manner the things of the world are objectively or in
themselves neither in one and the same state nor in different
states at different times, for thus understood [viz. as things in
themselves] they are not represented in time at all.”[547]
Thus Kant’s contention, both in this letter and in the passage
before us, is that even our inner states would not reveal change
if they could be apprehended by us or by some other being
apart from the subjective form of our inner sense. We may not
say that our inner states undergo change, or that they succeed
one another, but only that to us they necessarily appear as so
doing.[548] Time is no more than subjectively real.[549] As
Körner writes to Schiller: “Without time man would indeed
exist but not appear. Not his reality but only his appearance is
dependent upon the condition of time.” “Man is not, but only
appears, when he undergoes change.”[550] The objects of inner
sense stand in exactly the same position as those of outer
sense. Both are appearances, and neither can be identified with
the absolutely real. As Kant argues later in the Critique,[551]
inner processes are not known with any greater certainty or
immediacy than are outer objects; the reality of time as
subjective proves its unreality in relation to things in
themselves. The statement that the constitution of things in
themselves is “problematic” is an exceptional mode of
expression for Kant. Usually—as indeed throughout the whole
context of this passage[552]—he asserts that though things in
themselves are unknowable, we can with absolute certainty
maintain that they are neither in space nor in time. Upon this
point we have already dwelt in discussing Trendelenburg’s
controversy with Fischer.[553]
Third Paragraph.—The third and fourth paragraphs of this
section ought to have had a separate heading. They summarise
the total argument of the Aesthetic in regard to space as well as
time, distinguish its tenets from those of Newton and of
Leibniz, and draw a general conclusion. The summary follows
the strict synthetic method. The opening sentences illustrate
Kant’s failure to distinguish between the problems of pure and
of applied mathematics, and also show how completely he
tends to conceive mathematics as typified by geometry. The
criticism of alternative views traverses the ground of the
famous controversy between Leibniz and Clarke. Their
Streitschriften were, as we have good circumstantial grounds
for believing,[554] a chief influence in the development of
Kant’s own views. Kant, who originally held the Leibnizian
position, was by 1768[555] more or less converted to the
Newtonian teaching, and in the Dissertation of 1770
developed his subjectivist standpoint with the conscious
intention of retaining the advantages while remedying the
defects of both alternatives.[556] For convenience we may limit
the discussion to space. (a) The view propounded by Newton,
and defended by Clarke, is that space has an existence in and
by itself, independent alike of the mind which apprehends it
and of the objects with which it is filled. (b) The view held by
Leibniz is that space is an empirical concept abstracted from
our confused sense-experience of the relations of real things.
[557]

The criticism of (a) is twofold. First, it involves belief in an

eternal and infinite Unding. Secondly, it leads to metaphysical
difficulties, especially in regard to the existence of God. If
space is absolutely real, how is it to be reconciled with the
omnipresence of God? Newton’s view of space as the
sensorium Dei can hardly be regarded as satisfactory.
The objection to (b) is that it cannot account for the
apodictic certainty of geometry, nor guarantee its application
to experience. The concept of space, when regarded as of
sensuous origin, is something that may distort (and according
to the Leibnizian teaching does actually distort) what it
professes to represent, and is something from which
restrictions that hold in the natural world have been omitted.
[558] As empirical, it cannot serve as basis for the universal and
necessary judgments of mathematical science.[559]
The first view has, however, the advantage of keeping the
sphere of appearances open for mathematical science. As
space is infinite and all-comprehensive, its laws hold
universally. The second view has the advantage of not
subjecting reality to space conditions. These advantages are
retained, while the objections are removed, by the teaching of
the Aesthetic.
Kant further criticises the former view in A 46 ff. = B 64 ff.
There is no possibility of accounting for the a priori synthetic
judgments of geometry save by assuming that space is the pure
form of outer intuition. For though the Newtonian view will
justify the assertion that the laws of space hold universally, it
cannot explain how we come to know them a priori. And
assuming, as Kant constantly does, that space cannot be both
an a priori form of intuition and also independently real, he
concludes that it is the former only.
In B 71 Kant also restates the metaphysical difficulties to
which the Newtonian view lies open. In natural theology we
deal with an existence which can never be the object of
sensuous intuition, and which has to be freed from all
conditions of space and time. This is impossible if space is so
absolutely real that it would remain though all created things
were annihilated.
Fourth Paragraph.—Space and time are the only two
forms of sensibility; all other concepts belonging to the senses,
such as motion and change, are empirical.[560] As Kant has
himself stated, no reason can be given why space and time are
the sole forms of our possible intuition:
“Other forms of intuition than space and time, … even if
they were possible, we cannot render in any way conceivable
and comprehensible to ourselves, and even assuming that we
could do so, they still would not belong to experience, the only
kind of knowledge in which objects are given to us.”[561]
The further statement,[562] frequently repeated in the
Critique, that time itself does not change, but only what is in
time,[563] indicates the extent to which Kant has been
influenced by the Newtonian receptacle view. As Bergson very
justly points out, time, thus viewed as a homogeneous
medium, is really being conceived on the analogy of space. “It
is merely the phantom of space obsessing the reflective
consciousness.”[564]
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC

I. First Paragraph.—“To avoid all misapprehension” Kant

proceeds to state “as clearly as possible” his view of sensuous
knowledge. With this end in view he sets himself to enforce
two main points: (a) that as space and time are only forms of
sensibility, everything apprehended is only appearance; (b)
that this is not a mere hypothesis but is completely certain.
Kant expounds (a) indirectly through criticism of the opposing
views of Leibniz and of Locke. But before doing so he makes
in the next paragraph a twofold statement of his own
conclusions.
Second Paragraph.—This paragraph states (a) that through
intuition we can represent only appearances, not things in
themselves, and (b) that the appearances thus known exist only
in us. Both assertions have implications, the discussion of
which must be deferred to the Analytic. The mention of the
“relations of things by themselves” may, as Vaihinger
suggests,[565] be a survival from the time when (as in the
Dissertation[566]) Kant sought to reduce spatial to dynamical
relations. The assertion that things in themselves are
completely unknown to us goes beyond what the Aesthetic can
establish and what Kant here requires to prove. His present
thesis is only that no knowledge of things in themselves can be
acquired either through the forms of space and time or through
sensation; space and time are determined solely by our pure
sensibility, and sensations by our empirical sensibility. Failure
to recognise this is, in Kant’s view, one of the chief defects of
the Leibnizian system.
Third and Fourth Paragraphs. Criticism of the Leibniz-
Wolff Interpretation of Sensibility and of Appearance.—
Leibniz vitiates both conceptions. Sensibility does not differ
from thought in clearness but in content. It is a difference of
kind.[567] They originate in different sources, and neither can
by any transformation be reduced to the other.
“Even if an appearance could become completely
transparent to us, such knowledge would remain toto coelo
different from knowledge of the object in itself.”[568] “Through
observation and analysis of appearances we penetrate to the
secrets of nature, and no one can say how far this may in time
extend…. [But however far we advance, we shall never be
able by means of] so ill-adapted an instrument of investigation
[as our sensibility] to find anything except still other
appearances, the non-sensuous cause of which we yet long to
discover.”[569]
We should still know only in terms of the two inalienable
forms of our sensibility.[570] The dualism of thought and sense
can never be transcended by the human mind. By no extension
of its sphere or perfecting of its insight can sensuous
knowledge be transformed into a conceptual apprehension of
purely intelligible entities.
Leibniz’s conception of appearances as things in themselves
confusedly apprehended is equally false, and for the same
reasons.[571] Appearance and reality are related as distinct
existences, each of which has its own intrinsic character and
content. Through the former there can be no hope of
penetrating to the latter. Appearance is subjective in matter as
well as in form. For Leibniz our knowledge of appearances is
a confused knowledge of things in themselves. Properly
viewed, it is the apprehension, whether distinct or confused, of
objects which are never things in themselves. Sense-
knowledge, such as we obtain in the science of geometry, has
often the highest degree of clearness. Conceptual apprehension
is all too frequently characterised by obscurity and
indistinctness.
This criticism of Leibniz, as expounded in these two
paragraphs, is thoroughly misleading if taken as an adequate
statement of Kant’s view of the relations between sense and
understanding, appearance and reality. These paragraphs are
really a restatement of a passage in the Dissertation.
“It will thus be seen that we express the nature of the
sensuous very inappropriately when we assert that it is the
more confusedly known, and the nature of the intellectual
when we describe it as the distinctly known. For these are
merely logical distinctions, and obviously have nothing to do
with the given facts which underlie all logical comparison.
The sensuous may be absolutely distinct, and the intellectual
extremely confused. That is shown on the one hand in
geometry, the prototype of sensuous knowledge, and on the
other in metaphysics, the instrument of all intellectual enquiry.
Every one knows how zealously metaphysics has striven to
dispel the mists of confusion which cloud the minds of men at
large and yet has not always attained the happy results of the
former science. Nevertheless each of these kinds of knowledge
preserves the mark of the stock from which it has sprung. The
former, however distinct, is on account of its origin entitled
sensuous, while the latter, however confused, remains
intellectual—as e.g. the moral concepts, which are known not
by way of experience, but through the pure intellect itself. I
fear, however, that Wolff by this distinction between the
sensuous and the intellectual, which for him is merely logical,
has checked, perhaps wholly (to the great detriment of
philosophy), that noblest enterprise of antiquity, the
investigation of the nature of phenomena and noumena,
turning men’s minds from such enquiries to what are very
frequently only logical subleties.”[572]
The paragraphs before us give expression only to what is
common to the Dissertation and to the Critique, and do so
entirely from the standpoint of the Dissertation. Thus the
illustration of the conception of “right” implies that things in
themselves can be known through the understanding. The
conception, as Kant says, represents “a moral property which
belongs to actions in and by themselves.” Similarly, in
distinguishing the sensuous from “the intellectual,” he says
that through the former we do not apprehend things in
themselves, thus implying that things in themselves can be
known through the pure intellect. The view developed in the
Analytic, alike of sensibility and of appearance, is radically
different. Sensibility and understanding may have a common
source; and both are indispensably necessary for the
apprehension of appearance. Neither can function save in co-
operation with the other. Appearance does not differ from
reality solely through its sensuous content and form, but also
in the intellectual order or dispensation to which it is subject.
But in the very act of thus deepening the gulf between
appearance and reality by counting even understanding as
contributing to the knowledge only of the former, he was
brought back to a position that has kinship with the Leibnizian
view of their interrelation. Since understanding is just as
essential as sensibility to the apprehension of appearances, and
since understanding differs from sensibility in the universality
of its range, it enables us to view appearances in their relation
to ultimate reality, and so to apprehend them as being,
however subjective or phenomenal, ways in which the thing in
itself presents itself to us. Such a view is, however, on Kant’s
principles, quite consistent with the further contention, that
appearance does not differ from reality in a merely logical
manner. Factors that are peculiar to the realm of appearance
have intervened to transform the real; and in consequence even
completed knowledge of the phenomenal—if such can be
conceived as possible—would not be equivalent to knowledge
of things in themselves.
 Fifth Paragraph. Criticism of Locke’s View of
Appearance.—This paragraph discusses Locke’s doctrine[573]
that the secondary qualities are subjective, and that in the
primary qualities we possess true knowledge of things in
themselves. The distinction is drawn upon empirical grounds,
namely, that while certain qualities are uniform for more than
one sense, and belong to objects under all conditions, others
are peculiar to the different senses, and arise only through the
accidental relation of objects to the special senses.[574] This
distinction is, Kant says, entirely justified from the physical
standpoint.[575] A rainbow is an appearance of which the
raindrops constitute the true empirical reality. But Locke and
his followers interpret this distinction wrongly. They ignore
the more fundamental transcendental (i.e. metaphysical)
distinction between empirical reality and the thing in itself.
From the transcendental standpoint the raindrops are
themselves merely appearance. Even their round shape, and
the very space in which they fall; are only modifications of our
sensuous intuition. The ‘transcendental object’[576] remains
unknown to us.
When Kant thus declares that the distinction between
primary and secondary qualities is justified (richtig) from the
physical standpoint, he is again[577] speaking from a
phenomenalist point of view. And it may be noted that in
developing his transcendental distinction he does not describe
the raindrops as mere representations. His phrase is much
more indefinite. They are “modifications or fundamental
forms (Grundlagen) of our sensuous intuition.”
Kant does not here criticise the view of sensibility which
underlies Locke’s view of appearance. But he does so in A 271
= B 327, completing the parallel and contrast between Leibniz
and Locke.
“Leibniz intellectualised appearances, just as Locke,
according to his system of noogony (if I may be allowed these
expressions), sensualised all concepts of the understanding,
i.e. interpreted them as simply empirical or abstracted
concepts of reflection. Instead of interpreting understanding
and sensibility as two quite different sources of
representations, which yet can supply objectively valid
judgments of things only in conjunction with each other, each
of these great men holds only to one of the two, viewing it as
in immediate relation to things in themselves. The other
faculty is regarded as serving only to confuse or to order the
representations which this selected faculty yields.”[578]
Proof that the above View of Space and Time is not a
mere Hypothesis, but completely certain.[579]—The proof,
which as here recapitulated and developed follows the analytic
method, has already been considered in connection with A 39
= B 56. It proceeds upon the assumption that space cannot be
both an a priori form of intuition and also independently real.
The argument as a whole lacks clearness owing to Kant’s
failure to distinguish between the problems of pure and
applied geometry, between pure intuition and form of
intuition. This is especially obvious in the very unfortunate
and misleading second application of the triangle illustration.
[580] Kant’s tendency to conceive mathematical science almost
exclusively in terms of geometry is likewise illustrated.
“There is in regard to both [space and time] a large number
of a priori apodictic and synthetic propositions. This is
especially true of space, which for this reason will be our chief
illustration in this enquiry.”[581]
II. Paragraphs added in the Second Edition.[582]—Kant
proceeds to offer further proof of the ideality of the
appearances (a) of outer and (b) of inner sense. Such proof he
finds in the fact that these appearances consist solely of
relations. (a) Outer appearances reduce without remainder to
relations of position in intuition (i.e. of extension), of change
of position (motion), and to the laws which express in merely
relational terms the motive forces by which such change is
determined. What it is that is thus present in space, or what the
dynamic agencies may be to which the motion is due, is never
revealed. But a real existent (Sache an sich) can never be
known through mere relations. Outer sense consequently
reveals through its representations only the relation of an
object to the subject, not the intrinsic inner nature of the object
in itself (Object an sich). Kant’s avoidance of the term Ding
an sich may be noted.[583]
 (b) The same holds true of inner sense, not only because the
representations of outer sense constitute its proper
(eigentlichen) material, but also because time, in which these
are set, contains only relations of succession, coexistence, and
duration. This time (which as consisting only of relations can
be nothing but a form[584]) is itself, in turn, a mere relation. It
is only the manner in which through its own activity the mind
is affected by itself. But in order to be affected by itself it must
have receptivity, in other words, sensibility. Time,
consequently, must be regarded as the form of this inner sense.
That everything represented in time, like that which is
represented in space, consists solely of relations, Kant does
not, however, attempt to prove. He is satisfied with repeating
the conclusion reached in the first edition of the Aesthetic,
that, as time is the object of a sense, it must of necessity be
appearance. This, like everything which Kant wrote upon
inner sense, is profoundly unsatisfactory. The obscurities of
his argument are not to be excused on the ground that “the
difficulty, how a subject can have an internal intuition of itself,
is common to every theory.” For no great thinker,[585] except
Locke, has attempted to interpret inner consciousness on the
analogy of the senses. Discussion of the doctrine must
meantime be deferred.[586]
III. B 69.—Kant here formulates the important distinction
between appearance (Erscheinung) and illusion (Schein). The
main text is clear so far as it goes; but the appended note is
thoroughly confused. Together they contain no less than three
distinct and conflicting views of illusion.[587] According to the
main text, Schein signifies a representation, such as may occur
in a dream, to which nothing real corresponds. Erscheinung,
on the other hand, is always the appearance of a given object;
but since the qualities of that object depend solely on our
mode of intuition, we have to distinguish the object as
appearance from the object as thing in itself.
”[Every appearance] has two sides, the one by which the
object is viewed in and by itself, … the other by which the
form of the intuition of the object is taken into account….”[588]
 Obviously, when illusion is defined in the above manner,
the assertion that objects in space are mere appearances cannot
be taken as meaning that they are illusory.
But this view of illusion is peculiar to the passage before us
and to A 38 = B 55. It occurs nowhere else, either in the
Critique or in the Prolegomena; and it is not, as Kant has
himself admitted,[589] really relevant to the purposes of the
Critique. The issues are more adequately faced in the
appended note, which, however, at the same time, shows very
clearly that Kant has not yet properly disentangled their
various strands. The above definition of appearance is too
wide. It covers illusory sense perception as well as appearance
proper. The further qualification must be added, that the
predicates of appearance are constant and are inseparable from
its representation. Thus the space predicates can be asserted of
any external object. Redness and scent can be ascribed to the
rose. All of these are genuine appearances. If, on the other
hand, the two handles, as observed by Galileo, are attributed to
Saturn, roundness to a distant square tower, bentness to a
straight stick inserted in water, the result is mere illusion. The
predicates, in such cases, do not stand the test of further
observation or of the employment of other senses. Only in a
certain position of its rings, relatively to the observer, does
Saturn seem (scheint) to have two handles. The distant tower
only seems to be round. The stick only seems to be bent. But
the rose is extended and is red. Obviously Kant is no longer
viewing Schein as equivalent to a merely mental image. It now
receives a second meaning. It is illusion in the modern,
psychological sense. It signifies an abnormal perception of an
actually present object. The distinction between appearance
and illusion is now reduced to a merely relative difference in
constancy and universality of appearance. Saturn necessarily
appears to Galileo as possessing two handles. A square tower
viewed from the distance cannot appear to the human eye
otherwise than round. A stick inserted in water must appear
bent. If, however, Saturn be viewed under more favourable
conditions, if the distance from the tower be diminished, if the
stick be removed from the water, the empirical object will
appear in a manner more in harmony with the possible or
actual experiences of touch. The distinction is practical, rather
than theoretical, in its justification. It says only that certain
sets of conditions may be expected to remain uniform; those,
for instance, physical, physiological, and psychical, which
cause a rose to appear red. Other sets of conditions, such as
those which cause the stick to appear bent, are exceptional,
and for that reason the bentness may be discounted as illusion.
Among the relatively constant are the space and time
properties of bodies. To employ the terms of the main text, it is
not only by illusion that bodies seem to exist outside me; they
actually are there.
So long as we keep to the sphere of ordinary experience,
and require no greater exactitude than practical life demands,
this distinction is, of course, both important and valid. But
Kant, by his references to Saturn, raises considerations which,
if faced, must complicate the problem and place it upon an
entirely different plane. If, in view of scientific requirements,
the conditions of observation are more rigorously formulated,
and if by artificial instruments of scientific precision we
modify the perceptions of our human senses, what before was
ranked as appearance becomes illusion; and no limit can be set
to the transformations which even our most normal human
experiences may thus be made to undergo. Even the most
constant perceptions then yield to variation. The most that can
be asserted is that throughout all change in the conditions of
observation objects still continue to possess, in however new
and revolutionary a fashion, some kind of space and time
predicates. The application of this more rigorous scientific
standard of appearance thus leads to a fourfold distinction
between ultimate reality, scientific appearances, the
appearances of ordinary consciousness, and the illusions of
ordinary consciousness. The appearances of practical life are
the illusions of science, and the appearances of science would
similarly be illusions to any being who through ‘intuitive
understanding’ could apprehend things in themselves.
But if the distinction between appearance and illusion is
thus merely relative to the varying nature of the conditions
under which observation takes place, it can afford no sufficient
answer to the criticisms which Kant is here professing to meet.
Kant has in view those critics (such as Lambert, Mendelssohn,
and Garve) who had objected that if bodies in space are
representations existing, as he so often asserts, only “within
us,” their appearing to exist “outside us” is a complete illusion.
These critics have, indeed, found a vulnerable point in Kant’s
teaching. The only way in which he can effectively meet it is
by frank recognition and development of the phenomenalism
with which his subjectivism comes into so frequent conflict.
[590] That certain perceptions are more constant than others
does not prove that all alike may not be classed as illusory.
The criticism concerns only the reality of extended objects.
From Kant’s own extreme subjectivist position they are
illusions of the most thoroughgoing kind. If, as Kant so
frequently maintains, objects are representations and exist only
“within us,” their existence “outside us” must be denied. The
criticism can be met only if Kant is prepared consistently to
formulate and defend his own alternative teaching, that
sensations arise through the action of external objects upon the
sense-organs, and that the world of physical science has
consequently a reality not reducible to mere representations in
the individual mind.
It may be objected that Kant has in the main text cited one
essential difference between his position and that which is
being ascribed to him. Extended objects, though mere
representations, are yet due to, and conditioned by, things in
themselves. They are illusory only in regard to their properties,
not in regard to their existence. But this distinction is not
really relevant. The criticism, as just stated, is directed only
against Kant’s view of space. The fact that the spatial world is
a grounded and necessary illusion is not strictly relevant to the
matter in dispute. Kant has, indeed, elsewhere, himself
admitted the justice of the criticism. In A 780 = B 808 he cites
as a possible hypothesis, entirely in harmony with his main
results, though not in any degree established by them, the view
“that this life is an appearance only, that is, a sensuous
representation of purely spiritual life, and that the whole
sensible world is a mere image (ein blosses Bild) which hovers
before our present mode of knowledge, and like a dream has in
itself no objective reality.”
 Kant’s reply is thus really only verbal. He claims that
illusion, if constant, has earned the right to be called
appearance. He accepts the criticism, but restates it in his own
terms. The underlying phenomenalism which colours the
position in his own thoughts, and for which he has not been
able to find any quite satisfactory formulation, is the sole
possible justification, if any such exists, for his contention that
the criticism does not apply. Such phenomenalism crops out in
the sentence, already partially quoted:
“If I assert that the quality of space and time, according to
which, as a condition of their existence, I posit both external
objects and my own soul, lies in my mode of intuition and not
in these objects in themselves, I am not saying that only by
illusion do bodies seem to exist outside me or my soul to be
given in my self-consciousness.”[591]
But, so far, I have simplified Kant’s argument by leaving
out of account a third and entirely different view of illusion
which is likewise formulated in the appended note. In the
middle of the second sentence, and in the last sentence,
illusion is defined as the attribution to the thing in itself of
what belongs to it only in its relation to the senses. Illusion lies
not in the object apprehended, but only in the judgment which
we pass upon it. It is due, not to sense, but to understanding.
[592] Viewing illusion in this way, Kant is enabled to maintain
that his critics are guilty of “an unpardonable and almost
intentional misconception,”[593] since this is the very fallacy
which he himself has been most concerned to attack. As he has
constantly insisted, appearance is appearance just because it
can never be a revelation of the thing in itself.
Now the introduction of this third view reduces the
argument of the appended note to complete confusion. Its first
occurrence as a parenthesis in a sentence which is stating an
opposed view would seem to indicate that the note has been
carelessly recast. Originally containing only a statement of the
second view, Kant has connected therewith the view which he
had already formulated in the first edition and in the
Prolegomena. But the two views cannot be combined. By the
former definition, illusion is necessitated but abnormal
perception; according to the latter, it is a preventable error of
our conscious judgment. The opposite of illusion is in the one
case appearance, in the other truth. The retention of the
reference to Saturn, in the statement of the third view at the
end of the note, is further evidence of hasty recasting. While
the rose and the extended objects are there treated as also
things in themselves, Saturn is taken only in its phenomenal
existence. In view of the general confusion, it is a minor
inconsistency that Kant should here maintain, in direct
opposition to A 28-9, that secondary qualities can be attributed
to the empirical object.
This passage from the second edition is a development of
Prolegomena, § 13, iii. Kant there employs the term
appearance in a quite indefinite manner. For the most part he
seems to mean by it any and every sense-experience, whether
normal or abnormal, and even to include under it dream
images. But it is also employed in the second of the above
meanings, as signifying those sense-perceptions which
harmonise with general experience. Illusion is throughout
employed in the third of the above meanings. Kant’s
illustration, that of the apparently retrograde movements of the
planets, necessitates a distinction between apparent and real
motion in space, and consequently leads to the fruitful
distinction noted above. Kant gives, however, no sign that he
is conscious of the complicated problems involved.
In the interval between the Prolegomena (1783) and the
second edition of the Critique (1787) Mendelssohn had
published (1785) his Morgenstunden. In its introduction,
entitled Vorerkenntniss von Wahrheit, Schein und Irrthum,[594]
he very carefully distinguishes between illusion
(Sinnenschein) and error of judgment (Irrthum). This
introduction Kant had read. In a letter to Schütz[595] he cites it
by title, and praises it as “acute, original, and of exemplary
clearness.” It is therefore the more inexcusable that he should
again in the second edition of the Critique have confused these
two so radically different meanings of the term Schein.
Mendelssohn, however, drew no distinction between Schein
and Erscheinung. They were then used as practically
synonymous,[596] though of course Schein was the stronger
term. Kant seems to have been the first to distinguish them
sharply and to attempt to define the one in opposition to the
other. But the very fact that Erscheinung and Schein were
currently employed as equivalent terms, and that the
distinction, though one of his own drawing, had been
mentioned only in the most cursory manner in the first edition
of the Critique,[597] removes all justification for his retort upon
his critics of “unpardonable misconception.” His anger was
really due, not to the objection in itself, but to the implied
comparison of his position to that of Berkeley. Such
comparison never failed to arouse Kant’s wrath. For however
much this accusation might be justified by his own frequent
lapses into subjectivism of the most extreme type, even its
partial truth was more than he was willing to admit. Berkeley
represents in his eyes, not merely a subjectivist interpretation
of the outer world, but the almost diametrical opposite of
everything for which he himself stood. Discussion of Kant’s
relation to Berkeley had best, however, be introduced through
consideration of the passage immediately following in which
Kant refers to Berkeley by name.
III. (Second Part) B 70.—Kant urges that his doctrine of
the ideality of space and time, so far from reducing objects to
mere illusion, is the sole means of defending their genuine
reality. If space and time had an independent existence, they
would have to be regarded as more real than the bodies which
occupy them. For on this view space and time would continue
to exist even if all their contents were removed; they would be
antecedent necessary conditions of all other existences. But
space and time thus interpreted are impossible conceptions.
[598] The reality of bodies is thereby made to depend upon
Undinge. If this were the sole alternative, “the good Bishop
Berkeley [could] not be blamed for degrading bodies to mere
illusion.” We should, Kant maintains, have to proceed still
further, denying even our own existence. For had Berkeley
taken account of time as well as of space, a similar argument,
consistently developed in regard to time, would have
constrained him to reduce the self to the level of mere illusion.
Belief in the reality of things in themselves, whether spiritual
or material, is defensible only if space and time be viewed as
subjective. In other words, Berkeley’s idealism is an inevitable
consequence of a realist view of space. But it is also its
reductio ad absurdum.
[“Berkeley in his dogmatic idealism] maintains that space,
with all the things of which it is the inseparable condition, is
something impossible in itself, and he therefore regards the
things in space as merely imaginary entities (Einbildungen).
Dogmatic idealism is inevitable if space be interpreted as a
property which belongs to things in themselves. For, when so
regarded, space, and everything to which it serves as
condition, is a non-entity (Unding). The ground upon which
this idealism rests we have removed in the Transcendental
Aesthetic.”[599]
The term Schein is not employed throughout this passage in
either of the two meanings of the appended note, but in that of
the main text. It signifies a representation, to which no
existence corresponds.
KANT’S RELATION TO BERKELEY

By idealism[600] Kant means any and every system which

maintains that the sensible world does not exist in the form in
which it presents itself to us. The position is typified in Kant’s
mind by the Eleatics, by Plato, and by Descartes, all of whom
are rationalists. With the denial of reality to sense-appearances
they combine a belief in the possibility of rationally
comprehending its supersensible basis. Failing to appreciate
the true nature of the sensible, they misunderstand the
character of geometrical science, and falsely ascribe to pure
understanding a power of intellectual intuition. Kant’s
criticisms of Berkeley show very clearly that it is this more
general position which he has chiefly in view. To Berkeley
Kant objects that only in sense-experience is there truth, that it
is sensibility, not understanding, which possesses the power of
a priori intuition, and that through pure understanding, acting
in independence of sensibility, no knowledge of any kind can
be acquired. In other words, Kant classes Berkeley with the
rationalists. And, as we have already seen, he even goes the
length of regarding Berkeley’s position as the reductio ad
absurdum of the realist view of space. Kant does, indeed,
recognise[601] that Berkeley differs from the other idealists, in
holding an empirical view of space, and consequently of
geometry, but this does not prevent Kant from maintaining that
Berkeley’s thinking is influenced by certain fundamental
implications of the realist position. Berkeley’s insight—such
would seem to be Kant’s line of argument—is perverted by the
very view which he is attacking. Berkeley appreciates only
what is false in the Cartesian view of space; he is blind to the
important element of truth which it contains. Empiricist
though he be, he has no wider conception of the function and
powers of sensibility than have the realists from whom he
separates himself off; and in order to comprehend those
existences to which alone he is willing to allow true reality, he
has therefore, like the rationalists, to fall back upon pure
reason.[602]
That Kant’s criticism of Berkeley should be extremely
external is not, therefore, surprising. He is interested in
Berkeley’s positive teaching only in so far as it enables him to
illustrate the evil tendencies of a mistaken idealism, which
starts from a false view of the functions of sensibility and of
understanding, and of the nature of space and time. The key to
the true idealism lies, he claims, in the Critical problem, how a
priori synthetic judgments can be possible. This is the
fundamental problem of metaphysics, and until it has been
formulated and answered no advance can be made.
“My so-called (Critical) idealism is thus quite peculiar in
that it overthrows ordinary idealism, and that through it alone
a priori cognition, even that of geometry, attains objective
reality, a thing which even the keenest realist could not assert
till I had proved the ideality of space and time.”[603]
In order to make Kant’s account of Berkeley’s teaching
really comprehensible, we seem compelled to assume that he
had never himself actually read any of Berkeley’s own
writings. Kant’s acquaintance with the English language was
most imperfect, and we have no evidence that he had ever read
a single English book.[604] When he quotes Pope and Addison,
he does so from German translations.[605] Subsequent to 1781
he could, indeed, have had access to Berkeley’s Dialogues
between Hylas and Philonous[606] in a German translation; but
in view of the account which he continues to give of
Berkeley’s teaching, it does not seem likely[607] that he had
availed himself of this opportunity. As to what the indirect
sources of Kant’s knowledge of Berkeley may have been, we
cannot decide with any certainty, but amongst them must
undoubtedly be reckoned Hume’s statements in regard to
Berkeley in the Enquiry,[608] and very probably also the
references to Berkeley in Beattie’s Nature of Truth.[609] From
the former Kant would learn of Berkeley’s empirical view of
space and also of the sceptical tendencies of his idealist
teaching. From it he might also very naturally infer that
Berkeley denies all reality to objects. By Beattie Kant would
be confirmed in this latter view, and also in his contention that
Berkeley is unable to supply a criterion for distinguishing
between reality and dreams. Kant may also have received
some impressions regarding Berkeley from Hamann.
To take Kant’s criticisms of Berkeley more in detail. In the
first edition of the Critique[610] Kant passes two criticisms,
without, however, mentioning Berkeley by name: first, that he
overlooks the problem of time, and, like Descartes, ascribes
complete reality to the objects of inner sense. This is the cause
of a second error, namely, that he views the objects of outer
sense as mere illusion (blosser Schein). Proceeding, Kant
argues that inner and outer sense are really in the same
position. Though they yield only appearances, these
appearances are conditioned by things in themselves. Through
this relation to things in themselves they are distinguished
from all merely subjective images. Berkeley is again referred
to in the fourth Paralogism.[611] His idealism is distinguished
from that of Descartes. The one is dogmatic; the other is
sceptical. The one denies the existence of matter; the other
only doubts whether it is possible to prove it. Berkeley claims,
indeed, that there are contradictions in the very conception of
matter; and Kant remarks that this is an objection which he
will have to deal with in the section on the Antinomies. But
this promise Kant does not fulfil; and doubtless for the reason
that, however unwilling he may be to make the admission, on
this point his own teaching, especially in the Dialectic,
frequently coincides with that of Berkeley. So little, indeed, is
Kant concerned in the first edition to defend his position
against the accusation of subjectivism, that in this same
section he praises the sceptical idealist as a “benefactor of
human reason.”
“He compels us, even in the smallest advances of ordinary
experience, to keep on the watch, lest we consider as a well-
earned possession what we perhaps obtain only in an
illegitimate manner. We are now in a position to appreciate the
value of the objections of the idealist. They drive us by main
force, unless we mean to contradict ourselves in our
commonest assertions, to view all our perceptions, whether we
call them inner or outer, as a consciousness only of what is
dependent on our sensibility. They also compel us to regard
the outer objects of these perceptions not as things in
themselves, but only as representations, of which, as of every
other representation, we can become immediately conscious,
and which are entitled outer because they depend on what we
call ‘outer sense’ whose intuition is space. Space itself,
however, is nothing but an inner mode of representation in
which certain perceptions are connected with one
another.”[612]
These criticisms are restated in A 491-2 = B 519-20, with
the further addition that in denying the existence of extended
beings “the empirical idealist” removes the possibility of
distinguishing between reality and dreams. This is a new
criticism. Kant is no longer referring to the denial of
unknowable things in themselves. He is now maintaining that
only the Critical standpoint can supply an immanent criterion
whereby real experiences may be distinguished from merely
subjective happenings. This point is further insisted upon in
the Prolegomena,[613] but is nowhere developed with any
direct reference to Berkeley’s own personal teaching. Kant
assumes as established that any such criterion must rest upon
the a priori; and in this connection Berkeley is conveniently
made to figure as a thoroughgoing empiricist.
The Critique, on its publication, was at once attacked,
especially in the Garve-Feder review, as presenting an
idealism similar to that of Berkeley. As Erdmann has shown,
the original plan of the Prolegomena was largely modified in
order to afford opportunity for reply to this “unpardonable and
almost intentional misconception.”[614] Kant’s references to
Berkeley, direct and indirect, now for the first time manifest a
polemical tone, exaggerating in every possible way the
difference between their points of view. Only the
transcendental philosophy can establish the possibility of a
priori knowledge, and so it alone can afford a criterion for
distinguishing between realities and dreams. It alone will
account for the possibility of geometrical science; Berkeley’s
idealism would render the claims of that science wholly
illusory. The Critical idealism transcends experience only so
far as is required to discover the conditions which make
empirical cognition possible; Berkeley’s idealism is
‘visionary’ and ‘mystical.’[615] Even sceptical idealism now
comes in for severe handling. It may be called “dreaming
idealism”; it makes things out of mere representations, and
like idealism in its dogmatic form it virtually denies the
existence of the only true reality, that of things in themselves.
Sceptical idealism misinterprets space by making it empirical,
dogmatic idealism by regarding it as an attribute of the real.
Both entirely ignore the problem of time. For these reasons
they underestimate the powers of sensibility (to which space
and time belong as a priori forms), and exaggerate those of
pure understanding.
“The position of all genuine idealists from the Eleatics to
Berkeley is contained in this formula: ‘All cognition through
the senses and experience is nothing but mere illusion, and
only in the ideas of pure understanding and Reason is there
truth.’ The fundamental principle ruling all my idealism, on
the contrary, is this: ‘All cognition of things solely from pure
understanding or pure Reason is nothing but mere illusion and
only in experience is there truth.’”[616]
This is an extremely inadequate statement of the Critical
standpoint, but it excellently illustrates Kant’s perverse
interpretation of Berkeley’s teaching.
To these criticisms Kant gives less heated but none the less
explicit expression in the second edition of the Critique. He is
now much more careful to avoid subjectivist modes of
statement. His phenomenalist tendencies are reinforced, and
come to clearer expression of all that they involve. The fourth
Paralogism with its sympathetic treatment of empirical
idealism is omitted, and in addition to the above passage Kant
inserts a new section, entitled Refutation of Idealism, in which
he states his position in a much more adequate manner.
IV. B 71.—Kant continues the argument of A 39.[617] If
space and time condition all existence, they will condition
even divine existence, and so must render God’s omniscience,
which as such must be intuitive, not discursive, difficult of
conception. Upon this point Kant is more explicit in the
Dissertation.[618]
“Whatever is, is somewhere and sometime, is a spurious
axiom…. By this spurious principle all beings, even though
they be known intellectually, are restricted in their existence
by conditions of space and time. Philosophers therefore
discuss every form of idle question regarding the locations in
the corporeal universe of substances that are immaterial—and
of which for that very reason there can be no sensuous
intuition nor any possible spatial representation—or regarding
the seat of the soul, and the like. And since the sensuous mixes
with the intellectual about as badly as square with round, it
frequently happens that the one disputant appears as holding a
sieve into which the other milks the he-goat. The presence of
immaterial things in the corporeal world is virtual, not local,
although it may conveniently be spoken of as local. Space
contains the conditions of possible interaction only when it is
between material bodies. What, however, in immaterial
substances constitutes the external relations of force between
them or between them and bodies, obviously eludes the human
intellect…. But when men reach the conception of a highest
and extra-mundane Being, words cannot describe the extent to
which they are deluded by these shades that flit before the
mind. They picture God as present in a place: they entangle
Him in the world where He is supposed to fill all space at
once. They hope to make up for the [spatial] limitation they
thus impose by thinking of God’s place per eminentiam, i.e. as
infinite. But to be present in different places at the same time
is absolutely impossible, since different places are mutually
external to one another, and consequently what is in several
places is outside itself, and is therefore present to itself outside
itself—which is a contradiction in terms. As to time, men have
got into an inextricable maze by releasing it from the laws that
govern sense knowledge, and what is more, transporting it
beyond the confines of the world to the Being that dwells
there, as a condition of His very existence. They thus torment
their souls with absurd questions, for instance, why God did
not fashion the world many centuries earlier. They persuade
themselves that it is easily possible to conceive how God may
discern present things, i.e. what is actual in the time in which
He is. But they consider that it is difficult to comprehend how
He should foresee the things about to be, i.e. the actual in the
time in which He is not yet. They proceed as if the existence of
the Necessary Being descended successively through all the
moments of a supposed time, and having already exhausted
part of His duration, foresaw the eternal life that still lies
before Him together with the events which [will] occur
simultaneously [with that future life of His]. All these
speculations vanish like smoke when the notion of time has
been rightly discerned.”
The references in B 71-2 to the intuitive understanding are
among the many signs of Kant’s increased preoccupation,
during the preparation of the second edition, with the problems
which it raises. Such understanding is not sensuous, but
intellectual; it is not derivative, but original; the object itself is
created in the act of intuition. Or, as Kant’s position may
perhaps be more adequately expressed, all of God’s activities
are creative, and are inseparable from the non-sensuous
intuition whereby both they and their products are
apprehended by Him. Kant’s reason for again raising this point
may be Mendelssohn’s theological defence of the reality of
space in his Morgenstunden.[619] Mendelssohn has there
argued that just as knowledge of independent reality is
confirmed by the agreement of different senses, and is
rendered the more certain in proportion to the number of
senses which support the belief, so the validity of our spatial
perceptions is confirmed in proportion as men are found to
agree in this type of experience with one another, with the
animals, and with angelic beings. Such inductive inference
will culminate in the proof that even the Supreme Being
apprehends things in this same spatial manner.[620] Kant’s
reply is that however general the intuition of space may be
among finite beings, it is sensuous and derivative, and
therefore must not be predicated of a Divine Being. For
obvious reasons Kant has not felt called upon to point out the
inadequacy of this inductive method to the solution of Critical
problems. In A 42 Kant, arguing that our forms of intuition are
subjective, claims that they do not necessarily belong to all
beings, though they must belong to all men.[621] He is quite
consistent in now maintaining[622] that their characteristics, as
sensuous and derivative, do not necessarily preclude their
being the common possession of all finite beings.
THE PARADOX OF INCONGRUOUS COUNTERPARTS

The purpose, as already noted, of the above sections II. to

IV., as added in the second edition, is to afford ‘confirmation’
of the ideality of space and time. That being so, it is noticeable
that Kant has omitted all reference to an argument embodied,
for this same purpose, in § 13 of the Prolegomena. The matter
is of sufficient importance to call for detailed consideration.
[623]

As the argument of the Prolegomena is somewhat

complicated, it is advisable to approach it in the light of its
history in Kant’s earlier writings. It was to his teacher Martin
Knutzen that Kant owed his first introduction to Newton’s
cosmology; and from Knutzen he inherited the problem of
reconciling Newton’s mechanical view of nature and absolute
view of space with the orthodox Leibnizian tenets. In his first
published work[624] Kant seeks to prove that the very existence
of space is due to gravitational force, and that its three-
dimensional character is a consequence of the specific manner
in which gravity acts. Substances, he teaches, are unextended.
Space results from the connection and order established
between them by the balancing of their attractive and repulsive
forces. And as the law of gravity is merely contingent, other
modes of interaction, and therefore other forms of space, with
more than three dimensions, must be recognised as possible.
“A science of all these possible kinds of space would
undoubtedly be the highest enterprise which a finite
understanding could undertake in the field of geometry.”[625]
In the long interval between 1747 and 1768 Kant continued
to hold to some such compromise, retaining Leibniz’s view
that space is derivative and relative, and rejecting Newton’s
view that it is prior to, and pre-conditions, all the bodies that
exist in it. But in that latter year he published a pamphlet[626]
in which, following in the steps of the mathematician, Euler,
[627] he drew attention to certain facts which would seem quite
conclusively to favour the Newtonian as against the Leibnizian
interpretation of space. The three dimensions of space are
primarily distinguishable by us only through the relation in
which they stand to our body. By relation to the plane that is at
right angles to our body we distinguish ‘above’ and ‘below’;
and similarly through the other two planes we determine what
is ‘right’ and ‘left,’ ‘in front’ and ‘behind.’ Through these
distinctions we are enabled to define differences which cannot
be expressed in any other manner. All species of hops—so
Kant maintains—wind themselves around their supports from
left to right, whereas all species of beans take the opposite
direction. All snail shells, with some three exceptions, turn, in
descending from their apex downwards, from left to right. This
determinate direction of movement, natural to each species,
like the difference in spatial configuration between a right and
a left hand, or between a right hand and its reflection in a
mirror, involves in all cases a reference of the given object to
the wider space within which it falls, and ultimately to space
as a whole. Only so can its determinate character be
distinguished from its opposite counterpart. For as Kant points
out, though the right and the left hand are counterparts, that is
to say, objects which have a common definition so long as the
arrangement of the parts of each is determined in respect to its
central line of reference, they are none the less inwardly
incongruent, since the one can never be made to occupy the
space of the other. As he adds in the Prolegomena, the glove
of one hand cannot be used for the other hand. This inner
incongruence compels us to distinguish them as different, and
this difference is only determinable by location of each in a
single absolute space that constrains everything within it to
conform to the conditions which it prescribes. In three-
dimensional space everything must have a right and a left side,
and must therefore exhibit such inner differences as those just
noted. Spatial determinations are not, as Leibniz teaches,
subsequent to, and dependent upon, the relations of bodies to
one another; it is the former that determine the latter.
“The reason why that which in the shape of a body
exclusively concerns its relation to pure space can be
apprehended by us only through its relation to other bodies, is
that absolute space is not an object of any outer sensation, but
a fundamental conception which makes all such differences
possible.”[628]
Kant enforces his point by arguing that if the first portion of
creation were a human hand, it would have to be either a right
or a left hand. Also, a different act of creation would be
demanded according as it was the one or the other. But if the
hand alone existed, and there were no pre-existing space, there
would be no inward difference in the relations of its parts, and
nothing outside it to differentiate it. It would therefore be
entirely indeterminate in nature, i.e. would suit either side of
the body, which is impossible.
This adoption of the Newtonian view of space in 1768 was
an important step forward in the development of Kant’s
teaching, but could not, in view of the many metaphysical
difficulties to which it leads, be permanently retained; and in
the immediately following year—a year which, as he tells us,
[629] “gave great light”—he achieved the final synthesis which
enabled him to combine all that he felt to be essential in the
opposing views. Though space is an absolute and
preconditioning source of differences which are not
conceptually resolvable, it is a merely subjective form of our
sensibility.
Now it is significant that when Kant expounds this view in
the Dissertation of 1770, the argument from incongruous
counterparts is no longer employed to establish the absolute
and pre-conditioning character of space, but only to prove that
it is a pure non-conceptual intuition.
“Which things in a given space lie towards one side, and
which lie towards the other, cannot by any intellectual
penetration be discursively described or reduced to intellectual
marks. For in solids that are completely similar and equal, but
incongruent, such as the right and the left hand (conceived
solely in terms of their extension), or spherical triangles from
two opposite hemispheres, there is a diversity which renders
impossible the coincidence of their spatial boundaries. This
holds true, even though they can be substituted for one another
in all those respects which can be expressed in marks that are
capable of being made intelligible to the mind through speech.
It is therefore evident that the diversity, that is, the incongruity,
can only be apprehended by some species of pure
intuition.”[630]
There is no mention of this argument in the first edition of
the Critique, and when it reappears in the Prolegomena it is
interpreted in the light of an additional premiss, and is made to
yield a very different conclusion from that drawn in the
Dissertation, and a directly opposite conclusion from that
drawn in 1768. Instead of being employed to establish either
the intuitive character of space or its absolute existence, it is
cited as evidence in proof of its subjectivity. As in 1768, it is
spoken of as strange and paradoxical, and many of the
previous illustrations are used. The paradox consists in the fact
that bodies and spherical figures, conceptually considered, can
be absolutely identical, and yet for intuition remain diverse.
This paradox, Kant now maintains[631] in opposition to his
1768 argument, proves that such bodies and the space within
which they fall are not independent existences. For were they
things in themselves, they would be adequately cognisable
through the pure understanding, and could not therefore
conflict with its demands. Being conceptually identical, they
would necessarily be congruent in every respect. But if space
is merely the form of sensibility, the fact that in space the part
is only possible through the whole will apply to everything in
it, and so will generate a fundamental difference between
conception and intuition.[632] Things in themselves are, as
such, unconditioned, and cannot, therefore, be dependent upon
anything beyond themselves. The objects of intuition, in order
to be possible, must be merely ideal.
 Now the new premiss which differentiates this argument
from that of 1768, and which brings Kant to so opposite a
conclusion, is one which is entirely out of harmony with the
teaching of the Critique. In this section of the Prolegomena
Kant has unconsciously reverted to the dogmatic standpoint of
the Dissertation, and is interpreting understanding in the
illegitimate manner which he so explicitly denounces in the
section on Amphiboly.
“The mistake … lies in employing the understanding
contrary to its vocation transcendentally [i.e. transcendently]
and in making objects, i.e. possible intuitions, conform to
concepts, not concepts to possible intuitions, on which alone
their objective validity rests.”[633]
The question why no mention of this argument is made in
the second edition of the Critique is therefore answered. Kant
had meantime, in the interval between 1783 and 1787,[634]
become aware of the inconsistency of the position. So far from
being a paradox, this assumed conflict rests upon a false view
of the function of the understanding.[635] The relevant facts
may serve to confirm the view of space as an intuition in
which the whole precedes the parts;[636] but they can afford no
evidence either of its absoluteness or of its ideality. In 1768
they seem to Kant to prove its absoluteness, only because the
other alternative has not yet occurred to him. In 1783 they
seem to him to prove its ideality, only because he has not yet
completely succeeded in emancipating his thinking from the
dogmatic rationalism of the Dissertation.
As already noted,[637] Kant’s reason for here asserting that
space is intuitive in nature, namely, that in it the parts are
conditioned by the whole, is also his reason for elsewhere
describing it as an Idea of Reason. The further implication of
the argument of the Prolegomena, that in the noumenal sphere
the whole is made possible only by its unconditioned parts,
raises questions the discussion of which must be deferred. The
problem recurs in the Dialectic in connection with Kant’s
definition of the Idea of the unconditioned. In the Ideas of
Reason Kant comes to recognise the existence of concepts
which do not conform to the reflective type analysed by the
traditional logic, and to perceive that these Ideas can yield a
deeper insight than any possible to the discursive
understanding. The above rationalistic assumption must not,
therefore, pass unchallenged. It may be that in the noumenal
sphere all partial realities are conditioned by an unconditioned
whole.

Concluding Paragraph.[638]—The wording of this

paragraph is in keeping with the increased emphasis which in
the Introduction to the second edition is given to the problem,
how a priori synthetic judgments are possible. Kant
characteristically fails to distinguish between the problems of
pure and applied mathematics, with resulting
inconsecutiveness in his argumentation.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF
ELEMENTS
 PART II

THE TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

INTRODUCTION

I. Concerning Logic in General.—This Introduction[639]

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.[640] In any case it is externally tacked on to it; as
Adickes has noted,[641] it is completely ignored in the opening
section of the Analytic.[642]
In treating of intuition in the first sentence, Kant seems to
have in view only empirical intuition.[643] Yet he at once
proceeds to state that intuition may be pure as well as
empirical.[644] 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,[645] Kant again ignores pure
intuition. Sensuous intuition, it is stated, is the mode in which
we are affected by objects.[646] 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.[647] 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,[648] 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[649] may
be exhibited as follows:
Logic– general– pure
 applied
special
transcendental
Adickes[650] 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.”[651]
By a canon Kant means a system of a priori principles for
the correct employment of a certain faculty of knowledge.[652]
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[653] 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.[654] 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.[655]
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,[656] 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.[657]
General logic involves, it is true, the idea of reference to
objects,[658] 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.[659]—The following passage from
Kant’s Logic[660] 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.”[661]
The remaining paragraphs[662] of Section III. may similarly
be compared with the following passage from an earlier
section of Kant’s Logic:[663]
“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.[664] 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.[665]
IV. Concerning the Division of Transcendental Logic
into Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic.—The term
object[666] 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.[667]
 THE TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC

DIVISION I
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC

The chief point of this section[668] 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.
 BOOK I

THE ANALYTIC OF CONCEPTS

Introductory Paragraph.—Kant’s view of the
understanding as a separate faculty is in evidence again in this
paragraph.[669] The Analytic is a “dissection of the faculty of
the understanding.” A priori concepts are to be sought
nowhere but in the understanding itself, as their birthplace.
There “they lie ready till at last, on the occasion of experience,
they become developed.” But such statements fail to do justice
to Kant’s real teaching. They would seem to reveal the
persisting influence of the pre-Critical standpoint of the
Dissertation.
 CHAPTER I

THE CLUE TO THE DISCOVERY OF ALL PURE

CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING
That the understanding is “an absolute unity” is repeated.
From this assertion, thus dogmatically made, without even an
attempt at argument, Kant deduces the important conclusion
that the pure concepts, originating from such a source, “must
be connected with each other according to one concept or idea
(Begriff oder Idee).” And he adds the equally unproved
assertion:
“But such a connection supplies a rule by which we are
enabled to assign its proper place to each pure concept of the
understanding and by which we can determine in an a priori
manner their systematic completeness. Otherwise we should
be dependent in these matters on our own discretionary
judgment or merely on chance.”
In the next section he sets himself to discover from an
examination of analytic thinking what this rule or principle
actually is, and in so doing he for the first time discloses, in
any degree at all adequate, the real nature of the position
which he is seeking to develop. He connects the required
principle with the nature of the act of judging, considered as a
function of unity.
Section I. The Logical Use of the Understanding.—This
section,[670] viewed as introductory to the metaphysical
deduction of the categories, is extremely unsatisfactory. It
directs attention to the wrong points, and conceals rather than
defines Kant’s real position. Its argumentation is also
contorted and confused, and only by the most patient analysis
can it be straightened out. The commentator has presented to
him a twofold task from which there is no escape. He must
render the argument consistent by such modification as will
harmonise it with Kant’s later and more deliberate positions,
and he must explain why Kant has presented it in this
misleading manner.
 The title of the section would seem to imply that only the
discursive activities of understanding are to be dealt with. That
is, indeed, in the main true. Confusion results, however, from
the clashing of this avowed intention with the ultimate purpose
in view of which the argument is propounded. Kant is seeking
to prove that we can derive from the more accessible
procedure of the discursive understanding a clue sufficient for
determining those pre-logical activities which have to be
postulated in terms of his new Copernican hypothesis. But
though that is the real intention of this section, it has,
unfortunately, not been explicitly recognised, and can be
divined by the reader only after he has mastered the later
portions of the Analytic. Kant’s argument has also the further
defect that no sufficient statement is given either of the nature
of the discursive concept or of its relation to judgment. These
lacunae we must fill out as best we can from his utterances
elsewhere. I shall first state Kant’s view of the distinction
between discursive and synthetic thinking, and then examine
his treatment of the nature of the concept and of its relation to
judgment.
As already noted,[671] the distinction between transcendental
and general logic marks for Kant all-important differences in
the use of the understanding. In the one employment the
understanding, by creative synthetic activities, generates from
the given manifold the complex objects of sense-experience.
In so doing it interprets and organises the manifold through
concepts which originate from within itself. By the other it
discriminates and compares, and thereby derives from the
content of sense-experience the generic concepts of the
traditional logic. Now Kant would seem to argue in this
section that if the difference in the origin of the concepts in
those two cases be left out of account, and if we attend only to
the quite general character of their respective activities, they
will be found to agree in one fundamental feature, namely, that
they express functions of unity. Each is based on the
spontaneity of thought—on the spontaneity of synthetic
interpretation on the one hand, of discrimination and
comparison on the other. This feature common to the two
types of activity can be further defined as being the unity of
the act whereby a multiplicity is comprehended under a single
representation. In the judgment “every metal is a body” the
variety of metals is reduced to unity through the concept body.
In an analogous manner the synthetic understanding organises
a manifold of intuition through some such form of unity as that
of substance and attribute. That is the category which
underlies the above proposition, and which renders possible
the specific unity of the total judgment. To quote the sentence
with which in a later section Kant introduces his table of
categories:
“The same understanding, and by the same operations by
which in concepts, by means of analytic unity, it has produced
the logical form of a judgment, introduces, by means of the
synthetic unity of the manifold in intuition in general, a
transcendental element into its representations….”[672]
Now Kant’s exposition is extremely misleading. As his later
utterances show, his real argument is by no means that which
is here given. We shall have occasion to observe that Kant is
unable to prove, and does not ultimately profess to prove, that
it is “the same understanding,” and still less that it is “the same
operations,” which are exercised in discursive and in creative
thinking. But this is a criticism which it would be premature to
introduce at this stage. We must proceed to it by way of
preliminary analysis of the above exposition. Kant’s argument
does not rest upon any such analogy as that just drawn,
between the concepts formed by consciously comparing
contents and the concepts which originate from within the
understanding itself. Both, it is true, are functions of unity, but
otherwise there is, according to Kant’s own teaching, not the
least resemblance between them. A generic or abstract concept
expresses common qualities found in each of a number of
complex contents. It is itself a content. A category, on the
other hand, is always a function of unity whereby contents are
interpreted. It is not a content, but a form for the organisation
of content.[673] It can gain expression only in the total act of
judging, not in any one element such as the discursive concept.
But though the analogy drawn by Kant thus breaks down, his
argument is continued in a new and very different form. It is
no longer made to rest on any supposed resemblance between
discursive and creative thinking, regarded as co-ordinate and
independent activities. It now consists in the proof that the
former presupposes and is conditioned by the latter. Through
study of the understanding in its more accessible discursive
procedure, we may hope to discover the synthetic forms
according to which it has proceeded in its pre-logical
activities. When we determine the various forms of analytic
judgment, the categories which are involved in synthetic
thinking reveal themselves to consciousness.
Thus in spite of Kant’s insistence upon the conceptual
predicate, and upon the unity to which it gives expression,
immediately he proceeds to the deduction of the categories,
the emphasis is shifted to the unity which underlies the
judgment as a whole. What constitutes such propositions as
“all bodies are divisible,” “every metal is a body,” a unique
and separate type of judgment is not the character of the
predicate, but the category of substance and attribute whereby
the predicate is related to the subject. To that category they
owe their specific form; and it is a function of unity for which
the discursive understanding can never account. As Kant states
in the Prolegomena, if genuine judgments, that is, judgments
that are “objectively valid,” are analysed,
“…it will be found that they never consist of mere intuitions
connected only (as is commonly believed) by comparison in a
judgment. They would be impossible were not a pure concept
of the understanding superadded to the concepts abstracted
from intuition. The abstract concepts are subsumed under a
pure concept, and in this manner only can they be connected in
an objectively valid judgment.”[674]
Thus the analogy between discursive and a priori concepts
is no sooner drawn than it is set aside as irrelevant. Though
generic concepts rest upon functions of unity, and though (as
we shall see immediately) they exist only as factors in the total
act of judging, there is otherwise not the least resemblance
between them and the categories.[675] The clue to the
categories is not to be found in the inherent characteristics of
analytic thinking, or of its specific products (namely,
concepts), but solely in what, after all abstraction, it must still
retain from the products which synthetic thinking creates.
Each type of analytic judgment will be found on examination
to involve some specific function whereby the conceptual
factors are related to, and unified with, the other elements in
the judgment. This function of unity is in each case an a priori
category of the understanding. That is the thesis which
underlies the concluding sentence of this section.
“The functions of the understanding [i.e. the a priori
concepts of understanding] can be discovered in their
completeness, if it is possible to state exhaustively the
functions of unity [i.e. the forms of relation] in judgments.”
The adoption of such a position involves, it may be noted,
the giving up of the assertion, which is so emphatically made
in the passage above quoted, that it is by the same activities
that the understanding discursively forms abstract concepts
and creatively organises the manifold of sense. That is in no
respect true. There is no real identity—there is not even
analogy—between the processes of comparison and
abstraction on the one hand and those of synthetic
interpretation on the other. The former are merely reflective:
the latter are genuinely creative. Discursive activities are
conscious processes, and are under our control: the synthetic
processes, are non-conscious; only their finished products
appear within the conscious field. This, however, is to
anticipate a conclusion which was among the last to be
realised by Kant himself, namely that there is no proof that
these two types of activity are ascribable to one and the same
source. The synthetic activities—as he himself finally came to
hold—are due to a faculty of imagination.
“Synthesis in general … is the mere result of the power of
imagination, a blind but indispensable function of the soul,
without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever, but
of which we are scarcely ever conscious.”[676]
This sentence occurs in a passage which is undoubtedly a
later interpolation.[677] The “scarcely ever” (selten nur einmal)
indicates Kant’s lingering reluctance to recognise this
fundamental fact, destructive of so much in his earlier views,
even though it completes and reinforces his chief ultimate
conclusions. With this admission Kant also gives up his sole
remaining ground for the contention that there must be a
complete parallelism between discursive and creative thinking.
If they arise from such different sources, we have no right to
assume, without specific proof, that they must coincide in the
forms of their activity. This is a point to which we shall return
in discussing Kant’s formulation of the principle which is
supposed to guarantee the completeness of the table of
categories.
This unavowed change in point of view is the main cause of
confusion in this section. Its other defects are chiefly those of
omission. Kant fails to develop in sufficient detail his view of
the nature of the discursive concept, or to make sufficiently
clear the grounds for his assertion that conception as an
activity of the understanding is identical with judgment. To
take the former point first. Kant’s mode of viewing the
discursive concept finds expression in the following passage in
the Introduction to his Logic:[678]
“Human knowledge is on the side of the understanding
discursive; that is, it takes place by means of ideas which
make what is common to many things the ground of
knowledge: and hence by means of attributes as such. We
therefore cognise things only by means of attributes. An
attribute is that in a thing which constitutes part of our
cognition of it; or, what is the same, a partial conception so far
as it is considered as a ground of cognition of the whole
conception. All our concepts, therefore, are attributes, and all
thought is nothing but conception by means of attributes.”
The limitations of Kant’s view of the concept could hardly
find more definite expression. The only type of judgment
which receives recognition is the categorical, interpreted in the
traditional manner.[679]
“To compare something as a mark with a thing, is called ‘to
judge.’ The thing itself is the subject, the mark [or attribute] is
the predicate. The comparison is expressed by the word ‘is,’
… which when used without qualification indicates that the
predicate is a mark [or attribute] of the subject, but when
combined with the sign of negation states that the predicate is
a mark opposed to the subject.”[680]
 Kant’s view of analytic thinking is entirely dominated by
the substance-attribute teaching of the traditional logic. A
concept must, in its connotation, be an abstracted attribute, and
in its denotation represent a class. Relational thinking, and the
concepts of relation, are ignored. Thus, in the Aesthetic, as we
have already noted,[681] Kant maintains that since space and
time are not generic class concepts they must be intuitions.
This argument, honestly employed by Kant, shows how
completely unconscious he was of the revolutionary
consequences of his new standpoint. Even in the very act of
insisting upon the relational character of the categories, he still
continues to speak of the concept as if it must necessarily
conform to the generic type. In this, as in so many other
respects, transcendental logic is not, as he would profess,
supplementary to general logic; it is its tacit recantation.
Modern logic, as developed by Lotze, Sigwart, Bradley, and
Bosanquet, is, in large part, the recasting of general logic in
terms of the results reached by Kant’s transcendental
enquiries. Meantime, sufficient has been said to indicate the
strangely limited character of Kant’s doctrine of the logical
concept.
But on one fundamental point Kant breaks entirely free
from the traditional logic. The following passage occurs in the
above-quoted pamphlet on The Mistaken Subtlety of the Four
Syllogistic Figures:
“It is clear that in the ordinary treatment of logic there is a
serious error in that distinct and complete concepts are treated
before judgments and ratiocinations, although the former are
only possible by means of the latter.” “I say, then, first, that a
distinct concept is possible only by means of a judgment, a
complete concept only by means of a ratiocination. In fact, in
order that a concept should be distinct, I must clearly
recognise something as an attribute of a thing, and this is a
judgment. In order to have a distinct concept of body, I clearly
represent to myself impenetrability as an attribute of it. Now
this representation is nothing but the thought, ‘a body is
impenetrable.’ Here it is to be observed that this judgment is
not the distinct concept itself, but is the act by which it is
realised; for the idea of the thing which arises after this act is
distinct. It is easy to show that a complete concept is only
possible by means of a ratiocination: for this it is sufficient to
refer to the first section of this essay. We might say, therefore,
that a distinct concept is one which is made clear by a
judgment, and a complete concept one which is made distinct
by a ratiocination. If the completeness is of the first degree, the
ratiocination is simple; if of the second or third degree, it is
only possible by means of a chain of reasoning which the
understanding abridges in the manner of a sorites…. Secondly,
as it is quite evident that the completeness of a concept and its
distinctness do not require different faculties of the mind
(since the same capacity which recognises something
immediately as an attribute in a thing is also employed to
recognise in this attribute another attribute, and thus to
conceive the thing by means of a remote attribute), so also it is
evident that understanding and reason, that is, the power of
cognising distinctly and the power of forming ratiocinations,
are not different faculties. Both consist in the power of
judging, but when we judge mediately we reason.”[682]
In the section before us this same standpoint is maintained,
but is expressed in a much less satisfactory manner. Concepts
are no longer spoken of as complete judgments. In the above
passages Kant always speaks of the concept as the subject of
the proposition; it is now treated only as a predicate.[683] This
difference is significant. The concept as subject can represent
the judgment as a whole (or at least it does so from the
traditional standpoint to which Kant holds); the concept as
predicate is merely one element, even though it be a unifying
element, in the total act of judging. This falling away from his
own maturer standpoint would seem to be due to Kant’s lack
of clearness as to the nature of the analogy which he is here
drawing between analytic and synthetic thinking. It is
connected with his mistaken, and merely temporary,
comparison of a priori with discursive concepts. His position
in 1762 alone harmonises with his essential teaching. Now, as
then, he is prepared to view judgment as the sole ultimate
activity of the understanding, and therefore to define
understanding as the faculty of judging.
 But the new Critical standpoint compels Kant to reinterpret
this definition in a manner which involves a still more radical
transformation of the traditional doctrine. The categories
constitute a unique type of concept, and condition the
processes of discursive thought. They are embodied in the
complex contents from which analytic thinking starts; and
however far the processes of discursive comparison and
abstraction be carried, one or other of these categories must
still persist, determining the form which the analytic judgment
is to take. The categorical judgment can formulate itself only
by means of the a priori concept of subject and attribute, the
hypothetical only by means of the pure concept of ground and
consequence, and so with the others. And there are in
consequence just as many categories as there are forms of the
analytic judgment. This is how the principle of the
metaphysical deduction must be interpreted when the later and
deeper results of the transcendental deduction are properly
taken into account. In deducing the forms of the understanding
from the modes of discursive judgment Kant is virtually
maintaining that analytic judgment involves the same
problems as does judgment of the synthetic type. The
categories can be derived from the forms of discursive
judgment only because they are the conditions in and through
which it becomes possible.
But though Kant, both here and in the central portions of the
Analytic, seems to be on the very brink of this conclusion, it is
never explicitly drawn. As we shall see,[684] it would have
involved the further admission that there is no absolute
guarantee of the completeness of the table of categories, and
no satisfactory method of determining their interrelations. To
the very last general logic is isolated from transcendental
logic. The Critical enquiry is formulated as if it concerned
only such judgments as are explicitly synthetic. The principle
of the metaphysical deduction is not, therefore, stated by Kant
himself in the above manner; and we have still to decide the
difficult question as to what the principle employed by Kant in
the deduction actually is.
Kant makes a twofold demand upon the principle. It must
enable us to discover the categories, and it must also in so
doing enable us to view them as together forming a systematic
whole, and so as having their completeness guaranteed by
other than merely empirical considerations. The principle is
stated sometimes in a broader and sometimes in a more
specific form; for on this point also Kant speaks with no very
certain voice.[685] The broader formulation of the principle is
that all acts of understanding are judgments, and that therefore
the possible ultimate a priori forms of understanding are
identical with the possible ultimate forms of the judgment.[686]
The more specific and correct formulation is that to every
form of analytic judgment there corresponds a pure concept of
understanding. The first statement of the principle is obviously
inadequate. It merely reformulates the problem as being a
problem not of conception but of judgment. If a principle is
required to guarantee the completeness of our list of a priori
concepts, it will equally be required to guarantee the
completeness of our list of judgments. Even if the above
principle be more explicitly formulated, as in the
Prolegomena,[687] where judging is defined as the act of
understanding which comprises all its other acts, it will not
enable us to guarantee the completeness of any list of the
forms of judgment or to determine their systematic
interrelation. We are therefore thrown back upon the second
view. This, however, only brings us face to face with the
further question, what principle guarantees the completeness
of the table of analytic judgments. And to that query Kant has
absolutely no answer. The reader’s questionings break vainly
upon his invincible belief in the adequacy and finality of the
classification yielded by the traditional logic.
The fons et origo of all the confusions and obscurities of
this section are thus traceable to Kant’s attitude towards formal
logic. He might criticise it for ignoring the interdependence of
conception, judgment, and reasoning; he might reject the
second, third, and fourth syllogistic figures; and he might even
admit that its classification of the forms of judgment is not as
explicit as might be desired; but however many provisos he
made and defects he acknowledged, they were to him merely
minor matters, and he accepted its teaching as complete and
final. This unwavering faith in the fundamental distinctions of
the traditional logic was indeed, as we shall have constant
occasion to observe, an ever present influence in determining
alike the general framework and much of the detail of Kant’s
Critical teaching. The defects of the traditional logic were very
clearly indicated in his own transcendental logic. He showed
that synthetic thinking is fundamental; that by its distinctions
the forms and activities of analytic thought are predetermined;
that judgment in its various forms can be understood only by a
regress upon the synthetic concepts to which these forms are
due; that notions are not merely of the generic type, but that
there are also categories of relation. None the less, to the very
last, Kant persisted in regarding general logic as a separate
discipline, and as quite adequate in its current form. He
continued to ignore the fact that the analytic judgment, no less
than the synthetic judgment, demands a transcendental
justification.
The resulting situation is strangely perverse. In the very act
of revolutionising the traditional logic, Kant relies upon its
prestige and upon the assumed finality of its results to make
good the shortcomings of the logic which is to displace it. By
Kant’s own admission transcendental logic is incapable of
guaranteeing that completeness upon which, throughout the
whole Critique, so great an emphasis is laid. General logic is
allowed an independent status, sufficient to justify its authority
being appealed to; and the principle which is supposed to
guarantee the completeness of the table of categories is so
formulated as to contain no suggestion of the dependence of
discursive upon synthetic thinking. Formal logic, Kant would
seem to hold, can supply a criterion for the classification of the
ultimate forms of judgment just because its task is relatively
simple, and is independent of all epistemological views as to
the nature, scope, and conditions of the thought process. Since
formal logic is a completed and perfectly a priori science,
which has stood the test of 2000 years, and remains practically
unchanged to the present day, its results can be accepted as
final, and can be employed without question in all further
enquiries. Analytic thinking is scientifically treated in general
logic; the Critique is concerned only with the possibility and
conditions of synthetic judgment. The table of analytic
judgments therefore supplies a complete and absolutely
guaranteed list of the possible categories of the understanding.
But the perverseness of this whole procedure is shown by the
manner in which, as we shall find, Kant recasts, extends, or
alters, to suit his own purposes, the actual teaching of the
traditional logic.
As noted above,[688] the asserted parallelism of analytic and
synthetic judgment rests upon the further assumption that
discursive thinking and synthetic interpretation are the
outcome of one and the same faculty of understanding. It is
implied, in accordance with the attitude of the pre-Critical
Dissertation, that understanding, viewed as the faculty to
which all thought processes are due, has certain laws in
accordance with which it necessarily acts in all its operations,
and that these must therefore be discoverable from analytic no
less than from synthetic thinking. The mingling of truth and
falsity in this assumption has already been indicated. Such
truth as it contains is due to the fact that analytic thinking is
not co-ordinate with, but is dependent upon, and determined
by, the forms of synthetic thinking. Its falsity consists in its
ignoring of what thus gives it partial truth. The results of the
transcendental deduction call for a complete recasting of the
entire argument of the metaphysical deduction. And when this
is done, there is no longer any ground for the contention that
the number of the categories is determinable on a priori
grounds. On Kant’s own fundamental doctrine of the synthetic,
and therefore merely de facto, character of all a priori
principles, the necessity of the categories is only demonstrable
by reference to the contingent fact of actual experience. The
possible conceptual forms are relative to actual and ultimate
differences in the contingent sensuous material; and being thus
relative, they cannot possibly be systematised on purely a
priori grounds. This Kant has himself admitted in a passage
added in the second edition,[689] though apparently without
full consciousness of the important consequences which must
follow.
“This peculiarity of our understanding that it can produce a
priori unity of apperception solely by means of the categories,
and only by such and so many, is as little capable of further
explanation as why we have just these and no other functions
of judgment, or why space and time are the only forms of our
possible intuition.”
THE DEVELOPMENT OF KANT’S METAPHYSICAL DEDUCTION

The character of the metaphysical deduction will be placed

in a clearer light if we briefly trace the stages, so far as they
can be reconstructed, through which it passed in Kant’s mind.
We may start from the Dissertation of 1770. Kant there
modifies his earlier Wolffian standpoint, developing it,
probably under the direct influence of the recently published
Nouveaux Essais, on more genuinely Leibnizian lines.
“The use of the intellect … is twofold. By the one use
concepts, both of things and of relations, are themselves given.
This is the real use. By the other use concepts, whencesoever
given, are merely subordinated to each other, the lower to the
higher (the common attributes), and compared with one
another according to the principle of contradiction. This is
called the logical use…. Empirical concepts, therefore, do not
become intellectual in the real sense by reduction to greater
universality, and do not pass beyond the type of sensuous
cognition. However high the abstraction be carried, they must
always remain sensuous. But in dealing with things strictly
intellectual, in regard to which the use of the intellect is real,
intellectual concepts (of objects as well as of relations), are
given by the very nature of the intellect. They are not
abstracted from any use of the senses, and do not contain any
form of sensuous knowledge as such. We must here note the
extreme ambiguity of the word abstract…. An intellectual
concept abstracts from everything sensuous; it is not
abstracted from things sensuous. It would perhaps be more
correctly named abstracting than abstract. It is therefore
preferable to call the intellectual concepts pure ideas, and
those which are given only empirically abstract ideas.”[690] “I
fear, however, that Wolff, by this distinction between the
sensuous and the intellectual, which for him is merely logical,
has checked, perhaps wholly (to the great detriment of
philosophy), that noblest enterprise of antiquity, the
investigation of the nature of phenomena and noumena,
turning men’s minds from such enquiries to what are very
frequently only logical subtleties. Philosophy, in so far as it
contains the first principles of the use of the pure intellect, is
metaphysics…. As empirical principles are not to be found in
metaphysics, the concepts to be met with in it are not to be
sought in the senses but in the very nature of the pure intellect.
They are not connate concepts, but are abstracted from laws
inherent in the mind (legibus menti insitis), and are therefore
acquired. Such are the concepts of possibility, existence,
necessity, substance, cause, etc. with their opposites or
correlates. They never enter as parts into any sensuous
representation, and therefore cannot in any fashion be
abstracted from such representations.”[691]
The etcetera, with which in that last passage Kant concludes
his list of pure intellectual concepts, indicates a problem that
must very soon have made itself felt. That it did so, appears
from his letter to Herz (February 21, 1772). He there informs
his correspondent, that, in developing his
Transcendentalphilosophie (the first occurrence of that title in
Kant’s writings), he has
“…sought to reduce all concepts of completely pure reason
to a fixed number of categories [this term also appearing for
the first time], not in the manner of Aristotle, who in his ten
predicaments merely set them side by side in a sort of order,
just as he might happen upon them, but as they distribute
themselves of themselves according to some few principles of
the understanding.”[692]
Though in this same letter Kant professes to have solved his
problems, and to be in a position to publish his Critique of
Pure Reason (this title is already employed) “within some
three months,” the phrase “some few principles” clearly shows
that he has not yet developed the teaching embodied in the
metaphysical deduction. For its keynote is insistence upon the
necessity of a single principle, sufficient to reduce them not
merely to classes but to system. The difficulty of discovering
such a principle must have been one of the causes which
delayed completion of the Critique. The only data at our
disposal for reconstructing the various stages through which
Kant’s views may have passed in the period between February
1772 and 1781 are the Reflexionen, but they are sufficiently
ample to allow of our doing so with considerable definiteness.
[693]

In the Dissertation Kant had traced the concepts of space

and time, no less than the concepts of understanding, to mental
activities.
 “Both concepts [space and time] are undoubtedly acquired.
They are not, however, abstracted from the sensing of objects
(for sensation gives the matter, not the form of human
cognition). As immutable types they are intuitively
apprehended from the activity whereby the mind co-ordinates
its sensuous data in accordance with perpetual laws.”[694]
Now the Dissertation is quite vague as to how the “mind”
(animus), active in accordance with laws generative of the
intuitions space and time, differs from “understanding”
(intellectus), active in accordance with laws generative of pure
concepts. Kant’s reasons, apart from the intuitive character of
space and time, for contrasting the former with the latter, as
the sensuous with the intellectual, were the existence of the
antinomies and his belief that through pure concepts the
absolutely real can be known. When, however, that belief was
questioned by him, and he had come to regard the categories
as no less subjective than the intuitional forms, the antinomies
ceased to afford any ground for thus distinguishing between
them. The intuitional nature of space and time, while certainly
peculiar to them, is in itself no proof that they belong to the
sensuous side of the mind.[695]
A difficulty which immediately faced Kant, from the new
Critical standpoint, was that of distinguishing between space
and time, on the one hand, and the categories on the other.
This is borne out by the Reflexionen and by the following
passage in the Prolegomena.[696]
“Only after long reflection, expended in the investigation of
the pure non-empirical elements of human knowledge, did I at
last succeed in distinguishing and separating with certainty the
pure elementary concepts of sensibility (space and time) from
those of the understanding.”
The first stage in the development of the metaphysical
deduction would seem to have consisted in the attempt to view
the categories as acquired by reflection upon the activities of
the understanding in “comparing, combining, or separating”;
[697] and among the notiones rationales, notiones intellectus
puri, thus gained, the idea of space is specially noted. The
following list is also given:
 “The concepts of existence (reality), possibility, necessity,
ground, unity and plurality, parts, all, none, composite and
simple, space, time, change, motion, substance and accident,
power and action, and everything that belongs to ontology
proper.”[698]
In Reflexionen, ii. 507 and 509, the fundamental feature of
such rational concepts is found in their relational character.
They all agree in being concepts of form.[699]
Quite early, however, Kant seems to have developed the
view, which has created so many more difficulties than it
resolves, that space and time are given to consciousness
through outer and inner sense. Though still frequently spoken
of as concepts, they are definitely referred to the receptive,
non-spontaneous, side of the mind. This is at once a return to
the Dissertation standpoint, and a decided modification of its
teaching. It holds to the point of view of the Dissertation in so
far as it regards them as sensuous, and departs from it in
tracing them to receptivity.[700]
The passage quoted from the letter of 1772 to Herz may
perhaps be connected with the stage revealed in the
Reflexionen already cited. “Comparing, combining, and
separating” may be the “some few principles of the
understanding” there referred to. That, however, is doubtful,
for the next stage in the development likewise resulted in a
threefold division. This second stage finds varied expression in
Reflexionen, ii. 483, 522, 528, 556-63. These, in so far as they
agree, distinguish three classes of categories—of thesis, of
analysis, and of synthesis. The first covers the categories of
quality and modality, the second those of quantity, the third
those of relation.
Reflexionen, ii. 528 is as follows:
[Thesis = “The metaphysical concepts are, first, absolute:
] possibility and existence; secondly, relative:
(a) Unity and plurality: omnitudo and
particularitas.
[Analysis (b) Limits: the first, the last: infinitum, finitum.
=] [Anticipates the later category of limitation.]
 (c) Connection: co-ordination: whole and part
[Synthesis [anticipates the later category of reciprocity],
=] simple and compound; subordination:
(1) Subject and predicate.
(2) Ground and consequence.
This, and the connected Reflexionen enumerated above, are
of interest as proving that Kant’s table of categories was in all
essentials complete before the idea had occurred to him of
further systematising it or of guaranteeing its completeness by
reference to the logical classification of the forms of judgment.
They also justify us in the belief that when Kant set himself to
discover such a unifying principle the above list of categories
and the existing logical classifications must have mutually
influenced one another, each undergoing such modification as
seemed necessary to render the parallelism complete. This, as
we shall find, is what actually happened. The logical table, for
instance, induced Kant to distinguish the categories of quality
from those of modality, while numerous changes were made in
the logical table itself in order that it might yield the categories
required.
But the most important alteration, the introduction of the
threefold division of each sub-heading, is not thus explicable,
as exclusively due to one or other of the two factors. The
adoption of this threefold arrangement in place of the
dichotomous divisions of the logical classification and of the
haphazard enumerations of Kant’s own previous lists, seems to
be due to the twofold circumstance that he had already
distinguished three categories of synthesis or relation (always
the most important for Kant), and that this sufficiently
harmonised with the logical distinction between categorical,
hypothetical, and disjunctive judgments. He then sought to
modify the logical divisions by addition in each case of a third,
and finding that this helped him to obtain the categories
required, the threefold division became for him (as it remained
for Hegel) an almost mystical dogma of transcendental
philosophy.[701] In so far as it involved recognition that the
hard and fast opposites of the traditional logic (such as the
universal and the particular, the affirmative and the negative)
are really aspects inseparably involved in every judgment and
in all existence, it constituted an advance in the direction both
of a deeper rationalism and of a more genuine empiricism. But
in so far as it was due to the desire to guarantee completeness
on a priori grounds, and so was inspired by a persistent
overestimate of our a priori powers, it has been decidedly
harmful. Much of the useless “architectonic” of the Critique is
due to this scholastic prejudice.
This fundamental alteration in the table of logical judgments
is introduced with the naive assertion that “varieties of thought
in judgments,” unimportant in general logic, “may be of
importance in the field of its pure a priori knowledge.” In the
Critique of Judgment[702] we find the following passage:
“It has been made a difficulty that my divisions in pure
philosophy have almost always been threefold. But this lies in
the nature of the case. If an a priori division is to be made, it
must be either analytic, according to the principle of
contradiction, and then it is always twofold (quodlibet ens est
aut A aut non A); or else synthetic. And if in this latter case it
is derived from a priori concepts (not as in mathematics from
the a priori intuition corresponding to the concept) the
division must necessarily be a trichotomy. For according to
what is requisite for synthetic unity in general, there must be
(1) a condition, (2) a conditioned, and (3) the concept which
arises from the union of these two.”
The last stage, as expressed in the Critique, was, as we have
already noted, merely an application of his earlier position that
all thinking is judging. This appreciation of the inseparable
connection of the categories with the act of judging is sound in
principle, and is pregnant with many of the most valuable
results of the Critical teaching. But these fruitful consequences
follow only upon the lines developed in the transcendental
deduction. They are bound up with Kant’s fundamental
Copernican discovery that the categories are forms of
synthesis, and accordingly express functions or relations. The
categories can no longer be viewed, in the manner of the
Dissertation,[703] as yielding concepts of objects. The view of
the concept which we find in the Dissertation is, indeed,
applied in the Critique to space and time—they are taken as in
themselves intuitions, not as merely forms of intuition—but
the categories are recognised as being of an altogether
relational character. Though a priori, they are not, in and by
themselves, complete objects of consciousness, and
accordingly can reveal no object. They are functions, not
contents. That, however, is to anticipate. We must first
discharge, as briefly as possible, the ungrateful task of
dwelling further upon the laboured, arbitrary, and self-
contradictory character of the detailed working out of the
metaphysical deduction. The deduction is given in Sections II.
and III.
Section II. The Logical Function of the Understanding in
Judgment.[704]—Kant’s introductory statement may here be
noted. If, he says, we leave out of consideration the content of
any judgment, and attend only to the mere form, we “find” that
the function of thought in a judgment “can” be brought under
four heads, each with three subdivisions. But Kant himself, in
this same section, recognises in the frankest and most explicit
manner, that the necessary distinctions are only to be obtained
by taking account of the matter as well as of the form of
judgments. And even after this contradiction is discounted, the
term “find” may be allowed as legitimate only if the word
“can” is correspondingly emphasised. The distinctions were
not derived from any existing logic. They were reached only
by the freest possible handling of the classifications currently
employed. Examination of the table of judgments, and
comparison of it with the table of categories, supply
conclusive evidence that the former has been rearranged, in
highly artificial fashion, so as to yield a more or less
predetermined list of required categories.
1. Quantity.—Kant here frankly departs from the
classification of judgments followed in formal logic; and the
reason which he gives for so doing is in direct contradiction to
his demand that only the form of judgment must be taken into
account. The “quantity of knowledge” here referred to is
determinable, not from the form, but only from the content of
the judgment. Also, the statement that the singular judgment
stands to the universal as unity to infinity (Unendlichkeit) is
decidedly open to question. The universal is itself a form of
unity, as Kant virtually admits in deriving, as he does, the
category of unity from the universal judgment.
2. Quality.—Kant makes a similar modification in the
logical treatment of quality, by distinguishing between
affirmative and infinite judgments. The proposition, A is not-
B, is to be viewed as neither affirmative nor negative. As the
content of the predicate includes the infinite number of things
that are not-B, the judgment is infinite. Kant, in a very
artificial and somewhat arbitrary manner, contrives to define it
as limitative in character, and so as sharing simultaneously in
the nature both of affirmation and of negation. The way is thus
prepared for the “discovery” of the category of limitation.
3. Relation.—Wolff, Baumgarten, Meier, Baumeister,
Reimarus, and Lambert, with very minor differences, agree in
the following division:[705]
Simple = Categorical
Copulative (i.e. categorical with more
than one subject or more than one
Judgments–
Complex– predicate).
Hypothetical.
Disjunctive.
Kant omits the copulative judgment, and by ignoring the
distinction between simple and complex judgments (which in
Reimarus, and also less definitely in Wolff, is connected with
the distinction between conditional and unconditional
judgments) contrives to bring the remaining three types of
judgment under the new heading of “relation.” They had never
before been thus co-ordinated, and had never before been
subsumed under this particular title. It is by no means clear
why such distinctions as those between simple and complex,
conditioned and unconditioned, should be ignored, and why
the copulative judgment should not be recognised as well as
the hypothetical. Kant’s criterion of importance and
unimportance in the distinctions employed by the logicians of
his day was wholly personal to himself; and, though hard to
define, was certainly not dictated by any logic that is traceable
to Aristotelian sources. His exposition is throughout controlled
by foreknowledge of the particular categories which he desires
to “discover.”
4. Modality.—Neither Wolff nor Reimarus gives any
account of modality.[706] Baumgarten classifies judgments as
pure or modal (existing in four forms, necessity, contingency,
possibility, impossibility). Baumeister and Thomasius also
recognise four forms of modality. Meier distinguishes between
pure judgment (judicium purum) and impure judgment
(judicium modale, modificatum, complexum qua copula), but
does not classify the forms of modality. Lambert alone[707]
classifies judgments as “possible, actual (wirklich), necessary,
and their opposite.” But when Kant adopts this threefold
division, the inclusion of actuality renders the general title
“modality” inapplicable in its traditional sense. The expression
of actuality in the assertoric judgment involves no adverbial
modification of the predicate. Also, in its “affirmative” and
“categorical” forms it has already been made to yield two
other categories.
Kant speaks of the problematic, the assertoric, and the
apodictic forms of judgment as representing the stages through
which knowledge passes in the process of its development.
“These three functions of modality are so many momenta of
thought in general.”
This statement has been eulogised by Caird,[708] as being an
anticipation of the Hegelian dialectic. As a matter of fact,
Kant’s remark is irrelevant and misleading. The advance from
consciousness of the problematic, through determination of it
as actual to its explanation as necessary, represents only a
psychological order in the mind of the individual. Logically,
knowledge of the possible rests on and implies prior
knowledge of the actual and of the necessities that constitute
the actual.[709]
Section III.[710] The Categories or Pure Concepts of the
Understanding.—The first three pages of this section,
beginning “General logic abstracts,” and concluding with the
word “rest on the understanding,” would seem to be a later
interpolation. Embodying, as they do, some of the fundamental
ideas of the transcendental deduction, they express Kant’s final
method of distinguishing between general and transcendental
logic. But they are none the less out of harmony with the other
sections of the metaphysical deduction. They are of the nature
of an after-thought, even though that afterthought represents a
more mature and adequate standpoint. In A 55-7, where Kant
defines the distinction between general and transcendental
logic, the latter is formulated in entire independence of all
reference to pure intuition.[711] Kant, indeed, argues[712] that
just as there are both pure and empirical intuitions, so there are
both pure and empirical concepts. But there is no indication
that he has yet realised the close interdependence of the two
types of a priori elements. Even when he proceeds in A 62 to
remark that the empirical employment of pure concepts is
conditioned by the fact that objects are given in intuition, no
special reference is made to “the manifold of pure a priori
intuition.” Now, however, Kant emphasises, as the
fundamental characteristic of transcendental logic, its
possession of a pure manifold through reference to which its
pure concepts gain meaning. Thus not only does
transcendental logic not abstract from the pure a priori
concepts, it likewise possesses an a priori material.[713] It is in
this twofold manner that it is now regarded as differing from
formal logic.
The accounts given of the metaphysical deduction by
Cohen,[714] Caird,[715] Riehl,[716] and Watson[717] are vitiated
by failure to remark that this latter standpoint is a late
development, and is out of keeping with the rest of the
deduction. Riehl’s exposition has, however, the merit of
comparative consistency. He explicitly recognises the
important consequence which at once follows from acceptance
of this later view, namely, that it is by their implying space and
time that the categories differ from the notions which
determine the forms of judgment; in other words, that the
categories are actualised only as schemata. The category of
substance, for instance, differs from the merely logical notion
of a propositional subject, in being the concept of that which is
always a subject, and never a predicate; and such a conception
has specific meaning for us only as the permanent in time.
Logical subjects and predicates, quantitative relations apart,
are interchangeable. The relation between them is the analytic
relation of identity. The concept of subject, on the other hand,
transcendentally viewed, that is, as a category, is the
apprehension of what is permanent, in synthetic distinction
from, and relation to, its changing attributes. In other words,
the transcendental distinction between substance and accidents
is substituted for that of subject and predicate. Similarly the
logical relation of ground and consequence, conceived as
expressive of logical identity, gives way to the synthetic
temporal relation of cause and effect. And so with all the other
pure forms. As categories, they are schemata. Kant has
virtually recognised this by the names which he gives to the
categories of relation. But the proper recognition of the
necessary interdependence of the intuitional and conceptual
forms came too late to prevent him from distinguishing
between categories and schemata, and so from creating for
himself the artificial difficulties of the section on schematism.
In A 82 Kant states that he intentionally omits definitions of
the categories. He had good reason for so doing. The attempt
would have landed him in manifold difficulties, since his
views were not yet sufficiently ripe to allow of his perceiving
the way of escape. In A 241 (omitted in second edition) Kant
makes, however, the directly counter statement that definition
of the categories is not possible, giving as his reason that, in
isolation from the conditions of sensibility, they are merely
logical functions, “without the slightest indication as to how
they can possess meaning and objective validity.”[718]
It cannot be too often repeated that the Critique is not a
unitary work, but the patchwork record of twelve years of
continuous development. Certain portions of the
transcendental deduction, of which A 76-9 is one, represent the
latest of all the many stages; and their teaching, when
accepted, calls for a radical recasting of the metaphysical
deduction. The bringing of the entire Critique into line with its
maturest parts would have been an Herculean task; and it was
one to which Kant, then fifty-seven years of age, was very
rightly unwilling to sacrifice the time urgently needed for the
writing of his other Critiques. The passage before us is one of
the many interpolations by which Kant endeavoured to give an
external unity to what, on close study, is found to be the plain
record of successive and conflicting views. Meantime, in
dealing with this passage, we are concerned only to note that if
this later mode of defining transcendental logic be accepted,
far-reaching modifications in Kant’s Critical teaching have to
be made. The other points developed in A 76-9 we discuss
below[719] in their proper connection.
The same Function, etc.[720]—This passage has already
been sufficiently commented upon.[721] Kant here expresses in
quite inadequate fashion the standpoint of the transcendental
deduction. The implication is that analytic and synthetic
thinking are co-ordinate, one and the same faculty exercising,
on these two levels, the same operations. The true Critical
teaching is that synthetic thinking is alone fundamental, and
that only by a regress upon it can judgments be adequately
accounted for. This passage, like the preceding, may be of later
origin than the main sections of the metaphysical deduction.
Term “Categories”[722] borrowed from Aristotle.—Cf.
below, p. 198.
Table of Categories. Quantity.—Kant derives the category
of unity from the universal,[723] and that of totality (Allheit)
[724] from the singular. These derivations are extremely
artificial. In Reflexionen, ii. 563, Kant takes the more natural
line of identifying totality with the universal, and unity with
the singular. Probably[725] the reason of Kant’s change of view
is the necessity of obtaining totality by combining unity with
multiplicity. That can only be done if universality is thus
equated with unity. Watson’s explanation,[726] that Kant has
reversed the order of the categories, seems to be erroneous.
Quality.—Cf. above, p. 192.
Relation.—The correlation of the categorical judgment
with the conception of substance and attribute is only
possible[727] owing to Kant’s neglect of the relational
judgment and to the dominance in his logical teaching of the
Aristotelian substance-attribute view of predication. The
correlation is also open to question in that the relation of
subject and predicate terms in a logical judgment is a
reversible one. It is a long step from the merely grammatical
subject to the conception of that which is always a subject and
never a predicate.
Kant’s identification of the category of community or
reciprocity with the disjunctive judgment, though at first sight
the most arbitrary of all, is not more so than many of the
others. Its essential correctness has been insisted upon in
recent logic by Sigwart, Bradley, and Bosanquet. In Kant’s
own personal view[728] co-ordination in the form of co-
existence is only possible through reciprocal interaction. The
relation of whole and part (the parts in their relations of
reciprocal exclusion exhausting and constituting a genuine
whole) thus becomes, in its application to actual existences,
that of reciprocal causation. The reverse likewise holds;
interaction is only possible between existences which together
constitute a unity.[729] Kant returns to this point in Note 3,
added in the second edition.[730] The objection which Kant
there considers has been very pointedly stated by
Schopenhauer.
“What real analogy is there between the problematical
determination of a concept by disjunctive predicates and the
thought of reciprocity? The two are indeed absolutely
opposed, for in the disjunctive judgment the actual affirmation
of one of the two alternative propositions is also necessarily
the negation of the other; if, on the other hand, we think of two
things in the relation of reciprocity, the affirmation of one is
also necessarily the affirmation of the other, and vice
versa.”[731]
The answer to this criticism is on the lines suggested by
Kant. The various judgments which constitute a disjunction do
not, when viewed as parts of the disjunction, merely negate
one another; they mutually presuppose one another in the total
complex. Schopenhauer also fails to observe that in locating
the part of a real whole in one part of space, we exclude it
from all the others.[732]
Modality.—The existence of separate categories of
modality seems highly doubtful. The concepts of the possible
and of the probable may be viewed as derivative; the notion of
existence does not seem to differ from that of reality; and
necessity seems in ultimate analysis to reduce to the concept
of ground and consequence. These are points which will be
discussed later.[733]
Aristotle’s ten categories[734] are enumerated by Kant in
Reflexionen, ii. 522,[735] as: (1) substantia, accidens, (2)
qualitas, (3) quantitas, (4) relatio, (5) actio, (6) passio, (7)
quando, (8) ubi, (9) situs, (10) habitus; and the five post-
predicaments as: oppositum, prius, simul, motus, habere.
Eliminating quando, ubi, situs, prius, and simul as being
modes of sensibility; actio and passio as being complex and
derivative; and also omitting habitus (condition) and habere,
as being too general and indefinite in meaning to constitute
separate categories; we are then left with substantia, qualitas,
quantitas, relatio, and oppositum. The most serious defect in
this reduced list, from the Kantian point of view, is its
omission of causality. It is, however, a curious coincidence
that when substance is taken as a form of relatio, and
oppositum as a form of quality, we are left with the three
groups, quality, quantity, relation. Only modality is lacking to
complete Kant’s own fourfold grouping. None the less, as the
study of Kant’s Reflexionen sufficiently proves,[736] it was by
an entirely different route that Kant travelled to his
metaphysical deduction. Watson does not seem to have any
ground for his contention[737] that the above modified list of
Aristotle’s categories “gave Kant his starting-point.” It was
there indeed, as the reference to Aristotle in his letter of 1772
to Herz shows, that he first looked for assistance, only,
however, to be disappointed in his expectations.
Derivative concepts.[738]—Cf. above, pp. 66, 71-2.
I reserve this task for another occasion.[739]—Cf. A 204 =
B 249; A 13; above, p. 66 ff., and below, pp. 379-80.
Definitions of categories omitted.[740]—Cf. above, pp.
195-6, and A 241 there cited; also below, pp. 339-42, 404-5.
Note 1.[741]—On this distinction between mathematical and
dynamical categories cf. below, pp. 345-7, 510-11.
Note 2.[742]—This remark is inserted to meet a criticism
which had been made by Johann Schulze,[743] and to which
Kant in February 1784 had replied in terms almost identical
with those of the present passage.
“The third category certainly springs from the connection of
the first and second, not, indeed, from their mere combination,
but from a connection the possibility of which constitutes a
concept that is a special category. For this reason the third
category may not be applicable in instances in which the other
two apply: e.g. one year, many years of future time, are real
concepts, but the totality of future years, that is, the collective
unity of a future eternity, conceived as entire (so to say, as
completed), is something that cannot be thought. But even in
those cases in which the third category is applicable, it always
contains something more than the first and the second taken
separately and together, namely the derivation of the second
from the first, a process which is not always practicable.
Necessity, for example, is nothing else than existence, in so far
as it can be inferred from possibility. Community is the
reciprocal causality of substances in respect of their
determinations. But that determinations of one substance can
be produced by another substance, is something that we may
not simply assume; it is one of those connections without
which there could be no reciprocal relation of things in space,
and therefore no outer experience. In a word, I find that just as
the conclusion of a syllogism indicates, in addition to the
operations of understanding and judgment in the premisses, a
special operation peculiar to reason …, so also the third
category is a special, and in part original, concept. For
instance, the concepts, quantum, compositum, totum, come
under the categories unity, plurality, totality, but a quantum
thought as compositum would not yield the concept of totality
unless the concept of the quantum is thought as determinable
through the composition, and in certain quanta, such as infinite
space, that cannot be done.”[744]
Kant’s assertion that in certain cases the third category is
not applicable is misleading. His proof of the validity of the
category of reciprocity in the third Analogy really consists in
showing that it is necessary to the apprehension of spatial co-
existence;[745] and if, as Kant maintains, consciousness of
space is necessary to consciousness of time, it is thereby
proved to be involved in each and every act of consciousness.
It is presupposed in the apprehension even of substantial
existence and of causal sequence. His proof that it is a unique
category, distinct from the mere combination of the categories
of substance and causality, does not, therefore, assume what
his words in the above letter would seem to imply, that it is
only occasionally employed. The same remark holds in regard
to totality; it is presupposed even in the apprehension of a
single year. Kant’s references, both here and in other parts of
the Critique,[746] to totality in its bearing upon the conception
of infinitude, reveal considerable lack of clearness as to the
relation in which it stands to the Idea of the unconditioned.
Sometimes, as in this letter, he would seem to be identifying
them; elsewhere this confusion is avoided. In B 111 totality is
defined as multiplicity regarded as unity, and in A 142-3 = B
182 its schema is defined as number. (The identification of
totality with number has led Kant to say in B 111 that number
is not applicable in the representation of the infinite, a much
more questionable assertion than that of the letter above
quoted.) The statement that necessity is existence in so far as it
can be inferred from possibility, or that it is existence given
through possibility, is similarly misleading. Kant’s true
position is that all three are necessary to the conception of any
one of the three.
Thus Kant’s reply to Schulze, alike in his letter and in Note
2, fails to indicate with any real adequacy the true bearing of
Critical teaching in this matter; and consequently fails to
reveal the full force of his position. Only in terms of totality
can unity and plurality be apprehended; only through the
reciprocal relations which determine co-existence can we
acquire consciousness of either permanence or sequence; only
in terms of necessity can either existence or possibility be
defined. The third category is not derived from a prior
knowledge of the subordinate categories. It represents in each
case a higher complex within which alone the simpler relations
defined by the simpler concepts can exist or have meaning.
B 113-16, § 12.—This section, of no intrinsic importance, is
an example of Kant’s loving devotion to this “architectonic.”
His reasoning is extremely artificial, especially in its attempt
to connect “unity, truth, and perfection” with the three
categories of quantity. The Reflexionen show how greatly Kant
was preoccupied with these three concepts, seeking either to
base a table of categories upon them (B. Erdmann’s
interpretation), or to reduce them to categories (Adickes’
interpretation). For some time Kant himself ranked with those
who[747] “incautiously made these criteria of thought to be
properties of the things in themselves.” In Reflexionen, ii. 903,
[748] we find the following statement: “Unity (connection,
agreement), truth (quality), completeness (quantity).” In ii.
916[749] Kant makes trial to connect them, as conceptions of
possibility, with the categories of relation. In ii. 911 and 912
the later view, that they are logical in character and function,
appears, but leads to their being set in relation to the three
faculties of understanding, judgment, and reason. This is
conjectured by B. Erdmann to have been Kant’s view at the
time of the first edition. ii. 915, 919, 920 present the view
expounded in the section before us.[750] Erdmann[751] remarks
that in this section Kant “is settling accounts with certain
thoughts which in the ’seventies had yielded suggestions for
the transformation of ontology into the transcendental
analytic.”
 CHAPTER II

DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE

UNDERSTANDING
First edition Subjective and Objective Deductions.—In
dealing with the transcendental deduction, as given in the first
edition, we can make use of the masterly and convincing
analysis which Vaihinger[752] (building upon Adickes’
previous results, but developing an independent and quite
original interpretation) has given of its inconsecutive and
strangely bewildering argumentation. Vaihinger’s analysis is
an excellent example of detective genius in the field of
scholarship. From internal evidence, circumstantially
supported by the Reflexionen and Lose Blätter, he is able to
prove that the deduction is composed of manuscripts,
externally pieced together, and representing no less than four
distinct stages in the slow and gradual development of Kant’s
views. Like geological deposits, they remain to record the
processes by which the final result has come to be. Though
they do not in their present setting represent the correct
chronological order, that may be determined once the proper
clues to their disentanglement have been duly discovered. That
discovery is itself, however, no easy task; for the unexpected,
while lending colour and incident to the commentator’s
enterprise, baffles his natural expectations at every turn. The
first stage is one in which Kant dispenses with the categories,
and in which, when they are referred to, they are taken as
applying to things in themselves. The last stage, worked out, as
there is ground for believing, in the haste and excitement of
the final revision, is not represented in the Prolegomena or in
the second edition of the Critique, the author retracing his
steps and resuming the standpoint of the stage which preceded
it. The fortunate accident of Kant’s having jotted down upon
the back of a dated paper the record of his passing thought
(one of the few Lose Blätter that are thus datable) is the
culminating incident in this philosophical drama. It felicitously
serves as a keystone in the body of evidence supported by
general reasoning.
Before becoming acquainted with Vaihinger’s analysis I had
observed Kant’s ascription to empirical concepts of the
functions elsewhere allotted to the categories, but had been
hopelessly puzzled as to how such teaching could be fitted into
his general system. Vaihinger’s view of it as a pre-Critical
survival would seem to be the only possible satisfactory
solution. For the view which I have taken of Kant’s doctrine of
the transcendental object as also pre-Critical, and for its
employment as a clue to the dating of passages, I am myself
alone responsible.
The order of my exposition will be as follows:[753]
I. Enumeration, in chronological order, of the four stages
which compose the deduction of the first edition, and citation
of the passages which represent each separate stage.
II. Detailed analysis, again in chronological order, of each
successive stage, with exposition of the views which it
embodies.
III. Examination of the evidence yielded by the Reflexionen
and Lose Blätter in support of the above analysis.
IV. Connected statement and discussion of the total
argument of the deduction.
I. Enumeration of the Four Stages

(1) FIRST STAGE: THAT OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL OBJECT,

WITHOUT CO-OPERATION OF THE CATEGORIES.—This stage is
represented by[754]: (a) II. 3 (from beginning of the third
paragraph to end of 3) = A 104-10; (b) I. § 13 (the entire
section) = A 84-92 (retained in second edition as B 116-24). a
discusses the problem of the reference of sensations to an
object, b that of the objective validity of the categories. b is
therefore transitional to the second stage.
(2) SECOND STAGE: THAT OF THE CATEGORIES, WITHOUT CO-
OPERATION OF THE PRODUCTIVE IMAGINATION.—This stage is
represented by: (a) I. [§ 14] (with the exception of its
concluding paragraph) = A 92-4 (retained in second edition as
B 124-7); (b) II. (the first four paragraphs) = A 95-7; (c) II. 4
(the entire section) = A 110-14.
(3) THIRD STAGE: THAT OF THE PRODUCTIVE IMAGINATION,
WITHOUT MENTION OF THE THREEFOLD TRANSCENDENTAL
SYNTHESIS.—This stage is represented by (a) III.β (from
beginning of seventh paragraph to end of twelfth) = A 119-23;
(b) III. α (from beginning of third paragraph to end of sixth) =
A 116-19; (c) I. § 14 (Concluding paragraph) = A 94-5; (d)
III.δ (from beginning of sixteenth paragraph to end of section
preceding summary) = A 126-8; (e) S(ummary) (in conclusion
to III.) = A 128-30; (f) III.γ (from beginning of thirteenth
paragraph to end of fifteenth) = A 123-6; (g) I(ntroduction)
(from beginning of section to end of second paragraph) = A
115-16; (h) § 10 T(ransitional to the fourth stage) = A 76-9
(retained as B 102-4).
(4) FOURTH STAGE: THAT OF THE THREEFOLD TRANSCENDENTAL
SYNTHESIS.—This stage is represented by: (a) II. 1-3 (from
opening of 1 to end of second paragraph in 3) = A 98-104; (b)
II. (the two paragraphs immediately preceding a) = A 97-8.
II. Detailed Analysis of the Four Stages

First Stage.—A 104-10; A 84-92 (B 116-24).

A 104-10; II. § 3.—This is the one passage in the Critique
in which Kant explicitly defines his doctrine of the
“transcendental object”; and careful examination of the text
shows that by it he means the thing in itself, conceived as
being the object of our representations. Such teaching is, of
course, thoroughly un-Critical; and as I shall try to show, this
was very early realised by Kant himself. The passages in
which the phrase “transcendental object” occurs are, like the
section before us, in every instance of early origin. It is
significant that the transcendental object is not again referred
to in the deduction of the first edition.[755] Though it reappears
in the chapter on phenomena and noumena, it does so in a
passage which Kant excised in the second edition. The
paragraphs which he then substituted make no mention of it.
The doctrine is of frequent occurrence in the Dialectic, and
combines with other independent evidence to show that the
larger part of the Dialectic is of early origin. That the doctrine
of the transcendental object is thus a pre-Critical or semi-
Critical survival has, so far as I am aware, not hitherto been
observed by any writer upon Kant. It has invariably been
interpreted in the light of the sections in which it does not
occur, and, as thus toned down and tempered to something
altogether different from what it really stands for, has been
taken as an essential and characteristic tenet of the Critical
philosophy. It was in the course of an attempt to interpret
Kant’s entire argument in the light of his doctrine of the
transcendental object that I first came to detect its absence
from all his later utterances. But it is important to recognise
that the difficulties which would result from its retention are
quite insuperable, and would by themselves, even in the
absence of all external evidence of Kant’s rejection of it,
compel us to regard it as a survival of pre-Critical thinking. As
Vaihinger does not seem to have detected the un-Critical
character of this doctrine, it is the more significant that he
should, on other grounds, have felt constrained to regard the
passage in which it is expounded as embodying the earliest
stage in the development of the deduction. He would seem to
continue in the orthodox view so far as to hold that though the
doctrine of the transcendental object is here stated in pre-
Critical terms, it was permanently retained by Kant in altered
form.
The doctrine of the transcendental object, as here
expounded, is as follows:
“Appearances are themselves nothing but sensuous
representations which must not be taken as capable of existing
in themselves (an sich) with exactly the same character (in
ebenderselben Art) outside our power of representation.”[756]
These sense-representations are our only possible
representations, and when we speak of an object
corresponding to them, we must be conceiving an object in
general, equal to x.
“They have their object, but an object which can never be
intuited by us, and which may therefore be named the non-
empirical, i.e. transcendental object = x.”[757]
 This object is conceived as being that which prevents our
representations from occurring at haphazard, necessitating
their order in such manner that, manifold and varied as they
may be, they can yet be self-consistent in their several
groupings, and so possess that unity which is essential to the
concept of an object.
“The pure concept of this transcendental object, which in
fact throughout all our knowledge is always one and the same,
is that which can alone confer upon all our empirical concepts
relation in general to an object, i.e. objective reality.”[758]
What renders this doctrine impossible of permanent
retention was that it allowed of no objective existence mediate
between the merely subjective and the thing in itself. On such
teaching there is no room for the empirical object; and
immediately upon the recognition of that latter phenomenal
form of existence in space, Kant was constrained to recognise
that it is in the empirical object, not in the thing in itself, that
the contents of our representations are grounded and unified.
Any other view must involve the application of the categories,
especially those of substance and causality, to the thing in
itself. The entire empirical world has still to be conceived as
grounded in the non-empirical, but that is a very different
contention from the thesis that the thing in itself is the object
and the sole object of our representations. The doctrine of the
transcendental object has thus a twofold defect: it advocates an
extreme subjectivism, and yet at the same time applies the
categories to the thing in itself.
But the latter consequence is one which could not, at the
stage represented by this section, be appreciated by Kant. For,
as we shall find, he is endeavouring to solve the problem of
the reference of sense-representation to an object without
assumption of a priori categories. It is in empirical concepts,
conditioned only by a transcendental apperception, that he
professes to discover the grounds and conditions of this
objective reference. Let us follow Kant’s argument in detail.
The section opens[759] with what may be a reference to the
Aesthetic, and proceeds to deal with the first of the two
problems cited in the 1772 letter to Herz[760]—how sense-
representations stand related to their object. The exact terms in
which this question was there formulated should be noted.
“I propounded to myself this question: on what ground rests
the relation of that in us which we name representation
(Vorstellung) to the object. If the representation contains only
the mode in which the subject is affected by the object, it is
easily understood how it should accord (gemäss sei) with that
object as an effect with its cause, and how [therefore] this
determination of our mind should be able to represent
something, i.e. have an object. The passive or sensuous
representations have thus a comprehensible (begreifliche)
relation to objects, and the principles, which are borrowed
from the nature of our soul, have a comprehensible validity for
all things in so far as they are to be objects of the senses.”[761]
Thus in 1772 there was here no real problem for Kant. The
assumed fact, that our representations are generated in us by
the action of independent existences, is taken as sufficient
explanation of their being referred to objects.
The section of the Critique under consideration shows that
Kant had come to realise the inadequacy of this explanation
quite early, indeed prior to his solution of the second and
further question which in that same letter is spoken of as “the
key to the whole secret” of metaphysics. On what grounds, he
now asks, is a subjective idea, even though it be a sense
impression, capable of yielding consciousness of an object? In
the letter to Herz the use of the term representation
(Vorstellung) undoubtedly helped to conceal this problem. It is
now emphasised that appearances are nothing but sense
representations, and must never be regarded as objects capable
of existing in themselves, with exactly the same character,
outside our power of representation. Now also Kant employs,
in place of the phrase “in accord with,” the much more definite
term “corresponding to.” He points out that when we speak of
an object corresponding to our knowledge, we imply that it is
distinct from that knowledge. Consciousness of such an object
must therefore be acquired from some other source than the
given impressions. In other words, Kant is now prepared to
withdraw his statement that “the passive or sensuous
representations have an [easily] comprehensible relation to
objects.” In and by themselves they are purely subjective, and
can involve no such concept. The latter is a thought
(Gedanke), a concept (Begriff), additional to, and distinct
from, the given impressions. Its possibility, as regards both
origin[762] and validity, must be “deduced.”
There then results this first and very peculiar form of the
transcendental deduction. That part of it which persists in the
successive stages rests upon an explicitly developed
distinction between empirical and transcendental apperception.
Kant teaches, in agreement with Hume, though, as we may
believe, independently of his direct influence, that there is no
single empirical state of the self which is constant throughout
experience.[763]
“The consciousness of the self, according to the
determinations of our state in inner perception, is merely
empirical, and always in process of change…. That which has
to be represented as of necessity numerically identical cannot
be thought as such through empirical data. There must be a
condition which precedes all experience, and renders
experience itself possible, if a transcendental pre-supposition
of this kind is to be rendered valid…. This pure, original,
unchangeable consciousness I shall name transcendental
apperception.”[764]
Kant would seem to have first developed this view in a
quite crude form. The consciousness of the self, he seems to
have held, consists in its awareness of its own unceasing
activities. As consciousness of activity, it is entirely distinct in
nature and in origin from all apprehension of sense
impressions.[765] This teaching is a natural extension of the
doctrine of the Dissertation,[766] that such pure notions as
those of possibility, existence, necessity, substance, cause, are
“acquired by attending to the actions of the mind on the
occasion of experience.” Kant would very naturally hold that
consciousness of the identity and unity of the self is obtained
in a similar manner. Such, indeed, is the teaching of the
section before us.
“No knowledge can take place in us … without that unity of
consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions, and in
relation to which all representation of objects is alone
possible.”[767] “It is precisely this transcendental apperception
that constructs out of (macht aus) all possible appearances,
which are capable of coexisting in one experience, a
connection of all these representations according to laws. For
this unity of consciousness would be impossible if the mind
could not become conscious, in the knowledge of the
manifold, of the identity of the function whereby it combines it
synthetically in one knowledge. Thus the mind’s original and
necessary consciousness of the identity of itself is at the same
time a consciousness of an equally necessary unity of the
synthesis of all appearances according to concepts, i.e.
according to rules…. For the mind could not possibly think the
identity of itself in the manifold of its representations, and
indeed a priori, if it did not have before its eyes the identity of
its action….”[768]
That is to say, the self is the sole source of all unity. As a
pure and original unity it precedes experience; to its synthetic
activities all conceptual unity is due; and by reflection upon
the constancy of these activities it comes to consciousness of
its own identity.
“…even the purest objective unity, namely that of the a
priori concepts (space and time), is possible only through
relation of the intuitions to [transcendental apperception]. The
numerical unity of this apperception is therefore the a priori
condition of all concepts, just as the manifoldness of space and
of time is of the intuitions of sensibility.”[769]
To this consciousness of the abiding unity of the self Kant
also traces the notion of the transcendental object. The latter,
he would seem to argue, is formed by analogy from the
former.
“This object is nothing else than the subjective
representation (of the subject) itself, but made general, for I
am the original of all objects.”[770] “The mind, through its
original and underived thinking, is itself the pattern (Urbild) of
such a synthesis.”[771] “I would not represent anything as
outside me, and so make [subjective] appearances into
objective experience if the representations were not related to
something which is parallel to my ego, and so in that way
referred by me to another subject.”[772]
These quotations from the Lose Blätter would seem to
contain the key to Kant’s extremely enigmatic statement in A
105, that “the unity which the object makes necessary can be
nothing else than the formal unity of consciousness in its
synthesis of the manifold of its representations,” and again in
A 109, that “this relation [of representations to an object] is
nothing else than the necessary unity of consciousness.”[773]
But this does not complete the sum-total of the functions
which Kant is at this stage prepared to assign to apperception.
It mediates our consciousness of the transcendental object in
still another manner, namely, by rendering possible the
formation of the empirical concepts which unify and direct its
synthetic activities. This is, indeed, the feature in which this
form of the deduction diverges most radically from all later
positions. Space and time are, it would seem, regarded as
being the sole a priori concepts.[774] The instruments through
which the unity of apperception acts, and through which the
thought of an object becomes possible, are empirical concepts.
Such general concepts as “body” or “triangle” serve as rules
constraining the synthetic processes of apprehension and
reproduction to take place in such unitary fashion as is
required for unitary consciousness. The notion of objectivity is
specified in terms of the necessities which these empirical
concepts thus impose.
“We think a triangle as object in so far as we are conscious
of the combination of three straight lines according to a rule by
which such an intuition can at all times be generated. This
unity of rule determines the whole manifold and limits it to
conditions which make the unity of apperception possible; and
the concept of this unity [of rule] is the representation of the
object…. All knowledge demands a concept, … and a concept
is always, as regards its form, something general, something
that serves as a rule. Thus the concept of body serves as a rule
to our knowledge of outer appearances, in accordance with the
unity of the manifold which is thought through it…. The
concept of body necessitates … the representation of
extension, and therewith of impenetrability, shape, etc.”[775]
 Such is the manner in which Kant accounts for our concept
of the transcendental object. It consists of two main elements:
first, the notion of an unknown x, to which representations
may be referred; and secondly, the consciousness of this x as
exercising compulsion upon the order of our thinking. The
former notion is framed on the pattern of the transcendental
subject; it is conceived as another but unknown subject. The
consciousness of it as a source of external necessity is
mediated by the empirical concepts which transcendental
apperception also makes possible. And from this explanation
of the origin of the concept of the transcendental object Kant
derives the proof of its validity.[776] It is indispensable for the
realisation by the unitary self of a unitary consciousness.
“This relation [of representations to an object] is nothing
else than the necessary unity of consciousness, and therefore
also of the synthesis of the manifold, by a common
(gemeinschaftlich) functioning of the mind, which unites it in
one representation.”[777]
Through instruments empirical in origin, and subjectively
necessary, the notion of an objective necessity is rendered
possible to the mind.
It is not surprising that Kant did not permanently hold to
this view of the empirical concept. The objections are obvious.
Such a view of the function of general concepts renders
unintelligible their own first formation. For as they are
empirical, they can only be acquired by conscious processes
that do not involve them. That is to say, consciousness of
objects follows upon a prior consciousness in and through
which concepts, such as that of body, are discovered and
formed. Yet, as the argument claims, general concepts are the
indispensable conditions of unitary consciousness. How
through a consciousness that is not yet unified can general
concepts be formed? Also it is difficult to see how empirical
concepts can be viewed as directly conditioned by, and as
immediately due to, anything so general as pure apperception.
These objections Kant must have come very quickly to
recognise. This was the first part of his teaching to be
modified. In the immediately succeeding stage,[778] so far as
the stages can be reconstructed from the survivals in the
Critique, the empirical concepts are displaced once and for all
by the a priori categories.
The only sentences which can be regarded as possibly
conflicting with the above interpretation are those two (in the
second last and in the last paragraphs) in which the phrase
“rules a priori” occurs. Even granting (what is at least
questionable as regards the first) that the words are meant to
be taken together, it does not follow that Kant is here speaking
of categories. For contrary to his usual teaching he speaks of
the concept of body as a source of necessity. If so, it may well,
with equal looseness, be spoken of as a priori. That is indeed
done, by implication, in the second and third paragraphs,
where he speaks of a rule (referring to “body and triangle”) as
making the synthesis of reproduction “a priori necessary.”
Such assertions are completely inconsistent with Kant’s
Critical teaching, but so is the entire section.
The setting in which the passage before us occurs has its
own special interest.[779] When Kant, as it would seem, on the
very eve of the publication of the Critique, developed the
doctrine of a threefold synthesis culminating in a “synthesis of
recognition in the concept,” he must have bethought himself of
this earlier position, and have completed his subjective
deduction by incorporation, probably with occasional
alterations of phrasing, of the older manuscript. This
procedure has bewildered even the most discerning among
Kant’s readers; but now, thanks to Vaihinger’s convincing
analysis, it may be welcomed as of illuminating interest in the
historical study of Kant’s development.
I may here draw attention to the two important respects in
which the positions revealed in this section continued to
influence Kant’s later teaching: namely, in the emphasis laid
upon the transcendental unity of apperception, and in the view
of objectivity as involving the thought of the thing in itself.
The excessive emphasis which in this first stage is laid upon
the transcendental unity of apperception persists throughout
the later forms of the deduction, and, as I shall try to show,
does so to the detriment of the argument. Though its functions
are considerably diminished, they are still exaggerated; this is
perhaps in part due to its having been in this early stage
regarded as in and by itself the sole ultimate ground of unitary
experience. There were, however, two other influences at
work. Kant continued to employ the terminology of his earlier
view, and in his less watchful moments was betrayed thereby
into conflict with his considered teaching. But even more
important was the influence of his personal convictions. He
was irrevocably committed in his own private thinking to a
belief in the spiritual and abiding character of the self; and this
belief frequently colours, in illegitimate ways, the expression
of his views. This is especially evident in some of the
alterations[780] of the second edition, written as they were at a
time when he was chiefly preoccupied with moral problems.
As regards the other factor, the view adopted in regard to
the nature of objectivity, there is ample evidence that even
after the empirical concepts had been displaced by the
categories Kant still continued for some time (possibly for
several years in the earlier and middle ’seventies) to hold to his
doctrine of the transcendental object. Passages which expound
it in this later form occur in the Note on Amphiboly and
throughout the Dialectic.[781] That this may not be taken for
his final teaching is equally certain. The entire first layer of the
deduction of the first edition, all the relevant passages in the
chapter on phenomena and noumena, and some of those in the
Dialectic, were omitted in the second edition; and nowhere,
either in the other portions of the deduction of the first edition,
or in the deduction of the second edition, or in any passages
added elsewhere in the second edition, is such teaching to be
found.
A brief statement of Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental
object in its later form seems advisable at this point; it is
required in order to complete and to confirm the interpretation
which I have given of the earlier exposition. At the same time
I shall endeavour to show that the sections in which the
doctrine occurs, though later than the first layer of the
deduction of the first edition, are all of comparatively early
origin, and that they reveal not the least trace of Kant’s more
mature, phenomenalist view of the empirical world in space.
 We may begin with the passages in the chapter on
phenomena and noumena. The meaning in which the term
transcendental is employed is there made sufficiently clear.
“The transcendental employment of a concept in any
principle consists in its being referred to things in general and
in themselves.”[782]
That is to say, the term transcendental, as used in the phrase
transcendental object, is not employed in any sense which
would oppose it to the transcendent. In so far as the thought of
the thing in itself is a necessary ingredient in the concept of
objectivity, it is a condition of apperception, and therefore of
possible experience; in other words, the thought of a
transcendent object is one of the transcendental conditions of
our experience. As Kant is constantly interchanging the terms
transcendent and transcendental, such an explanation of the
phrase is perhaps superfluous; but if any is called for, the
above would seem to suffice. As we shall have occasion to
observe,[783] other factors besides the a priori must be
reckoned among the conditions of experience; and to both
types of conditions Kant applies the epithet transcendental.
In the chapter on phenomena and noumena Kant enquires at
considerable length whether the categories (meaning, of
course, the pure forms of understanding, not their schematised
correlates) allow of transcendental (i.e. transcendent)
employment. The passages in which this discussion occurs[784]
would seem, however, to be highly composite; many
paragraphs, or portions of paragraphs, are of much later date
than others. We may therefore limit our attention to those in
which the phrase transcendental object is actually employed,
i.e. to those which appear only in the first edition.
“All our representations are referred by the understanding to
some object; and since appearances are merely
representations, the understanding refers them to a something
as the object of sensuous intuition. But this something, thus
conceived (in so fern), is only the transcendental object; and
by that is meant a something = x, of which we know, and with
the present constitution of our understanding can know,
nothing whatsoever, but which, as a correlate of the unity of
apperception, can serve only for the unity of the manifold in
sensuous intuition. By means of this unity the understanding
combines the manifold into the concept of an object. This
transcendental object cannot be separated from the sense data,
for nothing then remains over through which it might be
thought. Consequently it is not in itself an object of
knowledge, but only the representation of appearances under
the concept of an object in general which is determinable
through the manifold of those appearances. Precisely for this
reason also the categories do not represent a special object
given to the understanding alone, but only serve to specify the
transcendental object (the concept of something in general)
through that which is given in sensibility, in order thereby to
know appearances empirically under concepts of objects.”[785]
“The object to which I relate appearance in general is the
transcendental object, i.e. the completely indeterminate
thought of something in general. This cannot be entitled the
noumenon [i.e. the thing in itself more specifically determined
as being the object of a purely intelligible intuition];[786] for I
know nothing of what it is in itself, and have no concept of it
save as the object of a sensuous intuition in general, and so as
being one and the same for all appearances.”[787]
Otherwise stated, Kant’s teaching is as follows. The thought
of the thing in itself remains altogether indeterminate; it does
not specify its object, and therefore yields no knowledge of it;
none the less it is a necessary ingredient in the concept of
objectivity as such. The object as specified in terms of sense is
mere representation; the object as genuinely objective can
only be thought. The correlate of the unity of apperception is
the thought of the thing in itself. This is what Kant is really
asserting, though in a hesitating manner which would seem to
indicate that he is himself already more or less conscious of its
unsatisfactory and un-Critical character.
The phrase transcendental object occurs once in the second
Analogy[788] and twice in the Note on Amphiboly.[789] The
passage in the second Analogy may very well, in view of the
kind of subjectivism which it expounds, be of early date of
writing. By transcendental object Kant there quite obviously
means the thing in itself. From the first reference in the Note
on Amphiboly no definite conclusions can be drawn. The
argument is too closely bound up with his criticism of Leibniz
to allow of his own independent standpoint being properly
developed. There is, however, nothing in it which compels us
to regard it as of late origin; and quite evidently Kant here
means by the transcendental object the thing in itself. The
phrase substantia phaenomenon is not, as might at first sight
seem, equivalent to the empirical object of Kant’s
phenomenalist teaching. It is an adaptation of Leibnizian
phraseology.[790] The second reference in the Note on
Amphiboly occurs in a passage which may perhaps be of later
origin;[791] but the transcendental object is there mentioned
only in order to afford opportunity for the statements that it
cannot be thought through any of the categories, that we are
completely ignorant whether it is within or without us, and
whether if sensibility were removed it would vanish or remain,
and that it can therefore serve only as a limiting concept. We
here observe it in the very process of being eliminated. As we
shall find, Kant’s teaching is ill-expressed in the sections on
Amphiboly; so much so that they could not be recast without
seriously disturbing the balance of his architectonic. They
were therefore allowed to remain unaltered in the second
edition.
We may now pass to the Dialectic. The subjectivist doctrine
of the transcendental object is there expressed in a much more
uncompromising manner. Let us first consider the references
to the transcendental object in the Paralogisms and in the
subsequent Reflection. The phrase transcendental object occurs
twice in the second Paralogism, once in the third, twice in the
fourth, and three times in the Reflection;[792] and in all these
cases there is not the least uncertainty as to its denotation. It is
taken as equivalent to the thing in itself, and is expounded as a
necessary ingredient in the consciousness of our subjective
representations as noumenally grounded.
“What matter may be as a thing in itself (transcendental
object) is completely unknown to us, though, owing to its
being represented as something external, its permanence as
appearance can indeed be observed.”[793] “We can indeed
admit that something, which may be (in the transcendental[794]
sense) ‘outside us,’ is the cause of our outer intuitions, but this
is not the object of which we are thinking in the
representations of matter and of corporeal things, for these are
merely appearances, i.e. mere kinds of representation which
are never to be met with save in us, and whose actuality
depends on immediate consciousness just as does the
consciousness of my own thoughts. The transcendental object
is equally unknown in respect to inner and to outer
intuition.”[795]
Here Kant at one and the same time distinguishes between,
and confounds together, representation and its empirical
object. What is alone clear is that by the transcendental object
he means simply the thing in itself viewed as the cause of our
sensations. In A 358 it is used in a wider sense as also
comprehending the noumenal conditions which underlie the
conscious subject.
“…this something which underlies the outer appearances
and which so affects our sense that it obtains the
representations of space, matter, shape, etc., this something
viewed as noumenon (or better as transcendental object) might
also at the same time be the subject that does our thinking….”
Similarly in A 379-80:
“Though the I, as represented through inner sense in time,
and objects in space outside me, are specifically quite distinct
appearances, they are not for that reason thought as being
different things. Neither the transcendental object which
underlies outer appearances, nor that which underlies inner
intuition, is in itself either matter or a thinking being, but is a
ground (to us unknown) of the appearances which supply to us
the empirical concepts of the former as well as of the latter
kind.”
The references in the Reflection on the Paralogisms are of
the same general character and are equally definite.[796] A 390-
1 has special interest in that it explicitly states that to
appearances, taken as Kant invariably takes them throughout
the Paralogisms in the first edition as mere subjective
representations, the category of causality, and therefore by
implication the category of substance, is inapplicable.
 “No one could dream of asserting that that which he has
once come to recognise as mere representation is an outer
cause.”
We may now turn to the passages in the chapter on the
Antinomies.
“The non-sensuous cause of our representations is
completely unknown to us, and therefore we cannot intuit it as
object…. We may, however, entitle the purely intelligible
cause of appearances in general the transcendental object….
To this transcendental object we can ascribe the whole extent
and connection of our possible perceptions….”[797]
Appearances can be regarded as real only to the extent to
which they are actually experienced. Otherwise they exist only
in some unknown noumenal form of which we can acquire no
definite concept, and which is therefore really nothing to us.
This, Kant declares, is true even of that immemorial past of
which we are ourselves the product.
“…all the events which have taken place in the immense
periods that have preceded my own existence mean really
nothing but the possibility of extending the chain of
experience from the present perception back to the conditions
which determine it in time.”[798]
In other words, we may not claim that such events,
empirically conceived, have ever actually existed in any such
empirical form. A similar interpretation is given to the
assertion of the present reality of what has never been actually
experienced.
“Moreover, in outcome it is a matter of indifference whether
I say that in the empirical progress in space I can meet with
stars a hundred times farther removed than the outermost now
perceptible to me, or whether I say that they are perhaps to be
met with in cosmical space even though no human being has
ever perceived or ever will perceive them. For though they
might be given as things in themselves, without relation to
possible experience, they are still nothing for me, and
therefore are not objects, save in so far as they are contained in
the series of the empirical regress.”[799] “The cause of the
empirical conditions of this process, that which determines
what members I shall meet with and how far by means of such
members I can carry out the regress, is transcendental and is
therefore necessarily unknown to me.”[800]
Such is the form in which Kant’s pre-Critical doctrine of the
transcendental object survives in the Critique.[801] It contains
no trace of the teaching of the objective deduction of the first
and second edition or of the teaching of the refutation of
idealism in the second edition. It closely resembles Mill’s
doctrine of the permanent possibilities of sensation, and is
almost equally subjectivist in character. As already noted,[802]
it also lies open to the further objection that it involves an
illegitimate application of the categories to things in
themselves. As Kant started from the naïve and natural
assumption that reference of representations to objects must be
their reference to things in themselves, he also took over 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 cause. The thing in itself is regarded as the sole true
substance and as the real cause of everything which happens in
the natural world. Appearances, being representations merely,
are wholly transitory and completely inefficacious. Not only,
therefore, are the categories regarded as valid of things in
themselves, they are also declared to have no possible
application to phenomena. Sense appearances do not, on this
view, constitute the mechanical world of the natural sciences;
they have a purely subjective, more or less epi-phenomenal,
existence in the mind of each separate observer. It was very
gradually, in the process of developing his own Critical
teaching, that Kant came to realise the very different position
to which he was thereby committed. The categories, including
that of causality, are pre-empted for the empirical object which
is now regarded as immediately apprehended; and the function
of mediating the reference of phenomena to things in
themselves now falls to the Ideas of Reason. The distinction
between appearance and reality is no longer that between
representations and their noumenal causes, but between the
limited and relative character of the entire world in space and
time and the unconditioned demanded by Reason. But these
are questions whose discussion must meantime be deferred.
[803]

I may now briefly summarise the evidence in favour of the

view that the doctrine of the transcendental object is a pre-
Critical or semi-Critical survival and must not be taken as
forming part of Kant’s final and considered position. (I) Of the
six sections in which the phrase transcendental object occurs,
three[804] were omitted in the second edition, and in the
passages which were substituted for them it receives no
mention. There are various reasons which can be suggested in
explanation of the retention of the other three[805] in the
second edition. The Note on Amphiboly was too unsatisfactory
as a whole to encourage Kant to improve upon it in detail. The
other two are outside the limit at which Kant thought good to
terminate all attempts to improve, whether in major or in
minor matters, the text of the first edition.[806] To have recast
the Antinomies as he had recast the Paralogisms would have
involved alterations much too extensive. Also, there were no
outside polemical influences—or at least none acting quite
directly—such as undoubtedly reinforced his other reasons for
revising the Paralogisms. (2) Secondly, the transcendental
object is not mentioned in the later layers of the deduction of
the first edition, nor in the deduction of the second edition, nor
in any passage or note added in the second edition. That Kant
should thus suddenly cease to employ a phrase to which he
had accustomed himself is the more significant in view of his
conservative preference for the adapting of familiar
terminology to new uses. It can only be explained as due to his
recognition of the completely untenable character of the
teaching to which it had given expression. As the object of
knowledge is always empirical, it can never legitimately be
called transcendental. (3) Thirdly, the general teaching of the
passages in which the phrase transcendental object occurs is
by itself sufficient proof of their early origin. They reveal not
the least trace of the deepened insight of his final standpoints.
As we know, it was certain difficulties involved in the working
out of the objective deduction that delayed the publication of
the Critique for so many years; and the sections which deal
with these difficulties contain Kant’s maturest teaching. In
them he seems to withdraw definitely from the positions to
which he had unwarily committed himself by his un-Critical
doctrine of the transcendental object. I now pass to the second
section constitutive of the first stage.
A 84-92=B 116-24, I. § 13.—Just as in II. § 3 Kant deals
solely with the first of the two questions formulated in the
letter of 1772 to Herz—the reference of sense-representations
to an object,—so in I. § 13 he raises only the second—that of
the objective validity of intellectual representations (now
spoken of as pure concepts of understanding, or pure a priori
concepts, and only in one sentence as categories). And just as
in the former section he carries the problem a step further, yet
without attaining to the true Critical position, so in this latter
he still assumes that it is the application of these pure concepts
to real independent objects, i.e. to things in themselves, which
calls for justification. We must again consider the exact terms
in which this problem is formulated in the letter to Herz.[807]
“Similarly, if that in us which is called a representation,
were active in relation to the object, that is to say, if the object
itself were produced by the representation (as on the view that
the ideas in the Divine Mind are the archetypes of things), the
conformity of representations with objects might be
understood. We can thus render comprehensible at least the
possibility of two kinds of intelligence—of an intellectus
archetypus, on whose intuition the things themselves are
grounded, and of an intellectus ectypus which derives the data
of its logical procedure from the sensuous intuition of things.
But our understanding (leaving moral ends out of account) is
not the cause of the object through its representations, nor is
the object the cause of its intellectual representations (in sensu
reali). Hence, the pure concepts of the understanding cannot
be abstracted from the data of the senses, nor do they express
our capacity for receiving representations through the senses.
But, whilst they have their sources in the nature of the soul,
they originate there neither as the result of the action of the
object upon it, nor as themselves producing the object. In the
Dissertation I was content to explain the nature of these
intellectual representations in a merely negative manner, viz.
as not being modifications of the soul produced by the object.
But I silently passed over the further question, how such
representations, which refer to an object and yet are not the
result of an affection due to that object, can be possible. I had
maintained that the sense representations represent things as
they appear, the intellectual representations things as they are.
But how then are these things given to us, if not by the manner
in which they affect us? And if such intellectual
representations are due to our own inner activity, whence
comes the agreement which they are supposed to have with
objects, which yet are not their products? How comes it that
the axioms of pure reason about these objects agree with the
latter, when this agreement has not been in any way assisted
by experience? In mathematics such procedure is legitimate,
because its objects only are quantities for us, and can only be
represented as quantities, in so far as we can generate their
representation by repeating a unit a number of times. Hence
the concepts of quantity can be self-producing, and their
principles can therefore be determined a priori. But when we
ask how the understanding can form to itself completely a
priori concepts of things in their qualitative determination,
with which these things must of necessity agree, or formulate
in regard to their possibility principles which are independent
of experience, but with which experience must exactly
conform,—we raise a question, that of the origin of the
agreement of our faculty of understanding with the things in
themselves, over which obscurity still hangs.”[808]
The section before us represents the same general
standpoint as that given in the above letter. Here, too, it is the
validity of the a priori concepts in reference to things in
themselves that is under consideration. The implication of
Kant’s argument is that the categories, being neither
determinable nor discoverable by means of experience, will
only apply to appearances if they determine, or rather reveal,
the actual non-experienced nature of things in themselves.
These pure concepts, it is implied, owing to their combined a
priori and intellectual characteristics, make this inherent
claim. Either they are altogether empty and illusory, or such
unlimited validity must be granted to them. Kant, that is to say,
still holds, as in the Dissertation, that sense-representations
reveal things as they appear, intellectual representations things
as they are.
“We have either to surrender completely all claims to
judgments of pure reason, in the most esteemed of all fields,
that which extends beyond the limits of all possible
experience, or we must bring this Critical investigation to
perfection.”[809]
The pure concepts, unlike space, “apply to objects generally,
apart from the conditions of sensibility.”[810] But here also, as
in the letter to Herz, the strange and problematic character of
such knowledge is clearly recognised.
Kant’s discussion of the concept of causality in A 90 may
seem to conflict with the above contention—that it is its
applicability to things in themselves which Kant is
considering. But this difficulty vanishes if we bear in mind
that here, as in the Dissertation, there is no such distinction as
we find in Kant’s later more genuinely phenomenalist position,
between the objects causing our sensations and things in
themselves.[3] The purely intelligible object, supposed to
remain after elimination of the empirical and a priori sensory
factors, is the thing in itself. The objects apprehended through
sense are real, only not in their sensuous form.
There are two connected facts which together may perhaps
be taken as evidence that I. § 13 is later than II. 3 b.
Intellectual concepts are reinstated alongside the a priori
concepts of space and time. Kant has evidently in the
meantime given up the attempt to construe the former as
empirical in origin. That that attempt was earlier in time would
seem to be proved by the further fact, that the a priori
concepts are here viewed as performing the same kind of
function as that ascribed in II. 3 b to concepts that are
empirical. They are conditions of the “synthetic unity of
thought.”[811] This view of the function of concepts is certainly
fundamental and important, and Kant permanently retained it
from his previous abortive method of ‘deduction.’ But it was a
long step from the discovery of the distinction between
empirical and a priori concepts to its fruitful application. That
involved appreciation of the further fact that the two problems,
separately stated in the letter to Herz and separately dealt with
in II. 3 b and in I. § 13—the problem of the relation of sense-
representations, and the problem of the relation of intellectual
representations, to an object,—are indeed one and the same,
soluble from one and the same standpoint, by one and the
same method of deduction, namely, by reference to the
possibility of experience. Only in and through relation to an
object can sense-representations be apprehended; and only as
conditions of such sense-experience are the categories
objectively valid. Relation to an object is constituted by the
categories, and is necessary in reference to sense-
representations, because only thereby is consciousness of any
kind possible at all.
That this truly Critical position had not been attained when
I. § 13 was written,[812] is shown not only by its concentration
on the single problem of the validity of a priori concepts, but
also by its repeated assertion that representations can be
consciously apprehended independently of all relation to the
faculty of understanding. The directly counter assertion
appears, however, in the sections (I. § 14, II.: first four
paragraphs) which immediately follow in the text of the
Critique—indicating that in the period represented by these
latter the revolutionary discovery, the truly Copernican
hypothesis, had at last been achieved. They constitute the
second stage, and to it we may now proceed.
Second Stage.—A 92-4 = B 124-7; A 95-7; A 110-14.
A 92-4, I. § 14 (with the exception of the concluding
classification of mental powers).—This section makes a fresh
start; it stands in no necessary relation to any preceding
section. The problem is still formulated, in its opening
sentences, in terms reminiscent of the letter to Herz; but
otherwise the standpoint is entirely new, and save for the
wording of a single sentence (A 93: “if not intuited, yet”), is
genuinely Critical. The phrase “possibility of experience” now
appears, and is at once assigned the central rôle. The words “if
not intuited, yet” in A 93 may possibly have been inserted
later in order to tone down the flagrant contradiction with the
preceding paragraphs. In any case, even this qualification is
explicitly retracted in A 94.
 A 95-7.—The same standpoint appears in the first three
paragraphs of Section II. The categories are “the a priori
conditions on which the possibility of experience
depends.”[813] By the categories alone “can an object be
thought.”[814] The further important point that only in their
empirical employment do the categories have use and meaning
is excellently developed.
“An a priori concept not referring to experience would be
the logical form only of a concept, but not the concept itself by
which something is thought.”[815]
A 110-14, II. 4.—In this section also the argument starts
afresh, indicating (if such evidence were required) that, like I.
§ 14, it must have been written independently of its present
context. But the argument is now advanced one step further.
The categories are recognised as simultaneously conditioning
both unity of consciousness and objectivity.
“There is but one experience … as there is but one space
and one time….” “The a priori conditions of a possible
experience are at the same time conditions of the possibility of
objects of experience”[816] “…the necessity of these categories
rests on the relation which our whole sensibility, and with it
also all possible appearances, have to the original unity of
apperception….”[817]
Now also it is emphasised that save in and through a priori
concepts no representations can exist for consciousness.
“They would then belong to no experience, would be
without an object, a blind play of representations, less even
than a dream.”[818] They “would be to us the same as
nothing.”[819]
The wording is still not altogether unambiguous, but the
main point is made sufficiently clear.
These paragraphs are the earliest in which traces of a
genuine phenomenalism can be detected. The transcendental
object, one and the same for all our knowledge, is not referred
to. ‘Objects’ (in the plural) is the term which is used wherever
the context permits. The empirical object is thus made to
intervene between the thing in itself and the subjective
representations. But the distinction between empirical objects
and subjective representations on the one hand, and between
empirical objects and things in themselves on the other, is not
yet drawn in any really clear and definite manner.
A similar phenomenalist tendency crops out in Kant’s
distinction[820] between objective affinity and subjective
association.
“The ground of the possibility of the association of the
manifold, so far as it lies in the object, is named the affinity of
the manifold.”
None the less Kant’s subjectivism finds one of its most
decided expressions in A 114.
Third Stage.—A 119-23 = III. β; A 116-19 = III. α; A 94-5
= I. § 14 C(oncluding paragraph); A 126-8 = III. δ; A 128-30 =
S(ummary); A 123-6 = III. γ; A 115-16 = III. I(ntroduction); A
76-9 (B 102-4) = § 10 T(ransition to fourth stage).
A 119-23, III. β (from the beginning of the seventh
paragraph to the end of the twelfth). The doctrine of objective
affinity already developed in the above sections is now made
to rest upon a new faculty, the productive imagination. As
Vaihinger remarks, the wording of this section would seem to
indicate that it is Kant’s first attempt at formulating that new
doctrine. He has not as yet got over his own surprise at the
revolutionary nature of the conclusions to which he feels
himself driven by the exigencies of Critical teaching. He finds
that it is deepening into consequences which may lead very far
from the current psychology and from his own previous views
regarding the nature and conditions of the knowing process
and of personality. As evidence that this section was not
written continuously with II. 4, [821a] we have the further fact
that though the doctrine of objective affinity is dwelt upon, it
is described afresh, with no reference to the preceding account.
Also, the empirical processes of apprehension and
reproduction, already mentioned in A 104-10, are now
ascribed to the empirical imagination which is carefully
distinguished from the productive.
 III. α repeats “from above” the argument given in III. β
“from below.” It insists upon the close connection between the
categories (first introduced in II. 4[821]) with the productive
imagination of III. β.
Vaihinger places III. δ next in order, on account of the
connection of its argument with III. α.[822] But it dwells only
upon the chief outcome of the total argument, viz. that the
orderliness of nature is due to understanding. That productive
imagination is not mentioned, is taken by Vaihinger to signify
Kant’s recognition that it can be postulated only
hypothetically, and that as doctrine it is not absolutely
essential to the strict deduction.
S summarises the entire argument, and in it “pure
imagination” receives mention.
Within this third stage III. γ is subsequent to the above four
sections. For it carries the doctrine of productive imagination
one step further. In III. β, III. α, and S, productive imagination
has been treated merely as an auxiliary function of pure
understanding.
“The unity of apperception in relation to the synthesis of
imagination is the understanding; and the same unity with
reference to the transcendental synthesis of the imagination is
the pure understanding.”[823]
It is now treated as a separate and distinct faculty. So far
from being a function of understanding, its synthesis “by itself,
though carried out a priori, is always sensuous.”[824] It is
“one of the fundamental faculties of the human soul…. The
two extreme ends, sensibility and understanding, must be
brought into connection with each other by means of this
transcendental function of imagination.”[825]
In this section there also appears a new element which
would seem to connect it with the next following stage,
namely, the addition to the series, apprehension, association,
and reproduction, of the further process, recognition. As here
introduced it is extremely ambiguous in character. It is counted
as being empirical, and yet as containing a priori concepts.
This decidedly hybrid process would seem to represent Kant’s
first formulation of the even more ambiguous process, which
corresponds to it in the fourth stage.
In III. I recognition is again mentioned, but this time in a
form still more akin to its treatment in the fourth stage. It is
not recognition through categories, but, as a form in
apperception, is the
“empirical consciousness of the identity of the reproductive
representations with the appearances by which they were
given.”[826]
In all other respects, however, the above six sections agree
(along with I. § 14 C) in holding to a threefold division of
mental powers: sensibility, imagination, and apperception.
This third stage is thereby marked off sufficiently clearly from
the second stage in which pure imagination is wanting, and
from the fourth stage in which it is dissolved into a threefold a
priori synthesis.
In both I. § 14 C and in III. I the classification which
underlies the third stage is explicitly formulated. Their
statements harmoniously combine to yield the following
tabular statement:
1. The synopsis of the manifold—a priori through sense, i.e.
in pure intuition.
2. The synthesis of this manifold—through pure
transcendental imagination.
3. The unity of this synthesis—through pure original
transcendental apperception.
At this point Vaihinger adds to the above section the earlier
passage § 10 T.[827] It is even more definitely than III. γ and
III. I transitional to the fourth stage. It must be classed within
the third stage, as it holds to the above threefold classification.
But it modifies that classification in two respects. First, in that
it does not employ the term synopsis, but only speaks of pure
intuition as required to yield us a manifold. The term synopsis,
as used by Kant, is, however, decidedly misleading.[828] His
invariable teaching is that all connection is due to synthesis.
By synopsis, therefore, which he certainly does not employ as
synonymous with synthesis, can be meant only apprehension
of external side-by-sideness. It never signifies anything except
apprehension of the lowest possible order. Kant’s omission of
the term, therefore, tends to clearness of statement. Secondly,
the classification is also modified by the substitution of
understanding for the unity of apperception. Apperception is,
however, so obscurely treated in all of the above sections, that
this cannot be regarded as a vital alteration. What is new in
this section, and seems to connect it in a curious and
interesting manner with sections in the fourth stage, is its
doctrine of
“a manifold of a priori sensibility.” “Space and time contain
a manifold of pure a priori intuition.”[829]
That is, in this connection, an entirely new doctrine. In all
the previous sections of the deduction (previous in the
assumed order of original writing) the manifold supplied
through intuition is taken as being empirical, and as consisting
of sensations. Kant here also adds that the manifold, “whether
given empirically or a priori,”[830] must be synthesised before
it can be known.
“The spontaneity of our thought requires that this manifold
[of pure a priori intuition] should be run through in a certain
manner, taken up, and connected, in order that a knowledge
may be formed out of it. This action I call synthesis.”
Fourth Stage.—A 98-104; A 97-8.—As already noted,
there are in Kant two persistent but conflicting interpretations
of the nature of the synthetic processes exercised by
imagination and understanding, the subjectivist and the
phenomenalist.[831] Now, on the former view, imagination is
simply understanding at work. In other words, imagination is
merely the active synthesising side of a faculty whose
complementary aspect appears in the logical unity of the
concept. From this point of view the transcendental and the
empirical factors may be taken as forming a single series. The
transcendental and the empirical processes will vary together,
some form of transcendental activity corresponding to every
fundamental form of empirical activity and vice versa. Such an
inference only follows if the subjectivist standpoint be
accepted to the exclusion of the phenomenalist point of view.
But since Kant constantly alternates between them, and never
quite definitely formulates them in their distinction and
opposition; since, in fact, they were rather of the nature of
obscurely felt tendencies than of formulated standpoints, it is
quite intelligible that an inference derived from the one should
be drawn even at the very time when the other is being more
explicitly developed. This, it would seem, is what actually
happened. When we come to consider the evidence derivable
from the Reflexionen and Lose Blätter, we shall find support
for the view that after January 1780, on the very eve of the
publication of the Critique, while the revolutionary,
phenomenalist consequences of the Critical hypothesis were
becoming clearer to him, he unguardedly allowed the above
inference to lead him to recast his previous views in a
decidedly subjectivist manner. The view that transcendental
imagination has a special and unique activity altogether
different in type from any of its empirical processes, namely,
the “productive,” is now allowed to drop; and in place of it
Kant develops the view that transcendental functions run
exactly parallel with the empirical processes of apprehension,
reproduction, and recognition. Accordingly, in place of the
classification presented in the third stage, we find a new and
radically different one introduced into the text, without the
least indication that Kant’s standpoint has meantime changed.
It is given in A 97:
A. Synopsis of the manifold through sense.
B. Synthesis.
1. Synthesis of apprehension of representations in
[inner] intuition.
2. Synthesis of reproduction of representations in
imagination.
3. Synthesis of recognition of representations in the
concept.
And Kant adds in explanation that “these point to three
subjective sources of knowledge which make the
understanding itself possible, and which in so doing make all
experience possible, in so far as it is an empirical product of
the understanding.” What, now, are these three subjective
sources of knowledge? They certainly are not those classified
in the table of the third stage. A roughly coincides with its first
member; consequently B 1 is left without proper correlate. B 2
is altogether different from the previous synthesis of
imagination, for in the earlier table transcendental imagination
is regarded as being solely productive, never reproductive.[832]
It is now asserted to be reproductive—a contradiction of one
of his own most emphatic contentions, which can only be
accounted for by some such explanation as we are here stating.
Nothing is lacking as regards explicitness in the statement of
this new position. “…the reproductive synthesis of
imagination belongs to the transcendental acts of the soul, and,
in reference to it [viz. to the reproductive synthesis], we will
call this power too the transcendental power of the
imagination.”[833] Lastly, even B 3 does not coincide with the
pure apperception of the other table. B 3 is more akin to the
recognition which in the third stage is declared to be always
empirical. In any case, it is recognition in the concept; and
though that may ultimately involve and condition
transcendental apperception, it remains, in the manner in
which it is here developed by Kant, something very different.
But this is a point to which we shall return. There is an added
complication, running through this entire stage, which first
requires to be disentangled. The transcendental syntheses are
declared to condition the pure representations of space and
time no less than those of sense-experience.
“This synthesis of apprehension also must be executed a
priori, i.e. in reference to representations which are not
empirical. For without it we could not have the a priori
representations either of space or of time, since these can be
generated only through the synthesis of the manifold which
sensibility presents in its original receptivity. Thus we have a
pure synthesis of apprehension”[834] “…if I draw a line in
thought or desire to think of the time from one noon to
another, or merely represent to myself a certain number, I
must, firstly, apprehend these manifold representations one
after the other. But if the preceding representations (the first
parts of the line, the antecedent parts of time or the units
serially represented) were always to drop out of my thought,
and were not reproduced when I advance to those that follow,
no complete representation, and none of all the
aforementioned thoughts, not even the purest and first basal
representations of space and time, could ever arise.”[835]
This, as Vaihinger remarks, is a point of sufficient
importance to justify separate treatment. But it is introduced
quite incidentally by Kant, and obscures quite as much as it
clarifies the main argument.
It is convenient to start with the second synthesis. Kant’s
argument is much clearer in regard to it than in regard to the
other two. He distinguishes between empirical and
transcendental reproduction. Reproduction in ordinary
experience, in accordance with the laws of association, is
merely empirical. The de facto conformity of appearances to
rules is what renders such empirical reproduction possible;
“…otherwise our faculty of empirical imagination would
never find any opportunity of action suited to its capacities,
and would remain hidden within the mind as a dead, and to us
unknown power.”[836]
Kant proceeds to argue, consistently with his doctrine of
objective affinity, that empirical reproduction is itself
transcendentally conditioned. The form, however, in which
this argument is developed is peculiar to the section before us,
and is entirely new.
“If we can show that even our purest a priori intuitions
yield no knowledge, save in so far as they contain such
connection of the manifold as will make possible a
thoroughgoing synthesis of reproduction, this synthesis of the
imagination must be grounded, prior to all experience, on a
priori principles; and since experience necessarily presupposes
that appearances can be reproduced, we shall have to assume a
pure transcendental synthesis of the imagination as
conditioning even the possibility of all experience.”[837]
In the concluding paragraph Kant makes clear that he
regards this transcendental activity as being exercised in a
twofold manner: in relation to the empirically given manifold
as well as in relation to the a priori given manifold. How this
transcendental activity is to be distinguished from the
empirical is not further explained. I discuss this point below.
[838]

The argument of the section on the synthesis of

apprehension, to which we may now turn back, suffers from
serious ambiguity. It is not clear whether a distinction,
analogous to that between empirical and transcendental
reproduction, is being made in reference to apprehension. The
actual wording of its two last paragraphs would lead to that
conclusion. That, however, is a view which would seem to be
excluded by the wider context. Kant is dealing with the
synthesis of apprehension in inner intuition, i.e. in time. By
the fundamental principles of his teaching such intuition must
always be transcendental. Empirical apprehension can only
concern the data of the special senses. The process of
apprehension referred to in the middle paragraph must
therefore itself be transcendental.
But it is in dealing with the synthesis of recognition that the
argument is most obscure. It is idle attempting to discover any
possible distinction between an empirical and a transcendental
process of recognition. For the transcendental process here
appears as being the consciousness that what we are thinking
now is the same as what we thought a moment before; and it is
illustrated not by reference to the pure intuitions of space and
time, but only by the process of counting. It may be argued
that empirical recognition is mediated by transcendental
factors—by pure concepts and by apperception. But unless we
are to take transcendental recognition as synonymous with
transcendental apperception, which Kant’s actual teaching
does not seem to justify us in doing, such considerations will
not enable us to distinguish two forms of recognition. Apart,
however, from this difficulty, there is the further one that the
concepts in and through which the recognition is executed are
here described as being empirical. The only key that will solve
the mystery of this extraordinary section, hopelessly
inexplicable when viewed as a single continuous whole, is, it
would seem, the theory of Vaihinger, namely,[839] that from the
third paragraph onwards (already dealt with as forming the
first stage of the deduction) Kant is making use of manuscript
which represents the earliest form in which his explanation of
the consciousness of objects was developed, with the strange
result that this section is a combination of the latest and of the
earliest forms of the deduction. While seeking to make out a
parallelism between the empirical, conscious activities of
imagination and understanding on the one hand, and its
transcendental functions on the other, he must have bethought
himself of the earlier attempt to explain consciousness of
objects through empirical concepts conditioned by
transcendental apperception, and so have attempted to
expound the third form of synthesis by means of it. As thus
extended it involves a distinction between transcendental and
empirical apperception, and upon that the discussion, so far as
it concerns anything akin to recognition, altogether turns. But
there is not the least further mention of recognition itself. As
transcendental, it cannot be taken as the equivalent of
empirical apperception; and as a synthesis through concepts,
can hardly coincide with pure apperception. The title of the
section, “the synthesis of recognition in the concept,” is thus
no real indication of the astonishing fare prepared for the
reader. The doctrine of a threefold synthesis seems to have
occurred to Kant on the very eve of the publication of the
Critique. The passage expounding it may well have been
hurriedly composed, and when unforeseen difficulties
accumulated, especially in regard to recognition as a
transcendental process, Kant must have resolved simply to
close the matter by inserting the older manuscript.
III. Evidence yielded by the “Reflexionen” and “Lose Blätter” in support of
the above analysis.

The evidence, derived by Vaihinger from the Reflexionen

and Lose Blätter, briefly outlined, is as follows.[840] (1) In the
Reflexionen zur Anthropologie relevant passages are few in
number, and represent a standpoint very close to that of the
1770 Dissertation. Imagination is treated only as an empirical
faculty.[841] Recognition, which is only once mentioned,[842] is
also viewed as merely empirical. The understanding is spoken
of as the faculty through which objects are thought.[843] The
categories are not mentioned, and it is stated that the
understanding yields only ideas of reflection. “All knowledge
of things is derived, as regards its matter, from sensation—the
understanding gives only ideas of reflection.”[844] So far, these
Reflexionen would seem to coincide, more or less, with the
first stage of the deduction. They contain, however, no
reference to transcendental apperception; and are therefore
regarded by Vaihinger as representing a still earlier standpoint.
(2) In the Reflexionen zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft there is
a very large and valuable body of relevant passages. No. 925
must be of the same date as the letter of 1772 to Herz; it
formulates its problem in practically identical terms.[845] Nos.
946-52 and 955 may belong to the period of the first stage. For
though the doctrine of the transcendental object as the opposite
counterpart of the transcendental subject is not mentioned, the
spiritualist view of the self is prominent. In No. 946 it is
asserted that the representation of an object is “made by us
through freedom.”
“Free actions are already given a priori, namely our
own.”[846] “To pass universal objective judgments, and to do
so apodictically, reason must be free from subjective grounds
of determination. For were it so determined the judgment
would be merely accidental, namely in accordance with its
subjective cause. Thus reason is conscious a priori of its
freedom in objectively necessary judgments in so far as it
apprehends them as exclusively grounded through their
relation to the object.”[847] “Transcendental freedom is the
necessary hypothesis of all rules, and therefore of all
employment of the understanding.”[848] “Appearances are
representations whereby we are affected. The representation of
our free self-activity does not involve affection, and
accordingly is not appearance, but apperception.”[849]
It is significant that the categories receive no mention.
Almost all the other Reflexionen would seem to have
originated in the period of the second stage of the deduction;
but they still betray a strong spiritualist bias.
“Impressions are not yet representations, for they must be
related to something else which is an action. Now the reaction
of the mind is an action which relates to the impression, and
which if taken alone[850] may in its special forms receive the
title categories.”[851] “We can know the connection of things in
the world only if we produce it through a universal action, and
so out of a principle of inner power (aus einem Prinzip der
inneren Potestas): substance, ground, combination.”[852]
These Reflexionen recognise only the categories of relation,
[853] and must therefore be prior to the twelvefold
classification. There is not the least trace of the characteristic
doctrines of the third and fourth stages of the deduction, viz. of
the transcendental function of the imagination or of a threefold
transcendental synthesis. The nature of apprehension is also
most obscure. It is frequently equated with apperception.
(3) The Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass (Heft I.) contains
fragments which also belong to the second stage of the
deduction, but which would seem to be of somewhat earlier
date than the above Reflexionen.[854] They have interesting
points of contact with the first stage. Thus though the phrase
transcendental object does not occur in them, the object of
knowledge is equated with x, and is regarded in the manner of
the first stage as the opposite counterpart of the unity of the
self.[855] These fragments belong, however, to the second stage
in virtue of their recognition of the a priori categories of
relation. There is also here, as is in the Reflexionen, great lack
of clearness regarding the nature of apprehension; and there is
still no mention of the transcendental faculty of imagination.
Fragment 8 is definitely datable. It covers the free spaces of a
letter of invitation dated May 20, 1775.[856] Fragment B 12[857]
belongs to a different period from the above. This is
sufficiently evident from its contents; but fortunately the paper
upon which it is written—an official document in the
handwriting of the Rector of the Philosophical Faculty of
Königsberg—enables us to decide the exact year of its origin.
It is dated January 20, 1780. The fragment must therefore be
subsequent to that date. Now in it transcendental imagination
appears as a third faculty alongside sensibility and
understanding, and a distinction is definitely drawn between
its empirical and its transcendental employment. The former
conditions the synthesis of apprehension; the latter conditions
the synthetic unity of apperception. It further distinguishes
between reproductive and productive imagination, and
ascribes the former exclusively to the empirical imagination.
In all these respects it stands in complete agreement with the
teaching of the third stage of the deduction. The fact that this
fragment is subsequent to January 1780 would seem to prove
that even at that late date Kant was struggling with his
deduction.[858] But the most interesting of all Vaihinger’s
conclusions has still to be mentioned. He points out that at the
time when this fragment was composed Kant had not yet
developed the doctrine characteristic of the fourth stage,
namely, of a threefold transcendental synthesis. Moreover, as
he observes, the statement which it explicitly contains, that
reproductive imagination is always empirical, is inconsistent
with any such doctrine. The teaching of the fourth stage must
consequently be ascribed to an even later date.[859]
(4) The Lose Blätter (Heft II.), though almost exclusively
devoted to moral and legal questions, contain in E 67[860] a
relevant passage which Reicke regards as belonging to the
‘eighties, but which Adickes and Vaihinger agree in dating
“shortly before 1781.” On Vaihinger’s view it is a preliminary
study for the passages of the fourth stage of the deduction. But
such exact dating is not essential to Vaihinger’s argument. It is
undoubtedly quite late, and contains the following sentence:
 “All representations, whatever their origin, are yet
ultimately as representations modifications of inner sense, and
their unity must be viewed from this point of view. A
spontaneity of synthesis corresponds to their receptivity: either
of apprehension as sensations or of reproduction as images
(Einbildungen) or of recognition as concepts.”
This is the doctrine from which the deduction of the first
edition starts; it was, it would seem, the last to be developed.
[861] That we find no trace of it in the Prolegomena, and that it
is not only eliminated from the second edition, but is expressly
disavowed,[862] would seem to indicate that it had been hastily
adopted on the very eve of publication, and that upon
reflection Kant had felt constrained definitively to discard it.
The threefold synthesis can be verified on the empirical level,
but there is no evidence that there exist corresponding
transcendental activities.
IV. Connected Statement and Discussion of Kant’s Subjective and Objective
Deductions in the First Edition

Such are the varying and conflicting forms in which Kant

has presented his deduction of the categories. We may now
apply our results to obtain a connected statement of the
essentials of his argument. The following exposition, which
endeavours to emphasise its main broad features, to
distinguish its various steps, and to disentangle its complex
and conflicting tendencies, will, I trust, yield to the reader such
steady orientation as is necessary in so bewildering a
labyrinth. In the meantime I shall take account only of the
deductions of the first edition,[863] and from them shall strive
to construct the ideal statement to which they severally
approximate. Any single relatively consistent and complete
deduction that is thus to serve as a standard exposition must,
like the root-languages of philology, be typical or archetypal,
representing the argument at which Kant aimed; it cannot be
one of the alternative expositions which he himself gives.
Such reconstruction of an argument which Kant has failed to
express in a final and genuinely adequate form must, of
course, lie open to all the dangers of arbitrary and personal
interpretation. It is an extremely adventurous undertaking, and
will have to be carefully guarded by constant reference to
Kant’s ipsissima verba. Proof of its historical validity will
consist in its capacity to render intelligible Kant’s own
departures from it, and in its power of explaining the reasons
of his so doing. Its expository value will be in proportion to
the assistance which it may afford to the reader in deciphering
the actual texts.
Our first task is to make clear the nature of the distinction
which Kant draws between the “subjective” and the
“objective” deductions. This is a distinction of great
importance, and raises issues of a fundamental character. In
regard to it students of Kant take widely different views. For it
brings to a definite issue many of the chief controversies
regarding Critical teaching. Kant has made some very definite
statements in regard to it; and one of the opposing schools of
interpretation finds its chief and strongest arguments in the
words which he employs. But for reasons which will appear in
due course, adherence to the letter of the Critique would in
this case involve the commentator in great difficulties. We
have no option except to adopt the invidious position of
maintaining that we may now, after the interval of a hundred
years and the labours of so many devoted students, profess to
understand Kant better than he understood himself. For such
procedure we may indeed cite his own authority.
“Not infrequently, upon comparing the thoughts which an
author has expressed in regard to his subject, whether in
ordinary conversation or in writing, we find that we can
understand him better than he understood himself. As he has
not sufficiently determined his concept, he has sometimes
spoken, or even thought, in opposition to his own
intention.”[864]
Let us, then, consider first the distinction between the two
types of deduction in the form in which it is drawn by Kant. In
the Preface to the first edition,[865] Kant states that his
transcendental deduction of the categories has two sides, and
assigns to them the titles subjective and objective.
“This enquiry, which is somewhat deeply grounded, has two
sides. The one refers to the objects of pure understanding, and
is intended to expound and render intelligible the objective
validity of its a priori concepts. It is therefore essential to my
purposes. The other seeks to investigate the pure
understanding itself, its possibility and the cognitive faculties
upon which it rests. Although this latter exposition is of great
importance for my chief purpose, it does not form an essential
part of it. For the chief question is always simply this,—what
and how much can the understanding and Reason know apart
from all experience? not—how is the faculty of thought itself
possible? The latter is as it were a search for the cause of a
given effect; and therefore is of the nature of an hypothesis
(though, as I shall show elsewhere, this is not really so); and I
would appear to be taking the liberty simply of expressing an
opinion, in which case the reader would be free to express a
different opinion.[866] For this reason I must forestall the
reader’s criticism by pointing out that the objective deduction,
with which I am here chiefly concerned, retains its full force
even if my subjective deduction should fail to produce that
complete conviction for which I hope….”
The subjective deduction seeks to determine the subjective
conditions which are required to render knowledge possible, or
to use less ambiguous terms the generative processes to whose
agency human knowledge is due. It is consequently
psychological in character. The objective deduction, on the
other hand, is so named because it deals not with
psychological processes but with questions of objective
validity. It enquires how concepts which are a priori, and
which as a priori must be taken to originate in pure reason,
can yet be valid of objects. In other words, the objective
deduction is logical, or, to use a post-Kantian term,
epistemological in character.
It is indeed true, as Kant here insists, that the subjective
deduction does not concern itself in any quite direct fashion
with the Critical problem—how a priori ideas can relate to
objects. “Although of great importance for my chief purpose,
it does not form an essential part of it.” This, no doubt, is one
reason why Kant omitted it when he revised the Critique for
the second edition.[867] None the less it is, as he here says,
important; and what exactly that importance amounts to, and
whether it is really true that it has such minor importance as to
be rightly describable as unessential, is what we have to
decide.
Though empirical psychology, in so far as it investigates the
temporal development of our experience, is, as Kant very
justly claims, entirely distinct in aim and method from the
Critical enquiry, the same cannot be said of a psychology
which, for convenience, and on the lines of Kant’s own
employment of terms, may be named transcendental.[868] For it
will deal, not with the temporal development of the concrete
and varied aspects of consciousness, but with the more
fundamental question of the generative conditions
indispensably necessary to consciousness as such, i.e. to
consciousness in each and every one of its possible
embodiments. In the definition above given of the objective
deduction, I have intentionally indicated Kant’s unquestioning
conviction that the a priori originates independently of the
objects to which it is applied. This independent origin is only
describable in mental or psychological terms. The a priori
originates from within; it is due to the specific conditions upon
which human thinking rests. Now this interpretation of the a
priori renders the teaching contained in the subjective
deduction much more essential than Kant is himself willing to
recognise. The conclusions arrived at may be highly schematic
in conception, and extremely conjectural in detail; they are
none the less required to supplement the results of the more
purely logical analysis. For though in the second edition the
sections devoted to the subjective deduction are suppressed,
their teaching, and the distinctions which they draw between
the different mental processes, continue to be employed in the
exposition of the objective deduction, and indeed are
presupposed throughout the Critique as a whole. They are
indispensably necessary in order to render really definite many
of the contentions which the objective deduction itself
contains. To eliminate the subjective deduction is not to cut
away these presuppositions, but only to leave them in the
obscure region of the undefined. They will still continue to
influence our mode of formulating and of solving the Critical
problem, but will do so as untested and vaguely outlined
assumptions, acting as unconscious influences rather than as
established principles. For these reasons the omission of the
subjective deduction is to be deplored. The explicit statement
of the implied psychological conditions is preferable to their
employment without prior definition and analysis. The
deduction of the second edition rests throughout upon the
initial and indispensable assumption, that though connection
or synthesis can never be given, it is yet the generative source
of all consciousness of order and relation. Factors which are
transcendental in the strict or logical meaning of the term rest
upon processes that are transcendental in a psychological
sense.
This last phrase, ‘transcendental in a psychological sense,’
calls for a word of justification. The synthetic processes
generative of experience are not, of course, transcendental in
the strict sense. For they are not a priori in the manner of the
categories. None the less they are discoverable by the same
transcendental method, namely, as being, like the categories,
indispensably necessary to the possibility of experience. They
differ from the categories in that they are not immanent in
experience, constituent of it, and cannot therefore be known in
their intrinsic nature. As they fall outside the field of
consciousness, they can only be hypothetically postulated.
None the less, formal categories and generative processes,
definable elements and problematic postulates, alike agree in
being conditions sine qua non of experience. And further, in
terms of Kant’s presupposed psychology, the latter are the
source to which the former are due. There would thus seem to
be sufficient justification for extending the term transcendental
to cover both; and in so doing we are following the path which
Kant himself willingly travelled. For such would seem to have
been his unexpressed reasons for ascribing, as he does, the
synthetic generative processes to what he himself names
transcendental faculties.
This disposes of Kant’s chief reason for refusing to
recognise the subjective deduction as a genuine part of the
Critical enquiry, namely, the contention upon which he lays
such emphasis in the prefaces both of the first and of the
second edition,[869] that in transcendental philosophy nothing
hypothetical, nothing in any degree dependent upon general
reasoning from contingent fact, can have any place. That
contention proves untenable even within the domain of his
purely logical analyses. The very essence of his transcendental
method consists in the establishment of a priori elements
through proof of their connection with factual experience.
Kant is here revealing how greatly his mind is still biased by
the Leibnizian rationalism from which he is breaking away.
His a priori cannot establish itself save in virtue of
hypothetical reasoning.[870] His transcendental method, rightly
understood, does not differ in essential nature from the
hypothetical method of the natural sciences; it does so only in
the nature of its starting-point, and in the character of the
analyses which that starting-point prescribes. And if
hypothetical reasoning may be allowed in the establishment of
the logical a priori, there is no sufficient reason why it may
not also be employed for the determination of dynamical
factors. The sole question is as to whether the hypotheses
conform to the logical requirements and so raise themselves to
a different level from mere opinion and conjecture.[871] As
Kant himself says,[872] though his conclusions in the
subjective deduction may seem to be hypothetical in the
illegitimate sense, they are not really so. From the experience
in view of which they are postulated they receive at once the
proof of their actuality and the material for their specification.
We may now return to the question of the nature of the two
deductions. The complex character of their interrelations may
be outlined as follows:
1. Though the subjective deduction is in its later stages
coextensive with its objective counterpart, in its earlier stages
it moves wholly on what may be called the empirical level.
The data which it analyses and the conditions which it
postulates are both alike empirical. The objective deduction,
on the other hand, deals from start to finish with the a priori.
2. The later stages of the subjective deduction are based
upon the results of the objective deduction. The existence and
validity of a priori factors having been demonstrated by
transcendental, i.e. logical, analysis, the subjective deduction
can be extended from the lower to the higher level, and can
proceed to establish for the a priori elements what in its earlier
stages it has determined for empirical consciousness, namely,
the nature of the generative processes which require to be
postulated as their ground and origin. When the two
deductions are properly distinguished the objective deduction
has, therefore, to be placed midway between the initial and the
final stages of the subjective deduction.
3. The two deductions concentrate upon different aspects of
experience. In the subjective deduction experience is chiefly
viewed as a temporal process in which the given falls apart
into successive events, which, in and by themselves, are
incapable of constituting a unified consciousness. The
fundamental characteristic of human experience, from this
point of view, is that it is serial in character. Though it is an
apprehension of time, it is itself also a process in time. In the
objective deduction, on the other hand, the time element is
much less prominent. Awareness of objects is the subject-
matter to which analysis is chiefly devoted. This difference
very naturally follows from the character of the two
deductions. The subjective enquiry is mainly interested in the
conditions generative of experience, and finds its natural point
of departure in the problem by what processes a unified
experience is constructed out of a succession of distinct
happenings. The objective deduction presents the logical
problem of validity in its most striking form, in our awareness
of objects; the objective is contrasted with the subjective as
being that which is universally and necessarily the same for all
observers. Ultimately each of the two deductions must yield an
analysis of both types of consciousness—awareness of time
and awareness of objects; a priori factors are involved in the
former no less than in the latter, and both are conditioned by
generative processes. Unfortunately the manner in which this
is done in the Critique causes very serious misunderstanding.
The problem of the psychological conditions generative of
consciousness of objects is raised[873] before the logical
analysis of the objective deduction has established the data
necessary for its profitable discussion. The corresponding
defect in the objective deduction is of a directly opposite
character, but is even more unfortunate in its effects. The
results obtained from the analysis of our awareness of objects
are not, within the limits of the objective deduction, applied in
further analysis of our consciousness of time. That is first
done, and even then by implication rather than by explicit
argument, in the Analytic of Principles. This has the twofold
evil consequence, that the relations holding between the two
deductions are very greatly obscured, and that the reader is not
properly prepared for the important use to which the results of
the objective deduction are put in the Analytic of Principles.
For it is there assumed—a quite legitimate inference from the
objective deduction, but one whose legitimacy Kant has
nowhere dwelt upon and explained—that to be conscious of
time we must be conscious of it as existing in two distinct
orders, subjective and objective. To be conscious of time we
must be conscious of objects, and to be conscious of objects
we must be able to distinguish between the order of our ideas
and the order of the changes (if any) in that which is known by
their means.
Thus the two deductions, properly viewed in their full
scope, play into one another’s hands. The objective deduction
is necessary to complete the analysis of time-consciousness
given in the subjective deduction, and the extension of the
analysis of object-consciousness to the explanation of time-
consciousness is necessary in order to make quite definite and
clear the full significance of the conclusions to which the
objective enquiry has led.[874]
One last point remains for consideration. Experience is a
highly ambiguous term, and to fulfil the rôle assigned to it by
Kant’s transcendental method—that of establishing the reality
of the conditions of its own possibility—its actuality must lie
beyond the sphere of all possible controversy. It must be itself
a datum, calling indeed for explanation, but not itself making
claims that are in any degree subject to possible challenge.
Now if we abstract from all those particularising factors which
are irrelevant in this connection, we are left with only three
forms of experience—experience of self, experience of
objects, and experience of time. The two former are open to
question. They may be illusory, as Hume has argued. And as
their validity, or rather actuality, calls for establishment, they
cannot fulfil the demands which the transcendental method
exacts from the experience whose possibility is to yield proof
of its discoverable conditions. Consciousness of time, on the
other hand, is a fact whose actuality, however problematic in
its conditions, and however mysterious in its intrinsic nature,
cannot, even by the most metaphysical of subtleties, be in any
manner or degree challenged. It is an unquestioned possession
of the human mind. Whether time itself is real we are not
metaphysically certain, but that, whatever be its reality or
unreality, we are conscious of it in the form of change, is
beyond all manner of doubt. Consciousness of time is the
factual experience, as conditions of whose possibility the a
priori factors are transcendentally proved. In so far as they can
be shown to be its indispensable conditions, its mere existence
proves their reality. And such in effect is the ultimate character
of Kant’s proof of the objective validity of the categories.
They are proved in that it is shown that only in and through
them is consciousness of time possible.
The argument gains immeasurably in clearness when this is
recognised;[875] and the deduction of the first edition of the
Critique, in spite of its contorted character, remains in my
view superior to that of the second edition owing to this more
explicit recognition of the temporal aspect of consciousness
and to employment of it as the initial starting-point. Analysis
at once reveals that though consciousness of time is
undeniably actual, it is conditioned in complex ways, and that
among the conditions indispensably necessary to its possibility
are both consciousness of self and consciousness of an
objective order of existence. Starting from the undeniable we
are thus brought to the problematic; but owing to the factual
character of the starting-point we can substantiate what would
otherwise remain open to question.
As this method of formulating Kant’s argument gives
greater prominence to the temporal factor than Kant himself
does in his statement of the deductions, the reader may very
rightly demand further evidence that I am not, by this
procedure, setting the deductions in a false or arbitrary
perspective. Any statement of Kant’s position in other than his
own ipsissima verba is necessarily, in large part, a matter of
interpretation, and proof of its correctness must ultimately
consist in the success with which it can be applied in
unravelling the manifold strands that compose his tortuous and
many-sided argument; but the following special considerations
may be cited in advance. Those parts of the Critique, such as
the chief paragraphs of the subjective deduction and the
chapter on Schematism, which are demonstrably late in date of
writing, agree in assigning greater prominence to the temporal
aspect of experience. This is also true of those numerous
passages added in the second edition which deal with inner
sense. All of these show an increasing appreciation of the
central rôle which time must play in the Critical enquiries.
Secondly, proof of the validity of specific categories is given,
as we shall find,[876] not in the objective deduction of the
Analytic of Concepts, but only in the Analytic of Principles.
What Kant gives in the former is only the quite general
demonstration that forms of unity, such as are involved in all
judgment, are demanded for the possibility of experience.
Now when proof of the specific categories does come, in the
Analytic of Principles, it is manifestly based on the analysis of
time-experience. In the three Analogies, for example, Kant’s
demonstration of the objective validity of the categories of
relation consists in the proof that they are necessary conditions
of the possibility of our time-consciousness. That is to say, the
transcendental method of proof, when developed in full detail,
in reference to some specific category, agrees with the
formulation which I have given of the subjective and objective
deductions. In the third place, Kant started from a spiritualist
standpoint, akin to that of Leibniz,[877] and only very gradually
broke away from the many illegitimate assumptions which it
involves. But this original starting-point reveals its persisting
influence in the excessive emphasis which Kant continued to
lay upon the unity of apperception. He frequently speaks[878]
as if it were an ultimate self-justifying principle, by reference
to which the validity of all presupposed conditions can be
established. But that, as I have already argued, is a legitimate
method of procedure only if it has previously been established
that self-consciousness is involved in all consciousness, that is,
involved even in consciousness of sequence and duration. And
as just stated, the deductions of specific categories, given in
the Analytic of Principles, fulfil these requirements of
complete proof. They start from the time-consciousness, not
from apperception.
I shall now summarise these introductory discussions in a
brief tabulated outline of the main steps in the argument of the
two deductions, and shall add a concluding note upon their
interconnection.
Subjective Deduction.—1. Consciousness of time is an
experience whose actuality cannot be questioned; by its
actuality it will therefore establish the reality of everything
that can be proved to be its indispensable condition.
2. Among the conditions indispensably necessary to all
consciousness of time are synthetic processes whereby the
contents of consciousness, occurring in successive moments,
are combined and unified. These processes are processes of
apprehension, reproduction, and recognition.
3. Recognition, in turn, is conditioned by self-
consciousness.
4. As no consciousness is possible without self-
consciousness, the synthetic processes must have completed
themselves before such self-consciousness is possible, and
consequently are not verifiable by introspection but only by
hypothetical construction.
[1, 2, 3, and 4 are steps which can be stated independently
of the argument of the objective deduction.]
5. Self-consciousness presupposes consciousness of objects,
and consciousness of objects presupposes the synthetic
activities of productive imagination whereby the matter of
sense is organised in accordance with the categories. These
productive activities also are verifiable only by conjectural
inference, and only upon their completion can consciousness
of any kind make its appearance.
6. Consciousness of self and consciousness of objects thus
alike rest upon a complexity of non-phenomenal conditions.
For anything that critical analysis can prove to the contrary,
consciousness and personality may not be ultimates. They may
be resultants due to realities fundamentally different from
themselves.
[5 is a conclusion obtained only by means of the argument
of the objective deduction. 6 is a further conclusion, first
explicitly drawn by Kant in the Dialectic.]
Objective Deduction.—1. The starting-point coincides
with that of the subjective deduction. Consciousness of time is
an experience by whose actuality we can establish the reality
of its indispensable conditions.
2. Among the conditions necessary to all consciousness of
time is self-consciousness.
3. Self-consciousness, in turn, is itself conditioned by
consciousness of objects.
4. Consciousness of objects is possible only if the categories
have validity within the sphere of sense-experience.
5. Conclusion.—The empirical validity of the categories,
and consequently the empirical validity of our consciousness
alike of the self and of objects, must be granted as a conditio
sine qua non of our consciousness of time. They are the
indispensable conditions of that fundamental experience.
As above stated,[879] the preliminary stages of the subjective
deduction prepare the way for the argument of the objective
deduction, while the results obtained by the latter render
possible the concluding steps of the former. That is to say, the
objective deduction has to be intercalated midway between the
opening and the concluding stages of the subjective deduction.
It may also be observed that whereas the objective deduction
embodies the main positive teaching of the Analytic, in that it
establishes the possibility of natural science and of a
metaphysics of experience, the subjective deduction is more
directly concerned with the subject-matter of the Dialectic,
reinforcing, as it does, the more negative consequences which
follow from the teaching of the objective deduction—the
impossibility of transcendent speculation. It stands in
peculiarly close connection with the teaching of the section on
the Paralogisms. We may now proceed to a detailed statement
of the argument of the two deductions.
 THE SUBJECTIVE DEDUCTION IN ITS INITIAL EMPIRICAL STAGES

In the opening of the subjective deduction Kant is careful to

give due prominence to the temporal aspect of our human
experience.
“…all the contents of our knowledge are ultimately subject
to the formal condition of inner sense, that is, to time, as that
wherein they must all be ordered, connected, and brought into
relation to one another. This is a general remark which the
reader must bear in mind as being a fundamental
presupposition of my entire argument.”[880]
Consciousness of time is thus the starting-point of the
deduction. Analysis reveals it as highly complex; and the
purpose of the deduction is to discover, and, as far as may be
possible, to define its various conditions. The argument can
best be expounded by reference to a single concrete example
—say, our experience of a series of contents, a, b, c, d, e, f, as
in succession to one another and as together making up the
total six. In order that such an experience may be possible the
successive members of the series must be held together
simultaneously before the mind. Obviously, if the earlier
members dropped out of consciousness before the mind
reached f, f could not be apprehended as having followed upon
them. There must be a synthesis of apprehension of the
successive items.
Such a synthesis of apprehension is, however, only possible
through reproduction of the earlier experiences. If when the
mind has passed from a to f, f is apprehended as having
followed upon a, b, c, d, e, such consciousness is only possible
in so far as these earlier contents are reproduced in image.
Synthesis of apprehension is conditioned by synthesis of
reproduction in imagination.
“But if the preceding representations (the first parts of [a]
line, the earlier moments of time or the units represented in
sequent order) were always to drop out of my thought, and
were not reproduced when I advance to those that follow, no
complete representation, and none of all the aforementioned
thoughts, not even the purest and first basal representations of
space and time, could ever arise.”[881]
 In order, however, that the reproduced images may fulfil
their function, they must be recognised as standing for or
representing contents which the self has just experienced.
“Without the consciousness that what we are thinking is the
same as what we thought a moment before, all reproduction in
the series of representations would be in vain.”[882]
Each reproduced image would in its present state be a new
experience, and would not help in the least towards gaining
consciousness of order or number in the succession of our
experiences. Recognition is, therefore, a third form of
synthesis, indispensably necessary to consciousness of time.
But further, the recognition is recognition of a succession as
forming a unity or whole, and that unity is always conceptual.
“The word concept (Begriff) might of itself have suggested
this remark. For it is this unitary consciousness which unites
into a single representation a manifold that has been
successively intuited and then subsequently reproduced.”[883]
“If in counting I forgot that the units … have been added to
one another in succession, I should never recognise what the
sum-total is that is being produced through the successive
addition of unit to unit; and so would remain ignorant of the
number. For the concept of this number is nothing but the
consciousness of this unity of synthesis.”[884]
The synthesis of recognition is thus a synthesis which takes
place in and through empirical concepts. In the instance which
we have chosen, the empirical concept is that of the number
six.
The analysis, however, is not yet complete. Just as
reproduction conditions apprehension and both rest on
recognition, so in turn recognition presupposes a still further
condition, namely, self-consciousness. For it is obvious, once
the fact is pointed out, that the recognition of reproduced
images as standing for past experiences can only be possible in
so far as there is an abiding self which is conscious of its
identity throughout the succession. Such an act of recognition
is, indeed, merely one particular form or concrete instance of
self-consciousness. The unity of the empirical concept in and
through which recognition takes place finds its indispensable
correlate in the unity of an empirical self. Thus an analysis of
our consciousness, even though conducted wholly on the
empirical level, that is, without the least reference to the a
priori, leads by simple and cogent argument to the conclusion
that it is conditioned by complex synthetic processes, and that
these syntheses in turn presuppose a unity which finds twofold
expression for itself, objectively through a concept and
subjectively in self-consciousness.
So far I have stated the argument solely in reference to
serial consciousness. Kant renders his argument needlessly
complex and diminishes its force by at once extending it so as
to cover the connected problem, how we become aware of
objects. This occurs in the section on the synthesis of
reproduction. An analysis of our consciousness of objects, as
distinct from consciousness of the immediately successive,
forces us to postulate further empirical conditions. Since the
reproductive imagination, to whose agency the apprehension
of complex unitary existences is psychologically due, acts
through the machinery of association, it presupposes
constancy in the apprehended manifold.
“If cinnabar were sometimes red, sometimes black,
sometimes light, sometimes heavy, if a man changed
sometimes into this and sometimes into that animal form, if
the country on the longest day were sometimes covered with
fruits, sometimes with ice and snow, my empirical imagination
would never even have occasion when representing red colour
to bring to mind heavy cinnabar….”[885]
This passage may be compared with the one which occurs
in the section on the synthesis of recognition. Our
representations, in order to constitute knowledge, must have
the unity of some concept; the manifold cannot be
apprehended save in so far as this is possible.
“All knowledge demands a concept, though that concept
may be quite imperfect or obscure. But a concept is always, as
regards its form, something general which serves as a rule.
The concept of body, for instance, as the unity of the manifold
which is thought through it, serves as a rule to our knowledge
of outer appearances…. It necessitates in the perception of
something outside us the representation of extension, and
therewith the representations of impenetrability, form,
etc.”[886]
So far the deduction still moves on the empirical level.
When Kant, however, proceeds to insist[887] that this empirical
postulate itself rests upon a transcendental condition, the
argument is thrown into complete confusion, and the reader is
bewildered by the sudden anticipation of one of the most
difficult and subtle conclusions of the objective deduction. The
same confusion is also caused throughout these sections as a
whole by Kant’s description of the various syntheses as being
transcendental.[888] They cannot properly be so described. The
concepts referred to as unifying the syntheses, and the self-
consciousness which is proved to condition the syntheses, are
all empirical. They present themselves in concrete form, and
presuppose characteristics due to the special contingent nature
of the given manifold; as Kant states in so many words in the
second edition.
“Whether I can become empirically conscious of the
manifold as simultaneous or as successive depends on
circumstances or empirical conditions. The empirical unity of
consciousness, through association of representations,
therefore itself relates to an appearance, and is wholly
contingent.”[889]
The argument in these preliminary stages of the subjective
deduction, in so far as it is employed to yield proof that all
consciousness involves the unity of concepts and the unity of
self-consciousness, is independent of any reference to the
categories, and consequently to transcendental conditions. In
accordance with the plan of exposition above stated, we may
now pass to the objective deduction.
OBJECTIVE DEDUCTION AS GIVEN IN THE FIRST EDITION

The transition from the preliminary stages of the subjective

deduction to the objective deduction may be made by further
analysis either of the objective unity of empirical concepts or
of the subjective unity of empirical self-consciousness. It is the
former line which the argument of the first edition follows.
Kant is asking what is meant by an object corresponding to our
representations,[890] and answers by his objective deduction.
He substitutes the empirical for the transcendental object,[891]
and in so doing propounds one of the central and most
revolutionary tenets of the Critical philosophy. Existence takes
a threefold, not a merely dual form. Besides representations
and things in themselves, there exist the objects of our
representations—the extended world of ordinary experience
and of science. Such a threefold distinction is prefigured in the
Leibnizian metaphysics, and is more or less native to every
philosophy that is genuinely speculative. Kant himself claims
Plato as his philosophical progenitor. The originality is not in
the bare thesis, but in the fruitful, tenacious, and consistent
manner in which it is developed through detailed analysis of
our actual experience.
In its first stages the argument largely coincides with the
argument of the paragraphs which deal with the transcendental
object. When we examine the objective, we find that the
primary characteristic distinguishing it from the subjective is
that it lays a compulsion upon our minds, constraining us to
think about it in a certain way. By an object is meant
something which will not allow us to think at haphazard.
Cinnabar is an object which constrains us to think it as heavy
and red. An object is thus the external source of a necessity to
which our thinking has to conform. The two arguments first
begin to diverge when Kant sets himself to demonstrate that
our consciousness of this external necessity is made possible
by categories which originate from within.
For this conclusion Kant prepares the way by an analysis of
the second main characteristic constitutive of an object, viz. its
unity. This unity is of a twofold nature, involving either the
category of substance and attribute or the category of cause
and effect. The two categories are ultimately inseparable, but
lead us to conceive the object in two distinct modes. When we
interpret an object through the a priori concept of substance
and attribute, we assert that all the contents of our perceptions
of it are capable of being regarded as qualities of one and the
same identical substance. No one of its qualities can be
incongruent with any other, and all of them together, in their
unity, must be expressive of its substantial nature.
 The causal interpretation of the object is, however, the more
important, and is that which is chiefly emphasised by Kant. It
is, indeed, simply a further and more adequate mode of
expressing the substantial unity of the object. All the qualities
must be causally bound up with one another in such a way that
the nature of each is determined by the nature of all the others,
and that if any one quality be changed all the others must
undergo corresponding alterations. Viewed in this manner, in
terms of the category of causality, an object signifies a
necessitated combination of interconnected qualities or effects.
But since no such form of necessitation can be revealed in the
manifold of sense, our consciousness of compulsion cannot
originate from without, and must be due to those a priori
forms which, though having their source within, control and
direct our interpretation of the given. Though the objective
compulsion is not itself due to the mind, our consciousness of
it has this mental a priori source. The concept of an object
consists in the thought of a manifold so determined in its
specific order and groupings as to be interpretable in terms of
the categories of substance and causality.
But the problem of the deduction proper is not yet raised.
On the one hand, Kant has defined what the concept of the
objective must be taken as involving, and on the other, has
pointed out that since the given as given is an unconnected
manifold, any categories through which it may be interpreted
must be of independent origin; but it still remains to be proved
that the above is a valid as well as a possible mode of
construing the given appearances. The categories, as a priori
concepts, originate from within. By what right may we assert
that they not only relate to an object, but even constitute the
very concept of it? Are appearances legitimately interpretable
in any such manner? It was, we may believe, in the process of
answering this question that Kant came to realise that the
objects of our representations must no longer be regarded as
things in themselves. For, as he finds, a solution is possible
only on the further assumption that the mind is legislating
merely for the world of sense-experience, and is making no
assertion in regard to the absolutely and independently real.
Kant’s method of proof is the transcendental, i.e. he seeks to
demonstrate that this interpretation of the given is
indispensably necessary as being a sine qua non of its possible
apprehension. This is achieved by means of the conclusion
already established through the preliminary steps of the
subjective deduction, namely, that all consciousness involves
self-consciousness. Kant’s proof of the objective validity of
the categories consists in showing that only by means of the
interpretation of appearances as empirically objective is self-
consciousness possible at all.
The self-consciousness of the subjective deduction, in the
preliminary form above stated, is, however, itself empirical.
Kant, developing on more strictly Critical lines the argument
which had accompanied his earlier doctrine of the
transcendental object, now proceeds to maintain in what is at
once the most fruitful and the most misleading of his tenets,
that the ultimate ground of the possibility of consciousness and
therefore also of empirical self-consciousness is the
transcendental unity of apperception. Such apperception, to
use Kant’s ambiguous phraseology, precedes experience as its
a priori condition. The interpretation of given appearances
through a priori categories is a necessity of consciousness
because it is a condition of self-consciousness; and it is a
condition of self-consciousness because it alone will account
for the transcendental apperception upon which all empirical
self-consciousness ultimately depends.
One chief reason why Kant’s deduction is found so baffling
and illusive is that it rests upon an interpretation of the unity of
apperception which is very definitely drawn, but to which
Kant himself gives only the briefest and most condensed
expression. I shall therefore take the liberty of restating it in
more explicit terms. The true or transcendental self has no
content of its own through which it can gain knowledge of
itself. It is mere identity, I am I. In other words, self-
consciousness is a mere form through which contents that
never themselves constitute the self are yet apprehended as
being objects to the self. Thus though the self in being
conscious of time or duration must be conscious of itself as
identical throughout the succession of its experiences, that
identity can never be discovered in those experiences; it can
only be thought as a condition of them. The continuity of
memory, for instance, is not a possible substitute for
transcendental apperception. As the subjective deduction
demonstrates, self-consciousness conditions memory, and
cannot therefore be reduced to or be generated by it.[892]
When, however, such considerations are allowed their due
weight, the necessity of postulating a transcendental unity
becomes only the more evident. Though it can never itself be
found among appearances, it is an interpretation which we are
none the less compelled to give to appearances.
To summarise before proceeding. We have obtained two
important conclusions: first, that all consciousness involves
self-consciousness; and secondly, that self-consciousness is a
mere form, in terms of which contents that do not constitute
the self are apprehended as existing for the self. The first leads
up to the second, and the second is equivalent to the assertion
that there can be no such thing as a pure self-consciousness,
i.e. a consciousness in which the self is aware of itself and of
nothing but itself. Self-consciousness, to be possible at all,
must at the same time be a consciousness of something that is
not-self. Only one further step is now required for the
completion of the deduction, namely, proof that this not-self,
consciousness of which is necessary to the possibility of self-
consciousness, must consist in empirical objects apprehended
in terms of the categories. For proof Kant again appeals to the
indispensableness of apperception. As no intuitions can enter
consciousness which are not capable of being related to the
self, they must be so related to one another that,
notwithstanding their variety and diversity, the self can still be
conscious of itself as identical throughout them all. In other
words, no intuition can be related to the self that is incapable
of being combined together with all the other intuitions to
form a unitary consciousness. I may here quote from the text
of the second edition:[893]
“…only in so far as I can grasp the manifold of the
representations in one consciousness, do I call them one and
all mine. For otherwise I should have as many-coloured and
diverse a self as I have representations of which I am
conscious to myself.”
Or as it is stated in the first edition:[894]
 “We are a priori aware of the complete identity of the self
in respect of all representations which belong to our
knowledge … as a necessary condition of the possibility of all
representations.”
These are the considerations which lead Kant to entitle the
unity of apperception transcendental. He so names it for the
reason that, though it is not itself a priori in the manner of the
categories, we are yet enabled by its means to demonstrate that
the unity which is necessary for possible experience can be
securely counted upon in the manifold of all possible
representations, and because (as he believed) it also enables us
to prove that the forms of such unity are the categories of the
understanding.
To the argument supporting this last conclusion Kant does
not give the attention which its importance would seem to
deserve. He points out that as the given is an unconnected
manifold, its unity can be obtained only by synthesis, and that
such synthesis must conform to the conditions prescribed by
the unity of apperception. That these conditions coincide with
the categories he does not, however, attempt to prove. He
apparently believes that this has been already established in
the metaphysical deduction.[895] The forms of unity demanded
by apperception, he feels justified in assuming, are the
categories. They may be regarded as expressing the minimum
of unity necessary to the possibility of self-consciousness. If
sensations cannot be interpreted as the diverse attributes of
unitary substances, if events cannot be viewed as arising out of
one another, if the entire world in space cannot be conceived
as a system of existences reciprocally interdependent, all unity
must vanish from experience, and apperception will be utterly
impossible.[896]
The successive steps of the total argument of the deduction,
as given in the first edition, are therefore as follows:
Consciousness of time involves empirical self-consciousness;
empirical self-consciousness is conditioned by a
transcendental self-consciousness; and such transcendental
self-consciousness is itself, in turn, conditioned by
consciousness of objects. The argument thus completed
becomes the proof of mutual interdependence. Self-
consciousness and consciousness of objects, as polar
opposites, mutually condition one another. Only through
consciousness of both simultaneously can consciousness of
either be attained. Only in and through reference to an object
can an idea be related to a self, and so be accompanied by that
self-consciousness which conditions recognition, and through
recognition all the varying forms in which our consciousness
can occur. From the point of view, however, of a Critical
enquiry apperception is the more important of the two forms
of consciousness. For though each is the causa existendi of the
other, self-consciousness has the unique distinction of being
the causa cognoscendi of the objective and a priori validity of
the forms of understanding.
“The synthetic proposition, that all the variety of empirical
consciousness must be combined in a single self-
consciousness, is the absolutely first and synthetic principle of
our thought in general.”[897]
We may at this point consider Kant’s doctrine of “objective
affinity.” It excellently enforces the main thesis which he is
professing to establish, namely, that the conditions of unitary
consciousness are the conditions of all consciousness. The
language, however, in which the doctrine is expounded is
extremely obscure and difficult; and before commenting upon
Kant’s own methods of statement, it seems advisable to
paraphrase the argument in a somewhat free manner, and also
to defer consideration of the transcendental psychology which
Kant has employed in its exposition.[898] Association can
subsist only between ideas, both of which have occurred
within the same conscious field. Now the fundamental
characteristic of consciousness, the very condition of its
existing at all, is its unity; and until this has been recognised,
there can be no understanding of the associative connection
which arises under the conditions which consciousness
supplies. To attempt to explain the unity of consciousness
through the mechanism of association is to explain an agency
in terms of certain of its own effects. It is to explain the
fundamental in terms of the derivative, the conditions in terms
of what they have themselves made possible. Kant’s argument
is therefore as follows. Ideas do not become associated merely
by co-existing. They must occur together in a unitary
consciousness; and among the conditions necessary to the
possibility of association are therefore the conditions of the
possibility of experience. Association is transcendentally
grounded. So far from accounting for the unity of
consciousness, it presupposes the latter as determining the
conditions under which alone it can come into play.
“…how, I ask, is association itself possible?… On my
principles the thorough-going affinity of appearances is easily
explicable. All possible appearances belong as representations
to the totality of a possible self-consciousness. But as this self-
consciousness is a transcendental representation, numerical
identity is inseparable from it and is a priori certain. For
nothing can come to our knowledge save in terms of this
original apperception. Now, since this identity must
necessarily enter into the synthesis of all the manifold of
appearances, so far as the synthesis is to yield empirical
knowledge, the appearances are subject to a priori conditions,
with which the synthesis of their apprehension must be in
complete accordance…. Thus all appearances stand in a
thorough-going connection according to necessary laws, and
therefore in a transcendental affinity of which the empirical is
a mere consequence.”[899]
In other words, representations must exist in consciousness
before they can become associated; and they can exist in
consciousness only if they are consciously apprehended. But
in order to be consciously apprehended, they must conform to
the transcendental conditions upon which all consciousness
rests; and in being thus apprehended they are set in
thoroughgoing unity to one another and to the self. They are
apprehended as belonging to an objective order or unity which
is the correlate of the unity of self-consciousness. This is what
Kant entitles their objective affinity; it is what conditions and
makes possible their associative or empirical connection.
This main point is very definitely stated in A 101.
“If we can show that even our purest a priori intuitions
yield no knowledge, save in so far as they contain such a
connection of the manifold as will make possible a
thoroughgoing synthesis of reproduction, this synthesis of the
imagination” [which acts through the machinery of
association] “must be grounded, prior to all experience, on a
priori principles, and since experience necessarily presupposes
that appearances can be reproduced, we shall have to assume a
pure transcendental synthesis of the imagination” [i.e. such
synthesis as is involved in the unity of consciousness] “as
conditioning even the possibility of all experience.”[900]
In A 121-2 Kant expresses his position in a more ambiguous
manner. He may seem to the reader merely to be arguing that a
certain minimum of regularity is necessary in order that
representations may be associated, and experience may be
possible.[901] But the general tenor of the passage as a whole,
and especially its concluding sentences, enforce the stronger,
more consistent, thesis.
”[The] subjective and empirical ground of reproduction
according to rules is named the association of representations.
If this unity of association did not also have an objective
ground, which makes it impossible that appearances should be
apprehended by the imagination except under the condition of
a possible synthetic unity of this apprehension, it would be
entirely accidental that appearances should fit into a connected
whole of human knowledge. For even though we had the
power of associating perceptions, it would remain entirely
undetermined and accidental whether they would themselves
be associable; and should they not be associable, there might
exist a multitude of perceptions, and indeed an entire
sensibility, in which much empirical consciousness would
arise in my mind, but in a state of separation, and without
belonging to one consciousness of myself. That, however, is
impossible. For only in so far as I ascribe all perceptions to
one consciousness (original apperception), can I say in all
perceptions that I am conscious of them. There must therefore
be an objective ground (that is, one that can be recognised a
priori, antecedently to all empirical laws of the imagination)
upon which may rest the possibility, nay the necessity, of a law
that extends to all appearances….”
Kant is not merely asserting that the associableness of ideas,
and the regularity of connection which that implies, must be
postulated as a condition of experience. That would be a mere
begging of the issue; the correctness of the postulate would not
be independently proved. Kant is really maintaining the much
more important thesis, that the unity of experience, i.e. of
consciousness, is what makes association possible at all. And
since consciousness must be unitary in order to exist, there
cannot be any empirical consciousness in which the conditions
of association, and therefore of reproduction, are not to be
found.
A further misunderstanding is apt to be caused by Kant’s
statement that associative affinity rests upon objective affinity.
This seems to imply, in the same manner as the passage which
we have just considered, that instead of proving that
appearances are subject to law and order, he is merely
postulating that an abiding ground of such regularity must
exist in the noumenal conditions of the sense manifold. But he
himself again supplies the needful correction.
“This [objective ground of all association of appearances]
can nowhere be found, except in the principle of the unity of
apperception in respect of all forms of knowledge which can
belong to me. In accordance with this principle all appearances
must so enter the mind, or be so apprehended, that they fit
together to constitute the unity of apperception. This would be
impossible without synthetic unity in their connection, and that
unity is therefore also objectively necessary. The objective
unity of all empirical consciousness in one consciousness, that
of original apperception, is therefore the necessary condition
of all (even of all possible) perception; and the affinity of all
appearances, near or remote, is a necessary consequence of a
synthesis in imagination which is grounded a priori on
rules.”[902]
The fundamental characteristic of consciousness is the
unified form in which alone it can exist; only when this unity
is recognised as indispensably necessary, and therefore as
invariably present whenever consciousness exists at all, can
the inter-relations of the contents of consciousness be properly
defined.
 If this main contention of the Critical teaching be accepted,
Hume’s associationist standpoint is no longer tenable.
Association cannot be taken to be an ultimate and inexplicable
property of our mental states. Nor is it a property which can be
regarded as belonging to presentations viewed as so many
independent existences. It is conditioned by the unity of
consciousness, and therefore rests upon the “transcendental”
conditions which Critical analysis reveals. Since the unity of
consciousness conditions association, it cannot be explained as
the outcome and product of the mechanism of association.
In restating the objective deduction in the second edition,
Kant has omitted all reference to this doctrine of objective
affinity. His reasons for this omission were probably twofold.
In the first place, it has been expounded in terms of a
transcendental psychology, which, as we shall find, is
conjectural in character. And secondly, the phrase “objective
affinity” is, as I have already pointed out, decidedly
misleading. It seems to imply that Kant is postulating, without
independent proof, that noumenal conditions must be such as
to supply an orderly manifold of sense data. But though the
doctrine of objective affinity is eliminated, its place is to some
extent taken[903] by the proof that all apprehension is an act of
judgment and therefore involves factors which cannot be
reduced to, or explained in terms of, association.
There are a number of points in the deduction of the first
edition which call for further explanatory and critical
comment. The first of these concerns the somewhat misleading
character of the term a priori as applied to the categories. It
carries with it rationalistic associations to which the Critical
standpoint, properly understood, yields no support. The
categories are for Kant of merely de facto nature. They have
no intrinsic validity. They are proved only as being the
indispensable conditions of what is before the mind as brute
fact, namely, conscious experience. By the a priori is meant
merely those relational factors which are required to
supplement the given manifold in order to constitute our actual
consciousness. And, as Kant is careful to point out, the
experience, as conditions of which their validity is thus
established, is of a highly specific character, resting upon
synthesis of a manifold given in space and time. That is to say,
their indispensableness is proved only for a consciousness
which in these fundamental respects is constituted like our
own.[904] And secondly, the validity of the a priori categories,
even in our human thinking, is established only in reference to
that empirical world which is constructed out of the given
manifold in terms of the intuitive forms, space and time. Their
validity is a merely phenomenal validity. They are valid of
appearances, but not of things in themselves. The a priori is
thus doubly de facto: first as a condition of brute fact, namely,
the actuality of our human consciousness; and secondly, as
conditioning a consciousness whose knowledge is limited to
appearances. It is a relative, not an absolute a priori.
Acceptance of it does not, therefore, commit us to rationalism
in the ordinary meaning of that term. Its credentials are
conferred upon it by what is mere fact; it does not represent an
order superior to the actual and legislative for it. In other
words, it is Critical, not Leibnizian in character. No
transcendent metaphysics can be based upon it. In formulating
this doctrine of the a priori as yielding objective insight and
yet as limited in the sphere of its application, the Critique of
Pure Reason marks an epoch in the history of scepticism, no
less than in the development of Idealist teaching.
There is one important link in the deduction, as above
given, which is hardly calculated to support the conclusions
that depend upon it. Kant, as we have already noted,[905]
asserts that the categories express the minimum of unity
necessary for the possibility of apperception. A contention so
essential to the argument calls for the most careful scrutiny
and a meticulous exactitude of proof. As a matter of fact, such
proof is not to be found in any part of the deductions, whether
of the first or of the second editions. It is attempted only in the
later sections on the Principles of Understanding, and even
there it is developed, in any really satisfactory fashion, only in
regard to the categories of causality and reciprocity.[906] This
proof, however, as there given, is an argument which in
originality, subtlety and force goes far to atone for all
shortcomings. It completes the objective deduction by
developing in masterly fashion (in spite of the diffuse and ill-
arranged character of the text) the central contention for which
the deduction stands. But in the transcendental deduction
itself, we find only such an argument—if it may be called an
argument—as follows from the identification of apperception
with understanding.
“The unity of apperception, in relation to the synthesis of
imagination, is the understanding…. In understanding there
are pure a priori forms of knowledge which contain the
necessary unity of pure synthesis of imagination in respect of
all possible appearances. But these are the categories, i.e. pure
concepts of understanding.”[907]
The point is again merely assumed in A 125-6. So also in A
126:
“Although through experience we learn many laws, these
are only special determinations of still higher laws, of which
the highest, under which all others stand, originate a priori in
the understanding itself….”[908]
Again in A 129 it is argued that as we prescribe a priori
rules to which all experience must conform, those rules cannot
be derived from experience, but must precede and condition it,
and can do so only as originating from ourselves (aus uns
selbst).
”[They] precede all knowledge of the object as [their]
intellectual form, and constitute a formal a priori knowledge
of all objects in so far as they are thought (categories).”
But this is only to repeat that such forms of unity as are
necessary to self-consciousness must be realised in all
synthesis. It is no sufficient proof that those forms of relation
coincide with the categories. As we shall find in considering
the deduction of the second edition, Kant to some extent came
to recognise the existence of this gap in his argument and
sought to supply the missing steps. But his method of so doing
still ultimately consists in an appeal to the results of the
metaphysical deduction, and therefore rests upon his untenable
belief in the adequacy of formal logic. It fails to obviate the
objection in any satisfactory manner.
 As regards the negative aspect of the conclusion reached—
that the validity of the categories is established only for
appearances—Kant maintains that this is a necessary corollary
of their validity being a priori. That things in themselves must
conform to the conditions demanded by the nature of our self-
consciousness is altogether impossible of proof. Even
granting, what is indeed quite possible, that things in
themselves embody the pure forms of understanding, we still
cannot have any ground for maintaining that they must do so
of necessity and will be found to do so universally. For even if
we could directly experience things in themselves, and
apprehend them as conforming to the categories, such
conformity would still be known only as contingent. But when
it is recognised that nature consists for us of nothing but
appearances, existing only in the mode in which they are
experienced, and therefore as necessarily conforming to the
conditions under which experience is alone possible, the
paradoxical aspect of the apriority ascribed to the categories at
once vanishes. Proof of their a priori validity presupposes the
phenomenal character of the objects to which they apply. They
can be proved to be universal and necessarily valid of objects
only in so far as it can be shown that they have antecedently
conditioned and constituted them. The sole sufficient reason
for asserting them to be universally valid throughout
experience is that they are indispensably necessary for
rendering it possible.[909] The transcendental method of proof,
i.e. proof by reference to the very possibility of experience, is
for this reason, as Kant so justly emphasises, the sole type of
argument capable of fulfilling the demands which have to be
met. It presupposes, and itself enforces, the truth of the
fundamental Critical distinction between appearances and
things in themselves.
Kant entitles the unity of apperception original
(ursprünglich);[910] and we may now consider how far and in
what sense this title is applicable.[911] From the point of view
of method there is the same justification for employing the
term ‘original’ as for entitling the unity of apperception
transcendental.[912] Self-consciousness is more fundamental or
original than consciousness of objects, in so far as[913] it is
only from the subjective standpoint which it represents that the
objective deduction can demonstrate the necessity of
synthesis, and the empirical validity of the pure forms of
understanding. It is as a condition of the possibility of self-
consciousness that the objective employment of the categories
is proved to be legitimate. In the development of the deduction
self-consciousness is, therefore, more original than
consciousness of objects. Kant’s employment of the term is,
however, extremely misleading. For it would seem to imply
that the self has been proved to be original or ultimate in an
ontological sense, as if it preceded experience, and through its
antecedent reality rendered objective experience possible of
achievement. Such a view is undoubtedly reinforced by Kant’s
transformation of apperception into a faculty—das
Radicalvermögen aller unsrer Erkenntniss[914]—and his
consequent identification of it with the understanding.[915] It
then seems as if he were maintaining that the transcendental
ego is ultimate and is independent of all conditions, and that to
its synthetic activities the various forms of objective
consciousness are due.[916]
This unfortunate phraseology is directly traceable to the
spiritualistic or Leibnizian character of Kant’s earlier
standpoint. In the Dissertation the self is viewed as an ultimate
and unconditioned existence, antecedent to experience and
creatively generative of it. We have already noted that a
somewhat similar view is presented in the Critique in those
paragraphs which Vaihinger identifies as embodying the
earliest stage in the development of the argument of the
deduction. The self is there described as coming to
consciousness of its permanence through reflection upon the
constancy of its own synthetic activities. Our consciousness of
a transcendental object, and even the possibility of the
empirical concepts through which such consciousness is, in
these paragraphs, supposed to be mediated, are traced to this
same source. To the last this initial excess of emphasis upon
the unity of apperception remained characteristic of Kant’s
Critical teaching; and though in the later statements of his
theory, its powers and prerogatives were very greatly
diminished, it still continued to play a somewhat exaggerated
rôle. The early spiritualistic views were embodied in a
terminology which he continued to employ; and unless the
altered meaning of his terms is recognised and allowed for,
misunderstanding is bound to result. The terms, having been
forged under the influence of the older views, are but ill
adapted to the newer teaching which they are employed to
formulate.
There was also a second influence at work. When Kant was
constrained in the light of his new and unexpected results to
recognise his older views as lacking in theoretical justification,
he still held to them in his own personal thinking. For there is
ample evidence that they continued to represent his
Privatmeinungen.[917]
Only, therefore, when these misleading influences, verbal,
expository, and personal, are discounted, do the results of the
deduction appear in their true proportions. Kant’s Critical
philosophy does not profess to prove that it is self-
consciousness, or apperception, or a transcendental ego, or
anything describable in kindred terms, which ultimately
renders experience possible. The most that we can legitimately
postulate, as noumenally conditioning experience, are
“syntheses” (themselves, in their generative character, not
definable)[918] in accordance with the categories. For only
upon the completion of such syntheses do consciousness of
self and consciousness of objects come to exist. Consciousness
of objects does, indeed, according to the argument of the
deduction, involve consciousness of self; self-consciousness is
the form of all consciousness. But, by the same argument, it is
equally true that only in and through consciousness of objects
is any self-consciousness possible at all. Consciousness of self
and consciousness of objects mutually condition one another.
Only through consciousness of both simultaneously can
consciousness of either be attained. Self-consciousness is not
demonstrably in itself any more ultimate or original than is
consciousness of objects. Both alike are forms of experience
which are conditioned in complex ways. Upon the question as
to whether or not there is any such thing as abiding
personality, the transcendental deduction casts no direct light.
Indeed consciousness of self, as the more inclusive and
complex form of awareness, may perhaps be regarded as
pointing to a greater variety of contributory and generative
conditions.
Unfortunately Kant, for the reasons just stated, has not
sufficiently emphasised this more negative, or rather
noncommittal, aspect of the results of the deduction. But when
later in the chapter on the Paralogisms he is brought face to
face with the issue, and has occasion to pronounce upon the
question, he speaks with no uncertain voice. In the theoretical
sphere there is, he declares, no sufficient proof of the
spirituality, or unitary and ultimate character, of the self. Like
everything else the unity of apperception must be noumenally
conditioned, but it cannot be shown that in itself, as self-
consciousness or apperception, it represents any noumenal
reality. It may be a resultant, resting upon, and due to, a
complexity of generative conditions; and these conditions may
be fundamentally different in character from itself. They may,
for all that we can prove to the contrary, be of a non-conscious
and non-personal nature. There is nothing in our cognitive
experience, and no result of the Critical analysis of it, which is
inconsistent with such a possibility.[919] Those commentators,
such as Cohen, Caird, and Watson, who more or less follow
Hegel in his criticism of Kant’s procedure, give an
interpretation of the transcendental deduction which makes it
inconsistent with the sceptical conclusions which the Critique
as a whole is made by its author to support. Unbiassed study of
the Analytic, even if taken by itself in independence of the
Dialectic, does not favour such a view. The argument of the
transcendental deduction itself justifies no more than Kant is
willing to allow in his discussion of the nature of the self in the
section on the Paralogisms. It may, indeed, as Caird has so
forcibly shown in his massive work upon the Critical
philosophy, be developed upon Hegelian lines, but only
through a process of essential reconstruction which departs
very far from many of Kant’s most cherished tenets, and which
does so in a spirit that radically conflicts with that which
dominates the Critique as a whole.
THE LATER STAGES OF THE SUBJECTIVE DEDUCTION
 The reader will have noted that several of the factors in
Kant’s exposition have so far been entirely ignored. The time
has now come for reckoning with them. They constitute, in my
view, the later stages of the subjective deduction. That is to
say, they refer to the transcendental generative powers which
Kant, on the strength of the results obtained in the more
objective enquiry, feels justified in postulating. Separate
consideration of them tends to clearness of statement. Kant’s
constant alternation between the logical and the dynamical
standpoints is one of the many causes of the obscurity in his
argument. In this connection we shall also find opportunity to
discuss the fundamental conflict, to which I have already had
occasion to refer, between the subjectivist and the
phenomenalist modes of developing the Critical standpoint.
The conclusions arrived at in the objective deduction
compelled Kant to revise his previous psychological views.
Hitherto he had held to the Leibnizian theory that a priori
concepts are obtained by reflection upon the mind’s native and
fundamental modes of action. In the Dissertation he carefully
distinguishes between the logical and the real employment of
the understanding. Through the former empirical concepts are
derived from concrete experience. Through the latter pure
concepts are creatively generated. Logical and real thinking
agree, however, Kant there argues, in being activities of the
conscious mind. Both can be apprehended and adequately
determined through the revealing power of reflective
consciousness. Such a standpoint is no longer tenable for Kant.
Now that he has shown that the consciousness of self and the
consciousness of objects mutually condition one another, and
that until both are attained neither is possible, he can no longer
regard the mind as even possibly conscious of the activities
whereby experience is brought about. The activities generative
of consciousness have to be recognised as themselves falling
outside it. Not even in its penumbra, through some vague form
of apprehension, can they be detected. Only the finished
products of such activities, not the activities themselves, can
be presented to consciousness; and only by general reasoning,
inferential of agencies that lie outside the conscious field, can
we hope to determine them.
 Now Kant appears to have been unwilling to regard the
‘understanding’ as ever unconscious of its activities. Why he
was unwilling, it does not seem possible to explain; at most his
rationalist leanings and Wolffian training may be cited as
contributing causes. To the end he continued to speak of the
understanding as the faculty whereby the a priori is brought to
consciousness. In order to develop the distinctions demanded
by the new Critical attitude, he had therefore to introduce a
new faculty, capable of taking over the activities which have to
be recognised as non-conscious. For this purpose he selected
the imagination, giving to it the special title, productive
imagination. The empirical reproductive processes hitherto
alone recognised by psychologists are not, he declares,
exhaustive of the nature of the imagination. It is also capable
of transcendental activity, and upon this the “objective
affinity” of appearances and the resulting possibility of their
empirical apprehension is made to rest. The productive
imagination is also viewed as rendering possible the
understanding, that is, the conscious apprehension of the a
priori as an element embedded in objective experience. Such
apprehension is possible because in the pre-conscious
elaboration of the given manifold the productive imagination
has conformed to those a priori principles which the
understanding demands for the possibility of its own exercise
in conscious apprehension. Productive imagination acts in the
manner required to yield experiences which are capable of
relation to the unity of self-consciousness, i.e. of being found
to conform to the unity of the categories. Why it should act in
this manner cannot be explained; but it is none the less, on
Critical principles, a legitimate assumption, since only in so
far as it does so can experience, which de facto exists, be
possible in any form. As a condition sine qua non of actual
and possible experience, the existence of such a faculty is,
Kant argues, a legitimate inference from the results of the
transcendental deduction.
Though Kant’s insistence upon the conscious character of
understanding compels him to distinguish between it and the
imagination, he has also to recognise their kinship. If
imagination can never act save in conformity with the a priori
forms of understanding, some reason must exist for their
harmony. This twofold necessity of at once distinguishing and
connecting them is the cause of the hesitating and extremely
variable account which in both editions of the Critique is
given of their relation. In several passages the understanding is
spoken of as simply imagination which has attained to
consciousness of its activities.[920] Elsewhere he explicitly
states that they are distinct and separate. From this second
point of view Kant regards imagination as mediating between
sense and understanding, and, though reducible to neither, akin
to both.
Only on one point is Kant clear and definite, namely, that it
is to productive imagination that the generation of unified
experience is primarily due. In it something of the fruitful and
inexhaustible character of noumenal reality is traceable.
Doubtless one chief reason for his choice of the title
imagination is the creative character which in popular thought
has always been regarded as its essential feature. As Kant,
speaking of schematism, which is a process executed by the
imagination, states in A 141: “This schematism … is an art
(Kunst) concealed in the depths of the human soul.”[921] This
description may perhaps be interpreted in the light of Kant’s
account of the creative character of artistic genius in the
Critique of Judgment, for there also imagination figures as the
truly originative or creative faculty of the human spirit. To its
noumenal character we may also trace its capacity of
combining those factors of sense and understanding which in
the realm of appearance remain persistently opposed.[922]
Imagination differs from the understanding chiefly in that it is
at once more comprehensive and also more truly creative. It
supplements the functional forms with a sensuous content, and
applies them dynamically in the generation of experience.
The schemata, which the productive imagination is
supposed to construct, are those generalised forms of temporal
and spatial existence in which alone the unity of experience
necessary to apperception can be realised. They are
“pure (without admixture of anything empirical), and yet are
in one aspect intellectual and in another sensuous.”[923]
 Or as Kant describes the process in the chapter before us:
[924]

“We name the synthesis of the manifold in imagination

transcendental, if without distinction of intuitions it is directed
exclusively to the a priori combination of the manifold; and
the unity of this synthesis is entitled transcendental, if it is
represented as a priori necessary in relation to the original
unity of apperception. As this unity of apperception conditions
the possibility of all knowledge, the transcendental unity of the
synthesis of imagination is the pure form of all possible
knowledge. Hence, through it all objects of possible
experience must be represented a priori.”
The schemata, thus transcendentally generated, are
represented by Kant as limiting and controlling the empirical
processes of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition. As
no experience is attainable save in terms of the schemata, they
enable us to determine, on a priori grounds, the degree of
constancy and regularity that can be securely counted upon in
all experience. This is Kant’s psychological explanation of
what he has entitled “objective affinity.”[925] The empirical
ground of reproduction is the association of ideas; its
transcendental ground is an objective affinity which is “a
necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination,
grounded a priori on rules.”[926]
”[The] subjective and empirical ground of reproduction
according to rules is named the association of representations.
If this unity of association did not also have an objective
ground, which makes it impossible that appearances should be
apprehended by the imagination except under the condition of
a possible synthetic unity of this apprehension, it would be
entirely accidental that appearances should fit into a connected
whole of human knowledge…. There might exist a multitude
of perceptions, and indeed an entire sensibility, in which much
empirical consciousness would arise in my mind, but in a state
of separation, and without belonging to one consciousness of
myself. That, however, is impossible.” [As the subjective and
objective deductions have demonstrated, where there is no
self-consciousness there is no consciousness of any kind.]
“There must therefore be an objective ground (that is, one that
can be determined a priori, antecedently to all empirical laws
of the imagination) upon which may rest the possibility, nay,
the necessity of a law that extends to all appearances—the law,
namely, that all appearances must be regarded as data of the
senses which are associable in themselves and subject to
general rules of universal connection in their reproduction.
This objective ground of all association of appearances I
entitle their affinity…. The objective unity of all empirical
consciousness in one consciousness, that of original
apperception, is the necessary condition of all possible
perception; and the affinity of all appearances, near or remote,
is a necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination
which is grounded a priori on rules.”[927]
This part of Kant’s teaching is apt to seem more obscure
than it is. For the reader is not unnaturally disinclined to
accept it in the very literal sense in which it is stated. That
Kant means, however, exactly what he says, appears from the
further consequence which he himself not only recognises as
necessary, but insists upon as valid. The doctrine of objective
affinity culminates in the conclusion[928] that it is “we
ourselves who introduce into the appearances that order and
regularity which we name nature.” The “we ourselves” refers
to the mind in the transcendental activities of the productive
imagination. The conscious processes of apprehension,
reproduction, and recognition necessarily conform to
schemata, non-consciously generated, which express the
combined a priori conditions of intuition and understanding
required for unitary consciousness.
Many points in this strange doctrine call for consideration.
It rests, in the first place, upon the assumption of a hard and
fast distinction, very difficult of acceptance, between
transcendental and empirical activities of the mind. Secondly,
Kant’s assertion, that the empirical manifolds can be relied
upon to supply a satisfactory content for the schemata, calls
for more adequate justification than he himself adduces. It is
upon independent reality that the fixity of empirical co-
existences and sequences depends. Is not Kant practically
assuming a pre-established harmony in asserting that as the
mind creates the form of nature it can legislate a priori for all
possible experience?
As regards the first assumption Kant would seem to have
been influenced by the ambiguities of the term transcendental.
It means, as we have already noted,[929] either the science of
the a priori, or the a priori itself, or the conditions which
render experience possible. Even the two latter meanings by
no means coincide. The conditions of the possibility of
experience are not in all cases a priori. The manifold of outer
sense is as indispensable a precondition of experience as are
the forms of understanding, and yet is not a priori in any valid
sense of that term. It does not, therefore, follow that because
the activities of productive imagination “transcendentally”
condition experience, they must themselves be a priori, and
must, as Kant also maintains,[930] deal with a pure a priori
manifold. Further, the separation between transcendental and
empirical activities of the mind must defeat the very purpose
for which the productive imagination is postulated, namely, in
order to account for the generation of a complex consciousness
in which no one element can temporally precede any of the
others. If the productive imagination generates only schemata,
it will not account for that complex experience in which
consciousness of self and consciousness of objects are
indissolubly united. The introduction of the productive
imagination seems at first sight to promise recognition of the
dynamical aspect of our temporally sequent experience, and of
that aspect in which as appearance it refers us beyond itself to
non-experienced conditions. As employed, however, in the
doctrines of schematism and of objective affinity, the
imagination exhibits a formalism hardly less extreme than that
of the understanding whose shortcomings it is supposed to
make good.
In his second assumption Kant, as so often in the Critique,
is allowing his old-time rationalistic leanings to influence him
in underestimating the large part which the purely empirical
must always occupy in human experience, and in exaggerating
the scope of the inferences which can be drawn from the
presence of the formal, relational factors. But this is a point
which we are not yet in a position to discuss.[931]
 Fortunately, if Vaihinger’s theory be accepted,[932] section A
98-104 enables us to follow the movement of Kant’s mind in
the interval between the formulating of the doctrine of
productive imagination and the publication of the Critique. He
himself would seem to have recognised the unsatisfactoriness
of dividing up the total conditions of experience into
transcendental activities that issue in schemata, and
supplementary empirical processes which transform them into
concrete, specific consciousness. The alternative theory which
he proceeds to propound is at first sight much more
satisfactory. It consists in duplicating each of the various
empirical processes with a transcendental faculty. There are,
he now declares, three transcendental powers—a
transcendental faculty of apprehension, a transcendental
faculty of reproduction (=imagination), and a transcendental
faculty of recognition. Thus Kant’s previous view that
transcendental imagination has a special and unique activity,
namely, the productive, altogether different in type from any
of its empirical processes, is now allowed to drop; in place of
it Kant develops the view that the transcendental functions run
exactly parallel with the empirical processes.[933] But though
such a position may at first seem more promising than that
which it displaces, it soon reveals its unsatisfactoriness. The
two types of mental activity, transcendental and empirical, no
longer, indeed, fall apart; but the difficulty now arises of
distinguishing in apprehension, reproduction, and recognition
any genuinely transcendental aspect.[934] Apprehension,
reproduction, and recognition are so essentially conscious
processes that to view them as also transcendental does not
seem helpful. They contain elements that are transcendental in
the logical sense, but cannot be shown to presuppose in any
analogous fashion mental powers that are transcendental in the
dynamical sense. This is especially evident in regard to
recognition, which is described as being “the consciousness
that what we are thinking is the same as what we thought a
moment before.” In dealing with apprehension and
reproduction the only real difference which Kant is able to
suggest, as existing between their transcendental and their
empirical activities, is that the former synthesise the pure a
priori manifolds of space and time, and the latter the
contingent manifold of sense. But even this unsatisfactory
distinction he does not attempt to apply in the case of
recognition. Nor can we hold that by the transcendental
synthesis of recognition Kant means transcendental
apperception. That is, of course, the suggestion which at once
occurs to the reader. But however possible it might be to inject
such a meaning into kindred passages elsewhere, it cannot be
made to fit the context of this particular section.
Vaihinger’s theory seems to be the only thread which will
guide us through this labyrinth. Kant, on the eve of the
publication of the Critique, recognising the unsatisfactoriness
of his hard and fast separation of transcendental from
empirical processes, adopted the view that some form of
transcendental activity corresponds to every fundamental form
of empirical activity and vice versa. Hastily developing this
theory, he incorporated it into the Critique alongside his older
doctrine. It does not, however, reappear in the Prolegomena,
and its teaching is explicitly withdrawn in the second edition
of the Critique. Its plausibility had entrapped him into its
temporary adoption, but the defects which it very soon
revealed speedily led him to reject it.
One feature of great significance calls for special notice.
The breakdown of this doctrine of a threefold transcendental
synthesis did not, as might naturally have been expected from
what is stated in the prefaces to the Critique regarding the
unessential and seemingly conjectural character of the
subjective deduction, lead Kant to despair of developing a
transcendental psychology. Though in the second edition he
cuts away the sections containing the earlier stages of the
subjective deduction,[935] and in recasting the other sections
gives greater prominence to the more purely logical analyses,
the older doctrine of productive imagination is reinstated in
full force,[936] and is again developed in[937] connection with
the doctrine of pure a priori manifolds. Evidently, therefore,
Kant was not disheartened by the various difficulties which lie
in the path of a transcendental psychology, and it seems
reasonable to conclude that there were powerful reasons
inclining him to its retention. I shall now attempt, to the best
of my powers, to explain—the task is a delicate and difficult
one—what we may believe these reasons to have been.[938]
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHENOMENALISM AND
SUBJECTIVISM

A wider set of considerations than we have yet taken into

account must be borne in mind if certain broader and really
vital implications of Kant’s enquiry are to be properly viewed.
The self has a twofold aspect. It is at once animal in its
conditions and potentially universal in its powers of
apprehension. Though man’s natural existence is that of an
animal organism, he can have consciousness of the spatial
world out of which his organism has arisen, and of the wider
periods within which his transitory existence falls. Ultimately
such consciousness would seem to connect man cognitively
with reality as a whole. Now it is to this universal or absolutist
aspect of our consciousness, to its transcendence of the
embodied and separate self, that Kant is seeking to do justice
in his transcendental deductions, especially in his doctrine of
the transcendental unity of apperception. For he views that
apperception as conditioned by, and the correlate of, the
consciousness of objectivity. It involves the consciousness of a
single cosmical time and of a single cosmical space within
which all events fall and within which they form a whole of
causally interdependent existences. That is why he names it
the objective unity of apperception. It is that aspect in which
the self correlates with a wider reality, and through which it
stands in fundamental contrast to the merely subjective states
and to the individual conditions of its animal existence. The
transcendental self, so far from being identical with the
empirical self, would seem to be of directly opposite nature.
The one would seem to point beyond the realm of appearance,
the other to be in its existence merely natural. The fact that
they are inextricably bound up with one another, and co-
operate in rendering experience possible, only makes the more
indispensable the duty of recognising their differing
characters. Even should they prove to be inseparable aspects
of sense-experience, without metaphysical implications, that
would not obviate the necessity of clearly distinguishing them.
The distinction remains, whatever explanation may be adopted
of its speculative or other significance.
 Now obviously in so fundamental an enquiry, dealing as it
does with the most complicated and difficult problem in the
entire field of metaphysics, no brief and compendious answer
can cover all the various considerations which are relevant and
determining. The problem of the deduction being what it is,
the section dealing with it can hardly fail to be the most
difficult portion of the whole Critique. The conclusions at
which it arrives rest not merely upon the argument which it
contains but also upon the results more or less independently
reached in the other sections. The doctrine of the empirical
object as appearance requires for its development the various
discussions contained in the Aesthetic, in the sections on Inner
Sense and on the Refutation of Idealism, in the chapters on
Phenomena and Noumena and on the Antinomies. The
metaphysical consequences and implications of Kant’s
teaching in regard to the transcendental unity of apperception
are first revealed in the chapter on the Paralogisms. The view
taken of productive imagination is expanded in the section on
Schematism. In a word, the whole antecedent teaching of the
Critique is focussed, and the entire subsequent development of
the Critical doctrine is anticipated, in this brief chapter.
But there are, of course, additional causes of the difficulty
and obscurity of the argument. One such cause has already
been noted, namely, that the Critique is not a unitary work,
developed from a previously thought-out standpoint, but in
large part consists of manuscripts of very various dates,
artificially pieced together by the addition of connecting links.
In no part of the Critique is this so obvious as in the Analytic
of Concepts. Until this is recognised all attempts to interpret
the text in any impersonal fashion are doomed to failure. For
this reason I have prefaced our discussion by a statement of
Vaihinger’s analysis. No one who can accept it is any longer in
danger of underestimating this particular cause of the
obscurity of Kant’s deduction.
But the chief reason is one to which I have thus far made
only passing reference, and to which we may now give the
attention which its importance demands, namely, the tentative
and experimental character of Kant’s own final solutions. The
arguments of the deduction are only intelligible if viewed as
an expression of the conflicting tendencies to which Kant’s
thought remained subject. He sought to allow due weight to
each of the divergent aspects of the experience which he was
analysing, and in so doing proceeded, as it would seem,
simultaneously along the parallel lines of what appeared to be
the possible, alternative methods of explanation. And to the
end these opposing tendencies continued side by side, to the
confusion of those readers who seek for a single unified
teaching, but to the great illumination of those who are looking
to Kant, not for clear-cut or final solutions, but for helpful
analysis and for partial disentanglement of the complicated
issues which go to constitute these baffling problems.
The two chief tendencies which thus conflicted in Kant’s
mind may be named the subjectivist and the phenomenalist
respectively. This conflict remained, so to speak, underground,
influencing the argument at every point, but seldom itself
becoming the subject of direct discussion. As we shall find, it
caused Kant to develop a twofold view of inner sense, of
causality, of the object of knowledge, and of the unity of
apperception. One of the few sections in the Critique where it
seems on the point of emerging into clear consciousness is the
section, added in the second edition, on the Refutation of
Idealism. But this section owes its origin to polemical causes.
It represents a position peculiar to the maturer portions of the
Analytic; the rest of the Critique is not rewritten so as to
harmonise with it, or to develop the consequences which
consistent holding to it must involve.
I shall use the term subjectivism (and its equivalent
subjective idealism) in the wide sense[939] which makes it
applicable to the teaching of Descartes and Locke, of Leibniz
and Wolff, no less than to that of Berkeley and Hume. A
common element in all these philosophies is the belief that
subjective or mental states, “ideas” in the Lockean sense, are
the objects of consciousness, and further are the sole possible
objects of which it can have any direct or immediate
awareness. Knowledge is viewed as a process entirely internal
to the individual mind, and as carrying us further only in virtue
of some additional supervening process, inferential,
conjectural, or instinctive. This subjectivism also tends to
combine with a view of consciousness as an ultimate self-
revealing property of a merely individual existence.[940] For
Descartes consciousness is the very essence, both of the mind
and of the self. It is indeed asserted to be exhaustive of the
nature of both. Though the self is described as possessing a
faculty of will as well as a power of thinking, all its activities
are taken as being disclosed to the mind through the revealing
power of its fundamental attribute. The individual mind is thus
viewed as an existence in which everything takes place in the
open light of an all-pervasive consciousness. Leibniz, it is true,
taught the existence of subconscious perceptions, and so far
may seem to have anticipated Kant’s recognition of non-
conscious processes; but as formulated by Leibniz that
doctrine has the defect which frequently vitiates its modern
counterpart, namely that it represents the subconscious as
analogous in nature to the conscious, and as differing from it
only in the accidental features of intensity and clearness, or
through temporary lack of control over the machinery of
reproductive association. The subconscious, as thus
represented, merely enlarges the private content of the
individual mind; it in no respect transcends it.
The genuinely Critical view of the generative conditions of
experience is radically different from this Leibnizian doctrine
of petites perceptions. It connects rather with Leibniz’s mode
of conceiving the origin of a priori concepts. But even that
teaching it restates in such fashion as to free it from
subjectivist implications. Leibniz’s contention that the mind is
conscious of its fundamental activities, and that it is by
reflection upon them that it gains all ultimate a priori
concepts, is no longer tenable in view of the conclusions
established in the objective deduction. Mental processes, in so
far as they are generative of experience, must fall outside the
field of consciousness, and as activities dynamically creative
cannot be of the nature of ideas or contents. They are not
subconscious ideas but non-conscious processes. They are not
the submerged content of experience, but its conditioning
grounds. Their most significant characteristic has still,
however, to be mentioned. They must no longer be interpreted
in subjectivist terms, as originating in the separate existence of
an individual self. In conditioning experience they generate the
only self for which experience can vouch, and consequently, in
the absence of full and independent proof, must not be
conceived as individually circumscribed. The problem of
knowledge, properly conceived, is no longer how
consciousness, individually conditioned, can lead us beyond
its own bounds, but what a consciousness, which is at once
consciousness of objects and also consciousness of a self, must
imply for its possibility. Kant thus obtains what is an almost
invariable concomitant of scientific and philosophical
advance, namely a more correct and scientific formulation of
the problem to be solved. The older formulation assumes the
truth of the subjectivist standpoint; the Critical problem, when
thus stated, is at least free from preconceptions of that
particular brand. Assumptions which hitherto had been quite
unconsciously held, or else, if reflected upon, had been
regarded as axiomatic and self-evident, are now brought
within the field of investigation. Kant thereby achieves a
veritable revolution; and with it many of the most far-reaching
consequences of the Critical teaching are closely bound up.
This new standpoint, in contrast to subjective idealism, may
be named Critical, or to employ the term which Kant himself
applies both to his transcendental deduction and to the unity of
apperception, objective idealism. But as the distinction
between appearance and reality is no less fundamental to the
Critical attitude, we shall perhaps be less likely to be
misunderstood, or to seem to be identifying Kant’s standpoint
with the very different teaching of Hegel, if by preference we
employ the title phenomenalism.
In the transcendental deduction Kant, as above noted, is
seeking to do justice to the universal or absolutist aspect of our
consciousness, to its transcendence of the embodied and
separate self. The unity of apperception is entitled objective,
because it is regarded as the counterpart of a single cosmical
time and of a single cosmical space within which all events
fall. Its objects are not mental states peculiar to itself, nor even
ideal contents numerically distinct from those in other minds.
It looks out upon a common world of genuinely independent
existence. In developing this position Kant is constrained to
revise and indeed completely to recast his previous views both
as to the nature of the synthetic processes, through which
experience is constructed, and of the given manifold, upon
which they are supposed to act. From the subjectivist point of
view the synthetic activities consist of the various cognitive
processes of the individual mind, and the given manifold
consists of the sensations aroused by material bodies acting
upon the special senses. From the objective or phenomenalist
standpoint the synthetic processes are of a noumenal character,
and the given manifold is similarly viewed as being due to
noumenal agencies acting, not upon the sense-organs, which
as appearances are themselves noumenally conditioned, but
upon what may be called “outer sense.” These distinctions
may first be made clear.
Sensations, Kant holds, have a twofold origin, noumenal
and mechanical. They are due in the first place to the action of
things in themselves upon the noumenal conditions of the self,
and also in the second place to the action of material bodies
upon the sense-organs and the brain. To take the latter first.
Light reflected from objects, and acting on the retina, gives
rise to sensations of colour. For such causal interrelations there
exists, Kant teaches, the same kind of empirical evidence as
for the causal interaction of material bodies.[941] Our
sensational experiences are as truly events in time as are
mechanical happenings in space. In this way, however, we can
account only for the existence of our sensations and for the
order in which they make their appearance in or to
consciousness, not for our awareness of them. To state the
point by means of an illustration. The impinging of one
billiard ball upon another accounts causally for the motion
which then appears in the second ball. But no one would
dream of asserting that by itself it accounts for our
consciousness of that second motion. We may contend that in
an exactly similar manner, to the same extent, no more and no
less, the action of an object upon the brain accounts only for
the occurrence of a visual sensation as an event in the
empirical time sequence. A sensation just as little as a motion
can carry its own consciousness with it. To regard that as ever
possible is ultimately to endow events in time with the
capacity of apprehending objects in space. In dealing with
causal connections in space and time we do not require to
discuss the problem of knowledge proper, namely, how it is
possible to have or acquire knowledge, whether of a motion in
space or of a sensation in time. When we raise that further
question we have to adopt a very different standpoint, and to
take into account a much greater complexity of conditions.
Kant applies this point of view no less rigorously to
feelings, emotions, and desires than to the sensations of the
special senses. All of them, he teaches, are ‘animal’[942] in
character. They are one and all conditioned by, and explicable
only in terms of, the particular constitution of the animal
organism. They one and all belong to the realm of appearance.
[943]

The term ‘sensation’ may also, however, be applied in a

wider sense to signify the material of knowledge in so far as it
is noumenally conditioned. Thus viewed, sensations are due,
not to the action of physical stimuli upon the bodily organs,
but to the affection by things in themselves of those factors in
the noumenal conditions of the self which correspond to
“sensibility.” Kant is culpably careless in failing to distinguish
those two very different meanings of the phrase ‘given
manifold.’ The language which he employs is thoroughly
ambiguous. Just as he frequently speaks as if the synthetic
processes were conscious activities exerted by the self, so also
he frequently uses language which implies that the manifold
upon which these processes act is identical with the sensations
of the special senses. But the sensations of the bodily senses,
even if reducible to it, can at most form only part of it. The
synthetic processes, interpreting the manifold in accordance
with the fixed forms, space, time, and the categories, generate
the spatial world within which objects are apprehended as
causally interacting and as giving rise through their action
upon the sense-organs to the various special sensations as
events in time. Sensations, as mechanically caused, are thus on
the same plane as other appearances. They depend upon the
same generating conditions as the motions which produce
them. As minor incidents within a more comprehensive
totality they cannot possibly represent the material out of
which the whole has been constructed. To explain the
phenomenal world as constructed out of the sensations of the
special senses is virtually to equate it with a small selection of
its constituent parts. Such professed explanation also commits
the further absurdity of attempting to account for the origin of
the phenomenal world by means of events which can exist
only under the conditions which it itself supplies. The
manifold of the special senses and the primary manifold are
radically distinct. The former is due to material bodies acting
upon the material sense-organs. The latter is the product of
noumenal agencies acting upon “outer sense,” i.e. upon those
noumenal conditions of the self which constitute our
“sensibility”; it is much more comprehensive than the former;
it must contain the material for all modes of objective
existence, including many that are usually regarded as purely
mental.[944]
To turn, now, to the other aspect of experience. What are the
factors which condition its form? What must we postulate in
order to account for the existence of consciousness and for the
unitary form in which alone it can appear? Kant’s answer is
again ambiguous. He fails sufficiently to insist upon
distinctions which yet are absolutely vital to any genuine
understanding of the new and revolutionary positions towards
which he is feeling his way. The synthetic processes which in
the subjective and objective deductions are proved to
condition all experience may be interpreted either as conscious
or as non-conscious activities, and may be ascribed either to
the agency of the individual self or to noumenal conditions
which fall outside the realm of possible definition. Now,
though Kant’s own expositions remain thoroughly ambiguous,
the results of the Critical enquiry would seem—at least so long
as the fundamental distinction between matter and form is held
to and the temporally sequent aspect of experience is kept in
view—to be decisive in favour of the latter alternative in each
case. The synthetic processes must take place and complete
themselves before any consciousness can exist at all. And as
they thus precondition consciousness, they cannot themselves
be known to be conscious; and not being known to be
conscious, it is not even certain that they may legitimately be
described as mental. We have, indeed, to conceive them on the
analogy of our mental processes, but that may only be because
of the limitation of our knowledge to the data of experience.
Further, we have no right to conceive them as the activities of
a noumenal self. We know the self only as conscious, and the
synthetic processes, being the generating conditions of
consciousness, are also the generating conditions of the only
self for which our experience can vouch. Kant, viewing as he
does the temporal aspect of human experience as fundamental,
would seem to be justified in naming these processes
“synthetic.” For consciousness in its very nature would seem
to involve the carrying over of content from one time to other
times, and the construction of a more comprehensive total
consciousness from the elements thus combined. Kant is here
analysing in its simplest and most fundamental form that
aspect of consciousness which William James has described in
the Principles of Psychology,[945] and which we may entitle
the telescoping of earlier mental states into the successive
experiences that include them. They telescope in a manner
which can never befall the successive events in a causal series,
and which is not explicable by any scheme of relations
derivable from the physical sphere.
Obviously, what Kant does is to apply to the interpretation
of the noumenal conditions of our conscious experience a
distinction derived by analogy from conscious experience
itself—the distinction, namely, between our mental processes
and the sensuous material with which they deal. The
application of such a distinction may be inevitable in any
attempt to explain human experience; but it can very easily,
unless carefully guarded, prove a source of serious
misunderstanding. Just as the synthetic processes which
generate consciousness are not known to be themselves
conscious, so also the manifold cannot be identified with the
sensations of the bodily senses. These last are events in time,
and are effects not of noumenal but of mechanical causes.
Kant’s conclusion when developed on consistent Critical
lines, and therefore in phenomenalist terms, is twofold:
positive, to the effect that consciousness, for all that our
analysis can prove to the contrary, may be merely a resultant,
derivative from and dependent upon a complexity of
conditions; and negative, to the effect that though these
conditions may by analogy be described as consisting of
synthetic processes acting upon a given material, they are in
their real nature unknowable by us. Even their bare possibility
we cannot profess to comprehend. We postulate them only
because given experience is demonstrably not self-explanatory
and would seem to refer us for explanation to some such
antecedent generative grounds.
Kant, as we have already emphasised, obscures his position
by the way in which he frequently speaks of the transcendental
unity of apperception as the supreme condition of our
experience. At times he even speaks as if it were the source of
the synthetic processes. That cannot, however, be regarded as
his real teaching. Self-consciousness (and the unity of
apperception, in so far as it finds expression through self-
consciousness) rests upon the same complexity of conditions
as does outer experience, and therefore may be merely a
product or resultant. It is, as he insists in the Paralogisms, the
emptiest of all our concepts, and can afford no sufficient
ground for asserting the self to be an abiding personality. We
cannot by theoretical analysis of the facts of experience or of
the nature of self-consciousness prove anything whatsoever in
regard to the ultimate nature of the self.
Now Kant is here giving a new, and quite revolutionary,
interpretation of the distinction between the subjective and the
objective. The objective is for the Cartesians the independently
real;[946] the subjective is that which has an altogether different
kind of existence in what is entitled the field of consciousness.
Kant, on the other hand, from his phenomenalist standpoint,
views existences as objective when they are determined by
purely physical causes, and as subjective when they also
depend upon physiological and psychological conditions. On
this latter view the difference between the two is no longer a
difference of kind; it becomes a difference merely of degree.
Objective existences, owing to the simplicity and recurrent
character of their conditions, are uniform. Subjective
existences resting upon conditions which are too complex to
be frequently recurrent, are by contrast extremely variable. But
both types of existence are objective in the sense that they are
objects, and immediate objects, for consciousness. Subjective
states do not run parallel with the objective system of natural
existences, nor are they additional to it. For they do not
constitute our consciousness of nature; they are themselves
part of the natural order which consciousness reveals. That
they contrast with physical existences in being unextended and
incapable of location in space is what Kant would seem by
implication to assert, but he challenges Descartes’ right to
infer from this particular difference a complete diversity in
their whole nature. Sensations, feelings, emotions, and desires,
so far as they are experienced by us, constitute the empirical
self which is an objective existence, integrally connected with
the material environment, in terms of which alone it can be
understood. In other words, the distinction between the
subjective and the objective is now made to fall within the
system of natural law. The subjective is not opposite in nature
to the objective, but is a subspecies within it.
The revolutionary character of this reformulation of
Cartesian distinctions may perhaps be expressed by saying that
what Kant is really doing is to substitute the distinction
between appearance and reality for the Cartesian dualism of
the mental and the material. The psychical is a title for a
certain class of known existences, i.e. of appearances; and they
form together with the physical a single system. But
underlying this entire system, conditioning both physical and
psychical phenomena, is the realm of noumenal existence; and
when the question of the possibility of knowledge, that is, of
the experiencing of such a comprehensive natural system, is
raised, it is to this noumenal sphere that we are referred.
Everything experienced, even a sensation or desire, is an
event; but the experiencing of it is an act of awareness, and
calls for an explanation of an altogether different kind.
Thus Kant completely restates the problem of knowledge.
The problem is not how, starting from the subjective, the
individual can come to knowledge of the independently real;
but how, if a common world is alone immediately
apprehended, the inner private life of the self-conscious being
can be possible, and how such inner experience is to be
interpreted. How does it come about that though sensations,
feelings, etc., are events no less mechanically conditioned than
motions in space, and constitute with the latter a single system
conformed to natural law, they yet differ from all other classes
of natural events in that they can be experienced only by a
single consciousness. To this question Kant replies in terms of
his fundamental distinction between appearance and reality.
Though everything of which we are conscious may
legitimately be studied in terms of the natural system to which
it belongs, consciousness itself cannot be so regarded. In
attempting to define it we are carried beyond the phenomenal
to its noumenal conditions. In other words, it constitutes a
problem, the complete data of which are not at our disposal.
This is by itself a sufficient reason for our incapacity to
explain why the states of each empirical self can never be
apprehended save by a single consciousness, or otherwise
stated, why each consciousness is limited, as regards
sensations and feelings, exclusively to those which arise in
connection with some one animal organism. It at least
precludes us from dogmatically asserting that this is due to
their being subjective in the dualistic and Cartesian sense of
that term—namely, as constituting, or being states of, the
knowing self.
A diagram may serve, though very crudely, to illustrate
Kant’s phenomenalist interpretation of the cognitive situation.
 ESA = Empirical self of the conscious Being A.
ESA = Empirical self of the conscious Being A.
ESB = Empirical self of the conscious Being B.
NCA = Noumenal conditions of the conscious
Being A.
NCB = Noumenal conditions of the conscious
Being B.
l, m, n = Objects in space.
x1, y1, z1 = Sensations caused by objects l, m, n
acting on the sense-organs of the empirical self A.
x2, y2, z2= Sensations caused by 1, m, n acting on the
sense-organs of the empirical self B.
NCEW = Noumenal conditions of the empirical
world.
Everything in this empirical world is equally open to the
consciousness of both A and B, save only certain psychical
events that are conditioned by physiological and psychological
factors. x1, y1, z1 can be apprehended only by A; x2, y2, z2 can
be apprehended only by B. Otherwise A and B experience one
and the same world; the body of B is perceived by A in the
same manner in which he perceives his own body. This is true
a fortiori of all other material existences. Further, these
material existences are known with the same immediacy as the
subjective states. As regards the relation in which NCA, NCB,
and NCEW stand to one another, no assertions can be made,
save, as above indicated,[947] such conjectural statements as
may precariously be derived through argument by analogy
from distinctions that fall within our human experience.[948]
Kant’s phenomenalism thus involves an objectivist view of
individual selves and of their interrelations. They fall within
the single common world of space. Within this phenomenal
world they stand in external, mechanical relations to one
another. They are apprehended as embodied, with known
contents, sensations, feelings, and desires, composing their
inner experience. There is, from this point of view, no problem
of knowledge. On this plane we have to deal only with events
known, not with any process of apprehension. Even the
components of the empirical self, the subject-matter of
empirical psychology, are not processes of apprehension, but
apprehended existences. It is only when we make a regress
beyond the phenomenal as such to the conditions which render
it possible, that the problem of knowledge arises at all. And
with this regress we are brought to the real crux of the whole
question—the reconciliation of this phenomenalism with the
conditions of our self-consciousness. For we have then to take
into account the fundamental fact that each self is not only an
animal existence within the phenomenal world, but also in its
powers of apprehension coequal with it. The self known is
external to the objects known; the self that knows is conscious
of itself as comprehending within the field of its consciousness
the wider universe in infinite space.
Such considerations would, at first sight, seem to force us to
modify our phenomenalist standpoint in the direction of
subjectivism. For in what other manner can we hope to unite
the two aspects of the self, the known conditions of its finite
existence and the consciousness through which it correlates
with the universe as a whole? In the one aspect it is a part of
appearance; in the other it connects with that which makes
appearance possible at all.
Quite frequently it is the subjectivist solution which Kant
seems to adopt. Objects known are “mere representations,”
“states of the identical self.” Everything outside the individual
mind is real; appearances are purely individual in origin. But
such a position is inconsistent with the deeper implications of
Kant’s Critical teaching, and would involve the entire ignoring
of the many suggestions which point to a fundamentally
different and much more adequate standpoint. The individual
is himself known only as appearance, and cannot, therefore, be
the medium in and through which appearances exist. Though
appearances exist only in and through consciousness, they are
not due to any causes which can legitimately be described as
individual. From this standpoint Kant would seem to
distinguish between the grounds and conditions of phenomenal
existence and the special determining causes of individual
consciousness. Transcendental conditions generate
consciousness of the relatively permanent and objective world
in space and time; empirical conditions within this space and
time world determine the sensuous modes through which
special portions of this infinite and uniform world appear
diversely to different minds.
This, however, is a point of view which is only suggested,
and, as we have already observed,[949] the form in which it is
outlined suggests many objections and difficulties.
Consciousness of the objective world in space and time does
not exist complete with one portion of it more specifically
determined in terms of actual sense-perceptions. Rather the
consciousness of the single world in space and time is
gradually developed through and out of sense experience of
limited portions of it. We have still to consider the various
sections in the Analytic of Principles (especially the section
added in the second edition on the Refutation of Idealism) and
in the Dialectic, in which Kant further develops this
standpoint. But even after doing so, we shall be forced to
recognise that Kant leaves undiscussed many of the most
obvious objections to which his phenomenalism lies open. To
the very last he fails to state in any really adequate manner
how from the phenomenalist standpoint he would regard the
world described in mechanical terms by science as being
related to the world of ordinary sense-experience,[950] or how
different individual consciousnesses are related to one another.
The new form, however, in which these old-time problems
here emerge is the best possible proof of the revolutionary
character of Kant’s Critical enquiries. For these problems are
no longer formulated in terms of the individualistic
presuppositions which govern the thinking of all Kant’s
predecessors, even that of Hume. The concealed
presuppositions are now called in question, and are made the
subject of explicit discussion. But further comment must
meantime be deferred.[951]
TRANSCENDENTAL DEDUCTION OF THE CATEGORIES, IN THE
SECOND EDITION

The argument of the second edition transcendental

deduction can be reduced to the following eight points:
(1)[952] It opens with the statement of a fundamental
assumption which Kant does not dream of questioning and of
which he nowhere attempts to offer proof. The representation
of combination is the one kind of representation which can
never be given through sense. It is not so given even in the
pure forms of space and time yielded by outer and inner sense.
[953] It is due to an act of spontaneity, which as such must be
performed by the understanding. As it is one and the same for
every kind of combination, it may be called by the general
name of synthesis. And as all combination, without exception,
is due to this source, its dissolution, that is, analysis, which
seems to be its opposite, always presupposes it.
(2)[954] Besides the manifold and its synthesis a further
factor is involved in the conception of combination, namely,
the representation of the unity of the manifold. The
combination which is necessary to and constitutes knowledge
is representation of the synthetical unity of the manifold. This
is a factor additional to synthesis and to the manifold
synthesised. For such representation cannot arise out of any
antecedent consciousness of synthesis. On the contrary, it is
only through supervention upon the unitary synthesis that the
conception of the combination becomes possible. In other
words, the representation of unity conditions consciousness of
synthesis, and therefore cannot be the outcome or product of
it. This is an application, or rather generalisation, of a position
which in the first edition is developed only in reference to the
empirical process of recognition. Recognition preconditions
consciousness, and therefore cannot be subsequent upon it.
(3)[955] The unity thus represented is not, however, that
which is expressed through the category of unity. The
consciousness of unity which is involved in the conception of
synthesis is that of apperception or transcendental self-
consciousness. This is the highest and most universal form of
unity, for it is a presupposition of the unity of all possible
concepts, whether analytic or synthetic, in the various forms of
judgment.
(4)[956] A manifold though given is not for that reason also
represented. It must be possible for the ‘I think’ to accompany
it and all my other representations:
 “…for otherwise something would be represented in me
which could not be thought at all; and that is equivalent to
saying that the representation would be impossible or at least
would be nothing to me.”[957]
But to ascribe a manifold as my representations to the
identical self is to comprehend them, as synthetically
connected, in one apperception.[958] Only what can be
combined in one consciousness can be related to the ‘I think.’
The analytic unity of self-consciousness presupposes the
synthetic unity of the manifold.
(5)[959] The unity of apperception is analytic or self-
identical. It expresses itself through the proposition, I am I.
But being thus pure identity without content of its own, it
cannot be conscious of itself in and by itself. Its unity and
constancy can have meaning only through contrast to the
variety and changeableness of its specific experiences; and yet,
at the same time, it is also true that such manifoldness will
destroy all possibility of unity unless it be reconcileable with
it. The variety can contribute to the conditioning of
apperception only in so far as it is capable of being combined
into a single consciousness. Through synthetic unifying of the
manifold the self comes to consciousness both of itself and of
the manifold.
(6)[960] The transcendental original unity of apperception is
an objective, not a merely subjective, unity. Its conditions are
also the conditions in and through which we acquire
consciousness of objects. An object is that in the conception of
which the manifold of given intuitions is combined. (This
point, though central to the argument, is more adequately
developed in the first than in the second edition.) Such
combination requires unity of consciousness. Thus the same
unity which conditions apperception likewise conditions the
relation of representations to an object. The unity of pure
apperception may therefore be described as an objective unity
for two reasons: first, because it can apprehend its own
analytical unity only through discovery of unity in the given,
and secondly, for the reason that such synthetical unifying of
the manifold is also the process whereby representations
acquire reference to objects.
(7)[961] Kant reinforces this conclusion, and shows its
further significance, by analysis of the act of judgment. The
logical definition of judgment, as the representation of a
relation between two concepts, has many defects. These,
however, are all traceable to its initial failure to explain, or
even to recognise, the nature of the assertion which judgment
as such claims to make. Judgment asserts relations of a quite
unique kind, altogether different from those which exist
between ideas connected through association. If, for instance,
on seeing a body the sensations of weight due to the attempt to
raise it are suggested by association, there is nothing but
subjective sequence; but if we form the judgment that the body
is heavy, the two representations are then connected together
in the object. This is what is intended by the copula ‘is.’ It is a
relational term through which the objective unity of given
representations is distinguished from the subjective. It
indicates that the representations stand in objective relation
under the pure unity of apperception, and not merely in
subjective relation owing to the play of association in the
individual mind. “Judgment is nothing but the mode of
bringing cognitions to the objective unity of apperception,” i.e.
of giving to them a validity which holds independently of the
subjective processes through which it is apprehended.
Objective relations are not, of course, all necessary or
universal; and a judgment may, therefore, assert a relation
which is empirical and contingent. None the less the
fundamental distinction between it and any mere relation of
association still persists. The empirical relation is still in the
judgment asserted to be objective. The subject and the
predicate are asserted, in the particular case or cases to which
the judgment refers, to be connected in the object and not
merely in the mind of the subject. Or otherwise stated, though
subject and predicate are not themselves declared to be
necessarily and universally related to one another, their
contingent relation has to be viewed as objectively, and
therefore necessarily, grounded. Judgment always presupposes
the existence of necessary relations even when it is not
concerned to assert them. Judgment is the organ of objective
knowledge, and is therefore bound up, indirectly when not
directly, with the universality and necessity which are the sole
criteria of knowledge. The judgment expressive of
contingency is still judgment, and is therefore no less
necessary in its conditions, and no less objective in its validity,
than is a universal judgment of the scientific type. To use
Kant’s own terminology, judgment acquires objective validity
through participation in the necessary unity of apperception. In
so doing it is made to embody those principles of the objective
determination of all representations through which alone
cognition is possible.
(8)[962] As judgment is nothing but the mode of bringing
cognitions to the objective unity of apperception, it follows
that the categories, which in the metaphysical deduction have
been proved to be the possible functions in judging, are the
conditions in and through which such pure apperception
becomes possible. Apperception conditions experience, and
the unity which both demand for their possibility is that of the
categories.

Before passing to the remaining sections of the deduction,

[963]which are supplementary rather than essential, I may add
comment upon the above points. Only (7) and (8) call for
special consideration. They represent a form of argument
which has no counterpart in the first edition. As we noted,[964]
the first edition argument is defective owing to its failure to
demonstrate that the categories constitute the unity which is
necessary to knowledge. By introducing in the second edition
this analysis of judgment, and by showing the inseparable
connection between pure apperception, objective
consciousness and judgment, this defect is in some degree
removed. As the categories correspond to the possible
functions of judgment, their objective validity is thereby
established. By this means also the connection which in Kant’s
view exists between the metaphysical and the transcendental
deductions receives for the first time proper recognition. The
categories which in the former deduction are discovered and
systematised through logical analysis of the form of judgment,
are in the latter deduction, through transcendental analysis of
the function of judgment, shown to be just those forms of
relation which are necessary to the possibility of knowledge. It
must, however, be noted that the transcendental argument is
brought to completion only through assumption of the
adequacy of the metaphysical deduction. No independent
attempt is made to show that the particular categories obtained
in the metaphysical deduction are those which are required,
that there are no others, or that all the twelve are
indispensable.
(7) is a development of an argument which first appears in
the Prolegomena. The statement of it there given is, however,
extremely confused, owing to the distinction which Kant most
unfortunately introduces[965] between judgments of experience
and judgments of perception. That distinction is entirely
worthless and can only serve to mislead the reader. It cuts at
the very root of Kant’s Critical teaching. Judgments of
perception involve, Kant says, no category of the
understanding, but only what he is pleased to call the “logical
connection of perceptions in a thinking subject.” What that
may be he nowhere explains, save by adding[966] that in it
perceptions are “compared and conjoined in a consciousness
of my state” (also spoken of by Kant as “empirical
consciousness”), and not “in consciousness in general.”
“All our judgments are at first mere judgments of
perception; they hold good merely for us (that is, for the
individual subject), and we do not till afterwards give them a
new reference, namely, to an object…. To illustrate the matter:
that the room is warm, sugar sweet, and wormwood bitter—
these are merely subjectively valid judgments. I do not at all
demand that I myself should at all times, or that every other
person should, find the facts to be what I now assert; they only
express a reference of two sensations to the same subject, to
myself, and that only in my present state of perception.
Consequently they are not intended to be valid of the object.
Such judgments I have named those of perception. Judgments
of experience are of quite a different nature. What experience
teaches me under certain circumstances, it must teach me
always and teach everybody, and its validity is not limited to
the subject or to its state at a particular time.”[967]
The illegitimacy and the thoroughly misleading character of
this distinction hardly require to be pointed out. Obviously
Kant is here confusing assertion of contingency and
contingency of assertion.[968] A judgment of contingency, in
order to be valid, must itself be necessary. Even a momentary
state of the self is referable to an object in judgment only if
that object is causally, and therefore necessarily, concerned in
its production.[969]
The distinction is repeated in § 22 as follows:
“Thinking is the combining of representations in one
consciousness. This combination is either merely relative to
the subject, and is contingent and subjective, or is absolute,
and is necessary or objective. The combination of
representations in one consciousness is judgment. Thinking,
therefore, is the same as judging, or the relating of
representations to judgments in general. Judgments, therefore,
are either merely subjective, or they are objective. They are
subjective when representations are related to a consciousness
in one subject only, and are combined in it alone. They are
objective when they are united in a consciousness in general,
that is, necessarily.”[970]
To accept this distinction is to throw the entire argument
into confusion. This Kant seems to have himself recognised in
the interval between the Prolegomena and the second edition
of the Critique. For in the section before us there is no trace of
it. The opposition is no longer between subjective and
objective judgment, but only between association of ideas and
judgment which as such is always objective. The distinction
drawn in the Prolegomena is only, indeed, a more definite
formulation of the distinction which runs through the first
edition of the Critique between the indeterminate and the
determinate object of consciousness. The more definite
formulation of it seems, however, to have had the happy effect
of enabling Kant to realise the illegitimacy of any such
distinction.
 We may now proceed to consider the remaining sections.
[971]In section 21[972] Kant makes a very surprising statement.
The above argument, which he summarises in a sentence,
yields, he declares, “the beginning of a deduction of the pure
concepts of understanding.” This can hardly be taken as
representing Kant’s real estimate of the significance of the
preceding argument, and would seem to be due to a temporary
preoccupation with the problems that centre in the doctrine of
schematism. So far, Kant adds in explanation, no account has
been taken of the particular manner in which the manifold of
empirical intuition is supplied to us.[973] The necessary
supplement, consisting of a very brief outline statement of the
doctrine of schematism, is given in section 26.[974] It differs
from the teaching of the special chapter devoted to schematism
in emphasising space equally with time. The doctrine of pure a
priori manifolds is incidentally asserted.[975] Section 26
concludes by consideration of the question why appearances
must conform to the a priori categories. It is no more
surprising, Kant claims, than that they should agree with the a
priori forms of intuition. The categories and the intuitional
forms are relative to the same subject to which the
appearances are relative; and the appearances “as mere
representations are subject to no law of connection save that
which the combining faculty prescribes.”
The summary of the deduction given in section 27 discusses
the three possible theories regarding the origin of pure
concepts, viz. those of generatio aequivoca (out of
experience), epigenesis, and preformation. The first is
disproved by the deduction. The second is the doctrine of the
deduction and fulfils all the requirements of demonstration.
The proof that the categories are at once independent of
experience and yet also universally valid for all experience is
of the strongest possible kind, namely, that they make
experience itself possible. The third theory, that the categories,
while subjective and self-discovered, originate in faculties
which are implanted in us by our Creator and which are so
formed as to yield concepts in harmony with the laws of
nature, lies open to two main objections. In the first place, this
is an hypothesis capable of accounting equally well for any
kind of a priori whatsoever; the predetermined powers of
judgment can be multiplied without limit. But a second
objection is decisive, namely, that on such a theory the
categories would lack the particular kind of necessity which is
required. They would express only the necessities imposed
upon our thinking by the constitution of our minds, and would
not justify any assertion of necessary connection in the object.
Kant might also have added,[976] that this hypothesis is
metaphysical, and therefore offers in explanation of the
empirical validity of a priori concepts a theory which rests
upon and involves their unconditioned employment. That is a
criticism which is reinforced by the teaching of the Dialectic.
To return now to the omitted sections 22 to 25. Section 22
makes no fresh contribution to the argument of the first
edition. Its teaching in regard to pure intuition and
mathematical knowledge has already been commented upon.
In section 23 Kant dwells upon an interesting consequence of
the argument of the deduction. The categories have a wider
scope than the pure forms of sense. Since the argument of the
deduction has shown that judgment is the indispensable
instrument both for reducing a manifold to the unity of
apperception and also for conferring upon representations a
relation to an object, it follows that the categories which are
simply the possible functions of unity in judgment are valid
for any and every consciousness that is sensuously conditioned
and whose knowledge is therefore acquired through synthesis
of a given manifold. Though such consciousness may not
intuit in terms of space and time, it must none the less
apprehend objects in terms of the categories. The categories
thus extend to objects of sensuous intuition in general. They
are not, however, valid of objects as such, that is, of things in
themselves. As empty relational forms they have meaning only
in reference to a given matter; and as instruments for the
reduction of variety to the unity of apperception their validity
has been proved only for conscious and sensuous experience.
Even if the possibility of a non-sensuous intuitive
understanding, capable of apprehending things in themselves,
be granted, we have no sufficient ground for asserting that the
forms which such understanding will employ must coincide
with the categories.[977] These are points which will come up
for discussion in connection with Kant’s more detailed
argument in the chapter on the distinction between phenomena
and noumena.[978]
The heading to section 24 is decidedly misleading. The
phrase “objects of the senses in general” might be synonymous
with “objects of intuition in general” of the preceding section.
To interpret it, however, by the contents of the section, it
means “objects of our senses.” This section ought, therefore,
to form part of section 26, which in its opening sentences
supplies its proper introduction. (It may also be noted that the
opening sentences of section 24 are a needless repetition of
section 23. This would seem to show that it was not written in
immediate continuation of it.) The first three paragraphs of
section 24 expound the same doctrine of schematism as that
outlined in section 26, save that time alone is referred to. The
remaining paragraphs of section 24 deal with the connected
doctrine of inner sense. Section 25 deals with certain
consequences which follow from that doctrine of inner sense.
[979]

THE DOCTRINE OF INNER SENSE

We have still to consider a doctrine of great importance in

Kant’s thinking, that of inner sense. The significance of this
doctrine is almost inversely proportionate to the scantiness and
obscurity of the passages in which it is expounded and
developed. Much of the indefiniteness and illusiveness of the
current interpretations of Kant would seem to be directly
traceable to the commentator’s failure to appreciate the
position which it occupies in Kant’s system. Several of Kant’s
chief results are given as deductions from it, while it itself, in
turn, is largely inspired by the need for a secure basis upon
which these positions may be made to rest. The relation of the
doctrine to its consequences is thus twofold. Kant formulates it
in order to safeguard or rather to justify certain conclusions;
and yet these conclusions have themselves in part been arrived
at owing to his readiness to accept such a doctrine, and to what
would seem to have been his almost instinctive feeling of its
kinship (notwithstanding the very crude form in which alone
he was able to formulate it) with Critical teaching. It was
probably one of the earliest of the many new tenets which
Kant adopted in the years immediately subsequent to the
publication of the inaugural Dissertation, but it first received
adequate statement in the second edition of the Critique. Kant
took advantage of the second edition to reply to certain
criticisms to which his view of time had given rise, and in so
doing was compelled to formulate the doctrine of inner sense
in a much more explicit manner. Hitherto he had assumed its
truth, but had not, as it would seem, sufficiently reflected upon
the various connected conclusions to which he was thereby
committed. This is one of the many instances which show how
what is most fundamental in Kant’s thinking is frequently that
of which he was himself least definitely aware. Like other
thinkers, he was most apt to discuss what he himself was
inclined to question and feel doubt over. The sources of his
insight as well as the causes of his failure often lay beyond the
purview of his explicitly developed tenets; and only under the
stimulus of criticism was he constrained and enabled to bring
them within the circle of reasoned conviction. We may venture
the prophecy that if Kant had been able to devote several years
more to the maturing of the problems which in the face of so
many difficulties he had brought thus far, the doctrine of inner
sense, or rather the doctrines to which it gives expression,
would have been placed in the forefront of his teaching, and
their systematic interconnection, both in the way of ground
and of consequence, with all his chief tenets would have been
traced and securely established.
This would have involved, however, two very important
changes. In the first place, Kant would have had to recognise
the unsatisfactory character of the supposed analogy between
inner and outer sense. As already remarked,[980] no great
thinker, except Locke, has attempted to interpret inner
consciousness on the analogy of the senses; and the obscurities
of Kant’s argument are not, therefore, to be excused on the
ground that “the difficulty, how a subject can have an internal
intuition of itself, is common to every theory.” Secondly, Kant
would have had to define the relation in which he conceived
this part of his teaching to stand to his theory of
consciousness. But both these changes could have been made
without requiring that he should give up the doctrines which
are mainly responsible for his theory of inner sense, namely,
that there can be no awareness of awareness, but only of
existences which are objective, and that there is consequently
no consciousness of the generative, synthetic processes[981]
which constitute consciousness on its subjective side. It is
largely in virtue of these conclusions that Kant’s
phenomenalism differs from the subjective idealism of his
predecessors. If we ignore or reject them, merely because of
the obviously unsatisfactory manner in which alone Kant has
been able to formulate them, we rule ourselves out from
understanding the intention and purpose of much that is most
characteristic of Critical teaching.
The doctrine of inner sense, as expounded by Locke, suffers
from an ambiguity which seems almost inseparable from it,
namely, the confusion between inner sense, on the one hand as
a sense in some degree analogous in nature to what may be
called outer sense, and on the other as consisting in self-
conscious reflection. This same confusion is traceable
throughout the Critique, and is, as we shall find, in large part
responsible for Kant’s failure to recognise, independently of
outside criticism, the central and indispensable part which this
doctrine is called upon to play in his system.
The doctrine is stated by Kant as follows. Just as outer sense
is affected by noumenal agencies, and so yields a manifold
arranged in terms of a form peculiar to it, namely, space, so
inner sense is affected by the mind itself and its inner state.
[982] The manifold thereby caused is arranged in terms of a
form peculiar to inner sense, namely, time. The content thus
arranged falls into two main divisions. On the one hand we
have feelings, desires, volitions, that is, states of the mind in
the strict sense, subjective non-spatial existences. On the other
hand we have sensations, perceptions, images, concepts, in a
word, representations (Vorstellungen) of every possible type.
These latter all refer to the external world in space, and yet,
according to Kant, speaking from the limited point of view of
a critique of knowledge, form the proper content of inner
sense. “…the representations of the outer senses constitute the
actual material with which we occupy our minds,”[983] “the
whole material of knowledge even for our inner sense.”[984]
(These statements, it may be observed, are first made in the
second edition.) As Kant explains himself in B 67-8, he would
seem to mean that the mind in the process of “setting”
representations of outer sense in space affects itself, and is
therefore constrained to arrange the given representations
likewise in time. No new content, additional to that of outer
sense, is thereby generated, but what previously as object of
outer sense existed merely in space is now also subjected to
conditions of time. The representations of outer sense are all
by their very nature likewise representations of inner sense. To
outer sense is due both their content and their spatial form; to
inner sense they owe only the additional form of time; their
content remains unaffected in the process of being taken over
by a second sense. This yields such explanation as is possible
of Kant’s assertion in A 33 that “time can never be a
determination of outer appearances.” He may be taken as
meaning that time is never a determination of outer sense as
such, but only of its contents as always likewise subject to the
form of inner sense.[985]
This is how Kant formulates his position from the extreme
subjectivist point of view which omits to draw any distinction
between representation and its object, between inner states of
the self and appearances in space. All representations, he says,
[986] all appearances without exception, are states of inner
sense, modifications of the mind. Some exist only in time,
some exist both in space and in time; but all alike are modes of
the identical self, mere representations (blosse Vorstellungen).
Though appearances may exist outside one another in space,
space itself exists only as representation, merely “in us.”
Now without seeking to deny that this is a view which we
find in the second edition of the Critique as well as in the first,
[987] and that even in passages which are obviously quite late
in date of writing Kant frequently speaks in terms which
conform to it, we must be no less insistent in maintaining that
an alternative view more and more comes to the front in
proportion as Kant gains mastery over the conflicting
tendencies that go to constitute his new Critical teaching.
From the very first he uses language which implies that some
kind of distinction must be drawn between representations and
objects represented, between subjective cognitive states in the
proper sense of the term and existences in space.
“Time can never be a determination of outer appearances. It
belongs neither to form nor position, etc. On the other hand it
determines the relation of representations in our inner
state.”[988]
Similarly in those very sentences in which he asserts all
appearances to be blosse Vorstellungen, a distinction is none
the less implied.
“Time is the formal a priori condition of all appearances in
general. Space, as the pure form of all outer intuition, is as a
priori condition limited exclusively (bloss) to outer
appearances. On the other hand as all representations, whether
they have outer things as their object or not, still in themselves
belong, as determinations of the mind, to the inner state, and
this inner state is subject to the formal condition of inner
intuition, that is of time, time is an a priori condition of all
appearance whatever. It is, indeed, the immediate condition of
the inner appearance (of our souls), and thereby mediately
likewise of outer appearances.”[989]
As the words which I have italicised show, Kant, even in the
very sentence in which he asserts outer representations to be
inner states, none the less recognises that appearances in space
are not representations in the same meaning of that term as are
subjective states. They are the objects of representation, not
representation itself. The latter alone is correctly describable
as a state of the mind. The former may be conditioned by
representation, and may therefore be describable as
appearances, but are not for that reason to be equated with
representation. But before the grounds and nature of this
distinction can be formulated in the proper Critical terms, we
must consider the reasons which induced Kant to commit
himself to this obscure and difficult doctrine of inner sense. As
I shall try to show, it is no mere excrescence upon his system;
on the contrary, it is inseparably bound up with all his main
tenets.
 One of the chief influences which constrained Kant to
develop this doctrine is the conclusion, so essential to his
position, that knowledge must always involve an intuitional
manifold in addition to a priori forms and concepts. That
being so, he was bound to deny to the mind all power of
gaining knowledge by mere reflection. If our mental activities
and states lay open to direct inspection, we should have to
recognise in the mind a non-sensuous intuitional power.
Through self-consciousness or reflection we should acquire
knowledge independently of sense. Such apprehension, though
limited to the mind’s own operations and states, would none
the less be knowledge, and yet would not conform to the
conditions which, as the transcendental deduction has shown,
are involved in all knowledge. In Kant’s view the belief that
we possess self-consciousness of this type, a power of
reflection thus conceived, is wholly illusory. To assume any
such faculty would be to endow the mind with occult or
mystical powers, and would throw us back upon the
Leibnizian rationalism, which traces to such reflection our
consciousness of the categories, and which rears upon this
foundation the entire body of metaphysical science.[990]
The complementary negative conclusion of the
transcendental deduction is a no less fundamental and
constraining influence in compelling Kant to develop a
doctrine of inner sense. If all knowledge is knowledge of
appearances, or if, as he states his position in the Analytic of
Principles,[991] our knowledge can extend no further than
sense experience and inference from such experience, either
knowledge of our inner states must be mediated, like our
knowledge of outer objects, by sensation, or we can have no
knowledge of them whatsoever. On Critical principles,
consistently applied, there can be no middle course between
acceptance of an indirect empirical knowledge of the mind and
assertion of its unknowableness. Mental activities may perhaps
be thought in terms of the pure forms of understanding, but in
that case their conception will remain as purely problematic
and as indeterminate as the conception of the thing in itself. It
is impossible for Kant to admit immediate consciousness of
the mind’s real activities and states, and at the same time to
deny that we can have knowledge of things in themselves. The
Aesthetic, in proving that everything in space and time is
appearance, implicitly assumes the impossibility of direct self-
conscious reflection; and the transcendental deduction in
showing that all knowledge involves as correlative factors
both sense and thought, has reinforced this conclusion, and
calls for its more explicit recognition, in reference to the more
inward aspect of experience.
As we have already noted,[992] Kant’s doctrine of inner
sense was probably adopted in the early ’seventies, and though
it is not itself definitely formulated in the first edition, the
chief consequence that follows from it is clearly recognised.
Thus in the Aesthetic Kant draws the conclusion that, as time
is the form of inner sense, everything apprehended in time,
and consequently all inner states and activities, can be known
only as appearances. The mind (meaning thereby the ultimate
conditioning grounds of consciousness) is as indirectly known
as is any other mode of noumenal existence. In the Analytic,
whenever he is called upon to express himself upon this and
kindred points, he continues to hold to this position; and in the
section on the Paralogisms all the main consequences that
follow from its acceptance are drawn in the most explicit and
unambiguous manner. It is argued that as the inner world, the
feelings, volitions and representations of which we are
conscious, is a world constructed out of a given manifold
yielded by inner sense, and is therefore known only as the
appearance of a deeper reality which we have no power of
apprehending, it possesses no superiority either of certainty or
of immediacy over the outer world of objects in space. We
have immediate consciousness of both alike, but in both cases
this immediate consciousness rests upon the transcendental
synthetic processes whereby such consciousness is
conditioned and generated. The transcendental activities fall
outside the field of empirical consciousness and therefore of
knowledge.
Thus Kant would seem to be maintaining that the radical
error committed by the subjective idealists, and with which all
the main defects of their teaching are inseparably bound up,
lies in their ascription to the mind of a power of direct self-
conscious reflection, and consequently in their confusion of
the transcendental activities which condition consciousness
with the inner states and processes which such consciousness
reveals. This has led them to ascribe priority and independence
to our inner states, and to regard outer objects as known only
by an inference from them. The Critical teaching insists on the
distinction between appearance and reality, applies it to the
inner life, and so restores to our consciousness of the outer
world the certainty and immediacy of which subjective
idealism would profess to deprive it. Such are the important
conclusions at which Kant arrives in his various “refutations of
idealism”; and it will be advisable to consider these refutations
in full detail before attempting to complete our statement of
his doctrine of inner sense.
KANT’S REFUTATIONS OF IDEALISM

Kant has in a number of different passages attempted to

define his Critical standpoint in its distinction from the
positions of Descartes and Berkeley. Consideration of these
will enable us to follow Kant in his gradual recognition of the
manifold consequences to which he is committed by his
substitution of inner sense for direct self-conscious intuition or
reflection, or rather of the various congenial tenets which it
gives him the right consistently to defend and maintain. In
Kant’s Critical writings we find no less than seven different
statements of his refutation of idealism: (I.) in the fourth
Paralogism of the first edition of the Critique; (II.) in section
13 (Anm. ii. and iii.) of the Prolegomena; (III.) in section 49 of
the Prolegomena; (IV.) in the second appendix to the
Prolegomena; (V.) in sections added in the second edition at
the conclusion of the Aesthetic (B 69 ff.); (VI.) in the
“refutation of idealism” (B 274-8), in the supplementary
section at the end of the section on the Postulates (B 291-4),
and in the note to the new preface (B xxxix-xl); (VII.) in the
“refutation of problematic idealism” given in the Seven Small
Papers which originated in Kant’s conversations with
Kiesewetter. Consideration of these in the above order will
reveal Kant’s gradual and somewhat vacillating recognition of
the new and revolutionary position which alone genuinely
harmonises with Critical principles. But first we must briefly
consider the various meanings which Kant at different periods
assigned to the term idealism. Even in the Critique itself it is
employed in a great variety of diverse connotations.
In the pre-Critical writings[993] the term idealism is usually
employed in what was its currently accepted meaning, namely,
as signifying any philosophy which denied the existence of an
independent world corresponding to our subjective
representations. But even as thus used the term is ambiguous.
[994] It may signify either denial of a corporeal world
independent of our representations or denial of an immaterial
world “corresponding to” the represented material world, i.e.
the denial of Dinge an sich. For there are traceable in
Leibniz’s writings two very different views as to the reality of
the material world. Sometimes the monads are viewed as
purely intelligible substances without materiality of any kind.
The kingdom of the extended is set into the representing
subjects; only the immaterial world of unextended purely
spiritual monads remains as independently real. At other times
the monads, though in themselves immaterial, are viewed as
constituting through their coexistence an independent material
world and a materially occupied space. Every monad has a
spatial sphere of activity. The material world is an objective
existence due to external relations between the monads, not a
merely subjective existence internal to each of them. This
alternation of standpoints enabled Leibniz’s successors to deny
that they were idealists; and as the more daring and
speculative aspects of Leibniz’s teaching were slurred over in
the process of its popularisation, it was the second, less
consistent view, which gained the upper hand. Wolff,
especially in his later writings, denounces idealism; and in the
current manuals, sections in refutation of idealism became part
of the recognised philosophical teaching. Idealism still,
however, continued to be used ambiguously, as signifying
indifferently either denial of material bodies or denial of things
in themselves. This is the dual meaning which the term
presents in Kant’s pre-Critical writings. In his Dilucidatio
(1755)[995] he refutes idealism by means of the principle that a
substance cannot undergo changes unless it is a substance
independent of other substances. Obviously this argument can
at most prove the existence of an independent world, not that it
is spatial or material. And as Vaihinger adds, it does not even
rule out the possibility that changes find their source in a
Divine Being. In the Dreams of a Visionseer (1766)[996]
Swedenborg is described as an idealist, but without further
specification of the exact sense in which the term is employed.
In the inaugural Dissertation (1770)[997] idealism is again
rejected, on the ground that sense-affection points to the
presence of an intelligible object or noumenon.
In Kant’s class lectures on metaphysics,[998] which fall, in
part at least, between 1770 and 1781, the term idealism is
employed in a very different sense, which anticipates its use in
the Appendix to the Prolegomena.[999] The teaching of the
Dissertation, that things in themselves are knowable, is now
described as dogmatic, Platonic, mystical (schwärmerischer)
idealism. He still rejects the idealism of Berkeley, and still
entitles it simply idealism, without limiting or descriptive
predicates. But now also he employs the phrase “problematic
idealism” as descriptive of his own new position. This is, of
course, contrary to his invariable usage elsewhere, but is
interesting as showing that about this time his repugnance to
the term idealism begins to give way, and that he is willing to
recognise that the relation of the Critical teaching to idealism
is not one of simple opposition. He now begins to regard
idealism as a factor, though a radically transformed factor, in
his own philosophy.
Study of the Critique reinforces this conclusion. In the
Aesthetic Kant teaches the “transcendental ideality” of space
and time; and in the Dialectic (in the fourth Paralogism)
describes his position as idealism, though with the qualifying
predicate transcendental.[1000] But though this involves an
extension of the previous connotation of the term idealism,
and might therefore have been expected to increase the
existing confusion, it has the fortunate effect of constraining
Kant to recognise and discriminate the various meanings in
which it may be employed. This is done somewhat clumsily,
as if it were a kind of afterthought. In the introductory
syllogism of the fourth Paralogism Descartes’ position and his
own are referred to simply as idealism and dualism
respectively. The various possible sub-species of idealism as
presented in the two editions of the Critique and in the
Prolegomena may be tabulated as follows:
Material Sceptical Problematic (the position of
Descartes).
Sceptical in the stricter and more
usual sense (the position of
Idealism–
Hume).
Dogmatic (the position of Berkeley).
Formal or Critical or Transcendental (Kant’s own
position).
The distinction between problematic idealism and idealism of
the more strictly sceptical type is not clearly drawn by Kant.
[1001] Very strangely Kant in this connection never mentions
Hume: the reference in B xxxix n. is probably not to Hume but
to Jacobi. Transcendental idealism is taken as involving an
empirical realism and dualism, and is set in opposition to
transcendental realism which is represented as involving
empirical idealism. In B xxxix n. Kant speaks of
“psychological idealism,” meaning, as it would seem, material
or non-Critical idealism.
In the second appendix to the Prolegomena Kant draws a
further distinction, in line with that already noted in his
lectures on metaphysics. Tabulated it is as follows:

Mystical, in the sense of belief in and reliance on a

supposed human power of intellectual intuition. It
is described as idealism in the strict (eigentlich)
Idealism– sense—the position of the Eleatics, of Plato and
Berkeley.

Formal or Critical—Kant’s own position.

This latter classification can cause nothing but confusion. The

objections that have to be made against it from Kant’s own
critical standpoint are stated below.[1002]
Let us now consider, in the order of their presentation, the
various refutations of idealism which Kant has given in his
Critical writings.
I. Refutation of Idealism as given in First Edition of
“Critique” (A 366-80).—This refutation is mainly directed
against Descartes, who is mentioned by name in A 367. Kant,
as Vaihinger suggests, was very probably led to recognise
Descartes’ position as a species of idealism in the course of a
re-study of Descartes before writing the section on the
Paralogisms. As already pointed out, this involves the use of
the term idealism in a much wider sense than that which was
usually given to it in Kant’s own day. In the development of
his argument Kant also wavers between two very different
definitions of this idealism, as being denial of immediate
certainty and as denial of all certainty.[1003] The second
interpretation, which would make it apply to Hume rather than
to Descartes, is strengthened in the minds of his readers by his
further distinction[1004] between dogmatic and sceptical
idealism, and the identification of the idealism under
consideration with the latter. The title problematic which Kant
in the second edition[1005] applies to Descartes’ position
suffers from this same ambiguity. As a matter of fact, Kant’s
refutation applies equally well to either position. The teaching
of Berkeley, which coincides with dogmatic idealism as here
defined by Kant, namely, as consisting in the contention that
the conception of matter is inherently contradictory, is not
dwelt upon, and the appended promise of refutation is not
fulfilled.
Descartes’ position is stated as follows: only our own
existence and inner states are immediately apprehended by us;
all perceptions are modifications of inner sense; and the
existence of external objects can therefore be asserted only by
an inference from the inner perceptions viewed as effects. In
criticism, Kant points out that since an effect may result from
more than one cause, this inference to a quite determinate
cause, viz. objects as bodies in space, is doubtfully legitimate.
The cause of our inner states may lie within and not without
us, and even if external, need not consist in spatial objects.
Further, leaving aside the question of a possible alternative to
the assumption of independent material bodies, the assertion of
the existence of such objects would, on Descartes’ view, be
merely conjectural. It could never have certainty in any degree
equivalent to that possessed by the experiences of inner sense.
“By an idealist, therefore, we must not understand one who
denies the existence of outer objects of the senses, but only
one who does not admit that their existence is known through
immediate perception, and who therefore concludes that we
can never, by way of any possible experience, be completely
certain of their reality.”[1006]
No sooner is the term idealist thus clearly defined than
Kant, in keeping with the confused character of the entire
section, proceeds to the assertion (a) that there are idealists of
another type, namely, transcendental idealists,[1007] and (b)
that the non-transcendental idealists sometimes also adopt a
dogmatic position, not merely questioning the immediacy of
our knowledge of matter, but asserting it to be inherently
contradictory. All this points to the composite origin of the
contents of this section.
Transcendental idealism is opposed to empirical idealism. It
maintains that phenomena are representations merely, not
things in themselves. Space and time are the sensuous forms of
our intuitions. Empirical idealism, on the other hand, goes
together with transcendental realism. It maintains that space
and time are given as real in themselves, in independence of
our sensibility. (Transcendental here, as in the phrase
“transcendental ideality,”[1008] is exactly equivalent to
transcendent.) But such a contention is inconsistent with the
other main tenet of empirical idealism. For if our inner
representations have to be taken as entirely distinct from their
objects, they cannot yield assurance even of the existence of
these objects. To the transcendental idealist no such difficulty
is presented. His position naturally combines with empirical
realism, or, as it may also be entitled, empirical dualism.
Material bodies in space, being merely subjective
representations, are immediately apprehended. The existence
of matter can be established “without our requiring to issue out
beyond our bare self-consciousness or to assume anything
more than the certainty of the representations in us, i.e. of the
cogito ergo sum.”[1009] Though the objects thus apprehended
are outside one another in space, space itself exists only in us.
 “Outer objects (bodies) are mere appearances, and are
therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the
objects of which are something only through these
representations. Apart from them they are nothing. Thus outer
things exist as well as I myself, and both, indeed, upon the
immediate witness of my self-consciousness….”[1010]
The only difference is that the representation of the self
belongs only to inner, while extended bodies also belong to
outer sense. There is thus a dualism, but one that falls entirely
within the field of consciousness, and which is therefore
empirical, not transcendental. There is indeed a transcendental
object which “in the transcendental sense may be outside
us,”[1011] but it is unknown and is not in question. It ought not
to be confused with our representations of matter and
corporeal things.
From this point[1012] the argument becomes disjointed and
repeats itself, and there is much to be said in support of the
contention of Adickes that the remainder of the section is
made up of a number of separate interpolations.[1013] First,
Kant applies the conclusion established in the Postulates of
Empirical Thought, viz. that reality is revealed only in
sensation. As sensation is an element in all outer perception,
perception affords immediate certainty of real existence, Kant
next enters[1014] upon a eulogy of sceptical idealism as “a
benefactor of human reason.” It brings home to us the utter
impossibility of proving the existence of matter on the
assumption that spatial objects are things in themselves, and so
constrains us to justify the assertions which we are at every
moment making. And such justification is, Kant here claims,
only possible if we recognise that outer objects as mere
representations are immediately known. In the next paragraph
we find a sentence which, together with the above eulogistic
estimate of the merits of idealism, shows how very far Kant, at
the time of writing, was from feeling the need of
differentiating his position from that of subjectivism. The
sentence is this:
“We cannot be sentient of what is outside ourselves, but
only of what is in ourselves, and the whole of our self-
consciousness therefore yields nothing save merely our own
determinations.”
It is probable, indeed, that the paragraph in which this
occurs is of very early origin, prior to the development of the
main body of the Analytic; for in the same paragraph we also
find the assertion, utterly at variance with the teaching of the
Analytic and with that of the first and third Paralogisms, that
“the thinking ego” is known phenomenally as substance.[1015]
We seem justified in concluding that the various manuscripts
which have gone to form this section on the fourth Paralogism
were written at an early date within the Critical period.
We may note, in passing, two sentences in which, as in that
quoted above, a distinction between representations and their
objects is recognised in wording if not in fact.
“All outer perception furnishes immediate proof of
something actual in space, or rather is the actual itself. To this
extent empirical realism is beyond question, i.e. there
corresponds to our outer perceptions something actual in
space.”[1016]
Again in A 377 the assertion occurs that “our outer senses,
as regards the data from which experience can arise, have their
actual corresponding objects in space.” Certainly these
statements, when taken together with the other passages in this
section, form a sufficiently strange combination of assertion
and denial. Either there is a distinction between representation
and its object or there is not; if the former, then objects in
space are not merely representations; if the latter, then the
“correspondence” is merely that of a thing with itself.[1017]

This refutation of idealism will not itself stand criticism. For

two separate reasons it entirely fails to attain its professed end.
In the first place, it refutes the position of Descartes only by
virtually accepting the still more extreme position of Berkeley.
Outer objects, Kant argues, are immediately known because
they are ideas merely. There is no need for inference, because
there is no transcendence of the domain of our inner
consciousness. In other words, Kant refutes the problematic
idealism of Descartes by means of the more subjective
idealism of Berkeley. The “dogmatic” idealism of Berkeley in
the form in which Kant here defines it,[1018] namely, as
consisting in the assertion that the notion of an independent
spatial object involves inherent contradictions, is part of his
own position. For that reason he was bound to fail in his
promise[1019] to refute such dogmatic idealism. Fortunately he
never even attempts to do so. In the second place, Kant ignores
the fact that he has himself adopted an “idealist” view of inner
experience. Inner experience is not for him, as it was for
Descartes, the immediate apprehension of genuine reality. As
it is only appearance, the incorporation of outer experience
within it, so far from establishing the reality of the objects of
outer sense, must rather prove the direct contrary. No more is
really established than Descartes himself invariably assumes,
namely, the actual existence of mental representations of a
corporeal world in space. Descartes’ further assertion that the
world of things in themselves can be inferred to be material
and spatial, Kant, of course, refuses to accept. On this latter
point Kant is in essential agreement with Berkeley.
It is by no means surprising that Kant’s first critics,[1020]
puzzled and bewildered by the obscurer and more difficult
portions of the Critique, should have based their interpretation
of Kant’s general position largely upon the above passages;
and that in combining the extreme subjective idealism which
Kant there advocates with his doctrine that the inner life of
ever-changing experiences is itself merely ideal, should have
come to the conclusion that Kant’s position is an extension of
that of Berkeley. Pistorius objected that in making outer
appearances relative to an inner consciousness which is itself
appearance, Kant is reducing everything to mere illusion.
Hamann came to the somewhat similar conclusion, that Kant,
notwithstanding his very different methods of argument, is “a
Prussian Hume,” in substantial agreement with his Scotch
predecessor.
II. “Prolegomena,” Section 13, Notes II and III.—In the
Prolegomena Kant replies to the criticism which the first
edition of the Critique had called forth, that his position is an
extension of the idealism of Descartes, and even more
thoroughgoing than that of Berkeley. Idealism he redefines in
a much narrower sense, which makes it applicable only to
Berkeley
“…as consisting in the assertion that there are none but
thinking beings, and that all other things which we suppose
ourselves to perceive in intuition are nothing but
representations in the thinking beings, to which no object
external to them corresponds in fact.”[1021]
In reply Kant affirms his unwavering belief in the reality of
Dinge an sich
“…which though quite unknown to us as to what they are in
themselves, we yet know by the representations which their
influence on our sensibility procures us…. Can this be termed
idealism? It is the very contrary.”[1022]
Kant adds that his position is akin to that of Locke, differing
only in his assertion of the subjectivity of the primary as well
as of the secondary qualities.
“I should be glad to know what my assertions ought to have
been in order to avoid all idealism. I suppose I ought to have
said, not only that the representation of space is perfectly
conformable to the relation which our sensibility has to objects
(for that I have said), but also that it is completely similar to
them—an assertion in which I can find as little meaning as if I
said that the sensation of red has a similarity to the property of
cinnabar which excites this sensation in me.”[1023]
Kant is here very evidently using the term idealism in the
narrowest possible meaning, as representing only the position
of Berkeley, and as excluding that of Descartes and Leibniz.
Such employment of the term is at variance with his own
previous usage. Though idealism here corresponds to the
“dogmatic idealism” of A 377, it is now made to concern the
assertion or denial of things in themselves, not as previously
the problem of the reality of material objects and of space.
Kant is also ignoring the fact, which he more than once points
out in the Critique, that his philosophy cannot prove that the
cause of our sensations is without and not within us. His use of
“body”[1024] as a name for the thing in itself is likewise
without justification. This passage is mainly polemical; it is
hardly more helpful than the criticism to which it was
designed to reply.
In Section 13, Note iii., Kant meets the still more extreme
criticism (made by Pistorius), that his system turns all the
things of the world into mere illusion (Schein). He
distinguishes transcendental idealism from “the mystical and
visionary idealism of Berkeley” on the one hand, and on the
other from the Cartesian idealism which would convert mere
representations into things in themselves. To obviate the
ambiguities of the term transcendental, he declares that his
own idealism may perhaps more fitly be entitled Critical. This
distinction between mystical and Critical idealism connects
with the contents of the second part of the Appendix, treated
below.
III. “Prolegomena,” Section 49.—This is simply a
repetition of the argument of the fourth Paralogism. The
Cartesian idealism, now (as in B 274) named material
idealism, is alone referred to. The Cartesian idealism does
nothing, Kant says, but distinguish external experience from
dreaming. There is here again the same confusing use of the
term “corresponds.”
“That something actual without us not only corresponds but
must correspond to our external perceptions can likewise be
proved….”[1025]
IV. “Prolegomena,” Second Part of the Appendix.—Kant
here returns to the distinction, drawn in Section 13, Note iii.,
between what he now calls “idealism proper
(eigentlicher),”[1026] i.e. visionary or mystical idealism, and
his own.
“The position of all genuine idealists from the Eleatics to
Bishop Berkeley is contained in this formula: ‘All cognition
through the senses and experience is nothing but mere illusion,
and only in the ideas of pure understanding and Reason is
there truth.’ The fundamental principle ruling all my idealism,
on the contrary, is this: ‘All cognition of things solely from
pure understanding or pure Reason is nothing but mere illusion
and only in experience is there truth.’”[1027]
 This mode of defining idealism can, in this connection,
cause nothing but confusion. Its inapplicability to Berkeley
would seem to prove that Kant had no first-hand knowledge of
Berkeley’s writings.[1028] As Kant’s Note to the Appendix to
the Prolegomena[1029] shows, he also had Plato in mind. But
the definition given of “the fundamental principle” of his own
idealism is almost equally misleading. It omits the all-essential
point, that for Kant experience itself yields truth only by
conforming to a priori concepts. As it is, he proceeds to
criticise Berkeley for failure to supply a sufficient criterion of
distinction between truth and illusion. Such criterion, he
insists, is necessarily a priori. The Critical idealism differs
from that of Berkeley in maintaining that space and time,
though sensuous, are a priori, and that in combination with the
pure concepts of understanding they
“…prescribe a priori its law to all possible experience: the
law which at the same time yields the sure criterion for
distinguishing within experience truth from illusion. My so-
called idealism—which properly speaking is Critical idealism
—is thus quite peculiar in that it overthrows ordinary idealism,
and that through it all a priori cognition, even that of
geometry, now attains objective reality, a thing which even the
keenest realist could not assert till I had proved the ideality of
space and time.”[1030]
V. Sections added in Second Edition at the Conclusion of
the Aesthetic. (B 69 ff.)—Kant here again replies to the
criticism of Pistorius that all existence has been reduced to the
level of illusion (Schein). His defence is twofold: first, that in
naming objects appearances he means to indicate that they are
independently grounded, or, as he states it, are “something
actually given.” If we misinterpret them, the result is indeed
illusion, but the fault then lies with ourselves and not with the
appearances as presented. Secondly, he argues that the doctrine
of the ideality of space and time is the only secure safeguard
against scepticism. For otherwise the contradictions which
result from regarding space and time as independently real will
likewise hold of their contents, and everything, including even
our own existence, will be rendered illusory. “The good
Berkeley [observing these contradictions] cannot, indeed, be
blamed for reducing bodies to mere illusion.” This last
sentence may perhaps be taken as supporting the view that
notwithstanding the increased popularity of Berkeley in
Germany and the appearance of new translations in these very
years, Kant has not been sufficiently interested to acquire first-
hand knowledge of Berkeley’s writings.[1031] The epithet
employed is characteristic of the rather depreciatory attitude
which Kant invariably adopts in speaking of Berkeley.
VI. “Refutation of Idealism” in Second Edition of the
“Critique.” (B 274-9, supplemented by note to B xxxix.).—
The refutation opens by equating idealism with material
idealism (so named in contradistinction to his own “formal or
rather Critical” teaching). Within material idealism Kant
distinguishes between the problematic idealism of Descartes,
and the dogmatic idealism of Berkeley. The latter has, he says,
been overthrown in the Aesthetic. The former alone is dealt
with in this refutation. This is the first occurrence in the
Critique of the expression “problematic idealism”: it is
nowhere employed in the first edition.[1032] Problematic
idealism consists in the assertion that we are incapable of
having experience of any existence save our own; only our
inner states are immediately apprehended; all other existences
are determined by inference from them. The refutation consists
in the proof that we have experience, and not mere
imagination of outer objects. This is proved by showing that
inner experience, unquestioned by Descartes, is possible only
on the assumption of outer experience, and that this latter is as
immediate and direct as is the former.
Thesis.—The empirically determined consciousness of my
own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside
me.[1033]
Proof.—I am conscious of my own existence as determined
in time. Time determination presupposes the perception of
something permanent. But nothing permanent is intuitable in
the empirical self. On the cognitive side (i.e. omitting feelings,
etc., which in this connection are irrelevant), it consists solely
of representations; and these demand a permanent, distinct
from ourselves, in relation to which their changes, and so my
own existence in the time wherein they change, may be
determined.[1034] Thus perception of this permanent is only
possible through a thing outside, and not through the mere
representation of a thing outside. And the same must hold true
of the determination of my existence in time, since this also
depends upon the apprehension of the permanent. That is to
say, the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an
immediate awareness of the existence of other things outside
me.
In the note to the Preface to the second edition[1035] occurs
the following emphatic statement.
“Representation of something permanent in existence is not
the same as permanent representation. For though the
representation [of the permanent] may be very changing and
variable like all our other representations, not excepting those
of matter, it yet refers to something permanent. This latter
must therefore be an external thing distinct from all my
representations, and its existence must be included in the
determination of my own existence, constituting with it but a
single experience such as would not take place even internally
if it were not also at the same time, in part, external. How this
should be possible we are as little capable of explaining
further as we are of accounting for our being able to think the
abiding in time, the coexistence of which with the variable
generates the conception of change.”
The argument of this note varies from that of B 274 ff. only
in its use of an ambiguous expression which is perhaps
capable of being taken as referring to things in themselves, but
which does not seem to have that meaning. “I am just as
certainly conscious that there are things outside me which
relate to my sense….”
In B 277-8 Kant refers to the empirical fact that
determination of time can be made only by relation to outer
happenings in space, such as the motion of the sun. This is a
point which is further developed in another passage which
Kant added in the second edition.
“…in order to understand the possibility of things in
conformity with the categories, and so to demonstrate the
objective reality of the latter, we need not merely intuitions,
but intuitions that are in all cases outer intuitions. When, for
instance, we take the pure concepts of relation, we find firstly
that in order to obtain something permanent in intuition
corresponding to the concept of substance, and so to
demonstrate the objective reality of this concept, we require an
intuition in space (of matter). For space alone is determined as
permanent, while time, and therefore everything that is in
inner sense, is in constant flux. Secondly, in order to exhibit
change as the intuition corresponding to the concept of
causality, we must take as our example motion, i.e. change in
space. Only in this way can we obtain the intuition of changes,
the possibility of which can never be comprehended through
any pure understanding. For change is combination of
contradictorily opposed determinations in the existence of one
and the same thing. Now how it is possible that from a given
state of a thing an opposite state should follow, not only
cannot be conceived by any reason without an example, but is
actually incomprehensible to reason without intuition. The
intuition required is the intuition of the movement of a point in
space. The presence of the point in different spaces (as a
sequence of opposite determinations) is what first yields to us
an intuition of change. For in order that we may afterwards
make inner changes likewise thinkable, we must represent
time (the form of inner sense) figuratively as a line, and the
inner change through the drawing of this line (motion), and so
in this manner by means of outer intuition make
comprehensible the successive existence of ourselves in
different states. The reason of this is that all change, if it is
indeed to be perceived as change, presupposes something
permanent in intuition, and that in inner sense no permanent
intuition is to be met with. Lastly, the possibility of the
category of community cannot be comprehended through mere
reason alone. Its objective reality is not to be understood
without intuition and indeed outer intuition in space.”[1036]
In this passage Kant is modifying the teaching of the first
edition in two very essential respects. In the first place, he is
now asserting that consciousness of both space and motion is
necessary to consciousness of time;[1037] and in the second
place, he is maintaining that the categories can acquire
meaning only by reference to outer appearances. Had Kant
made all the necessary alterations which these new positions
involve, he would, as we shall find,[1038] have had entirely to
recast the chapters on Schematism and on the Principles of
Understanding. Kant was not, however, prepared to make such
extensive alterations, and these chapters are therefore left
practically unmodified. This is one of the many important
points in which the reader is compelled to reinterpret passages
of earlier date in the light of Kant’s later utterances. There is
also a further difficulty. Does Kant, in maintaining that the
categories can acquire significance only in reference to outer
perception, also mean to assert that their subsequent
employment is limited to the mechanical world of the material
sciences? This is a point in regard to which Kant makes no
quite direct statement; but indirectly he would seem to indicate
that that was not his intention.[1039] He frequently speaks of
the states of inner sense as mechanically conditioned.
Sensations,[1040] feelings, and desires,[1041] are, he would seem
to assert, integral parts of the unitary system of phenomenal
existence. Such a view is not, indeed, easily reconcilable with
his equating of the principle of substance with the principle of
the conservation of matter.[1042] There are here two conflicting
positions which Kant has failed to reconcile: the traditional
dualistic attitude of Cartesian physics and the quite opposite
implications of his Critical phenomenalism. When the former
is being held to, Kant has to maintain that psychology can
never become a science;[1043] but his Critical teaching
consistently developed seems rather to support the view that
psychology, despite special difficulties peculiar to its subject
matter, can be developed on lines strictly analogous to those of
the material sciences.
We may now return to Kant’s main argument. This new
refutation of idealism in the second edition differs from that
given in the fourth Paralogism of the first edition, not only in
method of argument but also in the nature of the conclusion
which it seeks to establish. Indeed it proves the direct opposite
of what is asserted in the first edition. The earlier proof sought
to show that, as regards immediacy of apprehension and
subjectivity of existence, outer appearances stand on the same
level as do our inner experiences. The proof of the second
edition, on the other hand, argues that though outer
appearances are immediately apprehended they must be
existences distinct from the subjective states through which
the mind represents them. The two arguments agree, indeed, in
establishing immediacy, but as that which is taken as
immediately known is in the one case a subjective state and in
the other is an independent existence, the immediacy calls in
the two cases for entirely different methods of proof. The first
method consisted in viewing outer experiences as a
subdivision within our inner experiences. The new method
views their relation as not that of including and included, but
of conditioning and conditioned; and it is now to outer
experience that the primary position is assigned. So far is outer
experience from being possible only as part of inner
experience, that on the contrary inner experience,
consciousness of the flux of inner states, is only possible in
and through experience of independent material bodies in
space. A sentence from each proof will show how completely
their conclusions are opposed.
“Outer objects (bodies) are mere appearances, and are
therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the
objects of which are something only through these
representations. Apart from them they are nothing.”[1044]
“Perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing
outside me, and not through the mere representation of a thing
outside me.”[1045]
The one sentence asserts that outer objects are
representations; the other argues that they must be existences
distinct from their representations. The one inculcates a
subjectivism of a very extreme type; the other results in a
realism, which though ultimately phenomenalist, is none the
less genuinely objective in character. This difference is
paralleled by the nature of the idealisms to which the two
proofs are opposed and which they profess to refute. The
argument of the Paralogism of the first edition is itself
Berkeleian, and refutes only the problematic idealism of
Descartes. The argument of the second edition, though
formally directed only against Descartes, constitutes a no less
complete refutation of the position of Berkeley. In its realism it
has kinship with the positions of Arnauld and of Reid, while,
in attempting to combine this realism with due recognition of
the force and validity of Hume’s sceptical philosophy, it
breaks through all previous classifications, formulates a
profoundly original substitute for the previously existing
theories, and inaugurates a new era in the theory of
knowledge.
As already pointed out,[1046] Kant restates the distinction
between the subjective and the objective in a manner which
places the problem of knowledge in an entirely new light. The
subjective is not to be regarded as opposite in nature to the
objective, but as a subspecies within it. It does not proceed
parallel with the sequence of natural existences, but is itself
part of the natural system which consciousness reveals.
Sensations, in the form in which they are consciously
apprehended by us, do not constitute our consciousness of
nature, but are themselves events which are possible only
under the conditions which the natural world itself supplies.
[1047] The Cartesian dualism of the subjective and the objective
is thus subordinated to the Critical distinction between
appearance and reality. Kant’s phenomenalism is a genuine
alternative to the Berkeleian teaching, and not, as
Schopenhauer and so many others have sought to maintain,
merely a variant upon it.
The striking contradiction between Kant’s various
refutations of idealism has led some of Kant’s most competent
critics to give a different interpretation of the argument of the
second edition from that given above. These critics take the
independent and permanent objects which are distinguished
from our subjective representations to be things in themselves.
That is to say, they interpret this refutation as based upon
Kant’s semi-Critical doctrine of the transcendental object (in
the form in which it is employed for the solution of the
Antinomies), and so as agreeing with the refutation given in
the Prolegomena.[1048] Kant is taken as rejecting idealism
because of his belief in things in themselves. This is the view
adopted by Benno Erdmann,[1049] Sidgwick,[1050] A. J.
Balfour.[1051]
 As Vaihinger,[1052] Caird,[1053] and Adamson[1054] have
shown, such an interpretation is at complete variance with the
actual text. This is, indeed, so obvious upon unbiassed
examination that the only point which repays discussion is the
question, why Benno Erdmann and those who follow him
should have felt constrained to place so unnatural an
interpretation upon Kant’s words. The explanation seems to lie
in Erdmann’s convinced belief, plainly shown in all his
writings upon Kant, that the Critique expounds a single
consistent and uniform standpoint.[1055] If such belief be
justified, there is no alternative save to interpret Kant’s
refutation of idealism in the manner which Erdmann adopts.
For as the subjectivism of much of Kant’s teaching is beyond
question, consistency can be obtained only by sacrifice of all
that conflicts with it. Thus, and thus alone, can Erdmann’s
rendering of the refutation of the second edition be sustained;
the actual wording, taken in and by itself, does not support it.
Kant here departs from his own repeated assertion, in the
second hardly less than in the first edition of the Critique, of
the subjectivity of outer appearances. But, as Vaihinger justly
contends, Kant was never greater than in this violation of self-
consistency, “never more consistent than in this
inconsistency.” Tendencies, previously active but hitherto
inarticulate, are at last liberated. If the chrysalis stage of the
intense brooding of the twelve years of Critical thinking was
completed in the writing of the first edition of the Critique, the
philosophy which then emerged only attains to mature stature
in those extensions of the Critique, scattered through it from
Preface to Paralogisms, which embody this realistic theory of
the independent existence of material nature. For this theory is
no mere external accretion, and no mere reversal of
subordinate tenets, but a ripening of germinal ideas to which,
even in their more embryonic form, the earlier Critical
teaching owed much of its inspiration, and which, when
consciously adopted and maturely formulated, constitute such
a deepening of its teaching as almost amounts to
transformation. The individual self is no longer viewed as
being the bearer of nature, but as its offspring and expression,
and as being, like nature, interpretable in its twofold aspect, as
appearance and as noumenally grounded. The bearer of
appearance is not the individual subject, but those
transcendental creative agencies upon which man and nature
alike depend. Both man and nature transcend the forms in
which they are apprehended; and nothing in experience
justifies the giving of such priority to the individual mind as
must be involved in any acceptance of subjectivist theory.
Though man is cognisant of space and time, comprehending
them within the limits of his consciousness, and though in all
experience unities are involved which cannot originate within
or be explained by experience, it is no less true that man is
himself subject to the conditions of space and time, and that
the synthetic unities which point beyond experience do not
carry us to a merely individual subject. If man is not a part or
product of nature, neither is nature the product of man. Kant’s
transcendentalism, in its maturest form, is genuinely
phenomenalist in character. That is the view which has already
been developed above, in the discussion of Kant’s
transcendental deduction. I shall strive to confirm it by
comparison of the teaching of the two editions of the Critique
in regard to the reality of outer appearances.
Schopenhauer, to whom this new development of the
Critical teaching was altogether anathema, the cloven hoof of
the Hegelian heresies, denounced it as a temporary and ill-
judged distortion of the true Critical position, maintaining that
it is incapable of combination with Kant’s central teaching,
and that it finds no support in the tenets, pure and unperverted,
of the first edition. Kant, he holds, is here untrue to himself,
and temporarily, under the stress of polemical discussion,
lapses from the heights to which he had successfully made his
way, and upon which he had securely established, in
agreement with Plato and in extension of Berkeley, the
doctrine of all genuine philosophical thinking, the doctrine of
the Welt als Vorstellung.
We may agree with Schopenhauer in regarding those
sections of the first edition of the Critique which were omitted
in the second edition as being a permanently valuable
expression of Kantian thought, and as containing much that
finds no equally adequate expression in the passages which
were substituted for them; and yet may challenge his
interpretation of both editions alike. If, as we have already
been arguing, we must regard Kant’s thinking as in large
degree tentative, that is, as progressing by the experimental
following out of divergent tendencies, we may justly maintain
that among the most characteristic features of his teaching are
the readiness with which he makes changes to meet deeper
insight, and the persistency with which he strives to attain a
position in which there will be least sacrifice or blurring of any
helpful distinction, and fullest acknowledgment of the
manifold and diverse considerations that are really essential.
Recognising these features, we shall be prepared to question
the legitimacy of Schopenhauer’s opposition between the
teaching of the two editions. We shall rather expect to find that
the two editions agree in the alternating statement and
retraction of conflicting positions, and that the later edition,
however defective in this or that aspect as compared with the
first edition, none the less expresses the maturer insight, and
represents a further stage in the development of ideas that have
been present from the start. It may perhaps for this very reason
be more contradictory in its teaching; it will at least yield
clearer and more adequate formulation of the diverse
consequences and conflicting implications of the earlier tenets.
It will be richer in content, more open-eyed in its adoption of
mutually contradictory positions, freer therefore from
unconscious assumptions, and better fitted to supply the data
necessary for judgment upon its own defects. Only those
critics who are blind to the stupendous difficulties of the tasks
which Kant here sets himself, and credulous of their speedy
and final completion, can complain of the result. Philosophical
thinkers of the most diverse schools in Germany, France, and
England, have throughout the nineteenth century received
from the Critique much of their inspiration. The profound
influence which Kant has thus exercised upon succeeding
thought must surely be reckoned a greater achievement than
any that could have resulted from the constructing of a system
so consistent and unified, that the alternative would lie only
between its acceptance and its rejection. Ultimately the value
of a philosophy consists more in the richness of its content and
the comprehensiveness of its dialectic, than in the logical
perfection of its formal structure. The latter quality is
especially unfitted to a philosophy which inaugurated a new
era, and formulated the older problems in an altogether novel
manner. Under such conditions fertility of suggestion and
readiness to modify or even recast adopted positions, openness
to fuller insight acquired through the very solutions that may
at first have seemed to satisfy and close the issues, are more to
be valued than the power to remove contradictions and attain
consistency. This is the point of view which I shall endeavour
to justify in reference to the matters now before us. In
particular there are two points to be settled: first, whether and
how far the argument of the second edition is prefigured in the
first edition; and secondly, whether and to what extent it
harmonises with, and gives expression to, all that is most
central and genuinely Critical in both editions.
In the first place we must observe that the fourth
Paralogism occurs in a section which bears all the signs of
having been independently written and incorporated later into
the main text. It is certainly of earlier origin than those
sections which represent the third and fourth layers of the
deduction of the first edition, and very possibly was composed
in the middle ’seventies. Indeed, apart from single paragraphs
which may have been added in the process of adapting it to the
main text, it could quite well, so far as its refutation of
idealism is concerned, be of even earlier date. The question as
to the consistency of the refutation of the second edition with
the teaching of the first edition must therefore chiefly concern
those parts of the Analytic which connect with the later forms
of the transcendental deduction, that is to say, with the
transcendental deduction itself, with the Analogies and
Postulates, and with particular paragraphs that have been
added in other sections. We have already noted how Kant from
the very first uses terms which involve the drawing of a
distinction between representations and their objects. Passages
in which this distinction occurs can be cited from both the
Aesthetic and the Analytic, and two such occur in the fourth
Paralogism itself.[1056] Objects, he says, “correspond” to their
representations. A variation in expression is found in such
passages as the following:
 “…the objects of outer perception also actually exist (auch
wirklich sind) in that very form in which they are intuited in
space….”[1057]
Such language is meaningless, and could never have been
chosen, if Kant had not, even in the earlier stages of his
thinking, postulated a difference between the existence of an
object and the existence of its representation. He must at least
have distinguished between the representations and their
content. That, however, he could have done without advancing
to the further assertion of their independent existence.
Probably he was not at all clear in his own mind, and was too
preoccupied with the other complexities of his problem, to
have thought out his position to a definite decision. When,
however, as in the fourth Paralogism, he made any attempt so
to do, he would seem to have felt constrained to adopt the
extreme subjectivist position. Expressions to that effect are
certainly very much more common than those above
mentioned. This is what affords Schopenhauer such
justification, certainly very strong, as he can cite for regarding
subjectivism as the undoubted teaching of the first edition.
When, however, we also take account of the very different
teaching which is contained in the important section on the
Postulates of Empirical Thought, the balance of evidence is
decisively altered. The counter-teaching, which is suggested
by certain of the conflicting factors of the transcendental
deduction and of the Analogies, here again receives clear and
detailed expression. This is the more significant, as it is in this
section that Kant sets himself formally to define what is to be
understood by empirical reality. It thus contains his, so to
speak, official declaration as to the mode of existence
possessed by outer appearances. The passage chiefly relevant
is as follows:
“If the existence of the thing is bound up with some
perceptions according to the principles of their empirical
connection (the Analogies), we can determine its existence
antecedently to the perception of it, and consequently, to that
extent, in an a priori manner. For as the existence of the thing
is bound up with our perceptions in a possible experience, we
are able in the series of possible perceptions, and under the
guidance of the Analogies, to make the transition from our
actual perception to the thing in question. Thus we discover
the existence of a magnetic matter pervading all bodies from
the perception of the attracted iron filings, although the
constitution of our organs cuts us off from all immediate
perception of that matter. For in accordance with the laws of
sensibility and the connection of our perceptions in a single
experience, we should, were our senses more refined, actually
experience it in an immediate empirical intuition. The
grossness of our senses does not in any way decide the form of
possible experience in general.”[1058]
Now it cannot, of course, be argued that the above passage
is altogether unambiguous. We can, if we feel sufficiently
constrained thereto, place upon it an interpretation which
would harmonise it with Kant’s more usual subjectivist
teaching, namely as meaning that in the progressive
construction of experience, or in the ideal completion which
follows upon assumption of more refined sense-organs,
possible empirical realities are made to become, or are
assumed to become, real, but that until the possible
experiences are thus realised in fact or in ideal hypothesis,
they exist outwardly only in the form of their noumenal
conditions. And as a matter of fact, this is how Kant himself
interprets the teaching of this section in the process of
applying it in solution of the antinomies.
“Accordingly, if I represent to myself the aggregate of all
objects of the senses existing in all time and all places, I do not
set them, antecedently to experience, in space and time. The
representation is nothing but the thought of a possible
experience in its absolute completeness. Since the objects are
mere representations, only in such a possible experience are
they given. To say that they exist prior to all my experience,
can only be taken as meaning that they will be met with, if,
starting from actual perception, I advance to that part of
experience to which they belong. The cause of the empirical
conditions of this advance (that which determines what
members I shall meet with, or how far I can meet with any
such in my regress) is transcendental, and is therefore
necessarily unknown to me. We are not, however, concerned
with this transcendental cause, but only with the rule of
progression in that experience in which objects, that is to say,
appearances, are given. Moreover, in outcome it is a matter of
indifference whether I say that in the empirical progress in
space I can meet with stars a hundred times farther removed
than the outermost now perceptible to me, or whether I say
that they are perhaps to be met with in cosmical space even
though no human being has ever perceived or ever will
perceive them. For though they might be given as things in
themselves, without relation to possible experience, they are
still nothing to me, and therefore are not objects, save in so far
as they are contained in the series of the empirical
regress.”[1059]
But though this is a possible interpretation of the teaching of
the Postulates, and though further it is Kant’s own
interpretation in another portion of the Critique, it is not by
any means thereby decided that this is what the section itself
actually teaches. Unbiassed study of the section, in
independence of the use to which it is elsewhere put, can find
within it no such limitation to its assertion of the actual
independent existence of non-perceived bodies. We have to
remember that the doctrine and solution of the Antinomies was
completed prior to the writing of the central portions of the
Critique. The section treating of their solution seems, indeed,
in certain parts to be later[1060] than the other main portions of
the chapter on the Antinomies, and must have been at least
recast after completion of the Postulates. But the subjectivist
solution is so much simpler in statement, so much more fully
worked out, and indeed so much more capable of definite
formulation, and also so much more at one with the teaching
developed in the preceding chapter on the Paralogisms, that
even granting the doctrine expounded in the section on the
Postulates to be genuinely phenomenalist, it is not surprising
that Kant should have been unwilling to recast his older and
simpler solution of the Antinomies. In any case we are not
concerned to argue that Kant, even after formulating the
phenomenalist view, yields to it an unwavering adherence. As
I have already insisted, his attitude continues to the very last to
be one of alternation between two opposed standpoints.
 But the most significant feature of Kant’s treatment of the
argument of the Postulates still remains for consideration. It
was in immediate succession to the paragraph above
quoted[1061] that Kant, in the second edition, placed his
“Refutation of Idealism” with the emphatic statement that this
(not as in the first edition in connection with the Paralogisms)
was its “correct location.” It is required, he says, as a reply to
an objection which the teaching of the Postulates must at once
suggest. The argument of the second edition in proof of the
independent reality of material bodies, and in disproof of
subjectivism, is thus given by Kant as a necessary extension
and natural supplement of the teaching of the first edition.
There is therefore reason for concluding that the same
preconception which has led to such radical misinterpretation
of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism has been at work in inducing
a false reading of Kant’s argument in the Postulates, namely
the belief that Kant’s teaching proceeds on consistent lines,
and that it must at all costs be harmonised with itself. Finding
subjectivism to be emphatically and unambiguously inculcated
in all the main sections of the Critique, and the phenomenalist
views, on the other hand, to be stated in a much less definite
and somewhat elusive manner, commentators have
impoverished the Critical teaching by suppression of many of
its most subtile and progressive doctrines. Kant’s
experimental, tentative development of divergent tendencies is
surely preferable to this artificial product of high-handed and
unsympathetic emendation.
INNER SENSE AND APPERCEPTION

We are now in position to complete our treatment of inner

sense. When the inner world of feelings, volitions, and
representations is placed on the same empirical level as the
outer world of objects in space, when the two are correlated
and yet also at the same time sharply distinguished, when,
further, it is maintained that objects in space exist
independently of their representations, and that in this
independence they are necessary for the possibility of the
latter, the whole aspect of the Critical teaching undergoes a
genial and welcome transformation. Instead of the forbidding
doctrine that the world in space is merely my representation,
we have the very different teaching that only through
consciousness of an independent world in space is
consciousness of the inner subjective life possible at all, and
that as each is “external” to the other, neither can be reduced
to, or be absorbed within, the other. The inner representations
do not produce or generate the spatial objects, do not even
condition their existence, but are required only for the
individual’s empirical consciousness of them. Indeed the
relations previously holding between them are now reversed. It
is the outer world which renders the subjective representations
possible. The former is prior to the latter; the latter exist in
order to reveal the former. The outer world in space must,
indeed, be regarded as conditioned by, and relative to, the
noumenal conditions of its possibility; but these, on Kant’s
doctrine of outer and inner sense, are distinct from all
experienced contents and from all experienced mental
processes. This will at once be recognised as holding of the
noumenal conditions of the given manifold. But it is equally
true, Kant maintains, in regard to the noumenal conditions of
our mental life. We have no immediate knowledge of the
transcendental syntheses that condition all consciousness, and
in our complete ignorance of their specific nature they cannot
legitimately be equated with any individual or personal agent.
As the empirical self is only what it is known as, namely,
appearance, it cannot be the bearer of appearance. This
function falls to that which underlies both inner and outer
appearances equally, and which within experience gains
twofold expression for itself, in the conception of the thing in
itself = x on the one hand, and in the correlative conception of
a transcendental subject, likewise = x, on the other.
But with mention of the transcendental subject we are
brought to a problem which in the second edition invariably
accompanies Kant’s discussion of inner sense. The ‘I think’ of
apperception can find expression only in an empirical
judgment, and yet, so far from being the outcome of inner
sense, preconditions its possibility. What then is its relation to
inner sense? Does not its recognition conflict with Kant’s
denial of the possibility of self-conscious reflection, of direct
intuitive apprehension by the self of itself? The pure
apperception, ‘I think,’ is equivalent, Kant declares, to the
judgment ‘I am,’ and therefore involves the assertion of the
subject’s existence.[1062] Does not this conflict on the one hand
with the Critical doctrine that knowledge of existence is only
possible in terms of sense, and on the other with the Critical
limitation of the categories to the realm of appearance? How
are such assertions as that the ‘I think’ of pure apperception
refers to a non-empirical reality, and that it predicates its
existence, to be reconciled with the doctrine of inner sense as
above stated?
As we have already observed,[1063] Kant’s early doctrine of
the transcendental object was developed in a more or less
close parallelism with that of the transcendental unity of
apperception. They were regarded as correlative opposites, the
dual centres of noumenal reference for our merely subjective
representations. Kant’s further examination of the nature of
apperception, as embodied in alterations in the second edition,
was certainly, as we shall find, inspired by the criticisms
which the first edition had called forth. His replies, however,
are merely more explicit statements of the distinction which he
had already developed in the first edition between the
transcendental and the empirical self, and that distinction in
turn was doubtless itself largely determined by his own
independent recognition of the untenability of his early view
of the transcendental object. Though it is much more difficult
to differentiate between the empirical and the transcendental
self than to distinguish between the empirical object and the
thing in itself, both distinctions are from a genuinely Critical
standpoint equally imperative, and rest upon considerations
that are somewhat similar in the two cases.
One of the chief and most telling criticisms directed against
the teaching of the first edition was that Kant’s doctrine of a
transcendental consciousness of the self’s existence, i.e. of the
existence of a noumenal being, “this I or he or it (the thing)
which thinks,”[1064] is inconsistent with the teaching of the
Postulates of Empirical Thought. In that section, as also later
in the section on the theological Ideal, Kant had declared most
emphatically that existence is never discoverable in the
content of any mere concept. It is revealed in perception, and
in perception alone, in virtue of the element of sensation
contained in the latter.
“…to know the actuality of things demands perception, and
therefore sensation…. For that the concept precedes
perception, signifies the concept’s mere possibility; the
perception which supplies the content [Stoff] to the concept, is
the sole criterion [Charakter] of actuality.”[1065]
Yet Kant had also maintained that the ‘I think’ is equivalent
to ‘I am,’[1066] and that in this form, as an intellectual
consciousness of the self’s existence, it precedes all
experience. The teaching of the Postulates is, however, the
teaching of the Critique as a whole, and such critics as
Pistorius seemed therefore to be justified in maintaining that
Kant, in reducing the experiences of inner sense to mere
appearance, destroys the possibility of establishing reality in
any form. Appearance, in order to be appearance, presupposes
the reality not only of that which appears, but also of the
mental process whereby it is apprehended. But if reality is
given only in sensation, and yet all experience that involves
sensation is merely appearance, there is no self by which
appearance can be conditioned; and only illusion (Schein), not
appearance (Erscheinung), is left. To quote Pistorius’ exact
words:
”[If our inner representations are not things in themselves
but only appearances] there will be nothing but illusion
(Schein), for nothing remains to which anything can
appear.”[1067]
Kant evidently felt the force of this criticism, for in the
second edition he replies to it on no less than seven different
occasions.[1068] In three of these passages[1069] the term Schein
is employed, and in the note to B xxxix the term Erdichtung
appears. This shows very conclusively that it is such criticism
as the above that Kant has in mind. The most explicit passage
is B 428:
“The proposition, ‘I think,’ or ‘I exist thinking,’ is an
empirical proposition. Such a judgment, however, is
conditioned by empirical intuition, and the object that is
thought therefore underlies it as appearance. It would
consequently seem that on our theory the soul is completely
transformed, even in thinking [selbst im Denken], into
appearance, and that in this way our consciousness itself, as
being a mere illusion [Schein], must refer in fact to nothing.”
Kant, in his reply, is unyielding in the contention that the ‘I
think,’ even though it involves an empirical judgment, is itself
intellectual. “This representation is a thinking, not an
intuiting,”[1070] or as he adds, “The ‘I think’ expresses the
actus whereby I determine my existence.” Existence is
therefore already given thereby.[1071] Kant also still maintains
that the self thus revealed is not “appearance and still less
illusion.”
“I am conscious of myself …, not as I appear to myself, nor
as I am in myself, but only that I am.”[1072] “I thereby
represent myself to myself neither as I am nor as I appear to
myself. I think myself only as I do any object in general from
whose mode of intuition I abstract.”[1073]
Kant’s method of meeting the criticism, while still holding
to these positions, is twofold. It consists in the first place in
maintaining that the ‘I think,’ though intellectual, can find
expression only in empirical judgments—in other words, that
it is in and by itself formal only, and presupposes as the
occasion of its employment a given manifold of inner sense;
and secondly, by the statement that the ‘existence’ which is
involved in the ‘I think’ is not the category of existence. Let us
take in order each of these two points.
Kant’s first method of reply itself appears in two forms, a
stronger and a milder. The milder mode of statement[1074] is to
the effect that though the representation ‘I am’ already
immediately involves the thought of the existence of the
subject, it yields no knowledge of it. Knowledge would
involve intuition, namely, consciousness of inner
determinations in time, which in turn would itself presuppose
consciousness of outer objects. As a merely intellectual
representation,
“…this ‘I’ has not the least predicate of intuition which, in
its character of permanence, could, somewhat after the manner
of impenetrability in the empirical intuition of matter, serve as
correlate of time determination in inner sense.”[1075]
The stronger and more definite mode of statement is that the
‘I think’ is an empirical proposition.[1076] Though it involves
as one factor the intellectual representation, ‘I think,’ it is none
the less empirical.
“Without some empirical representation supplying the
material for thought, the actus, ‘I think,’ would not take
place….”[1077]
The empirical is indeed “only the condition of the
application or employment of the pure intellectual faculty,” but
as such is indispensable. This is repeated in even clearer terms
in B 429.
“The proposition, ‘I think,’ in so far as it amounts to the
assertion, ‘I exist thinking,’ is no mere logical function but
determines the subject (which is then at the same time object)
in respect of existence, and cannot take place without inner
sense….”
This admission is the more significant in that it follows
immediately upon a passage in which Kant has been arguing
that thinking, taken in and by itself, is a merely logical
function.
The real crux lies in the question as to the legitimacy of
Kant’s application of the predicate existence to the
transcendental subject. Its employment in reference to the
empirical self in time is part of the problem of the Refutation
of Idealism in the second edition; and the answer there given is
clear and definite. Consciousness of the empirical self as
existing in time involves consciousness of outer objects in
space. But as Kant recognises that a transcendental ego, not in
time, is presupposed in all consciousness of the empirical self,
the question whether the predicate of existence is also
applicable to the transcendental self cannot be altogether
avoided, and is indeed referred to in B 277. The attitude to be
taken to this latter question is not, however, defined in that
section.
 In the first edition Kant has insisted that the categories as
pure forms of the understanding, in isolation from space and
time, are merely logical functions “without content.”
Interpreted literally, this would signify that they are devoid of
meaning, and therefore are incapable of yielding the thought
of any independent object or existence. As merely logical
forms of relation, they presuppose a material, and that is
supplied only through outer and inner sense. Such is not,
however, the way in which Kant interprets his own statement.
It is qualified so as to signify only that they are without
specific or determinate content. They are taken as yielding the
conception of object in general. Passages in plenty can be cited
from the first edition[1078]—passages allowed to remain in the
second edition—in which Kant teaches that the pure forms of
understanding, as distinct from the schematised categories,
yield the conception of things in themselves. This view is,
indeed, a survival from his earlier doctrine of the
transcendental object.[1079] In all passages added in the second
edition the consequences of his argument are more rigorously
drawn, and the doctrine of the transcendental object is entirely
eliminated. It is now unambiguously asserted that the pure
forms of understanding, the “modes of self-consciousness in
thinking,”[1080] are not intellectual concepts of objects. They
“yield no object whatsoever.” The only object is that given
through sense. And since in thinking the transcendental subject
we do, by Kant’s own account, think an “object,” he is led to
the conclusion, also explicitly avowed, that the notion of
existence involved in the ‘I think’ is not the category of the
same name.[1081] So also of the categories of substance and
causality.
“If I represent myself as subject of thoughts or as ground of
thinking, these modes of representation do not signify the
categories of substance or of cause….”[1082]
The notion of the self, like the notion of things in
themselves, is a concept distinct from all the categories.[1083]
This conclusion is reinforced by means of an argument
which is employed in the section of the first edition on
Paralogisms. Apperception is the ground of the possibility of
the categories, and these latter on their side represent only the
synthetic unity which that apperception demands. Self-
consciousness is therefore the representation of that which is
the condition of all unity, and which yet is itself
unconditioned.
“…it does not represent itself through the categories, but
knows the categories and through them all objects in the
absolute unity of apperception, and so through itself. Now it is,
indeed, very evident that I cannot know as an object that
which I must presuppose in order to know any object….”[1084]
This argument recurs in B 422.
“The subject of the categories cannot by thinking the
categories acquire a conception of itself as an object of the
categories. For, in order to think them, its pure self-
consciousness, which is what was to be accounted for, must
itself be presupposed.”
It is extremely difficult to estimate the value and cogency of
this argument.[1085] Many objections or rather qualifications
must be made before it can be either accepted or rejected. If it
be taken only as asserting that the unity of self-consciousness
is not adequately expressible through any of the categories, it
is undoubtedly valid. If, further, the categories be identified
with the schemata, it is also true that they are not applicable in
any degree or manner. The schemata are applicable only to
natural existences in space and time. Self-consciousness can
never be reduced to a natural existence of that type. On the
other hand, if it is not self-consciousness as such, but the self-
conscious subject, which on Kant’s view is always noumenal
—“this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks”[1086]—that is
referred to, and if we distinguish between the categories
strictly so called, that is, the pure forms of understanding, and
the schemata, it is not at all evident that the self-conscious
subject may not be described as being an existence that is
always a subject and never a predicate, and as being related to
experience as a ground or condition. These indefinite
assertions leave open alternative possibilities. They do not
even decide whether the self is “I or he or it.”[1087] In so far as
they advance beyond the mere assertion that the self rests upon
noumenal conditions they are, indeed, incapable of proof, but
by no Critical principle can they be shown to be inapplicable.
When, therefore, Kant may seem to extract a more definite
conclusion from the above argument,[1088] he advances beyond
what it can be made to support.
Kant is here influenced by the results of the ethical
enquiries with which in the period subsequent to 1781 he was
chiefly preoccupied. He believed himself to have proved that
the self, as a self-conscious being, is a genuinely noumenal
existence. That being so, he was bound to hold that the
categories, even as pure logical forms, are inadequate to
express its real determinate nature. But he confounds this
position with the assertion that they are not only inadequate,
but in and by themselves are likewise inapplicable. That is not
a legitimate conclusion, for even if the self is more than mere
subject or mere ground, it will at least be so much. When
ethical considerations are left out of account, the only proper
conclusion is that the applicability of the categories to the self-
conscious subject is capable neither of proof nor of disproof,
but that when the distinction between appearance and reality
(which as we shall find is ultimately based upon the Ideas of
Reason) has been drawn, the categories can be employed to
define the possible difference between self-conscious
experience and its unknown noumenal conditions. Any other
conclusion conflicts with the teaching of the section on the
Paralogisms.
It is important to observe—a point ignored by such critics as
Caird and Watson—that in the sections under
consideration[1089] Kant most explicitly declares self-
consciousness to be merely “the representation of that which
is the condition of all unity.” He maintains that this
representation, as standing for “the determining self (the
thinking), is to be distinguished from the self which we are
seeking to determine (the subject which thinks) as knowledge
from its object,”[1090] or in other words, that, without special
proof, unattainable on theoretical grounds, “the unity of
thought” may not be taken as equivalent to the unity of the
thinking subject.[1091] They may be as diverse as unity of
representation and unity of object represented are frequently
found to be. We may never argue from simplicity in a
representation to simplicity in its object.
But to return to the main thesis, it may be observed that
these arguments, with the exception of that which we have just
been considering from the nature of self-consciousness, lead to
the conclusion that the categories are as little applicable to the
thing in itself as to the transcendental subject. Even the
argument from the necessary and invariable presence of self-
consciousness in each and every act of judgment is itself valid
only from a point of view which regards self-consciousness in
the manner of Kant’s early semi-Critical view of the
transcendental subject[1092] as an ultimate. But if, as is
maintained in the section in which this argument occurs, viz.
that on the Paralogisms, self-consciousness may be complexly
conditioned, and may indeed have conditions similar in nature
to those which underlie outer experience, the categories may
be just as applicable, or as inapplicable, to its noumenal nature
as to the nature of the thing in itself. It is noticeable that in the
second edition, doubtless under the influence of preoccupation
with ethical problems, some of Kant’s utterances betray a
tendency to relax the rigour of his thinking, and to bring his
theoretical teaching into closer agreement with his ethical
results than the theoretical analysis in and by itself at all
justifies. This tendency was, of course, reinforced by the
persisting influence of that view of the transcendental subject
which he had held in the middle ’seventies, and from which he
never completely emancipated either his language or his
thinking.[1093] Indeed in several of the passages added in the
second edition[1094] Kant even goes so far as to adopt language
which if taken quite literally would mean that the ‘I think’ is
an immediate consciousness of the mind’s purely intellectual
activity—a view which, as we have seen,[1095] is altogether
alien to the Critical position. It would, as he argues so forcibly
elsewhere, involve a kind of experience which does not
conform to Critical requirements, and which would lie open to
the attacks of sceptics such as Hume.
In B 157-8 the difficulties of Kant’s position are again
manifest. Speaking of the representation of the self, he
declares that “I am conscious of myself …, not as I appear to
myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am.” This may
seem to imply that existence is predicable of the
transcendental self. He adds that though the determination, i.e.
specification in empirical form, of my existence (mein eigenes
Dasein) is possible only in inner sensuous intuition, it is “not
appearance and still less mere illusion.” But in the appended
note it is urged that my existence (Dasein) as self-active being
is represented in purely indeterminate fashion. Only my
existence as sensuous, and therefore as appearance, can be
known, i.e. can be made determinate.
The problem is more directly and candidly faced in the note
to B 422. That note is interesting for quite a number of
reasons. It reveals Kant in the very act of recasting his
position, and in the process of searching around for a mode of
formulation which will enable him to hold to a transcendental
consciousness of the self’s existence and at the same time not
to violate the definition of existence given in the Postulates,
i.e. both to posit the transcendental self as actual and yet to
deny the applicability to it of any of the categories. After
stating that the ‘I think’ is an empirical proposition in which
my existence is immediately involved, he proceeds further to
describe it as expressing “an undetermined empirical intuition,
i.e. perception,” and so as showing that sensation underlies its
assertion of existence. Kant does not, however, mean by these
words that the existence asserted is merely that of the
empirical self; for he proceeds:
“…existence is here not a category, which as such does not
apply to an indeterminately-given object…. An indeterminate
perception here signifies only something real that is given,
given indeed to thought in general, and so not as appearance,
nor as thing in itself (Noumenon), but as something which
actually [in der That] exists, and which in the proposition, I
think, is denoted [bezeichnet] as such.”
The phrases here employed are open to criticism on every
side. Kant completely departs from his usual terminology
when he asserts that through an “indeterminate perception” the
self is given, and “given to thought in general” as “something
real.” The contention, that the existence asserted is not a
category, is also difficult to accept.[1096] It is equally surprising
to read that its reality is given “neither as appearance nor as
thing [Sache] in itself (Noumenon)”; for hitherto no such
alternative form of real existence has been recognised.
But to press such criticisms is to ignore the spirit for the
sake of the letter. Kant here breaks free from all his habitual
modes of expression for the very good and sufficient reason
that he is striving to develop a position more catholic and
comprehensive than any previously adopted. He is seeking to
formulate a position which, without in any way justifying or
encouraging the transcendent employment of the categories,
will yet retain for thought the capacity of self-limitation, that
is, of forming concepts which will reveal the existence of
things in themselves and so will enable the mind to apprehend
the radical distinction between things in themselves and things
experienced. But he has not yet discovered that in so doing he
is committing himself to the thesis that the distinction is
mediated, not by the understanding, but by Reason, not by
categories, but by Ideas.[1097] As I have already indicated, this
tendency is crossed by another derived from his preoccupation
with moral problems, namely, the desire to defend, in a
manner which his Critical teaching does not justify, the
noumenal existence of the self as a thinking being.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC
 Book II

THE ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES

The distinction which Kant here introduces for the first time
between understanding (now viewed as the faculty only of
concepts) and the faculty of judgment (Urtheilskraft) is
artificial and extremely arbitrary.[1098] As we have seen,[1099]
his own real position involves a complete departure from the
traditional distinction between conceiving, judging, and
reasoning, as separate processes. All thinking without
exception finds expression in judgment. Judgment is the
fundamental activity of the understanding. It is “an act which
contains all its other acts.” Kant is bent, however, upon forcing
the contents of the Critique into the external framework
supplied by the traditional logic, viewed as an architectonic;
and we have therefore no option save to take account of his
exposition in the actual form which he has chosen to give to it.
Since general logic develops its teaching under three separate
headings, as the logic of conception, the logic of judgment,
and the logic of reasoning, the Critique has to be made to
conform to this tripartite division. The preceding book is
accordingly described as dealing with concepts, and this
second book as dealing with judgments or principles; while
understanding and the faculty of judgment, now viewed as
independent, are redefined to meet the exigencies of this new
arrangement, the former as being “the faculty of rules,” and
the latter as being “the faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e. of
distinguishing whether something does or does not stand under
a given rule (casus datae legis).”
The reader need not strive to discover any deep-lying
ground or justification for these definitions.[1100]
Architectonic, that ‘open sesame’ for so many of the secrets of
the Critique, is the all-sufficient spell to resolve the mystery.
As a matter of fact, Kant is here taking advantage of the
popular meaning of the term judgment in the sense in which
we speak of a man of good judgment; and in order that
judgment and understanding may be distinguished he then
imposes an artificial limitation upon the meaning in which the
latter term is to be employed.
As formal logic abstracts from all content, it cannot, Kant
maintains, supply rules for the exercise of “judgment.” It is
otherwise with transcendental logic, which in the pure forms
of sensibility possesses a content enabling it to define in an a
priori manner the specific cases to which concepts must be
applicable. The Analytic of Principles is thus able to supply “a
canon for the faculty of judgment, instructing it how to apply
to appearances the concepts of understanding which contain
the condition of a priori rules.”[1101] This will involve (1) the
defining of the sensuous conditions under which the a priori
rules may be applied—the problem of the chapter on
schematism; and (2) the formulating of the rules in their
sensuous, though a priori, concreteness—the problem of the
chapter on “the system of all principles of pure
understanding.”
Such is Kant’s own very misleading account of the purposes
of these two chapters. There are other and sounder reasons
why they should be introduced. In the Analytic of Concepts, as
we have seen,[1102] the transcendental deduction only succeeds
in proving that a priori forms of unity are required for the
possibility of experience. No proof is given that the various
categories are just the particular forms required, and that they
are one and all indispensable. This omission can be made good
only by a series of proofs, directed to showing, in reference to
each separate category, its validity within experience and its
indispensableness for the possibility of experience. These
proofs are given in the second of the two chapters. The chapter
on schematism is preparatory in character; it draws attention to
the importance of the temporal aspect of human experience,
and defines the categories in the form in which they present
themselves in an experience thus conditioned by a priori
intuition.
 CHAPTER I

THE SCHEMATISM OF PURE CONCEPTS OF

UNDERSTANDING[1103]
The more artificial aspect of Kant’s argument again appears
in the reason which he assigns for the existence of a problem
of schematism, namely, that pure concepts, and the sensuous
intuitions which have to be subsumed under them, are
completely opposite in nature. No such explanation can be
accepted. For if category and sensuous intuition are really
heterogeneous, no subsumption is possible; and if they are not
really heterogeneous, no such problem as Kant here refers to
will exist. The heterogeneity which Kant here asserts is merely
that difference of nature which follows from the diversity of
their functions. The category is formal and determines
structure; intuition yields the content which is thereby
organised. Accordingly, the “third thing,” which Kant
postulates as required to bring category and intuition together,
is not properly so describable; it is simply the two co-
operating in the manner required for the possibility of
experience. Kant’s method of stating the problem of
schematism is, however, so completely misleading, that before
we can profitably proceed, the various strands in his highly
artificial argument must be further disentangled. This is an
ungrateful task, but has at least the compensating interest of
admirably illustrating the kind of influence which Kant’s
logical architectonic is constantly exercising upon his
statement of Critical principles.
The architectonic has in this connection two very
unfortunate consequences. It leads Kant to describe
schematism as a process of subsumption, and to speak of the
transcendental schema as “a third thing.” Neither assertion is
legitimate. Schematism, properly understood, is not a process
of subsumption, but, as Kant has already recognised in A 124,
of synthetic interpretation. Creative synthesis, whereby
contents are apprehended in terms of functional relations, not
subsumption of particulars under universals that are
homogeneous with them, is what Kant must ultimately mean
by the schematism of the pure forms of understanding. A
category, that is to say, may not be viewed as a predicate of a
possible judgment, and as being applied to a subject
independently apprehended; its function is to articulate the
judgment as a whole. The category of substance and attribute,
for instance, is the form of the categorical judgment, and may
not be equated with any one of its single parts.
Thus the criticisms which we have already passed upon
Kant’s mode of formulating the distinction between formal
and transcendental logic,[1104] are no less applicable to the
sections now before us. The terminology which Kant is here
employing is borrowed from the traditional logic, and is out of
harmony with his Critical principles.
Kant’s description of the schema as a third thing, additional
to category and intuition, and intermediate between them, is
also a result of his misleading mode of formulating his
problem. What Kant professes to do is to interpret the relation
of the categories to the intuitional material as analogous to that
holding between a class concept and the particulars which can
be subsumed under it. This is implied in his use of the plate
and circle illustration.[1105] But as the relation holding between
categories and the material of sense is that of form and matter,
structure and content, the analogy is thoroughly misleading.
As all content, strictly so called, falls on the side of the
intuitional material, there is no content, i.e. no quality or
attribute, which is common to both. And thus it happens that
the inappropriateness of the analogy which Kant is seeking to
enforce is ultimately the sole ground which he is able to offer
in support of his description of the schema as “a third thing.”
 “Now it is clear [!] that there must be a third thing, which is
homogeneous on the one hand with the category and on the
other with the appearance, and which thus makes the
application of the one to the other possible.”[1106]
On the contrary, the true Critical teaching is that category
and intuition, that is to say, form and content, mutually
condition one another, and that the so-called schema is simply
a name for the latter as apprehended in terms of the former.
But there is a further complication. Kant, as we have
already observed,[1107] defines judgment as being
“…the faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e. of
distinguishing whether something does or does not stand under
a given rule (casus datae legis).”
Now this view of judgment really connects with the
syllogism, not with the proposition.[1108] As Kant states in his
Logic, there are
“…three essential elements in all inference: (1) a universal
rule which is entitled the major premiss; (2) the proposition
which subsumes a cognition under the condition of the
universal rule, and which is entitled the minor premiss; and
lastly, (3) the conclusion, the proposition which asserts or
denies of the subsumed cognition the predicate of the
rule.”[1109]
Regarded in this way, as the application of a rule,
subsumption is more broadly viewed and becomes a more
appropriate analogy for the relation of category to content.
And obviously it is this comparison that Kant has chiefly in
mind in these introductory sections. For only when the
subsumption is that of a particular instance under a universal
rule, can the necessity of a mediating condition be allowed.
Such, then, are the straits to which Kant is reduced in the
endeavour to hold loyally to his architectonic. He has to
identify the two very different kinds of subsumption which
find expression in the proposition and in the syllogism
respectively; and when his analogy between logical
subsumption, thus loosely interpreted, and synthetic
interpretation, proves inapplicable, he uses the failure of the
analogy as an argument to prove the necessity of “a third
thing.” On his own Critical teaching, as elsewhere expounded,
no such third thing need be postulated. Even the definitions
which he proceeds to give of the various schemata do not
really support this description of them.
But though Kant’s method of introducing and expounding
the argument of this chapter is thus misleading, the contents
themselves are of intrinsic value, and have a threefold bearing:
(a) on the doctrine of productive imagination; (b) on the
relation holding between image and concept; and (c) on the
nature of the categories in their distinction from the pure forms
of understanding.
(a) Kant gives definite and precise expression to the two
chief characteristics of the productive imagination, namely,
that it deals with an a priori manifold of pure intuition[1110]
and that it exercises a “hidden art in the depths of the human
soul.”[1111] Kant’s description of the schema as “a third thing,”
at once intellectual and sensuous, seems to be in large part due
to the transference to it of predicates already applied to the
faculty which is supposed to be its source. The distinction
between the transcendental schema and the particularised
image is also given as analogous to that between the pure and
the empirical faculties of imagination. In A 141-2 = B 180-1,
Kant speaks of the empirical faculty of productive
imagination, and so is led, to the great confusion of his
exposition, though also to the enrichment of his teaching, to
allow of empirical as well as of transcendental schemata, and
thus contrary to his own real position to recognise schemata of
such empirical objects as dog or horse—a view which
empirical psychology has since adopted in its doctrine of the
schematic image. This passage was doubtless written at the
time when he was inclining to the view that the empirical
processes run parallel with the transcendental.[1112] Kant’s
final view is that empirical imagination is always reproductive.
This brings us, however, to our second main point.
(b) Kant makes a statement which serves as a valuable
corrective of his looser assertions in other parts of the
Critique.[1113] Five points set after one another, thus,….., form
an image of the number five. The schema of the number five
is, however, of very different nature, and must not be
identified with any such image. It is
“…rather the representation of a method whereby a
multiplicity [in this case five] may be represented in an image
in accordance with a certain concept, than this image
itself….”[1114]
This becomes more evident in the case of large numbers,
such as a thousand. The thought or schema of the number
remains just as clear and definite as in the case of smaller
numbers, but cannot be so adequately embodied and surveyed
in a concrete image.
“This representation of a general procedure of imagination
in providing its image for a concept, I name the schema to this
concept.”[1115]
But even in the simplest cases an image can never be
completely adequate to the concept. The image of a triangle,
for instance, is always some particular triangle, and therefore
represents only a part of the total connotation. As the schema
represents a universal rule of production in accordance with a
concept, it resembles the concept in its incapacity to subsist in
an objective form. Images become possible only through and
in accordance with schemata, but can never themselves be
identified with them. Schemata, therefore, and not images—
such is the implied conclusion—form the true subject-matter
of the mathematical sciences. Images are always particular;
schemata are always universal. Images represent existences;
schemata represent methods of construction.
There are three criticisms which must be passed upon this
position. In the first place, the selection of the triangle as an
illustration tends to obscure the main point of Kant’s
argument. As there are three very different species of triangle,
the concept triangle is a class concept in a degree and manner
which is not to be found in the concepts, say, of the circle or of
the number five. So that while Kant may seem to be chiefly
insisting upon the inadequacy[1116] of the image to represent
more than a part of the connotation of the corresponding
concept, his real intention is to emphasise that the schema
expresses the conceptual rule whereby, even in images that
cover the whole connotation, the true meaning of the image
can alone be determined.
Secondly, the above definition of the schema as being “the
representation of a general procedure of imagination in
providing an image for a concept” is obviously bound up with
Kant’s view of it as “a third thing,” additional to the concept,
and as intermediate between it and the image.[1117] But as we
have already found occasion to note, in discussing Kant’s
doctrine of the “construction” of mathematical concepts,[1118]
this threefold distinction is out of harmony with his Critical
principles. It results from his retention of the traditional view
of the concept as in all cases a mere concept, i.e. an abstracted
or class concept. In defining the schema Kant is defining the
true nature of the concept as against the false interpretation of
it in the traditional class-theory; he misrepresents the logic of
his own standpoint when he interpolates a third kind of
representation intermediate between the concept and the
image. The concept ‘triangle,’ as a concept, is (to employ
Kant’s own not very satisfactory terms) the representation of
the method of constructing a certain type of object; and the
only other mode of representing this kind of object is the
image. There may, indeed, as Kant has himself suggested, be a
species of image that may be entitled schematic; but if that be
identified with a blurred or indeterminate or merely symbolic
form of representation, it can have nothing in common with
the transcendental or conceptual schema, save the name.
Thirdly, the entire discussion of the nature of the schemata
of “sensuous concepts” and of their relation to the sense
image, is out of order in this chapter; and however valuable in
itself, bewilders the reader who very properly assumes for it a
relevancy which it does not possess. The pure concepts of the
understanding, whose schemata Kant is endeavouring to
define, are altogether different in nature from sensuous
representations, and can never be reduced in any form or
degree to an image. They are wholly transcendental,
representing pure syntheses unified through categories in
accordance with the form of inner sense. This, however, brings
us to our last main point.
 (c) Kant’s manner of employing the term category is a
typical example of his characteristic carelessness in the use of
his technical terms. Sometimes it signifies the pure forms of
understanding. But more frequently it stands for what he now,
for the first time, entitles schemata, namely, the pure
conceptual forms as modified through relation to time. To take
as examples the two chief categories of relation. The first
category of relation, viewed as a form of the pure
understanding, is the merely logical conception of that which
is always a subject and never a predicate. The corresponding
schema is the conception of that which has permanent
existence in time; it is not the logical notion of subject, but the
transcendental conception of substance. The pure logical
conception of ground and consequence is similarly
distinguished from the transcendental schema of cause and
effect.
This contrast is of supreme importance in the Critical
philosophy, and ought therefore to have been marked by a
careful distinction of terms. Had Kant restricted the term
category to denote the pure forms, and invariably employed
the term schemata to signify their more concrete counterparts,
many ambiguities and confusions would have been prevented.
The table of categories, in its distinction from the table of
logical forms, would then have been named the table of
schemata, and the definitions given in this chapter would have
been appended to it, as the proper supplement to the
metaphysical deduction, completing it by a careful definition
of each separate schema. For what Kant usually means when
he speaks of the categories are the schemata; and the chapter
before us therefore contains their delayed definitions.[1119] As
Kant has constantly been insisting, and as he again so
emphatically teaches in this chapter, the pure forms of
understanding, taken in and by themselves, apart from the
forms of intuition, have no relation to any object, and are mere
logical functions without content or determinate meaning.
From this point of view the misleading influence of Kant’s
architectonic may again be noted. It forces him to preface his
argument by introductory remarks which run entirely counter
to the very point which he is chiefly concerned to illustrate and
enforce, namely, the inseparability of conception and intuition
in all experience and knowledge. He does, indeed, draw
attention to the fact that the conditions which serve to realise
the pure concepts of understanding also at the same time
restrict them, but it is with their empirical employment that he
is here chiefly concerned.
Caird’s[1120] mode of expounding Kant’s doctrine of
schematism may serve as an example of the misleading
influence of Kant’s artificial method of introducing his
argument. As Caird accepts Kant’s initial statements at their
face value, he is led to read the entire chapter in accordance
with them, and so to interpret it as being a virtual recantation
of the assumptions which underlie the statement of its
problem. The truer view would rather seem to be that the
introduction is demanded by the exigencies of Kant’s
architectonic, and therefore yields no true account either of the
essential purpose of the chapter or of its actual contents.
Cohen not unjustly remarks that
“…recent writers are guilty of a very strange misreading of
Kant when they maintain, as if in opposition to him, a thought
to which his doctrine of schematism gives profound
expression, namely, that intuition and conception do not
function independently, and that thought, and still more
knowledge, is and must always be intuitive.”[1121]
Cohen fails, however, to draw attention to the cause of the
misunderstanding for which Kant must certainly share the
blame. Riehl,[1122] while adopting a somewhat similar view to
that here given, traces Kant’s misleading mode of stating the
problem to his holding a false view of the universality of the
concept. Such criticism of Kant, like that passed by Caird, is in
many respects justified, but the occasion upon which the
admonition is made to follow would none the less seem to be
ill-chosen.
It may be asked why Kant in this chapter so completely
ignores space. No really satisfactory answer seems to present
itself. It is true that time is the one universal form of all
intuition, of outer as well as of inner experience. It is also true
that, as Kant elsewhere shows, consciousness of time
presupposes consciousness of space for its own possibility, and
so to that extent may be regarded as including the latter form
of consciousness within itself. Nevertheless Kant’s
concentration on the temporal aspect of experience is
exceedingly arbitrary, and results in certain unfortunate
consequences. Owing to the manner in which Kant envisages
his problem[1123] he is bound, indeed, to lay the greater
emphasis upon time, but that need not have involved so
exclusive a recognition of its field and function. Possibly
Kant’s very natural preoccupation with his new and
revolutionary doctrines of inner sense and productive
imagination has something to do with the matter.
Though the definitions given of the various schemata,
especially of those of reality and existence, raise many
difficulties, consideration of them must be deferred.[1124] They
can be properly discussed only in connection with the
principles which Kant bases upon them. Only one further point
calls for present remark. Kant does not give a schema for each
of the categories. In the first two groups of pure conceptual
forms, those of quantity and of quality, he gives a schema only
for the third category in each case. Number is strictly not the
schema of quantity as such, but of totality. The schema of
quality is a definition only of limitation.[1125] This departure
from the demands of strict architectonic is made without
comment or explanation of any kind. Kant delights to insist
upon the confirmation given to his teaching by the fulfilment
of architectonic requirements; he is for the most part silent
when they fail to correspond. This architectonic was a hobby
sufficiently serious to yield him keen pleasure in its
elaboration, but was not so vital to his main purposes as to call
for stronger measures when shortcomings occurred.
In concluding this chapter Kant draws attention to the fact
that the sensuous conditions which serve to realise the pure
concepts also at the same time restrict their meaning. Their
wider meaning is, however, of merely logical character.[1126]
Their function, as pure concepts, lies solely in establishing
unity of representation; they do not therefore suffice to yield
knowledge of any object. Objective application “comes to
them solely from sensibility.” In these statements Kant
expounds one of his fundamental doctrines, but in a manner
which does less than justice to the independent value of pure
thought. As he elsewhere teaches,[1127] it is not sense that sets
limits to understanding; it is the pure forms of thought that
enable the mind to appreciate the limited and merely
phenomenal character of the world experienced.
 CHAPTER II

SYSTEM OF ALL PRINCIPLES OF PURE

UNDERSTANDING
The introductory remarks to this important chapter are again
dictated by Kant’s architectonic, and set its actual contents in
an extremely false light. Kant would seem to imply that as the
Analytic of Concepts has determined all the various conceptual
elements constitutive of experience, and has proved that they
serve as predicates of possible judgments, it now remains to
show in an Analytic of Principles what a priori synthetic
judgments, or in other words what principles, can actually be
based upon them. Though this is a quite misleading account of
the relation holding between the two books of the Analytic, it
has been accepted by many commentators.[1128] For several
reasons it must be rejected. The pure forms of understanding
are not predicates for possible judgments. They underlie
judgment as a whole, expressing the relation through which its
total contents are organised. Thus in the proposition “cinnabar
is heavy” the category of substance and attribute is not in any
sense the predicate; it articulates the entire judgment,
interpreting the experienced contents in terms of the dual
relation of substance and attribute. Judgment, its nature and
conditions, is the real problem of the misnamed Analytic of
Concepts. As already indicated,[1129] the two main divisions of
the Analytic deal with one and the same problem. But while
doing so, they differ in two respects. In the first place, as
above noted, the Analytic of Concepts supplies no proof of the
validity of particular categories, but only a quite general
demonstration that forms of unity, such as are involved in all
judgment, are demanded for the possibility of apperception.
The proofs of the indispensableness of specific categories are
first given in the Analytic of Principles. Secondly, in the
Analytic of Concepts the temporal aspect of experience falls
somewhat into the background, whereas in the Analytic of
Principles it is emphasised.
 From these two fundamental points of difference there
arises a third distinguishing feature. When the categories, or
rather schemata, are explicitly defined, and receive individual
proof, they are found to be just those principles that are
demanded for the possibility of the positive sciences. This is,
from Kant’s point of view, no mere coincidence. Scientific
knowledge is possible only in so far as experience is grounded
on a priori conditions; and the conditions of sense-experience
are also the conditions of its conceptual interpretation. But
while the Analytic of Concepts deals almost exclusively with
ordinary experience, in the Analytic of Principles the physical
sciences receive their due share of consideration.
First and Second Sections. The Highest Principles of
Analytic and Synthetic Judgments.—These two sections
contain nothing not already developed earlier in the Critique.
Though the principle of non-contradiction is a merely negative
test of truth, it can serve as a universal and completely
adequate criterion in the case of all judgments that are analytic
of given concepts. The principle of synthetic judgments, on the
other hand, is the principle whereby we are enabled to advance
beyond a given concept so as to attach a predicate which does
not stand to it in the relation either of identity or of
contradiction. This principle is the principle of the possibility
of experience. Though a priori synthetic judgments cannot be
logically demonstrated as following from higher and more
universal propositions,[1130] they are capable of a
transcendental proof, that is, as being conditions of sense-
experience.
“The possibility of experience is what gives objective
reality to all our a priori knowledge.”[1131] “Although we
know a priori in synthetic judgments a great deal regarding
space in general and the figures which productive imagination
describes in it, and can obtain such judgments without actually
requiring any experience; yet even this knowledge would be
nothing but a playing with a mere figment of the brain, were it
not that space has to be regarded as a condition of the
appearances which constitute the material for outer
experience….”[1132]
 In the first part of the last sentence, as in the page which
precedes it, Kant would seem to be inculcating his doctrine of
a pure a priori manifold, but the latter part of the statement
would not be affected by the admission that space is not an
independent intuition but only the form of outer sense.
Third Section. Systematic Representation of all the
Synthetic Principles of Understanding.—Kant is not
concerned in this section with the fundamental propositions of
mathematical science, since, on his view, they rest upon the
evidence of intuition. He claims, however, that their objective
validity depends upon two principles, which, though not
themselves mathematical in the strict sense, may conveniently
be so described from the transcendental standpoint—the
principle of the “axioms of intuition,” and the principle of the
“anticipations of experience.” The physicist, who takes the
legitimacy of applied mathematics for granted, has no
occasion to formulate these principles. That he none the less
presupposes them is shown, however, by his unquestioning
assumption that nature conforms to the strict requirements of
pure mathematics. And since the principles involve pure
concepts, the one embodying the schema of number, and the
other the schema of quality, they fall outside the scope of the
Transcendental Aesthetic, and call for a deduction similar to
that of the other categories.
As already indicated, Kant’s procedure is extremely
arbitrary, and is due to the perverting influence of his
architectonic. Proof of the validity of applied mathematics has
already been given in the Aesthetic[1133] of the first edition—a
proof which is further developed in the Prolegomena,[1134] and
recast in the second edition so as to constitute a separate
“transcendental exposition.”[1135] As Kant teaches in these
passages, the objective validity of applied mathematics rests
upon proof that space and time are the a priori forms of outer
and inner sense. The new deductions of the schemata of
number and quality, which he now proceeds to formulate, are
quite unnecessary, and also are by no means conclusive in the
manner of their proof. This, however, is more than
compensated by the extremely valuable proofs of the
schematised categories of relation which he gives in the
section on the Analogies of Experience. The section on the
Postulates of Empirical Experience, which deals with the
principles of modality, also contains matter of very real
importance.
The principles with which this chapter has to deal can thus
be arranged according to the fourfold division of the table of
categories: (1) Axioms of Intuition, (2) Anticipations of
Perception, (3) Analogies of Experience, (4) Postulates of
Empirical Thought. And following the distinction already
drawn in the Analytic of Concepts,[1136] Kant distinguishes
between the Axioms and Anticipations on the one hand, and
the Analogies and Postulates on the other. The former
determine the conditions of intuition in space and time, and
may therefore be called mathematical and constitutive. They
express what is necessarily involved in every intuition as such.
The latter are dynamical. They are principles according to
which we must think the existence of an object as determined
in its relation to others. While, therefore, the first set of
principles can be intuitively verified, the second set have only
an indirect relation to the objects experienced. Whereas a
relation of causality can never be intuited as holding between
two events, but only thought into them, spatial and temporal
relations are direct objects of the mind. Similarly, the relation
of substance and attribute cannot be intuited; it can only be
thought into what is intuited. The mathematical principles thus
acquire an immediate (though, be it remembered, merely de
facto) evidence; the a priori certainty, equally complete, of the
dynamical principles can be verified only through the
circuitous channel of transcendental proof.
The composite constitution of these sections finds striking
illustration in the duplicated account of this distinction which
precedes and follows the table of principles. The two accounts
can hardly have been written in immediate succession to one
another. The earlier in location[1137] is probably the later in
date. It would seem to rest upon some such uncritical
distinction as that drawn in the Prolegomena between
judgments of perception and judgments of experience.[1138]
The second and briefer account[1139] is not open to this
objection.
 In A 178-80 = B 220-3 Kant develops a further point of
difference between the mathematical and the dynamical
principles, or rather explains what he means by his all too brief
and consequently ambiguous reference in the first of the above
accounts to “existence” (Dasein). The mathematical principles
are constitutive; the dynamical are regulative. That is to say,
the mathematical principles lay down the conditions for the
generation or construction of appearances. The dynamical only
specify rules whereby we can define the relation in which
existences contingently given are connected. As existence can
never be constructed a priori, we are limited to the
determination of the interrelations between existences all of
which must be given. Thus the principle of causality enables
us to predict a priori that for every event there must exist
some antecedent cause; but only through empirical
investigation can we determine which of the particular given
antecedents may be so described. That is to say, the principle
defines conditions to which experience must conform, but
does not enable us to construct it in advance. This distinction
is inspired by the contrast between mathematical and physical
science, and is valuable as defining the empirically regulative
function of the a priori dynamical principles; but its somewhat
forced character[1140] becomes apparent when we bear in mind
Kant’s previous distinction between the principles of pure
mathematical science and the transcendental principles which
justify their application to experience. Those latter principles
concern existence as apprehended through schematised
categories, and are consequently, as regards certainty and
method of proof, in exactly the same position as the dynamical
principles. This is sufficiently evident from his own
illustration of sunlight.[1141] There is as little possibility of
“constructing” its intensity as of determining a priori the cause
of an effect.
I. THE AXIOMS OF INTUITION

All appearances are in their intuition extensive magnitudes.

Or as in the second edition: All intuitions are extensive
magnitudes.
‘Extensive’ is here used in a very wide sense to include
temporal as well as spatial magnitude. Kant bases this
principle upon the schema of number, and the proof which he
propounds in its support is therefore designed to show that
apprehension of an object of perception, whether spatial or
temporal, is only possible in so far as we bring that schema
into play. But though this is the professed purpose of the
argument, number is itself never even mentioned; and the
reason for the omission is doubtless Kant’s consciousness of
the obvious objections to any such position. That aspect of the
argument is therefore, no doubt without explicit intention, kept
in the background. But even as thus given, the argument must
have left Kant with some feeling of dissatisfaction. Loyalty to
his architectonic scheme prevents such doubt and disquietude
from finding further expression.
The argument, in its first-edition statement, starts from the
formulation of a view of space and time directly opposed to
that of the Aesthetic:[1142]
“I entitle a magnitude extensive when the representation of
the parts makes possible, and therefore necessarily precedes,
the representation of the whole. I cannot represent to myself a
line, however small, without drawing it in thought, i.e.
generating from a point all its parts one after another, and thus
for the first time recording this intuition.”
Similarly with even the smallest time. And as all
appearances are intuited in space or time, every appearance, so
far as intuited, is an extensive magnitude, that is to say, can be
apprehended only through successive generation of its parts.
All appearances are “aggregates, i.e. manifolds of antecedently
given parts.”
This definition of extensive magnitude involves an
assumption which Kant also employs elsewhere in the
Critique,[1143] but which he nowhere attempts to establish by
argument; namely, that it is impossible to apprehend a
manifold save in succession. This assumption is, of course,
entirely false (at least as applied to our empirical
consciousness), as has since been amply demonstrated by
experimental investigation. Kant adopted it in the earlier
subjectivist stage of his teaching, before he had come to
recognise that consciousness of space is involved in
consciousness of time. But even after he had done so, the
earlier view still tended to gain the upper hand whenever the
doctrines of inner sense and of productive imagination were
under consideration. For in regard to the transcendental
activities of productive imagination, which are essentially
synthetic, Kant continued to treat time as more fundamental
than space. But, as already noted,[1144] a directly opposite view
of the interrelations of space and time is expounded in
passages added in the second edition.
The two central paragraphs are very externally connected
with the main argument, and are probably later interpolations.
[1145] In the first of these two paragraphs Kant ascribes the
synthetic activity involved in the “generation of figures” to the
productive imagination, and maintains that geometry is
rendered possible by this faculty. In the other paragraph Kant
deals with arithmetic, but makes no reference to the productive
imagination. Its argument is limited to the contention that
propositions expressive of numerical relation, though
synthetic, are not universal. They are not axioms, but
numerical formulae. This distinction has no very obvious
bearing on the present argument, and serves only to indicate
Kant’s recognition that no rigid parallelism can be established
between geometry and arithmetic. There are, it would seem,
no arithmetical axioms corresponding to the axioms of Euclid.
[1146]

The concluding paragraph is a restatement of the argument

of the Aesthetic and of § 13, Note i. of the Prolegomena.
Appearances are not things in themselves. They are
conditioned by the pure intuitional forms, and are therefore
subject to pure mathematics “in all its precision.” Were we
compelled to regard the objects of the senses as things in
themselves, an applied science of geometry (again taken, in
Kant’s habitual manner, as typically representing the
mathematical disciplines) would not be possible. The only new
element in the argument is the reference to synthesis as
presupposed in all apprehension.
The additional proof with which in the second edition Kant
prefaces the entire argument calls for no special comment. It
may, however, be noted that though in the argument of the first
edition the need of synthesis in all apprehension is clearly
taught, the term synthesis is not itself employed except in the
central and final paragraphs. In the proof given in the second
edition both the term and what it stands for are allowed due
prominence.
2. THE ANTICIPATIONS OF PERCEPTION

In all appearances sensation and the real which

corresponds to it in the object (realitas phaenomenon) has an
intensive magnitude or degree. Or as in the second edition: In
all appearances the real, which is an object of sensation, has
intensive magnitude or degree.
We may first analyse the total section. The first
paragraph[1147] explains the term anticipation. The second and
third paragraphs give a first proof of the principle. Paragraphs
four to ten treat of continuity in space, time and change, and of
the impossibility of empty space, and also afford Kant the
opportunity to develop his dynamical theory of matter, and so
to indicate the contribution which transcendental philosophy is
able to make towards a more adequate understanding of the
principles of physical science. The eleventh and twelfth
paragraphs, evidently later interpolations, give a second proof
of the principle which in one important respect varies from the
first proof. In the second edition a third proof akin to this
second proof, but carrying it a stage further, is added in the
form of a new first paragraph.
Kant’s reason for changing the formulation of the principle
in the second edition is evidently the unsatisfactoriness of the
phrase “sensation and the real.”[1148] The principle, properly
interpreted, applies not, as the first edition title and also the
second proof would lead us to expect, to sensation itself, but to
its object, realitas phaenomenon. It is phenomenalist in its
teaching. The emphatic term “anticipation” is adopted by Kant
to mark that in this principle we are able in a priori fashion to
determine something in regard to what in itself is purely
empirical. Sensation as such, being the matter of experience,
can never be known a priori. Its quality, as being a colour or a
taste, depends upon factors which are for us, owing to the
limitations of our knowledge, wholly contingent. None the less
in one particular respect we can predetermine the object of all
sensation, and so can anticipate experience, even in its
material aspect.
The first proof is as follows. Apprehension, so far as it takes
place through a sensation, occupies only a single moment; it
does not involve any successive synthesis proceeding from
parts to the complete representation. That which is
apprehended cannot, therefore, possess extensive magnitude.
But, as already stated in the chapter on Schematism, reality is
that in appearance which corresponds to a sensation. It is
realitas phaenomenon. The absence of it is negation = 0. Now
every sensation is capable of diminution; between reality in
the appearance and negation there is a continuous series of
many possible intermediate sensations, the difference between
any two of which is always smaller than the difference
between the given sensation and zero. That is to say, the real in
appearance has intensive magnitude or degree. The argument
is from capability of variation in the intensity of sensation to
existence of degree in its object or cause. For the most part this
reality is spoken of as that which is apprehended in sensation,
but Kant adds that if it be
“…viewed as cause either of sensation or of other reality in
appearance, such as change, the degree of its reality … is then
entitled a moment, as for instance the moment of gravity.”
The obscurity of what in itself is a very simple and direct
argument would seem to be traceable to the lack of clearness
in Kant’s own mind as to what is to be signified by reality. The
implied distinction between sensation and its object has not
been clearly formulated. Definitions have, indeed, been given
of reality in the chapter on Schematism;[1149] but they are
extremely difficult to decipher. Kant never varies from the
assertion that reality is “that which corresponds to sensation in
general.” Our difficulty is with the additional qualifications.
This reality, he further declares, is
“…that, the concept of which in itself points to an existence
[Sein] in time.”[1150]
The words ‘in time’ would seem to show that what is
referred to is reality in the realm of appearance, the realitas
phaenomenon of the Anticipations. But immediately below we
find the following sentence:
“As time is only the form of intuition, and consequently of
objects as appearances, what corresponds in them to sensation
is the transcendental matter of all objects as things in
themselves, thinghood [Sachheit], reality.”[1151]
The teaching of the first sentence is phenomenalist; that of
the other is subjectivist.
Now in the section on Anticipations of Perception the
phenomenalist tendencies of Kant’s thought are decidedly the
more prominent. The implied distinction is threefold, between
sensation as subjective state possessing intensive magnitude,
spatial realities that possess both intensive and extensive
magnitude, and the thing in itself. Objects as appearances are
regarded as causes of sensation and as producing changes in
one another.
The explanation of the phenomenalist character of this
section is not far to seek. Kant’s chief purpose in it, as we shall
find, is to develop the dynamical theory of matter to which he
had long held, and which, as he was convinced, would
ultimately be substituted for the mechanistic view to which
almost all physicists then adhered. We can easily understand
how in this endeavour the realist tendencies of his thinking
should at once come to the surface, and why he should have
been constrained to develop a position more precise and less
ambiguous than that expressed in the definitions of reality and
degree given in the chapter on Schematism. With these
preliminary explanations we may pass to Kant’s second proof
of his principle.
A link of connection between the two proofs may be found
in the reason which Kant in the first proof gives for his
assertion that sensation cannot possess extensive magnitude—
the reason, namely, that as its apprehension takes place in a
single moment, it involves no element of synthesis. In his
second proof Kant modifies this contention, and maintains that
we can abstract from the extensive magnitude of the
appearance, and yet can recognise a synthesis as being
involved.
 “The real which corresponds to sensations in general, as
opposed to negation = 0, represents only something the very
conception of which contains an existence [ein Sein], and
signifies nothing but the synthesis in an empirical
consciousness in general.”[1152]
Kant adds that in a single moment we can represent to
ourselves as involved in the bare sensation
“…a synthesis of the uniform progression from zero to the
given empirical consciousness.”
These statements are far from clear; but it is hardly
necessary to criticise them in detail. Since Kant is
endeavouring to prove that a schema, that of reality or
limitation, is involved in the apprehension of sensation, he is
bound in consistency to maintain, in accordance with the
teaching of his deduction of the categories, that the application
of the schema demands some species of synthesis.
The third proof, added in the second edition,[1153] is
somewhat more explicit, and represents a further and last stage
in Kant’s vain endeavour to harmonise the teaching of this
section with his general principles. In the empirical
consciousness of sensation there is
“…a synthesis of the different quantities involved in the
generation of a sensation from its beginning in pure intuition =
0 to its particular required magnitude.”
Or again, apprehension of magnitude is apprehension
“…in which the empirical consciousness can in a certain
time increase from zero up to its given measure.”
Here, again, what Kant asserts as occurring in our
awareness of sensation calls for much more rigorous
demonstration. Like the argument of the second proof, it is not
independently established; it is a mere corollary to the general
principles of his deduction of the categories.
Thus Kant’s thesis, that the apprehension of sense qualities
as intensive magnitudes presupposes a synthesis according to
an a priori schema, is both obscure in statement, and
unconvincing in argument; and some of the assertions made,
especially in reference to the occurrence of synthesis, would
seem to be hardly less arbitrary than the connection which
Kant professes to trace between logical “quality,” as
affirmation or negation, and the dynamical intensity of
sensuous qualities. For, as already indicated,[1154] logical
“quality” and intensive magnitude have nothing in common
save the name.
Kant next proceeds to a discussion of the general problem
of continuity. The connection is somewhat forced. But if we
overlook the artificial ordering of the argument and are content
to regard what is given as in the nature of parenthetical
comment, we find in the middle paragraph of this section an
excellent statement of his view of the nature of continuity and
a very clear statement of his dynamical theory of matter.
Kant develops the conception of continuity (a) in reference
to space and time, and (b) in its application to the intensity of
sensations and of their causes.
(a) Kant’s own words require no comment:
“Space and time are quanta continua because no part of
them can be given, save as enclosed between limits (points or
moments), and therefore as being itself a space or a time.
Space therefore consists only of spaces, time only of times.
Points and moments are only limits, i.e. mere positions that
limit space and time. But positions always presuppose the
intuitions which they limit or are intended to limit; and out of
mere positions, viewed as constituents capable of being given
prior to space and time, neither space nor time can be
constructed. Such magnitudes may also be called flowing,
since the synthesis of productive imagination involved in their
production is a progression in time, and the continuity of time
is ordinarily denoted by the expression flowing.”[1155]
(b) When Kant proceeds to apply the principle of continuity
to intensive magnitude, his conclusion rests upon a somewhat
different basis. He argues that appearances must be continuous
owing to the fact that they are apprehended in space and time.
[1156] So far as they are extended in space and enduring in time
that may perhaps be true; but Kant’s assertion has a wider
sweep. It implies that sensations and the physical conditions of
sensation, as for instance the sensation of red or the force of
gravity, are capable of existing in every possible degree
between zero and any given intensity. This affords the key to
his method of formulating his second and third proofs of the
principle of Anticipations of Perception, which, in the form in
which he interprets it, contains this further implication of
continuity. These proofs are inspired by the desire to make all
apprehension, even that of simple sensation, a temporal
process, and by that indirect means to establish for sensuous
intensity and its objective conditions a continuity similar to
that of space and time. The proof is, however, as we have seen,
inconclusive. This application of continuity must be regarded
as more in the nature of a mere hypothesis than Kant is willing
to recognise. As regards sensations, it would seem to have
been positively disproved by the results of experimental
psychology.
From his supposed proof of the continuity of all intensive
magnitudes Kant draws two further conclusions: first, that
experience can never be made to yield proof of the void in
either space or time. For if all reality can exist in innumerable
degrees, and if each sense has a determinate degree of
receptivity, the complete absence of reality can never be itself
experienced. Inference to such absence is also impossible for a
second reason, namely, that one and the same extensive
magnitude may be completely occupied by an infinite number
of different intensive degrees, indefinitely approximating to,
and yet also indefinitely differing from, zero. Kant is here
referring to the dynamical theory of matter which he had long
held,[1157] and which he expounds in opposition to the current
mechanistic view.[1158] The mechanistic theory rests, he
contends, upon an assumption purely metaphysical and
therefore wholly dogmatic, that the real in space has no
internal differences, but is uniform like the empty space in
which it exists.[1159] In accordance with this assumption
physicists infer that all qualitative differences in our sensations
must be due to merely quantitative differences in their material
causes, and ultimately to differences in the number and
distribution of the constituent parts of material bodies. If two
bodies of the same volume differ in weight or in inertia, the
variation must be traced to differences in the amount of matter,
or, otherwise stated, to differences in the amount of
unoccupied space, in the two bodies. To this view Kant
opposes his own hypothesis—for it is in this more modest
form that it is presented in these paragraphs—namely, that
matter occupies space by intensity and not by mere bulk, and
that it may therefore be diminished indefinitely in degree
without for that reason ceasing completely to fill the same
extensive area. Thus an expanded force such as heat, filling
space without leaving the smallest part of it empty, may be
indefinitely diminished in degree, and yet may still with these
lesser degrees continue to occupy that space as completely as
before. This may not, Kant admits, be the true explanation of
physical differences, but it at least has the merit of freeing the
understanding from metaphysical preconceptions, and of
demonstrating the possibility of an alternative to the current
view. If matter has intensity as well as extensity, and so can
vary in quality as well as in quantity, physical science may
perhaps be fruitfully developed on dynamical lines.
3. THE ANALOGIES OF EXPERIENCE

The principle of the Analogies is: Experience is possible

only through the representation of a necessary connection of
perceptions.[1160]
Kant introduces the three analogies with the statement of an
underlying principle, which corresponds to the central thesis of
the transcendental deduction. In the second edition this general
principle is reformulated, and a new proof is added. These
alterations do not seem, however, to be of any special
significance. The two proofs repeat the main argument of the
transcendental deduction, but with special emphasis upon the
temporal aspect of experience. The categories of relation, as
schematised, yield the Analogies, which acquire objective
validity in so far as they render experience possible. The first
proof (given in the second paragraph of the first edition)
maintains that they are indispensable for apperception, and the
second proof (that of the second edition) that they are
indispensable for knowledge of objects. The references to time
in the second proof are too condensed to be intelligible save in
the light of the more explicit arguments given in support of the
three Analogies.
The first paragraph in the first edition must be a later
interpolation, as its assertion that simultaneity is a mode of
time conflicts with the proof given of the first Analogy, but
agrees with what must be regarded as a later interpolated
passage introductory to that proof.[1161] This paragraph is also
peculiar in another respect. Hitherto Kant has traced the
existence of the three analogies to the three categories of
relation, each of which conditions a separate schema. But in
this paragraph he bases their threefold form on the fact that
time has three modes, duration, sequence,[1162] and
coexistence, and that there is therefore a threefold problem:
first, what is involved in consciousness of duration; secondly,
what is involved in consciousness of succession; and thirdly,
what is involved in consciousness of coexistence. This is not,
however, a satisfactory mode of stating the matter, for it might
seem to imply that the three aspects of time can be separately
apprehended, and that each has its own independent
conditions. What Kant really proves is that all three involve
one another. We can only be conscious of duration in contrast
to succession, and of succession in contrast to the permanent,
while both involve consciousness of coexistence. The three
analogies thus treat of three aspects of the same problem, the
first connecting with the category of substance, the second
with that of causality, and the third with that of reciprocity.
The only point that calls for further comment[1163] concerns
Kant’s adoption of the term Analogy as a title for the three
principles of “relation.” The term is employed in contra-
distinction to constitutive principle or axiom; and Kant points
out that this usage of the term must be carefully distinguished
from the other or mathematical. “In philosophy analogy is not
the likeness of two quantitative but of two qualitative
relations.” In mathematical analogy a fourth term can be
discovered from three given terms; but in an ‘analogy of
experience’ we possess a rule that suffices only for the
determination of the relation to a term not given, never for
knowledge of this term itself. Thus if we are informed that 15
is to x as 5 is to 10, the value of x can be determined as 30. But
if it be stated that a given event stands to an antecedent event
as effect to cause, only the relation holding between the events
can be specified, not the actual cause itself. The principle of
causality thus serves only as a regulative principle, directing
us to search for the cause of an event among its antecedents.
Riehl has suggested a very different explanation of the term,
namely, as signifying that the categories of relation are
employed only on the analogy of the corresponding, pure
logical forms.
“In so far as I know matter in terms of its empirical
properties as the substance of outer experiences, I do not gain
knowledge of the nature of matter but only of its relation to
my thinking. In all judgments upon outer things I employ
matter as the subject. That knowledge is therefore nothing but
an analogy to the conceptual relation of a subject to its
predicates. Matter is related to its properties and effects in the
realm of appearance as the subject of a categorical judgment is
related to its predicates. In so far as an antecedent is entitled
the cause of an event, we do not gain knowledge of its nature
but only of the analogy of the relation of cause and effect with
that of antecedent and consequent in a hypothetical
proposition; the connection of the changes is analogous to the
conceptual relation of ground and consequence; the principle
of the sufficient ground of changes is an analogy of
experience.”[1164]
This explanation may at first sight seem to be supported by
Kant’s own statement in the concluding paragraph of the
section before us.
“Through these principles we are justified in combining
appearances only according to an analogy with the logical and
general unity of concepts …”[1165]
This assertion is, however, incidental to Kant’s explanation
that the analogies are not principles of “transcendental” (i.e.
transcendent), but only of empirical application—an
explanation itself in turn occasioned by his desire to connect
his present argument with the chapter on Schematism. This
interpretation of the term analogy is probably, therefore, of the
nature of an afterthought. Having adopted the term on the
grounds above stated in A 179-80 = B 222, he finds in it an
opportunity to reinforce his previous assertion of the
restricting character of the time condition through which
categories are transformed into schemata. The entire paragraph
is probably, as Adickes remarks, a later interpolation. But
there are further reasons why we cannot accept this passage as
representing the real origin of the term analogy. It would
involve adoption of the subjectivist standpoint from which
Riehl, despite his otherwise realistic reading of Kant,
interprets Kant’s phenomenalist doctrines. For it implies that it
is only in the noumenal, and not also in the phenomenal
sphere, that substantial existences and genuinely dynamical
activities are to be found.[1166] It would also seem to imply,
what is by no means Kant’s invariable position, the absolute
validity of the logical forms. And lastly, it would involve the
priority of the logical to the real use of the categories, a
violation of Critical principles of which Kant is himself
occasionally guilty, but never, as it would seem, in this
exaggerated form.
A. First Analogy.—All appearances contain the permanent
(substance) as the object itself, and the changeable as its mere
determination, i.e. as a mode in which the object exists. Or as
in the second edition: In all change of appearances substance
is permanent; its quantum in Nature neither increases nor
diminishes.
The second paragraph[1167] is of composite character. Its
first part (consisting of the first three sentences) and its second
part give separate proofs, involving assertions directly
contradictory of one another. The one asserts change and
simultaneity to be modes of time; the other denies this. They
cannot, therefore, be of the same date. The first would seem to
be the later; it connects with the first paragraph of the
preceding section.
In the first edition the principle is defined as expressing the
schema of the dual category of substance and attribute. In the
second edition it is reformulated in much less satisfactory
form, as being the scientific principle of the conservation (i.e.
indestructibility) of matter. This second formulation
emphasises the weaker side of the argument of the first
edition, and is largely due to the perverting influence of Kant’s
method of distinguishing between the Analytic of Concepts
and the Analytic of Judgments. It reveals Kant’s growing
tendency to contrast the two divisions of the Analytic, as
dealing, the one with ordinary experience, and the other with
its scientific reorganisation.[1168]
The first proof in the first edition gives explicit expression
to a presupposition underlying this entire section, namely, that
all apprehension is necessarily successive, or in other words
that it is impossible to apprehend a manifold save in
succession.[1169] From this assumption it follows that if such
succession is not only to occur but is to be apprehended as
occurring, and if we are to be able to distinguish between the
successive order of all our apprehensions and the order of
coexisting independent existences, a permanent must be
thought into the succession, that is to say, the successive
experiences must be interpreted into an objective order in
terms of the category of abiding substance and changing
attributes. Kant neither here nor elsewhere makes any attempt
to explain how this position is to be reconciled with his
doctrine that space can be intuited as well as time; and there is
equal difficulty in reconciling it with the doctrine developed in
his second proof (in the second division of this same
paragraph) that time itself does not change but only the
appearances in it.
As above shown,[1170] there are two tendencies in Kant’s
treatment of time, each of which carries with it its own set of
connected consequences. There is the view that consciousness
of time as a whole preconditions consciousness of any part of
it. This tends to recognition of simultaneity as a mode of time
and of the simultaneous as apprehended in a single non-
successive act of apprehension. On the other hand, there is the
counter-view that consciousness of time is only possible
through the successive combination of its parts. This leads to
the assertion that simultaneity is not a mode of time, and that
time itself cannot be apprehended save as the result of
synthesis in accordance with unifying categories. Through the
categories there arises consciousness of objectivity, and so for
the first time consciousness of a distinction between the
subjective which exists invariably and exclusively in
succession, and the objective which may exist either as
successive or as permanent, and in whose existence both
elements are, indeed, inseparably involved.
To turn now to Kant’s second[1171] proof of the principle;
[1172] it is as follows. All our perceptions are in time, and in
time are represented as either coexistent or successive. Time
itself cannot change,[1173] for only as in it can change be
represented. Time, however, cannot by itself be apprehended.
As such, it is the mere empty form of our perceptions. There
must be found in the objects of perception some abiding
substrate or substance which will represent the permanence of
time in consciousness, and through relation to which
coexistence and succession of events may be perceived. And
since only in relation to this substrate can time relations be
apprehended, it must be altogether unchangeable, and may
therefore[1174] be called substance. And being unchangeable it
can neither increase nor diminish in quantity. Kant, without
further argument, at once identifies this substance with matter.
This proof may be restated in briefer fashion.[1175] The
consciousness of events in time involves the dating of them in
time. But that is only possible in so far as we have a
representation of the time in which they are to be dated. Time,
however, not being by itself experienced, must be represented
in consciousness by an abiding substrate in which all change
takes place, and since, as the substrate of all change, it will
necessarily be unchangeable, it may be called substance.
The argument, in both proofs, is needlessly abstract, and as
already remarked,[1176] the reason of this abstractness is that
Kant here, as in the chapter on Schematism, unduly ignores
space, limiting his analysis to inner sense. He defines the
schema of substance as the permanence of the real in time, i.e.
as the representation of the real which persists while all else
changes. As the second edition of the Critique shows,[1177]
Kant himself came to recognise the inadequacy of this
definition, and therefore of the proof of the first Analogy.
Consciousness is only possible through the representation of
objects in space. Only in outer sense is a permanent given in
contrast to which change may be perceived. The proof ought
therefore to have proceeded in the following manner. Time can
be conceived only as motion, and motion is perceivable only
against a permanent background in space. Consciousness of
time therefore involves consciousness of a permanent in space.
He might have added that consciousness of relative time
involves consciousness of change in relation to something
relatively permanent, and that the scientific conception of all
changes as taking place in a single absolute time involves the
determining of change through relation to something
absolutely permanent, this ultimate standard being found in the
heavenly bodies. By the permanent is not meant the
immovable, but only that which is uniform and unchanging in
its motions. The uniform motions of the heavenly bodies
constitute our ultimate standard of time. The degree of their
uniformity is the measure of our approximation to an absolute
standard. A marginal note upon this Analogy in Kant’s private
copy of the Critique reveals Kant’s late awakened recognition
of the necessity of this mode of restating the argument.
“Here the proof must be so developed as to apply only to
substances as phenomena of outer sense, and must therefore be
drawn from space, which with its determinations exists at all
times. In space all change is motion….”[1178]
That the new argument of the second edition still proceeds
on the same lines as the second argument of the first edition is
probably due, as Erdmann remarks,[1179] to Kant’s
unwillingness to make the extensive alterations which would
have been called for in the chapter on Schematism as well as in
the statement of this Analogy.
A second serious objection to Kant’s treatment of the first
Analogy follows at once from the above. Kant identifies the
permanent which represents time in consciousness with matter,
and seeks to prove by means of this identification the principle
of the conservation of matter.[1180] That principle is not really
capable of transcendental proof. It is not a presupposition of
possible experience, but merely a generalisation empirically
grounded. Kant is here confounding a particular theory as to
the manner in which the element of permanence, necessary to
possible experience, is realised, with the much more general
conclusion which alone can be established by transcendental
methods. His argument also conflicts with his own repeated
assertion that the notion of change, in so far as it is distinct
from that of temporal succession or of motion in space, is
empirical, and consequently falls outside the scope of
transcendental enquiry. By the conservation of matter we mean
the constancy of the weight of matter throughout all changes.
But the only permanent which can be postulated as necessary
to render our actual consciousness of time possible, consists of
spatial objects sufficiently constant to act as a standard by
comparison with which motions may be measured against one
another. And as this first Analogy, properly understood, thus
deals solely with spatial changes of bodies, the principle of the
conservation of matter has no real connection with it.
Then thirdly, and lastly, Kant takes this first Analogy as
showing the indispensable function performed in experience
by the category of substance and attribute. Substance, he
argues, corresponds to the time in which events happen, and
its attributes correspond to the changing events. Just as all
events are only to be conceived as happening in time, so too
all changes are only to be conceived as changes in an abiding
substance. These, he would seem to hold, are simply two ways
of making one and the same assertion. Now Kant may perhaps
be right in insisting that all change is change in, and not of,
time. Unity of consciousness would seem to demand
consciousness of a single time in which all events happen. But
this relation of time to its events does not justify the same
assertion being made of substance. Substance may be what
corresponds to time in general, and may represent it in
consciousness, but we cannot for that reason say that changes
are also only in and not of it. To regard the changes in this way
as attributes inhering in substance directly contradicts the view
developed in the second Analogy. For the notion of substance
is there treated as an implication of the principle of causality.
Substance, Kant there insists, is not a bare static existence in
which changes take place, but a dynamic energy which from
its very nature is in perpetual necessitated change. Change is
not change in, but change of, substance.
Even in the passage in which Kant identifies the notion of
the permanent in change with that of substance and attribute,
he shows consciousness of this difficulty. We must not, he
says, separate the substance from its accidents, treating it as a
separate existence. The accidents are merely the special forms
of its existence. But all the same, he adds, withdrawing the
words which he has just uttered, such a separation of the
changing accidents from the abiding substance is
“unavoidable, owing to the conditions of the logical
employment of our understanding.”[1181] Kant is here so hard
pressed to account for the use of the category of substance and
attribute in experience, and to explain the contradictions to
which it gives rise, that the only way he sees out of the
difficulty is to refer the contradictions involved in the category
to the constitution of our understanding in its logical
employment. Yet as such employment of understanding is,
according to his own showing, secondary to, and dependent
upon, its “real” employment, the category of substance and
attribute can hardly have originated in this way.
We must, then, conclude that Kant offers no sufficient
deduction or explanation of the category of substance and
attribute, and as he does so nowhere else, we are driven to the
further conclusion that he is unable to account for its use in
experience, or at least to reconcile it in any adequate fashion
with the principle of causality.
B. Second Analogy.—Everything that happens, i.e. begins
to be, presupposes something on which it follows according to
a rule. Or as in the second edition: All changes take place in
conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect.
This section, as Kant very rightly felt, contains one of the
most important and fundamental arguments of the entire
Critique; and this would seem to be the reason why he has so
multiplied the proofs which he gives of the Analogy. Within
the limits of the section no less than five distinct proofs are to
be found, and still another was added in the second edition. As
Adickes[1182] argues, it is extremely unlikely that Kant should
have written five very similar proofs in immediate succession.
The probability is that they are of independent origin and were
later combined to constitute this section; or, if we hold with
Adickes that Kant first composed a “brief outline,” we may
conclude that he combined the one or more proofs, which that
outline contained, with others of earlier or of later origin. The
first to the fourth paragraphs of the first edition contain a first
proof; the fifth to the seventh a second proof (a repetition of
the first proof but in indirect form); the eighth to the tenth a
third proof (almost identical with the first); the eleventh to the
thirteenth a fourth proof (different in character from all the
others); the fourteenth a fifth proof (probably the latest in time
of writing; an anticipation of the argument in the second
edition). The paragraph added in the second edition (the
second paragraph in the text of the second edition) gives a
sixth and last proof.
We may first state the central argument, deferring treatment
of such additional points as arise in connection with Kant’s
varying formulations of it in his successive proofs. The second
Analogy, though crabbedly, diffusely, and even confusedly
stated, is one of the finest and most far-reaching pieces of
argument in the whole Critique. It is of special historical
importance as being Kant’s answer to Hume’s denial of the
validity of the causal principle. Hume had maintained that we
can never be conscious of anything but mere succession. Kant
in reply seeks to prove that consciousness of succession is
only possible through consciousness of a necessity that
determines the order of the successive events.
Kant, we must bear in mind, accepts much of Hume’s
criticism of the category of causality. The general principle
that every event must have an antecedent cause is, Kant
recognises, neither intuitively certain nor demonstrable by
general reasoning from more ultimate truths. It is not to be
accounted for by analytic thought, but like all synthetic
judgments a priori can only be proved by reference to the
contingent fact of actual experience. Secondly, Kant makes no
attempt, either in this Analogy or elsewhere in the Critique, to
explain the nature and possibility of causal connection, that is,
to show how one event, the cause, is able to give rise to
another and different event, the effect. We can never by
analysis of an effect discover any reason why it must
necessarily be preceded by a cause.[1183] Thirdly, the principle
of causality, as deduced by Kant and shown to be necessarily
involved in all consciousness of time, is the quite general
principle that every event must have some cause in what
immediately precedes it. What in each special case the cause
may be, can only be empirically discovered; and that any
selected event is really the cause can never be absolutely
certain. The particular causal laws are discovered from
experience, not by means of the general principle but only in
accordance with it, and are therefore neither purely empirical
nor wholly a priori. As even J. S. Mill teaches, the general
principle is assumed in every inference to a causal law, and
save by thus assuming the general principle the particular
inference to causal connection cannot be proved. But at the
same time, since the proof of causal connection depends upon
satisfaction of those empirical tests which Mill formulates in
his inductive methods, such special causal laws can be
gathered only from experience.
The starting-point of Kant’s analysis is our consciousness of
an objective order in time. This is for Kant a legitimate
starting-point since he has proved in the Transcendental
Deduction that only through consciousness of the objective is
consciousness of the subjective in any form possible. The
independent argument by which it is here supported is merely
a particular application of the general principle of that
deduction. When we apprehend any very large object, such as
a house, though we do so by successively perceiving the
different parts of it, we never think of regarding these
successive perceptions as representing anything successive in
the house. On the other hand, when we apprehend successive
events in time, such as the successive positions of a ship
sailing down stream, we do regard the succession of our
experiences as representing objective succession in what is
apprehended. Kant therefore feels justified in taking as fact,
that we have the power of distinguishing between subjective
and objective succession, i.e. between sequences which are
determined by the order of our attentive experience and
sequences which are given as such. It is this fact which affords
Kant a precise method of formulating the problem of the
second Analogy, viz. how consciousness of objective change,
as distinguished from subjective succession, is possible?
 Schopenhauer, owing to the prominence in his system of the
principle of sufficient reason, has commented upon this second
Analogy in considerable detail;[1184] and we may here employ
one of his chief criticisms to define more precisely the general
intention of Kant’s argument. The succession in our
experiences of the parts of a house and of the positions of a
ship is, Schopenhauer maintains, in both cases of genuinely
objective character. In both instances the changes are due to
the position of two bodies relatively to one another. In the first
example one of these bodies is the body of the observer, or
rather one of his bodily organs, namely the eye, and the other
is the house, in relation to the parts of which the position of
the eye is successively altered. In the second example the ship
changes its position relatively to the stream. The motion of the
eye from roof to cellar is one event; its motion from cellar to
roof is a second event; and both are events of the same nature
as the sailing of the ship. Had we the same power of dragging
the ship upstream that we have of moving the eye in a
direction opposite to that of its first movement, the positions of
the ship could be reversed in a manner exactly analogous to
our reversal of the perceptions of the house.
This criticism is a typical illustration of Schopenhauer’s
entire failure to comprehend the central thesis of Kant’s
Critical idealism.[1185] The Analytic, so far as the main
argument of its objective deduction is concerned, was to him a
closed book; and as this second analogy is little else than a
special application of the results of the deduction, he was
equally at a loss in its interpretation. Kant was himself, of
course, in large part responsible for the misunderstanding. The
distinction which would seem to be implied by Kant’s
language between sequence that is objective and sequence that
is merely subjective is completely inconsistent with Critical
principles,[1186] and is as thoroughly misleading as that other
distinction which he so frequently employs between the a
priori and the merely empirical. Schopenhauer, however,
regarded these distinctions as valid, and accordingly applies
them in the interpretation of Kant’s method of argument. If
inner and outer experience are to be contrasted as two kinds of
experience, there is, as Schopenhauer rightly insists, no
sufficient ground for regarding changes due to movements of
the eye as being subjective and those that are due to
movements of a ship as being objective. That is not, however,
Kant’s intention in the employment of these illustrations. He
uses them only to make clear the fairly obvious fact that while
in certain cases the order of our perceptions is subjectively
initiated, in other cases we apprehend the subjective order of
our experiences as corresponding to, and explicable only
through, the objective sequence of events. In holding to this
distinction Kant is not concerned to deny that even in the order
which is determined by the subject’s purposes or caprice
objective factors are likewise involved. The fact that the
foundations of a house support its roof, and will therefore
determine what it is that we shall apprehend when we turn the
eye upwards, does not render the order of our apprehensions
any the less subjective in character. But that this order is
purely subjective, Kant could never have asserted. His Critical
principles definitely commit him to the view that even
sensations and desires are integral parts of the unitary system
of natural law. Kant, as we shall find, is maintaining that some
such distinction between subjective and objective sequence as
is illustrated in the above contrasted instances must be present
from the very start of our experience—must, indeed, be
constitutive of experience as such. Out of a consciousness of
the purely subjective the notion of the objective can never
arise.[1187] Or otherwise stated, consciousness of a time order,
even though subjective, must ultimately involve the
application of some non-subjective standard.
“I shall be obliged … to derive the subjective sequence of
apprehension from the objective sequence of appearances,
because otherwise the former is entirely undetermined, and
does not distinguish any one appearance from any other.”[1188]
We interpret the subjective order in terms of an objective
system; consciousness of the latter is the necessary
presupposition of all awareness. It is as necessary to the
interpretation of what is apprehended through the rotating
eyeballs as to the apprehension of a moving ship. So far from
refusing to recognise that the subjective order of our
experiences is objectively conditioned, Kant is prepared to
advance to the further assertion that it is only apprehensible
when so conceived.
In the third Analogy Kant proceeds to the connected
problem, how we can apprehend the parts of a house as
simultaneous notwithstanding the sequent relation of our
perceptions of them, and what justification we have for thus
interpreting the subjectively sequent experiences as
representing objective coexistence. Just as Kant in this second
Analogy does not argue that irreversibility is by itself proof of
causal relation, but only that the consciousness of such
irreversibility demands the employment of the conception of
causality, so in the third Analogy he does not attempt to reduce
the consciousness of coexistence to the consciousness of
reversibility, but to prove that only through the application of
the conception of reciprocity can the reversibility be properly
interpreted. In each case the category conditions the empirical
consciousness; the latter is an apprehension of determinate
order only in so far as it presupposes the category. Though
Kant’s treatment of the third Analogy has less historical
importance, and perhaps less intrinsic interest, than the proof
of the second Analogy, it is even more significant of the kind
of position which he is endeavouring to establish, and I may
therefore forewarn the reader that he must not spare himself
the labour of mastering its difficult, and somewhat illusive,
argument. The doctrines which it expounds at once reinforce
and extend the results of the second Analogy, while the further
difficulties which it brings to view, but which it is not itself
capable of meeting, indicate that the problems of the Analytic
call for reconsideration in the light of certain wider issues first
broached in the Dialectic.
We may now return to Kant’s main argument. His problem,
as we have found, is how consciousness of objective change,
as distinguished from subjective succession, is possible. The
problem, being formulated in this particular way, demands,
Kant felt, careful definition of what is meant by the term
‘objective,’ upon which so much depends. To apply the
illustration above used, the house as apprehended is not a thing
in itself but only an appearance to the mind. What, then, do we
mean by the house, as distinguished from our subjective
representations of it, when that house is nothing but a complex
(Inbegriff) of representations?[1189] The question and Kant’s
answer to it are stated in subjectivist fashion, in terms of his
earlier doctrine of the transcendental object. To contrast an
object with the representations through which we apprehend it,
is only possible if these representations stand under a rule
which renders necessary their combination in some one
particular way, and so distinguishes this one particular mode
of representation as the only true mode from all others. The
origin, therefore, of our distinction between the subjectively
successive and the succession which is also objective must be
due in the one case to the presence of a rule compelling us to
combine the events in some particular successive order, and in
the other to the absence of such a rule. Our apprehension of
the house, for instance, may proceed in any order, from the
roof downwards or vice versa, and as the order may always be
reversed there is no compulsion upon the mind to regard the
order of its apprehension as representing objective sequence.
But since in our apprehension of an event B in time, the
apprehension of B follows upon the apprehension of a
previous event A, and we cannot reverse the order, the mind is
compelled to view the order of succession, in terms of the
category of causality, as necessitated, and therefore as
objective. The order is a necessary order not in the sense that
A must always precede B, that A is the cause of B, but that the
order, if we are to apprehend it correctly, must in this
particular case be conceived as necessary. The succession, that
is, need not be conceived as a causal one, but in order to be
conceived as objective succession it must be conceived as
rendered necessary by connections that are causal.
Having, in this general fashion, shown the bearing of his
previous analysis of objective experience upon the problem in
hand, Kant proceeds to develop from it his proof of the special
principle of causality. The schema of causality is necessary
succession in time, and it is through this, its time aspect, that
Kant approaches the principle. It has to do with the special
case of change. To be conscious of change we must be
conscious of an event, that is, of something as happening at a
particular point in time. The change, in other words, requires
to be dated, and as we are not conscious of time in general, it
must be dated by reference to other events, and obviously in
this case in relation to the preceding events, in contrast to
which it is apprehended as change. But according to the
results of our analysis of what constitutes objective
experience, it can be fixed in its position in objective time only
if it be conceived as related to the preceding events according
to a necessary law; and the law of necessary connection in
time is the law of causality. In order, then, that something
which has taken place may be apprehended as having
occurred, that is, as being an objective change, it must be
apprehended as necessarily following upon that which
immediately precedes it in time, i.e. as causally necessary.
The principle of causality thus conditions consciousness of
objective succession, and Hume, in asserting that we are
conscious of the succession of events, therefore admits all that
need be assumed in order to prove the principle. The reason
why Hume failed to recognise this, is that he ignored the
distinction between consciousness of the subjective order of
our apprehensions and consciousness of the objective
sequence of events. Yet that is a distinction upon which his
own position rested. For he teaches that determination of
causal laws, sufficiently certain to serve the purposes alike of
practical life and of natural science, can be obtained through
observation of those sequences which remain constant. Such is
also the position of all empiricists. They hold that causal
relation is discovered by comparison of given sequences.
Kant’s contention is that the apprehension of change as
change, and therefore ultimately the apprehension even of an
arbitrarily determined order of subjective succession,[1190]
presupposes, and is only possible through, an application of
the category of causality. The primary function of the
understanding does not consist in the clarification of our
representation of an event, but in making such representation
possible at all.[1191] The primary field of exercise for the
understanding lies not in the realm of reflective comparison,
but in the more fundamental sphere of creative synthesis.[1192]
In determining the nature of the given it predetermines the
principles to which all reflection upon the given must
conform. The discursive activities of scientific reflection are
secondary to, and conditioned by, the transcendental processes
which generate the experience of ordinary consciousness.
Only an experience which conforms to the causal principle can
serve as foundation either for the empirical judgments of sense
experience, or for that ever-increasing body of scientific
knowledge into which their content is progressively translated.
The principle of causality is applicable to everything
experienced, for the sufficient reason that experience is itself
possible only in terms of it. This conclusion finds its most
emphatic and adequate statement in the Methodology.
“…through concepts of understanding pure reason
establishes secure principles, not however directly from
concepts, but always only indirectly through relation of these
concepts to something altogether contingent, namely, possible
experience. For when such experience (i.e. something as
object of possible experience) is presupposed, the principles
are apodictically certain, though by themselves (directly) a
priori they cannot even be recognised at all. Thus no one can
acquire insight into the proposition that everything which
happens has its cause, merely from the concepts involved. It is
not, therefore, a dogma, although from another point of view,
namely, from that of the sole field of its possible employment,
i.e. experience, it can be proved with complete apodictic
certainty. But though it needs proof, it should be entitled a
principle, not a theorem, because it has the peculiar character
that it makes possible the very experience which is its own
ground of proof, and in this experience must always itself be
presupposed.”[1193]
Before making further comment upon Kant’s central
argument, it is advisable to consider the varying statements
which Kant has given of it. We may take his successive proofs
in the order in which they occur in the first edition.
First Proof.[1194]—The argument is developed in terms of
Kant’s early doctrine of the transcendental object. The only
points specially characteristic of the statement here given of
that doctrine consist (a) in the emphasis with which it is
asserted that representations can be experienced only in
succession to one another, and that they can never stand in the
relation of coexistence,[1195] and (b) in the almost complete
ignoring of the transcendental object as source or ground of
the rule in terms of which the successive representations are
organised. (a) This is a point common to the arguments of all
three Analogies. In the first and third the problem is how, from
representations merely successive, permanence and
coexistence can be determined. In the second Analogy the
problem is how from representations invariably successive a
distinction can be drawn between the subjectively determined
order of our apprehensions and the objective sequence of
events. Or in other words: how under such conditions we can
recognise an order as given, and so as prescribing the order in
which it must be apprehended. Or to state the same point in
still another manner: how we can distinguish between an
arbitrary or reversible order and an imposed or fixed order,
and so come to apprehend the subjective order of our
apprehensions as in certain cases controlled by, and explicable
only through, the objective sequence of events.[1196]
(b) The reason why the transcendental object, as source of
the determinate and prescribed order of the given events, falls
into the background in this passage is that Kant is concerned
only with the general principle or category by means of which
the order is apprehended as necessary. That principle has a
subjective origin even though the particular sequences of
concrete events have by means of that concept to be conceived
as inexorably determined by their noumenal conditions.[1197]
The principle accounts for the comprehension of the order as
objective, and that is the only point with which Kant is here
immediately concerned. That the assertion of the subjective
origin of the category is not inconsistent with recognition of
the imposed order of the given has already been shown above.
[1198] Kant’s own illustration, in this section, of the ship sailing
down stream shows that he was prepared to assume without
question that they are compatible. His argument is, however,
obscure, owing to his failure to distinguish between the two
senses in which the term ‘rule’ may be employed. The term
may signify either the universal and merely formal principle
that every event must have a cause, or it may be used to denote
the fixed order in which concrete events are presented to
sense-perception. The latter order need not represent a series
the members of which are causally connected with one
another, but only one that is due to causal necessities. Thus the
successive positions of a ship sailing down stream are not
interrelated as cause and effect, and yet in order to be
apprehended as objectively successive must be conceived as
causally conditioned. The term ‘rule’ has very different
meanings in the two cases. ‘Rule’ in the first sense is of
subjective origin. It is formal, and can never be given. It is
read into the given. ‘Rule’ in the second sense is given merely,
and being due to noumenal conditions constitutes the material
element in natural science, the empirical content of some
particular causal law. Owing to Kant’s failure explicitly to
distinguish between these two very different connotations of
the term, such a sentence as the following is ambiguous: “That
in appearance which contains the condition of this necessary
rule of apprehension is the object.” Kant may mean that the
prescribed order of the concrete events is due to the
transcendental object; but in that case it is not given as
necessary. Necessity, as he constantly insists, is the one thing
that can never be given. The sentence is also misleading
through its use of the term ‘appearance.’ That term has no
legitimate place in a passage inspired by the doctrine of the
transcendental object; there can be no such middle term
between subjective representations and the thing in itself. As
Kant himself states,[1199] appearance defined in terms of that
doctrine is “nothing save a complex of representations.”
There is a very essential difference in the view which Kant
takes of the causal relation according as he is proceeding upon
subjectivist or upon phenomenalist lines. From the one point
of view appearances are representations merely, and
accordingly are entirely devoid of causal efficacy. They are not
causes and effects of one another. They have not the
independence or self-persistence necessary for the exercise of
dynamical energy or even for the reception of modifications.
Being “states of the identical self,” all causal relation,
dynamically conceived, must lie solely in their noumenal
conditions. Causality reduces to the thought of necessitated
(not necessitating) sequence. It is, as Kant has suggested in A
181 = B 224, a mere ‘analogy’ in terms of which we apply the
logical relation of ground and consequence[1200] to the
interpretation of our subjective representations, and so view
them as grounded not in one another but exclusively in the
thing in itself. Causality in the strict sense, i.e. dynamical
agency, can be looked for only in the noumenal sphere.
Caird, while adopting this explanation of the term
‘analogy,’[1201] is, as might be expected from his Hegelian
standpoint, extremely indefinite and non-committal as to
whether or not empirical objects can be genuine causes. Riehl,
notwithstanding his professedly realistic interpretation of
Kant, adopts the above subjectivist view of natural causation.
So also do Benno Erdmann and Paulsen. The latter[1202]
speaks with no uncertain voice.
“Causality in the phenomenal world signifies for Kant, as
for Hume, nothing but regularity in the sequence of
phenomena. Real causal efficiency cannot of course occur
here, for phenomena are ideational products. As such they can
no more produce an effect than concepts can.”
The corresponding phenomenalist view of the causal
relation receives no quite definite formulation either in this
section or elsewhere in the Critique, but may be gathered from
the general trend of Kant’s phenomenalist teaching.[1203] It is
somewhat as follows. The term ‘analogy’ is viewed as having
a meaning very different from that above suggested. The
causal relation is not a mere analogy from the logical relation
of ground and consequence; it is the representation of
genuinely dynamical activities in the objects apprehended.
Those objects are not mere states of the self, subjective
representations. They are part of an independent order which
in the form known to us is a phenomenalist transcript of a
deeper reality. If the causal relation is the analogy of anything
distinguishable from itself, it is an analogon or interpretation
of dynamical powers exercised by things in themselves,[1204]
not of the merely logical relation between premisses and
conclusion. The objects of representation may exercise powers
which representations as such can never be conceived as
possessing. Between the individual’s subjective states and
things in themselves stands the phenomenal world of the
natural sciences. Its function, whether as directly experienced
through sense-perception or as conceptually reconstructed
through scientific hypothesis, is to stand as the representative
in human consciousness of that noumenal realm in which all
existence is ultimately rooted. The causal interactions of
material bodies in space are as essentially constitutive of those
bodies as are any of their quantitative properties. Causal
relation, even in the phenomenal sphere, must not be identified
with mere conformity to law. The true and complete purpose
of the natural sciences is not to be found in the Berkeleian or
sceptical ideal of simplification, but in the older and sounder
conception of causal explanation. That, at least, is the view
which Kant invariably defends whenever he has occasion to
discuss the principles of physical science.
Second Proof.[1205]—The argument of the first proof is here
developed in indirect fashion. In the absence of any rule
prescribing necessary sequence, no distinction can be made
between subjective and objective succession. The justification
for such a rule lies therefore, not in an inductive inference
from repeated experience, but in its necessity for the
possibility of experience. It is an expression of the synthetic
unity in which experience consists.
Third Proof.[1206]—This is for the most part merely a
restatement of the first proof. It differs from it in making
rather more explicit that the objective reference involved in the
notion of the transcendental object is one that carries the mind
beyond all representations to the thought of something which
determines their order according to a rule. Otherwise the
ambiguities of the terms employed are identical with those of
the first proof. Its concluding paragraph, however, is a much
clearer statement of the difficult argument of A 192-3 = B
238-9.
Fourth Proof.[1207]—This proof differs from all the others.
It argues from the characteristics of pure time to the properties
necessary to the empirical representation of the time-series. As
time cannot be experienced in and by itself, all its essential
characteristics must be capable of being represented in terms
of appearance. “Only in appearances can we empirically
recognise continuity in the connection of times.” The primary
function of the understanding is to make such recognition
possible, and it does so by “transferring the time order to the
appearances and their existence.” It is a necessary law of time
that we can only advance to the succeeding through the
preceding. Each moment of time is the indispensable condition
of the existence of that which follows it. We can pass to the
year 1915 only by way of the preceding year 1914. And since,
as just noted, time is not cognisable by itself but only as the
form of our perceptions, this law must be applicable to them.
We can only be conscious of all times as successively
conditioning one another in one single time, and that means in
one single objective time, if we are conscious of all the
phenomena perceived as conditioning one another in their
order in time.
It is somewhat difficult to understand how Kant came to
formulate the argument in this form. The explanation may
perhaps be found in his preoccupation[1208] with the doctrine
of a transcendental activity of the productive imagination and
with the connected doctrine of a pure a priori manifold. For
this proof would seem to rest upon the assumption that the
characteristics of time are known purely a priori and therefore
with complete certainty, independently of sense experience.
The unusual and somewhat scholastic character of the proof
also appears in Kant’s substitution of the principle of sufficient
reason for the principle of causality. But despite the artificial
character of the standpoint, the argument serves to bring
prominently forward Kant’s central thesis, viz. that the
principle of causality is presupposed in all consciousness of
time, even of the subjectively successive. Also, by
emphasising that time in and by itself can never be “an object
of perception,” and that the relating of appearances to
“absolute time” is possible only through the determining of
them in their relations to one another, it supplies the data for
correction of its own starting-point.
Fifth Proof.[1209]—This proof is probably later than the
preceding proofs. Though its essential content coincides with
that of the opening proof, its formulation would seem to be a
first attempt at statement of the sixth proof, i.e. of the
argument which Kant added in the second edition. Adickes
considers this proof to be earlier in date than the first four
proofs, but the reason which he assigns for so regarding it, viz.
that Kant here postulates a synthesis of the imagination
independent of the categories as preceding a synthesis of
apprehension in terms of the categories, seems to be based
upon a much too literal reading of Kant’s loose mode of
statement. The argument rather appears to be, as in the sixth
proof, that synthesis of the imagination may be either
subjective or objective; and the term “apprehension” would
seem to be used as signifying that the manifold synthesised is
given to the imagination through actual sense experience, and
that as thus given it has a determinate order of its own. The
argument concludes with the statement (more definite than any
to be found in the preceding arguments), that the proof of the
principle of causality consists in its indispensableness as a
condition of all empirical judgments, and so of experience as
such. As a ground of the possibility of experience it must be
valid of all the objects of experience.
Sixth Proof.[1210]—The argument of the fifth proof is here
more clearly stated. All synthesis is due to “the faculty of
imagination which determines inner sense in respect of the
time relation.” Such synthesis may, however, yield the
consciousness either of subjective succession or of succession
“in the object.” In the latter form it presupposes the
employment of a pure concept of the understanding, that of the
relation of cause and effect. And the conclusion reached is
again that only so is empirical knowledge possible. This mode
of stating the argument is far from satisfactory. It tends to
obscure Kant’s central thesis, that only through consciousness
of an objective order is consciousness of subjective sequence
possible, and that the principle of causality is therefore a
conditioning factor of all consciousness. The misleading
distinction drawn in the Prolegomena between judgments of
perception and judgments of experience also crops out in
Kant’s use of the phrase “mere perception.”[1211]

We may again return to Kant’s central argument. For we

have still to consider certain objections to which it may seem
to lie open, and also to comment upon Kant’s further
explanations in the remaining paragraphs of the section.[1212]
Kant’s imperfect statement of his position has suggested to
Hutchison Stirling and others a problem which is largely
artificial, namely, how the mind is enabled to recognise the
proper occasions upon which to apply the category of
causality. On the one hand sequence as such cannot be the
criterion, since many sequences are not causal, and on the
other hand the absence of sequence does not appear to debar
its application, since cause and effect would frequently seem
to be co-existent. This difficulty arises from failure to
appreciate the central thesis upon which Kant’s proof of the
principle of causality ultimately rests. Kant’s diffuse and
varying mode of statement may conceal but never conflicts
with that thesis, which consists in the contention that the
category of causality is a necessary and invariable factor in all
consciousness. Nothing can be apprehended save in terms of
it.[1213] It prescribes an interpretation which the mind has no
option save to apply in the consciousness of each and every
event, of the coexistent no less than of the sequent. Whether
two changes are coexistent or are successive, each must be
conceived as possessing an antecedent cause. The only
difference is that in the case of sequent events one of them (i.e.
the antecedent change) may, upon empirical investigation, be
found to be itself the cause of the second and subsequent
event, whereas with coexistent events this can never be
possible. As the principle of causality is that every event must
have an antecedent cause, it follows that where there is no
sequence there can be no causation. But when Kant states that
sequence is “the sole empirical criterion”[1214] of the causal
relation, he does less than justice to the position he is
defending. The empirical criteria are manifold in number, and
are such as John Stuart Mill has attempted to formulate in his
inductive methods.
Schopenhauer has objected[1215] that Kant’s argument
proves too much, since it would involve that all objective
sequences, such as that of night and day or of the notes in a
piece of music, are themselves causal sequences. This
criticism has been replied to by Stadler[1216] in the following
terms:
 “When Schopenhauer adduces the sequence of musical
notes or of day and night, as objective sequences which can be
known without the causal law, we need only meet him with the
question, Where in these cases is the substance that changes?
So soon as he is forced to put his objection into the form
required to bring it into relation to the question of the
possibility of knowledge, his error becomes obvious. His
instances must then be expressed thus:—The instrument
passes from one state of sound into another; the earth changes
from the measure of enlightenment which makes day, to that
which makes night. Of such changes no one will say that they
are not referred to a cause. And we may quote in this reference
the appropriate saying of Kant himself, ‘Days are, as it were,
the children of Time, since the following day with that which
it contains is the product of the previous day.’”
Night and day, in so far as they are sequent events, must be
conceived in terms of causality, not in the sense that night
causes day, but as being determined by causes that account not
only for each separately, but also for the alternating sequence
of the one upon the other. Such causes are found by the
astronomer to lie in the changing positions of the earth
relatively to the sun.
Schopenhauer adds a further objection of a more subtle
nature, which has again been excellently stated and answered
by Stadler:
“Schopenhauer points out that what we call chance is just a
sequence of events which do not stand in causal connexion. ‘I
come out of the house and a tile falls from the roof which
strikes me; in such a case there is no causal connexion
between the falling of the tile and my coming out of the house,
yet the succession of these two events is objectively
determined in my apprehension of them.’ How have we to
criticise this case from the transcendental point of view? We
know that successions become necessary, i.e. objective, for our
consciousness, when we regard them as changes of a
substance which are determined by a cause. But it is shown
here that there are successions in which the single members
are changes of different substances. If substance S changes its
state A into B on account of the cause X, and substance S´
changes its state A´ into B´ on account of the cause X´, and if I
call the first change V and the second V´, the question arises
how the objectivity of the succession V V´ is related to the law
of causality. Sequences such as V V´ are very frequent, and
our consciousness of the objectivity is certain. Do we owe this
consciousness to the same rule as holds good in other cases?
Certainly. The distinction is not qualitative, but rests only on
the greater complication of the change in question. The
sequence V V´ can become objective only if I think it as a
necessary connexion. It must be so determined that V can only
follow V´ in ‘consciousness in general’; there must be a U, the
introduction of which is the cause that V´ follows V. To be
convinced of this, I do not need actually to know U. I know
that on every occasion U causes the succession V V´. Of
course, this presupposes that all data of the states considered,
A and A´, remain identical. But whether these data are very
simple or endlessly complex, whether they are likely to
combine to the given result frequently or seldom, is indifferent
for the objectifying of the event; it is not the perception of U,
but the presupposition of it, which makes the change necessary
and so objective for us.”[1217]
To turn now to the other difficulty which Kant himself
raises in A 202-3 = B 247-8, viz. that cause and effect would
frequently seem to be coexistent, and the “sole empirical
criterion” to be therefore absent. It may from this point of
view be maintained that the great majority of causes occur
simultaneously with their effects, and that such time sequence
as occurs is due solely to the fact that the cause cannot execute
itself in one single instant. Kant has little difficulty in
disposing of this objection. Causality concerns only the order,
not the lapse, of time; and the sequence relation must remain
even though there is no interval between the two events. If a
leaden ball lies upon a cushion it makes a depression in it. The
ball and the depression are coexistent. None the less, when
viewed in their dynamical relation, the latter must be regarded
as sequent upon the former. If the leaden ball is placed upon a
smooth cushion a hollow is at once made, but if a hollow
exists in a cushion a ball need not appear. In other words, the
criteria for the determination of specific causal relations are
neither the presence nor the absence of sequence, but are
empirical considerations verifiable only upon special
investigation.[1218] The observer is called upon to disentangle
the complicated web of given appearances under the guidance
of the quite general and formal principle that every event is
due to some antecedent cause. He must do so as best he can
through the application of his acquired insight, and, when
necessary, by means of the requisite experimental variation of
conditions.
In the two following paragraphs (A 204-5 = B 249-51) Kant
raises points which he later discussed more fully in the
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science.[1219] As
adequate explanation of the argument would be a very lengthy
matter, and not of any very real importance for the
understanding of the general Critical position, we may omit all
treatment of it. In the sections of the Metaphysical First
Principles just cited, the reader will find the necessary
comment and explanation. Such bearing as these two
paragraphs have upon Kant’s view of the nature of the causal
relation has been noted above.[1220]
In the section on Anticipations of Perception[1221] Kant has
stated that the principle of the continuity of change involves
empirical factors, and therefore falls outside the limits of
transcendental philosophy. To this more correct attitude Kant,
unfortunately, did not hold. In A 207-11 = B 252-6 he
professes to establish the principle in a priori transcendental
fashion as a necessary consequence of the nature of time. This
proof is indeed thrice repeated with unessential variations,
thereby clearly showing that these paragraphs also are of
composite origin. The argument in all three cases consists in
inferring from the continuity of time the continuity of all
changes in time. As the parts of time are themselves times, of
which no one is the smallest, so in all generation in time, the
cause must in its action pass through all the degrees of
quantity from zero to that of the final effect.
“Every change has a cause which evinces its causality in the
whole time in which the change takes place. This cause,
therefore, does not engender the change suddenly (at once or
in one moment), but in a time, so that, as the time increases
from its initial moment a to its completion in b, the quantity of
the reality (b-a) is in like manner generated through all lesser
degrees which are contained between the first and the
last.”[1222]
This argument is inconclusive. As Kant himself recognises
in regard to space,[1223] we may not without special proof
assume that what is true of time must be true of the contents of
time. If time, change, and causation can be equated, what is
true of one will be true of all three. But the assumption upon
which the argument thus rests has not itself been substantiated.
In the third proof[1224] the argument is stated in extreme
subjectivist terms which involve the further assumption that
what is true of apprehension is ipso facto true of everything
apprehended. The possibility of establishing the law of
dynamical continuity follows, Kant declares, as a consequence
of its being a law of our subjective apprehension.
“We anticipate only our own apprehension, the formal
condition of which, inasmuch as it inheres in the mind prior to
all given appearances, must certainly be capable of being
known a priori.”[1225]
Kant’s attitude towards the physical principle of continuity
underwent considerable change. In his New Doctrine of
Motion and Rest (1758)[1226] he maintains that it cannot be
proved, and that physicists may rightly refuse to recognise it
even as an hypothesis. It is in the Essay on Negative Quantity
(1763)[1227] that Kant first adopts the attitude of the Critique,
and rejects the “speculative” objections raised against the
mathematical conception of the infinitely small. In the
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science[1228] the
principle of continuity is defended and developed, but only in
its application to material existence, not in its relation to the
causal process.
C. Third Analogy.—All substances, in so far as they are
coexistent, stand in thoroughgoing communion,[1229] i.e. in
reciprocity with one another. Or, as in the second edition: All
substances, so far as they can be perceived to coexist in space,
are in thoroughgoing reciprocity.
 This section contains four separate proofs. The first three
paragraphs in the text of the first edition contain the first
proof. The fourth paragraph supplies a second proof, and the
fifth paragraph a third. In the second edition Kant adds a
fourth proof (the first paragraph of the text of the second
edition).
We may lead up to these proofs by first formulating (a) the
fundamental assumption upon which they proceed, and (b) the
thesis which they profess to establish. (a) The argument
involves the same initial assumption as the preceding
Analogies, viz. that representations exist exclusively in
succession, or stated in phenomenalist terms, that the
objectively coexistent can be apprehended only in and through
representations that are sequent to one another in time.[1230]
Upon this assumption the problem of the third Analogy is to
explain how from representations all of which are in
succession we can determine the objectively coexistent. (b) In
the Dissertation[1231] Kant had maintained that though the
possibility of dynamical communion of substances is not
necessarily involved in their mere existence, such interaction
may be assumed as a consequence of their common origin in,
and dependence upon, a Divine Being. In the Critique no such
metaphysical speculations are any longer in order, and Kant
recognises that as regards things in themselves it is not
possible to decide whether dynamical interaction is, or is not,
necessarily involved in coexistence. The problem of this third
Analogy concerns only appearances, which as such must be
subject to the conditions of unitary experience; and one such
condition is that they be apprehended as belonging to a single
objective order of nature, and therefore as standing in
reciprocal relations of interaction. The apprehension of
substances as reciprocally determining one another is, Kant
contends, an indispensable condition of their being known
even as coexistent. Such is Kant’s thesis. The proof may first
be stated in what may be called its typical or generic form.
Kant’s four successive proofs can then be related to it as to a
common standard.
Two things, A and B, can be apprehended as coexistent only
in so far as we can experience them in either order, i.e. when
the order of our perceptions of them is reversible. If they
existed in succession, this could never be possible. The earlier
member of a time series is past when the succeeding member
is present, and what belongs to the past can never be an object
of perception. The fact that the order in which things can be
perceived is reversible would thus seem to prove that they do
not exist successively to one another in time.[1232] That,
however, is not the case. By itself such experience does not
really suffice to yield consciousness of coexistence. It can
yield only consciousness of an alternating succession.[1233] A
further factor, namely, interpretation of the reversibility of our
perceptions as due to their being conditioned by objects which
stand in the relation of reciprocal determination, must first be
postulated. If these objects mutually determine one another to
be what they are, no one of them can be antecedent to or
subsequent upon the others; and by their mutual reference each
will date the others as simultaneous with itself. In other words,
the perception of the coexistence of objects involves the
conception of them as mutually determining one another. The
principle of communion or reciprocity conditions the
experience of coexistence, and is therefore valid for objects
apprehended in that manner.
Kant also maintains, more by implication than by explicit
statement, that as A and B need not stand in any direct
relation, the apprehension of them as coexistent involves the
conception of an all-embracing order of nature within which
they fall and which determines them to be what they are. If
any one of them, even the most minute and insignificant, were
conceived as altered, corresponding simultaneous variations
would have to be postulated for all the others. The unity of the
phenomenal world is the counterpart of the unity of
apperception. Unity of experience involves principles which
prescribe a corresponding unity in the natural realm.
Dynamical communion is the sufficient and necessary
fulfilment of this demand. It carries to completion the unity
demanded by the preceding Analogies of substance and
causality. Kant sums up his position in a note to A 218 = B
265.
 “The unity of the world-whole, in which all appearances
have to be connected, is evidently a mere consequence of the
tacitly assumed principle of the communion of all substances
which are coexistent. For if they were isolated, they would not
as parts constitute a whole. And if their coexistence alone did
not necessitate their connection (the reciprocal action of the
manifold) we could not argue from the former, which is a
merely ideal relation, to the latter, which is a real relation. We
have, however, in the proper context, shown that communion
is really the ground of the possibility of an empirical
knowledge of coexistence, and that therefore the actual
inference is merely from this empirical knowledge to
communion as its condition.”
To turn now to Kant’s successive proofs. The first[1234] calls
for no special comment. It coincides with the above. The
second[1235] proof is an incompletely stated argument, which
differs from the first only in its more concrete statement of the
main thesis and in its limitation of the argument to spatial
existences. Dynamical community is the indispensable
condition of our apprehension of any merely spatial side-by-
sideness. Kant now adds that it is the dynamical continuity of
the spatial world which enables us to apprehend the
coexistence of its constituents. The important bearing of this
argument we shall consider in its connection with the proof
which Kant added in the second edition.
The third[1236] proof is probably the earliest in date of
writing. It draws a misleading distinction between subjective
and objective coexistence, and seems to argue that only the
latter form of coexistence need presuppose the employment of
the category of reciprocity. That runs directly counter to the
central thesis of the other proofs, that only in terms of
dynamical relation is coexistence at all apprehensible. That the
above distinction indicates an early date of writing would
seem to be confirmed by the obscure phrase “community of
apperception” which is reminiscent of the prominence given to
apperception in Kant’s earlier views, and by the concluding
sentence in which Kant employs terms—inherence,
consequence, and composition—that are also characteristic of
the earlier stages of his Critical enquiries.[1237]
 It is significant that in the new argument[1238] of the second
edition the space factor, emphasised in the second proof of the
first edition, is again made prominent.[1239] The principle is,
indeed, reformulated in such manner as to suggest its
limitation to spatial existences. “All substances, so far as they
can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing
reciprocity.” Now it is decidedly doubtful whether Kant means
to limit the category of reciprocity to spatial existences. As we
have already noted,[1240] he would seem to hold that though
the category of causality can acquire meaning only in its
application to events in space, it may in its subsequent
employment be extended to the states of inner sense. The latter
are effects dynamically caused, and among their causal
conditions are mechanical processes in space. The extension of
the category of reciprocity to include sensations and desires
undoubtedly gives rise to much greater difficulties than those
involved in the universal application of the causal principle.
On the other hand, its limitation to material bodies must render
the co-ordination of mental states and mechanical processes
highly doubtful, and would carry with it all the difficulties of
an epiphenomenal view of psychical existences. The truth
probably is that in this matter Kant had not thought out his
position in any quite definite manner; and that owing to the
influence, on the one hand of the dualistic teaching of the
traditional Cartesian physics, and on the other of his increasing
appreciation of the part which space must play in the
definition and proof of the principles of understanding, he
limited the category of reciprocity to spatial existences,
without considering how far such procedure is capable of
being reconciled with his determinist view of the empirical
self. His procedure is also open to a second objection, namely,
that while thus reformulating the principle, he fails to remodel
his proof in a sufficiently thoroughgoing fashion. The chief
stress is still laid upon the temporal element; and in order to
obtain a proof of the principle that will harmonise with the
prominence given to the space-factor, we are thrown back
upon such supplementary suggestions as we can extract from
the second argument of the first edition. It is there stated that
“without dynamical communion even spatial community
(communio spatii) could never be known empirically.”[1241]
That is an assertion which, if true, will yield a proof of the
principle of reciprocity analogous to that which has been given
of the principle of causality; for it will show that just as the
conception of causality is involved in, and makes possible, the
awareness of time, so the conception of reciprocity is involved
in, and makes possible, the awareness of space.
The proof will be as follows. The parts of space have to be
conceived as spatially interrelated. Space is not a collection of
independent spaces; particular spaces exist only in and through
the spaces which enclose them. In other words, the parts of
space mutually condition one another. Each part exists only in
and through its relations, direct or indirect, to all the others;
the awareness of their coexistence involves the awareness of
this reciprocal determination. But space cannot, any more than
time, be known in and by itself;[1242] and what is true of space
must therefore hold of the contents, in terms of the
interrelations of which space can alone be experienced. How,
then, can the reciprocal determination of substances in space
be apprehended by a consciousness which is subject in all its
experiences to the conditions of time? As Kant has pointed out
in A 211 = B 258,[1243] objective coexistence is distinguished
from objective sequence by reversibility of the perceptions
through which it is apprehended. When A and B coexist, our
perceptions can begin with A and pass to B, or start from B
and proceed to A. There is also, as Kant observes in the
second proof, a further condition, namely, that the transition is
in each case made through a continuous series of changing
perceptions.
 “Only the continuous influences in all parts of space can
lead our senses from one object to another. The light, which
plays between our eye and the celestial bodies, produces a
mediate communion between us and them, and thereby
establishes the coexistence of the latter. We cannot empirically
change our position (perceive such a change), unless matter in
all parts of space makes the perception of our position possible
to us. Only by means of its reciprocal influence can matter
establish the simultaneous existence of its parts, and thereby,
though only mediately, their coexistence with even the most
remote objects. Without communion, every perception of an
appearance in space is broken off from every other, and the
chain of empirical representations, i.e. experience, would have
to begin entirely anew with every new object, without the least
connection with preceding representations, and without
standing to them in any relation of time.”[1244]
But even such reversibility of continuous series does not by
itself establish coexistence. For in the imagination[1245] we can
represent such series, without thereby acquiring the right to
assert that they exist not as series but as simultaneous wholes.
And as Kant might also have pointed out, even in sense-
perception we can experience reversible continuous series that
do not in any way justify the inference to coexistence. We
may, for instance, produce on a musical instrument a series of
continuously changing sounds, and then in immediate
succession produce the same series in reverse order. An
additional factor is therefore required, namely, the
interpretation of the reversibility of our perceptions as being
grounded in objects which, because spatially extended, and
spatially continuous with one another, can yield continuous
series of perceptions, and which, because of their
thoroughgoing reciprocity, make possible the reversing of
these series. To summarise the argument in a sentence: as the
objectively coexistent, if it is to be known at all, can only be
known through sequent representations, the condition of its
apprehension is the possibility of interpreting reversible
continuous series as due to the reciprocal interaction of
spatially ordered substances.
 This argument has a twofold bearing. Its most obvious
consequence is that all things apprehended as coexistent must
be conceived as standing in relations of reciprocal interaction;
but by implication this involves the further consequence that
the conceptual principle of reciprocity is an integral factor in
all apprehension of space. Space, though intuitive in character,
has a meaning that demands this concept for its articulation.
Just as consciousness of temporal sequence is only possible in
terms of causation, so consciousness of spatial coexistence is
only possible through application of the category of
reciprocity. And since, on Kant’s view, awareness of space
conditions awareness of time, these conclusions carry the
Critical analysis of our consciousness of time a stage further.
In confirmation of the more general argument of the objective
deduction, reciprocity is added to the already large sum-total
of the indispensable conditions of our time-consciousness;
while in regard to time itself it is shown that, owing to its
space-reference, coexistence may be counted among its
possible modes.
I have made occasional reference to the positions adopted
by Stout in his Manual of Psychology, and may here indicate
their relation to the present argument. Stout cites four
“categories” or ultimate principles of unity which “belong
even to rudimentary perceptual consciousness as a condition
of its further development,”[1246] namely, spatial unity,
temporal unity, causal unity, and the unity of different
attributes as belonging to the same thing. The criticism which,
from the standpoint of the Analogies, has to be passed upon
this list,[1247] is that it ignores the category of reciprocity, i.e.
of systematic interconnection, and that it fails to recognise the
close relation in which the various principles stand to one
another. The temporal unity must not be isolated from causal
unity, nor either of them from the spatial unity, with which the
category of reciprocity is inseparably bound up. Further, Kant
maintains that these principles are demanded, not merely for
the development of perceptual consciousness, but for its very
existence.
But Kant’s argument suggests many difficulties which we
have not yet considered, and we may again employ
Schopenhauer’s criticisms to define the issues involved.
“The conception of reciprocity ought to be banished from
metaphysics. For I now intend, quite seriously, to prove that
there is no reciprocity in the strict sense, and this conception,
which people are so fond of using, just on account of the
indefiniteness of the thought, is seen, if more closely
considered, to be empty, false, and invalid…. It implies that
both the states A and B are cause and that both are effect of
each other; but this really amounts to saying that each of the
two is the earlier and also the later; thus it is an
absurdity.”[1248]
This criticism proceeds on the assumption that the category
of reciprocity reduces to a dual application of the category of
causality. If that were the case, there would, of course, be no
separate category of reciprocity,[1249] and further it would, as
Schopenhauer maintains, be impossible to regard A and B as
being at one and the same time both cause and effect of one
another. Causality determines the order of the states of
substances in the time series; reciprocity must be distinct from
causality if it is to be capable of defining the order of their
coexistent states in space. A deduction from the dual
application of the conception of causality has, therefore, no
bearing upon the question of the possibility of this further
category. Kant has laid himself open to this criticism by a
passage which occurs in the first proof, and which shows that
he was not quite clear in his own mind as to how reciprocity
ought to be conceived.
“That alone can determine the position of anything else in
time, which is its cause or the cause of its determinations.
Every substance (inasmuch as only in its determinations can it
be an effect) must therefore contain in itself the causality of
certain determinations in the other substance, and at the same
time the effects of the causality of that other, i.e. they must
stand in dynamical communion (immediately or mediately), if
their coexistence is to be known in any possible
experience.”[1250]
It should be noted that in the new proof[1251] in the second
edition Kant is careful to employ the terms ground and
influence in place of the terms cause and causality.
Secondly, Schopenhauer argues that if the two states
necessarily belong to each other and exist at one and the same
time, they will not be simultaneous, but will constitute only
one state.[1252] Schopenhauer is again refusing to recognise the
conditions under which alone a special category of reciprocity
is called for. We can speak of simultaneity only if a
multiplicity be given; and if it be given, its nature as
simultaneous plurality cannot be comprehended through a
causal law, which, as such, applies only to sequent order.
Lastly, Schopenhauer endeavours to confirm his position by
examination of the supposed instances of reciprocity.
”[In the continuous burning of a fire] the combination of
oxygen with the combustible body is the cause of heat, and
heat, again, is the cause of the renewed occurrence of the
chemical combination. But this is nothing more than a chain of
causes and effects, the links of which have alternately the
same name…. We see before us only an application of the
single and simple law of causality which gives the rule to the
sequence of states, but never anything which must be
comprehended by means of a new and special function of the
understanding.”[1253]
Schopenhauer is again misled by his equating of reciprocity
with causal action. Combustion is quite obviously a case of
sequent processes. Instead of proving that coexistence does not
involve reciprocity, Schopenhauer is only showing that cause
and effect may sometimes, as Kant himself observes,[1254]
seem to be simultaneous.[1255] Action followed by reaction is
not equivalent to what Kant means by reciprocal
determination. Schopenhauer also cites the instance of a pair
of scales brought to rest by equal weights.
“Here there is no effect produced, for there is no change; it
is a state of rest; gravity acts, equally divided, as in every body
which is supported at its centre of gravity, but it cannot show
its force by any effect.”[1256]
This example is more in line with what Kant would seem to
have in view, but is still defined in reference to the problem of
causation, and not in reference to that of coexistence. Kant is
not enquiring whether coexistent bodies are related as causes
and effects, though, as we have already observed, his language
betrays considerable lack of clearness on this very point. He is
endeavouring to define the conditions under which we are
enabled to recognise that bodies, external to one another in
space and apprehensible only through sequent perceptions, are
none the less coexistent. And the answer which he gives is that
coexistence can only be determined by reference of each
existence to the totality of systematic relations within which it
is found, its particular spatial location being one of the factors
which condition this reference. Causal explanation in the most
usual meaning of that highly ambiguous phrase, namely, as
explanation of an artificially isolated event by reference to
antecedents similarly isolated from their context, may partially
account for this event being of one kind rather than another,
but will not explain why it is to be found at this particular time
in this particular place. That is to say, it will not answer the
question which is asked when we are enquiring as to what
events are coexistent with it.
But the considerations which thus enable us to dispose of
Schopenhauer’s criticisms have the effect of involving us in
new, and much more formidable, difficulties. Indeed they
disclose the incomplete, and quite inadequate, character of
Kant’s proof of the third Analogy. For must not spatial co-
existence be independently known if it is to serve as one of the
factors determinant of reciprocity? Can the apprehension of
extended bodies wait upon a prior knowledge of the system of
nature to which they belong?
The mere propounding of these questions does not,
however, suffice to overthrow Kant’s contention. For he is
prepared—that is indeed the reason why the Critique came to
be written—to answer them in a manner that had never before
been suggested, save perhaps in the philosophies of Plato and
Aristotle. This answer first emerges in the Dialectic, in the
course of its treatment of the wider problem, of which the
above difficulties are only special instances, how if
conditioned parts can only be known in terms of an
unconditioned whole, any knowledge whatsoever can be
acquired by us. But though Kant in the Dialectic gives due
prominence to this fundamental problem, the hard and fast
divisions of his architectonic—and doubtless other influences
which would be difficult to define—intervene to prevent him
from recognising its full implications. For the problem is
viewed in the Dialectic as involving considerations altogether
different from those dwelt upon in the Analogies, and as being
without application to the matters of which they treat.
The situation thus created is very similar to that which is
occasioned by Kant’s unfortunate separation of the problems
of space and time in the Aesthetic from the treatment of the
categories in the Analytic. In the Aesthetic space and time are
asserted to be intuitive, not conceptual, in nature; and yet in
the Analytic we find Kant demonstrating that the principles of
causality and reciprocity are indispensably involved in their
apprehension. But even more misleading is the separation of
the problems of the Aesthetic and Analytic from those of the
Dialectic. Kant’s primary and prevailing interest is in the
metaphysics, not in the mere methodology, of experience; and
it is in the Dialectic that the metaphysical principles which
underlie and inspire all his other tenets first find adequate
statement. Since the third Analogy defines the criterion of
coexistence in entire independence of all reference to the Ideas
of Reason, Kant is thereby precluded from even so much as
indicating the true grounds upon which his position, if it is to
be really tenable, must be made to rest. For as he ultimately
came to recognise, the intuition of space not only involves the
conceptual category of reciprocal determination, but likewise
demands for its possibility an Idea of Reason. In space the
wider whole is always prior in thought to the parts which go to
constitute it. But though Kant states[1257] that this
characteristic of space justifies its being entitled an Idea of
Reason, he nowhere takes notice of the obvious and very
important bearing which this must have upon the problem,
how we are to formulate the criterion of coexistence.
The general character of time is analogous to that of space,
and our formulation of the criterion of causal sequence is
therefore similarly affected. The system of nature is not the
outcome of natural laws which are independently valid;
natural laws are the expression of what this system prescribes;
they are the modes in which it defines and embodies its
inherent necessities.
The situation which these considerations would seem to
disclose may, therefore, be stated as follows. If the empirical
criteria of truth are independent of the Ideas of Reason, the
Analytic may be adequate to their discussion, but will be
unable to justify the assertion that there is a category of
reciprocal or systematic connection distinct from that of
causality. If, however, it should be found that these criteria are
merely special applications of standards metaphysical in
character—and that would seem to be Kant’s final conclusion,
—only in the light of the wider considerations first broached
in the Dialectic, can we hope to define their nature and
implications with any approach to completeness.
4. THE POSTULATES OF EMPIRICAL THOUGHT IN GENERAL

First Postulate.—That which agrees, in intuition and in

concepts, with the formal conditions of experience is possible.
Second Postulate.—That which is connected with the
material conditions of experience (that is, with sensation) is
actual.
Third Postulate.—That which is determined, in its
connection with the actual, according to universal conditions
of experience is (that is, exists as) necessary.
In this section Kant maintains that when the Critical
standpoint is accepted, possibility, actuality and necessity can
only be defined in terms of the conditions which render sense-
experience possible. In other words, the Critical position, that
all truth, even that of a priori principles, is merely de facto,
involves acceptance of the view that the actual reduces to the
experienced, and that only by reference to the actual as thus
given can possibility and necessity be defined. The Leibnizian
view that possibility is capable of being defined independently
of the actual, and antecedently to all knowledge of it, must be
rejected.
An analysis of the text can be profitably made only after a
detailed examination of Kant’s general argument; and to that
task we may at once apply ourselves. The section affords
further illustration of the perverting influence of Kant’s
architectonic, as well as of the insidious manner in which the
older rationalism continued to pervert his thinking in his less
watchful moments.
First Postulate.—In the opening paragraphs Kant uses (as
it would seem without consciousness of so doing) the term
possibility in two very different senses.[1258] When the
possible is distinguished from the actual and the necessary, it
acquires the meaning defined in this first Postulate; it is “that
which agrees with the formal conditions of experience.” But it
is also employed in a much narrower sense to signify that
which can have “objective reality, i.e. transcendental
truth.”[1259] The possibility of the objectively real rests upon
fulfilment of a threefold condition: (1) that it agree with the
formal conditions of experience; (2) that it stand in connection
with the material of the sensuous conditions of experience; and
(3) that it follow with necessity upon some preceding state in
accordance with the principle of causality, and so form part of
a necessitated order of nature. In other words, it must be
causally necessitated in order to be empirically actual; and
only the empirically actual is genuinely possible. Such is also
the meaning that usually attaches to the term possible in the
other sections of the Critique. A ‘possible experience’ is one
that can become actual when the specific conditions, all of
which must themselves be possible, are fulfilled. An
experience which is not capable of being actual has no right to
be described even as possible. As a term applicable to the
objectively real, the possible is not wider than the actual, but
coextensive with it. As Kant himself remarks, those terms
refer exclusively to differences in the subjective attitude of the
apprehending mind.
This ambiguity in the term ‘possibility’ has caused a
corresponding ambiguity in Kant’s employment of the term
‘actuality.’ It leads him to endeavour to define the actual, not
in its connection with the conditions of possibility, but in
distinction from them. The possible having been defined (in
the first Postulate) solely in terms of the formal factors of
experience, he proceeds to characterise the actual in a
similarly one-sided fashion, exclusively in terms of the
material element of given sensation. Doubtless the element of
sensation must play a prominent part in enabling us to decide
what is or is not actually existent, but no definition which
omits to take account of relational factors can be an adequate
expression of Critical teaching. Indeed, we only require to
substitute the words ‘sensuously given’ for ‘actual’ in Kant’s
definition of the third Postulate (i.e. of the necessary) in order
to obtain a correct statement of the true Critical view of actual
existence: it is “that which is determined in its connection with
the sensuously given according to universal conditions of
experience.” For Kant the actual and the necessary, objectively
viewed, coincide. Necessity is for the human mind always
merely de facto; and nothing can be objectively actual that is
not causally determined. As the empirically possible cannot, in
its objective reference, be wider than the empirically
necessary, one and the same definition adequately covers all
three terms alike. While the distinctions between them will, of
course, remain, they will be applicable, not to objects, but only
to the subjective conditions of experience in so far as these
may vary from one individual to another. Experiences capable
of being actual for one individual may be merely possible for
another. And what is merely actual to one observer may by
others be comprehended in its necessitating connections. The
terms will not denote differences in the real, but only
variations in the cognitive attitude of the individual.
Thus in professing to show that the three Postulates are
transcendental principles, Kant does less than justice to his
own teaching. For though both here and in the opening
sections of the chapter[1260] he speaks of them in this manner,
i.e. as being conditions alike of ordinary and of scientific
experience, he has himself admitted in so many words the
inappropriateness of such a description.
“The principles of modality are nothing more than
explanations [not, it may be noted, proofs] of the concepts of
possibility, actuality and necessity, in their empirical use, and
are therefore at the same time restrictions of all the categories
to this merely empirical use, ruling out and forbidding their
transcendental [= transcendent] employment.”[1261]
 That is to say, these so-called principles are not really
principles; they merely embody explanatory statements
designed to render the preceding results more definite, and
especially to guard against the illegitimate meanings which the
Leibnizian metaphysics had attached to certain of the terms
involved.
These considerations bring us to the real source of Kant’s
perverse argumentation, namely, the artificial (but none the
less imperious) demands of his architectonic. He is constrained
to provide a set of principles corresponding to the categories
of modality. The definitions of the modal categories have
therefore to be called by that inappropriate name. But that is
not the end of the matter. In order to meet the needs of his
logical framework, Kant proceeds even further than he had
ventured to do in the sections on the Axioms of Intuition and
Anticipations of Perception. There he fell so far short as to
provide only a single principle in each case. In dealing,
however, with the categories of relation he has been able to
define each of the three categories separately, and to derive
from each a separate principle. Many of the defects in his
argument are, indeed, traceable to this source. The close
interrelations of the three principles are, as we have had
occasion to note, seriously obscured. But still, in the main,
separate treatment of each has proved feasible. Kant,
encouraged, as we may believe, by this successful fulfilment
of architectonic requirements, now sets himself to develop, in
similar fashion, a separate principle for each modal category.
But for any such enterprise the conditions are less favourable
than in the case of the categories of relation. For, as just
indicated, no one of the three can, on Critical principles,
possess any genuine meaning save in its relation to the others.
Before following out this line of criticism, we must however
note some further points in Kant’s argument.
In A 219 = B 266, and again in A 225 = B 272, Kant makes
the statement that a concept can be complete prior to any
decision as to its possibility, actuality, or necessity. This
contention is capable of being interpreted in two quite
independent ways, and in only one of those ways is it tenable.
He may mean that the distinction between the possible, the
actual, and the necessary, does not concern the objectively
real, which as such is always both actual and necessary, but
only the subjective attitude of the individual towards the
objects of his thought and experience. From the Critical
standpoint, as we have been arguing, such a contention is
entirely just. But Kant would seem in the above statement to
be chiefly concerned to maintain that a conception may be
complete and determinate, even while we remain in doubt
whether the existence for which it stands is even possible.[1262]
Such a view is merely a relic of the Leibnizian rationalism
from which he is striving to break away. All existences have
their place in a systematic order of experience, and no
conception of them can be either complete or determinate
which fails to specify the causal context to which they belong.
The process of specifying the detail of a concept is the only
process whereby we can define its possibility, actuality, or
necessity.[1263] Were it capable of complete statement without
determination of its modal character, it could never form part
of a unified experience. The examples of “fictitious” concepts,
which Kant cites, are either so determinate as to be
demonstrably inconsistent with experience, and therefore
empirically impossible, or so indeterminate as to afford no
sufficient means of deciding even as to their possibility.
There is a further objection to the definition given of
possibility in the first Postulate. After stating that the possible
is what agrees with the formal conditions of experience, Kant
proceeds, on the one hand, to argue that the forms of intuition
and the categories of understanding may, in accordance with
this criterion, be viewed as possible, and, on the other hand, to
maintain that no other concepts can be so regarded.[1264] That
is to say, the possible, as thus interpreted, does not consist in
something additional to, and in harmony with, the conditions
of experience, but reduces without remainder to those very
forms. Now Kant is not betrayed merely by inadvertence into
thus narrowing the sphere of the possible; such limitation is an
almost inevitable consequence of the one-sided manner in
which he has treated the concept of the possible in this first
Postulate. He professes to be proceeding in the light of the
results obtained in the transcendental deduction, and to be
defining the possible in terms of the conditions which make
sense-experience possible. But the deduction has shown that
experience is possible only in so far as the material factors co-
operate with the formal. And when this is recognised, it
becomes obvious that a definition of the possible in terms of
sensation,—namely, as that which is capable of being
presented in sense-perception,—is equally legitimate, and is
indeed required in order to correct the deficiencies of the
definition which Kant has himself given. As both factors are
indispensable in all possible experience, both must be
reckoned with in defining the possible.
Kant’s argument in the fifth paragraph is somewhat
obscured by its context. He is contending that fictitious
(gedichtete) concepts, elaborated from the contents presented
in perception, cannot be determined as possible. As they
involve sensuous contents, the formal elements of experience
do not suffice for proof of their possibility; and since the
contents are supposed to have been recombined in ways not
supported by experience, an empirical criterion is equally
inapplicable. Obviously Kant is here using the term ‘possible’
not in the meaning of the first Postulate, but in its narrower
connotation as signifying that which is capable of objective
reality. Such fictitious concepts may completely fulfil all the
demands prescribed by space, time, and the categories, and
yet, as he here insists, be none the less incapable of objective
existence.
The argument is still further obscured by the character of
the concrete examples which Kant cites. They involve modes
of action or of intuition which contradict the very conditions
of human experience, and so for that reason alone fall outside
the realm of the empirically possible. That would not,
however, seem to be Kant’s meaning in employing them.
Assumed powers of anticipating the future or of telepathic
communication with other minds are, he says, concepts
“…the possibility of which is altogether groundless, as they
cannot be based on experience and its known laws, and
without such confirmation are arbitrary combinations of
thoughts, which, although indeed free from contradiction, can
make no claim to objective reality and so to the possibility of
an object such as we here profess to think.”[1265]
The mathematical examples which Kant gives in A 223 = B
271[1266] are no less misleading. The concept of a triangle can,
it is implied, be determined as possible in terms of the first
Postulate, since it harmonises with a formal condition of
experience, namely, space. This is true only if it be granted
that construction in space can be executed absolutely a priori,
in independence of all sense-experience. Such is, of course,
Kant’s most usual view; and to that extent the argument is
consistent. Mathematical concepts will from this point of view
represent the only possible exception to the general statement
that the formal conditions of experience constitute a criterion
of possibility for no concepts save themselves. Kant’s final
conclusion is clearly and explicitly stated in the following
terms:
“I leave aside everything the possibility of which can be
derived only from its reality in experience, and have here in
view only the possibility of things through a priori concepts;
and I maintain the thesis that the possibility of such things can
never be established from such concepts taken in and by
themselves, but only when they are viewed as formal and
objective conditions of experience in general.”[1267]
We are now in a position to appreciate the reasons which
have induced Adickes to regard the text as of composite origin.
[1268] Adickes argues that Kant’s original intention was to treat
the three concepts together, showing that they can be defined
only in empirical terms, and that their significance is
consequently limited to the world of appearance. Such is the
content of the first, second, fourth (excepting the first
sentence), and fifth paragraphs. No attempt is made to separate
the three Postulates, and the term possibility is throughout
employed exclusively as referring to objective reality. (In the
third paragraph it is used in both senses.) The other paragraphs
were, according to Adickes’ theory, added later, when Kant
unfortunately resolved to fulfil more exactly the requirements
of his architectonic. That involved the formulation of three
separate Postulates, with all the many evil consequences
which that attempt carried in its train. He must then have
interpolated the third paragraph, added the first sentence to the
fourth paragraph, corrected the too extensive sweep of the
older paragraphs through the introduction of the sixth
paragraph, further supplemented the exposition of the first
Postulate by the seventh paragraph, and added independent
treatments of the postulates of actuality and necessity. This
may seem a very complicated and hazardous hypothesis; but
careful examination of the text, with due recognition of the
confused character of the argument as it stands, will probably
convince the reader that Adickes is in the right.
Second Postulate.[1269]—Perception is necessary to all
determination of actuality. The actual is either itself given in
perception or can be shown, in accordance with the Analogies,
to stand within the unity of objective experience, in connection
with what is thus given. So long as Kant expresses himself in
these terms his statements are entirely valid. Nothing which
cannot be shown to be bound up with the contingent material
of sense-experience can be admitted as actual. He proceeds,
however, to give a definition of actuality which entirely omits
all reference to the Analogies, and which is open to the same
fundamental criticism as his characterisation of possibility in
the first Postulate. Though the earlier statements give due
recognition both to the material content and to the relational
forms constitutive of complete experience, Kant now contrasts
the mere or bare (blosser) concept and the given perception in
a manner which suggests the unfortunate distinction drawn in
the Prolegomena, and repeated in the second edition of the
Critique, between judgments of perception and judgments of
experience.[1270] Kant’s reference to “the mere concept of a
thing”[1271] is on the same lines as the opening paragraph of
the section. However complete the concept may be, it yields
not the least ground for deciding as to the existence of its
object.
Kant’s thinking, as I have already pointed out, is here
perverted by the continuing influence of the Leibnizian
rationalism. He is forgetting that, on Critical principles, even
the categories are meaningless except in their reference to the
contingently given. If that be true of the strictly a priori, it
must hold with even greater force of empirical concepts with
sensuous content. As the sole legitimate function of concepts,
whether a priori or empirical, is to organise and unify the
material of sense, there can be no such thing as the mere or
bare concept. Such a combination of words is without Critical
significance. A concept as such must refer to, and embody
insight into, the real. Only in proportion to its incompleteness,
that is, to its indefiniteness, can it remain without specific and
quite determinate location within the context of unified
experience. It may, indeed, be found convenient to retain the
phrase “mere concept” notwithstanding its misleading
character and rationalistic origin. It must, however, be used
only to mark the indefiniteness, indeterminateness, or
incompleteness which prevents it from adequately revealing
the denotation to which through the nature of its content it
necessarily refers. Meaning and existence, connotation and
denotation, are complementary the one to the other, and
though not, perhaps, coextensive (if that term has itself
meaning in this connection), are none the less inseparably
conjoined. When Kant’s utterances, as frequently happens,
imply the contrary, they may be taken as revealing the strength
and insidious tenacity of the influences from which he was
sufficiently courageous, but not always sufficiently watchful,
to break away.
The doctrine of the “mere concept” finds its natural
supplement in the equally un-Critical assertion that
“…perception [evidently employed in the less pregnant
sense, as signifying ‘sensation accompanied by
consciousness’], which supplies the material to the concept, is
the sole character of actuality.”[1272]
This same position is expressed equally strongly by Kant in
his Reflexionen (ii. 1095).
“Possibility is thought without being given; actuality is
given without being thought; necessity is given through being
thought.”
Such statements are entirely out of harmony with Kant’s
central teaching. There is no lack of passages in the Critique
which inculcate the direct contrary. Though the element of
sensation is a sine qua non of all experience of the actual, the
formal elements are no less indispensable. In their absence the
merely given would reduce to less than a dream; for even in
dreams images are interpreted and are referred to some
connected context. The given, merely as such, cannot enter the
field of consciousness, and is therefore “for us as good as
nothing.” As Caird has pointed out, we find in Kant
“…two apparently contradictory forms of expression—(1)
that the understanding by means of its conceptions refers our
preceptions to objects, and (2) that conceptions are referred to
objects only indirectly through perceptions. The former mode
of expression is preferred whenever Kant has to show that
‘perceptions without conceptions are blind’; the latter when he
has to show that ‘conceptions without perceptions are
empty.’”[1273] “We can understand the possibility of Kant’s
looking at the subject in these two opposite ways, only if we
remember the reciprocal presupposition of perception and
conception in the judgment of knowledge, and the way in
which Kant tries to explain it, now from the point of view of
perception, and now from the point of view of conception. The
effect of this is, no doubt, a formal contradiction which Kant
himself never disentangles, but which we must endeavour to
disentangle, if we would do justice to him.”[1274]
The one-sidedness of Kant’s definition of actuality is
certainly due to the cause suggested by Caird. The definition,
notwithstanding its misleading character, serves to enforce
against the older rationalism, with which Kant throughout this
section is almost exclusively concerned, the central tenet
through which the Critical teaching is distinguished from that
of Leibniz, namely, that neither existence, possibility, nor
necessity, can be established save by reference to the
contingent nature of the sensuously given. Proof by reference
to the possibility of experience can establish only those
conditions which can be shown to be de facto necessary in
order that consciousness of time may be accounted for. The
formal conditions of experience, which in and by themselves
are determinable neither as actual nor as possible, are
established as actual, and so as necessary, by reference to the
merely given; they are necessary only in this merely relative
fashion, as being indispensable to what can never itself be
viewed as other than contingent.
“Our knowledge of the existence of things reaches, then,
only so far as perception and its continuation according to
laws of nature can extend. If we do not start from experience,
or do not proceed according to laws of the empirical
connection of appearances, our guessing or enquiring into the
existence of anything will only be an idle pretence.”[1275]
Polemically, therefore, Kant’s formulation of the second
Postulate is not without its advantages, though from the inner
standpoint of Critical teaching it is altogether inadequate.
For comment upon A 226 = B 273, and upon the general
teaching of this Postulate in its important bearing upon Kant’s
phenomenalism, cf. above, pp. 318-19.
B 274-9.—Refutation of Idealism, cf. above, p. 308 ff.

Third Postulate.[1276]—In the opening sentence Kant draws

the distinction which was lacking in his treatment of the first
Postulate between ‘material’ and ‘formal’ modality. (No
distinction, however, is drawn between the ‘formal’ possibility
of the first Postulate and logical possibility, which consists in
absence of contradiction.) It is with the former alone that we
have to deal. As existence cannot be determined completely a
priori, necessity can never be known from concepts, but only
by reference to the actually given, in accordance with the
universal principles that condition experience. Further, since
such empirical necessity does not concern the existence of
substances, but only the existence of their states, viewed as
dynamically caused, the criterion of empirical necessity
reduces to the second Analogy, viz. that everything which
happens is determined by an antecedent empirical cause. This
criterion does not extend beyond the field of possible
experience, and even within that field applies only to those
existences which can be viewed as effects, i.e. as events which
come into existence in time, and of which therefore the causes
are of the same temporal and conditioned character. The
necessity is a hypothetical necessity; given an empirical event,
it can always be legitimately viewed as necessitated by an
antecedent empirical cause.
Kant introduces, reinterprets, and in this altered form
professes to justify, four of the central principles of the
Leibnizian metaphysics. In mundo non datur casus gives
expression to the above empirical principle. Non datur fatum
may be taken as meaning that natural (i.e. empirical) necessity
is a conditioned and therefore comprehensible necessity, and is
consequently not rightly described as blind. The other two
principles, non datur saltus, and non datur hiatus connect with
the principle of continuity already established in the
Anticipations of Perception and in the second Analogy.
Kant’s further remarks reveal an uneasy feeling that he is
neglecting to assign these principles to the pigeon-holes
provided in his architectonic. The reader, he states, may easily
do so for himself. That may be so, but only if the reader be
permitted the same high-handed methods of adjustment that
are here illustrated in Kant’s location of non datur fatum with
the principles of modality.[1277]
In the next paragraph (A 230 = B 282) Kant suddenly,
without warning or explanation, attaches to the term
possibility a meaning altogether different from any yet
assigned to it. He now takes it as equivalent to the absolutely
or metaphysically possible. Combining this with the meanings
previously given to it by Kant we obtain the following table:—

Logical: equivalent to absence of contradiction.

Empirical: in the wider sense, equivalent to

agreement with the formal conditions of
experience; in the narrower or stricter sense,
Possibility– involving in addition the capacity of being
presented in sense-experience.

Metaphysical: equivalent to absolute possibility,

a conception not of understanding but of
Reason.
When this last meaning is given to the term, an entirely new
set of problems arises, to the confusion of the reader who very
properly continues to employ the term possibility in the
empirical sense which, as Kant has been insisting, is alone
legitimate. Kant has temporarily changed over to the
standpoint of the metaphysical view which he has been
criticising, and accordingly uses the term ‘possibility’ in the
Leibnizian sense. Is Leibniz, he asks, justified in maintaining
that the field of the possible is wider than the realm of the
actual, and the latter in turn wider in extent than the
necessary? In reply Kant accepts the metaphysical meaning
assigned to the term ‘possibility,’ but restates the problem in
Critical fashion. Do all things belong as appearances to the
context of a single experience, or are other types of experience
possible? Do other forms of intuition besides space and time,
other forms of understanding besides the discursive through
concepts, come within the range of the possible? These are
questions which fall to be answered, not by the mere
understanding, the sole function of which is empirical, but by
Reason, which transcends the world of appearance.
Kant introduces these questions, as he is careful to state,
[1278]only because they are currently believed to be within the
competence of the understanding; and he now for the first time
points out that possibility, in this sense, means absolute
possibility, that which is independent of all limiting
conditions, a meaning ruled out by the preceding treatment of
the modal categories. Like all other absolute conceptions, it
belongs to Reason, and must therefore await treatment in the
Dialectic. These admissions come, however, only after the
discussion has been completed. Had Kant reversed the order of
the two paragraphs which constitute this digression, and
marked them off as being a digression, he would have greatly
assisted the reader in following the argument.
Kant adds a refutation of the merely logical arguments by
which Leibniz had professed to establish the priority and
greater scope of the possible. From the proposition, everything
actual is possible, we can infer by immediate inference that
some possible things are actual. That, however, would seem to
imply that part of the possible is not actual, and that something
must be added to the possible in order to constitute the actual.
But this, Kant replies, is obviously an untenable view. The
something additional to the possible, not being itself possible,
we should be constrained to regard as impossible. For our
understanding,[1279] the possible is that which connects with
some perception in agreement with the formal conditions of
experience. (Kant here gives the correct Critical definition of
the possible, by combining the two first postulates.) Whether,
and how far, other existences beyond the field of sense
experience are possible, we have no means of deciding.
B 288-294.—This second edition section emphasises the
fact that possibility cannot be determined through the
categories alone, but only through the categories in their
relation to intuition, and indeed to outer intuition. Possibility is
throughout taken as referring to objective reality. The section
is chiefly important in connection with the problems bearing
on the relation of inner and outer sense and on the nature of
our consciousness of time.[1280]
In B 289-91 Kant criticises those rationalistic arguments
which rest upon the equating of necessity of thought with
necessity of existence. When it is sought by mere analysis of
concepts to prove that all accidental existence has a cause, the
most that can be shown is that the existence of the accidental
cannot be comprehended by us, unless the existence of a cause
be assumed. But we may not argue that a condition of possible
understanding is likewise a condition of possible existence.
[1281] What is or is not possible for thought is, without special
proof, no sufficient criterion of what is or is not possible in the
real. If, again, the term accidental be taken as meaning that
which can exist only as a consequence of some other
existence, the general principle becomes merely analytic, and
must not be taken as establishing the synthetic principle of
causality. The latter demands transcendental proof by
reference to the possibility of contingent experience.
 CHAPTER III

ON THE GROUND OF THE DISTINCTION OF ALL

OBJECTS WHATEVER INTO PHENOMENA AND
NOUMENA
THIS chapter, as Kant himself states,[1282] 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.[1283]
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.”[1284]
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.[1285] 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.”[1286]
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.[1287] And in the absence of
ascertainable meaning they cannot, of course, be defined.
In A 244[1288] 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.”[1289]
 A 248-9[1290] 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.[1291] 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.[1292] 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.[1293] 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.[1294]
But to return to Kant’s own argument: the reason why the
mind is “not satisfied with this substrate of sensibility,”[1295]
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;[1296] 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,[1297] 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[1298] 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.”[1299]
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,[1300] 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.”[1301]
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;[1302] 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.[1303] 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.”[1304]
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.”[1305]
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.”[1306]
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.”[1307] 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.”[1308]
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.[1309]
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.”[1310]
”[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….”[1311]
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,”[1312] 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,[1313] 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.[1314] 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[1315]
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.[1316]
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[1317]
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,”[1318] 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,[1319]
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[1320] 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.[1321]
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,[1322] 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.
[1323] 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,[1324] 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,[1325] 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.[1326] 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.[1327] 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.[1328]
(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[1329] 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.[1330] 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.[1331] It has
already been commented upon.[1332] A 285-9 = B 342-6, on
the other hand, which supplements the chapter on Phenomena
and Noumena,[1333] would seem to be of late origin. It is so
dated by Adickes,[1334] 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,[1335] 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.[1336] 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,[1337] 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.”[1338] 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.[1339] 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[1340]

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[1341] 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,[1342]
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.[1343] 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,[1344] 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”[1345] 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.
[1346]
The resulting conceptions are defined both as limits[1347]
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.[1348]
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,[1349] 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.[1350]
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[1351]
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,[1352] 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.[1353]
There is evidence that the theological problems were the
first to be withdrawn from the sphere of the “sceptical
method,”[1354] peculiar to the antinomies. Thus Reflexion ii.
125[1355] states that “metaphysics proper consists of
cosmologia rationalis and theologia naturalis”—rational
psychology being, as it would seem, still included within
cosmology.[1356] 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.”[1357]
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).[1358] 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.[1359] 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.[1360] 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.[1361] This earlier scheme may therefore be
represented as follows:
Aesthetic.
Logic.
Doctrine of
Elements Critique = Discipline
Transcendental [corresponding to the
Philosophy– Dialectic of the Critique].
Doctrine of
Canon.
Methods
Architectonic.
(Methodology)
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:
Transcendental of
Philosophy Concepts.
Analytic
or Critique of of
Aesthetic.
Pure Reason Doctrine of Judgement.
Elements Logic.
Dialectic
—of
Reason.
Doctrine of Discipline (retained but
Methods given a new
(Methodology) and more general
content).
 Canon.
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.[1362]
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.[1363]
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[1364] 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,[1365] the doctrine
of schematism, in terms of which the distinction between
understanding and judgment is formulated, is late in date of
origin.[1366] 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.[1367]—The meaning which

Kant attaches to the term dialectic has already been
considered. The passage above quoted[1368] 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[1369] 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[1370] 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,[1371] 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,[1372] 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[1373]
(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.[1374] 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.”[1375] “The principles of the synthesis of pure
Reason are all metaphysical…. [They] are principles of the
subjective unity of knowledge through Reason, i.e. of the
agreement of Reason with itself.”[1376]
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].”[1377]
(b) The Logical Use of Reason[1378]

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[1379]

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.[1380]
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.”
 BOOK I

THE CONCEPTS OF PURE REASON[1381]

The distinction here drawn between concepts obtained by
reflection and concepts gained by inference is a somewhat
misleading mode of stating the fact that, whereas the
categories of understanding condition experience and so make
possible the unity of consciousness necessary to all reflection,
or, in other words, are conditions of the material supplied for
inference, the concepts of Reason are Ideal constructions
which though in a certain sense resting upon experience none
the less transcend it. The function of the Ideas is to organise
experience in its totality; that of the categories is to render
possible the sense-perceptions constitutive of its content. The
former refer to the unconditioned, and though that is a
conception under which everything experienced is conceived
to fall, it represents a type of knowledge to which no actual
experience can ever be adequate.
Conceptus ratiocinati—conceptus ratiocinantes. When
such transcendent concepts possess “objective validity,” they
are correctly inferred, and may be entitled conceptus
ratiocinati. If, on the other hand, they are due to merely
sophistical[1382] reasoning, they are purely fictitious, conceptus
ratiocinantes. This distinction raises many difficulties. Kant’s
intention cannot be to deny that the conceptus ratiocinati are
“mere Ideas” (entia rationis)[1383]—for such is his avowed and
constant contention—or that the inference to them is
dialectical and is based upon a transcendental illusion. Two
alternatives are open. He may mean that they are only valid
when the results of such inference are Critically reinterpreted,
and when the function of the Ideas is realised to be merely
regulative; or his intention may be to mark off the Ideas,
strictly so-called, which are inevitable and beneficial products
of Reason, from the many idle and superfluous inventions of
speculative thought. Kant’s concluding remark, that the
questions at issue can be adequately discussed only at a later
stage, may be taken as in the nature of an apology for the
looseness of these preliminary statements, and as a warning to
the reader not to insist upon them too absolutely. The
participles ratiocinati and ratiocinantes[1384] are of doubtful
latinity. The distinction of meaning here imposed upon them
has not been traced in any other writer, and is perhaps Kant’s
own invention.[1385]
SECTION I

IDEAS IN GENERAL[1386]

Kant connects his use of the term Idea with the meaning in
which it is employed by Plato. He urges upon all true lovers of
philosophy the imperative need of rescuing from misuse a
term so indispensable to mark a distinction more vital than any
other to the very existence of the philosophical disciplines.
”[For Plato] Ideas are the archetypes of the things
themselves, and not, like the categories, merely keys to
possible experiences. In his view they issued from the
Supreme Reason, and from that source have come to be shared
in by human Reason…. He very well realised that our faculty
of knowledge feels a much higher need than merely to spell
out appearances according to a synthetic unity, in order to read
them as experience. He knew that our Reason naturally exalts
itself to forms of knowledge which so far transcend the bounds
of experience that no given empirical object can ever coincide
with them, but which must none the less be recognised as
having their own reality and which are by no means mere
fictions of the brain.”[1387]
Plato found these ideas chiefly, though not exclusively, in
the practical sphere. When moral standards are in question,
experience is the mother of illusion.
“For nothing can be more injurious or more unworthy of a
philosopher than the vulgar appeal to so-called adverse
experience. Such experience would never have existed at all, if
those institutions had been established at the proper time in
accordance with Ideas, and if Ideas had not been displaced by
crude conceptions which, just because they have been derived
from experience, have nullified all good intentions.”[1388]
 Even in the natural sphere Ideas which are never themselves
adequately embodied in the actual must be postulated in order
to account for the actual. Certain forms of existences “are
possible only according to Ideas.”
“A plant, an animal, the orderly arrangement of the cosmos
—probably, therefore, the entire natural world—clearly show
that they are possible only according to Ideas, and that though
no single creature in the conditions of its individual existence
coincides with the Idea of what is most perfect in its kind—
just as little as does any individual man exactly conform to the
Idea of humanity, which he actually carries in his soul as the
archetype of his actions—yet these Ideas are none the less
completely determined in the Supreme Understanding, each as
an individual and each as unchangeable, and are the original
causes of things. But only the totality of things, in their
interconnection as constituting the universe, is completely
adequate to the Idea.”[1389]
Though Kant avows the intention of adapting the term Idea
freely to the needs of his more Critical standpoint, all these
considerations contribute to the rich and varied meanings in
which he employs it.
Reflexionen and passages from the Lectures on Metaphysics
may be quoted to show the thoroughly Platonic character of
Kant’s early use of the term, and to illustrate its gradual
adjustment to Critical demands.
“The Idea is the unity of knowledge, through which the
manifold either of knowledge or of the object is possible. In
the former, the whole of knowledge precedes its parts, the
universal precedes the particular; in the latter, knowledge of
the objects precedes their possibility, as e.g. in [objects that
possess] order and perfection.”[1390] “That an object is possible
only through a form of knowledge is a surprising statement;
but all teleological relations are possible only through a form
of knowledge [i.e. a concept].”[1391] “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.”[1392] “As the Understanding of
God is the ground of all possibility, archetypes, Ideas, are in
God…. The divine Intuitus contains Ideas according to which
we ourselves are possible; cognitio divina est cognitio
archetypa, and His Ideas are archetypes of things. The
[corresponding] forms of knowledge possessed by the human
understanding we may also entitle (in a comparative sense)
archetypes or Ideas. They are those representations of our
understanding which serve for judgment upon things.”[1393]
“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, because in experience we
proceed from the parts through successive synthesis to the
whole. It is the archetype 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.”[1394] “The pure concepts of Reason have no
exemplaria; they are themselves archetypes. But the concepts
of our pure Reason have as their archetypes this Reason itself
and are therefore subjective, not objective.”[1395] “The
transcendental Ideas serve to limit the principles of experience,
forbidding their extension to things in themselves, and
showing that what is never an object of possible experience is
not therefore a non-entity [Unding], and that experience is not
adequate either to itself or to Reason, but always refers us
further to what is beyond itself.”[1396] “The employment of the
concept of understanding was immanent, that of the Ideas as
concepts of objects is transcendent. But as regulative
principles alike of the completion and of the limitation of our
knowledge, they are Critically immanent.”[1397] “The
difficulties of metaphysics all arise in connection with the
reconciling of empirical principles with Ideas. The possibility
of the latter cannot be denied, but neither can they be made
empirically intelligible. The Idea is never a conceptus dabilis;
it is not an empirically possible conception.”[1398]
Kant[1399] appends the following ‘Stufenleiter’ (ladder-like)
arrangement of titles for the various kinds of representation.
Representation (Vorstellung) is the term which he substitutes
for the Cartesian and Lockian employment of the term idea,
now reserved for use in its true Platonic meaning. To entitle
such a representation as that of red colour an idea is, in Kant’s
view, an intolerable and barbaric procedure; that
representation is not even a concept of the understanding.

SECTION II

THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1400]

This section completes the metaphysical deduction of the

Ideas. In the preceding sections on the logical and on the pure
use of Reason, Kant has pointed out that Reason proceeds in
accordance with the principle, that for the conditioned
knowledge of understanding the unconditioned, in which it
finds completion, must be discovered. This principle is
synthetic, involving a concept which transcends the
understanding; and as Reason in its logical use is merely
formal, that concept must be due to Reason in its creative or
transcendental activity. In the section before us Kant deduces
from the three kinds of syllogism the three possible forms in
which such an Idea of Reason can present itself. The deduction
is, as already noted, wholly artificial, and masks Kant’s real
method of obtaining the Ideas, namely, through combination
of the unique concept of the unconditioned with the three
categories of relation. The deduction is based upon an
extremely ingenious analogy between the logical function of
Reason in deductive inference and its transcendental procedure
in prescribing the Ideal of unconditioned totality. In the
syllogism the predicate of the conclusion is shown to be
connected with its subject in accordance with a condition
which is stated in its universality in the major premiss. Thus if
the conclusion be: Caius is mortal, in constructing the
syllogism, required to establish it, we seek for a conception
which contains the condition under which the predicate is
given—in this case the conception “man”—and we state that
condition in its universality: All men are mortal. Under this
major premiss is then subsumed Caius, the object dealt with:
Caius is a man. And so indirectly, by reference to the universal
condition, we obtain the knowledge that Caius is mortal.
Universality, antecedently stated, is restricted in the conclusion
to a specific object. Now what corresponds in the synthesis of
intuition to the universality (universalitas) of a logical premiss
is allness (universitas) or totality of conditions. The
transcendental concept of Reason, to which the logical
procedure is to serve as clue, can therefore be no other than
that of the totality of conditions for any given conditioned.
And as totality of conditions is equivalent to the
unconditioned, this latter must be taken as the fundamental
concept of Reason; the unconditioned is conceived as being
the ground of the synthesis of everything conditioned. But
there are three species of relation, and consequently there are
three forms in which the concept of Reason seeks to realise its
demand for the unconditioned: (1) through categorical
synthesis in one subject, (2) through hypothetical synthesis of
the members of a series, and (3) through disjunctive synthesis
of the parts in one system. To these three correspond the three
species of syllogism, categorical, hypothetical, and
disjunctive, in each of which thought passes through a
regressive series of prosyllogisms back to an unconditioned:
the first to a concept which stands for what is always a subject
and never a predicate; the second to a presupposition which
itself presupposes nothing further; and the third to such an
aggregate of the members of the division as will make that
division complete. It may be observed that in this proof the
threefold specification of the concept of the unconditioned is
really obtained directly from the categories of relation, or at
least from the judgments of relation, and not from the
corresponding species of syllogism.
Totality and unconditionedness, when taken as equivalent,
become synonymous with the absolute.[1401] This last term,
however, especially when taken as defining possibility and
necessity, is ambiguous. The absolutely possible may signify
either that which in itself, i.e. so far as regards its internal
content, is possible; or else that which is in every respect and
in all relations possible. The two meanings have come to be
connected largely owing to the fact that the internally
impossible is impossible in every respect. Otherwise, however,
the two meanings fall completely apart. Absolute necessity
and inner necessity are quite diverse in character. We must not,
for instance, argue that the opposite of what is absolutely
necessary must be inwardly impossible, nor consequently that
absolute necessity must in the end reduce to an inner necessity.
Examination will show that, in certain types of cases, not the
slightest meaning can be attached to the phrase ‘inner
necessity.’ As we possess the terms inner and logical to denote
the first form of necessity, there is no excuse for employing
the term absolute in any but the wider sense. That, Kant holds,
is its original and proper meaning. The absolute totality to
which the concept of Reason refers is that form of
completeness which is in every respect unconditioned.
In A 326 = B 383 Kant’s mode of statement emphasises the
connection of the Ideas with the categories of relation. Reason,
he claims, “seeks to extend the synthetic unity, which is
thought in the category, to the absolutely unconditioned.” Such
positive content as the Ideas can possess lies in the experience
which they profess to unify; in so far as they transcend
experience and point to an Ideal completion that is not
empirically attainable, they refer to things of which the
understanding can have no concept. It is necessary, however,
that they should present themselves in this absolute and
transcendent form, since otherwise the understanding would
be without stimulus and without guidance. Though mere Ideas,
they are neither arbitrary nor superfluous. They regulate the
understanding in its empirical pursuit of that systematic unity
which it requires for its own satisfaction.
In A 327-8 = B 383-4 one and the same ground is assigned
for entitling the Ideas transcendental and also transcendent,
namely, that, as they surpass experience, no object capable of
being given through the senses corresponds to them. But a
difference would none the less seem to be implied in the
connotation of the two terms. In being prescribed by the very
nature of Reason, they are transcendental; as overstepping the
limits of experience, they are transcendent. Kant’s use of the
terms subject and object in this passage is also somewhat
puzzling. ‘Object’ is employed in the metaphysical sense
proper only from the pre-Critical standpoint of the
Dissertation, as meaning an existence apprehended through
pure thought. The term ‘subject’ receives a correspondingly
un-Critical connotation. The further phrase “the merely
speculative use of Reason” is somewhat misleading, even
though we recognise that for Kant speculative and theoretical
are synonymous terms; we should rather expect “Reason in its
legitimate or Critical or directive function.” Kant’s intended
meaning, however, is sufficiently clear. When we say that a
concept of Reason is an Idea merely, we have in mind the
degree to which it can be empirically verified. We are
asserting that it prescribes an Ideal to which experience may
be made to approach, but which it can never attain. It defines
“a problem to which there is no solution.” In the practical
sphere of morals, on the other hand, the Ideal of Reason must
never be so described. Though only partially realisable, it is
genuinely actual. Even those actions which imperfectly
embody it none the less presuppose it as their indispensable
condition. In two respects, therefore, as Kant points out, the
statement that the transcendental concepts of Reason are
merely Ideas calls for qualification. In the first place they are
by no means “superfluous and void.” They supply a canon for
the fruitful employment of understanding. And secondly, they
may perhaps be found to make possible a transition from
natural to moral concepts, and so to bring the Ideas of practical
Reason into connection with the principles of speculative
thought. The reader may again note the genuinely Platonic
character of Kant’s use of the term Idea.
In A 330-1 = B 386-7 Kant returns to the problem of the
metaphysical deduction, and analyses the nature of syllogistic
reasoning. The analysis differs from that of A 321 ff. = C 377
ff. only in emphasising that when a conclusion is given as
valid the totality of the premisses required for its establishment
can be postulated as likewise given, and that when completely
stated in the implied prosyllogisms the premisses form a
regressive series. In this way Kant contrives to bring the
logical process into closer connection with the transcendental
principle, which he now definitively formulates as follows:
When the conditioned is given, the series of conditions up to
the unconditioned is likewise given. The series of antecedent
conditions may either have a first term or may be incapable of
such. In either case it has to be viewed as unconditioned, in the
one case in virtue of its unconditioned beginning, in the other
in its character as an unending and therefore unlimited series.
In one or other form Reason demands that the unconditioned
be recognised as underlying and determining everything
conditioned.[1402]
class=“chead”SECTION III

SYSTEM OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1403]

The three Ideas of Reason, as derived from the three kinds
of syllogism, are now brought into connection with the three
possible relations in which representations are found to stand:
first, to the thinking subject; secondly, to objects as
appearances; thirdly, to objects of thought in general. Kant
argues that the completed totalities towards which Reason
strives are likewise three in number. Reason seeks: (1) in
regard to the subject known, as constituting the fact of inner
experience, a representation of the self or soul that will render
completely intelligible what is peculiar to the inner life; (2) in
regard to the object known, a conception of the completed
totality of the world of phenomena, the cosmos; (3) in regard
to the ultimate synthesis of the subject known and the object
known, such a conception of all existing things as will render
intelligible the co-operation of mind and external nature in one
experience. In this way Kant professes to obtain transcendental
justification for the threefold division of metaphysical science
into rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational
theology. The absolute unity of the thinking subject is dealt
with by psychology, the totality of all appearances by
cosmology, and the Being, which contains the condition of the
possibility of all that can be thought, by theology.
In thus proceeding, Kant is assuming that the concepts of
unconditioned substance and of unconditioned necessity can
be interpreted only in spiritualist and theological terms.[1404]
This assumption stands in direct conflict with what the history
of philosophy records. The Absolute has frequently been
materialistically defined, and, as Kant himself admits, we
cannot prove that the thinking subject may not be
naturalistically conditioned. Architectonic is again exercising
its baleful influence. That the argument is lacking in cogency
is indeed so evident that Kant takes notice of the deficiency,
[1405] and promises that it will be remedied in the sequel. This
promise he is unable to fulfil. Such further reasons as he is
able to offer are of the same external character.[1406]
“Of these transcendental Ideas, strictly speaking, no
objective deduction, such as we were able to give of the
categories, is possible.”[1407] As Kant indicates by use of the
phrase ‘strictly speaking,’ this statement is subject to
modification. He himself formulates a transcendental
deduction of the Ideas, as principles regulative of experience.
[1408] The deduction from the three forms of syllogism, which
Kant here entitles subjective, ought properly to be named
‘metaphysical.’[1409]
 BOOK II

THE DIALECTICAL INFERENCES OF PURE

REASON[1410]
 CHAPTER I

THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON[1411]

As rational psychology fails to distinguish between
appearances and things in themselves, it identifies mere
apperception with inner sense; the self in experiencing the
succession of its inner states is supposed to acquire knowledge
of its own essential nature. “I, as thinking, am an object of
inner sense, and am entitled soul,” in contrast to the body
which is an object of outer sense. Empirical psychology deals
with the concrete detail of inner experience; rational
psychology abstracts from all such special experiences, indeed
from everything empirical, professing to establish its doctrine
upon the single judgment, “I think.” That judgment has
already been investigated in its connection with the problem of
the possibility, within the field of experience, of synthetic a
priori judgments. It has now to be considered as a possible
basis for knowledge of the self as a thinking being (ein
denkend Wesen) or soul (Seele).
Following the guiding thread of the table of categories, but
placing them in what he regards as being, in this connection,
the most convenient order, Kant obtains a “topic” or
classification of the possible rubrics for the doctrines of a
rational psychology: (1) the soul is substance; (2) is simple;
(3) is numerically identical; (4) stands in relation to possible
objects in space. Now all those four doctrines are, Kant holds,
incapable of demonstration. The proofs propounded by
rational psychology are logically imperfect, committing the
logical fallacy which is technically named paralogism.[1412]
The fallacy is not, however, of merely logical character. Had
that been the case, it could never have gained such general
currency. Certainly no metaphysical science, widely accepted
by profound thinkers, could ever have come to be based upon
it. The paralogism is transcendental in character, resting upon
a transcendental ground. It represents an illusion which from
any non-Critical standpoint is altogether unavoidable. Its
dialectic is a natural dialectic, wrongly interpreted by the
Schools, but not capriciously invented by them. The key to its
proper treatment is first supplied by the results of the
transcendental deduction. We are now called upon to apply
these results in explanation of the occurrence of the
paralogisms, and in judgment upon their false claims. Little
that is really new is to be found in this chapter; but many of
the established results of the Analytic receive interesting
illustration, and are thereby set in a clearer light.
In rational psychology the “I think” is taken in its universal,
or to use Kant’s somewhat misleading term, problematic
aspect, that is to say, not as a judgment expressive of the self’s
own existence but “in its mere possibility,”[1413] as
representing the self-consciousness of all possible thinking
beings. As we cannot gain a representation of thinking beings
through outer experience, we are constrained to think them in
terms of our own self-consciousness. The “I think” is thus
taken as a universal judgment, expressing what belongs to the
conception of thinking being in general. The judgment is so
interpreted by rational psychology, “in order to see what
predicates applicable to its subject (be that subject actually
existent or not) may flow from so simple a judgment.”
In summarising what is directly relevant in the argument of
the transcendental deduction, Kant emphasises that the I, as
representation, is altogether empty of content.[1414]
“We cannot even say that it is a conception, but only that it
is a bare (blosses) consciousness which accompanies all
conceptions. Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks,
nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of
the thoughts = x….”
It is apprehended only in its relation to the thoughts which
are its predicates; apart from them we cannot form any
conception whatever of it, but can only revolve in a perpetual
circle, since any judgment upon it has already made use of its
representation.[1415]
The patchwork character of the Critique, the artificial nature
of the connections between its various parts, is nowhere more
evident than in this section on the Paralogisms. According to
the definition given of transcendental illusion, we naturally
expect Kant’s argument to show that the Paralogisms rest
upon a failure to distinguish between appearance and reality.
As a matter of fact, the cause of their fallacy is traced in the
first three Paralogisms solely to a failure to distinguish
between the logical and the real application of the categories.
The argument can indeed be restated so as to agree with the
introductory sections of the Dialectic. But Kant’s manner of
expounding the Paralogisms shows that this chapter must
originally have been written independently of any intention to
develop such teaching as that of the sections which in the
ultimate arrangement of the Critique are made to lead up to it.
[1416]

First Paralogism: of Substantiality.[1417]—Save for the

phrase ‘subject in itself,’ there is, in Kant’s comment upon this
Paralogism, not a word regarding the necessity of a distinction
between appearance and reality, but only an insistence that the
“I think” yields no knowledge of the thinking self.
Consciousness of the self and knowledge of its underlying
substance are by no means identical. The self, so far as it
enters into consciousness, is a merely logical subject; the
underlying substrate is that to which this self-consciousness
and all other thoughts are due. It is in the light of this
distinction that Kant discusses the substantiality of the subject.
As expressive of the “I think,” the category of substance and
attribute can be employed only to define the relation in which
consciousness stands to its thoughts; it expresses the merely
logical relation of a subject to its predicates. It tells us nothing
regarding the nature of the “I,” save only that it is the
invariable centre of reference for all thoughts. In order to
know the self as substance, and so as capable of persisting
throughout all change, and as surviving even the death of the
body, we should require to have an intuition of it, and of such
intuition there is not the slightest trace in the “I think.” It
“signifies a substance only in Idea, not in reality.”[1418] As
Kant adds later,[1419] the permanence and self-identity of the
representation of the self justifies no argument to the
permanence and self-identity of its underlying conditions.
Inference from the nature of representation to the nature of the
object represented is entirely illegitimate. In the equating of
the two, and not, as the introduction to the Dialectic would
lead us to expect, in a failure to distinguish appearance from
reality, consists the paralogistic fallacy of this first syllogism.
Second Paralogism: of Simplicity.[1420]—We may follow
Adickes[1421] in his analysis of A 351-62. (a) The original
criticism, parallel to that of the first Paralogism, would seem
to be contained in paragraphs five to nine. (b) The opening
paragraphs, and (c) the concluding paragraphs, would seem,
for reasons stated below, to be independent and later additions.
(a) The argument of the central paragraphs runs almost
exactly parallel with the criticism of the first Paralogism,
applying the same line of thought, in disproof of the assumed
argument for the simplicity of the soul. It may be noted, in
passing, that Kant here departs from his table of categories.
There is no category of simplicity. The connection which he
seeks to establish between the concept of simplicity and the
categories of quality is arbitrary. It more naturally connects
with the category of unity; but the category of unity is required
for the third Paralogism. For explanation of the way in which
he equates the concept of simplicity with the category of
reality Kant is satisfied to refer the reader to the section on the
second antinomy in which this same identification occurs.[1422]
Indeed the simplicity here dwelt upon seems hardly
distinguishable from substantiality, and therefore it is not
surprising that Kant’s criticism of the second Paralogism
should be practically identical with that of the first.[1423] Since
the “I,” as logical subject of thought, signifies only a
something in general, and embodies no insight into the
constitution of this something, it is for that reason empty of all
content, and consequently simple. “The simplicity of the
representation of a subject is not eo ipso a knowledge of the
simplicity of the subject itself….” The second Paralogism
thus, in Kant’s view, falsely argues from the merely logical
unity of the subject in representation to the actual simplicity of
the subject in itself.
(b) One reason for regarding the first four paragraphs as a
later addition is their opening reference to the introductory
sections of the Dialectic, of which this chapter otherwise takes
little or no account. This Paralogism is, Kant declares, “the
Achilles of all the dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of
the soul,” meaning that it may well seem a quite invulnerable
argument.[1424]
“It is no mere sophistical play contrived by a dogmatist in
order to impart to his assertions a superficial plausibility
(Schein), but an inference which appears to withstand even the
keenest scrutiny and the most scrupulously exact
investigation.”
The second paragraph is a very pointed restatement of a
main supporting argument of this second Paralogism. This
argument well deserves the eulogy with which Kant has
ushered it in. It is as follows. The unity of consciousness can
not be explained as due to the co-operative action of
independent substances. Such a merely external effect as that
of motion in a material body may be the resultant of the united
motions of its parts. But it is otherwise with thought. For
should that which thinks be viewed as composite, and the
different representations, as, for instance, of the single words
of a verse, be conceived as distributed among the several parts,
a multiplicity of separate consciousnesses would result, and
the single complex consciousness, that of the verse as a whole,
would be rendered impossible. Consciousness cannot therefore
—such is the argument—inhere in the composite. The soul
must be a simple substance.[1425]
As there is no reference in this argument to the “I think,” the
criticism cannot be that of the first Paralogism, nor that of the
central paragraphs of this second Paralogism. Kant’s reply—
as given in the third and fourth paragraphs—is in effect to
refer the reader to the results of the Analytic, and is formulated
in the manner of his Introduction to the Critique. The principle
that multiplicity of representation presupposes absolute unity
in the thinking subject can neither be demonstrated
analytically from mere concepts, nor derived from experience.
Being a synthetic a priori judgment, it can be established only
by means of a transcendental deduction. But in that form it
will define only a condition required for the possibility of
consciousness; it can tell us nothing in regard to the noumenal
nature of the thinking being. And, as Kant argues in the third
Paralogism,[1426] there may be a possible analogy between
thought and motion, though of a different kind from that above
suggested.
The entire absence of all connection between the argument
of these paragraphs and the argument of those which
immediately follow upon them, at least suffices to show that
this second Paralogism has not been written as a continuous
whole; and taken together with the fact that the problem is
here formulated in terms of the Introduction to the Critique,
would seem to show that this part of the section is of
comparatively late origin.
(c) The concluding paragraphs, which are of considerable
intrinsic interest, also reflect an independent line of criticism.
As the phrase “the above proposition”[1427] seems to indicate,
they were not originally composed in this present connection.
They give expression to Kant’s partial agreement with the line
of argument followed by the rationalists, but also seek to show
that, despite such partial validity, the argument does not lend
support to any metaphysical extension of our empirical
knowledge. In A 358 we have what may be a reference to the
argument of the introductory sections of the Dialectic. The
argument under criticism is praised as being “natural and
popular,” “occurring even to the least sophisticated
understanding,” and as leading it to view the soul as an
altogether different existence from the body. The argument is
as follows. None of the qualities proper to material existence,
such as impenetrability or motion, are to be discovered in our
inner experience. Nor can feelings, desires, thoughts, etc., be
externally intuited. In view of these differences, we seem
justified in asserting that the soul cannot be an appearance in
space, and cannot therefore be corporeal. Kant replies by
drawing attention to the fundamental Critical distinction
between appearances and things in themselves.[1428] If
material bodies, as apprehended, were things in themselves,
the argument would certainly justify us in refusing to regard
the soul and its states as of similar nature. But since, as the
Aesthetic has shown, bodies, as known, are mere appearances
of outer sense, the real question at issue is not that of the
distinction between the soul and bodies in space, but of the
distinction between the soul and that something which
conditions all outer appearances.
“…this something which underlies the outer appearances
and which so affects our sense that it obtains the
representations of space, matter, shape, etc., this something,
viewed as noumenon (or better, as transcendental object),
might yet also at the same time serve as the subject of our
thoughts….”[1429]
Thus the argument criticised serves only to enforce the very
genuine distinction between inner and outer appearances; it
justifies no assertion, either positive or negative, as to the
nature of the soul or as to its relation to body in its noumenal
aspect. The monadistic, spiritualist theory of material
existence remains an open possibility, though only as an
hypothesis incapable either of proof or of disproof. We cannot
obtain, by way of inference from the character of our
apperceptive consciousness, any genuine addition to our
speculative insight.
Third Paralogism: of Personality.[1430]—Kant’s criticism
again runs parallel with that of the preceding Paralogisms.
The fallacy involved is traced to a confusion between the
numerical identity of the self in representation and the
numerical identity of the subject in itself. The logical subject
of knowledge must, as the transcendental deduction has
proved, think itself as self-identical throughout all its
experiences. This is indeed all that the judgment “I think”
expresses. It is mere identity, “I am I.” But from the identity of
representation we must not argue to identity of the underlying
self. So far as the unity of self-consciousness is concerned,
there is nothing to prevent the noumenal conditions of the self
from undergoing transformation so complete as to involve the
loss of identity, while yet supporting the representation of an
identical self.
“Although the dictum of certain ancient Schools, that
everything in the world is in a flux and nothing permanent and
abiding, cannot be reconciled with the admission of
substances, it is not refuted by the unity of self-consciousness.
For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine
whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon as
belonging to our identical self only that of which we are
conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the
same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious.
We cannot, however, claim that such a judgment would be
valid from the standpoint of an outside observer. As the only
permanent appearance which we meet with in the soul is the
representation ‘I’ that accompanies and connects them all, we
are unable to prove that this ‘I,’ a mere thought, may not be in
the same state of flux as the other thoughts which are
connected together by its means.”[1431]
And Kant adds an interesting illustration.[1432]
“An elastic ball which impinges on another similar ball in a
straight line communicates to the latter its whole motion, and
therefore its whole state (i.e. if we take account only of the
positions in space). If, then, in analogy with such bodies, we
postulate substances such that the one communicates to the
other representations together with the consciousness of them,
we can conceive a whole series of substances of which the first
transmits its state together with its consciousness to the
second, the second its own state with that of the preceding
substance to the third, and this in turn the states of all the
preceding substances together with its own consciousness and
with their consciousness to another. The last substance would
then be conscious of all the states of the substances, which had
undergone change before its own change, as being its own
states, because they would have been transferred to it together
with the consciousness of them. And yet it would not have
been one and the same person in all these states.”[1433]
The perversely Hegelian character of Caird’s and Watson’s
manner of interpreting the Critique is especially evident in
their treatment of the Paralogisms. They make not the least
mention of this part of Kant’s teaching.
Kant employs a further argument which would seem to
show that at the time when these paragraphs were written the
general tendency of his thought was predominantly
subjectivist in character. There are, he implies, as many
different times as there are selves that represent time.[1434] The
argument is as follows. As the “I think” is equivalent to “I am
I,” we may say either that all time of which I am conscious is
in me, or that I am conscious of myself as numerically
identical in each and every part of it. In my individual
consciousness, therefore, identity of my person is unfailingly
present. But an observer, viewing me from the outside,[1435]
represents me in the time of his own consciousness; and as the
time in which he thus sets me is not that of my own thinking,
the self-identity of my consciousness, even if he recognises its
existence, does not justify him in inferring the objective
permanence of my self.
The two concluding paragraphs seem to have been
independently composed.[1436] They contribute nothing of
importance.
Fourth Paralogism: of Ideality.[1437]—The main argument
of this Paralogism, which contains the first edition refutation
of idealism, has already been considered above.[1438] We
require, therefore, only to treat of it in its connection with the
other Paralogisms, and to note some few minor points that
remain for consideration. Its argument differs from that of the
other Paralogisms in that the fallacy involved is traced, in
agreement with the requirements of the introductory sections
of the Dialectic, to a failure to distinguish between
appearances and things in themselves. Its connection with the
table of categories is extremely artificial. In A 344 = B 402 the
category employed is that of possibility, in A 404 and A 344 n.
that of existence.[1439] Kant’s attempt to combine the problem
here treated with that of the other Paralogisms can only be
explained as due to the requirements of his architectonic.[1440]
This Paralogism does not concern itself with the nature of the
soul. It refers exclusively to the mode of existence to be
ascribed to objective appearances. None the less, Kant
contrives to bring it within the range of rational psychology in
the following manner. He argues[1441] that rational
psychologists are one and all adherents of empirical idealism.
They confound appearances in space with things in
themselves, and therefore assert that our knowledge of their
existence is inferential and consequently uncertain. The errors
of empirical idealism are thus bound up with the dogmatic
assumptions of the rationalist position. They are traceable to
its failure to distinguish between appearances and things in
themselves. Such dogmatism may take the form of materialism
or of ontological dualism, as well as of spiritualism.[1442] All
three, in professing to possess knowledge of things in
themselves, violate Critical principles. If the chief function of
rational psychology consists in securing the conception of the
soul against the onslaughts of materialism,[1443] that can be
much more effectively attained through transcendental
idealism.
“For, on [Critical] teaching, so completely are we freed
from the fear that on the removal of matter all thought, and
even the very existence of thinking beings, would be
destroyed, that on the contrary it is clearly shown that if I
remove the thinking subject the whole corporeal world must at
once vanish, since it is nothing save appearance in the
sensibility of our subject and a species of its
representations.”[1444]
We do not, indeed, succeed in proving that the thinking self
is in its existence independent of the “transcendental
substrate”[1445] of outer appearances. But as both possibilities
remain open, the admission of our ignorance leaves us free to
look to other than speculative sources for proof of the
independent and abiding existence of the self.
Reflection on the Whole of Pure Psychology.[1446]—This
section affords Kant the opportunity of discussing certain
problems which he desires to deal with, but is unable to
introduce under the recognised rubrics of his logical
architectonic.[1447] There are, Kant says, three other dialectical
questions, essential to the purposes of rational psychology,
grounded upon the same transcendental illusion (confusion of
appearances with things in themselves), and soluble in similar
fashion: (1) as to the possibility of the communion of soul and
body, i.e. of the state of the soul during the life of the body; (2)
as to the beginning of this association, i.e. of the soul in and
before birth; (3) as to the termination of this association, i.e. of
the soul in and after the death of the body. Kant treats these
three problems from the extreme subjectivist standpoint, inner
and outer sense being distinguished and related in the manner
peculiar to the first edition. The contrast between mind and
body is a difference solely between the appearances of inner
and those of outer sense. Both alike exist only in and through
the thinking subject, though the latter
“…have this deceptive property that, representing objects in
space, they as it were detach themselves from the soul and
appear to hover outside it.”[1448]
The problem, therefore, of the association of soul and body,
properly understood, is not that of the interaction of the soul
with other known substances of an opposite nature, but only
“…how in a thinking subject outer intuition, namely, that of
space, with its filling in of figure and motion, is possible. And
that is a question which no human being can possibly answer.
The gap in our knowledge … can only be indicated through
the ascription of outer appearances to that transcendental
object which is the cause of this species of representations, but
of which we can have no knowledge whatsoever and of which
we shall never acquire any conception.”[1449]
The familiar problem of the association of mind and body is
thus due to a transcendental illusion which leads the mind to
hypostatise representations, viewing them as independent
existences that act upon the senses and generate our subjective
states. The motions in space, which are merely the expression
in terms of appearance of the influence of the transcendental
object upon “our senses,”[1450] are thus wrongly regarded as
the causes of our sensations. They themselves are mere
representations, and, as Kant implies, are for that reason
incapable of acting as causes. In this section, it may be noted
in passing, there is not the least trace of the phenomenalist
teaching, according to which spatial objects are viewed as
acting upon the bodily sense-organs. Kant here denies all
interaction of mind and body, and recognises only the
interaction of their noumenal conditions. Appearances as such
can never have causal efficacy. The position represented is
pure subjectivism, and very significantly goes along with
Kant’s earlier doctrine of the transcendental object.[1451]
The dogmatic character of the interaction theory appears
very clearly, as Kant proceeds to point out, in the objections
which have been made to it, whether by those who substitute
for it the theories of pre-established harmony and
occasionalism, or by those who adopt a sceptical non-
committal attitude. Their objections rest upon exactly the same
presupposition as the theory which they are attacking. To
demonstrate the impossibility of interaction, they must be able
to show that the transcendental object is not the cause of outer
appearances; and owing to the limitations of our knowledge
that is entirely beyond our powers. Failing, however, to draw a
distinction between appearances and things in themselves,
they have not realised the actual nature of the situation, and
accordingly have directed their objections merely to showing
that mind and body, taken as independent existences, must not
be viewed as capable of interaction.
The Critical standpoint also supplies the proper formulation
for the other two problems—a formulation which in itself
decides the degree and manner of our possible insight in
regard to them. The view that the thinking subject may be
capable of thought prior to all association with the body
should be stated as asserting
“…that prior to the beginning of that species of sensibility
in virtue of which something appears to us in space, those
transcendental objects, which in our present state appear to us
as bodies, could have been intuited in an entirely different
manner.”[1452]
The view that the soul, upon the cessation of all association
with the corporeal world, may still continue to think, will
similarly consist in the contention
“…that if that species of sensibility, in virtue of which
transcendental objects (which in our present state are entirely
unknown) appear to us as a material world, should cease, all
intuition of them would not for that reason be removed; but
that it would still be possible that those same unknown objects
should continue to be known [sic] by the thinking subject,
though no longer, indeed, in the quality of bodies.”[1453]
Not the least ground, Kant claims, can be discovered by
means of speculation in support of such assertions. Even their
bare possibility cannot be demonstrated. But it is equally
impossible to establish any valid objection to them. Since we
cannot pretend to knowledge of things in themselves, a modest
acquiescence in the limitations of experience alone becomes
us.
The remaining paragraphs (A 396-405) contain nothing that
is new. They merely repeat points already more adequately
stated. A 401-2, which deals with the nature of apperception
and its relation to the categories, has been considered above.
[1454] The argument that, as the self must presuppose the
thought of itself in knowing anything, it cannot know itself as
object, is also commented upon above.[1455]
The statement[1456] that the determining self (the thinking,
das Denken) is to be distinguished from the determinable self
(the thinking subject) as knowledge from its object, should be
interpreted in the light of Kant’s argument in the second and
third Paralogisms, that the simplicity and self-identity of the
representation of an object must not be taken as knowledge of
simplicity or numerical identity in the object represented.
The analysis given in A 402-3 of the fallacy involved in the
Paralogisms is, as Adickes has pointed out,[1457] confused and
misleading. Kant here declares that in the major premiss of
each syllogism the assertion is intended in the merely logical
sense, and therefore as applicable only to the subject in
representation, but in the minor premiss and conclusion is
asserted of the subject as bearer of consciousness, i.e. in itself.
But were that so, the minor premiss would be a false assertion,
and the false conclusion would not be traceable to logical
fallacy. Kant gives the correct statement of his position in B
410-11.[1458] The attempted justification of the fourfold
arrangement of the Paralogisms with which the section
concludes suffers from the artificiality of Kant’s logical
architectonic.
SECOND EDITION STATEMENT OF THE
PARALOGISMS[1459]
Except for the introductory paragraphs, which remain
unaltered, the chapter is completely recast in the second
edition. The treatment of the four Paralogisms which in the
first edition occupied thirty-three pages is reduced to five. The
problems of the mutual interaction of mind and body, of its
prenatal character and of its immortality, the discussion of
which in the first edition required some ten pages, are now
disposed of in a single paragraph (B 426-7). The remaining
twenty-two pages of the new chapter are almost entirely
devoted to more or less polemical discussion of criticisms
which had been passed upon the first edition. These had been
in great part directed against Kant’s doctrine of apperception
and of inner sense, and so could fittingly be dealt with in
connection with the problems of rational psychology. As
Benno Erdmann has suggested,[1460] B 409-14 and 419-21
would seem to be directed against Ulrichs’[1461] Leibnizian
position and especially against his metaphysical interpretation
of apperception. B 428-30 treats of the difficulties raised by
Pistorius[1462] in regard to the existence of the self. B 414-15 is
similarly polemical, but in this case Kant cites his opponent,
Mendelssohn, by name. Throughout, as in the alterations made
in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, Kant insists more
strongly than in the first edition upon the unknowableness of
the self, and on the difference between thought and
knowledge. The pure forms of thought are not, Kant now
declares, concepts of objects, that is, are not categories,[1463]
but “merely logical functions.” Though this involves no
essential doctrinal change, it indicates the altered standpoint
from which Kant now regards his problem. Its significance has
already been dwelt upon.[1464]
In formulating the several arguments of the four
Paralogisms, Kant develops and places in the forefront a
statement which receives only passing mention in A 352-3,
362, 366-7, 381-2, namely, that the truths contained in the
judgments of rational psychology find expression in merely
identical (i.e. analytic) propositions. This enables Kant to
formulate both the Paralogisms and his criticisms thereof in
much briefer and more pointed fashion. In each case the
Paralogism, as he shows, substitutes a synthetic a priori
judgment, involving an extension of our knowledge and a
reference to the noumenal self, for the given judgment which,
in so far as it is valid, is always a merely analytic restatement
of the purely formal “I think.” From the very start also, Kant
introduces the distinctions of his own Critical teaching,
especially that between thinking and intuiting, and that
between the determining and the determinable self.
First Paralogism.—That the I which thinks must always in
thought be viewed as subject and not as mere predicate, is an
identical proposition. It must not be taken as meaning that the
subject which underlies thought is an abiding substance. This
latter proposition is of much wider scope, and would involve
such data (in this case entirely lacking) as are required for the
establishment of a synthetic a priori judgment.
Second Paralogism.—That the I of apperception and so of
all thought is single and cannot be resolved into a multiplicity
of subjects, is involved in the very conception of thought, and
is therefore an analytic proposition. It must not be interpreted
as signifying that the self is a simple substance. For the latter
assertion is again a synthetic proposition, and presupposes for
its possibility an intuition by the self of its own essential
nature. As all our intuitions are merely sensuous, that cannot
be looked for in the “I think.”
“It would, indeed, be surprising if what in other cases
requires so much labour to discover—namely, what it is, of all
that is presented by intuition, that is substance, and further,
whether this substance is simple (e.g. in the parts of matter)—
should be thus directly given me, as if by revelation, in the
poorest of all representations.”[1465]
We may here observe how the practice, adopted by Caird, of
translating Anschauung by ‘perception’ has misled him into
serious misunderstanding of Kant’s teaching. It has caused
him[1466] to interpret Kant as arguing that we have no
knowledge of the self because we can have no sensuous
perception of it. Kant’s argument rather is that as all human
“intuition” is sensuous, we are cut off from all possibility of
determining our noumenal nature. We are thrown back upon
mere concepts which, as yielding only analytic propositions,
cannot extend our insight beyond the limits of sense-
experience. The term ‘intuition’ is much broader in meaning
than the term ‘perception’; it can also be employed as
equivalent to the phrase ‘immediate apprehension.’[1467] The
grounds for Kant’s contention that we have no intuition or
immediate knowledge of the self are embodied in, and inspire,
his doctrine of inner sense.[1468] It may also be noted that in B
412 Kant, speaking of the necessity of intuition for knowledge
of the self, uses the unusual phrase ‘a permanent intuition’—a
phrase which, so far as I have observed, he nowhere employs
in dealing with the intuition that conditions the sense
perception of material bodies.[1469] Its employment here may
perhaps be due to the fact that its implied reference is not to a
given sensuous manifold but to some form of immediate
apprehension, capable of revealing the permanent nature of the
noumenal self.
Third Paralogism.—That I am identical with myself
throughout the consciousness of my manifold experiences, is
likewise an analytic proposition obtainable by mere analysis of
the “I think.” And since that form of consciousness, as stated
in the criticism of the preceding Paralogism, is purely
conceptual, containing no element of intuition, no judgment
based solely upon it can ever be taken as equivalent to the
synthetic proposition that the self, as thinking being, is an
identical substance.
Fourth Paralogism.—This Paralogism is somewhat
altered. As noted above,[1470] the problem dealt with in the
first edition concerns the outer world, and only quite indirectly
the nature of the self. In the second edition that argument is
restated,[1471] and is more properly located within the Analytic.
The argument which now takes its place runs parallel with that
of the three preceding Paralogisms. The assertion that I
distinguish my own existence as a thinking being from other
things outside me, including thereunder my own body, is an
analytic proposition, since by other things is meant things
which I think as different from myself.
“But I do not thereby learn whether this consciousness of
myself would be at all possible apart from things outside me
through which representations are given to me, and whether,
therefore, I can exist merely as thinking being (i.e. without
existing in human form).”
 In B 417-18 Kant points out that rational psychology, in
asserting that the self can be conscious apart from all
consciousness of outer things, commits itself to the acceptance
of problematic idealism. If consciousness of outer objects is
not necessary to consciousness of self, there can be no valid
method of proving their existence. In the fourth Paralogism of
the first edition, the inter-dependence of rational psychology
and empirical idealism is also dwelt upon, but is there traced
to a confusion of appearances with things in themselves.[1472]
B 410-11.—The correct formulation is here given of what in
the first edition[1473] is quite incorrectly stated.[1474] A
paralogism is a syllogism which errs in logical form (as
contrasted with a syllogism erring in matter, i.e. the premisses
of which are false). In the paralogisms of Rational Psychology,
the logical fallacy committed is that of ambiguous middle, or
as Kant names it, the sophisma figurae dictionis. In the major
premiss the middle term is used as referring to real existence,
in the minor only as expressive of the unity of consciousness.
Refutation of Mendelssohn’s Proof of the Permanence of
the Soul.[1475]—Mendelssohn’s argument is that the soul, as it
does not consist of parts,[1476] cannot disappear gradually by
disintegration into its constituent elements. If, therefore, it
perishes, it must pass out of existence suddenly; at one
moment it will exist, at the next moment it will be non-
existent. But, Mendelssohn maintains, for three closely
connected reasons this would seem to be impossible. In the
first place, the immediate juxtaposition of directly opposed
states is never to be met with in the material world. Complete
opposites, such as day and night, waking and sleeping, never
follow upon one another abruptly, but only through a series of
intermediate states.[1477] Secondly, among the opposites which
material processes thus bridge over, the opposition of being
and not-being is never to be found. Only by a miracle can a
material existence be annihilated.[1478] If, therefore, empirical
evidence is to be allowed as relevant, we must not assert of the
invisible soul what is never known to befall the material
existences of the visible world. Thirdly—the only part of
Mendelssohn’s argument which Kant mentions—the sudden
cessation of the soul’s existence would also violate the law of
the continuity of time.[1479] Between any two moments there is
always an intermediate time in which the one moment passes
continuously into the other.
Kant’s reply to this third part of Mendelssohn’s argument is
that though the soul must not be conceived as perishing
suddenly, it may pass out of existence by a continuous
diminution through an infinite number of smaller degrees of
intensive reality; and in support of this view he maintains the
very doubtful position that clearness and obscurity of
representation are not features of the contents apprehended,
but only of the intensity of the consciousness directed upon
them.[1480]
B 417-22.—Kant here points out that rational psychology,
as above expounded, proceeds synthetically, starting from the
assertion of the substantiality of the soul and proceeding to the
proof that its existence is independent of outer things. But it
may proceed in the reverse fashion, analytically developing
the implications supposed to be involved in the “I think,”
viewed as an existential judgment, i.e. as signifying “I exist
thinking.” Kant restates the argument in this analytic form in
order, as it would seem, to secure the opportunity of replying
to those criticisms of his teaching in the first edition which
concern his doctrine of apperception and his employment of
the categories, especially of the category of existence, in
relation to the self. What is new and important in these pages,
and also in the connected passages in B 428-30, has been
discussed above.[1481]
B 419-20.—After remarking that simplicity or unity is
involved in the very possibility of apperception, Kant proceeds
to argue that it can never be explained from a strictly
materialist standpoint, since nothing that is real in space is
ever simple. Points are merely limits, and are not therefore
themselves anything that can form part of space. The passage
as a whole would seem to be directed against the Leibnizian
teaching of Ulrichs.[1482]
B 426-7.—Kant makes a remark to which nothing in his
argument yields any real support, namely, that the dialectical
illusion in rational psychology is due to the substitution of an
Idea of reason for the quite indeterminate concept of a
thinking being in general. As is argued below,[1483] the
assumption which he is here making that the concept of the
self is an a priori and ultimate Idea of pure Reason, cannot be
regarded as a genuine part of his Critical teaching.
B 427-8 touches quite briefly upon questions more fully and
adequately treated in the first edition. The scanty treatment
here accorded to them would seem to indicate, as Benno
Erdmann remarks,[1484] that the problem of the interaction of
mind and body which so occupied Kant’s mind from 1747 to
1770 has meantime almost entirely lost interest for him. The
problem of immortality remains central, but it is now
approached from the ethical side.
In B 421 and B 423-6 Kant draws from his criticism of the
Paralogisms the final conclusion that the metaphysical
problems as to the nature and destiny of the self are essentially
practical problems. When approached from a theoretical
standpoint, as curious questions to be settled by logical
dialectic, their speculative proof
“…so stands upon the point of a hair, that even the schools
preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it
unceasingly spinning round like a top; even in their own eyes
it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything could be
built.”[1485] “Rational psychology exists not as doctrine, … but
only as discipline. It sets impassable limits to speculative
reason in this field, and thus keeps us, on the one hand, from
throwing ourselves into the arms of soulless materialism, or,
on the other hand, from losing ourselves in an unsubstantial
spiritualism which can have no real meaning for us in this
present life. But though it furnishes no positive doctrine, it
reminds us that we should regard this refusal of Reason to give
satisfying response to our inquisitive probings into what is
beyond the limits of this present life as a hint from Reason to
divert our self-knowledge from fruitless and extravagant
speculation to its fruitful practical employment.”[1486] “The
proofs which are serviceable for the world at large preserve
their entire value undiminished, and indeed, upon the
surrender of these dogmatic pretensions, gain in clearness and
in natural force. For Reason is then located in its own peculiar
sphere, namely the order of ends, which is also at the same
time an order of nature; and since it is in itself a practical
faculty which is not bound down to natural conditions, it is
justified in extending the order of ends, and therewith our own
existence, beyond the limits of experience and of life.”[1487]
Then follows brief indication of the central teaching of the
Metaphysics of Ethics and of the two later Critiques. Through
moral values that outweigh all considerations of utility and
happiness, we become conscious of an inner vocation which
inspires feelings of sublimity similar to those which are
aroused by contemplation of the starry firmament; and to the
verities thus disclosed we can add the less certain but none the
less valuable confirmation yielded by natural beauty and
design, and by the conformity of nature to our intellectual
demands.
“Man’s natural endowments—not merely his talents and the
impulses to employ them, but above all else the Moral Law
within him—go so far beyond all utility and advantage which
he may derive from them in this present life, that he learns
thereby to prize the mere consciousness of a righteous will as
being, apart from all advantageous consequences, apart even
from the shadowy reward of posthumous fame, supreme over
all other values; and so feels an inner call to fit himself, by his
conduct in this world, and by the sacrifice of many of its
advantages, for being a citizen of a better world upon which he
lays hold in Idea. This powerful and incontrovertible proof is
reinforced by our ever-increasing knowledge of purposiveness
in all that we see around us, and by a glimpse of the immensity
of creation, and therefore also by the consciousness of a
certain illimitableness in the possible extension of our
knowledge and of a striving commensurate therewith. All this
still remains to us, though we must renounce the hope of ever
comprehending, from the mere theoretical knowledge of
ourselves, the necessary continuance of our existence.”[1488]
IS THE NOTION OF THE SELF A NECESSARY IDEA OF REASON?

One point of great importance must be dwelt upon before

we pass from the Paralogisms. Though the negative
consequences which follow from the teaching of the objective
deduction are here developed in the most explicit manner,
Kant does not within the limits of this chapter, in either
edition, make any further reference to the doctrine expounded
in the introductory sections of the Dialectic,[1489] viz. that the
notion of the self as an immortal being is a necessary Idea of
human Reason. The reader is therefore left under the
impression that that doctrine is unaffected by the destructive
criticism passed upon rational psychology, and that it still
survives as an essential tenet of the Critical philosophy. And
he is confirmed in this view when he finds the doctrine
reappearing in the Appendix to the Dialectic and in the
Methodology. The Idea of the self is there represented as
performing a quite indispensable, regulative function in the
development of the empirical science of psychology. Now it is
one thing to maintain the existence of Ideal demands of
Reason for unity, system and unconditionedness, and to assert
that it is in virtue of these demands that we are led, in the face
of immense discouragement and seeming contradictions, to
reduce the chance collocations and bewildering complexities
of ordinary experience to something more nearly
approximating to what Reason prescribes. But it is a very
different matter when Kant claims that in any one sphere, such
as that of psychology, the unity and the unconditionedness
must necessarily be of one predetermined type. He is then
injecting into the Ideals that specific guidance which only the
detail of experience is really capable of supplying. He is
proving false to his own Critical empiricism, in which no
function is ascribed to Reason that need in any way conflict
with the autonomy of specialist research; and he is also
violating his fundamental principle that the a priori can never
be other than purely formal. Indeed, when Kant discloses
somewhat more in detail what he means by the regulative
function of the Idea of the self, the ambiguity of his statements
reveals the unconsidered character of this part of his teaching.
It is the expression only of a preconception, and has eluded the
scrutiny of his Critical method largely because of the
protective colouring which its admirable adaptation to the
needs of his architectonic confers upon it. If, for instance, we
compare the three passages in which it is expounded in the
Appendix to the Dialectic, we find that Kant himself alternates
between the authoritative prescription to psychology of a
spiritualist hypothesis and what in ultimate analysis, when
ambiguities of language are discounted, amounts simply to the
demand for the greatest possible simplification of its complex
phenomena. The passages are as follows.
“In conformity with these Ideas as principles we shall first,
in psychology, connect in inner experience all appearances, all
actions and receptivity of our mind, as if (als ob) the mind
were a simple substance which persists with personal identity
(in this life at least), while its states, to which those of the
body belong only as outer conditions, are in continual
change.”[1490]
“…in the human mind we have sensation, consciousness,
imagination, memory, wit, power of discrimination, pleasure,
desire, etc. Now, to begin with, a logical maxim requires that
we should reduce, so far as may be possible, this seeming
diversity, by comparing these with one another and detecting
their hidden identity. We have to enquire whether imagination
combined with consciousness may not be the same thing as
memory, wit, power of discrimination, and perhaps even
identical with understanding and Reason. Though logic is not
capable of deciding whether a fundamental power actually
exists, the Idea of such a power is the problem involved in a
systematic representation of the multiplicity of powers. The
logical principle of Reason calls upon us to bring about such
unity as completely as possible; and the more appearances of
this or that power are found to be identical with one another,
the more probable it becomes that they are simply different
manifestations of one and the same power, which may be
entitled, relatively speaking, their fundamental power. The
same is done with the other powers. The relatively
fundamental powers must in turn be compared with one
another, with a view to discovering their harmony, and so
bringing them nearer to a single radical, i.e. absolutely
fundamental, power. But this unity of Reason is purely
hypothetical. We do not assert that such a power must
necessarily be met with, but that we must seek it in the interest
of Reason, that is, of establishing certain principles for the
manifold rules which experience may supply to us. We must
endeavour, wherever possible, to bring in this way systematic
unity into our knowledge.”[1491]
In the third of the Appendix passages these two views are
confusedly combined. Kant is insisting that an Idea never
asserts, even as an hypothesis, the existence of a real thing.
”[An Idea] is only the schema of the regulative principle by
which Reason, so far as lies in its power, extends systematic
unity over the whole field of experience. The first object of
such an Idea is the ‘I’ itself, viewed simply as thinking nature
or soul. If I am to investigate the properties with which a
thinking being exists in itself, I must interrogate experience. I
cannot even apply any one of the categories to this object,
except in so far as its schema is given in sense intuition. But I
never thereby attain to a systematic unity of all appearances of
inner sense. Instead, then, of the empirical concept (of that
which the soul actually is), which cannot carry us far, Reason
takes the concept of the empirical unity of all thought; and by
thinking this unity as unconditioned and original, it forms
from it a concept of Reason, i.e. the Idea of a simple
substance, which, unchangeable in itself (personally identical),
stands in association with other real things outside it; in a
word, the Idea of a simple self-subsisting intelligence. Yet in
so doing it has nothing in view save principles of systematic
unity in the explanation of the appearances of the soul. It is
endeavouring to represent all determinations as existing in a
single subject, all powers, so far as possible, as derived from a
single fundamental power, all change as belonging to the states
of one and the same permanent being, and all appearances in
space as completely different from the actions of thought. The
simplicity and other properties of substance are intended to be
only the schema of this regulative principle, and are not
presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul.
For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we
can know nothing. The soul in itself could not be known
through these assumed predicates, not even if we regarded
them as absolutely valid in regard to it. For they constitute a
mere Idea which cannot be represented in concreto. Nothing
but advantage can result from the psychological Idea thus
conceived, if only we take heed that it is not viewed as more
than a mere Idea, and that it is therefore taken as valid only in
its bearing on the systematic employment of Reason in
determining the appearances of our soul. For no empirical
laws of bodily appearances, which are of a totally different
kind, will then intervene in the explanation of what belongs
exclusively to inner sense. No windy hypotheses of
generation, extinction, and palingenesis of souls will be
permitted. The consideration of this object of inner sense will
thus be kept completely pure and unmixed, without employing
heterogeneous properties. Also, Reason’s investigations will
be directed to reducing the grounds of explanation in this field,
so far as may be possible, to a single principle. All this will be
best obtained (indeed is obtainable in no other way) through
such a schema, viewed as if (als ob) it were a real being. The
psychological Idea, moreover, can signify nothing but the
schema of a regulative principle. For were I to enquire whether
the soul in itself is of spiritual nature, the question would have
no meaning. In employing such a concept I not only abstract
from corporeal nature, but from nature in general, i.e. from all
predicates of a possible experience, and therefore from all
conditions for thinking an object for such a concept: yet only
as related to an object can it be said to have a meaning.”[1492]
The last passage would seem to indicate that Kant has still
another and only partially avowed reason for insisting upon a
special and spiritualist Idea, as regulative of empirical
psychology. It is necessary, he would seem to argue, in order
to mark off the peculiar nature of its subject matter, and to
warn us against attempting to explain its phenomena in the
mechanistic manner of physical science. But if that is Kant’s
intention, he has failed to formulate the position in any really
tenable way. It is impossible to maintain, as he here does, that
“no empirical laws of bodily appearances [can] intervene in
the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner
sense.”[1493] Indeed, in the immediately following sentences,
he very clearly indicates how completely such a position
conflicts with his own real teaching. To think away the
corporeal is to think away all experience. Experience is not
dualistically divided into separate worlds. It is one and single,
and the principle of causality rules universally throughout,
connecting inner experiences of sense, feeling, and desire,
with their outer conditions, organic and physical.[1494] Thus
Kant’s retention of the Idea of the self is chiefly of interest as
revealing the strength and tenacity of his spiritualist leanings.
We may judge of the disinterestedness and courage of his
thinking by the contrary character of his pre-conceptions. For
even when they have been shown to be theoretically
indemonstrable, they continue to retain by honorific title the
dignity from which they have been deposed. The full force of
the objections is none the less recognised.
“The simplicity of substance … is not presupposed as the
real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on
altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing.”
That, however, is only Kant’s unbiassed estimate of the
theoretical evidence; it is not an expression of his own
personal belief.
 CHAPTER II

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON[1495]

This introduction summarises the preceding argument, and
distinguishes the new problems of Antinomy from those of the
Paralogisms. In rational psychology pure Reason attains, as it
were, euthanasia; in the antinomies an entirely different
situation is disclosed. For though rational cosmology is able to
expound itself in a series of demonstrated theses, its teaching
stands in irreconcilable conflict with the actual nature of
appearances, as expressed through a series of antitheses which
are demonstrable in an equally cogent manner.
SECTION I

SYSTEM OF THE COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS[1496]

The first eight paragraphs of this section are of great textual

interest. They must have been written at a time when Kant still
intended to expound his entire criticism of metaphysical
science in the form of a doctrine of antinomy. For they define
the Ideas of Reason as exclusively cosmological,[1497] and give
a very different explanation of their origin from that which has
been expounded in the preceding chapters. Evidently,
therefore, this part of the section must have been written prior
to Kant’s formulation of the metaphysical deduction from the
three species of syllogism. This is supported by the fact that
the argument begins anew, just as if the matter had not
previously been discussed; and that, though a new view of the
nature of Reason is propounded, there is not the least mention
of the more Idealist view which it displaces. Reason, Kant
here teaches, is not a faculty separate from the understanding,
and does not therefore produce any concept peculiar to itself.
Reason is simply a name for the understanding in so far as it
acts independently of sensibility, and seeks, by means of its
pure forms, in abstraction from all empirical limitations, to
grasp the unconditioned. “The transcendental Ideas are in
reality nothing but categories extended to the unconditioned.”
The intelligible, as thus conceived by the understanding,
expresses itself, as he later shows, in a series of theses; while
the sensuous expresses its opposite and conflicting character in
a series of antitheses.
Yet not all categories yield a concept of the unconditioned.
That is possible only to those which concern themselves with a
series of members conditioning and conditioned, and in
reference to which, therefore, the postulate of an
unconditioned would seem to be legitimate, viz.: (1)
unconditioned quantity in space and time; (2) unconditioned
quality (indivisibility and simplicity) of reality in space
(matter); (3) unconditioned causality of appearances; (4)
unconditioned necessity of appearances. As this arrangement
is determined by the needs of Kant’s architectonic, no detailed
comment is here called for. Its consequences we shall have
ample opportunity to consider later. As already noted, Kant’s
statement in A 414 = B 441, that “the category of substance
and accident does not lend itself to a transcendental Idea,”
shows very clearly that, at the time when he composed this
passage, he had not yet bethought himself of placing a separate
and independent Idea at the basis of rational psychology. But
as Kant here strives to follow the fourfold arrangement of the
categories, the content of these paragraphs must either have
been later recast or have been composed in the interval
between his discovery of the metaphysical deduction of the
categories and his formulation of the corresponding deduction
of the Ideas from the three forms of syllogism. It may also be
observed that the derivation of the cosmological Idea from the
hypothetical syllogism, which embodies only the category of
causality, clashes with the above specification of it in terms of
all four rubrics of category.
The remaining paragraphs (ninth to thirteenth) of this
section must be of later date, as they are developed in view of
the independent treatment of the theological Ideal.[1498]
(Adickes, in dating the ninth and tenth paragraphs with the
preceding instead of with the concluding paragraphs, would
seem to have overlooked this fact.) In order to justify the
treatment of the Ideas of a first cause and of unconditioned
necessity, as cosmological, Kant now asserts that the
antinomies concern only appearances—“our [cosmical] Ideas
being directed only to what is unconditioned among the
appearances,”[1499] and not to noumena.[1500] His explanation
of the nature of transcendental illusion, and of the antinomies
in particular, as being due to a failure to distinguish between
appearance and things in themselves, is thus ruthlessly
sacrificed to considerations of architectonic. Kant could not, of
course, consistently hold to the position here adopted; but it
causes him from time to time, especially in dealing with the
third and fourth antinomies, to make statements which tend
seriously to obscure the argument and to bewilder the careful
reader.
Kant is far from clear as to the relation in which the
concepts of the totality of conditions and of the unconditioned
stand to one another.[1501] In A 322 = B 379 they would seem
to be taken as exactly equivalent concepts. In A 416-17 = B
443-5 they are apparently regarded as distinct, the former only
leading up to the latter. But discussion of this important point
must meantime be deferred.[1502]
SECTION II

ANTITHETIC OF PURE REASON[1503]

”[Antithetic] is the conflict between two apparently
dogmatic judgments [Erkenntnisse] to neither of which can we
ascribe any superior claim to acceptance over the other, i.e. by
Antithetic I mean a thesis, together with an antithesis.”
“Transcendental Antithetic is an investigation of the antinomy
of pure Reason, its causes and outcome.”
The very existence of such antinomy presupposes a twofold
condition: first, that it does not refer to a gratuitous but to an
inevitable problem of human Reason, “one which it must
necessarily encounter in its natural progress”; and secondly,
that the thesis and the antithesis together generate a “natural
and inevitable illusion,” which continues to persist even after
its deceptive power has been clearly disclosed. Such conflict is
caused by the fact that Reason seeks a unity which transcends
the understanding, and which nevertheless is meant to conform
to the conditions of the understanding. If the unity is adequate
to the demands of Reason, it is too great for the understanding;
if it is commensurate with the understanding, it is too small for
Reason.[1504] The theses express the higher unity at which
Reason aims; the antitheses are the judgments to which the
understanding is constrained by the nature of the appearances
with which both it and Reason profess to deal. If we hold to
Reason, we make assertions contradictory of the appearances;
while if we place reliance on the understanding, Reason
condemns our conclusions.
This conflict is limited to those few problems above
enumerated in which we are called upon to complete a given
series.[1505] Since totality, whether in the form of a first
beginning of the series or as an actual infinity of the whole
series, can never itself be experienced, these are problems in
regard to which experience can be of no assistance to us. It can
neither confirm nor refute any particular solution. The only
possible method of deciding between the competing claims is
to watch or even to provoke the conflict, in the hope that we
may finally be able to detect some misunderstanding, and so to
resolve the conflict to the satisfaction of both the litigants.
Such is Kant’s description of what he entitles his “sceptical
method.”[1506]
Without here attempting a full discussion of the subject, it
seems advisable to point out at the very start what Kant’s
exposition seriously obscures, namely, the real character of the
evidence upon which the theses and the antitheses respectively
rest. The latter are not correctly stated as transcending
experience, and as therefore incapable of confirmation by it.
The proofs which Kant offers of them are, indeed, of a non-
empirical a priori character. They are formulated in terms of
the dogmatic rationalism of the Leibnizian position, with a
constant appeal to abstract principles. But, as a matter of fact,
they can be much more adequately established—in so far as
they can be established at all—through analysis of the spatial
and temporal conditions of material existence. As space and
time are continuous and homogeneous, any assertion which is
true of a space or time however small is likewise true of a
space or time however large. Any space consists of spaces, and
must be regarded as itself part of a larger whole.[1507] Any
time consists of parts which are themselves times, and is
apprehensible only as following upon preceding times. It is by
such considerations as these that we are led to regard the
material world as unlimited, as infinitely divisible, and as
having no first state.
Kant’s method of demonstrating the theses—that the world
is limited, is finitely divisible, and has a first state—is no less
misleading. Here again his rationalistic arguments conceal the
basis upon which the various theses really rest. Their true
determining ground is the demand of Reason for some more
satisfactory form of unconditionedness than that which is
found in the actual infinite. It is this demand which has led
philosophers to look around for proofs in support of the theses,
and to elaborate those rationalistic arguments which Kant here
reproduces. Thus the grounds of the antitheses are altogether
different from those of the theses; and in neither case are they
properly represented by the arguments which Kant employs.
[1508]

The reasons why Kant in his detailed statement of the

antinomies has omitted, or at least subordinated, the above
considerations, are complex and various. In the first place, this
doctrine of antinomy was in several of its main features
already formulated prior to his development of the Critical
philosophy. It forms part of his Dissertation of 1770; and at
that time Kant was still largely in fundamental sympathy with
the Leibnizian ontology. Secondly, Kant is here professing to
criticise the science of rational cosmology, and is therefore
bound to expound it in more or less current form. And in the
third place, he teaches that the antinomies exist as antinomies
only when viewed from the false standpoint of dogmatic
rationalism. Had he eliminated the rationalistic proofs, the
conflict of the antinomies, in its strictly logical form, as the
conflict of direct contradictories, would at once have vanished.
The general framework of this division of the Dialectic
demanded a rationalistic treatment of both theses and
antitheses, and Kant believed that the rationalistic proofs
which he propounds in their support are unanswerable, so long
as the dogmatic standpoint of ordinary consciousness and of
Leibnizian ontology is preserved. But even when that
important limitation is kept in view, Kant fails to justify this
interpretation of the conflict, and we must therefore be
prepared to find that his proofs, whether of theses or of
antitheses, are in all cases inconclusive. I shall append to each
of his arguments a statement of the reasons which constrain us
to reject them as unsound. We shall then be in a position to
consider his whole doctrine of antinomy in its broader aspects,
and in its connection with the teaching of the other main
divisions of the Dialectic.
FIRST ANTINOMY

Thesis.—(a) The world has a beginning in time, and (b) is

also limited in regard to space.
Thesis a. Proof.—If we assume the opposite, namely, that
the world has no beginning in time, and if we define the
infinite as that which can never be completed by means of a
successive synthesis, we must conclude that the world-series
can never complete itself. But the entire series of past events
elapses, i.e. completes itself at each moment. It cannot
therefore be infinite.
Criticism.—This argument gains its plausibility from the
illegitimate use of the term ‘elapse’ (verfliessen) as equivalent
to ‘complete itself.’ If it be really correct to define the infinite
as that which can never be completed, the conclusion to be
drawn is that the temporal series is always actually infinite,
and that no point or event in it is nearer to or further from
either its beginning or its end.[1509] We may select any point in
the series as that from which we propose to begin a regress to
the earlier members of the series, but if the series is actually
infinite, it will be a regress without possibility of completion,
and one therefore which removes all justification for asserting
that at the point chosen a series has completed itself. It has no
beginning, and has no completion. What it has done at each
moment of the past it is still doing at each present moment,
namely, coming out of an inexhaustible past and passing into
an equally inexhaustible future. Time is by its given nature
capable of being interpreted only as actually infinite, alike in
its past and in its future. It cannot complete itself any more
than it can begin itself. The one would be as gross a violation
of its nature as would the other. The present exists only as a
species of transition, unique in itself, but analogous in nature
to the innumerable other times that constitute time past. It is a
transition from the infinite through the infinite to the infinite.
That we cannot comprehend how, from an infinitude that has
no beginning, the present should ever have been reached, is no
sufficient reason for denying what by the very nature of time
we are compelled to accept as a correct description of the
situation which is being analysed. The actual nature of time is
such as to rule out from among the possibilities the thesis
which Kant is here professing to be able to establish; time,
being such as it actually is, can have no beginning.
What thus holds of time may likewise hold of events in
time. If time is actually infinite, no proof can be derived from
it in support of the assumption that the world has had a
beginning in time.
The phrase “by means of a successive synthesis” gives a
needlessly subjectivist colouring to Kant’s method of proof.
The antinomy is professedly being stated from the realist
standpoint, and ought not therefore to be complicated by any
such reference. This objection applies, as we shall find, still
more strongly to Kant’s proof of the second part of the thesis.
The latter proof depends upon this subjectivist reference; the
present proof does not.
Kant limits his problem to the past infinitude of time. The
reason for this lies, of course, in the fact that he is concerned
with the problem of creation. The limitation is, however,
misleading.
Thesis b.—The world is limited in regard to space.
Proof.—Assume the opposite, namely, that the world is an
infinite, given whole of coexisting parts. A magnitude not
given within the determinate limits of an intuition can only be
thought through the synthesis of its parts, and its totality
through their completed synthesis. In order, therefore, that we
may be able to think as a single whole the world which fills all
space, the successive synthesis of the parts of an infinite world
must be regarded as completed, i.e. an infinite must be
regarded as having elapsed in the enumeration of all coexisting
things. This, however, is impossible. An infinite aggregate of
actual things cannot therefore be viewed as a given whole, nor
as being given as coexistent. Consequently the world of spatial
existences must be regarded as finite.
Criticism.—From the impossibility of traversing infinite
space in thought by the successive addition of part to part,
Kant here argues that “an infinite aggregate of actual things
cannot be viewed as a given whole,” and consequently that the
world cannot be infinitely extended in space. That is, from a
subjective impossibility of apprehension he infers an objective
impossibility of existence. But Kant has himself defined the
infinite as involving this subjective impossibility; for in the
proof of thesis a he has stated that the infinitude of a series
consists in the very fact that it can never be completed through
successive synthesis. Kant is therefore propounding against
the existence of the infinite the very feature which by
definition constitutes its infinitude. The implication would
seem to be that the concept of the infinite is the concept of that
which ex definitione cannot exist, and that there is therefore a
contradiction in the very idea of the actual infinite.
Deferring for a moment the further objections to which such
procedure lies open, we may observe that Kant, in arguing
from a subjective to an objective impossibility, commits the
fallacy of ignoratio elenchi. For when the conditions of
objective existence are recognised in their distinction from
those of mental apprehension, the supposed contradiction
vanishes, and the argument ceases to have any cogency. The
use of the words ‘given’ and ‘whole’ is misleading. If space is
infinite, it is without bounds, and cannot therefore exist as a
whole in any usual meaning of that term. For the same reason
it must be incapable of being given as a whole. Its infinitude is
a presupposition which analysis of actually given portions of it
constrains us to postulate, and has to be conceived in terms of
the definition employed in thesis a. The given must always be
conceived as involving what is not itself given and what is not
even capable of complete construction. In terms of this
presupposition an actual infinite, not given and not capable of
construction, can be represented with entire consistency.
But to return to the main assumption upon which Kant’s
proof would seem to rest: it is all-important to observe that
Kant does not, either in the Critique or in any other of his
writings, assert that the concept of the actual infinite is
inherently self-contradictory. This is a matter in regard to
which many of Kant’s critics have misrepresented his
teaching. Kant’s argument may, as we have just maintained, be
found on examination to involve the above assertion; but this,
if clearly established, so far from commending the argument to
Kant, would have led him to reject it as invalid. The passage in
the Dissertation[1510] of 1770, which contains his most definite
utterance on this point, represents the view from which he
never afterwards departed. It may be quoted in full.
 “Those who reject the actual mathematical infinite do so in
a very casual manner. For they so construct their definition of
the infinite that they are able to extract a contradiction from it.
The infinite is described by them as a quantity than which
none greater is possible, and the mathematical infinite as a
multiplicity—of an assignable unit—than which none greater
is possible. Since they thus substitute maximum for infinitum,
and a greatest multiplicity is impossible, they easily conclude
against this infinite which they have themselves invented. Or,
it may be, they entitle an infinite multiplicity an infinite
number, and point out that such a phrase is meaningless, as is,
indeed, perfectly evident. But again they have fought and
overthrown only the figments of their own minds. If, however,
they had conceived the mathematical infinite as a quantity
which, when related to measure, as its unity, is a multiplicity
greater than all number; and if furthermore, they had observed
that measurability here denotes only the relation [of the
infinite] to the standards of the human intellect, which is not
permitted to attain to a definite conception of multiplicity save
by the successive addition of unit to unit, nor to the sum-total
(which is called number) save by completing this progress in a
finite time; they would have perceived clearly that what does
not conform to the established law of some subject need not on
that account exceed all intellection. An intellect may exist,
though not indeed a human intellect, which perceives a
multiplicity distinctly in one intuition [uno obtutu] without the
successive application of a measure.”
The concluding sentences of this Dissertation passage may
be taken as Kant’s own better and abiding judgment in regard
to the question before us. We must not argue from the
impossibility of mentally traversing the infinite to the
impossibility of its existence. Indeed the essentials of the
above passage are restated in the ‘Observation’ on this thesis.
[1511] Thus the concept of the actual infinite is not only, as a
concept, perfectly self-consistent, it is also one which, in view
of the nature of time and of space, we are constrained to accept
as a correct representation of the actually given. The thesis of
this first antinomy runs directly counter to admitted facts. That
Kant is here arguing in respect to the world, and not merely in
respect to space and time, does not essentially alter the
situation. For if space and time are necessarily to be viewed as
infinite, there can be no a priori proof—none, at least, of the
kind here attempted—that the world-series may not be so
likewise.
Antithesis.—(a) The world has no beginning in time; (b)
has no limits in space. In both these respects the world is
infinite.
In these antitheses Kant assumes that space and time are
actually infinite, and from that assumption advances to the
proof that this is likewise true of the world in its spatial and
temporal aspects. This, by itself, ought to be sufficient
evidence that Kant does not regard the actual infinite as an
inherently impossible conception. As the antinomies are
avowedly formulated from the realist, dogmatic standpoint of
ordinary consciousness, Kant is also enabled to assume that if
the world begins to be, it must have an antecedent cause
determining it to exist at that moment rather than at another.
Antithesis a. Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely,
that the world has a beginning. It will then be preceded by an
empty time in which it was not. But in an empty time no
becoming is possible, since in such a time no part possesses
over any other any distinguishing condition of existence rather
than of non-existence. The world must therefore be infinite as
regards past time.
Criticism.—In this argument everything depends upon
what is to be meant by the term ‘world.’ If Kant means by it
merely the material world, the assumption of its non-existence
does not leave only empty time and space. Other kinds of
existence may be possible, and in these a sufficient cause of its
first beginning may be found. The nature of creative action
will remain mysterious and incomprehensible, but that is no
sufficient reason for denying its possibility. If, on the other
hand, Kant means by the world ‘all that is,’ the assumption of
its non-existence is likewise the assumption of the non-
existence of all its possible causes. That, however, is for
ordinary consciousness a quite impossible assumption, since it
runs counter to the causal principle which is taken as
universally valid. From this point of view the argument
consists in making an impossible assumption, and in then
pointing out the impossible consequence which must follow.
By such a mode of argument no conclusion can be reached.
Kant’s decision ought rather to have been that, as time is
actually infinite, the world may be so likewise, but that though
reality must in some form be eternally existent, the material
world cannot be proved to be so by any a priori proof of the
kind here given.
Antithesis b. Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely,
that the world is finite, existing in an empty limitless space.
There will then be not only a relation of things in space, but
also of things to space. But as the world is a totality outside of
which no object of intuition can be found, the relation of the
world to empty space is a relation to no object. Such a relation
is nothing. Consequently the opposite holds; the world must be
infinitely extended.
Criticism.—That Kant himself felt the inadequacy of this
argument, when taken from the dogmatic standpoint, is
indicated by the lengthy note which he has appended to it, and
which develops his own Critical view of space as not a real
independent object, but merely the form of external intuition.
From the standpoint of ordinary consciousness space is a self-
existent entity, and there is no insuperable difficulty in
conceiving a relation as holding between it and its contents.
The introduction of the opposed standpoint of the Aesthetic
therefore runs directly counter to Kant’s own intention of
expounding the antinomies from the dogmatic standpoint
which involves this realist view of space, and of showing that
they afford, in independence of the arguments of the Aesthetic,
an indirect proof of the untenableness of that belief.[1512] The
conclusion which ought to have been drawn is analogous to
that above suggested for thesis a. As space is actually infinite,
the material world may be so likewise; but that it actually is
so, cannot be established by an a priori argument of the kind
here attempted.
SECOND ANTINOMY
 Thesis.—Every composite substance in the world consists
of simple parts, and nothing anywhere exists save the simple
or what is composed of it.
Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely, that
substances do not consist of simple parts. If all composition be
then removed in thought, no composite part, and (as there are
no simple parts) also no simple part, and therefore nothing
whatsoever, will remain. Consequently no substance will be
given. Either, therefore, it is impossible to remove in thought
all composition, or after its removal something that exists
without composition, i.e. the simple, must remain. In the
former case the composite would not itself consist of
substances (with them composition is a merely accidental
relation, and they must, as self-persisting beings, be able to
exist independently of it). As this contradicts our assumption,
only the latter alternative remains, namely, that the substantial
compounds in the world consist of simple parts.
Criticism.—Kant here assumes, by his definition of terms,
the point which he professes to establish by argument. The
substance referred to, though never itself mentioned by name,
is extended matter. Kant identifies it with ‘composite
substance.’ Substance, he further dogmatically decides, is that
which is capable of independent existence, and to which all
relations of composition are therefore merely accidental. If
these assumptions be granted, it at once follows that
composition cannot be essential to matter, and that when all
composition is thought away, its reality will be disclosed as
consisting in simple parts. Kant, however, makes no attempt to
prove that extended matter can be defined in any such terms.
From the dogmatic point of view of ordinary consciousness,
though not from the sophisticated standpoint of Leibniz,
extension is of the very essence of matter; and, as Kant
himself believed,[1513] the continuity of extension is such as to
exclude all possibility of elimination of the composite. For he
maintains that, however far division be carried, the parts
remain no less composite than the whole from which the
regress has started. On any such view the extended and the
composite are not equivalent terms. The opposite of the
composite is the simple; the opposite of the extended is the
non-extended. Kant is here surreptitiously substituting a
Leibnizian metaphysics in place of the empirical reality which
is supposed to necessitate the argument.
In the Observation on this thesis Kant shows consciousness
of the defects of his argument. It does not apply to space, time,
or change.
“We ought not to call space a compositum but a totum,
because its parts are possible only in the whole, not the whole
through the parts.”[1514]
As Kant further states, he is speaking only of the simples of
the Leibnizian system. This thesis is “the dialectical principle
of monadology.” Again in the Observation on the antithesis, in
commenting on the mathematical proof of the infinite
divisibility of matter, Kant even goes so far as to declare that
the argument of the thesis is based on an illegitimate
substitution of things in themselves, conceived by the pure
understanding, for the appearances with which alone the
antinomy is concerned.[1515]
“…it is quite futile to attempt to overthrow, by sophistical
manipulation of purely discursive concepts, the manifest,
demonstrated truth of mathematics.”
Antithesis.—No composite thing in the world consists of
simple parts, and there nowhere exists in the world anything
simple.
Proof.—Let us assume the opposite, namely, that a
composite thing (as substance) consists of simple parts. As all
external relation, and therefore all composition of substances,
is only possible in space, space must consist of as many parts
as there are parts of the composite that occupies it. Space,
however, does not consist of simple parts, but of spaces. The
simple must therefore occupy a space. Now as everything real
which occupies a space contains in itself a manifold of
constituents external to one another, and therefore is
composite, and as a real composite is not composed of
accidents (for without substance accidents could not be outside
one another), but of substances, the simple would be a
substantial composite, which is self-contradictory.
 Criticism.—The Leibnizian standpoint is here completely
deserted. Instead of proceeding to demonstrate the direct
opposite of the thesis, Kant in this argument deals with the
extended bodies of empirical intuition. The proof given
ultimately reduces to an argument from the continuous nature
of space to the continuous nature of the matter which occupies
it. But as the thesis and the antithesis thus refer to different
realities, the former to things in themselves conceived by pure
understanding, and the latter to the sensuous, no antinomy has
been shown to subsist. Antinomy presupposes that both the
opposing assertions have the same reference. Kant, as already
noted, argues in the Observation to this antithesis that all
attempts “made by the monadists” to refute the mathematical
proof of the infinite divisibility of matter are quite futile, and
are due to their forgetting that in this discussion we are
concerned only with appearances.
“The monadists have, indeed, been sufficiently acute to seek
to avoid this difficulty by not treating space as a condition of
the possibility of the objects of outer intuition (bodies), but by
taking these and the dynamical relation of substances as the
condition of the possibility of space. But we have a concept of
bodies only as appearances, and as such they necessarily
presuppose space as the condition of the possibility of all outer
appearance.”[1516]
How Kant, after writing these words, should still have left
standing the proof which he has given of the thesis may be
partially explained as due to the continuing influence of his
earlier view,[1517] according to which antinomy represents not
a conflict between opposing views of the world of ordinary
consciousness, but between the demands of pure thought and
the forms of sensuous existence. That older view of antinomy
here gains the upper hand, notwithstanding its lack of
agreement with the general scheme of the Dialectic.
There is a further inconsistency in Kant’s procedure which
may perhaps be taken as indicating the early origin of this
portion of the Critique. He presents the mathematical proof of
the continuity of matter as conclusive. Yet in the Metaphysical
First Principles of Natural Science (1786) he most
emphatically states that “the infinite divisibility of matter is
very far from being proved through proof of the infinite
divisibility of space.”[1518]
Russell,[1519] in discussing the thesis and antithesis on their
merits, from the point of view of certain present-day
mathematical theories, makes the following criticism of Kant’s
procedure.
“Here, again, the argument applies to things in space and
time, and to all collections, whether existent or not…. And
with this extension[1520] the proof of the proposition must, I
think, be admitted; only that terms or concepts should be
substituted for substances, and that, instead of the argument
that relations between substances are accidental (zufällig), we
should content ourselves with saying that relations imply
terms and complexity implies relations.”
Russell further argues that Kant’s assumption in the
antithesis, that “space does not consist of simple parts, but of
spaces,” cannot be granted. It
“…involves a covert use of the axiom of finitude, i.e. the
axiom that, if a space does consist of points, it must consist of
some finite number of points. When once this is denied, we
may admit that no finite number of divisions of a space will
lead to points, while yet holding every space to be composed
of points. A finite space is a whole consisting of simple parts,
but not of any finite number of simple parts. Exactly the same
thing is true of the stretch between 1 and 2. Thus the antinomy
is not specially spatial, and any answer which is applicable in
Arithmetic is applicable here also. The thesis, which is an
essential postulate of Logic, should be accepted, while the
antithesis should be rejected.”
But, as above observed,[1521] those mathematicians who
adopt this view so alter the meaning of the term point that it
would perhaps be equally true to say that the thesis, as thus
interpreted by Russell, coincides with what Kant believes
himself to be asserting in the antithesis.
THIRD ANTINOMY

Thesis.—Causality according to the laws of nature is not

the only causality from which the appearances of the world
can be deduced. There is also required for their explanation
another, that of freedom.
Proof.—Let us assume the opposite. In that case everything
that happens presupposes a previous state upon which it
follows according to a rule. That previous state is itself caused
in similar fashion, and so on in infinitum. But if everything
thus happens according to the mere laws of nature, there can
never be a first beginning, and therefore no completeness of
the series on the side of the derivative causes. But the law of
nature is that nothing happens without a cause sufficiently
determined a priori. If, therefore, all causality is possible only
according to the laws of nature, the principle contradicts itself
when taken in unlimited universality. Such causality cannot
therefore be the sole causality possible. We must admit an
absolute spontaneity, whereby a series of appearances, that
proceed according to laws of nature, begins by itself.
Criticism.—The vital point of this argument lies in the
assertion that the principle of causality calls for a sufficient
cause for each event, and that such sufficiency is not to be
found in natural causes which are themselves derivative or
conditioned. As the antecedent series of causes for an event
can never be traced back to a first cause, it can never be
completed, and can never, therefore, be sufficient to account
for the event under consideration. Either, therefore, the
principle of causality contradicts itself, or some form of free
self-originative causality must be postulated. This argument
cannot be accepted as valid. Each natural cause is sufficient to
account for its effect. That is to say, the causation is sufficient
at each stage. That the series of antecedent causes cannot be
completed is due to its actual infinitude, not to any
insufficiency in the causality which it embodies.[1522] To prove
his point, Kant would have to show that the conception of the
actual infinite is inherently self-contradictory; and that, as we
have already noted, he does not mean to assert. His argument
here lies open to the same criticism as we have already passed
upon his argument in proof of the thesis of the first antinomy.
Antithesis.—There is no freedom; everything in the world
proceeds solely in accordance with laws of nature.
 Proof.—Let us assume the opposite. Free causality, i.e. the
power of absolute origination, presupposes the possibility of a
state of the cause which has no causal connection with its
preceding state, and which does not follow from it. But this is
opposed to the law of causality, and would render unity of
experience impossible. Freedom is therefore an empty
thought-entity (Gedankending), and is not to be met with in
any experience.
Criticism.—We may first observe the strange relation in
which the proof of the thesis stands to that of the antithesis.
According to the former, freedom must be postulated because
otherwise the principle of causality would contradict itself.
According to the latter, freedom is impossible, and for the
same reason. Now, as Erhardt has pointed out,[1523] a principle
cannot be reconciled with itself through the making of an
assumption which contradicts it. That would only be the
institution of a second contradiction, not the removal of the
previous conflict. If the proof of the thesis be correct, that of
the antithesis must be false; if the proof of the antithesis be
correct, that of the thesis must be invalid. For though the thesis
and the antithesis may themselves contradict one another, such
conflict must not exist between the grounds upon which they
establish themselves. If the reasons cited in their support are
contradictory of one another, the total argument is rendered
null and void. The supporting proofs being contradictory of
one another, nothing whatsoever has been established. There
will remain as a pressing and immediate problem the task of
distinguishing the truth from among the competing
alternatives; and until this has been done, the argument cannot
proceed. The assumption of freedom either does or does not
contradict the principle of causality. Antinomy is not the
simple assertion that both A and not-A are true, but that A and
not-A, though contradictory of one another, can both be
established by arguments in which such contradiction does not
occur.[1524]
The proof given of the thesis would seem, as already noted,
to be untenable. The principle of natural causality is not self-
contradictory. What now is to be said regarding the proof of
the antithesis? If the principle of natural causality be
formulated as asserting that every event has an antecedent
cause determining it to exist, then certainly free, spontaneous,
or self-originating causality is excluded. Here, as in Kant’s
proof of the antithesis of the first antinomy, everything
depends upon definition of the terms employed. It must be
borne in mind that the antinomies are asserted to exist only on
the dogmatic level. Critical considerations must not, therefore,
be allowed to intervene. Now for ordinary consciousness the
concept of causality has a very indefinite meaning, and a very
wide application. Causation may be spontaneous as well as
mechanical, spiritual as well as material. All possibilities lie
open, and no mere reference to the concept of causal
dependence suffices to decide between them. Free causality, so
far as dogmatic analysis of the causal postulate can show to
the contrary, may or may not be possible.[1525] Kant has failed
to establish the antithesis save by the surreptitious introduction
of conclusions which presuppose the truth of his Critical
teaching. This is especially shown in the emphasis laid upon
‘unity of experience.’ The further statement[1526] that freedom
means lawlessness is only true if Kant’s teaching is mutilated
by reduction merely to its assertion of the objective validity of
the mechanistic principles of natural science. Kant is both
running with the hare and hunting with the hounds.
Though this antinomy is chiefly concerned with the problem
of freedom, i.e. of spontaneous origination within the world,
the proof of the thesis refers only to the cosmological problem
of a first cause.[1527] The reasons of this oscillation we shall
have occasion to consider in dealing with the fourth antinomy.
The terms world and nature play the same ambiguous part as
in the antithesis of the first antinomy; they tend to be
employed in the narrower, mechanistic sense of Kant’s own
Critical teaching.
FOURTH ANTINOMY

As the proofs of the thesis and antithesis proceed on lines

identical with those of the third antinomy, I shall omit detailed
statement of them.[1528] Kant again argues from the fact that
every change has a condition which precedes it in time. There
is no difference in the proofs themselves, but only in the
nature of the inference which they are made to support. In the
third antinomy they lead to the assertion and denial of free
causality; in the fourth antinomy they lead to the assertion and
denial of an absolutely necessary being. The assertion is
required in order to save the principle of causality from self-
contradiction; the denial is also necessary, and for the same
reason. The illegitimacy of this procedure has already been
pointed out.[1529] Though the thesis and the antithesis will, if
antinomy be assumed to represent an actual conflict, contradict
one another, no such conflict is allowable in the grounds
which profess to establish them. We must not assert, as
argument, that both A and not-A are true.
In the Observation on the antithesis[1530] Kant has himself
taken notice of this “strange” situation.
“From the same ground on which, in the thesis, the
existence of an original being was inferred, its non-existence is
inferred, and that with equal stringency.”
A necessary being is inferred to exist, because the past
series of events cannot contain all the conditions of an event,
unless the unconditioned is to be found among them. A
necessary being is denied to exist, because the series of merely
conditioned events contains all the conditions that there are.
Kant’s defence of this procedure is as follows:
“Nevertheless, the method of argument in both cases is
entirely in conformity even with ordinary human reason,
which frequently falls into conflict with itself from
considering its object from two different points of view. M. de
Mairan[1531] regarded the controversy between two famous
astronomers, which arose from a similar difficulty in regard to
choice of standpoint, as a sufficiently remarkable phenomenon
to justify his writing a special treatise upon it. The one had
argued that the moon revolves on its own axis, because it
always turns the same side towards the earth. The other drew
the opposite conclusion that the moon does not revolve on its
own axis, because it always turns the same side towards the
earth. Both inferences were correct, according to the point of
view which each chose in observing the moon’s motion.”
This example is not really relevant. In spite of Kant’s
assertion to the contrary, the point of view is one and the same
in thesis and in antithesis. In both cases the absolutely
necessary being is viewed as the first of the changes in the
world of sense. To maintain that when thus viewed it both is
and is not demanded by the law of causality, is as impossible
as to assert that in one and the same meaning of our terms the
moon both does and does not revolve on its own axis.
That the proofs of the fourth antinomy are identical with
those of the third is due to the fact that Kant, under the stress
of his architectonic,[1532] is striving to construct four
antinomies while only three are really distinguishable. The
third and fourth antinomies coincide as formulations of the
problem whether or not the conditioned implies, and originates
in, the unconditioned. The precise determination of this
unconditioned, whether as free causality or as a necessary
being, or in any other way, is a further problem, and does not
properly fall within the scope of the cosmological inquiries,
which are alone in place in this division of the Critique.
The manner in which Kant, in treating of freedom, makes
the transition[1533] from the cosmological (or theological)
unconditioned to the psychological is significant. The
cosmological unconditioned is proved to exist by the argument
of the thesis, and its existence is at once interpreted as
establishing at least in this one case the actuality of free
spontaneous causality. Kant remarks that this
“…transcendental Idea of freedom does not by any means
constitute the entire content of the psychological concept of
that name, which is mainly empirical, but only that of absolute
spontaneity of action…. The necessity of a first beginning, due
to freedom, of a series of appearances we have demonstrated
only in so far as it is required for the conceivability of an
origin of the world…. But as, after all, the power of
spontaneously originating a series in time has thus been
proved (though not understood), it is now permissible for us to
admit within the course of the world different series as capable
in their causality of beginning of themselves, and so to
attribute to their substances a power of acting from freedom.”
That each such successive series in the world can only have
a relatively primary beginning, and must always be preceded
by some other state of things, is no sufficient objection to such
causality.
“For we are here speaking of an absolutely first beginning
not in time, but in causality. If, for instance, I at this moment
arise from my chair in complete freedom, without being
necessarily determined thereto by the influence of natural
causes, a new series, with all its natural consequences in
infinitum, has its absolute beginning in this event, although the
event itself is only, with regard to time, the continuation of a
preceding series.”
Thus Kant’s proof of freedom in the thesis of the third
antinomy is merely a corollary from his proof of the existence
of a cosmological or theological unconditioned; and further,
this freedom is not, like the cosmological unconditioned,
proved to exist, but only to be “admissible” as a possibility.
Similarly in the antithesis, the only disproof of freedom is the
disproof of unconditioned causality in general. The antinomy
deals with the general opposition and relation between the
contingent and the unconditioned.
It is this same opposition exactly which constitutes the
subject-matter of the fourth antinomy. The terms used are
different, but their meanings are one and the same. For though
Kant substitutes ‘absolutely necessary being’ for
‘unconditioned causality,’ the former is still conceived as
belonging to the world of sense, as the unconditioned origin of
its changes. And as Kant is careful to add, only the causal,
cosmological argument can be employed to establish the
existence of an absolutely necessary being; nothing can
legitimately be inferred from the mere Idea. The verbal change
is consequently verbal only; the argument of the fourth
antinomy coincides in result no less than in method of proof
with the argument of the third. It is impossible to define the
unconditioned in any more specific fashion save by an enquiry
which entirely transcends the scope of the argument that Kant
is here presenting. Kant’s procedure also lies open to the
further objection that the conception of an absolutely
necessary being, which he here introduces without preliminary
analysis or explanation, is later shown by him[1534] to be
devoid of significance. He employs it, but precludes himself
from either investigating it or from drawing any serviceable
consequences from it. The situation is not without the
elements of comedy. In order to seem to mark a real
distinction between the fourth and the third antinomies, Kant
has perforce to trespass upon the domain of theology; but as he
is aware that the trespass is forbidden, he seeks to mitigate the
offence by returning from the foray empty-handed. To such
unhappy straits is he again reduced by his over-fond devotion
to architectonic.
SECTION III

THE INTEREST OF REASON IN THIS SELF-CONFLICT[1535]

This section, though extremely important, requires no

lengthy comment. It is lucid and straightforward. It may be
summarised as follows. The theses and the antitheses rest upon
diverse and conflicting interests. The theses, though expressed
in dry formulas, divested of the empirical features through
which alone their true grandeur can be displayed, represent the
proud pretensions of dogmatic Reason. The antitheses give
expression to principles of pure empiricism. The former are
supported by interests of a practical and popular character:
upon them morals and religion are based. The latter, while
conflicting with our spiritual interests, far exceed the theses in
their intellectual advantages. This explains
“…the zelotic passion of the one party, and the calm
assurance of the other, and why the world hails the one with
eager approval, and is implacably prejudiced against the
other.”
No legitimate objection could be raised against the
principles of the empirical philosopher, if he sought only to
rebuke the rashness and presumption of Reason when it boasts
of knowledge, and when it represents as speculative insight
that which is grounded only in faith.
“But when empiricism itself, as frequently happens,
becomes dogmatic …, and confidently denies whatever lies
beyond the sphere of its intuitive knowledge, it betrays the
same lack of modesty; and that is all the more reprehensible
owing to the irreparable injury which is thereby caused to the
practical interests of Reason.”
 Each party asserts more than it knows. The one allows our
practical interests to delude Reason as to its inherent powers;
the other would so extend empirical knowledge as to destroy
the validity of our moral principles. Kant regards the
opposition as being historically typified by the contrasted
systems of Platonism and Epicureanism. It befits us, as self-
reflecting beings, to free ourselves, at least provisionally, from
the partiality of those divergent interests, and by application of
“the sceptical method,” unconcerned about consequences, to
penetrate to the primary sources of this perennial conflict. As
Kant states in the next section, the conflict is of such a
character as to be genuinely resolvable.
This section must have been written, or at least first
sketched, at the time when Kant still intended to bring his
whole criticism of the metaphysical sciences within the scope
of his doctrine of antinomy.[1536]
SECTION IV

OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEMS OF PURE REASON, IN SO

FAR AS THEY ABSOLUTELY MUST BE CAPABLE OF SOLUTION [1537]

There are sciences the very nature of which requires that

every question which can occur in them must be completely
answerable from what can be presumed to be known. This is
true of the science of ethics. When I ask to what course of
action I am committed in moral duty, the question must be
answerable in terms of the considerations which have led to its
being propounded. For there can be no moral obligation in
regard to that of which we cannot have knowledge. We must
not plead that the problem is unanswerable; a solution must be
found. Kant proceeds to argue that this is no less true of
transcendental philosophy.
“…it is unique among speculative sciences in that no
question which concerns an object given to pure Reason is
insoluble for this same human Reason, and that no excuse of
an unavoidable ignorance, or of the unfathomable depth of the
problem, can release us from the obligation to answer it
thoroughly and completely. That very concept which enables
us to ask the question must also qualify us to answer it, since,
as in the case of right and wrong, the object is not to be met
with outside the concept.”
The third and fourth paragraphs would seem to be later
interpolations. The section, like Section III., must have been
written at the time when Kant still regarded the doctrine of
antinomy as covering the entire field of metaphysics.
Transcendental philosophy is identified with cosmology, as
dealt with in the antinomies. But in the third paragraph the
former is taken as a wider term. Also, in the first two
paragraphs the problems of pure Reason are regarded as
soluble because their objects are not to be met with outside the
concepts of them; whereas in the third paragraph they are
viewed as soluble because their object is given empirically.
Again, in the second paragraph transcendental philosophy has
been taken as unique among speculative [i.e. theoretical]
sciences; in the fourth paragraph mathematics is placed
alongside it.
Examination of this section as a whole (and the same is true
of the immediately following section) justifies the conclusion
that at the time when it was written Kant regarded the Ideas of
Reason as having a purely and exclusively regulative function,
and consequently as exhausting their inherent meaning in their
empirical reference. He regards them as entirely lacking in
metaphysical significance. They are invented by Reason for
Reason’s own satisfaction, and must therefore yield in their
internal content the explanation of their existence, and must
also supply a complete and thorough answer to all problems
which are traceable to them. A dogmatic (i.e. ontological)
solution of the antinomies is, as we have already found,
impossible; the Critical solution considers the question
subjectively,
“…in accordance with the foundation of the knowledge
upon which it is based.”[1538] “For your object is only in your
brain, and cannot be given outside it; so that you have only to
take care to be at one with yourself, and to avoid the
amphiboly which transforms your Idea into a supposed
representation of an object which is empirically given and
therefore to be known according to the laws of
experience.”[1539]
 Kant’s argument in proof of this purely subjective
interpretation of the Ideas consists in showing that they are not
presented in any given appearances, and are not even
necessary to explain appearances. The unconditioned, whether
of quantity, of division, or of origination, has nothing to do
with any experience, whether actual or possible.
“You would not, for instance, in any wise be able to explain
the appearances of a body better, or even differently, if you
assumed that it consists either of simple or of inexhaustibly
composite parts; for neither a simple appearance nor an
infinite composition can ever come before you. Appearances
demand explanation only in so far as the conditions of their
explanation are given in perception, [and the unconditioned
can never be so given].”[1540]
This standpoint, at once sceptical and empirical, is further
developed in the next section.
SECTION V

SCEPTICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL

QUESTIONS[1541]

Applying the “sceptical method,”[1542] Kant argues that

even supposing one or other party could conclusively establish
itself through final refutation of the other, no advantage of any
kind would accrue. The victory would be a fruitless one, and
the outcome “mere nonsense.”[1543] The sole validity of the
Ideas lies in their empirical reference; and yet that reference is
one which proves them to be, when objectively interpreted,
entirely meaningless. The cosmological Idea is always either
too large or too small for any concept of the understanding. No
matter what view is taken, the only possible object (viz. that
yielded by experience) will not fit into it. If the world has no
beginning, or is infinitely divisible, or has no first cause, the
regress transcends all empirical concepts; while if the world
has a beginning, is composed of simple parts, and has a first
cause, it is too small for the concepts through which alone it
can be experienced. In other words, the cosmological Ideas are
always either too large or too small for the empirical regress,
and therefore stand condemned by sense-experience, which
can alone impart relation to an object, i.e. truth and meaning to
any concept. For, as Kant explicitly states, we must not reverse
this relation and condemn empirical concepts, as being in the
one case too small, and in the other case too large for the
Idea. Experience, not Ideas, is the criterion alike of reality and
of truth.
“The possible empirical concept is, therefore, the standard
by which we must judge whether the Idea is mere Idea and
thought-entity (Gedankending), or whether it finds its object in
the world.”[1544]
When two things are compared, that for the sake of which
the other exists is the sole proper standard. We do not say “that
a man is too long for his coat, but that the coat is too short for
the man.”[1545] We are thus confirmed in the view that the
antinomies rest upon a false view of the manner in which the
object of the cosmological Ideas can be given; and are set
upon the track, followed out in the next section, of the illusion
to which they are due.
This reduction of the Ideas to mere thought-entities is one of
the two alternative views which, as we have already stated,
[1546] compete with one another throughout the entire
Dialectic. We may, for instance, compare the above
explanation of the conflict between the Ideas and experience
with that given in A 422 = B 450. In the latter passage the
antinomies are traced to a conflict between Reason and
understanding. If the unity is adequate to the demands of
Reason, it is too great for the understanding; if it is adequate to
the understanding, it is too small for Reason. Kant does not
here allow that the claims of Reason are ipso facto condemned
through the incapacity of experience to fulfil them. On the
contrary, he implies that it is through the Ideas that we come to
realise the merely phenomenal character of everything
experienced.
Our task, in this Commentary, is only to distinguish the
passages in which those two conflicting tendencies appear, and
to trace the consequences which follow from Kant’s
alternation between them. Discussion of their significance had
best be deferred to the close of the Dialectic, where Kant
dwells upon the regulative function of Reason. At present we
need merely note that the main content of the above sections,
in which the sceptical view is expounded, is of early date,
prior to the working out of the Paralogisms and of the Ideal.
SECTION VI

TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AS THE KEY TO THE SOLUTION OF

THE COSMOLOGICAL DIALECTIC [1547]

In this section subjectivism is dominant. The type of

transcendental idealism expounded is that earlier and less
developed form which connects with the doctrine of the
transcendental object.[1548] It shows no trace of Kant’s maturer
teaching. No distinction is drawn between representation and
the objects represented. To the transcendental object, the
“purely intelligible cause” of appearances in general, and to it
alone, Kant ascribes “the whole extent and connection of our
possible perceptions.”[1549] Appearances exist only in the
degree to which they are constructed in experience. As they
are mere representations, they cannot exist outside the mind.
Independently of such construction, they may indeed be said
to be given in the transcendental object, but they only become
objects to us on the supposition that they can be reached
through extension of the series of our actual perceptions. It is
in this form alone, as conceived in a regressive series of
possible perceptions, and not as having existed in itself, that
even the immemorial past course of the world can be
represented as real;
“…so that all events which have taken place in the immense
periods that have preceded my own existence mean really
nothing but the possibility of extending the chain of
experience from the present perception back to the conditions
which determine it in time.”[1550]
A similar interpretation has to be given to all propositions
which assert the present reality of that which has never been
actually experienced.
“In outcome it is a matter of indifference whether I say that
in the empirical progress in space I can meet with stars a
hundred times farther removed than the outermost now
perceptible to me, or whether I say that they are perhaps to be
met with in cosmical space even though no human being has
ever perceived or ever will perceive them. For even if they
were given as things in themselves, without relation to
possible experience,[1551] they are still nothing for me, and
therefore are not objects, save in so far as they are contained in
the series of the empirical regress.”[1552]
The distinction between appearances and things in
themselves must always, Kant observes, be borne in mind
when we are interpreting the meaning of our empirical
concepts; and this is especially necessary when those concepts
are brought into connection with the cosmological Idea of an
unconditioned. The antinomies are due to a failure to
appreciate this fundamental distinction, and the key to their
solution lies in its recognition.
“It would be an injustice to ascribe to us that long-decried
empirical idealism which, while it admits the genuine actuality
of space, denies the existence of the extended beings in
it….”[1553]
This is in line with the passages from the Prolegomena
commented upon above.[1554]
SECTION VII

CRITICAL DECISION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL CONFLICT OF

REASON WITH ITSELF[1555]

Kant’s argument is as follows. The antinomies rest upon the

principle that if the conditioned be given, the entire series of
all its conditions is likewise given. If the objects of the senses
were independently real, there would be no escape from this
assumption, and the dialectical conflict would consequently be
irresolvable. Transcendental idealism, as above stated, reveals
a way out of the dilemma. As appearances are merely
representations, their antecedent conditions do not exist as
appearances, save in the degree in which they are mentally
constructed. Though the appearances are given, their empirical
conditions are not thereby given. The most that we can say is
that a regress to the conditions, i.e. a continued empirical
synthesis in that direction, is commanded or required. The
cosmological argument can thus be shown to be logically
invalid. The syllogism, which it involves, is as follows:
 If the conditioned be given, the entire series of all its
conditions is likewise given.
The objects of the senses are given.
Therefore the entire series of all their conditions is likewise
given.
In the major premiss the concept of the conditioned is
employed transcendently (Kant says transcendentally), in the
minor empirically. But though the inference thus commits the
logical fallacy of sophisma figurae dictionis, the ground of its
occurrence, and the reason why it is not at once detected, lie in
a natural and inevitable illusion which leads us to accept the
sensible world in space as being independently real. Only
through Critical investigation can the deceptive power of this
illusion be overcome. Owing to its influence, the above fallacy
has been committed by dogmatists and empiricists alike. It can
be shown that in refuting each other
… “they are really quarrelling about nothing, and that a
certain transcendental illusion has caused them to see a reality
where none is to be found.”[1556]
The existence of antinomy, Kant further argues, presupposes
that theses and antitheses are contradictory opposites, i.e. that
no third alternative is possible. When opposed assertions are
not contradictories but contraries, the opposition, to use Kant’s
terms, is not analytical but dialectical. Both may be false; for
the one does not merely contradict the other, but makes, in
addition, a further statement on its own account. Now
examination of the illusion above described enables us to
perceive that the opposites, in reference to which antinomy
occurs, are of this dialectical character. Theses and antitheses
are alike false. Since the world does not exist as a thing in
itself, it exists neither as an infinite whole nor as a finite
whole, but only in the degree in which it is constructed in an
empirical regress. We must not apply “the Idea of absolute
totality, which is valid only as a condition of things in
themselves,”[1557] to appearances. (The words which I have
italicised mark the emergence of Kant’s non-sceptical, non-
empirical view of the nature and function of the Ideas of
Reason.) Thus antinomy, rightly understood, does not favour
scepticism, but only the “sceptical method,” and indeed yields
an indirect proof of the correctness of Critical teaching. This
proof may be presented in the form of a dilemma. If the world
is a whole existing in itself, it is either finite or infinite. But the
former alternative is refuted by the proofs given of the
antitheses, and the latter alternative by the proofs of the theses.
Therefore the world cannot be a whole existing in itself. From
this it follows that appearances are nothing outside our
representations; and that is what is asserted in the doctrine of
transcendental idealism.
In A 499 = B 527 Kant uses ambiguous language,[1558]
which can be interpreted as asserting that in the regress there
can be no lack of given conditions. Such a statement would
presuppose positive knowledge regarding the unknown
transcendental object.[1559] The opposite, more correct, view is
given in A 514-15 = B 542-3 and A 517 ff. = B 545 ff., though
in the latter passage with a reversion to the above position.
[1560]

The earlier manuscripts, which Kant has so far been

employing, probably terminate either, as Adickes suggests,
[1561] at the end of this section, or at the close of Section VIII.,
which is of doubtful date. Section IX. is certainly from a later
period; it represents a more complex standpoint, in which
Reason is no longer viewed as possessing a merely empirical
function, and in which consequently the theses and antitheses
are no longer indiscriminately denounced as being alike false.
Under the influence of his later, more Idealistic
preoccupations, Kant so far modifies the above solution as to
assert that in the ease of the last two antinomies both theses
and antitheses are true, when properly interpreted.
SECTION VIII

THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE OF PURE REASON IN REGARD TO

THE COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS [1562]

The principle of pure Reason, correctly formulated, is that

when the conditioned is given a regress upon the totality of its
conditions is set as a problem. As such it is valid,
“…not indeed as an axiom … but as a problem for the
understanding …, leading it to undertake and to continue,
according to the completeness in the Idea, the regress in the
series of conditions of any given conditioned.”[1563]
It does not anticipate, prior to the regress, what actually
exists as object, but only postulates, in the form of a rule, how
the understanding ought to proceed. It does not tell us whether
or how the unconditioned exists, but how the empirical regress
is to be carried out under the guidance of a mere Idea. Such a
rule can be regulative only, and the Idea of totality which it
contains must never be invested with objective reality. As the
absolutely unconditioned can never be met with in experience,
we know, indeed, beforehand that in the process of the regress
the unconditioned will never be reached. But the duty of
seeking it by way of such regress is none the less prescribed.
Kant proceeds to give a somewhat bewildering account of
the familiar distinction between progressus in infinitum and
progressus in indefinitum, and to draw a very doubtful
distinction between the series in division of a given whole and
the series in extension of it.[1564] The illustration from the
series of human generations is an unfortunate one; the
discovery that it began at some one point in the past would not
necessarily violate any demand of Reason. Such a series is not
comparable with those of space, time, and causality.[1565] The
only important result of this digression is the conclusion that
whatever demand be made, whether of regress in infinitum or
of regress in indefinitum, in neither case can the series of
conditions be regarded as being given as infinite in the object.
“The question, therefore, is no longer how great this series
of conditions may be in itself, whether finite or infinite, for it
is nothing in itself; but how we are to carry out the empirical
regress, and how far we should continue it.”[1566]
We have already noted[1567] Kant’s ambiguous suggestion in
A 499 = B 527, that in the empirical regress there can be no
lack of given conditions. The statement, thus interpreted, is
illegitimate. The most that he can claim is that, were further
sensations not forthcoming, we should still have to conceive
those last obtained as being preceded by empty space and
time, and as lacking in any experienced cause. Under such
circumstances we should experience neither finitude nor
unconditionedness, but only incapacity to find a content
suitable to the inexhaustible character of the spatial and
temporal conditions of experience, or in satisfaction of our
demand for causal antecedents. In A 514-15 = B 542-3 Kant
shows consciousness of this difficulty, but in dealing with it
adopts a half-way position which still lies open to objection.
He recognises that, since no member of a series can be
empirically given as absolutely unconditioned, a higher
member is always possible, and that the search for it is
therefore prescribed; none the less he asserts that in regard to
given wholes we are justified in taking up a very different
position, namely, that the regress in the series of their internal
conditions does not proceed, as in the above case, in
indefinitum, but in infinitum, i.e. that in this case more
members exist and are empirically given than we can reach
through the regress. In given wholes we are commanded to
find more members; in serial extension we are justified only in
inquiring for more. This half-way position is a makeshift, and
is in no respect tenable. The evidence for the infinite
extensibility of space and time is as conclusive as for their
infinite divisibility. And when we consider sensuous existence
under these forms, it is just as possible that the transcendental
object may, beyond a certain point, fail to supply material for
further division, as that it may fail to yield data for further
expansion. What Kant asserts of the latter, that further advance
must always remain as a possibility, and for that Reason must
always call for the open mind of further inquiry, without any
attempted anticipatory assertion either pro or contra, alone
represents the true Critical standpoint. The cessation of data
may really, however, be due to an increase in the subtlety of
the conditioning processes that incapacitates them from acting
upon our senses;[1568] by indirect means this disability may be
overcome. Reason, in its conception of an unconditioned,
prescribes to us a task that is inexhaustible in its demands. We
have no right to lay down our intellectual arms before any
barrier however baffling, or to despair before any chasm
however empty and abrupt.
SECTION IX

THE EMPIRICAL EMPLOYMENT OF THE REGULATIVE PRINCIPLE

OF REASON IN REGARD TO ALL COSMOLOGICAL IDEAS[1569]
 SOLUTION OF THE FIRST AND SECOND
ANTINOMIES
Statement.—The fundamental fact upon which, as Kant has
already stated, the regulative principle of Reason is based, is
that it is impossible to experience an absolute limit. It is
always possible that a still higher member of the series may be
found; and that being so, it is our duty to search for it. But as
we are here dealing with possibilities only, the regress is in
indefinitum, not in infinitum.
“…we must seek the concept of the quantity of the world
only according to the rule which determines the empirical
regress in it. This rule says no more than that however far we
may have attained in the series of empirical conditions, we
should never assume an absolute limit, but should subordinate
every appearance, as conditioned, to another as its condition,
and that we must then advance to this condition. This is the
regressus in indefinitum, which, as it determines no quantity in
the object, is clearly enough distinguishable from the regressus
in infinitum.”[1570]
We are acquainted only with the rule, and not with the
whole object. Any assertion, therefore, which we can make,
must be dictated solely by the rule, and be an expression of it.
Neither the thesis nor the antithesis of the first antinomy is
valid; there is a third alternative. The sensible world is neither
finite nor infinite in extent; it is infinitely extensible, in terms
of the rule.
Unfortunately Kant is not content to leave his conclusion in
this form. He complicates his argument, and bewilders the
reader, by maintaining that this is a virtual acceptance of the
antithesis, in that we assert negatively, that an absolute limit in
either time or space is empirically impossible;[1571] and
affirmatively, that the regress goes on in indefinitum, and
consequently has no absolute quantity.
Kant also repeats the argument of the preceding section in
regard to given wholes.[1572] When the problem is that of
subdivision, the regress starts from a given whole, and
therefore from a whole whose conditions (the parts) are given
with it. The division is, therefore, in infinitum, and not merely
in indefinitum. This does not, however, he argues, mean that
the given whole consists of infinitely many parts. For though
the parts are contained in the intuition of the whole, yet the
whole division arises only through the regress that generates it.
It is a quantum continuum, not a quantum discretum.[1573] This
argument has been criticised above.[1574] Kant here ignores the
possibility that the parts of matter, though extended, may be
physically indivisible, or that they may be centres of force
which control, but do not occupy, a determinate space.
REMARKS ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE MATHEMATICAL-
TRANSCENDENTAL AND THE DYNAMICAL-TRANSCENDENTAL
IDEAS[1575]

Statement.—Kant again[1576] introduces the distinction

between the mathematical and the dynamical. The
mathematical Ideas synthesise the homogeneous, the
dynamical may connect the heterogeneous. In employing the
former we must therefore remain within the phenomenal;
through the latter we may be able to transcend it. The way is
thus opened for propounding, in regard to the third and fourth
antinomies, a solution in which the pretensions of Reason no
less than those of understanding may find satisfaction.
Whereas both the theses and the antitheses of the first and
second antinomies have to be declared false, those of the third
and fourth antinomies may both be true—the theses applying
to the intelligible realm, and the antitheses to the world of
sense.
Comment.—When the distinction between the
mathematical and the dynamical is thus extended from the
categories to the Ideas, its validity becomes highly doubtful.
Space and time are certainly themselves homogeneous, and the
categories of quality and quantity, in so far as they are
mathematically employed, may perhaps be similarly
described. But when the term is still further extended, to cover
the pairs of correlative opposites with which the first two
antinomies deal, those, namely, between the limited and the
unlimited, the simple and the infinitely divisible, Kant would
seem to be making a highly artificial distinction. The first two
antinomies deal not with space and time as such, but with the
sensible world in space and time; and within this sensible
world, even in its quantitative aspects, qualitative differences
have to be reckoned with. Common sense does, indeed, tend to
assume that the unlimited and the simple must, like that which
they condition, be in space and time, and so form with the
conditioned a homogeneous series. But this assumption
ordinary consciousness is equally disposed to make in regard
to a first cause and to the unconditionally necessary.
Kant further attempts[1577] to distinguish between the
mathematical and the dynamical by asserting that the
dynamical antinomies are not concerned with the quantity of
their object, but only with its existence. He admits, however,
that in all four cases a series arises which is either too large or
too small for the understanding; and that being so, in each case
the problem arises as to the existence of an unconditioned.
The artificiality of Kant’s distinction becomes clear when
we recognise that the opposed solutions, which he gives of the
two sets of antinomies, can be mutually interchanged. As the
sensible world rests upon intelligible grounds, both the theses
and the antitheses of the first two antinomies may be true, the
former in the intelligible realm and the latter in the sensuous.
Similarly, both the theses and antitheses of the third and fourth
antinomies may be false. In the sensible world, about which
alone anything can be determined, the series of dynamical
conditions forms neither a finite nor an infinite series. There is
a third alternative, akin to that of the antitheses, but distinct in
character from it, namely, that the series is infinitely
extensible. Kant’s differential treatment of the two sets of
antinomies is arbitrary, and would seem to be due to his
having attempted to superimpose, with the least possible
modification, a later solution of the antinomies upon one
previously developed. In the earlier view, as we have already
had occasion to observe, Reason has a merely empirical
application. Its Ideas are taken as existing “only in the brain.”
Only their empirical reference can substantiate them, or indeed
give them the least significance. And as they are by their very
nature incapable of empirical embodiment, all assertions
which involve them must necessarily be false. Later, Kant
came to regard Reason as having its own independent rights.
Encouraged by his successful establishment of the objective
validity of the categories, progressively more and more
convinced of the importance of the distinction, which that
proof reinforced, between appearances and things in
themselves, and preoccupied with the problems of the spiritual
life, his old-time faith in the absolute claims of pure thought
reasserted itself. Through Reason we realise our kinship with
noumenal realities, and through its demands the nature of the
unconditioned is foreshadowed to the mind. The theses and
antitheses, which throughout the entire history of philosophy
have competed with one another, may both be true. Their
perennial conflict demonstrates the need for some more
catholic standpoint from which the two great authorities by
which human life is controlled and directed, the intellectual
and the moral, may be reconciled. Neither can be made to
yield to the other; each is supreme in its own field. The
distinction between appearances and things in themselves,
recognition of which is the first step towards an adequate
theory of knowledge, and without which the nature of the
intellectual life remains self-contradictory and
incomprehensible, itself affords the means of such a
reconciliation. The understanding is the sole key to the world
of appearance, the moral imperative to the realm of things in
themselves. Reason with its demand for the unconditioned
mediates between them, and enables us to realise our dual
vocation.
This radical alteration of standpoint was bound to make the
employment of manuscript representing the earlier and more
sceptical attitude altogether unsatisfactory; and only Kant’s
constitutional unwillingness to sacrifice what he had once
committed to paper can account for his retention of the older
expositions. He allows his previous treatment of the first two
antinomies to remain in its sceptical form, and, by means of
the distinction between the mathematical and the dynamical,
develops his newer, more Idealist view exclusively in
reference to the third and fourth antinomies. That it is no less
applicable to the others, we have already seen.
Though the Idealist view, as here expounded, may be thus
described, relatively to the sceptical view of Reason, as later,
that is not to be taken as meaning that it represents the latest
stage in the development of Kant’s Critical teaching. It seems
to belong to the period prior to that in which the central
sections of the Analytic were composed. The evidence[1578] for
this consists chiefly in its subjectivist references to the nature
of appearances. It would seem to be contemporary with Kant’s
doctrine of the transcendental object.
SOLUTION OF THE THIRD ANTINOMY[1579]

Statement.—As appearances are representations only, they

must have a ground which is not itself an appearance;[1580] and
though the effects of such an intelligible cause appear, and
accordingly are determined through other appearances, its
causality is not itself similarly conditioned. Both it and its
causality lie outside the empirical series; only the effects fall
within the realm of experience. And that causality, not being
subject to time, does not require to stand under another cause
as its effect. In this way Kant derives from his transcendental
idealism an explanation of the possibility of an action being at
once free and causally determined. This explanation he takes
as applying either to a first cause of the whole realm of natural
phenomena or to a finite being regarded as a free agent. The
proof of the possibility of this metaphysical, or, as Kant
entitles it, “transcendental freedom,” removes what has always
been the real difficulty that lay in the way of “practical
freedom.” The conception of freedom is a transcendental Idea
which can neither be derived from experience nor verified by
it. It is created by Reason for itself;[1581] and reveals the
possibility that in this third antinomy both thesis and antithesis
may be true. The alternatives—“every effect must arise from
nature,” and “every effect must arise from freedom”—are not
exclusive of one another. They may be true of one and the
same event in different relations.[1582] The event may be free
in reference to its intelligible cause, determined as an
existence in space and time. Were appearances things in
themselves, freedom and causality would necessarily conflict:
by means of the above ontological distinction freedom can be
asserted without any diminution in the scope allowed to the
causal principle. All events, without a single possible
exception, are subject to the law of natural determination; and
yet every event may at the same time proceed from a free
cause.
POSSIBILITY OF HARMONISING CAUSALITY THROUGH FREEDOM
WITH THE UNIVERSAL LAW OF NATURAL NECESSITY [1583]

Statement.—The above conclusion is so seemingly

paradoxical that Kant devotes this and the following section to
its further elucidation. How can events be both free and
determined? The answer lies in recognition of the two-sided
character of every natural existence. It is, in one aspect, mere
appearance; in another, it has at its foundation a transcendental
object. It is an appearance of the latter, and for its complete
comprehension this latter must be taken into account. Now
there is nothing to prevent us from attributing to the
transcendental object a causality which is not phenomenal.
Such causality may make the appearance just that appearance
which it is. In the world of sense every efficient cause must
have a specific empirical character, since only so can it
determine one effect rather than another according to the
universal and invariable law expressive of its nature. We must
similarly allow to the transcendental object an intelligible
character, and trace to it all those appearances which as
members of the empirical series stand to one another in
unbroken causal connection. This transcendental object, owing
to its intelligible character, is not in time. Its act does not either
arise or perish, and is not, therefore, subject to the law of
empirical determination which applies only to the changeable,
i.e. to events subsequent upon previous states. Such
supersensuous causality can find no place in the series of
empirical conditions, and though it can be conceived only in
terms of the empirical character which is its outcome, the
difference between it and natural causality may be as complete
as that which subsists between the transcendental and the
empirical objects of knowledge. In its empirical character the
action is a part of nature, and enters into a causal nexus which
conforms to universal laws.[1584] All its effects are inevitably
determined by antecedent natural conditions. In its intelligible
character, however, this same active subject must be
considered free from all influence of sensibility and from all
determination through natural events. In so far as it is a
noumenon, there can be no change in it, and therefore nothing
which is capable of explanation in terms of natural causes.
Even its empirical effects are not traceable to it as events in
time. For as events these effects are always the results of
antecedent empirical causes. What is alone due to noumenal
causality is that empirical character in virtue of which
appearances are what they are, and owing to which they stand
in specific and necessary causal relations to one another.
“…the empirical character is permanent, while its effects,
according to variation in the concomitant, and in part limiting
conditions, appear in changeable forms.”[1585]
Empirical causality is itself in its specific nature conditioned
by an intelligible cause.[1586]
EXPLANATION OF THE RELATION OF FREEDOM TO NECESSITY OF
NATURE[1587]

Statement.—No single appearance can be exempted from

the law of natural causality. For it would then be placed
outside all possible experience, and would be for us a fiction
of the brain, or rather could not be conceived at all. Nothing,
therefore, in nature can act freely or spontaneously. But while
thus recognising that all events without exception are
empirically conditioned, we may, as already pointed out,
regard empirical causality as itself an effect of a non-empirical
and intelligible power.[1588] In events there may be nothing but
nature, and yet nature itself, or perhaps even some of the
existences composing it, may rest upon powers of a noumenal
order. Kant proceeds to show that such an hypothesis is not
only allowable, but is indispensable for understanding the
distinguishing features of human life in its practical aspect.
Man is a natural existence, and his activities are subject to
empirical laws. Like all other objects of nature, he has an
empirical character, and in virtue of it takes his place as an
integral part of the system of nature. But man is unique among
all natural existences in that he not only knows himself as a
sensible existence, but also, through pure apperception,
becomes aware of himself as possessing faculties of a strictly
intelligible character.[1589] Such are the faculties of
understanding and Reason, especially the latter in its practical
employment. The “ought” of the moral imperative expresses a
kind of necessity and a form of causation which we nowhere
find in the world of nature. The understanding can know in
nature only what actually is, has been, or will be. Nothing
natural can be other than it is in the particular relations in
which it is found. Moral action transcends the natural in that it
finds its cause, not in an appearance or set of appearances, but
in an Ideal of pure Reason. Such action must indeed be
possible under natural conditions, but such conditions do not
determine its rightness, and consequently cannot determine its
causality.
“Reason … does not here follow the order of things as they
present themselves in appearance, but frames to itself with
perfect spontaneity an order of its own according to Ideas, to
which it adapts the empirical conditions, and according to
which it declares actions to be necessary even although they
have never yet taken place, and perhaps never will take place.
And at the same time it also presupposes that Reason can have
causality in regard to all these actions, since otherwise no
empirical effects could be expected from its Ideas.”[1590]
If such action of pure Reason be admitted to be possible, it
will have to be viewed, purely intelligible though it be, as also
possessing an empirical character, i.e. as conforming to the
system of nature. Its empirical consequences will be the effects
of antecedent appearances, and will empirically determine by
natural necessity all subsequent acts. In this empirical
character, therefore, there can be no freedom. Were our
knowledge of the circumstances sufficiently extensive, every
human action, so far as it is appearance, could be predicted
and shown to be necessary. How, then, can we talk of actions
as free, when from the point of view of appearances they must
in all cases be regarded as inevitable? The solution is that
which has already been given of the broader issue. The entire
empirical character, the whole system of nature, is determined
by the intelligible character. And the former results from the
latter, not empirically, and therefore not according to any
temporal, causal law. It does not arise or begin at a certain
time. The intelligible character conditions the empirical series
as a series, and not as if it were a first member of it.
 “Thus what we have missed in all empirical series is
disclosed as possible, namely, that the condition of a
successive series of events may itself be empirically
unconditioned.”[1591]
The intelligible character lies outside the series of
appearances. “Reason is the abiding (beharrliche) condition of
all free actions….”[1592] Freedom ought not, therefore, to be
conceived only negatively as independence of empirical
conditions, but also positively as the power of originating a
series of events. The empirical series is in time. Reason, which
is its unconditioned condition, admits of nothing antecedent to
itself; it knows neither before nor after. The series is the
immediate effect of a non-temporal reality.
In illustration of his meaning, not, as he is careful to add,
with the profession of thereby confirming its truth, Kant points
out that moral judgment upon a vicious action is not
determined in view of the inheritance, circumstances and past
life of the offender, but is passed just as if he might in each
action be supposed to begin, quite by himself, a new series of
effects. This, in Kant’s view, shows that practical Reason is
regarded as a cause completely capable, independently of all
empirical conditions, of determining the act, and that it is
present in all the actions of men under all conditions, and is
always the same. To explain why the intelligible character
should in any specific case produce just this particular
empirical character, good or bad,
“…transcends all the powers of our Reason, indeed all its
rights of questioning, just as if we were to ask why the
transcendental object of our outer sense-intuition yields
intuition in space only and no other.”[1593]
In conclusion Kant states that his intention has not been to
establish the reality of freedom, not even to prove its
possibility. Freedom has been dealt with only as a
transcendental Idea; and the only point established is that
freedom is, so to speak, a possible possibility, in that it is not
contradicted either by experience or by anything that can be
proved to be a presupposition of experience.
 Comment.—Adequate comment upon this section is
difficult for many reasons. The section is full of archaic
expressions from the earlier stages of Kant’s Critical teaching.
Secondly, the section anticipates a problem which is first
adequately dealt with in the second Critique. And lastly, but
not least, the discussion of freedom in connection with a
cosmological antinomy leads Kant to treat it in the same
manner as the general antinomy, and in so doing to ignore the
chief difficulty to which human freedom, as an independent
problem with its own peculiar difficulties, lies open. For it is
comparatively easy to reconcile the universality of the causal
principle with the unconditionedness of the transcendental
ground upon which nature as a whole is made to rest. It is a
very different matter to reconcile the spontaneous origination
of particular causal series, or the freedom of particular
existences, such as human beings, with the singleness and
uniformity of a natural system in which every part is
determined by every other. Self-consciousness, with the
capacity which it confers of constructing rational ideals,
certainly, as Kant rightly contends, creates a situation to which
mechanical categories are by no means adequate. But the mere
reference to the conceivability of distinct causal series, having
each a pure conception as their intelligible ground, does not
suffice to meet the fundamental difficulty that, on Kant’s own
admission, each such separate series must form an integral part
of the unitary system of natural law. In only one passage does
Kant even touch upon this difficulty. Speaking[1594] of
Reason’s power of originating a series of events, he adds that
while nothing begins in Reason itself (as it admits of no
conditions antecedent to itself in time), the new series must
none the less have a beginning in the natural world. But the
proviso, which he at once makes, indicates that he is aware
that this statement is untenable. For he adds the qualification
that though a beginning of the series, it is never an absolutely
first beginning. In other words, it is not a beginning in any real
sense of the term. As the argument of his next paragraph
shows, it is the entire system of nature, and not any one series
within it, which can alone account, in empirical terms, for any
one action.
 It is open to Kant to argue, as he has already done,[1595] that
the transcendental object conditions each separate appearance
as well as all appearances in their totality, and that the specific
empirical character of each causal series is therefore no less
noumenally conditioned than is nature as a whole. But this
does not suffice to meet the difficulty—how, if all natural
phenomena constitute a single closed system in which
everything is determined by everything else, a moral agent,
acting spontaneously, can be free to originate a genuinely new
series of natural events. We seem constrained to conclude that
Kant has failed to sustain his position. A solution is rendered
impossible by the very terms in which he formulates the
problem. If the spiritual and the natural be opposed to one
another as the timeless and the temporal, and if the natural be
further viewed as a unitary system, individual moral freedom
is no longer defensible. Only the “transcendental freedom” of
the cosmological argument can be reckoned as among the
open possibilities.
As regards the character of the Critical doctrine which
underlies this section, we need only note that the statement in
A 546-7 = B 574-5, that man knows himself through pure
apperception as “a purely intelligible object,”[1596] does not
conform to Kant’s final teaching. The section can be dated
through its unwavering adherence to the subjectivist doctrine
of the transcendental object.[1597]
SOLUTION OF THE FOURTH ANTINOMY[1598]

Statement.—The above solution is adopted. Both thesis

and antithesis may be true, the latter of the world of sense and
the former of its non-empirical ground. All things sensible are
contingent, but the contingent series in its entirety may
nevertheless rest upon an unconditionally necessary being.
The unconditioned, since it is outside the series, does not
require that any one link in the series should be itself
unconditioned. “Reason follows its own course in the
empirical, and again a peculiar course in its transcendental
use,” i.e. it limits itself by the law of causality in dealing with
appearances, lest in losing the thread of the empirical
conditions it should fall into idle and empty speculations;
while, on the other hand, it limits that law to appearances, lest
it should wrongly declare that what is useless for the
explanation of appearances is therefore impossible in itself.
This does not prove that an absolutely necessary being is
really possible, but only that its impossibility must not be
concluded from the necessary contingency of all things
sensuous.
Comment.—Kant’s method of distinguishing[1599] this
conclusion from that of the preceding antinomy is again
artificial. “Necessary being” is not in conception more
extramundanum than “unconditioned cause.” If Kant’s
distinction were valid, the argument of the fourth antinomy
would no longer be cosmological; it would coincide with the
problem of the Ideal of Pure Reason.
CONCLUDING NOTE ON THE WHOLE ANTINOMY OF PURE
REASON[1600]

Statement.—When we seek the unconditioned entirely

beyond experience, our Ideas cease to be cosmological; they
become transcendent. They separate themselves off from all
empirical use of the understanding, and create to themselves
an object, the material of which is not taken from experience,
and which is therefore a mere thing of the mind (blosses
Gedankending). None the less the cosmological Idea of the
fourth antinomy impels us to take this step. When sensuous
appearances, as merely contingent, require us to look for
something altogether distinct in nature from them, our only
available instruments, in so doing, are those pure concepts of
things in general which contingent experience involves. We
use them as instruments in such manner as may enable us to
form, through analogy, some kind of notion of intelligible
things. Taken in abstraction from the forms of sense, they
yield that notion of an absolutely necessary Being which is
equivalent to the concept of the theological Ideal.
CONCLUDING COMMENT ON KANT’S DOCTRINE OF THE
ANTINOMIES

We may now, in conclusion, briefly summarise the results

obtained in this chapter. Kant fails to justify the assertion that
on the dogmatic level there exist antinomies in which both the
contradictory alternatives allow of cogent demonstration. His
proofs are in every instance invalid. The real nature of
antinomy must, as he himself occasionally intimates, be
defined in a very different manner, namely, as a conflict
between the demand of Reason for unity and system, and the
specific nature of the conditions, especially of the spatial and
temporal conditions, under which the sensuous exists. In this
wider form it constitutes a genuine problem, which demands
for its solution the fundamental Critical distinction between
appearances and things-in-themselves, and also a more
thoroughgoing discussion than has yet been attempted of the
nature of Reason and of the function of its Ideas. It is to these
connected questions that Kant devotes his main attention in the
remaining portions of the Dialectic, so that in passing to the
Ideal of Pure Reason he is not proceeding to the treatment of a
new set of problems, but to the restatement and to the more
adequate solution of the fundamental conflict between
understanding and Reason.
The observations which closed our comment upon the
Paralogisms are thus again in order. The teaching of the
sections on the Antinomies, no less than that of those on the
Paralogisms, is incomplete, and if taken by itself is bound to
mislead. The Ideas of an unconditioned self and of an
unconditioned ground of nature have thus far been taken as at
least conceptually possible, and as signifying what may
perhaps be real existences. These Ideas are in certain of the
remaining sections of the Dialectic called in question. They
are there declared to be without inherent meaning. They are
useful fictions—heuristische Fiktionen—and in their
psychological nature are simply schemata of regulative
principles. Their theoretical significance consists merely in
their regulative and limitative functions. They must not be
regarded, even hypothetically, as representing real existences.
In the practical (i.e. ethical) sphere they do indeed acquire a
very different standing. But with that the Critique of Pure
Reason is not directly concerned. The reader may therefore be
warned not to omit the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason, on
the supposition that it embodies only a criticism of the
Cartesian and teleological proofs of God’s existence. It is an
integral part of Critical teaching, and carries Kant’s entire
argument forward to its final conclusions. Only in view of the
new and deeper considerations, which it brings to light, can his
treatment even of the Antinomies be properly understood. Its
main opening section (Section II.) is, indeed, among the most
scholastically rationalistic in the entire Critique; but in the
later sections it unfolds, with a boldness and consistency to
which we find no parallel in the treatment of the Paralogisms
and of the Antinomies, the full consequences of the more
sceptical of Kant’s alternating standpoints. It disintegrates the
concepts of the unconditioned, which have hitherto been
employed without analysis and without question; and upon
their elimination from among the legitimate instruments of
Reason, the situation undergoes entire transformation, the two
points of view appearing for the first time in the full extent of
their divergence and conflict. For Kant’s Idealist view of
Reason and of its Ideas still continues to find occasional
statement, showing that he has not been able decisively to
commit himself to this more sceptical interpretation of the
function of Reason; that he is conscious that the Idealist view
alone gives adequate expression to certain fundamental
considerations which have to be reckoned with; and that unless
the two views can in some manner be reconciled with one
another, a really definitive and satisfactory solution of the
problem has not been reached. When, therefore, we speak of
Kant’s final conclusions, we must be taken as referring to the
twofold tendencies, sceptical and Idealist, which to the very
last persist in competition with one another. The greater
adequacy of Kant’s argument in the chapter on the Ideal of
Pure Reason and in the important Appendix attached to the
Dialectic consists in its forcible and considered exposition of
both attitudes. Most of the sections on the Antinomies must, as
we have seen, be dated as among the earliest parts of the
Critique. Their teaching is correspondingly immature. The
chapter on the Ideal and the Appendix, on the other hand, were
among the latest to be written, and contain, together with the
central portions of the Analytic, our most authoritative
exposition of Kant’s Critical principles.
 CHAPTER III

THE IDEAL OF PURE REASON

SECTIONS I and II

THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAL[1601]

THE statements of the first section cannot profitably be

commented upon at this stage; they are of a merely general
character.[1602] I pass at once to Section II., which, as above
stated, is quite the most archaic piece of rationalistic argument
in the entire Critique. It is not merely Leibnizian, but Wolffian
in character. For Kant the Wolffian logic had an old-time
flavour and familiarity that rendered it by no means
distasteful; and he is here, as it were, recalling, not altogether
without sympathy, the lessons of his student years. They
enable him to render definite, by way of contrast, the outcome
of his own Critical teaching.
As Kant here restates the Wolffian notion of the Ens
realissimum in such fashion as is required to make it conform
to his deduction of the theological Idea from the disjunctive
syllogism, a preliminary statement of the more orthodox
formulation will help to set Wolff’s doctrine in a clearer light.
In so doing, I shall follow Baumgarten, whose Metaphysica
Kant used as a class text-book. Briefly summarised
Baumgarten’s statement is as follows.[1603] The Ens
perfectissimum is that Being which possesses as many
predicates, i.e. perfections, as can possibly exist together in a
single thing, and in which every one of its perfections is as
great as is anywhere possible. This most perfect Being must be
a real Being, and its reality must be the greatest possible. It is
that in which the most and the greatest realities are. But all
realities are affirmative determinations, and no denial is a
reality. Accordingly no reality can contradict another reality,
and all realities can exist together in the same thing. The Ens
perfectissimum, in possessing all the realities that can exist
together, must therefore possess all realities without exception,
and every one of them in the highest degree. The notion of an
individual existence that is at once perfectissimum and also
realissimum is thus determinable by pure Reason from its
internal resources. It is the ground and condition of all other
existences; all of them arise through limitation of its purely
positive nature.
Kant seeks to justify his metaphysical deduction of the Ideal
from the disjunctive syllogism, by recasting the above
argument in the following manner. Since everything which
exists is completely determined, it is subject to the principle of
complete determination, according to which one of each of the
possible pairs of contradictory predicates must be applicable to
it. To be completely determined the thing must be compared
with the sum total of all possible predicates. Although this idea
of the sum total of all possible predicates, through reference to
which alone any concept can be completely determined, seems
itself indeterminate, we find nevertheless on closer
examination that it individualises itself a priori, transforming
itself into the concept of an individual existence that is
completely determined by the mere Idea, and which may
therefore be called an Ideal of pure Reason. That is proved as
follows. No one can definitely think a negation unless he
founds it on the opposite affirmation. A man completely blind
cannot frame the smallest conception of darkness, because he
has none of light. All negations are therefore derivative; it is
the realities which contain the material by which a complete
determination of anything becomes possible. The source, from
which all possible predicates may be derived, can be nothing
but the sum total of reality. And this concept of the omnitudo
realitatis is the Idea of a Being that is single and individual.
As all finite beings derive the material of their possibility from
it, they presuppose it, and cannot, therefore, constitute it. They
are imperfect copies (ectypa), of which it is the sole Ideal. The
Idea is also individual. Out of each possible pair of
contradictory predicates, that one which expresses reality
belongs to it. By these infinitely numerous positive predicates
it is determined to absolute concreteness; and as it therefore
possesses all that has reality, not only in nature but in man, it
must be conceived as a personal and intelligent Primordial
Being. The logical Ideal, thus determining itself completely by
its own concept, appears not only as ideal but also as real, not
only as logical but also as divine.
Kant so far anticipates his criticism of the ontological
argument as to give, in the remaining paragraphs of this
second section, a preliminary criticism of this procedure. For
the purpose for which the Ideal is postulated, namely, the
determination of all finite and therefore limited existences,
Reason does not require to presuppose an existence
corresponding to it. Its mere Idea will suffice.
“All manifoldness of things is only a correspondingly varied
mode of limiting the concept of the highest reality which
forms their common substratum, just as all figures are only
possible as so many different modes of limiting infinite
space.”[1604]
This relation is not, however, that of a real existence to
other things but of an Idea to concepts. The Idea is a mere
fiction, necessary for comprehending the limited, not a reality
that can be asserted, even hypothetically,[1605] as given along
with the limited. None the less, owing to a natural
transcendental illusion, the mind inevitably tends to
hypostatise it, and so generates the object of rational theology.
Comment.—The explanation of this illusion, which Kant
proceeds to give in the two concluding paragraphs, is
peculiarly confusing. Though the concept of an all-
comprehensive reality may, he argues, be required for the
definition of sensible objects, such a concept must not for that
reason be taken as representing a real existence. The teaching
of the section on Amphiboly is here entirely ignored; and the
reader is bewildered by the assumption, which Kant apparently
makes, that something analogous to the Leibnizian Ideal is a
prerequisite of possible experience.
These last remarks indicate the kind of criticism to which
the argument of this section lays itself open. In expounding the
teaching of the Leibnizian science of rational theology, Kant
strives to represent its Ideal as being an inevitable Idea of
human Reason; and in order to make this argument at all
convincing he is constrained to treat as valid the presupposed
ontology, though that has already been shown in the discussion
of Amphiboly to be altogether untenable.[1606] Limitation is not
merely negative; genuine realities may negate one another.
Though the objects of sense presuppose the entire system to
which they belong, the form of this presupposition is in no
respect analogous to that which Wolff would represent as
holding between finite existences and the Ens realissimum.
The passage in the Analytic[1607] in which Kant directly
controverts the above teaching is as follows:
“The principle, that realities (as pure assertions) never
logically contradict each other … has not the least meaning
either in regard to nature or in regard to any thing-in-itself….
Although Herr von Leibniz did not, indeed, announce this
proposition with all the pomp of a new principle, he yet made
use of it for new assertions, and his followers expressly
incorporated it in their Leibnizian-Wolffian system. According
to this principle all evils, for instance, are merely
consequences of the limitations of created beings, i.e.
negations, because negations alone conflict with reality….
Similarly his disciples consider it not only possible, but even
natural, to combine all reality, without fear of any conflict, in
one being, because the only conflict which they recognise is
that of contradiction, whereby the concept of a thing is itself
removed. They do not admit the conflict of reciprocal injury in
which each of two real grounds destroys the effect of the other
—a process which we can represent to ourselves only in terms
of conditions presented to us in sensibility.”
Thus the Ideal which Kant here declares to be a necessary
Idea of Reason is denounced in the Analytic as based on false
principles peculiar to the Leibnizian philosophy, and as
“without the least meaning in regard either to nature or to any
thing in itself.” The teaching of the Analytic will no more
combine with this scholastic rationalism than oil with water.
The reader may safely absolve himself from the thankless task
of attempting to render Kant’s argumentation in these
paragraphs consistent with itself. Fortunately, in the next
section, Kant returns to the standpoint proper to the doctrine
he is expounding, and lays bare, with remarkable subtlety and
in a very convincing manner, the concealed dialectic by which
the conclusions of this metaphysical science are really
determined.[1608]
SECTION III

THE SPECULATIVE ARGUMENTS IN PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF

A SUPREME BEING[1609]

Statement.—Though the Ideal is not arbitrary, but is

presupposed in every attempt to define completely a finite
concept, Reason would feel hesitation in thus transforming
what is merely a logical concept into a Divine Existence, were
it not that it is impelled from another direction to derive reality
from such a source. All existences known in experience are
contingent, and so lead us (owing to the constitution of our
Reason) to assume an absolutely necessary Being as their
ground and cause. Now when we examine our various
concepts, to ascertain which will cover this notion of
necessary existence, we find that there is one that possesses
outstanding claims, namely, that Idea which contains a
therefore for every wherefore, which is in no respect defective,
and which does not permit us to postulate any condition. The
concepts of the Ideal and of the necessary alone represent the
unconditioned; and as they agree in this fundamental respect,
they must, we therefore argue, be identical. And to this
conclusion we are the more inclined, in that, by thus idealising
reality, we are at the same time enabled to realise our Ideal.
This line of argument, which starts from the contingent, is
as little valid as that which proceeds directly from the Ideal.
But since these arguments express certain tendencies inherent
in the human mind, they have a vitality which survives any
merely forensic refutation. Though the conclusions to which
they lead are false, they are none the less inevitably drawn.
Our acceptance of them is due to a transcendental illusion
which may be detected as such, but which, like the ingrained
illusions of sense-experience, must none the less persist.
The opening paragraph of Section V[1610] is the natural
completion of the above analysis. The ontological argument,
in starting from the concept of the Ens realissimum, inverts
the natural procedure. It is “a merely scholastic innovation,”
and would never have been attempted save for the need of
finding some necessary Being, to which we may ascend from
contingent existence. It maintains that this necessary Being
must be unconditioned and a priori certain, and accordingly
looks for a concept capable of fulfilling this requirement. Such
a concept is supposed to exist in the Idea of an Ens
realissimum, and this Idea is therefore used to gain more
definite knowledge of that which has been previously and
independently recognised, namely, the necessary Being,
“This natural procedure of Reason was concealed from
view, and instead of ending with this concept, the attempt was
made to begin with it, and so to deduce from it that necessity
of existence which it was only fitted to complete. Thus arose
the unfortunate ontological proof, which yields satisfaction
neither to the natural and healthy understanding nor to the
more academic demands of strict proof.”[1611]
To return to Section III.: Kant breaks the continuity of his
argument, and anticipates his discussion of the cosmological
proof, by stopping to point out the illegitimacy of the
assumption which underlies the first step in the above
argument, namely, that a limited being cannot be absolutely
necessary. Though the concept of a limited being does not
contain the unconditioned, that does not prove that its
existence is conditioned. Indeed each and every limited being
may, for all their concepts show to the contrary, be
unconditionally necessary.[1612] The above argument is
consequently inconclusive, and cannot be relied on to give us
any concept whatever of the qualities of a necessary Being.
But this is a merely logical defect, and, as already noted, it is
not really upon logical cogency that the persuasive force of the
argument depends.
In conclusion Kant points out that there are only three
possible kinds of speculative (i.e. theoretical) proofs of the
existence of God: (1) from definite experience and the specific
nature of the world of sense as revealed in experience; (2)
from indefinite experience, i.e. from the fact that any existence
at all is empirically given; (3) the non-empirical a priori proof
from mere concepts. The first is the physico-theological or
teleological argument, the second is the cosmological, and the
third is the ontological. Kant finds it advisable to reverse the
order of the proofs, and to begin by consideration of the
ontological argument. This would seem to indicate that the
‘scholastic innovation’ to which he traces the origin of the
ontological proof has more justification than his remarks
appear to allow.
SECTION IV

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF AN ONTOLOGICAL PROOF[1613]

Statement.—Hitherto Kant has employed the concept of an

absolutely necessary Being without question. He now
recognises that the problem, from which we ought to start, is
not whether the existence of an absolutely necessary Being can
be demonstrated, but whether, and how, such a Being can even
be conceived. And upon analysis he discovers that the
assumed notion of an absolutely necessary, i.e. unconditioned
Being is entirely lacking in intelligible content. For in
eliminating all conditioning causes—through which alone the
understanding can conceive necessity of existence—we also
remove this particular kind of necessity. A verbal definition
may, indeed, be given of the Idea, as when we say that it
represents something the non-existence of which is
impossible. But this yields no insight into the reasons which
make its non-existence inconceivable, and such insight is
required if anything at all is to be thought in the Idea.
“The expedient of removing all those conditions which the
understanding indispensably requires in order to regard
something as necessary, simply through the introduction of the
word unconditioned, is very far from sufficing to show
whether I am still thinking anything, or not rather perhaps
nothing at all, in the concept of the unconditionally
necessary.”[1614]
The untenableness of the concept has been in large part
concealed through a confusion between logical and ontological
necessity, that is, between necessity of judgment and necessity
of existence. The fact that every proposition of geometry must
be regarded as absolutely necessary was supposed to justify
this identification. It was not observed that logical necessity
refers only to judgments, not to things and their relations, and
that the absolute necessity of the judgment holds only upon the
assumption that the conditioned necessity of the thing referred
to has previously been granted. If there be any such thing as a
triangle, the assertion that it has three angles will follow with
absolute necessity; but the existence of a triangle or even of
space in general is contingent. In other words, the asserted
necessity is only a form of logical sequence, not the
unconditioned necessity of existence which is supposed to be
disclosed in the Idea of Reason. All judgments, so far as they
refer to existence, as distinct from mere possibility, are
hypothetical, and serve to define a reality that is only
contingently given. In adopting this position, Kant is in entire
agreement with Hume. The contradictory of a matter of fact is
always thinkable. There has, Kant claims, been no more
fruitful source of illusion throughout the whole history of
philosophy than the belief in an absolute necessity that is
purely logical.[1615] In the ontological argument we have the
most striking instance of such rationalistic exaggeration of the
powers of thought.
Comment.—Had this criticism of the Idea of unconditioned
necessity been introduced at an earlier stage in Kant’s
argument, much confusion would have been avoided. It
involves the thorough revisal of his criticism of the third and
fourth antinomies, as well as of the whole account hitherto
given of the function of Reason and of its metaphysical
dialectic. The principle, that if the conditioned be given, the
whole series of conditions up to the unconditioned is likewise
given, must no longer be accepted as a basis for argument.
Indeed the very terms in which Reason has so far been
defined, as the faculty of the unconditioned, become subject to
question. In that definition the term unconditioned has tacitly
been taken as equivalent to the unconditionally necessary, and
on elimination of the element of necessity, it will reduce
merely to the concept of totality, which is a pure form of the
understanding. Those parts of the Dialectic, which embody the
view that Reason is simply the understanding transcendently
employed, will thus be confirmed; the alternative view of
Reason as a separate faculty will have to be eliminated. But
these are questions which Kant himself proceeds to raise and
discuss.[1616] Meantime he applies the above results in
criticism of the ontological argument.
Statement.—In an identical judgment it is contradictory to
reject the predicate while retaining the subject. But there is no
contradiction if we reject subject and predicate alike, for
nothing is then left that can be contradicted. If we assume that
there is a triangle, we are bound to recognise that it has three
angles, but there is no contradiction in rejecting the triangle
together with its three angles. The same holds true of an
absolutely necessary Being. ‘God is omnipotent’ is an
identical and therefore necessary judgment. But if we say,
‘There is no God,’ neither the omnipotence nor any other
attribute remains; and there is therefore not the least
contradiction in saying that God does not exist. The only way
of evading this conclusion is to argue that there are subjects
which cannot be removed out of existence. That, however,
would only be another way of asserting that there exist
absolutely necessary subjects, and that is the very assertion
which is now in question, and which the ontological argument
undertakes to prove. Our sole test of what cannot be removed
is the contradiction which would thereby result; and the only
possible instance which can be cited is the concept of the Ens
realissimum. It remains, therefore, to establish the above
criticism for this specific case.
At the start Kant points out that absence of internal
contradiction, even if granted, proves only that the Ens
realissimum is a logically possible concept (as distinguished
from the nihil negativum[1617]); it does not suffice to establish
the possibility of the object of the concept. But for the sake of
argument Kant allows this initial assumption to pass. The
argument to be disproved is that as reality comprehends
existence, existence is contained in the concept of Ens
realissimum, and cannot therefore be denied of it without
removing its internal possibility. The really fundamental
assumption of this argument is that existence is capable of
being included in the concept of a possible being. If that were
so, the assertion of its existence would be an analytic
proposition, and the proof could not be challenged. (The
assumption is partly concealed by alternation of the terms
reality and existence: in their actual employment they are
completely synonymous.) As the above assumption thus
decides the entire issue, Kant sets himself to establish, in
direct opposition to it, the thesis, that every proposition which
predicates existence is synthetic, and that in consequence its
denial can never involve a logical contradiction. Existence can
never form part of the content of a conception, and therefore
must not be regarded as a possible predicate. What logically
corresponds to it in a judgment is a purely formal factor,
namely, the copula. The proposition, ‘God is omnipotent,’
contains two concepts, each of which has its object—God and
omnipotence. The word ‘is’ adds no new predicate, but only
serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject.
Similarly, when we take the subject together with all its
predicates (including that of omnipotence), and say, ‘God is’
or ‘there is a God,’ we attach no new predicate to the concept
of God, but only posit the subject in itself with all its
predicates as being an object that stands in relation to our
concept. In order that the proposition be true, the content of
the object and of the concept must be one and the same. If the
object contained more than the concept, the concept would not
express the object, and the proposition would assert a relation
that does not hold. Or to state the same point in another way,
the real must not contain more content than the possible.
Otherwise it would not be the possible, but something
different from the possible, which would then be taken as
existing. A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin
more than a hundred possible thalers. Though my financial
position is very differently affected by a hundred real thalers
than by the thought of them only, a conceived hundred thalers
are not in the least increased through acquiring existence
outside my concept.
Kant presents his argument in still another form. If we think
in a thing every kind of reality except one, the missing reality
is not supplied by my saying that this defective thing exists.
On the contrary, it exists with the same defect with which I
have thought it. When, therefore, I think a Being as the highest
reality, without any defect, the question still remains whether it
exists or not. For though, in my concept, nothing may be
lacking of the possible real content of a thing in general,
something is still lacking in its relation to my whole state of
thinking, namely, knowledge of its existence; and such
knowledge can never be obtained save in an a posteriori
manner. That is owing to the limitations imposed by the
conditions of our sense-experience. We never confound the
existence of a sensible object with its mere concept. The
concept represents something that may or may not exist: to
determine existence we must refer to actual experience. As
Kant has already stated, the actual is always for us the
accidental, and its assertion is therefore synthetic. A possible
idea and the idea of a possible thing are quite distinct.[1618] A
thing is known to be possible only when presented in some
concrete experience, or when, though not actually
experienced, it has been proved to be bound up, according to
empirical laws, with given perceptions. It is not, therefore,
surprising that if we try, as is done in the ontological
argument, to think existence through the pure category, we
cannot mention a single mark distinguishing it from a merely
logical possibility. The concept of a Supreme Being is, in
many respects, a valuable Idea, but just because it is an Idea of
pure Reason, i.e. a mere Idea, we can no more extend our
knowledge of real existence by means of it, than a merchant
can better his position by adding a few noughts to his cash
account.
There are many points of connection between this section
and the first edition Introduction; and in view of these points
of contact Adickes has suggested[1619] that the considerations
which arose in the examination of the ontological argument
may have been what brought Kant to realise that the various
problems of the Critique can all be traced to the central
problem of a priori synthesis.
SECTION V

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A COSMOLOGICAL PROOF OF THE

EXISTENCE OF GOD[1620]

Statement.—Kant, as already noted, views the ontological

proof as ‘a mere innovation of scholastic wisdom’ which
restates, in a quite unnatural form, a line of thought much
more adequately expressed in the cosmological proof. To
discover the natural dialectic of Reason we must therefore
look to this latter form of argument. It is composed of two
distinct stages. In the first stage it makes no use of specific
experience: if anything is given us as existing, e.g. the self,
there must exist an absolutely necessary Being as its cause.
Then, in the second stage, it is argued that as such a Being
must be altogether outside experience, Reason must leave
experience entirely aside, and discover from among pure
concepts what properties an absolutely necessary Being ought
to possess, i.e. which among all possible things contains in
itself the conditions of absolute necessity. The requisite
enlightenment is believed by Reason to be derivable only from
the concept of an Ens realissimum, and Reason therefore at
once concludes that this concept must represent the absolutely
necessary Being.
Now in that final conclusion the truth of the ontological
argument is assumed. If the concept of a Being of the highest
reality is so completely adequate to the concept of necessary
existence that they can be regarded as identical, the latter must
be capable of being derived from the former, and that is all
that is maintained in the ontological proof. To make this point
clearer, Kant states it in scholastic form. If the proposition be
true, that every absolutely necessary Being is at the same time
the most real Being (and this is the nervus probandi of the
cosmological proof in so far as it is also theological), it must,
like all affirmative propositions, be capable of conversion, at
least per accidens. This gives us the proposition that some
Entia realissima are at the same time absolutely necessary
Beings. One Ens realissimum, however, does not differ from
another, and what applies to one applies to all. In this case,
therefore, we must employ simple conversion, and say that
every Ens realissimum is a necessary Being. Thus the
cosmological proof is not only as illusory as the ontological,
but also less honest. While pretending to lead us by a new road
to a sound conclusion, it brings us back, after a short circuit,
into the old path. If the ontological argument is correct, the
cosmological is superfluous; and if the ontological is false, the
cosmological cannot possibly be true.
But the first stage of the cosmological argument, that by
which it is distinguished from the ontological, is itself
fallacious. A whole nest of dialectical assumptions lies hidden
in its apparently simple and legitimate inference from the
contingent to the necessary. To advance from the contingent to
the necessary, from the relative to the absolute, from the given
to the transcendent, is just as illegitimate as the opposite
process of passing from Idea to existence. The necessity of
thought, which is in both cases the sole ground of the
inference, is found on examination to be of merely subjective
character. No less than three false assumptions are involved in
this inference. In the first place, the principle that everything
must have a cause, which can be proved to be valid only
within the world of sense, is here applied to the sensible world
as a whole; and is therefore employed in the wider form which
coincides with the fundamental principle of the higher faculty
of Reason. We assume, that if the conditioned be given, the
totality of its conditions up to the unconditioned is given
likewise. No such principle can be granted. As it is synthetic,
it could be established only as a condition of the possibility of
experience. But no such proof is offered: the principle is based
upon a purely intellectual concept. Secondly, the inference to a
first cause rests on the kindred assumption that an infinite
series of empirical causes is impossible. That conclusion can
never be drawn, even within the realm of experience. How,
then, can we rely upon it in advancing beyond experience?
Certainly, no one can prove that the empirical series is infinite,
but just as little can we establish the opposite. In discussing
the third and fourth antinomies Kant has shown that the
existence of a first cause or of an absolutely necessary Being,
though possible (or rather, possibly possible), is never
demonstrable. Thirdly—as has been shown in A 592-3 = B
620-1—in inferring to an unconditioned cause, it is blindly
assumed that the removal of all conditions does not at the
same time remove the very concept of necessity. Our only
notion of necessity is derived from experience, and therefore
depends on those finite conditions which the argument would
deny to us. The concept of unconditioned necessity is entirely
null and void.
The fourth defect, which Kant enumerates, refers to the
second stage of the cosmological argument, and has already
been considered. He ought also to have mentioned a still
further assumption underlying its first stage, namely, that a
concept which represents a limited being, as, for instance, that
of matter, cannot represent necessary existence. This also is an
assumption which it cannot justify. This objection Kant has
himself stated in A 586 = B 614 and A 588 = B 616.[1621]
Comment.—We are apt to overlook the wider sweep which
Kant’s criticism takes in this section, owing to his omission to
notify the reader that he is here calling in question a principle
which he has hitherto been taking for granted, namely, the
principle in terms of which he has in the opening sections of
the Dialectic defined the faculty of Reason, that if the
conditioned be given the totality of conditions up to the
unconditioned is given likewise. The first step in his rejection
of this principle occurs as merely incidental to his criticism of
the ontological argument. It is there shown that the concept of
the unconditionally necessary is without meaning. Now, in this
present section, he calls in question the principle itself. It must
be rejected not only, as stated in the third of the above
objections, because the concept of the unconditioned, which
tacitly implies the factor of absolute necessity, is without real
significance, but also for two further reasons—those above
cited in the first and second objections. How very differently
the problems of the Dialectic appear, and how very differently
the Ideas of Reason have to be regarded, when this principle,
and also the concept of the unconditioned of which it is the
application, are thus called in question, will be shown in the
sequel.
DISCOVERY AND EXPLANATION OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL
ILLUSION IN ALL TRANSCENDENTAL PROOFS OF THE EXISTENCE
OF A NECESSARY BEING[1622]

Statement.—We do not properly fulfil the task prescribed

by Critical teaching in merely disproving the cosmological
argument. We must also explain its hold upon the mind. If it is,
as Kant insists, more natural to the mind than the ontological,
and yet, as we have just seen, is more fallacious; if it has not
been invented by philosophers, but is the instinctive reasoning
of the natural man, it must rest, like all dialectical illusion,
upon a misunderstanding of the legitimate demands of pure
Reason. Reason demands the unconditioned, and yet cannot
think it.
“Unconditioned necessity, which we so indispensably
require as the last bearer of all things, is for human Reason the
veritable abyss…. We can neither help thinking, nor can we
bear the thought, that a Being—even if it be the one which we
represent to ourselves as supreme amongst all Beings—
should, as it were, say to itself: ‘I am from eternity to eternity,
and outside me there is nothing save what is through my will;
but whence am I?’ All support here fails us; and supreme
perfection, no less than the least perfection, is unsubstantial
and baseless for the merely speculative Reason….”[1623]
We are obliged to think something as necessary for all
existence, and yet at the same time are unable to think
anything as in itself necessary—God as little as anything else.
The explanation[1624] of this strange fact must be that which
follows as a corollary from the limitation of our knowledge to
sense-experience, namely, that our concepts of necessity and
contingency do not concern things in themselves, and cannot
therefore be applied to them in accordance with either of the
two possible alternatives. Each alternative must express a
subjective principle of Reason; and the two together (that
something exists by necessity, and that everything is only
contingent) must form complementary rules for the guidance
of the understanding. These rules will then be purely heuristic
and regulative, relating only to the formal interests of Reason,
and may well stand side by side. For the one tells us that we
ought to philosophise as if there were a necessary first ground
for everything that exists, i.e. that we ought to be always
dissatisfied with relativity and contingency, and to seek always
for what is unconditionally necessary. The other warns us
against regarding any single determination in things (such, for
instance, as impenetrability or gravity) as absolutely necessary,
and so bids us keep the way always open for further
derivation. In other words, Reason guides the understanding
by a twofold command. The understanding must derive
phenomena and their existence from other phenomena, just as
if there were no necessary Being at all; while at the same time
it must always strive towards the completeness of that
derivation, just as if such a necessary Being were presupposed.
It is owing to a transcendental illusion or subreption that we
view the latter principle as constitutive, and so think its unity
as hypostatised in the form of an Ens realissimum. The falsity
of this substitution becomes evident as soon as we consider
that unconditioned necessity, as a thing in itself, cannot even
be conceived, and that the “Idea” of it cannot, therefore, be
ascribed to Reason save as a merely formal principle,
regulative of the understanding in its interpretation of given
experience.[1625]
Comment.—The reader may observe that, when Kant is
developing this sceptical view of the Ideal of Reason, the
explanation of dialectical illusion in terms of transcendental
idealism falls into the background. The illusion is no longer
traced to a confusion between appearances and things in
themselves, but to the false interpretation of regulative
principles as being constitutive. When it is the cosmological
problem with which we are dealing, the two illusions do,
indeed, coincide. If we view the objects of sense-experience as
things in themselves, we are bound to regard the Ideal
completion of the natural sciences as an adequate
representation of ultimate reality. But in Rational Theology,
which is professedly directed towards the definition of a Being
distinct from nature and conditioning all finite existence, it is
not failure to distinguish between appearance and things in
themselves, but the mistaking of a merely formal Ideal for a
representation of reality, that is alone responsible for the
conclusions drawn.
In A 617-18 = B 645-6 Kant makes statements which
conflict with the teaching of A 586 = B 614 and A 588 = B
616. In the latter passages he has argued that the concept of a
limited being may not without specific proof be taken as
contradictory of absolute necessity. He now categorically
declares that the philosophers of antiquity are in error in
regarding matter as primitive and necessary; and the reason
which he gives is that the regulative principle of Reason
forbids us to view extension and impenetrability, “which
together constitute the concept of matter,” as ultimate
principles of experience. But obviously Kant is here going
further than his regulative principle will justify. It demands
only that we should always look for still higher principles of
unity, and so keep open the way for possible further
derivation; it does not enable us to assert that such will
actually be found to exist. Notwithstanding the Ideal demands
of the regulative principle, matter may be primordial and
necessary, and its properties of extension and impenetrability
may not be derivable from anything more ultimate.
In this connection we may raise the more general question,
how far the Ideal demand for necessity and unity in knowledge
and existence can be concretely pictured. Kant gives a varying
answer. Sometimes—when he is emphasising the limitation of
our theoretical knowledge to sense-experience—he reduces
the speculative Idea of Divine Existence to a purely abstract
maxim for the regulation of natural science. When the Ideal
occupies the mind on its own account, and so attracts our
attention away from our sense-knowledge, it is an unreality,
and perverts the understanding; it yields genuine light and
leading only as a quite general maxim within the sphere of
natural science. From this point of view necessary Being, even
as an Ideal, can by no means be identified with a personal
God. It signifies only the highest possible system and unity of
the endlessly varied natural phenomena in space and time, and
can be approximately realised in the most various ways. Its
significance is entirely cosmological. It is an Ideal of positive
science, and signifies only systematic unity in the object
known. In being transformed from a scientific ideal into a
subject of theological enquiry, it has inevitably given rise to
dialectical illusion. At other times,—when he is concerned to
defend the concept of Divine Existence as at least possible,
and so to prepare the way for its postulation as implied in the
moral law, or when he is seeking, as in the Critique of
Judgment, to render comprehensible the complete adaptation
of phenomenal nature in its material aspect to the needs of our
understanding—Kant insists that we are ultimately compelled,
by the nature of our faculties, to conceive the Ideal of Reason
as a personal God, as an Intelligence working according to
purposes. Only by such a personal God, he maintains, can the
demands of Reason be genuinely satisfied.
 These two interpretations of the Ideal of Reason are in
conflict with one another; and so far as the Critique of Pure
Reason is concerned, a very insufficient attempt is made to
justify the frequent assertion that the Idea of God is the Ideal
of Reason, and not merely one possible, and highly
problematic, interpretation of it. If the Idea of God is a
necessary Idea, it cannot be adequately expressed through any
merely regulative maxim. It demands not only system in
knowledge but also perfection in the nature of the known. It is
not a merely logical Ideal such as might be satisfied by any
rational system, but an Ideal which concerns matter as well as
form, man as well as nature, our moral needs as well as our
intellectual demands. If Kant is to maintain that the only
genuine function of theoretical Reason is to guide the
understanding in its scientific application, he is debarred from
asserting that a concrete interpretation of its regulative
principles is unavoidable. And he is also precluded by his own
limitation of all knowledge to sense-experience from seeking
to define by any positive predicate the transcendent nature of
the thing in itself.
Such justification as Kant can offer in support of his
assertion that the Idea of God, of Intelligent Perfection, is an
indispensable Idea of human Reason, is chiefly based upon the
teleological aspect of nature which is dealt with in the
physico-theological proof. Mechanical science implies only
the cosmological Idea: teleological unity presupposes the
theological Ideal. Further enquiry, then, into the necessity of
the Idea of God as a regulative principle, and its dangers as a
source of dialectical illusion, we must defer until we have
examined the one remaining argument.[1626]
SECTION VI

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE PHYSICO-THEOLOGICAL PROOF[1627]

Statement.—The teleological proof starts from our definite

knowledge of the order and constitution of the sensible world.
The actual world presents such immeasurable order, variety,
fitness, and beauty, that we are led to believe that here at least
is sufficient proof of the existence of God. Kant’s attitude
towards this argument is at once extremely critical and
extremely sympathetic. Though he represents it as the oldest,
the clearest, and the most convincing, he is none the less
prepared to show that it contains every one of the fallacies
involved in the other two proofs, as well as some false
assumptions peculiar to itself. It possesses overpowering
persuasive force, not because of any inherent logical cogency,
but because it so successfully appeals to feeling as to silence
the intellect. It would, Kant declares, be not only comfortless,
but utterly vain to attempt to diminish its influence.
 ”[The mind is] aroused from the indecision of all
melancholy reflection, as from a dream, by one glance at the
wonders of nature and the majesty of the universe….”[1628]
Meantime, however, we are concerned with its merely
logical force. We have to decide whether, as theoretical proof,
it can claim assent on its own merits, requiring no favour, and
no help from any other quarter. On the basis of empirical facts
the argument makes the following assertions. (1) There are
everywhere in the world clear indications of adaptation to a
definite end. (2) As this adaptation cannot be due to the
working of blind, mechanical laws, and accordingly cannot be
explained as originating in things themselves, it must have
been imposed upon them from without; and there must
therefore exist, apart from the sensible world, an intelligent
Being who has arranged it according to ideas antecedently
formed. (3) As there is unity in the reciprocal relations of the
parts of the universe as portions of a single edifice, and as the
universe is infinite in extent and inexhaustible in variety, its
intelligent cause must be single, all-powerful, all-wise, i.e.
God.
Now, even granting for the sake of argument the
admissibility of these assertions, they enable us to infer only
an intelligent author of the purposive form of nature, not of its
matter, only an architect who is very much hampered by the
inadaptability of the material in which he has to work, not a
Creator to whose will everything is due. To prove the
contingency of matter itself, we should have to establish the
truth of the cosmological proof.
But the assumptions implied even in the demonstration that
God exists as a formative power, are by no means beyond
dispute. Why may not nature be regarded as giving form to
itself by its blindly working forces? Can it really be proved
that nature is a work of art that demands an artificer as
certainly as does a house, or a ship, or a clock? Kant’s
argument is at this point extremely brief, and I shall so far
digress from the statement of it, which he here gives, as to
supplement it from his other writings. Even so-called dead
matter is not merely inert. By its inherent powers of gravity
and chemical attraction it spontaneously gives rise to the most
wonderful forms. When Clarke and Voltaire, in their first
enthusiasm over Newton’s great discovery, asserted that the
planetary system must have been divinely created, each planet
being launched in the tangent of its orbit by the finger of God,
just as a wheel must be fixed into its place by the hand of the
mechanician, they under-estimated the organising power of
blind inanimate nature. As Kant argued in his early treatise,
[1629] the planetary system can quite well have arisen, and, as it
would seem, actually has come into existence, through the
action of blindly working laws. The mechanical principles
which account for its present maintenance will also account
for its origin and development. But it is when we turn to
animate nature, which is the chief source from which
arguments for design are derived, that the insufficiency of the
teleological argument becomes most manifest. As Kant points
out in the Critique of Judgment, the differentia distinguishing
the living from the lifeless, is not so much that it is organised
as that it is self-organising. When, therefore, we treat an
organism as an analogon of art we completely misrepresent its
essential nature.[1630] In regarding it as put together by an
external agent we are ignoring its internal self-developing
power. As Hume had previously maintained in his Dialogues
on Natural Religion,[1631] the facts of the organic world not
only agree with the facts of the inorganic world in not
supporting the argument of the teleological proof, but are in
direct conflict with it.
But to return to Kant’s immediate statement of the
argument. Setting the above objection aside, and granting for
the present that nature may be regarded as the outcome of an
external artificer, we can argue only to a cause adequate to its
production, i.e. to an extraordinarily wise and wonderfully
powerful Being. Even if we ignore the existence of evil and
defect in nature, the step from great power to omnipotence,
and from great wisdom to omniscience, is one that can never
be justified on empirical grounds.[1632] Since the Ideas of
Reason, and above all the completely determined, individual
Ideal of Reason, transcend experience, experience can never
justify us in inferring their reality. The teleological argument
can, indeed, only lead us to the point of admiring the
greatness, wisdom, and power of the author of the world. In
proceeding further it abandons experience altogether, and
reasons, not from particular kinds and excellencies of natural
design, but from the contingency of all such adaptation to the
existence of a necessary Being, exactly in the manner of the
cosmological argument. And it ends by assuming, in
agreement with the ontological proof, that the only possible
necessary Being is the Ideal of Reason. Thus after committing
a number of fallacies on its own account, the teleological
argument itself endorses all those that are involved in the more
a priori proofs. The teleological argument rests on the
cosmological, and the cosmological on the ontological, which
therefore would be the only proof possible, were the proof of a
completely transcendent proposition ever possible at all. The
strange fact that the convincing force of the arguments thus
varies inversely with their validity shows, Kant maintains, that
we are correct in concluding that they do not really depend
upon their logical cogency, and merely express, in abstract
terms, beliefs deep-rooted in the human spirit.
SECTION VII

CRITICISM OF ALL THEOLOGY BASED ON SPECULATIVE

PRINCIPLES OF REASON [1633]

A 631-3 = B 659-66.—On the distinction between “theist”

and “deist,” cf. Encyclopædia Britannica, vii. p. 934:
“The later distinction between ‘theist’ and ‘deist,’ which
stamped the latter word as excluding the belief in providence
or in the immanence of God, was apparently formulated in the
end of the eighteenth century by those rationalists who were
aggrieved at being identified with the naturalists.”
A 633-4 = B 661-2.—Kant here does no more than indicate
that by way of practical Reason it may be possible to
postulate, though not theoretically to comprehend, a Supreme
Being. On the distinction between postulates and hypotheses,
cf. A 769 ff. = B 797 ff., and below, p. 543 ff. Cf. also p. 571
ff.
A 634 = B 662.—On relative necessity, cf. below, pp. 555,
571 ff.
 A 635-9 = B 663-7 only summarises points already treated.
A 639-42 = B 667-70.—Kant concludes by declaring that
the Ideal, in addition to its regulative function, possesses two
further prerogatives. In the first place, it supplies a standard, in
the light of which any knowledge of Divine Existence,
acquired from other sources, can be purified and rendered
consistent with itself. For it is “an Ideal without a flaw,” the
true crown and culmination of the whole of human knowledge.
“If there should be a moral theology … transcendental
theology … will then prove itself indispensable in determining
its concept and in constantly testing Reason which is so often
deceived by sensibility, and which is frequently out of
harmony with its own Ideas.”[1634]
And secondly, though the Ideal fails to establish itself
theoretically, the arguments given in its support suffice to
show the quite insufficient foundations upon which all
atheistic, deistic, and anthropomorphic philosophies rest.
Comment.—These concluding remarks cannot be accepted
as representing Kant’s true teaching. The Ideal, by his own
showing, is by no means without a flaw. In so far as it involves
the concept of unconditioned necessity, it is meaningless; it is
purely logical, and therefore contains no indication of real
content; it embodies a false view of the nature of negation, and
therefore of the relation of realities to one another. In short, it
is constituted in accordance with the false, un-Critical
principles of Leibnizian metaphysics, and is found on
examination to be non-existent even as a purely mental entity.
Reduced to its proper terms, it becomes a mere schema
regulative of the understanding in the extension of experience,
and does not yield even a negative criterion for the testing of
our ideals of Divine Existence. The criterion, which Kant
really so employs, is not that of an Ens realissimum, but the
concept of an Intuitive Understanding, which, as he has
indicated in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena,[1635] is
our most adequate Ideal of completed Perfection. This latter is
not itself, however, a spontaneously formed concept of natural
Reason, and does not justify the assertion that the Idea of God
is a necessary Idea of the human mind. In attempting to defend
such a thesis, Kant is unduly influenced by the almost
universal acceptance of deistic beliefs in the Europe of his
time.[1636] His criticism of the Ideal of Reason and of rational
theology is much more destructive, and really allows that
theology much less value, even as natural dialectic, than he is
willing to admit.[1637] Architectonic forbids that the extreme
radical consequences of the teaching of the Analytic should be
allowed to show in their full force. These shortcomings are,
however, in great part remedied in the elaborate Appendix
which Kant has attached to the Dialectic.
 APPENDIX TO THE TRANSCENDENTAL
DIALECTIC
THE REGULATIVE EMPLOYMENT OF THE IDEAS OF PURE
REASON[1638]

Before we proceed to deal with this Appendix it will be of

advantage to consider the section in the Methodology on the
Discipline of Pure Reason in regard to Hypotheses.[1639] That
section affords a very illuminating introduction to the
problems here discussed, and is extremely important for
understanding Kant’s view of metaphysical science as yielding
either complete certainty or else nothing at all. This is a
doctrine which he from time to time suggests, to the
considerable bewilderment of the modern reader.[1640] In
discussing it he starts from the obvious objection, that though
nothing can be known through Reason in its pure a priori
employment, metaphysics may yet be possible in an empirical
form, as consisting of hypotheses, constructed in conjectural
explanation of the facts of experience. Kant replies by defining
the conditions under which alone hypotheses can be
entertained as such. There must always be something
completely certain, and not only invented or merely “opined,”
namely, the possibility of the object to which the hypothesis
appeals. Once that is proved, it is allowable, on the basis of
experience, to form opinions regarding its reality. Then, and
only then, can such opinions be entitled hypotheses. Otherwise
we are not employing the understanding to explain; we are
simply indulging the imagination in its tendency to dream.
Now since the categories of the pure understanding do not
enable us to invent a priori the concept of a dynamical
connection, but only to apprehend it when presented in
experience, we cannot by means of these categories invent a
single object endowed with a new quality not empirically
given; and cannot, therefore, base an hypothesis upon any such
conception.
“Thus it is not permissible to invent any new original
powers, as, for instance, an understanding capable of intuiting
its objects without the aid of senses; or a force of attraction
without any contact; or a new kind of substance existing in
space and yet not impenetrable. Nor is it legitimate to
postulate any other form of communion of substances than that
revealed in experience, any presence that is not spatial, any
duration that is not temporal. In a word our Reason can
employ as conditions of the possibility of things only the
conditions of possible experience; it can never, as it were,
create concepts of things, independently of those conditions.
Such concepts, though not self-contradictory, would be
without an object.”[1641]
This does not, however, mean that the concepts of pure
Reason can have no valid employment. They are, it is true,
Ideas merely, with no object corresponding to them in any
experience; but then it is also true that they are not hypotheses,
referring to imagined objects, supposed to be possibly real.
They are purely problematic. They are heuristic fictions
(heuristische Fiktionen), the sole function of which is to serve
as principles regulative of the understanding in its systematic
employment. Used in any other manner they reduce to the
level of merely mental entities (Gedankendinge) whose very
possibility is indemonstrable, and which cannot therefore be
employed as hypotheses for the explanation of appearances.
Given appearances can be accounted for only in terms of laws
known to hold among appearances. To explain natural
phenomena by a transcendental hypothesis—mental processes
by the assumption of the soul as a substantial, simple, spiritual
being, or order and design in nature by the assumption of a
Divine Author—is never admissible.
“…that would be to explain something, which in terms of
known empirical principles we do not understand sufficiently,
by something which we do not understand at all.”[1642]
And Kant adds that the wildest hypotheses, if only they are
physical, are more tolerable than a hyperphysical one. They at
least conform to the conditions under which alone hypothetical
explanation as such is allowable. “Outside this field, to form
opinions, is merely to play with thoughts….”[1643]
A further condition, required to render an hypothesis
acceptable, is its adequacy for determining a priori all the
consequences which are actually given. If for that purpose
supplementary hypotheses have to be called in, the force of the
main assumption is proportionately weakened. Thus we can
easily explain natural order and design, if we are allowed to
postulate a Divine Author who is absolutely perfect and all-
powerful. But that hypothesis lies open to all the objections
suggested by defects and evils in nature, and can only be
preserved through new hypotheses which modify the main
assumption. Similarly the hypothesis of the human soul as an
abiding and purely spiritual being, existing in independence of
the body, has to be modified to meet the difficulties which
arise from the phenomena of growth and decay. But the new
hypotheses, then constructed, derive their whole authority
from the main hypothesis which they are themselves
defending.
Such is Kant’s criticism of metaphysics when its teaching is
based on the facts of experience hypothetically interpreted. In
regard to transcendent metaphysics, there are, in Kant’s view,
only two alternatives.[1644] Either its propositions must be
established independently of all experience in purely a priori
fashion, and therefore as absolutely certain; or they must
consist in hypotheses empirically grounded. The first
alternative has in the Analytic and Dialectic been shown to be
impossible; the second alternative he rejects for the above
reasons.
But this does not close Kant’s treatment of metaphysical
hypotheses. He proceeds to develop a doctrine which, in its
fearless confidence in the truth of Critical teaching, is the
worthy outcome of his abiding belief in the value of a
“sceptical method.”[1645] As Reason is by its very nature
dialectical, outside opponents are not those from whom we
have most to fear. Their objections are really derived from a
source which lies in ourselves, and until these have been
traced to their origin, and destroyed from the root upwards, we
can expect no lasting peace. Our duty, therefore, is to
encourage our doubts, until by the very luxuriance of their
growth they enable us to discover the hidden roots from which
they derive their perennial vitality.
 “External tranquillity is a mere illusion. The germ of these
objections, which lies in the nature of human Reason, must be
rooted out. But how can we uproot it, unless we give it
freedom, nay, nourishment, to send out shoots so that it may
discover itself to our eyes, and that we may then destroy it
together with its root? Therefore think out objections which
have never yet occurred to any opponent; lend him, indeed,
your weapons, or grant him the most favourable position
which he could possibly desire. You have nothing to fear in all
this, but much to hope for; you may gain for yourselves a
possession which can never again be contested.”[1646]
In this campaign to eradicate doubt by following it out to its
furthermost limits, the hypotheses of pure Reason, “leaden
weapons though they be, since they are not steeled by any law
of experience,” are an indispensable part of our equipment.
For though hypotheses are useless for the establishment of
metaphysical propositions, they are, Kant teaches, both
admirable and valuable for their defence. That is to say, their
true metaphysical function is not dogmatic, but polemical.
They are weapons of war to which we may legitimately resort
for the maintenance of beliefs otherwise established. If, for
instance, we have been led to postulate the immaterial, self-
subsistent nature of the soul, and are met by the difficulty that
experience would seem to prove that both the growth and the
decay of our mental powers are due to the body, we can
weaken this objection by formulating the hypothesis that the
body is not the cause of our thinking, but only a restrictive
condition of it, peculiar to our present state, and that, though it
furthers our sensuous and animal faculties, it acts as an
impediment to our spiritual life. Similarly, to meet the many
objections against belief in the eternal existence of a finite
being whose birth depends upon contingencies of all kinds,
such as the food supply, the whims of government, or even
vice, we can adduce the transcendental hypothesis that life has
neither beginning in birth nor ending in death, the entire world
of sense being but an image due to our present mode of
knowledge, an image which like a dream has in itself no
objective reality. Such hypotheses are not, indeed, even Ideas
of Reason, but simply concepts invented to show that the
objections which are raised depend upon the false assumption
that the possibilities have been exhausted, and that the mere
laws of nature comprehend the whole field of possible
existences. These hypotheses at least suffice to reveal the
uncertain character of the doubts which assail us in our
practical beliefs.
”[Transcendental hypotheses] are nothing but private
opinions. Nevertheless, we cannot properly dispense with
them as weapons against the misgivings which are apt to
occur; they are necessary even to secure our inner tranquillity.
We must preserve to them this character, carefully guarding
against the assumption of their independent authority or
absolute validity, since otherwise they would drown Reason in
fictions and delusions.”[1647]
We may now return to A 642-68 = B 670-96. The teaching
of this section is extremely self-contradictory, wavering
between a subjective and an objective interpretation of the
Ideas of Reason. The probable explanation is that Kant is here
recasting older material, and leaves standing more of his
earlier solutions than is consistent with his final conclusions.
We can best approach the discussion by considering Kant’s
statements in A 645 = B 673 and in A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. They
expound, though unfortunately in the briefest terms, a point of
view which Idealism has since adopted as fundamental. Kant
himself, very strangely, never develops its consequences at
any great length.[1648] The Idea, which Reason follows in the
exercise of its sole true function, the systematising of the
knowledge supplied by the understanding, is that of a unity in
which the thought of the whole precedes the knowledge of its
parts, and contains the conditions according to which the place
of every part and its relation to the other parts are determined
a priori. This Idea specialises itself in various forms, and in all
of them directs the understanding to a knowledge that will be
that of no mere aggregate but of a genuine system. Such
concepts are not derived from nature; we interrogate nature
according to them, and consider our knowledge defective so
long as it fails to embody them. In A 650 = B 678 Kant further
points out that this Idea of Reason does not merely direct the
understanding to search for such unity, but also claims for
itself objective reality. And he adds,
“…it is difficult to understand how there can be a logical
principle by which Reason prescribes the unity of rules, unless
we also presuppose a transcendental principle whereby such
systematic unity is a priori assumed to be necessarily inherent
in the objects.”
For how could we treat diversity in nature as only disguised
unity, if we were also free to regard that unity as contrary to
the actual nature of the real?
“Reason would then run counter to its own vocation,
proposing as its aim an Idea quite inconsistent with the
constitution of nature.”[1649]
Nor is our knowledge of the principle merely empirical,
deduced from the unity which we find in contingent
experience. On the contrary, there is an inherent and necessary
law of Reason compelling us, antecedently to all specific
experience, to look for such unity.
“…without it we should have no Reason at all, and without
Reason no coherent employment of the understanding, and in
the absence of this no sufficient criterion of empirical truth. In
order, therefore, to secure an empirical criterion we are
absolutely compelled to presuppose the systematic unity of
nature as objectively valid and necessary.”[1650] “It might be
supposed that this is merely an economical contrivance of
Reason, seeking to save itself all possible trouble, a
hypothetical attempt, which, if it succeeds, will, through the
unity thus attained, impart probability to the presumed
principle of explanation. But such a selfish purpose can very
easily be distinguished from the Idea. For in the latter we
presuppose that this unity of Reason is in conformity with
nature itself; and that, although we are indeed unable to
determine the limits of this unity, Reason does not here beg
but command.”[1651]
This last alternative, that Reason is here propounding a
tentative hypothesis, in order by trial to discover how far it can
be empirically verified—an alternative which Kant in the
above passage rejects as unduly subjective, and as
consequently failing to recognise the objective claims and a
priori authority of the Ideas of Reason,—is yet a view which
he himself adopts and indeed develops at considerable length
in this same section. This, as already stated, affords evidence
of the composite character and varying origins of the material
here presented.
The Dissertation of 1770 gives a purely subjectivist
interpretation of the regulative principles, among which, from
its pre-Critical standpoint, it classes the principle of causality
and the principle of the conservation of matter.
”[We adopt principles] which delude the intellect into
mistaking them for arguments derived from the object,
whereas they are commended to us only by the peculiar nature
of the intellect, owing to their convenience for its free and
ample employment. They therefore … rest on subjective
grounds … namely, on the conditions under which it seems
easy and expeditious for the intellect to make use of its
insight…. These rules of judging, to which we freely submit
and to which we adhere as if they were axioms, solely for the
reason that were we to depart from them almost no judgment
regarding a given object would be permissible to our intellect,
I entitle principles of convenience…. [One of these is] the
popularly received canon, principia non esse multiplicanda
praeter summam necessitatem, to which we yield our
adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the
world either by reason or by experience, but because we seek
it by an impulse of the intellect, which seems to itself to have
advanced in the explanation of phenomena only in the degree
in which it is granted to it to descend from a single principle to
the greatest number of consequences.”[1652]
This, in essentials, is the view which we find developed in
A 646-9 = B 674-8. Reason is the faculty of deducing the
particular from the general. When the general is admitted only
as problematical, as a mere idea, while the particular is
certain, we determine the universality of the rule by applying it
to the particulars, and then upon confirmation of its validity
proceed to draw conclusions regarding cases not actually
given. This Kant entitles the hypothetical use of Reason.
Reason must never be employed constitutively. It serves only
for the introduction, as far as may be found possible, of unity
into the particulars of knowledge. It seeks to make the rule
approximate to universality.[1653] The unity which it demands
“…is a projected unity, to be regarded not as given in itself,
but as a problem only. This unity aids us in discovering a
principle for the manifold and special employment of the
understanding, drawing its attention to cases which are not
given, and thus rendering it more coherent.”[1654]
The unity is merely logical, or rather methodological.[1655]
To postulate, in consequence of its serviceableness, real unity
in the objects themselves would be to transform it into a
transcendental principle of Reason, and to render
“…the systematic unity necessary, not only subjectively and
logically, as method, but objectively also.”[1656]
The above paragraphs are intercalated between A 645 = B
673 and A 650-63 = B 678-91, in which, as we have already
seen, the directly opposite view is propounded, namely, that
such principles are not merely hypothetical, nor merely
logical. In all cases they claim reality, and rest upon
transcendental principles; they condition the very possibility of
experience; and may therefore be asserted to be a priori
necessary and to be objectively valid. To quote two additional
passages:
“…we can conclude from the universal to the particular,
only if universal qualities are ascribed to things as the
foundation upon which the particular qualities rest.”[1657] “The
foundation of these laws [cf. below, pp. 550-1] is not due to
any secret design of making an experiment by putting them
forward as merely tentative suggestions…. It is easily seen
that they contemplate the parsimony of fundamental causes,
the manifoldness of effects, and the consequent affinity of the
parts of nature, as being in themselves both rational and
natural. Hence these principles carry their recommendation
directly in themselves, and not merely as methodological
devices.”[1658]
 Thus, in direct opposition to the preceding view of Reason’s
function as hypothetical, Kant is now prepared to maintain that
the maxims of Reason are without meaning and without
application save in so far as they can be grounded in a
transcendental principle.[1659]
Let us follow Kant’s detailed exposition of this last thesis.
The logical maxim, to seek for systematic unity, rests upon the
transcendental principle that the apparently infinite variety of
nature does not exclude identity of species, that the various
species are varieties of a few genera, and these again of still
higher genera. This is the scholastic maxim: entia praeter
necessitatem non esse multiplicanda. Upon this principle rests
the possibility of concepts, and therefore of the understanding
itself. It is balanced, however, by a second principle, no less
necessary, the transcendental law of specification, namely, that
there must be manifoldness and diversity in things, that every
genus must specify itself in divergent species, and these again
in sub-species. Or as it is expressed in its scholastic form:
entium varietates non temere esse minuendas. This principle is
equally transcendental. It expresses a condition no less
necessary for the possibility of the understanding, and
therefore of experience. As the understanding knows all that it
knows by concepts only, however far it may carry the division
of genera, it can never know by means of pure intuition, but
always again by lower concepts. If, therefore, there were no
lower concepts, there could be no higher concepts;[1660] the
gap existing between individuals and genera could never be
bridged; or rather, since neither individuals nor universals
could then be apprehended, neither would exist for the mind.
As the higher concepts acquire all their content from the
lower, they presuppose them for their own existence.
“Every concept may be regarded as a point which, in so far
as it represents the standpoint of a spectator, has its own
horizon…. This horizon must be capable of containing an
infinite number of points, each of which again has its own
narrower horizon; that is, every species contains sub-species,
according to the principle of specification, and the logical
horizon consists exclusively of smaller horizons (sub-species),
never of points which possess no extent (individuals).”[1661]
 Combining these two principles, that of homogeneity and
that of specification, we obtain a third, that of continuity. The
logical law of the continuum formarum logicarum presupposes
the transcendental law, lex continui in natura. It provides that
homogeneity be combined with the greatest possible diversity
by prescribing a continuous transition from every species to
every other, or in other words by requiring that between any
two species or sub-species, however closely related,
intermediate species be always regarded as possible. (The
paragraph at the end of A 661 = B 689, with its proviso that
we cannot make any definite empirical use of this law, is
probably of later origin; it connects with the concluding parts
of the section.) That this third law is also a priori and
transcendental, is shown by the fact that it is not derived from
the prior discovery of system in nature, but has itself given rise
to the systematised character of our knowledge.[1662]
The psychological, chemical, and astronomical examples
which Kant employs to illustrate these laws call for no special
comment. They were taken from contemporary science, and in
the advance of our knowledge have become more confusing
than helpful. The citation in A 646 = B 674 of the concepts of
“pure earth, pure water, pure air” as being “concepts of
Reason” is especially bewildering. They are, even in the use
which Kant himself ascribes to them, simply empirical
hypotheses, formulated for the purposes of purely physical
explanation; they are in no genuine sense universal, regulative
principles.
In passing to A 663-8 = B 691-6 we find still another
variation in the substance of Kant’s teaching. He returns,
though with a greater maturity of statement, and with a very
different and much more satisfactory terminology, to the more
sceptical view of A 646-9 = B 674-7.[1663] The interest of the
above principles, Kant continues to maintain, lies in their
transcendentality. Despite the fact that they are mere Ideas for
the guidance of understanding, and can only be approached
asymptotically, they are synthetic a priori judgments, and
would seem to have an objective, though indeterminate,
validity. So far his statements are in line with the preceding
paragraphs. But he proceeds to add that this objective validity
consists exclusively in their heuristic function. They differ
fundamentally from the dynamical, no less than from the
mathematical, principles of understanding, in that no schema
of sensibility can be assigned to them. In other words, their
object can never be exhibited in concreto; it transcends all
possible experience. For this reason they are incapable of a
transcendental deduction.[1664] They are among the conditions
indispensably necessary to the possibility, not of each and
every experience, but only of experience as systematised in the
interest of Reason. In place of a schema they can possess only
what may be called the analogon of a schema, that is, they
represent the Idea of a maximum, which the understanding in
the subjective interest of Reason—or, otherwise expressed,
[1665] in the interest of a certain possible perfection of our
knowledge of objects—is called upon to realise as much as
possible. Thus they are at once subjective in the source from
which they arise, and also indeterminate as to the conditions
under which, and the extent to which, they can obtain
empirical embodiment. The fact that in this capacity they
represent a maximum, does not justify any assertion either as
to the degree of unity which experience on detailed
investigation will ultimately be found to verify, or as to the
noumenal reality by which experience is conditioned.
In A 644-5 = B 672-3 Kant employs certain optical
analogies to illustrate the illusion which the Ideas, in the
absence of Critical teaching, inevitably generate. When the
understanding is regulated by the Idea of a maximum, and
seeks to view all the lines of experience as converging upon
and pointing to it, it necessarily regards it, focus imaginarius
though it be, as actually existing. The illusion, by which
objects are seen behind the surface of a mirror, is
indispensably necessary if we are to be able to see what lies
behind our backs. The transcendental illusion, which confers
reality upon the Ideas of Reason, is similarly incidental to the
attempt to view experience in its greatest possible extension.
ON THE FINAL PURPOSE OF THE NATURAL DIALECTIC OF HUMAN
REASON[1666]

This section is thoroughly unified and consistent in its

teaching. Its repetitious character is doubtless due to Kant’s
personal difficulty either in definitively accepting or in
altogether rejecting the constructive, Idealist interpretation of
the function of Reason. He at least succeeds in formulating a
view which, while not asserting anything more than is required
in the scientific extension of experience, indicates the many
possibilities which such experience fails to exclude. As the
Ideas of Reason are not merely empty thought-entities (entia
rationis ratiocinantis[1667]), but have a certain kind of
objective validity (i.e. are entia rationis ratiocinatae[1668]),
they demand a transcendental deduction.[1669] What this
deduction is, and how it differs from that of the categories, we
must now determine. Its discovery will, Kant claims, crown
and complete our Critical labours.
Kant begins by drawing a distinction between representing
an object absolutely, and representing an object in the Idea.
“In the former case our concepts are employed to determine
the object, in the latter case there is in truth only a schema for
which no object, not even a hypothetical one, is directly given,
and which only enables us to represent to ourselves indirectly
other objects in their systematic unity, by means of their
relation to this Idea.”[1670]
An Idea is only a schema (Kant in terms of A 655 = B 693
ought rather to have said analogon of a schema) whereby we
represent to ourselves, as for instance in the concept of a
Highest Intelligence, not an objective reality but only such
perfection of Reason as will tend to the greatest possible unity
in the empirical employment of understanding.
With this introduction, Kant ushers in his famous “als ob”
doctrine. We must view the things of the world as if they
derived their existence from a Highest Intelligence. That Idea
is heuristic only, not expository. Its purpose is not to enable us
to comprehend such a Being, or even to think its existence, but
only to show us how we should seek to determine the
constitution and connection of the objects of experience. The
three transcendental Ideas do not determine an object
corresponding to them, but, under the presupposition of such
an object in the Idea, lead us to systematic unity of empirical
knowledge. When they are thus strictly interpreted as merely
regulative of empirical enquiry, they will always endorse
experience and never run counter to it. Reason, which seeks
completeness of explanation, must therefore always act in
accordance with them. Only thereby can experience acquire its
fullest possible extension. This is the transcendental deduction
of which we are in search. It establishes the indispensableness
of the Ideas of Reason for the completion of experience, and
their legitimacy as regulative principles.
We may here interrupt Kant’s exposition so far as to point
out that this argument does not do justice to the full force of
his position. The true Critical contention—and only if we
interpret the passage in the light of this contention can the
proof be regarded as transcendental in the strict sense—is that
the Ideas are necessary to the possibility of each and every
experience, involved together with the categories as conditions
of the very existence of consciousness. They are not merely
regulative, but are regulative of an experience which they also
help to make possible.[1671] They express the standards in
whose light we condemn all knowledge which does not fulfil
them; and we have consequently no option save to endeavour
to conform to their demands. In other words, they are not
derivative concepts obtained by merely omitting the
restrictions essential to our empirical consciousness, but
represent a presupposition necessarily involved in all
consciousness. Some such restatement of the argument is
demanded by the position which Kant has himself outlined in
A 645 = B 673 and in A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. Unfortunately he
does not return to it. The more sceptical view which he has
meantime been developing remains dominant. The deduction
is left in this semi-Critical form.
A 672-6 = B 700-4 give a fuller statement of the “als ob”
doctrine. In psychology we must proceed as if the mind were a
simple substance endowed with personal identity[1672] (in this
life at least), not in order to derive explanation of its changing
states from the soul so conceived, but to derive them from
each other in accordance with the Idea. In cosmology and
theology (we may observe the straits to which Kant is reduced
in his attempt to distinguish them) we ought to consider all
phenomena both in their series and in their totality as if they
were due to a highest and all-sufficient unitary ground. In so
doing we shall not derive the order and system in the world
from the object of the Idea, but only extract from the Idea the
rule whereby the understanding attains the greatest possible
satisfaction in the connecting of natural causes and effects.
In A 676-7 = B 704-5 Kant resorts to still another
distinction—between suppositio relativa and suppositio
absoluta. This distinction is suggested by the semi-objectivity
of principles that are merely regulative. Though we have to
recognise them as necessary, such necessity does not justify
the assertion of their independent validity. When we admit a
supreme ground as the source of the order and system which
the principles demand, we do so only in order to think the
universality of the principles with greater definiteness. Such
supposition is relative to the needs of Reason in its empirical
employment: not absolute, as pointing to the existence of such
a being in itself.
“This explains why, in relation to what is given to the senses
as existing, we require the Idea of a primordial Being
necessary in itself, and yet can never form the slightest
concept of it or of its absolute necessity.”[1673]
This last statement leads to the further problem to which
Kant here gives his final solution, how if, as has been shown
in the Dialectic, the concepts of absolute necessity and of
unconditionedness are without meaning, the Ideas of Reason
can be entertained at all, even mentally. What is their actual
content and how is it possible to conceive them? Kant’s reply
is developed in terms of the semi-Critical subjectivist point of
view which dominates this section. The Ideas are mere Ideas.
They yield not the slightest concept either of the internal
possibility or of the necessity of any object corresponding to
them. They only seem to do so, owing to a transcendental
illusion. On examination we find that the concepts which we
employ in thinking them as independently real, are one and all
derived from experience. That is to say, we judge of them after
the analogy of reality, substance, causality, and necessity in the
sensible world.[1674]
 ”[They are consequently] analoga only of real things, not
real things in themselves. We remove from the object of the
Idea the conditions which limit the concept of the
understanding, but which at the same time alone make it
possible for us to have a determinate concept of anything.
What we then think is, therefore, a something of which, as it is
in itself, we have no concept whatsoever, but which we none
the less represent to ourselves as standing in a relation to the
sum-total of appearances analogous to that in which
appearances stand to one another.”[1675]
They do not carry our knowledge beyond the objects of
possible experience, but only extend the empirical unity of
experience. They are the schemata of regulative principles. In
them Reason is concerned with nothing but its own inherent
demands; and as their unity is the unity of a system which is to
be sought only in experience,[1676] qualities derived from the
sensible world can quite legitimately be employed in their
specific determination. They are not inherently dialectical;
their demands have the rationality which we have a right to
expect in the Ideals of Reason. When Critically examined,
they propound no problem which Reason is not in itself
entirely competent to solve.[1677] It is to their misemployment
that transcendental illusion is due. In the form in which they
arise from the natural disposition of our Reason they are good
and serviceable.[1678]
To the question what is the most adequate form in which the
regulative schema can be represented,[1679] Kant gives an
answer which shows how very far he is from regarding the
Leibnizian Ens realissimum as the true expression of the Ideal
of Reason. It is through the employment of teleological
concepts that we can best attain the highest possible form of
systematic unity.
“The highest formal unity … is the purposive unity of
things. The speculative [i.e. theoretical] interest of Reason
makes it necessary to regard all order in the world as if it had
originated in the purpose of a Supreme Reason. Such a
principle opens out to our Reason, as applied in the field of
experience, altogether new views as to how the things of the
world may be connected according to teleological laws, and so
enables it to arrive at their greatest systematic unity. The
assumption of a Supreme Intelligence, as the one and only
cause of the universe, though in the Idea alone, can therefore
always benefit Reason and can never injure it.”[1680]
For so long as this assumption is employed only as a
regulative principle, even error cannot be really harmful. The
worst that can happen is that where we expected a teleological
connection, a merely mechanical or physical one is met with.
If, on the other hand, we leave the solid ground of experience,
and use the assumption to explain what we are unable to
account for in empirical terms, we sacrifice all real insight,
and confound Reason by transforming a concept, which is
anthropomorphically determined for the purposes of empirical
orientation, into a means of explaining order as non-natural
and as imposed from without on the material basis of things.
This is a point of sufficient importance to call for more
detailed statement. Hume in his Dialogues points out that the
main defect in the teleological proof of God’s existence is its
assumption that order and design are foreign to the inherent
constitution of things, and must be of non-natural origin. The
argument is therefore weakened by every advance in the
natural sciences. It also runs directly counter to the very
phenomena, those of animal life, upon which it is chiefly
based, since the main characteristic of the organic in its
distinction from the inorganic is its inner wealth of productive
and reproductive powers. With these criticisms Kant is in
entire agreement. From them, in the passage before us, he
derives an argument in support of a strictly regulative
interpretation of his “als ob” doctrine. The avowed intention
of the teleological argument is to prove from nature the
existence of an intelligent supreme cause. If therefore its
standpoint be held to with more consistency than its own
defenders have hitherto shown, it will be found to rest upon
the regulative principle, that we must study nature as if an
inherent order were native to it, and so seek to approach by
degrees, in proportion as such natural unity is empirically
discovered, the absolute perfection which inspires our
researches. But if we transform our Ideal into an instrument of
explanation, beginning with what ought properly to be only
our goal, we delude ourselves with the belief that what can
only be acquired through the slow and tentative labours of
empirical enquiry is already in our possession.
“If I begin with a supreme purposive Being as the ground of
all things, the unity of nature is really surrendered, as being
quite foreign and accidental to the nature of things, and as not
to be known from its own general laws. There thus arises a
vicious circle: we are assuming just that very point which is
mainly in dispute.”[1681]
Such a method of argument is self-destructive, since if we
do not find order and perfection in the nature of things, and
therefore in their general and necessary laws, we are not in a
position to infer such a Being as the source of all causality.
To the question whether we may not interpret natural order,
once it has been discovered by empirical investigation, as due
to the divine will, Kant replies that such procedure is
allowable only on the condition that it is the same to us
whether we say that God has wisely willed it or that nature has
wisely arranged it. We may admit the Idea of a Supreme Being
only in so far as it is required by Reason as the regulative
principle of all investigation of nature;
“…and we cannot, therefore, without contradicting
ourselves, ignore the general laws of nature in view of which
the Idea was adopted, and look upon the purposiveness of
nature as contingent and hyper-physical in its origin. For we
were not justified in assuming above nature a Being of those
qualities, but only in adopting the Idea of it in order to be able
to view the appearances, according to the analogy of a causal
determination, as systematically connected with one
another.”[1682] “Thus pure Reason, which at first seemed to
promise nothing less than the extension of knowledge beyond
all limits of experience, contains, if properly understood,
nothing but regulative principles….”[1683]
CONCLUDING COMMENT ON THE DIALECTIC

I may now summarise Kant’s answer to the three main

questions of the Dialectic: (1) Whether, or in what degree, the
so-called Ideas of Reason are concepts due to a faculty
altogether distinct from the understanding, and how far, as
thus originating in pure Reason, they allow of definition; (2)
how far they are capable of a transcendental deduction; (3)
what kind of objective validity this deduction proves them to
possess.
These questions are closely interconnected; the solution of
any one determines the kind of solution to be given to all
three. Kant, as we have found, develops his final position
through a series of very subtle distinctions by which he
contrives to justify and retain, though in a highly modified
form, the more crudely stated divisions between Ideas and
categories, between Reason and understanding, upon which
the initial argument of the Dialectic is based.
The answer amounts in essentials to the conclusion that
understanding, in directing itself by means of Ideals, exercises
a function so distinct from that whereby it conditions concrete
and specific experience, that it may well receive a separate
title; that the Ideas in terms of which it constructs these Ideals,
though schematic (i.e. sensuous and empirical in content), are
not themselves empirical, and so far from being merely
extended concepts of understanding, express transcendental
conditions upon which all use of the understanding rests.
Now if this position is to be justified, Kant ought to show
that the fundamental Idea of Reason, that of the unconditioned,
is altogether distinct from any concept of the understanding,
and in particular that it must not be identified with the
category of totality, nor be viewed as being merely the concept
of conditioned existence with its various empirical limitations
thought away. Needless to say, Kant does not fulfil these
requirements in any consistent manner. The Critique contains
the material for a variety of different solutions; it does not
definitively commit itself to any one of them.
If the argument of A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. were developed we
should be in possession of what may be called the Idealist
solution. It would proceed somewhat as follows.
Consciousness as such is always the awareness of a whole
which precedes and conditions its parts. Such consciousness
cannot be accounted for on the assumption that we are first
conscious of the conditioned, and then proceed to remove
limitations and to form for ourselves, by means of the more
positive factors involved in this antecedent consciousness, an
Idea of the totality within which the given falls. The Idea of
the unconditioned, distinct from all concepts of understanding,
is one of the a priori conditions of possible experience, and is
capable of a transcendental deduction of equal validity with,
and of the same general nature as, that of the categories. It is
presupposed in the possibility of our contingently given
experience.
As this Idea conditions all subordinate concepts, it cannot
be defined in terms of them. That does not, however, deprive it
of all meaning; its significance is of a unique kind; it finds
expression in those Ideals which, while guiding the mind in
the construction of experience, also serve as the criteria
through which experience is condemned as only phenomenal.
But this, as we have found, is not a line of argument which
Kant has developed in any detail. The passages which point to
it occur chiefly in the introductory portions of the Dialectic; in
its later sections they are both brief and scanty. When he sets
himself, as in the chapter on the Ideal of Pure Reason and in
the subsequent Appendix, to define his conclusions, it is a
much more empirical, and indeed sceptical, line that he almost
invariably follows. There are, he then declares, strictly no
pure, a priori Ideas. The supposed Ideas of unconditionedness
and of absolute necessity are discovered on examination to be
without the least significance for the mind. The Ideas, properly
defined, are merely schemata of regulative principles, and
their whole content reduces without remainder to such
categories as totality, substance, causality, necessity,
transcendently applied. As Ideas, they are then without real
meaning; but they can be employed by analogy to define an
Ideal which serves an indispensable function in the extension
of experience. From this point of view, the transcendental
deduction of the Ideas is radically distinct from that of the
categories. The proof is not that they are necessary for the
possibility of experience, but only that they are required for its
perfect, or at least more complete, development. And as Kant
is unable to prove that such completion is really possible, the
objective validity of the Ideas is left open to question. They
should be taken only as heuristic principles; the extent of their
truth, even in the empirical realm, cannot be determined by the
a priori method that is alone proper to a Critique of Pure
Reason.
The first view is inspired by the fundamental teaching of the
Analytic, and is the only view which will justify Kant in
retaining his distinction between appearance and things in
themselves. All that is positive in the second view can be
combined with the first view; but, on the other hand, the
negative implications of the second view are at variance with
its own positive teaching. For when the Ideas are regarded as
empirical in origin no less than in function, their entire
authority is derived from experience, and cannot be regarded
as being transcendental in any valid sense of that term. In
alternating between these two interpretations of the function of
Reason, Kant is wavering between the Idealist and the merely
sceptical view of the scope and powers of pure thought. On the
Idealist interpretation Reason is a metaphysical faculty,
revealing to us the phenomenal character of experience, and
outlining possibilities such as may perhaps be established on
moral grounds. From the sceptical standpoint, on the other
hand, Reason gives expression to what may be only our
subjective preference for unity and system in the ordering of
experience. According to the one, the criteria of truth and
reality are bound up with the Ideas; according to the other,
sense-experience is the standard by which the validity even of
the Ideas must ultimately be judged. From the fact that Kant
should have continued sympathetically to develop two such
opposite standpoints, we would seem to be justified in
concluding that he discerned, or at least desiderated, some
more complete reconciliation of their teaching than he has
himself thus far been able to achieve, and that no solution
which would either subordinate the Ideal demands of thought,
or ignore the gifts of experience, could ever have been
definitively accepted by him as satisfactorily meeting the
issues at stake. The Idealist solution is that to which his
teaching as a whole most decisively points; but he is as
conscious of the difficulties which lie in its path as he is
personally convinced of its ultimate truth. His continuing
appreciation of the value of sceptical teaching is a tacit
admission that the Idealist doctrines, in the form which he has
so far been able to give to them, are not really adequate to the
complexity of the problems. As further confirmation of the
tentative character of Kant’s conclusions in the Critique of
Pure Reason, we have his own later writings. In the Critique
of Judgment, published nine years later, in teaching less
sceptical and more constructive, though still delicately
balanced between the competing possibilities, and always,
therefore, leaving the final decision to moral considerations,
Kant ventures upon a restatement of the problems of the
Dialectic. To this restatement both of the above tendencies
contribute valuable elements.
 APPENDIX A[1684]

TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHODS

 CHAPTER I

THE DISCIPLINE[1685] OF PURE REASON

KANT is neither an intellectualist nor an anti-intellectualist.
Reason, the proper duty of which is to prescribe a discipline to
all other endeavours, itself requires discipline; and when it is
employed in the metaphysical sphere, independently of
experience, it demands not merely the correction of single
errors, but the eradication of their causes through “a separate
negative code,” such as a Critical philosophy can alone supply.
In the Transcendental Doctrine of Elements this demand has
been met as regards the materials or contents of the Critical
system; we are now concerned only with its methods or formal
conditions.[1686]
This distinction is highly artificial. As already indicated, it
is determined by the requirements of Kant’s architectonic. The
entire teaching of the Methodology has already been more or
less exhaustively expounded in the earlier divisions of the
Critique.
SECTION I

THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON IN ITS DOGMATIC

EMPLOYMENT

In dealing with the distinction between mathematical and

philosophical knowledge, Kant is here returning to one of the
main points of his Introduction to the Critique.[1687] His most
exhaustive treatment of it is, however, to be found in a treatise
which he wrote as early as 1764, his Enquiry into the
Clearness of the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals.
The continued influence of the teaching of that early work is
obvious throughout this section, and largely accounts for the
form in which certain of its tenets are propounded.
“…one can say with Bishop Warburton that nothing has
been more injurious to philosophy than mathematics, that is,
than the imitation of its method in a sphere where it is
impossible of application….”[1688]
 So far from being identical in general nature, mathematics
and philosophy are, Kant declares, fundamentally opposed in
all essential features. For it is in their methods, and not merely
in their subject-matter, that the essential difference between
them is to be found.[1689] Philosophical knowledge can be
acquired only through concepts, mathematical knowledge is
gained through the construction of concepts.[1690] The one is
discursive merely; the other is intuitive. Philosophy can
consider the particular only in the general; mathematics
studies the general in the particular.[1691] Philosophical
concepts, such as those of substance and causality, are, indeed,
capable of application in transcendental synthesis, but in this
employment they yield only empirical knowledge of the
sensuously given; and from empirical concepts the universal
and necessary judgments required for the possibility of
metaphysical science can never be obtained.
The exactness of mathematics depends on definitions,
axioms, and demonstrations, none of which are obtainable in
philosophy. To take each in order.
I. Definitions.—To define in the manner prescribed by
mathematics is to represent the complete concept of a thing.
This is never possible in regard to empirical concepts. We are
more certain of their denotation than of their connotation; and
though they may be explained, they cannot be defined. Since
new observations add or remove predicates, an empirical
concept is always liable to modification.
“What useful purpose could be served by defining an
empirical concept, such, for instance, as that of water? When
we speak of water and its properties, we do not stop short at
what is thought in the word water, but proceed to experiments.
The word, with the few marks which are attached to it, is more
properly to be regarded as merely a designation than as a
conception. The so-called definition is nothing more than a
determining of the word.”[1692]
Exact definition is equally impossible in regard to a priori
forms, such as time or causality. Since they are not framed by
the mind, but are given to it, the completeness of our analysis
of them can never be guaranteed. Though they are known,
they are known only as problems.
“As Augustine has said, ‘I know well what time is, but if
any one asks me, I cannot tell.’”[1693]
Mathematical definitions make concepts; philosophical
definitions only explain them.[1694] Philosophy cannot,
therefore, imitate mathematics by beginning with definitions.
In philosophy the incomplete exposition must precede the
complete; definitions are the final outcome of our enquiry, and
not as in mathematics the only possible beginning of its
proofs. Indeed, the mathematical concept may be said to be
given by the very process in which it is constructively defined;
and, as thus originating in the process of definition, it can
never be erroneous.[1695] Philosophy, on the other hand,
swarms with faulty definitions, which are none the less
serviceable.
“In mathematics definition belongs ad esse, in philosophy
ad melius esse. It is desirable to attain it, but often very
difficult. Jurists are still without a definition of their concept of
Right.”[1696]
II. Axioms.—This paragraph is extremely misleading as a
statement of Kant’s view regarding the nature of geometrical
axioms. In stating that they are self-evident,[1697] he does not
really mean to assert what that phrase usually involves,
namely, absolute a priori validity. For Kant the geometrical
axioms are merely descriptions of certain de facto properties
of the given intuition of space. They have the merely
hypothetical validity of all propositions that refer to the
contingently given. For even as a pure intuition, space belongs
to the realm of the merely factual.[1698] This un-Critical
opposition of the self-evidence of geometrical axioms to the
synthetic character of such “philosophical” truths as the
principle of causality is bound up with Kant’s unreasoned
conviction that space in order to be space at all, must be
Euclidean.[1699] Kant’s reference in this paragraph to the
propositions of arithmetic is equally open to criticism. For
though he is more consistent in recognising their synthetic
character, he still speaks as if they could be described as self-
evident, i.e. as immediately certain. The cause of this
inconsistency is, of course, to be found in his intuitional theory
of mathematical science. Mathematical propositions are
obtained through intuition; those of philosophy call for an
elaborate and difficult process of transcendental deduction.
When modern mathematical theory rejects this intuitional
view, it is really extending to mathematical concepts Kant’s
own interpretation of the function of the categories. Concepts
condition the possibility of intuitional experience, and find in
this conditioning power the ground of their objective validity.
[1700] Here, as in the Aesthetic,[1701] Kant fails adequately to
distinguish between the problems of pure and applied
mathematics.
III. Demonstrations.—Kant again introduces his very
unsatisfactory doctrine of the construction of concepts:[1702]
and he even goes so far as to maintain, in complete violation
of his own doctrine of transcendental deduction, that where
there is no intuition, there can be no demonstration. Apodictic
propositions, he declares, are either dogmata or mathemata;
and the former are beyond the competence of the human mind.
But no sooner has he made these statements than he virtually
withdraws them by adding that, though apodictic propositions
cannot be established directly from concepts, they can be
indirectly proved by reference to something purely contingent,
namely, possible experience. Thus the principle of causality
can be apodictically proved as a condition of possible
experience. Though it may not be called a dogma, it can be
entitled a principle! In explanation of this distinction, which
betrays a lingering regard for the self-evident maxims of
rationalistic teaching, Kant adds that the principle of causality,
though a principle, has itself to be proved.
“…it has the peculiarity that it first makes possible its own
ground of proof, namely, experience….”[1703]
This, as we have noted,[1704] is exactly what mathematical
axioms must also be able to do, if they are to establish their
objective validity.
SECTION II
 THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON IN ITS POLEMICAL
EMPLOYMENT

This section contains an admirable defence of the value of

scepticism.
“Even poisons have their use. They serve to counteract
other poisons generated in our system, and must have a place
in every complete pharmacopeia. The objections against the
persuasions and complacency of our purely speculative
Reason arise from the very nature of Reason itself, and must
therefore have their own good use and purpose, which ought
not to be disdained. Why has Providence placed many things
which are closely bound up with our highest interests so far
beyond our reach, that we are only permitted to apprehend
them in a manner lacking in clearness and subject to doubt, in
such fashion that our enquiring gaze is more excited than
satisfied? It is at least doubtful whether it serves any useful
purpose, and whether it is not, indeed, perhaps even harmful to
venture upon bold interpretations of such uncertain
appearances. But there can be no manner of doubt that it is
always best to grant Reason complete liberty, both of enquiry
and of criticism, so that it may be without hindrance in
attending to its own proper interests. These interests are no
less furthered by the limitation than by the extension of its
speculations; and they will always suffer when outside
influences intervene to divert it from its natural path, and to
constrain it by what is irrelevant to its own proper ends.”[1705]
“Whenever I hear that a writer of real ability has demonstrated
away the freedom of the human will, the hope of a future life,
and the existence of God, I am eager to read the book, for I
expect him by his talents to increase my insight into these
matters.”[1706]
SECTION IV[1707]
THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON IN REGARD TO ITS PROOFS[1708]

This section merely restates the general nature and

requirements of transcendental proof. The exposition is much
less satisfactory than that already given in the Analytic and
Dialectic. The only really new factor is the distinction between
apagogical and direct proof. The former may produce
conviction, but cannot enable us to comprehend the grounds of
the truth of our conviction. Also, outside mathematics, it is
extremely dangerous to attempt to establish a thesis by
showing its contradictory to be impossible.[1709] This is
especially true in the sphere of our Critical enquiries, since the
chief danger to be guarded against is the confounding of the
subjectively necessary with the independently real. In this field
of investigation it is never permissible to attempt to justify a
synthetic proposition by refuting its opposite. Such seeming
proofs can easily be secured, and have been the favourite
weapons of dogmatic thinkers.
“Each must defend his position directly, by a legitimate
proof that carries with it transcendental deduction of the
grounds upon which it is itself made to rest. Only when this
has been done, are we in a position to decide how far its
claims allow of rational justification. If an opponent relies on
subjective grounds, it is an easy matter to refute him. The
dogmatist cannot, however, profit by this advantage. His own
judgments are, as a rule, no less dependent upon subjective
influences; and he can himself in turn be similarly cornered.
But if both parties proceed by the direct method, either they
will soon discover the difficulty, nay, the impossibility, of
showing reason for their assertions, and will be left with no
resort save to appeal to some form of prescriptive authority; or
the Critique will the more easily discover the illusion to which
their dogmatic procedure is due; and pure Reason will be
compelled to relinquish its exaggerated pretensions in the
realm of speculation, and to withdraw within the limits of its
proper territory—that of practical principles.”[1710]
 CHAPTER II

THE CANON[1711] OF PURE REASON

SECTION I

THE ULTIMATE END OF THE PURE USE OF OUR REASON[1712]

The problems of the existence of God, the freedom of the

will, and the immortality of the soul have, Kant declares, little
theoretical interest. For, as he has already argued, even if we
were justified in postulating God, freedom, and immortality,
they would not enable us to account for the phenomena of
sense-experience, the only objects of possible knowledge. But
the three problems are also connected with our practical
interests, and in that reference they constitute the chief subject
of metaphysical enquiry.[1713] The practical is whatever is
possible through freedom; and the decision as to what we
ought to do is the supreme interest of pure Reason in its
highest employment.
“…the ultimate intention of Nature in her wise provision for
us has indeed, in the constitution of our Reason, been directed
to our moral interests alone.”[1714]
This is the position which Kant endeavours to establish in
his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, and in the
Critique of Practical Reason. The very brief outline which he
here gives of his argument is necessarily incomplete; and is in
consequence somewhat misleading. He first disposes of the
problem of freedom; and does so in a manner which shows
that he had not, when this section was composed, developed
his Critical views on the nature of moral freedom. He is for the
present content to draw a quite un-Critical distinction between
transcendental and practical freedom.[1715] The latter belongs
to the will in so far as it is determined by Reason alone,
independently of sensuous impulses. Reason prescribes
objective laws of freedom, and the will under the influence of
these laws overcomes the affections of sense. Such practical
freedom can, Kant asserts, be proved by experience to be a
natural cause. Transcendental freedom,[1716] on the other hand,
i.e. the power of making a new beginning in the series of
phenomena, is a problem which can never be empirically
solved. It is a purely speculative question with which Reason
in its practical employment is not in the least concerned. The
canon of pure Reason has therefore to deal only with the two
remaining problems, God and immortality. Comment upon
these assertions can best be made in connection with the
argument of the next section.[1717]
SECTION II

THE IDEAL OF THE HIGHEST GOOD, AS A DETERMINING GROUND

OF THE ULTIMATE END OF PURE REASON[1718]

Reason in its speculative employment transcends

experience, but solely for the sake of experience. In other
words, speculative Reason has a purely empirical function.
(This is the explanation of the somewhat paradoxical
contention, to which Kant has already committed himself, that
the problems of God and immortality, though seemingly
speculative in character, really originate in our practical
interests.) But pure Reason has also a practical use; and it is in
this latter employment that it first discloses the genuinely
metaphysical character of its present constitution and ultimate
aims. The moral consciousness, in revealing to us an Ideal of
absolute value, places in our hands the only available key to
the mysteries of existence. As this moral consciousness
represents the deepest reality of human life, it may be expected
to have greater metaphysical significance than anything else in
human experience; and since the ends which it reveals also
present themselves as absolute in value, and are indeed the
only absolute values of which we can form any conception,
this conclusion would seem to be confirmed.
Happiness has natural value; morality, i.e. the being worthy
to be happy, has absolute value. The means of attaining the
former obtain expression in prudential or pragmatic laws that
are empirically grounded. The conditions of the latter are
embodied in a categorical imperative of an a priori character.
The former advise us how best to satisfy our natural desire for
happiness; the latter dictates to us how we must behave in
order to deserve happiness.
 Kant’s further argument is too condensed to be really clear,
and if adequately discussed would carry us quite beyond the
legitimate limits of this Commentary. I shall therefore confine
myself to a brief and free restatement of his general position.
The Critical teaching can be described as resulting in a new
interpretation of the function of philosophy.[1719] The task of
the philosopher, properly viewed, does not consist in the
solution of speculative problems; such problems transcend our
human powers. All that philosophy can reasonably attempt is
to analyse and define the situations, cognitive and practical, in
which, owing to the specific conditions of human existence,
we find ourselves to be placed. Upon analysis of the cognitive
situation Kant discovers that while all possibilities are open,
the theoretical data are never such as to justify ontological
assertions.[1720] When, however, he passes to the practical
situation, wider horizons, definitely outlined, at once present
themselves. The moral consciousness is the key to the
meaning of the entire universe as well as of human life. Its
values are the sole ultimate values, and enable us to interpret
in moral terms (even though we cannot comprehend in any
genuinely theoretical fashion) the meaning of the dispensation
under which we live. The moral consciousness, like sense-
experience, discloses upon examination a systematic unity of
presupposed conditions. In the theoretical sphere this unity
cannot be proved to be more than a postulated Ideal of
empirical experience; and it is an Ideal which, even if granted
to have absolute validity, is too indefinite to enable us to assert
that ultimate reality is spiritual in character, or is teleologically
ordered. The underlying conditions, on the other hand, of
practical experience have from the start a purely noumenal
reference. They have no other function than to define, in terms
of the moral consciousness, the ultimate meaning of reality as
a whole. They postulate[1721] a universe in which the values of
spiritual experience are supported and conserved.
But the main difference in Kant’s treatment of the two
situations, cognitive and practical, only emerges into view
when we recognise the differing modes in which the
transcendental method of proof is applied in the two cases.
The a priori forms of sensibility, understanding, and Reason
are proved by reference to possible experience, as being its
indispensable conditions. In moral matters, however, we must
not appeal to experience. The actual is no test of the Ideal;
“what is” is no test of what ought to be. And secondly, the
moral law, if valid at all, must apply not merely within the
limits of experience, but with absolute universality to all
rational beings. The moral law, therefore, can neither be given
us in experience, nor be proved as one of the conditions
necessary to its possibility. Its validity, in other words, can be
established neither through experience nor through theoretical
reason.
Though such is Kant’s own method of formulating the issue,
it exaggerates the difference of his procedure in the two
Critiques, and is very misleading as a statement of his real
position. In one passage, in the Critique of Practical Reason,
[1722] Kant does, indeed, assert that the moral law requires no
deduction. It is, he claims, a fact of which we are a priori
conscious: so far from itself requiring proof, it enables us to
prove the reality of freedom. Yet in the very same section he
argues that the deduction of freedom from the moral law is a
credential of the latter, and is a sufficient substitute for all a
priori justification. According to the first statement we have
an immediate consciousness of the validity of the moral law;
according to the second statement the moral law proves itself
indirectly, by serving as a principle for the deduction of
freedom. The second form of statement alone harmonises with
the argument developed in the third section of the Foundations
of the Metaphysics of Morals, and more correctly expresses
the intention of Kant’s central argument in the Critique of
Practical Reason. For the difference between the two
transcendental proofs in the two Critiques does not really
consist in any diversity of method, but solely in the differing
character of the premisses from which each starts. The
ambiguity of Kant’s argument in the second Critique seems
chiefly to be caused by his failure clearly to recognise that the
moral law, though a form of pure Reason, exercises, in the
process of its transcendental proof, a function which exactly
corresponds to that which is discharged by possible experience
in the first Critique. Our consciousness of the moral law is,
like sense-experience, a given fact. It is de facto, and cannot
be deduced from anything more ultimate than itself.[1723] But
as given, it enables us to deduce its transcendental conditions.
This does not mean that our immediate consciousness of it as
given guarantees its validity. The nature of its validity is
established only in the process whereby it reveals its necessary
implications. The objects of sense-experience are assumed by
ordinary consciousness to be absolutely real; in the process of
establishing the transcendental conditions of such experience
they are discovered to be merely phenomenal. The pure
principles of understanding thus gain objective validity as the
conditions of a given experience which reveals only
appearances. Ordinary consciousness similarly starts from the
assumption of the absolute validity of the moral law. But in
this case the consciousness of the law is discovered on
examination to be explicable, even as a possibility, only on the
assumption that it is due to the autonomous activity of a
noumenal being. By its existence it proves the conditions
through which alone it is explicable. Its mere existence
suffices to prove that its validity is objective in a deeper and
truer sense than the principles of understanding. The notion of
freedom, and therefore all the connected Ideas of pure Reason,
gain noumenal reality as the conditions of a moral
consciousness which is incapable of explanation as illusory or
even phenomenal. Since the consciousness of the moral law is
thus noumenally grounded, it has a validity with which
nothing in the phenomenal world can possibly compare. It is
the one form in which noumenal reality directly discloses itself
to the human mind.[1724]
Obviously the essential crux of Kant’s argument lies in the
proof that the moral consciousness is only explicable in this
manner, as the self-legislation of a noumenal being. Into the
merits of his argument we cannot, however, here enter; and I
need only draw attention to the manner in which it conflicts
with the statement of the preceding section, that the possibility
of transcendental freedom is a purely speculative question
with which practical Reason is not concerned. The reality of
freedom, as a form of noumenal activity, is the cardinal fact of
Kant’s metaphysics of morals. For though our consciousness
of the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of freedom,
transcendental freedom is the ratio essendi of the moral law.
[1725]

“With this faculty [of practical Reason], transcendental

freedom is also established; freedom, namely, in that absolute
sense in which speculative Reason required it, in its use of the
concept of causality, in order to escape the antinomy into
which it inevitably falls, when in the chain of cause and effect
it tries to think the unconditioned…. Freedom is the only one
of all the Ideas of the speculative Reason of which we know
the possibility a priori (without, however, understanding it),
because it is the condition of the moral law which we
know.”[1726] ”[Freedom] is the only one of all the Ideas of pure
Reason whose object is a thing of fact and to be reckoned
among the scibilia.”[1727] “It is thus very remarkable that of
the three pure rational Ideas, God, freedom, and immortality,
that of freedom is the only concept of the supersensible which
(by means of the causality that is thought in it) proves its
objective reality in nature by means of the effects it can
produce there; and thus renders possible the connection of
both the others with nature, and of all three with one another
so as to form a Religion…. The concept of freedom (as
fundamental concept of all unconditioned practical laws) can
extend Reason beyond those bounds within which every
natural (theoretical) concept must inevitably remain
confined.”[1728]
Thus freedom is for Kant a demonstrated fact, and in that
respect differs from the Ideas of God and immortality, which
are merely problematic conceptions, and which can be
postulated only as articles of “practical faith.”
This brings us to the final question, upon what grounds
Kant ascribes validity to the Ideas of God and immortality. At
this point in his argument Kant introduces the conception of
the Summum Bonum. Reason, in prescribing the moral law,
prescribes, as the final and complete end of all our actions, the
Summum Bonum, i.e. happiness proportioned to moral worth.
Owing to the limitations of our faculties, the complete
attainment of this supreme end is conceivable by us only on
the assumption of a future life wherein perfect worthiness may
be attained, and of an omnipotent Divine Being who will
apportion happiness in accordance with merit.
”[This Divine Being] must be omnipotent, in order that the
whole of nature and its relation to morality … may be subject
to his will; omniscient, that he may know our innermost
sentiments and their moral worth; omnipresent, that he may be
immediately present for the satisfying of every need which the
highest good demands; eternal, that this harmony of nature and
freedom may never fail, etc.”[1729]
The moral ideal thus supplies us with a ground[1730] for
regarding the universe as systematically ordered according to
moral purposes, and also with a principle that enables us to
infer the nature and properties of its Supreme Cause. In place
of a demonology, which is all that physical theology can
establish, we construct upon moral grounds a genuine
theology.
The concepts thus obtained are, however, anthropomorphic;
and for that reason alone must be denied all speculative value.
This is especially evident in regard to the Idea of God. Owing
to our incapacity to comprehend how moral merit can
condition happiness, we conceive them as externally combined
through the intervention of a supreme Judge and Ruler. As
Kant indicates,[1731] we must not assert that this represents the
actual situation. He himself seems to have inclined to a more
mystical interpretation of the universe, conceiving the relation
of happiness to virtue as being grounded in a supersensuous
but necessary order that may, indeed, be bodied forth in the
inadequate symbols of the deistic creed, but which in its true
nature transcends our powers of understanding. So far as the
Ideas of God and immortality are necessary to define the
moral standpoint, they have genuine validity for all moral
beings; but if developed on their own account as speculative
dogmas, they acquire a definiteness of formulation which is
not essential to their moral function, and which lays them open
to suspicion even in their legitimate use.
These considerations also indicate Kant’s further reason for
entitling the Summum Bonum, God and immortality, Ideas of
faith. Though they can be established as presuppositions of the
moral situation in which we find ourselves, such
demonstration itself rests upon the acceptance of the moral
consciousness as possessing a supersensuous sanction; and
that in turn is determined by features in the moral situation not
deducible from any higher order of considerations.
“Belief in matters of faith is a belief in a pure practical point
of view, i.e. a moral faith, which proves nothing for
theoretical, pure, rational cognition, but only for that which is
practical and directed to the fulfilment of its duties; it in no
way extends speculation…. If the supreme principle of all
moral laws is a postulate, the possibility of its highest Object
… is thereby postulated along with it.”[1732] “So far, as
practical Reason has the right to yield us guidance, we shall
not look upon actions as obligatory because they are the
commands of God, but shall regard them as divine commands
because we have an inward obligation to them…. Moral
theology is thus of immanent use only. It enables us to fulfil
our vocation in this present world by showing us how to adapt
ourselves to the system of all ends, and by warning us against
the fanaticism and indeed the impiety of abandoning the
guidance of a morally legislative Reason in the right conduct
of our lives, in order to derive guidance directly from the Idea
of the Supreme Being. For we should then be making a
transcendent employment of moral theology; and that, like a
transcendent use of pure speculation, must pervert and
frustrate the ultimate ends of Reason.”[1733]
SECTION III

OPINING, KNOWING, AND BELIEVING[1734]

Kant first distinguishes between conviction (Ueberzeugung)

and persuasion (Ueberredung). A judgment which is
objectively grounded, and which is therefore valid for all other
rational beings, is affirmed with conviction. When the
affirmation is due only to the peculiar character of the subject,
the manner in which it is asserted may be entitled persuasion.
Persuasion is therefore “a mere illusion.”[1735] Conviction
exists in three degrees, opinion, belief, and knowledge. In
opinion we are conscious that the judgment is insufficiently
grounded, and that our conviction is subjectively incomplete.
In belief the subjective conviction is complete, but is
recognised as lacking in objective justification. In knowledge
the objective grounds and the subjective conviction are alike
complete.
After pointing out that opinion is not permissible in
judgments of pure Reason,[1736] Kant develops the further
distinction between pragmatic or doctrinal belief and moral
belief. When a belief is contingent (i.e. is affirmed with the
consciousness that on fuller knowledge it may turn out to be
false), and yet nevertheless supplies a ground for the
employment of means to certain desired ends, it may be called
pragmatic belief. Such belief admits of degree, and can be
tested by wager or by oath.[1737] What may be called doctrinal
belief is analogous in character, and is taken by Kant, in
somewhat misleading fashion, as describing our mode of
accepting such doctrines as the existence of God and the
immortality of the soul.[1738] They are adopted as helpful
towards a contingent but important end, the discovery of order
in the system of nature. This account of the nature of Ideas is
in line with Kant’s early view of them as merely regulative.
Taken in connection with his repeated employment of the term
‘moral sentiments’ (moralische Gesinnungen), it tends to
prove that this section is early in date of writing.
In moral belief the end, the Summum Bonum, is absolutely
necessary, and as there is only one condition under which we
can conceive it as being realised, namely, on the assumption of
the existence of God and of a future life, the belief in God and
immortality possesses the same certainty as the moral
sentiments.
“The belief in a God and another world is so interwoven
with my moral sentiment that as there is little danger of my
losing the latter, there is equally little cause for fear that the
former can ever be taken from me.”[1739]
As I have just suggested, this basing of moral belief upon
subjective sentiments, which, as Kant very inconsistently
proceeds to suggest, may possibly be lacking in certain men,
marks this section as being of early origin. But in concluding
the section, in reply to the objection that, in thus tracing such
articles of faith to our “natural interest” in morality,
philosophy admits its powerlessness to advance beyond the
ordinary understanding, Kant propounds one of his abiding
convictions, namely, that in matters which concern all men
without distinction nature is not guilty of any partial
distribution of her gifts, and that in regard to the essential ends
of human nature the highest philosophy cannot advance
beyond what is revealed to the common understanding.[1740]
The reverence which Kant ever cherished for the memory of
his parents, and for the religion which was so natural to them,
must have predisposed him to a recognition of the widespread
sources of the spiritual life. But Kant has himself placed on
record his sense of the great debt which in this connection he
also owed to the teaching of Rousseau.
“I am by disposition an enquirer. I feel the consuming thirst
for knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and
the delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed
that this is what confers real dignity upon human life, and I
despised the common people who know nothing. Rousseau has
set me right. This imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to
honor men, and should regard myself as of much less use than
the common labourer, if I did not believe that my philosophy
will restore to all men the common rights of humanity.”[1741]
The sublimity of the starry heavens and the imperative of
the moral law are ever present influences on the life of man;
and they require for their apprehension no previous initiation
through science and philosophy. The naked eye reveals the
former; of the latter all men are immediately aware.[1742] In
their universal appeal they are of the very substance of human
existence. Philosophy may avail to counteract the hindrances
which prevent them from exercising their native influence; it
cannot be a substitute for the inspiration which they alone can
yield.
 CHAPTER III

THE ARCHITECTONIC OF PURE REASON[1743]

Adickes[1744] very justly remarks that “this is a section after
Kant’s own heart, in which there is presented, almost
unsought, the opportunity, which he elsewhere so frequently
creates for himself, of indulging in his favourite hobby.” The
section is of slight scientific importance, and is chiefly of
interest for the light which it casts upon Kant’s personality.
Moreover the distinctions which Kant here draws are for the
most part not his own philosophical property, but are taken
over from the Wolffian system.
The distinctions may be exhibited in tabular form as
follows:[1745]
KNOWLEDGE

1=[1746] 2=[1747] 3=[1748]

Kant further distinguishes between the “scholastic” and the
“universal” or traditional meaning of the term philosophy.[1749]
In the former sense philosophy is viewed from the point of
view of its logical perfection, and the philosopher appears as
an artist of Reason.[1750] Philosophy in the broader and higher
sense is “the science of the relation of all knowledge to the
essential ends of human Reason.”[1751] The philosopher then
appears as the lawgiver of human Reason. Of the essential
ends, the ultimate end is man’s moral destiny; to this the other
essential ends of human Reason are subordinate means. For
though the legislation of human Reason concerns nature as
well as freedom, and has therefore to be dealt with by a
philosophy of nature, i.e. of all that is, as well as by a
philosophy of morals, i.e. of that which ought to be, the former
is subordinate to the latter in the same degree in which in
human life knowledge is subordinate to moral action. Whereas
speculative metaphysics serves rather to ward off errors than
to extend knowledge,[1752] in the metaphysics of morals “all
culture [Kultur] of human Reason”[1753] finds its indispensable
completion.
Empirical psychology is excluded from the domain of
metaphysics. It is destined to form part of a complete system
of anthropology, the pendant to the empirical doctrine of
nature.[1754]
 CHAPTER IV

THE HISTORY OF PURE REASON[1755]

This title, as Kant states, is inserted only to mark the place
of the present chapter in a complete system of pure reason.
The very cursory outline, which alone Kant here attempts to
give, merely repeats the main historical distinctions of which
the Critique has made use. The contrast between the
sensationalism of Epicurus and the intellectualism of Plato has
been developed in A 465 ff. = B 493 ff.[1756] The contrast
between Locke and Leibniz is dwelt upon in A 43 ff. = B 60 ff.
and A 270 ff. = B 326 ff. Under the title ‘naturalist of pure
Reason’ Kant is referring to the ‘common sense’ school,
which is typically represented by Beattie.[1757] In his
Logic[1758] Kant gives a fuller account of his interpretation of
the history of philosophy.
 APPENDIX B

A MORE DETAILED STATEMENT OF KANT’S

RELATIONS TO HIS PHILOSOPHICAL
PREDECESSORS[1759]
The development of philosophy, prior to Kant, had rendered
two problems especially prominent—the problem of sense-
perception and the problem of judgment. The one raises the
question of the interrelation of mind knowing and objects
known; the other treats of the connection holding between
subject and predicate in the various forms of judgment. The
one enquires how it is possible to know reality; the other seeks
to determine the criterion of truth. These two problems are, as
Kant discovered, inseparable from one another; and the logical
is the more fundamental of the two. Indeed it was Hume’s
analysis of the judgment involved in the causal principle that
enabled Kant to formulate his Critical solution of the problem
of perception. In this Appendix I propose to follow these
problems as they rise into view in the systems of Descartes
and his successors.
Galileo’s revolutionary teaching regarding the nature of
motion was the immediate occasion of Descartes’ restatement
of the problem of perception. That teaching necessitated an
entirely new view of the nature of matter, and consequently of
the interrelation of mind and body. Questions never before
seriously entertained now became pressing. The solutions had
to be as novel as the situation which they were designed to
meet.
These new problems arose in the following manner.
According to the medieval view, motion may properly be
conceived on the analogy of human activity. It comes into
being, exhausts itself in exercise, and ceases to be. It is a
fleeting activity; only its “material” and “formal” conditions
have any permanence of existence. According to Galileo’s
teaching, on the other hand, motion is as different from human
activity as matter is from mind. It is ingenerable and
indestructible. We know it only through the effect which in
some incomprehensible fashion it produces in those bodies
into which it enters, namely, their translation from one part of
space to another. That this translatory motion is called by the
same name as the power which generates it, doubtless in some
degree accounts for the fact that our understanding of the one
tends to conceal from us our entire ignorance of the other.[1760]
We have only to reflect, however, in order to realise that
motion is completely mysterious in its intrinsic dynamical
nature. We cannot, for instance, profess to comprehend, even
in the least degree, how motion, though incapable of existing
apart from matter, should yet be sufficiently independent to be
able to pass from one body to another.
Descartes, following out some of the chief consequences of
this new teaching, concluded that matter is passive and inert,
that it is distinguished neither by positive nor by negative
properties from the space which it fills, and that it is to motion
that all the articulated organisation of animate and inanimate
nature is due. Descartes failed, indeed, to appreciate the
dynamical character of motion, and by constantly speaking as
if it were reducible to the translatory motion, in which it
manifests itself, he represented it as known in all its essential
features. None the less, the rôles previously assigned to matter
and motion are, in Descartes’ system, completely reversed.
Matter is subordinated to motion as the instrument to the
agency by which it is directed and shaped. On the older view,
material bodies had, through the possession of formative and
vital forces, all manner of intrinsic powers. By the new view
these composite and nondescript existences are resolved into
two elements, all the properties of which can be quantitatively
defined—into a matter which is uniform and homogeneous,
and into motion whose sole effect is the translation of bodies
in space. Matter is the passive and inert substance out of which
motion, by its mere mechanical powers, can produce the whole
range of material forms.
This revolutionary change in the physical standpoint
involved restatement of the philosophical issues. But the
resulting difficulties were found thoroughly baffling. Though
Descartes and his successors were willing to adopt any
hypothesis, however paradoxical, which the facts might seem
to demand, their theories, however modified and restated, led
only deeper into a hopeless impasse. The unsolved problems
of the Cartesian systems formed the discouraging heritage to
which Kant fell heir. If matter is always purely material, and
motion is its sole organising power, there can be no real
kinship between body and mind. The formative and vital
forces, which in the Scholastic philosophy and in popular
thought serve to maintain the appearance of continuity
between matter and mind, can no longer be credited. Motion,
which alone is left to mediate between the opposites, is purely
mechanical, and (on Descartes’ view) is entirely lacking in
inner or hidden powers. The animal body is exclusively
material, and is therefore as incapable of feeling or
consciousness as any machine made by human hands. The
bodily senses are not ‘sensitive’; the brain cannot think.
Mental experiences do, of course, accompany the brain-
motions. But why a sensation should thus arise when a
particular motion is caused in the brain, or how a mental
resolution can be followed by a brain state, are questions to
which no satisfactory answer can be given. The mental and the
material, the spiritual and the mechanical, fall entirely apart.
The difficulties arising out of this incomprehensibility of the
causal interrelations of mind and body are not, however, in
themselves a valid argument against a dualistic interpretation
of the real. The difficulties of accounting for the causal
relation are, in essential respects, equally great even when the
interaction is between homogeneous existences. The
difficulties are due to the nature of causal action as such, not to
the character of the bodies between which it holds. This,
indeed, was clearly recognised by Descartes, and was insisted
upon by his immediate successors. The transference of motion
by impact is no less incomprehensible than the interaction of
soul and body. If motion can exist only in matter, there is no
possible method of conceiving how it can make the transition
from one discrete portion of matter to another. Causal action is
thus a problem which no philosophy can pretend to solve, and
which every philosophy, whether monistic or dualistic, must
recognise as transcending the scope of our present knowledge.
 It is in another and more special form that Descartes’
dualism first reveals its fatal defects, namely, in its bearing
upon the problem of sense-perception. Descartes can solve the
problem of knowledge only by first postulating the doctrine of
representative perception. That doctrine is rendered necessary
by the dualism of mind and body. Objects can be known only
mediately by means of their action upon the sense-organs, and
through the sense-organs upon the brain. The resulting brain
states are in themselves merely forms of motion. They lead,
however, in a manner which Descartes never professes to
explain,[1761] to the appearance of sensations in the mental
field. Out of these sensations the mind then constructs mental
images of the distant bodies; and it is these mental images
alone which are directly apprehended. Material bodies are
invisible and intangible; they are knowable only through their
mental duplicates. Thus, according to the doctrine of
representative perception, each mind is segregated in a world
apart. It looks out upon a landscape which is as mental and as
truly inward as are its feelings and desires. The apparently
ultimate relation of mind knowing and object known is
rendered complex and problematic through the distinction
between mental objects and real things. Mental objects are in
all cases images merely. They exist only so long as they are
apprehended; and they are numerically and existentially
distinct in each individual mind. Real things are not
immediately perceived; they are hypothetically inferred. To
ordinary consciousness the body which acts on the sense-
organ is the object known; when reflective consciousness is
philosophically enlightened, the object immediately known is
recognised as a merely mental image, and the external object
sinks to the level of an assumed cause.
The paradoxical character of this doctrine is accentuated by
Galileo’s distinction between primary and secondary qualities.
[1762] Those physical processes, which are entitled light and
heat, bear no resemblance to the sensations through which
they become known. The many-coloured world of ordinary
consciousness is an illusory appearance which can exist only
in the human mind. We must distinguish between the sensible
world which, though purely mental, appears, through an
unavoidable illusion, to be externally real, and that very
different world of matter and motion which reveals its
independent nature only to reflective thinking. In the latter
world the rich variety of sensuous appearance can find no
place. There remain only the quantitative, mechanical
properties of extension, figure and motion; and even these
have to be interpreted in the revolutionary fashion of physical
science.
The doctrine of representative perception cannot, however,
defend successfully the positions which it thus involves. It
wavers in unstable equilibrium. The facts, physical and
physiological, upon which it is based, are in conflict with the
conclusions in which it results. This has been very clearly
demonstrated by many writers in recent times.[1763] The
conflict manifested itself in the period between Descartes and
Kant only through the uneasy questionings of Locke and
Berkeley. The problem, fundamental though it be, is almost
completely ignored by Spinoza, Leibniz, and Wolff.
Stated in modern terms, the inherently contradictory
character of the doctrine consists in its unavoidable alternation
between the realist attitude to which it owes its origin, and the
idealist conclusion in which it issues. Such oscillation is due to
the twofold simultaneous relation in which it regards ideas as
standing to the objects that they are supposed to represent. The
function of sensations is cognitive; their origin is mechanical.
As cognitive they stand to objects in a relation of inclusion;
they reveal the objects, reduplicating them in image before the
mind. Yet in their origin they are effects, mechanically
generated by the action of material bodies upon the sense-
organs and brain. As they are effects mechanically generated,
there is no guarantee that they resemble their causes; and if we
may argue from other forms of mechanical causation, there is
little likelihood that they do. They stand to their first causes in
a relation of exclusion, separated from them by a large number
of varying intermediate processes. There is thus a conflict
between the function of sensations and their origin. Their
origin in the external objects is supposed to confer upon them
a representative power; and yet the very nature of this origin
invalidates any such claim.
 This irreconcilability of the subjectivist consequences of the
doctrine with its realist basis was seized upon by Berkeley. To
remove the contradiction, he denied the facts from which the
doctrine had been developed. That is to say, starting from its
results he disproved its premisses. Arguing from the physical
and physiological conditions of perception Descartes had
concluded that only sensations can be directly apprehended by
the mind. Berkeley starts from this conclusion, and virtually
adopts it as an assumption which cannot be questioned, and
which does not call for proof. Since, he contends, we know
only sensations, the assertion that they are due to material
causes is mere hypothesis, and is one for which there may be
no valid grounds. As Descartes himself had already suggested,
there is a second possible method of interpreting the relevant
facts. There may exist an all-powerful Being who produces the
sensations in our minds from moment to moment; and
provided that they are produced in the same order as now, the
whole material world might be annihilated without our being
in the least aware that so important an event had taken place.
Since we can experience only sensations, any hypothesis
which will account for the order of their happening is equally
legitimate. The whole question becomes one of relative
simplicity in the explanation given. The simpler analysis, other
things being equal, must hold the field.
Berkeley reinforces this argument by pointing to the many
embarrassing consequences to which Descartes’ dualism must
lead. We postulate bodies in order to account for the origin of
our sensations, and yet are unable to do so by their means. The
dualistic theory creates more difficulties than it solves, without
a single counter-advantage, save perhaps—so Berkeley argues
—that it seems to harmonise better with the traditional
prejudices of the philosophic consciousness.
If we grant Berkeley his premisses, the main lines of his
argument are fairly cogent, however unconvincing may be his
own positive views. The crux, however, of the Berkeleian
idealism lies almost exclusively in the establishment of its
fundamental assumption, that only ideas (i.e. images) can be
known by the mind. This assumption Berkeley, almost without
argument, takes over from his predecessors. It was currently
accepted, and from it, therefore, he believed that he could
safely argue. It rests, however, upon the assumption of facts
which he himself questions. In rejecting the Cartesian dualism
he casts down the ladder by which alone it is possible to climb
into his position. For save through the facts of physics and
physiology there seems to be no possible method of disproving
the belief of ordinary consciousness, that in perception we
apprehend independent material bodies. And until that belief
can be shown to be false and ungrounded, the Berkeleian
idealism is without support. It cannot establish the
fundamental assumption upon which its entire argument
proceeds. Thus, though Berkeley convincingly demonstrates
the internal incoherence of the doctrine of representative
perception—the inconsistency of its conclusions with the
physical and physiological facts upon which alone it can be
based—he cannot himself solve the problem in answer to
which that doctrine was propounded. His services, like those
of so many other reformers, were such as he did not himself
foresee. In simplifying the problem, he prepared the way for
the more sceptical treatment of its difficult issues by Hume.
At this point, in the philosophy of Hume, the problem of
perception comes into the closest possible connection with the
logical problem, referred to above. The question, how mind
knowing is related to the objects known, is found to depend
upon the question, how in certain crucial cases predicates may
legitimately be referred to their subject. This logical problem
arises in two forms, a narrower and a wider. The narrower
issue concerns only the principle of causality. With what right
do we assert that every event must have a cause? What is the
ground which justifies us in thus predicating of events a causal
character? Obviously, this logical question is fundamental, and
must be answered before we can hope to solve the more
special problem, as to our right to interpret sensations as
effects of material bodies. Hume was the first to emphasise the
vital interconnection of these two lines of enquiry.
The wider issue is the generating problem of Kant’s
Critique: How in a judgment can a predicate be asserted of a
subject in which it is not already involved? In other words,
what is it that in such a case justifies us in connecting the
predicate with the subject? Though this problem was never
directly raised by any pre-Kantian thinker, not even by Hume,
it is absolutely vital to all the pre-Kantian systems. Thus
Descartes’ philosophy is based upon a distinction, nowhere
explicitly drawn but everywhere silently assumed, between
abstract and fruitful ideas. The former contain just so much
content and no more; this content may be explicitly unfolded
in a series of judgments, but no addition is thereby made to our
knowledge. The latter, on the other hand, are endowed with an
extraordinary power of inner growth. To the attentive mind
they disclose a marvellous variety of inner meaning. The chief
problem of scientific method consists, according to Descartes,
in the discovery of these fruitful ideas, and in the separation of
them from the irrelevant accompaniments which prevent them
from unfolding their inner content. Once they are discovered,
the steady progress of knowledge is assured. They are the
springs of knowledge, and from them we have only to follow
down the widening river of truth.
Descartes professed to give a complete list of the possible
fruitful ideas. They are, he claimed, better known than any
other concepts. They lie at the basis of all experience, and no
one can possibly be ignorant of them; though, owing to their
simplicity and omnipresence, their philosophical importance
has been overlooked. When, however, Descartes proceeded to
classify them, he found that while such ideas as space,
triangle, number, motion, contain an inexhaustible content that
is progressively unfolded in the mathematical sciences, those
ideas, on the other hand, through which we conceive mental
existences,—the notions of mind, thought, self—do not by any
means prove fruitful upon attentive enquiry. As Malebranche
later insisted, we can define mind only in negative terms; its
whole meaning is determined through its opposition to the
space-world, which alone is truly known. Though it is the
function of mind to know, it cannot know itself. And when we
remove from our list of ideas those which are not really
fruitful, we find that only mathematical concepts remain.[1764]
They alone have this apparently miraculous property of
inexhaustibly developing before the mind. Scientific
knowledge is limited to the material world; and even there, the
limits of our mathematical insight are the limits of our
knowledge.
Malebranche believed no less thoroughly than Descartes in
the asserted power and fruitfulness of mathematical concepts.
Under the influence of this belief, he developed, as so many
other thinkers from Plato onwards have done, a highly
mystical theory of scientific knowledge. It is a revelation of
eternal truth, and yet is acquired by inner reflection, not
laboriously built up by external observation. It comes by
searching of the mind, not by exploration of the outer world.
But Malebranche was not content, like Descartes, merely to
accept this type of knowledge. He proceeded to account for it
in metaphysical terms. The fruitfulness of mathematical ideas
is due, he claimed, to the fundamental concept of extension in
which they all share. This idea, representing, as it does, an
infinite existence, is too great to be contained within the finite
mind. Through it the mind is widened to the apprehension of
something beyond itself; we know it through consciousness of
its archetype in the mind of God. It is the one point at which
consciousness transcends its subjective limits. Its fruitfulness
is due to, and is the manifestation of, this divine source. The
reason why we are condemned to remain ignorant of
everything beyond the sphere of quantity is that extension
alone holds this unique position. It is the only fruitful idea
which the mind possesses, and other concepts, such as
triangle, circle, or number, are fruitful only in proportion as
they share in it. We can acquire no genuine knowledge even of
the nature of the self. Being ignorant of mind, we cannot
comprehend the self which is one of its modes. It is as if we
sought to comprehend the nature of a triangle, in the absence
of any conception of space. Were we in possession of the
archetypal idea of mind, we should not only be able to deduce
from it those various feelings and emotions which we have
already experienced, and those sensations of the secondary
qualities which we falsely ascribe to the influence of external
objects, but we should also be able to discover by pure
contemplation innumerable other emotions and qualities,
which entirely transcend our present powers. And all of these
would then be experienced in their ideal nature, and not, as
now, merely through feeble and confused feeling. If
mathematicians destroy their bodily health through absorption
in the progressive clarification of the mysteries of space, what
might not happen if the archetypal idea of mind were revealed
to us? Could we attend to the preservation of a body which
would incessantly distract us from the infinite and
overwhelming experiences of our divine destiny?
This romantic conception of the possibilities of rational
science reveals more clearly than any other Cartesian doctrine
the real bearing and perverse character of the rationalistic
preconceptions which underlie the Cartesian systems. The
Cartesians would fain make rational science, conceived on the
analogy of the mathematical disciplines, coextensive with the
entire realm of the real. This grotesque enterprise is conceived
as abstractly possible even by so cautious a thinker as John
Locke. His reason for condemning the physical sciences as
logically imperfect is that they fail to conform to this
rationalistic ideal. Hence those sentences which sound so
strangely in the mouth of Locke, the sensationalist.
“It is the contemplation of our abstract ideas that alone is
able to afford us general knowledge.”[1765] “The true method
of advancing knowledge is by considering our abstract
ideas.”[1766] ”[Did we know the real essence of gold] it would
be no more necessary that gold should exist, and that we
should make experiments upon it, than it is necessary for the
knowing of the properties of a triangle, that a triangle should
exist in any matter: the idea in our minds would serve for the
one as well as for the other.”[1767] “In the knowledge of bodies,
we must be content to glean what we can from particular
experiments, since we cannot, from a discovery of their real
essences, grasp at a time whole sheaves, and in bundles
comprehend the nature and the properties of whole species
together.”
Locke’s empirical doctrine of knowledge is thus based upon
a rationalistic theory of the real. It is not, he holds, the
constitution of reality, but the de facto limitations of our
human faculties which make empirical induction the only
practicable mode of discovery in natural science. Indeed,
Locke gives more extreme expression than even Descartes
does, to the mystically conceived mathematical method. Being
ignorant of mathematics, and not over well-informed even in
the physical sciences, Locke was not checked by any too close
acquaintance with the real character and necessary limits of
this method; and he accordingly makes statements in that
unqualified fashion which seldom fails to betray the writer
who is expounding views which he has not developed for
himself by first-hand study of the relevant facts.
But though the unique character of mathematical knowledge
thus forced itself upon the attention of all the Cartesian
thinkers, and in the above manner led even the most level-
headed of Descartes’ successors to dream strange dreams, no
real attempt was made (save in the neglected writings of
Leibniz) to examine, in a sober spirit, the grounds and
conditions of its possibility. In the English School, Locke’s
eulogy of abstract ideas served only to drive his immediate
successors to an opposite extreme. Both Berkeley and Hume
attempted to explain away, in an impossible manner, those
fundamental differences, which, beyond all questioning,
profoundly differentiate mathematical from empirical
judgments.[1768] It is not surprising that Kant, who had no
direct acquaintance with Hume’s Treatise, should have
asserted that had Hume realised the bearing of his main
teaching upon the theory of mathematical science, he would
have hesitated to draw his sceptical conclusions. Such,
however, was not the case. Hume’s theory of mathematical
reasoning undoubtedly forms the least satisfactory part of his
philosophy. He did, however, perceive the general bearing of
his central teaching. It was in large degree his ignorance of the
mathematical disciplines that concealed from him the thorough
unsatisfactoriness of his general position, and which prevented
him from formulating the logical problem in its full scope—
the problem, namely, how judgments which make additions to
our previous knowledge, and yet do not rest upon mere
sensation, are possible. He treated it only as it presents itself in
those judgments which involve the concept of causality.[1769]
But this analysis of causal judgments awoke Kant from his
dogmatic slumber, and so ultimately led to the raising of the
logical problem in its widest form:—how synthetic a priori
judgments, whether mathematical, physical, or metaphysical,
are possible.
Hume discussed the causal problem both in regard to the
general principle of causality and in its bearing upon our
particular judgments of causal relation. The problems
concerned in these two discussions are essentially distinct. The
first involves immensely wider issues, and so far as can be
judged from the existing circumstantial evidence,[1770] it was
this first discussion, not as has been so often assumed by
Kant’s commentators the second and more limited problem,
which exercised so profound an influence upon Kant at the
turning-point of his speculations. In stating it, it will be best to
take Hume’s own words.
 “To begin with the first question concerning the necessity of
a cause: ‘Tis a general maxim in philosophy, that whatever
begins to exist, must have a cause of existence. This is
commonly taken for granted in all reasonings, without any
proof given or demanded. ‘Tis supposed to be founded on
intuition, and to be one of those maxims, which though they
may be deny’d with the lips, ‘tis impossible for men in their
hearts really to doubt of. But if we examine this maxim by the
idea of knowledge above explain’d we shall discover in it no
mark of any such intuitive certainty; but on the contrary shall
find, that ‘tis of a nature quite foreign to that species of
conviction.”[1771]
The principle that every event must have a cause, is neither
intuitively nor demonstratively certain. So far from there
existing a necessary connection between the idea of an event
as something happening in time and the idea of a cause, no
connection of any kind is discoverable by us. We can conceive
an object to be non-existent at this moment, and existent the
next, without requiring to conjoin with it the altogether
different idea of a productive source.
This had been implicitly recognised by those few
philosophers who had attempted to give demonstrations of the
principle. By so doing, however, they only reinforce Hume’s
contention that it possesses no rational basis. When Hobbes
argues that as all the points of time and place in which we can
suppose an object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal,
there must be some cause determining an event to happen at
one moment rather than at another, he is assuming the very
principle which he professes to prove. There is no greater
difficulty in supposing the time and place to be fixed without a
cause, than in supposing the existence to be so determined. If
the denial of a cause is not intuitively absurd in the one case, it
cannot be so in the other. If the first demands a proof, so
likewise must the second. Similarly with the arguments
advanced by Locke and Clarke. Locke argues that if anything
is produced without a cause, it is produced by nothing, and
that that is impossible, since nothing can never be a cause any
more than it can be something, or equal to two right angles.
Clarke’s contention that if anything were without a cause, it
would produce itself, i.e. exist before it existed, is of the same
character. These arguments assume the only point which is in
question.
“When we exclude all causes we really do exclude them,
and neither suppose nothing nor the object itself to be the
causes of the existence, and consequently can draw no
argument from the absurdity of these suppositions to prove the
absurdity of that exclusion.”[1772]
The remaining argument, that every effect must have a
cause, since this is implied in the very idea of an effect, is
“still more frivolous.”
“Every effect necessarily presupposes a cause; effect being
a relative term, of which cause is the correlative. But this does
not prove that every being must be preceded by a cause; no
more than it follows, because every husband must have a wife,
that therefore every man must be married.”[1773]
The far-reaching conclusion, that the principle of causality
has no possible rational basis, Hume extends and reinforces
through his other doctrines, viz. that synthetic reason[1774] is
merely generalised belief, and that belief is in all cases due to
the ultimate instincts and propensities which de facto
constitute our human nature. The synthetic principles which lie
at the basis of our experience are non-rational in character.
Each is due to a ‘blind and powerful instinct,’ which,
demanding no evidence, and ignoring theoretical inconsistency
for the sake of practical convenience, necessitates belief.
“Nature by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity has
determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel.”[1775]
“All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which
no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is
able either to produce or to prevent.”[1776]
Reason is “nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible
instinct in our souls.”[1777] It justifies itself by its practical
uses, but can afford no standard to which objective reality
must conform.
It is from this point of view that Hume states his answer to
the problem of perception. Our natural belief in the
permanence and identity of objects, as expressed through the
principle of substance and attribute, leads us to interpret the
objects of sense-perception as independent realities. We
interpret our subjective sensations as being qualities of
independent substances. Our other natural belief, in the
dynamical interdependence of events, as expressed through the
principle of causality, leads, however, to the opposite
conclusion, that the known objects are merely mental. For by
it we are constrained to interpret sensations, not as objective
qualities, but only as subjective effects, expressive of the
reactions of our psycho-physical organism. The Cartesian
problems owe their origin to the mistaken attempt to
harmonise, in a theoretical fashion, these two conflicting
principles. The conflict is inevitable and the antinomy is
insoluble, so long as the two principles are regarded as
objectively valid. The only satisfactory solution comes
through recognition that reason is unable to account, save in
reference to practical ends, even for its own inevitable
demands. The principle of substance and attribute and the
principle of causality co-operate in rendering possible such
organisation of our sense-experience as is required for
practical life. But when we carry this organisation further than
practical life itself demands, the two principles at once
conflict.
Kant shows no interest in this constructive part of Hume’s
philosophy; and must, indeed, have been almost entirely
ignorant of it, since it finds only very imperfect expression in
the Enquiry, and is ignored in Beattie’s Nature of Truth.
Accordingly, Kant does not regard Hume as offering a positive
explanation of knowledge, but rather as representing the point
of view of thoroughgoing scepticism. But even had he been
acquainted at first hand with Hume’s Treatise, he would
undoubtedly have felt little sympathy with Hume’s naturalistic
view of the function of reason. His training in the
mathematical sciences would have enabled him to detect the
inadequacy of Hume’s treatment of mathematical knowledge,
and his strong moral convictions would have led him to rebel
against the naturalistic assumptions which underlie Hume’s
entire position. The Berkeley-Hume comedy is thus repeated
with reversed rôles. Just as Berkeley’s anti-materialistic
philosophy was mainly influential as a step towards the
naturalism of Hume, and as such still survives in the
philosophies of John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, Huxley,
Mach and Karl Pearson, so in turn Hume’s anti-metaphysical
theory of knowledge was destined to be one of the chief
contributory sources of the German speculative movement.
We may now turn to Hume’s treatment of the narrower
problem—that of justifying our particular causal judgments.
Hume’s attitude towards this question is predetermined by the
more fundamental argument, above stated, which precedes it
in the Treatise, but which is entirely omitted from the
corresponding chapters of the Enquiry. As the general
principle of causality is of an irrational character, the same
must be true of those particular judgments which are based
upon it. Much of Hume’s argument on this question is, indeed,
merely a restatement of what had already been pointed out by
his predecessors. There is no necessary connection
discoverable between any cause and its effect. This is
especially evident as regards the connection between brain
states and mental experiences. No explanation can be given
why a motion in the brain should produce sensations in the
mind, or why a mental resolution should produce movements
in the body. Such sequences may be empirically verified; they
cannot be rationally understood. That this likewise holds,
though in less obvious fashion, of the causal interrelations of
material bodies, had been emphasised by Geulincx,
Malebranche, Locke, and Berkeley. The fact that one billiard
ball should communicate motion to another by impact is, when
examined, found to be no less incomprehensible than the
interaction of mind and body. Hume, in the following passage,
is only reinforcing this admitted fact, in terms of his own
philosophy.
“We fancy that were we brought on a sudden into this world
we could at first have inferred that one billiard ball would
communicate motion to another upon impulse; and that we
needed not to have waited for the event, in order to pronounce
with certainty upon it. Such is the influence of custom, that,
where it is strongest, it not only covers our natural ignorance,
but even conceals itself, and seems not to take place merely
because it is found in the highest degree.”[1778]
Nor are we conscious of any causal power within the self.
When Berkeley claims that mind has the faculty of producing
images at will, he is really ascribing to it creative agency. And
such creation, as Malebranche had already pointed out, is not
even conceivable.
“I deny that my will produces in me my ideas, for I cannot
even conceive how it could produce them, since my will, not
being able to act or will without knowledge, presupposes my
ideas and does not make them.”[1779] “Is there not here,”
Hume asks, “either in a spiritual or material substance, or both,
some secret mechanism or structure of parts, upon which the
effect depends, and which, being entirely unknown to us,
renders the power or energy of the will equally unknown and
incomprehensible?”[1780]
But the fact that Hume thus restates conclusions already
emphasised by his predecessors will not justify us in
contending (as certain historians of philosophy seem inclined
to do) that in his treatment of the causal problem he failed to
make any important advance upon the teaching of the
Occasionalists. Hume was the first to perceive the essential
falsity of the Cartesian, rationalistic view of the causal nexus.
For Descartes, an effect is that which can be deduced with
logical necessity from the concept of its cause. The
Occasionalists similarly argued that because natural events can
never be deduced from one another they must in all cases be
due to supernatural agency; like Descartes, they one and all
failed to comprehend that since by an effect we mean that
which follows in time upon its cause, and since, therefore, the
principle of causality is the law of change, the nature of
causality cannot be expressed in logical terms. Hume was the
first to appreciate the significance of this fundamental fact;
and an entirely new set of problems at once came into view. If
causal connection is not, as previous thinkers had believed,
logical in character, if it does not signify logical dependence of
the so-called effect upon its cause, its true connotation must lie
elsewhere; and until this has been traced to its hidden source,
any attempted solution of metaphysical problems is certain to
involve many false assumptions. The answer that is given to
the problem of the origin and content of the causal concept
must determine our interpretation alike of sense-experience
and of pure thought.
The problem presents on examination, however, a most
paradoxical aspect. As Hume has already shown, every effect
is an event distinct from its cause, and there is never any
connection, beyond that of mere sequence, discoverable
between them. We observe only sequence; we assert necessary
connection. What, then, is in our minds when this latter
assertion is made? And how, if the notion of necessitated
connection cannot be gained through observation of the
external events, is it acquired by us? Hume again propounds a
naturalistic solution. Causation, i.e. necessitated sequence in
time, is not in any sense a conception; it is not a
comprehended relation between events, but a misunderstood
feeling in our minds. We cannot form any, even the most
remote, conception of how one event can produce another.
Neither imagination nor pure thought, however freely they
may act, are capable of inventing any such notion. But nature,
by the manner in which it has constituted our minds, deludes
us into the belief that we are in actual possession of this idea.
The repeated sequence of events, in fixed order, generates in
us the feeling of a tendency to pass from the perception or idea
of the one to the idea of the other. This feeling, thus generated
by custom, and often in somewhat confused fashion combined
with the feeling of ‘animal nisus,’ which is experienced in
bodily effort, is mistaken by the mind for a definite concept of
force, causality, necessary connection. As mere feeling it can
afford no insight into the relation holding between events, and
as merely subjective can justify no inference in regard to that
relation. The terms force, causality, necessitated sequence in
time, have a practical value, as names for our instinctive,
natural expectations; but when employed as instruments for
the theoretical interpretation of experience, they lead us off on
a false trail.
This is one of the fundamental points upon which Hume
reveals a deeper speculative insight than either Malebranche,
Geulincx, or Locke. Though these latter insist upon our
ignorance of the relation holding between events, they still
assume that causation and natural necessity are concepts
which have a quite intelligible meaning; and in consequence
they fail to draw the all-important conclusion, that the general
principle of causality has neither intuitive nor demonstrative
validity. For that is the revolutionary outcome of Hume’s
analysis of the notion of necessitated connection. The principle
of causality is a synthetic judgment in which no connection is
discoverable between its subject and its predicate. That is the
reason why it is neither self-evident nor capable of being
established upon more ultimate grounds.
As has already been stated, the wider problem concerning
the principle of causality is developed only in the Treatise; the
problem regarding the concept of causality is discussed both in
the Treatise and in the Enquiry. An appreciation of the wider
problem is required, however, in order to set this second
problem in its true light, for it is only through its connection
with the wider issue that Hume’s reduction of the concept of
causality to a merely instinctive, non-rational expectation
acquires its full significance. Hume’s analysis then amounts,
as Kant was the first to realise, to an attack upon the objective
validity of all constructive thinking. Not only rationalism, but
even such metaphysics as may claim to base its conclusions
upon the teaching of experience, is thereby rendered altogether
impossible. The issue is crucial, and must be honestly faced,
before metaphysical conclusions, no matter what their specific
character may be, whether a priori or empirical, can
legitimately be drawn. If we may not assert that an event must
have some cause, even the right to enquire for a cause must
first be justified. And if so fundamental a principle as that of
causality is not self-evident, are there any principles which can
make this claim?
The account which we have so far given of Hume’s
argument covers only that part of it which is directed against
the rationalist position, and which was therefore so influential
in turning Kant on to the line of his Critical speculations. But
Hume attacked with equal vigour the empiricist standpoint;
and as this aspect of his teaching, constituting as it did an
integral part of Kant’s own philosophy, must undoubtedly have
helped to confirm Kant in his early rationalist convictions, we
may profitably dwell upon it at some length. In opposition to
the empiricists, Hume argues that experience is incapable of
justifying any inference in regard to matters of fact. It cannot
serve as a basis from which we can inductively extend our
knowledge of facts beyond what the senses and memory
reveal. Inductive inference, when so employed, necessarily
involves a petitio principii; we assume the very point we
profess to have proved.
The argument by which Hume establishes this important
contention is as follows. All inductive reasoning from
experience presupposes the validity of belief in causal
connection. For when we have no knowledge of causes, we
have no justification for asserting the continuance of
uniformities. Now it has been shown that we have no
experience of any necessary relation between so-called causes
and their effects. The most that experience can supply are
sequences which repeat themselves. In regarding the
sequences as causal, and so as universally constant, we make
an assertion for which experience gives no support, and to
which no amount of repeated experience, recalled in memory,
can add one jot of real evidence. To argue that because the
sequences have remained constant in a great number of
repeated experiences, they are therefore more likely to remain
constant, is to assume that constancy in the past is a ground for
inferring it in the future; and that is the very point which
demands proof. In drawing the conclusion we virtually assume
that there is a necessary connection, i.e. an absolutely constant
relation, between events. But since no single experience of
causal sequence affords ground for inferring that the sequence
will continue in the future, no number of repeated experiences,
recalled in memory, can contribute to the strengthening of the
inference. It is meaningless to talk even of likelihood or
probability. The fact that the sun has without a single known
exception arisen each day in the past does not (if we accept the
argument disproving all knowledge of necessary connection)
constitute proof that it will rise to-morrow.
“None but a fool or a madman will be unaffected in his
expectations or natural beliefs by this constancy, but he is no
philosopher who accepts this as in the nature of
evidence.”[1781]
Since, for all that we know to the contrary, bodies may
change their nature and mode of action at any moment, it is
vain to pretend that we are scientifically assured of the future
because of the past.
“My practice, you say, refutes my doubts.[1782] But you
mistake the purport of my question. As an agent, I am quite
satisfied in the point; but as a philosopher, who has some share
of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the
foundation of this inference. No reading, no enquiry has yet
been able to remove my difficulty or give me satisfaction in a
matter of such importance. Can I do better than propose the
difficulty to the public, even though, perhaps, I have small
hopes of obtaining a solution? We shall at least, by this means,
be sensible of our ignorance, if we do not augment our
knowledge.”[1783]
Kant was the first, after thirty years, to take up this
challenge. Experience is no source of evidence until the causal
postulate has been independently proved. Only if the principle
of causality can be established prior to all specific experience,
only if we can predetermine experience as necessarily
conforming to it, are empirical arguments valid at all. Hume’s
enquiry thus directly leads to the later, no less than to the
earlier form of Kant’s epoch-making question.[1784] In its
earlier formulation it referred only to a priori judgments; in its
wider application it was found to arise with equal cogency in
connection with empirical judgments. And as thus extended, it
generated the problem: How is sense-experience, regarded as a
form of knowledge, possible at all?[1785] By showing that the
principle of causality has neither intuitive nor demonstrative
validity, Hume cuts the ground from under the rationalists; by
showing that sense-experience cannot by itself yield
conclusions which are objectively valid, he at the same time
destroys the empiricist position. In this latter contention Kant
stands in complete agreement with Hume. That the sensuously
given is incapable of grounding even probable inferences, is a
fundamental presupposition (never discussed, but always
explicitly assumed) of the Critical philosophy. It was by
challenging the sufficiency of Hume’s other line of argument,
that which is directed against the rationalists, that Kant
discovered a way of escape from the sceptical dilemma. The
conditions of experience can be proved by a transcendental
method, which, though a priori in character, does not lie open
to Hume’s sceptical objections. Each single experience
involves rational principles, and consequently even a single
empirical observation may suffice to justify an inductive
inference. Experience conforms to the demands of pure a
priori thought; and can legitimately be construed in
accordance with them.
We may now pass to the philosophy in which Kant was
educated. It gave to his thinking that rationalist trend, to
which, in spite of all counter-influences, he never ceased to
remain true.[1786] It also contributed to his philosophy several
of its constructive principles. Only two rationalist systems
need be considered, those of Leibniz and of Wolff. Kant, by
his own admission,[1787] had been baffled in his attempts
(probably not very persevering) to master Spinoza’s
philosophy. It was with Wolff’s system that he was most
familiar; but both directly and indirectly, both in his early
years and in the ’seventies, the incomparably deeper teaching
of Leibniz must have exercised upon him a profoundly
formative influence. In defining the points of agreement and of
difference between Hume and Leibniz,[1788] we have already
outlined Leibniz’s general view of the nature and powers of
pure thought, and may therefore at once proceed to the
relevant detail of his main tenets.
Upon two fundamental points Leibniz stands in opposition
to Spinoza. He seeks to maintain the reality of the contingent
or accidental. These terms are indeed, as he conceives them,
synonymous with the actual. Necessity rules only in the sphere
of the possible. Contingency or freedom is the differentiating
characteristic of the real. This point of view is bound up with
his second contention, namely, that the real is a kingdom of
ends. It is through divine choice of the best among the possible
worlds that the actual present order has arisen. There are thus
two principles which determine the real: the principle of
contradiction which legislates with absolute universality, and
the principle of the best, or, otherwise formulated, of sufficient
reason, which differentiates reality from truth, limiting
thought, in order that, without violating logic, it may freely
satisfy the moral needs. Leibniz thus vindicates against
Spinoza the reality of freedom and the existence of ends.
Though Leibniz agrees with Spinoza that the
philosophically perfect method would be to start from an
adequate concept of the Divine Being, and to deduce from His
attributes the whole nature of finite reality, he regards our
concept of God as being too imperfect to allow of such
procedure. We are compelled to resort to experience, and by
analysis to search out the various concepts which it involves.
By the study of these concepts and their interrelations, we
determine, in obedience to the law of contradiction, the nature
of the possible. The real, in contradistinction from the
possible, involves, however, the notion of ends. The existence
of these ends can never be determined by logical, but only by
moral considerations. The chief problem of philosophical
method is, therefore, to discover the exact relation in which
the logical and the teleological, the necessary and the
contingent, stand to one another.
The absence of contradiction is in itself a sufficient
guarantee of possibility, i.e. even of the possibility of real
existence. How very far Leibniz is willing to go on this line is
shown by his acceptance of the ontological argument. The
whole weight of his system rests, indeed, upon this proof. The
notion of God is, he maintains, the sole concept which can
determine itself in a purely logical manner not only as possible
but also as real. If we are to avoid violating the principle of
contradiction, the Ens perfectissimum must be regarded as
possessing the perfection of real existence. And since God is
perfect in moral as in all other attributes, His actions must be
in conformity with moral demands. In creating the natural
order God must therefore have chosen that combination of
possibilities which constitutes the best of all possible worlds.
By means of this conceptual bridge we are enabled to pass by
pure a priori thinking from the logically possible to the
factually real.
 Pure logical thinking is thus an instrument whereby ultimate
reality can be defined in a valid manner. Pure thought is
speculative and metaphysical in its very essence. It uncovers
to us what no experience can reveal, the wider universe which
exists eternally in the mind of God. Every concept (whether
mathematical, dynamical, or moral), provided only that it is
not self-contradictory, is an eternal essence, with the intrinsic
nature of which even God must reckon in the creation of
things. When, therefore, we are determining the unchanging
nature of the eternally possible, there is no necessary reference
to Divine existence. The purely logical criterion suffices as a
test of truth. Every judgment which is made in regard to such
concepts must express only what their content involves. All
such judgments must be analytic in order to be true.
When, however, we proceed from the possible to the real,
that is to say, from the necessary to the contingent, the logical
test is no longer sufficient; and only by appeal to the second
principle, that of sufficient reason, can judgments about reality
be logically justified. Whether or not the principle of sufficient
reason is deducible, as Wolff sought to maintain, from the
principle of contradiction, is a point of quite secondary
importance. That is a question which does not deserve the
emphasis which has been laid upon it. What is chiefly
important is that for Leibniz, as for Wolff, both principles are
principles of analysis. The principle of sufficient reason is not
an instrument for determining necessary relations between
independent substances. The sufficient ground of a valid
predicate must in all cases be found in the concept of the
subject to which it is referred. The difference between the two
principles lies elsewhere, namely, in the character of the
connection established between subject and predicate. In the
one case the denial of the proposition involves a direct self-
contradiction. In the other the opposite of the judgment is
perfectly conceivable; our reason for asserting it is a moral
(employing the term in the eighteenth-century sense), not a
logical ground. The subject is so constituted, that in the choice
of ends, in pursuit of the good, it must by its very nature so
behave. The principle of sufficient reason, which represents in
our finite knowledge the divine principle of the best, compels
us to recognise the predicate as involved in the subject—as
involved through a ground which inclines without
necessitating. Often the analysis cannot be carried sufficiently
far to enable us thus to transform a judgment empirically given
into one which is adequately grounded. None the less, in
recognising it as true, we postulate that the predicate is related
to the subject in this way. There are not for Leibniz two
methods of establishing truth, sense-perception to reveal
contingent fact, and general reasoning to establish necessary
truth. A proposition can be accepted as true only in so far as
we can at least postulate, through absence of contradiction and
through sufficient reason, its analytic character. It must express
some form of identity. The proposition, Caesar crossed the
Rubicon, is given us as historical fact. The more complete our
knowledge of Caesar and of his time, the further we can carry
the analysis; and that analysis if completely executed would
displace the merely factual validity of the judgment by insight
into its metaphysical truth. Thus experience, with its assertions
of the here and now about particulars inexhaustibly concrete,
sets to rational science an inexhaustible task. We can proceed
in our analysis indefinitely, pushing out the frontiers of
thought further and further into the empirical realm. Only by
the Divine Mind can the task be completed, and all things seen
as ordered in complete obedience to the two principles of
thought.
Leibniz, in propounding this view, develops a genuinely
original conception of the relation holding between appearance
and reality. Only monads, that is, spiritual beings, exist. Apart
from the representative activity of the monads there are no
such existences as space and time, as matter and motion. The
mathematical and physical sciences, in their present forms,
therefore, cannot be interpreted as revealing absolute
existences. But, if ideally developed, they would emancipate
themselves from mechanical and sensuous notions; and would
consist of a body of truths, which, as thus perfected, would be
discovered to constitute the very being of thought. Pure
thought or reason consists in the apprehension of such truths.
To discover and to prove them thought does not require to
issue out beyond itself. It creates this conceptual world in the
very act of apprehending it; and as this realm of truth thus
expresses the necessary character of all thought, whether
divine or human, it is universal and unchanging. Each mind
apprehends the same eternal truth; but owing to imperfection
each finite being apprehends it with some degree of obscurity
and confusion, fragmentarily, in terms of sense, and so falls
prey to the illusion that the self stands in mechanical relations
to a spatial and temporal world of matter and motion.
Leibniz supports this doctrine by his theory of sense-
experience as originating spontaneously from within the
individual mind. Thereby he is only repeating that pure
thought generates its whole content from within itself. Sense-
experience, in its intrinsic nature, is nothing but pure thought.
Such thought, owing to the inexhaustible wealth of its
conceptual significance, so confuses the mind which thus
generates it, that only by prolonged analysis can larger and
larger portions of it be construed into the conceptual
judgments which have all along constituted its sole content.
And in the process, space, time, and motion lose all sensuous
character, appearing in their true nature as orders of relation
which can be adequately apprehended only in conceptual
terms. They remain absolutely real as objects of thought,
though as sensible existences they are reduced to the level of
mere appearance. Such is the view of thought which is
unfolded in Leibniz’s writings, in startling contrast to the
naturalistic teaching of his Scotch antagonist.
As already indicated, Kant’s first-hand knowledge of
Leibniz’s teaching was very limited. He was acquainted with it
chiefly through the inadequate channel of Wolff’s somewhat
commonplace exposition of its principles. But even from such
a source he could derive what was most essential, namely,
Leibniz’s view of thought as absolute in its powers and
unlimited in its claims. How closely Wolff holds to the main
tenet of Leibniz’s system appears from his definition of
philosophy as “the science of possible things, so far as they are
possible.” He thus retains, though without the deeper
suggestiveness of Leibniz’s speculative insight, the view that
thought precedes reality and legislates for it. By the possible is
not meant the existentially or psychologically possible, but the
conceptually necessary, that which, prior to all existence, has
objective validity, sharing in the universal and necessary
character of thought itself.
As Riehl has very justly pointed out,[1789] Wolff’s
philosophy had, prior even to the period of Kant’s earliest
writings, been displaced by empirical, psychological enquiries
and by eclectic, popular philosophy. Owing to the prevailing
lack of thoroughness in philosophical thinking,
“Problemlosigkeit” characterised the whole period. The two
exclusively alternative views of the function of thought stood
alongside one another within each of the competing systems,
quite unreconciled and in their mutual conflict absolutely
destructive of all real consistency and thoroughness of
thought. It was Kant who restored rationalism to its rightful
place. He reinvigorated the flaccid tone of his day by adopting
in his writings, both early and late, the strict method of rational
science, and by insisting that the really crucial issues be boldly
faced. In essentials Kant holds to Wolff’s definition of
philosophy as “the science of possible things, so far as they are
possible.” As I have just remarked, the possible is taken in an
objective sense, and the definition consequently gives
expression to the view of philosophy upon which Kant so
frequently insists, as lying wholly in the sphere of pure a
priori thought. Its function is to determine prior to specific
experience what experience must be; and obviously that is
only possible by means of an a priori, purely conceptual
method. His Critique, as its title indicates, is a criticism of
pure reason by pure reason. Nothing which escapes definition
through pure a priori thinking can come within its sphere. The
problem of the “possibility of experience” is the problem of
discovering the conditions which necessarily determine
experience to be what it is. Kant, of course, radically
transforms the whole problem, in method of treatment as well
as in results, when in defining the subject-matter of enquiry he
substitutes experience for things absolutely existent. This
modification is primarily due to the influence of Hume. But
the constant occurrence in Kant’s philosophy of the term
“possibility” marks his continued belief in the Idealist view of
thought. Though pure thought never by itself amounts to
knowledge—therein Kant departs from the extreme rationalist
position—only through it is any knowledge, empirical or a
priori, possible at all. Philosophy, in order to exist, must be a
system of a priori rational principles. Nothing empirical or
hypothetical can find any place in it.[1790] Yet at the same time
it is the system of the a priori conditions only of experience,
not of ultimate reality. Such is the twofold relation of
agreement and difference in which Kant stands to his
rationalist predecessors.
 INDEX
A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V,
W, Z
Absolute. See Unconditioned
Absolutist aspect of human consciousness, xxx-xxxiii, liii, liv-
lv, lvi-lvii, 270-1, 274, 282, 285-7, 331 n., 423 n.
Actuality, 391 ff.
Adamson, R., 38, 311, 314
Addison, 156
Adickes, E., xx-xxi, 76, 166, 200, 215 n., 233 n., 234, 304,
363, 376, 397, 406 n., 423, 439-40, 441, 464 n., 466, 479, 579
n., 601 n.
Affinity, objective, 224, 253-7, 266-7
“Als ob” doctrine, 524, 553 ff.
Analogy, Kant’s use of the term, 356-8
Analytic and synthetic judgment, xxv ff., xxxv-xxxvi, xxxviii,
28 ff., 37 ff., 59-60, 65;
existential judgment, 530-1;
distinction perhaps suggested by examination of ontological
argument, 531.
See Judgment
Analytic and synthetic methods, 44 ff., 111, 117 n.
See Transcendental method
Analytic, distinguished from the Dialectic, 172-4, 438-42
Anthropologie, Kant’s, 81 n., 100 n.
Antinomies, lii, liii, 432, 478 ff., 519-20
Appearance, Kant’s views regarding, xxxvii, xlvi-xlvii, liii-liv,
18-22, 83-5, 120-2, 147 ff., 205 ff., 215 ff., 279-284, 293 ff.,
301 ff., 312 ff., 321 ff., 330-1, 372-3, 404 ff., 427 ff.;
criticism of Leibnizian view of, 143-6;
criticism of Locke’s view of, 146-7;
ideality of, 147 ff.;
outer and inner appearances reduce to relations, 147-8;
appearance and illusion, 148 ff.;
causal efficacy of appearances, 216, 217-18, 351, 373-4;
distinction between appearance and reality based not on
categories of understanding but on Ideas of Reason, liii-liv,
217-18, 326 n., 331, 390-1, 414-17, 426-31, 473-7, 511-12,
519-21, 541-2, 558-61
Apperception, and memory, 251;
in what sense original, xxxiv, xliii-xlv, l-lii, 260-3, 461-2,
472-7;
transcendental unity of, l-lii, 207 ff., 212, 250-3, 260-3, 270,
277-9, 322 ff., 455 ff., 473-7;
absent from the animal mind, xlvii-l;
objective unity of, 270-1, 274, 282, 285-7;
and inner sense, 295-8, 321 ff., 512 n.
See Self
A priori, Kant’s views regarding the, xxvi-xxviii, xxxiii-xxxvi,
lii-lv, 1-2, 39-40, 42, 54 ff.;
problem of a priori synthetic judgment, 26 ff., 39-40, 43 ff.;
its validity merely de facto, xxxv-xxxvi, xliv, 30, 57, 118,
142, 185-6, 257-9, 291, 391-2, 393, 400-1, 411;
the faculties in which it originates, xliii-xlv, l-lii, 1-2, 50-1,
237-8, 263 ff., 391-2, 393, 398, 563-5;
semi-Critical view of the, 188-9, 232, 263-4.
See Understanding, Reason
Aquinas, 73
Architectonic, xxii, 100, 184, 332-6, 340-1, 342, 343, 345,
347, 390, 392, 394, 419 ff., 434, 437, 440, 439-40, 454, 463,
464, 474, 479-80, 496, 498, 542, 563, 579
Aristotle, xlv, 196, 198, 390. See Logic
Arithmetic, 32, 40-1, 65-6, 128 ff., 337-8, 347, 566
Association, and judgment, xxxiv-xxxv, xlviii-l;
and consciousness, xli-xlii; rests on objective affinity, 253-
7, 266-7
Attributive judgment, Kant’s exclusive emphasis upon, 37-8,
180-1, 197
Augustine, St., 73, 110, 565
Avenarius, 587 n.
Axioms, Kant’s view of, 50, 127, 348, 565-7

Bacon, Francis, 4-5, 74

Bain, A., 86 n.
Balfour, A. J., 314
Baumgarten, 192-3, 441, 522
Beantwortung der Frage: Was heisst Aufklärung? Kant’s, 15
Beattie, James, xxviii-xxix, xxxi n., 207, 582, 595, 600 n.
Beck, 80
Belief, Kant’s view of, lv ff., 576-7
Beloselsky, Fürst von, xlix
Bergson, 86, 142, 359-60 n., 587 n.
Berkeley, xxxii, xl, xlvi, 112, 153-4, 155 ff., 272, 298 ff., 587-
8, 592, 595, 596
Borowski, 63, 156
Bosanquet, B., 36, 181, 197
Bradley, F. G., 36, 181, 197
Bruno, Giordano, 74
Bülffinger, 155

Caird, E., xx, 1 n., 23, 51, 102 n., 114, 117, 183, 194, 195,
262, 296, 314, 328, 340, 357 n., 359 n., 373, 378, 399, 462,
468
Campanella, 74
Canon, 72, 169-70, 174, 332-3, 438, 569 ff.
Cassirer, E., 132
Categorical imperative, xxxvi, lvi-lviii, 571 ff.
Categories, distinction from generic concept, 178 ff.;
de facto nature of the, xxxv-xxxvi, xxxviii, xliv, 30, 57,
185-6, 257-8, 291, 391-2, 398, 400-1, 411;
definition of the, 195-6, 198, 339-42, 404-5;
semi-Critical view of the, 188-9, 217-18, 232, 263-4;
merely logical forms, xxxv-xxxvi, xxxviii, 30 n., 32, 39,
108, 176 ff., 185-6, 191, 195-196, 257-8, 290-1, 325 ff., 339-
40, 398, 404-5, 409-10, 413-14, 467;
valid only for appearances, 259-60;
and schemata, 195-6, 311, 333, 339-342, 467 n.;
metaphysical deduction of the, 183 ff., 192 ff., 287-8;
transcendental deduction of the, 234 ff., 287-8;
all categories involved in every act of consciousness, xli-
xlv, liii-liv, 199-200, 356, 368, 370, 377, 387-91;
have wider scope than the forms of sense, lv-lvi, 20, 25,
290-1, 331, 404 ff.;
restricted by time and space, 342, 357;
in relation to outer and inner experience, 311-12;
how far predicable of the ‘I think,’ 325 ff.;
how far applicable to sensations, desires, etc., xlvi n., 275-6,
279 ff., 312 ff., 384-5, 476;
proof of specific, 242-3, 252-3, 258-9, 287-8, 333, 343-4;
determinate and indeterminate application of the, 325 ff.,
405 ff.;
may be intrinsically inapplicable to things in themselves,
290, 409-10, 413-14;
 category of existence, 322, 415 n.;
category of totality and Idea of the unconditioned, 199-200,
433, 451, 480, 529;
mathematical and dynamical, 198, 345-7, 510-11.
See A priori, Understanding
Catharticon, 169, 174
Causality, Kant influenced by Hume’s teaching regarding, xxv
ff., 61-4, 364 ff., 593-600;
Kant’s treatment of the principle of, 363 ff.;
Kant’s subjectivist and phenomenalist views of, 216, 217-
18, 318-21, 351, 373-4;
sensations, feelings, etc. subject to principle of, xlvi n., 275,
279-82, 312, 384-5;
category of, involved in consciousness of time, liii-liv, 365
ff., 377 ff., 387;
and freedom, 492 ff.
See Hume
Clarke, 140, 539, 594
Cohen, H., 51, 102 n., 195, 262, 340
Coherence theory of truth, xxxvi-xxxix, 36 ff., 173 n.;
criterion of truth bound up with the Ideas of Reason, 217-
18, 326 n., 331, 390-1, 414-17, 426-31, 473-7, 511-12, 519-21,
541-2, 558-61
Concept, Kant’s generic or class view of the, 99-100, 105-7,
118-19, 126, 132-3, 177-84, 338-9, 370-1, 377-84, 390-1;
intuition and conception, 38-42, 93-4, 105-9, 118-20, 126,
128-134, 165-6, 167-8, 194, 370, 390-1, 564-6;
construction of concepts, 41, 131-3, 338-9, 418 ff., 564-6;
concepts and images, 337-9;
Kant’s doctrine of the pure concept, xxxix, 394-400, 418 ff.
See Understanding
Concerning the Advances, made, etc.
See Fortschritte
Consciousness, Kant’s views regarding, xxxiv-xxxv, xxxix-
xlv, xliii-xlvii, l-lii;
and the animal mind, xlvii-l;
may be a resultant, xxxiv, xliii-xlv, l-lii, 261-3, 277-9, 327,
459-62, 473-7;
no immediate consciousness of mind’s own activities, xliii-
xlv, l-lii, 263 ff., 273 ff., 293, 295 ff., 322 ff.;
 consciousness of time Kant’s datum, xxxiv, 120, 241 ff.,
365 ff., 381 ff.;
absolutist aspect of, xxx-xxxiii, liii, lvi-lvii, 270-1, 274, 282,
285-7, 331 n.
See Apperception, Judgment
Contingency, assertion of, 39 ff., 55, 286-9
Continuity, Kant’s views regarding, 352-355, 488 ff., 509;
principle of, 380-1;
transcendental principle of, 551
Copernicus, 18-19, 22-5
Cosmological Argument, 531 ff.
Criterion of truth. See Coherence theory of truth
Criticism, Kant’s use of term, 1, 9, 13-14, 21;
Age of, 15
Critique of Practical Reason, lvi, lvii, lx, 77-8, 569 ff., 572
Critique of Judgment, lxi, 77, 83, 97-8, 191, 265, 537, 539,
561, 569 n., 574, 575 n., 576, 577 n.
Crusius, xxviii, xxxii, 47
Curtius, E., 336

Deduction of categories, distinction between subjective and

objective, xliv n., 235 ff.;
subjective, 245 ff., 263 ff.; objective, 248 ff.;
metaphysical, 175 ff., 192 ff.;
stages in Kant’s development of metaphysical, 186 ff.
See Transcendental method of proof
Deduction of Ideas, metaphysical, 426, 433 ff., 450-4, 478-80,
522-3;
transcendental, 426, 430, 436, 454, 552-4, 572 ff.
See Ideas of Reason
Definition, Kant’s view of, 564-5
Deist, as contrasted with Theist, 541;
Kant’s deistic interpretation of the Ideas of Reason, 418,
436, 439-40, 454, 473-7, 520-1, 537, 542, 575.
See Idealist view of Reason.
Democritus, 354 n.
Demonstration, Kant’s view of, 566-7
Descartes, xxxi, xxxix-xliii, xlvi, 155, 157, 272-3, 279 ff., 298
ff., 354 n., 421, 449, 583-7, 589-90, 597
Desires, Kant’s view of the, xlvi n., 276, 279-82, 312, 384-5
Dewey, J., 36
Dialectic, distinguished from the Analytic, 172-4, 438-42;
the problems of the, 425 ff.;
development of Kant’s views regarding the, 431 ff.
Dilucidatio Principiorum primorum, etc., Kant’s, 155, 299
Discipline, 170, 174, 438, 563 ff.
Dissertation, Kant’s Inaugural, xx, 26, 40, 46, 81, 86, 87, 89
ff., 96, 99, 101, 117, 123, 128, 131, 135, 137, 140-1, 144-5,
147, 159-60, 163-5, 185, 186-9, 208, 260, 263, 299, 382, 419,
427, 432, 482, 486, 489 n., 548
Divine Existence, in relation to space and time, 159-61;
and intuitive understanding, 160;
Idea of, 434-7;
how far can be concretely pictured, 536-7, 541-2, 556 ff.
See God
Dogmatism, as distinguished from Criticism, 9, 13-14, 21
Dreams of a Visionseer, Kant’s, 155 n., 299
Duns Scotus, 73-4

Eberhard, Kant’s reply to, 90 ff., 143 n.

Ego, transcendental. See Apperception
Eleatics, the, 159
Emotions, Kant’s view of the, xlvi n., 276, 279-82, 312, 384-5
Empirical, relation to the a priori, 36 ff.;
problem of empirical knowledge, 39-40, 53;
empirical object intermediate between subjective
representations and thing in itself, 206 ff., 223, 270 ff., 308 ff.
See Experience
Enquiry into the Clearness of the Principles of Natural
Theology and Morals, Kant’s, 15, 40, 563 ff.
Ens realissimum, 522 ff., 529-30, 532, 534, 541-2, 556
Epicurus, lix, 436, 499, 582
Erdmann, B., xx, xxviii n., 46, 142 n., 158, 161, 163, 200-1,
208 n., 294 n., 314, 373, 382 n., 412, 431-2, 471, 601 n.
Erhardt, F., 484 n., 494
Error, See Appearance, Illusion
Euler, 162
Existence, and the “I think,” 322 ff.;
judgment of, always synthetic, 527 ff.;
necessary existence, 533-7
Experience, proof by reference to the possibility of, xxxvi,
xxxvii-xxxviii, 45, 238-9, 241-3, 259-60, 344, 426, 430, 454,
552-4, 572 ff.;
meaning of term, 52; problem of, 57-8;
as datum is equivalent to consciousness of time, xxxiv, 120,
241 ff., 365 ff., 381 ff.
Exposition, Kant’s use of term, 109-10

Faith, Kant’s view of, lv-lvi, lxi, 571 ff., 575-6

Feeling, Kant’s use of term, 82-3;
Kant’s view of, xlvi n., 276, 279-82, 312, 384-5
Fichte, l
Fischer, K., 46, 75, 113-14, 140, 601 n.
Form and matter, importance of distinction between, xxxiii-
xxxiv, xxxvi, 85 ff.
Forms of the understanding. See Categories
Fortschritte, Welches sind die wirklichen, etc., Kant’s, li n., 59,
60, 84, 578 n., 580 n.
Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s, lviii, lix,
569, 572
Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse, Kant’s, lvii, 578
Freedom of the will, problem of, 20-1, 435, 512 ff., 569-70;
and causality, 492 ff.;
transcendental and practical freedom, 497, 512-13, 517-18,
569-70, 573-4

Galileo, 18, 583-4, 586

Garve, xix, 150; Garve-Feder review, 158
Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte,
Kant’s, 117, 161-2
Geometry, the fundamental mathematical science, 96 n.;
pure and applied, 111-12, 147, 349, 565-6;
Kant’s attitude to modern, 117 ff.
Geulincx, 596, 598
God, ontological proof of existence of, 527 ff.;
cosmological proof, 531 ff.;
physico-theological proof, 538 ff.;
problem of God’s existence, 569 ff.;
how far an indispensable Idea of Reason, 439-40, 536-7,
541-2, 556 ff.
Green, T. H., l n., 23, 36
Groos, K., xxviii n.

Hamann, 157, 539-40 n.;

describes Kant as “a Prussian Hume,” 305
Hegel, xxxvii, xlv, l, 36, 190, 194, 274, 554 n.
Herbart, 86 n., 124
Herz, Marcus, xxii-xxiii, xxix, xlix, 6, 26, 28, 46, 51, 114 n.,
138, 187, 189, 198, 206-7, 219-22, 432
Hicks, G. Dawes, 415 n.
Hobbes, 593
Höffding, H., 23
Home, Henry, 1
Homogeneity, transcendental principle of, 550-1
Hume, date of first influence on Kant, xx, xxviii;
Kant’s relation to, xxv-xxxiii, xxxv, xxxvii, xlvi;
his view of consciousness, xl-xliii;
anticipates Kant’s phenomenalism, 21-2;
maintains that experience cannot prove universality or
necessity, 27, 57-8;
shows causal axiom to be synthetic, 30-1;
Hume’s problem a deepening of Kant’s earlier problem, 46;
Kant’s relation to, 61-4;
on the self, 207 n.;
his subjectivism, 272-3, 284, 300;
Kant “a Prussian Hume,” 305;
much of Hume’s teaching in regard to causality accepted by
Kant, 364;
Kant’s reply to Hume, 369-71;
Hume’s philosophy the perfected expression of the
empirical and sceptical position, 421;
influence on Kant, 432;
on existential judgment, 528;
influence on Kant of Hume’s Dialogues on Natural
Religion, 539-540, 557, 567 n.;
influence on Kant, 583;
the philosophical teaching of, 588-601;
influence on Kant, 606
Humility, lvi, lviii-lix, 554 n.
Hypotheses, and postulates, xxxvii-xxxviii, 541, 543 ff., 571
ff.;
how far valid in metaphysics, lxi, 9-12, 543 ff.
Hypothetical employment of Reason, 549-50

Idealism, objective or Critical, 274;

Kant’s refutations of subjective idealism. 298 ff., 462-3;
transcendental idealism as key to solution of the antinomies,
503 ff.
See Phenomenalism and subjectivism
Ideal of Reason, 522 ff., 536-7, 541-2, 554 n., 556-61
Idealist view of Reason, xxxviii-xxxix, xliv, liii, 97-8, 102,
331-2, 390-1, 414-17, 426 ff., 433 ff., 447 ff., 473-7, 478 ff.,
500-6, 511-12, 519-21, 547 ff., 552 ff., 558-61
Ideality, of space and time, 76, 111, 116-17, 138, 147, 154, 308
Ideas of Reason, Kant’s sceptical and Idealist views of the,
xxxviii-xxxix, xliii, xliv, lii-lv, lvi ff., 330-1, 390-1, 414-17.
426 ff., 433 ff., 446 ff., 473-7, 478 ff., 500-6, 511-12, 520-1,
547 ff., 558-61;
involved in consciousness of space and time, liii-liv, 96-8,
102 n., 165-6, 390-1;
Kant’s deistic interpretation of the, 418, 436, 439-40, 454,
473-477, 520-1, 537, 575;
as limiting concepts, 408, 413-17, 426 ff.;
as regulative, xxxviii-xxxix, xliii, liii, 473-7, 500 ff., 547 ff.;
and categories of relation, 451-2;
distinction between mathematical and dynamical, 510-11;
Kant’s criticism of Idea of unconditioned necessity, 527 ff.,
533-7, 541-2;
metaphysical and practical validity of the Ideas, 570-6;
concluding comments on Kant’s views of the, 558-61;
condition distinction between appearance and reality, liii-
liv, 217-18, 326 n., 331, 391, 414-17, 426-31, 473-7, 511-12,
519-21, 541-2, 558-61.
See Deduction of Ideas
Illusion, and appearance, 148 ff.;
Berkeley regards objects of outer sense as, 157, 307-8;
inner experience not illusory, 323-4;
transcendental, 13, 427-9, 437, 456 ff., 480, 552, 555
Imagination, may be the common root of sensibility and
understanding, 77, 225, 265;
 productive, 224 ff., 264 ff., 337, 348, 375-6
Immanent and transcendent metaphysics. See Metaphysics
Immortality, problem of, 569 ff.
Incongruous counterparts, 161 ff.
Infinitude, of space, 105 ff.;
of time, 124 ff.;
Kant’s view of, 483 ff.;
distinction between in infinitum and in indefinitum, 507 ff.
Inner Sense, xliii n., 148, 291 ff., 360, 464, 468-9;
and apperception, 321 ff.
Intuition, Kant’s doctrine of pure, 40 ff., 79-80, 118-20, 128
ff., 167-8, 468-9;
intuition and conception, 38-42, 93-98, 105-9, 118-20, 126,
128-34, 165-166, 167-8, 194, 390-1, 564-6;
formal intuition and form of intuition, 109, 114-16
Intuitive understanding, Kant’s view of, 160, 291, 408 ff., 468
n. 542

Jacobi, 300
Jakob, xxviii n.
James, W., 86, 277-8, 459 n., 461 n.
Janitsch, 155, 156
Jones, Sir Henry, 36
Judgment, Kant’s doctrine of the, xxxiv-xxxv, xxxviii, xli-xliv,
xlviii-l, 177 ff., 192 ff., 286 ff.;
the fundamental activity of the understanding, xxxiv-xxxv,
xxxviii, xli-xlii, 133, 181-2, 288, 332, 370;
a priori and empirical, 27-8;
analytic and synthetic, xxv ff., 28 ff., 37 ff., 59-60;
judgment 7 + 5 = 12, 65;
relational types ignored by Kant, 37 ff.;
Kant’s attributive view of, 37-38, 180-1, 197;
as assertion of contingency, 39 ff., 55, 286-9;
Kant’s distinction between judgments of perception and
judgments of experience, 288-9;
existential, 527-31

Knowing and thinking, distinction between, lv-lvi, 20, 25,

290-1, 331, 404 ff.
See Categories
Knowledge, the narrow meaning assigned to term by Kant, lv-
lvi, lxi, 25
Knützen, 161

Lambert, xx, xxviii, xxxii, 74, 138, 150, 193

Lange, F., 23
Lectures on Metaphysics, Kant’s, 261, 275 n., 299, 448-9, 475
n.
Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Kant’s, 261
Leibniz, Kant’s relation to, xxx-xxxiii, xxxv, xxxvii, xlvi, l,
lvii;
his absolutist view of thought, xxx-xxxii;
anticipates Kant’s phenomenalism, 21-2;
his rejection of empiricism, 27, 58;
his pre-established harmony, 28;
regards synthetic judgments as always empirical, 30;
his conceptual atomism, 38;
Kant probably influenced by the Nouveaux Essais of, 92,
186;
referred to by Kant, 112;
Kant’s relation to, 140-1;
Kant’s criticism of his interpretation of sensibility and
appearance, 143-6;
his view of space, 161 ff.;
Kant influenced by the spiritualism of, 208-9, 243, 260-1,
263;
his subjectivism and doctrine of petites perceptions, 272-3,
298-9, 306;
his alternative views of the reality of the material world,
298-9;
continuing influence of his rationalism on Kant, 394-5, 398-
9, 418 ff.;
his view of the possible as wider than the actual, 401-2;
antinomies formulated by Kant from the standpoint of the
Leibnizian rationalism, 481 ff.;
Kant’s formulation of the ontological argument Leibnizian,
522 ff., 556;
contrast between Locke and, 146-7, 421, 582;
on mathematical method, 592;
the philosophical teaching of, 601-6;
 on the nature of sense-experience, 604-5;
influence on Kant, 605-6
Limiting concepts, Ideas as, 408, 413-17, 426 ff.
See Ideas of Reason
Locke, xxxii, xl, xlvi, 15;
Kant’s criticism of his view of appearance, 146-7;
Kant’s restatement of his distinction between primary and
secondary qualities, 120-2, 146, 149 ff., 306;
subjectivism of, 272, 306;
on inner sense, 148, 292-3;
contrast between Leibniz and, 146-7, 421, 582;
his use of term idea rejected by Kant, 449;
on primary and secondary qualities, 586 n.;
rationalism of, 591-2;
his proof of causal axiom, 594;
on the causal relation, 596, 598
Logic, Kant’s contribution to the science of, xxxvi-xxxix;
Kant’s view of the traditional, 10, 21, 33-6, 100, 181, 183,
184-6, 259, 332;
the various kinds of, 167 ff.;
distinction between general and transcendental, xxxix, 170
ff., 176 ff., 178 n., 181, 183, 184-5, 194-5, 196, 335
Logic, Kant’s, 1, 110, 170 ff., 180-1, 576 n., 577 n., 580 n.,
581 n., 582
Lose Blätter aus Kant’s Nachlass, xx-xxi, 112 n., 202-3, 209,
211 n., 232-4, 261
Lotze, 1 n., 36, 181

Mach, E., 596

Mairan, J. J. Dortous de, 496
Malebranche, xxxi, xxxii, xliii n., 15, 28, 47;
Kant’s phenomenalism anticipated by, 21-2;
rationalism of, 590-1;
on the causal relation, 596-8
Manifolds, of appearance, 84-5;
empirical, 267, 274 ff.;
pure a priori, 88-90, 92 ff., 95, 96-7, 134, 142 n., 148 n.,
171, 194-5, 226, 228-9, 267, 269-70, 289, 337, 344, 375, 385
n.
Mathematics, methods of, 17-18;
 judgments in, not all synthetic, 64;
principle of contradiction in mathematical reasoning, 60,
64-5, 344;
Kant’s intuitional view of, 40-1, 65-6;
distinction between mathematical and philosophical
knowledge, 15, 563 ff.;
pure and applied, 68, 111-12, 114-15, 140, 166, 566;
use of schemata in, 337-9.
See Arithmetic, Geometry
Matter, Kant’s dynamical theory of, 354-5;
principle of conservation of, 361-2
Meier, 441
Mendelssohn, Moses, xix, xxxii, 6, 11, 58, 138 n., 139 n., 150,
153, 160-1, 458-9 n., 467, 470-1
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science, Kant’s, 56
n., 66, 97, 127-8, 164-5 n., 312 n., 354 n., 361 n., 380-1, 384
n., 491, 579 n.
Metaphysics, distinction between immanent and transcendent,
liv-lv, 15, 19, 22, 26-7, 33, 50, 52, 53, 55-6, 58-9, 66-70, 244-
5, 257-8, 545, 580-1; in disrepute, 8-9;
Kant professes to establish a quite final, 10, 35, 543 ff.;
“Copernican hypothesis” and, 18 ff.;
as natural disposition, 12-13, 68 ff.;
as science, 68 ff.;
hypotheses not valid in, 543 ff.;
the problems of, 569-76, 579-81
Method, the sceptical, 545-6;
mathematical, 563-7.
See Analytic and Synthetic Methods
Mill, J. S., 86, 364-5, 377, 596
Mind, Kant’s use of term, 81
Mistaken Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, Kant’s, 181-
2
Modality, 391 ff.
Monadologia physica, Kant’s, 354
Moral attitude, the, xxxvi, xlv, lv ff., 515-16, 571 ff.
Moral belief, lvi ff., 577
Moral law, consciousness of the, de facto, xxxvi, xlv, 572-3
Motion, doctrine of, 127-9, 133;
Galileo’s revolutionary doctrine of, 583-4
Müller, Max, 75

Natural Science, pure, 66-8;

and immanent metaphysics, 70. See Metaphysics
Nature, means “all that is,” 16
Necessity, and universality, 56-7;
definition of, 391 ff.;
of thought and of existence, 402-3, 527, 533, 536;
limited being may exist by unconditioned, 527, 533, 536;
absolute necessity not purely logical, 528;
unconditioned, Idea of, 527 ff., 533-7, 541-2, 555, 558-61;
and contingency, concepts of, not applicable to things in
themselves, 535;
relative, 541, 555, 571 ff.
Negative Quantity, Kant’s essay on, 381, 403 n.
New Doctrine of Motion and Rest, Kant’s, 354, 381 n.
Newton, his influence on Kant, lv-lvi, 96 n., 140-2, 161 ff.,
354 n.;
Kant modifies Newton’s cosmology, 539
Noumenon, positive and negative conception of, 408 ff., 413.
See Appearance
Number, schema of, 347-8. See Arithmetic

Object, Kant’s use of term, 79-81, 167 n., 174;

transcendental, 203 ff.;
empirical, 206 ff., 223, 270 ff., 308 ff.
Objective, not the opposite of the subjective, 279 ff., 313-14;
validity of Ideas, 558-61
Occasionalism, 465, 596-7, 598
On the Radical Evil in Human Nature, Kant’s treatise, lviii, lix
Ontological argument, 527 ff.
Opinion, Kant’s use of term, 543, 576-7
Organon, 71-2, 169-70, 174
Oswald, xxviii n.
Outer Sense, 147, 276, 293 ff., 360

Paralogisms, 455 ff.;

nature of fallacy of the, 466, 470
Paulsen, 46-7, 64, 373, 601 n.
Pearson, K., 596
Perpetual Peace, Kant’s treatise on, lvii n.
Phenomenalism and subjectivism, xxxix ff., xlv-xlvii, 82-4,
120-2, 136-8, 138-9, 140, 150-4, 155-9, 223, 227, 270 ff., 312
ff., 349-51, 357-8, 373-4, 407 n., 414-17
Phenomenon, distinction between appearance and, 83.
See Appearance
Philosophy, causes of failure of, 59;
Kant reinterprets its function and aims, lvi, 571-6, 577-8;
the domains of, 579-81;
Kant’s view of history of, 582
Physico-theological argument, 538 ff.
Physics, method of, 17-18;
Kant’s views regarding, 354-5, 361-2, 379-81
Pistorius, 305, 307-8, 323, 467
Plato, xlv, 47, 158, 301, 390, 436, 496, 582
Pope, 156
Possibility, Kant’s definition of, 391 ff.
Postulates. See Hypotheses
Practical employment of Reason, lvi-lix, 569 ff.
Pragmatic belief, lvi, 577
Prantl, 73
Pre-established harmony, 28, 47, 114, 141-2, 267-8, 290, 465,
590
Priestley, J., xxviii n., 11, 567 n.
Primary and secondary qualities, 82, 120-2, 146, 149 ff., 306
Principles never self-evident, xxvi-xxviii,
xxxv-xxxviii, 36 ff., 53, 185-6, 340.
See A priori
Probabilities, inference from. See Hypotheses
Prolegomena to Every Future Metaphysics, Kant’s, xxv, xxviii
n., xxix n., 12, 13, 46, 47, 49, 59-60, 61-4, 65, 66-7, 68 ff., 80,
84, 91, 106, 109-11, 116, 121, 129, 146, 149, 152, 153, 155,
156, 158, 159, 161, 163, 165, 178-9, 184, 188, 234, 288-9,
299, 300-1, 305-8, 346, 361 n., 376-7
Psychology, Kant’s views regarding, xliii-xlvii, 50-1, 235 ff.,
263 ff., 269-270, 311 n., 312 n., 384-5, 455 ff., 473-7, 580-1
Pure, Kant’s use of term, 1-2, 54-6, 64

Quality, and intensive magnitude, 352.

See Primary and secondary qualities
Rationalism, Kant’s type of, xxxv-xxxvi, 257-8;
relation to the rationalism of Leibniz, 418 ff.
See A priori
Reason, meanings of the term, liii-lv, lvi, 2-3, 71, 426 ff., 520-
1, 558-61;
ineradicably metaphysical, liii-lv, lvi, 8;
condition of free actions, 515-16;
as practical, lvi ff., 515-17;
as causing antinomy, liii, 519 ff.;
hypothetical employment of, 549-50;
Ideal of, 556 ff.
See Idealist and sceptical views of Reason, Ideas of Reason
Rechtslehre, Kant’s, 190
Reciprocity, category of, 197, 381 ff., 434-5, 439-40, 451-4
Reflexionen Kants zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft, xx, xxiii,
xlix, lv, 85, 86, 106, 127, 182, 188 ff., 196, 197, 198, 200-1,
202-3, 208, 231-2, 261, 334 n., 399, 433-40, 448-9, 543
Regulative. See Ideas of Reason
Reicke, xx. See Lose Blätter
Reimarus, 193
Representation, Kant’s use of term, 81, 104;
distinction between representation and its object, 135, 136-
7, 272 ff., 308 ff., 317-18, 365.
See Phenomenalism and subjectivism
Representative perception, doctrine of, xxxix-xliii, xlvi, 272
ff., 298 ff., 585-8
Riehl, A., xliv n., 46, 51, 88, 102 n., 195, 303-4, 317-18, 340-
1, 342, 357-8, 372 n., 373, 601 n., 605
Rousseau, lvii, lviii-lix, 436, 567 n., 578
Rule, two kinds of, 372
Russell, B., 491-2, 568 n.

Sceptical method, Kant’s, 481, 545-6

Sceptical view of Reason, 481, 500-3, 511-12, 519-21, 528-9,
533-7, 541-2, 547 ff., 558-61
Scepticism, 9, 13-15, 545-6, 567
Schematism, 195-6, 265-7, 289, 311, 333, 334 ff., 467 n.;
and images, 337-9
Schopenhauer, 75, 197, 315-16, 365-7, 377-9, 387-9, 407 n.,
482-3 n., 493 n., 495 n.
Schulze, Johann, 129-31, 138, 198-9, 480 n.
Schütz, 153
Segner, 66
Self, Kant’s semi-Critical, spiritualist view of the, l, 207-9,
212, 243, 260-3, 327-8, 473-7, 515;
may not be an ultimate form of existence, l-lii, 260-3, 277-
9, 327, 459-62, 473-7;
Idea of the, 439-40, 455-62, 471, 472-7, 554;
Kant’s view of nature and destiny of, 472-7.
See Apperception, Soul
Self-consciousness. See Apperception, Consciousness
Self-evidence, Kant’s rejection of, xxvi-xxviii, xxxv-xxxviii,
36, 53, 118, 142, 185-6, 563-4, 565-6.
See A priori
Sensation, Kant’s views of, 81-2, 84-8, 274-7, 349-52;
non-spatial, 85-8, 100-1, 105;
required for determining actuality, 391 ff.;
sensations, feelings, etc., subject to law of causality, xlvi n.,
275, 279-82, 311-12, 313-14, 384-5
Sensibility, may have a common root with understanding, 77;
definition of, 81, 167-8;
as a limitation, 116;
criticism of Leibniz’s view of, 143-6;
Kant’s view of, 274-7
Seven Small Papers, Kant’s, 298
Sidgwick, H., 314
Sigsbee, R. A., 11
Sigwart, 36, 181, 197
Simultaneity. See Time
Soul, and body, Kant’s view of their relation, 275-6, 279-84,
312 ff., 384-5, 464-6, 467, 471, 476.
See Apperception, Self
Space, Kant’s views of, xxxv-xxxvi, lii, 85 ff., 188;
involves an Idea of Reason, liii-liv, 96-8, 102 n., 165-6,
390-1;
metaphysical exposition of, 99 ff., 109-10, 112 ff., 134 ff.;
transcendental exposition of, 109 ff., 344-5;
not a property of things in themselves, 112 ff.;
is the form of outer sense, 114-16;
 transcendental ideality of, 76, 116-17;
uniform for all human beings, 116-18, 120, 241-2, 257;
possibility of other spaces, 117 ff.;
criticism of Newtonian and Leibnizian views of, 140-2;
merely de facto character of, 57, 118, 142, 185-6, 257;
as Unding, 154;
in relation to Divine Existence, 159-61;
and incongruous counterparts, 161 ff.;
involved in consciousness of time, 309 ff., 384-6, 390-1;
ignored by Kant in doctrine of schematism, 341, 348, 360;
involves category of reciprocity, liii-liv, 385-7, 390-1;
and antinomy, 480 ff.
See Geometry
Specification, transcendental principle of, 501-2
Spencer, Herbert, 87, 584 n., 596
Spinoza, 74, 273 n., 440, 587, 601-2
Stadler, 197, 378-9, 389 n.
Stirling, J. Hutchison, 23, 75, 366 n., 377
Stout, G. F., 87, 367 n., 387
Subconscious, the, Kant’s view of, 263 ff., 273-4
Subjectivism, in Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object,
xxxix ff., xlv-xlvii, 206 ff., 217-18.
See Phenomenalism and subjectivism, Idealism
Substance and attribute, category of, 362-3
Sulzer, xxviii n.
Summum Bonum, 575, 577
Swedenborg, 155 n., 158 n., 299
Swift, Benjamin, 74
Synthetic, problem of knowledge a priori and, xxv ff., xxxv-
xxxvi, xxxviii, 28 ff., 37 ff., 59 ff.;
knowledge from mere concepts, 64;
decomposing synthesis, 95;
ambiguities in Kant’s formulation of problem of a priori
synthetic judgments, 43 ff.;
processes, xliii-xlv, l-lii, 245-8, 261-2, 263 ff., 277-8, 293,
295 ff., 322, 327 ff.
See Analytic and synthetic judgments, and methods
System of pure reason, 71-3, 579-80

Teleological argument, 536-7, 538-42, 556-8

Terrasson, Jean, 15
Tetens, 82, 148, 294 n., 475
Thales, 18
Theist, as contrasted with deist, 541
Things in themselves, Kant’s first use of phrase, 112 n.;
transcendental object equivalent to thing in itself, 204 ff.
See Appearance
Thinking, discursive and creative. See Understanding
Thomasius, 193
Time, consciousness of, Kant’s datum, xxxiv, 120, 241-2;
metaphysical exposition of, 123 ff.;
as infinite, 125;
transcendental exposition of, 126 ff., 344-5;
as form of inner sense, 134-5, 293 ff.; axioms of, 127;
not a determination of outer appearance, 134 ff.;
merely de facto character of, xxxv-xxxvi, lii, 142, 565-7;
simultaneity not a mode of, 135 ff., 356, 358-9;
and simultaneous apprehension, 135-6, 348, 358-9, 367-8,
371-2, 381-2;
and reality of inner changes, 138-40;
transcendental ideality of, 76, 138;
Kant’s view of, not a mere hypothesis, 147;
space involved in consciousness of, 134-6, 309 ff., 341,
347-8;
subjective and objective order of, 358 ff., 365 ff., 381 ff.;
time relations determined by the given, 34-5, 267-8, 367,
370, 371-2, 377;
does not itself change, 142, 359-60;
category of causality involved in consciousness of, liii-liv,
365 ff., 377 ff., 387;
cannot be experienced in and by itself, 375-6;
category of reciprocity involved in consciousness of, 381-
91;
Idea of Reason involved in consciousness of, liii-liv, 96-8,
390-1;
infinitude and infinite divisibility of, 390-1, 481, 483 ff.
Totality. See Unconditioned
Transcendent. See Transcendental and Metaphysics
Transcendental, meaning of term, 73-6, 116-17, 302; illusion,
13, 427-9, 552, 555;
 method of proof, xxxv, xxxvii-xxxviii, 45, 238-9, 241-3,
259-60, 344, 568, 572 ff.;
ideality of space and time, 76, 116-17, 138;
exposition of space and time, 109 ff., 126 ff., 344-5;
object, Kant’s doctrine of, xlvi n., 203, 204 ff., 322, 328,
371-3, 406-7, 412, 414, 415, 513-14, 518;
unity of apperception, Kant’s pre-Critical view of, 207 ff.,
212;
unity of apperception, Kant’s doctrine of, l-lii, 250-3, 260-3,
270, 277-9, 322 ff., 455 ff., 473-7;
psychology, xliii-xlvii, l-lii, 50-1, 235 ff., 253, 263 ff.; Ideal,
522 ff.;
principles of Reason, 550-1;
illusion, 13, 427-9, 437, 456 ff., 480, 552, 555.
See Deduction of Categories and of Ideas
Transition from the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural
Science to Physics, Kant’s treatise, 275 n., 283 n., 482 n., 514
n.
Trendelenburg, 113-14, 140
Truth. See Coherence theory of truth

Ueber das Organ der Seele, Kant’s, 81 n., 275 n.

Ueber eine Entdeckung, etc., Kant’s reply to Eberhard, 90 ff.,
143 n.
Ueber Philosophie überhaupt, Kant’s, 83 n., 128
Ulrichs, 467, 471
Unconditioned, Idea of the, its relation to category of totality,
199-200, 433-4, 451, 480, 529, 559-60;
our awareness of the conditioned presupposes the, 416-17,
429 ff.;
in connection with Kant’s view of the self, 473-7;
Kant’s criticism of the Idea of the, 498, 527 ff., 533-7, 541-
2, 555, 558-61.
See Idealist and Sceptical views of Reason
Understanding, and Reason, lii-lv, 2, 52;
defined, 81;
may have common root with sensibility, 77;
distinction between its discursive and its originative
activities, 172, 176 ff., 182-3, 263 ff., 277-8, 334-5, 370, 377;
viewed by Kant as a unity, 174 ff., 185-6;
 its primary function, xxxiv-xxxv, xxxviii, xli-xlii, 93-94,
133, 181-2, 288-9, 332, 370, 377;
as intuitive, 160, 291, 408 ff., 468 n., 542.
See Concept
Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, Kant’s,
539
Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze, Kant’s,
110 n., 131

Vaihinger, Hans, xx, xxv, xxviii n., xliv n., 2, 13, 23, 43, 45 ff.,
52, 53, 59, 60, 64, 65, 66, 81, 87, 104, 105, 109, 112, 113, 117,
127, 130, 139, 140, 143, 147, 148, 156, 161, 162, 202 ff., 261,
268-9, 298-9, 301, 314-315, 579 n., 601 n.
Value, problems of, lvi, lx-lxi
Void, Kant’s doctrine of the, 354-5
Voltaire, xxxi, 436, 539
Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im
Raume, Kant’s, 40, 86 n., 140, 162

Watson, J., 1 n., 23 n., 75, 102 n., 117, 183, 195, 196, 198,
262, 328, 462, 468 n., 564
Windelband, 46
Wolff, 192-3, 272, 436, 440, 522, 579, 587, 601-6

Zedlitz, Freiherr von, 6-7

 THE END
Printed by R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, Edinburgh.
 FOOTNOTES:
[1] Headings not in Kant’s Table of Contents are printed in italics.
[2] W. x. p. 323.
[3] W. x. p. 316.
[4] Cf. Kant’s letter to Lambert, September 2, 1770: W. x. p. 93.
[5] Embodied in his edition of the Kritik (1889).
[6] From letter to Marcus Herz, June 7, 1777: W. x. pp. 116-17.
[7] From letter to Marcus Herz, February 21, 1772: W. x. p. 127.
[8] Reflexionen ii. 5.
[9] These passages are by no means unambiguous, and are commented
upon below, p. 61 ff.
[10] For justification of this interpretation of Hume I must refer the reader
to my articles on “The Naturalism of Hume” in Mind, vol. xiv. N.S. pp. 149-
73, 335-47.
[11] To this fact Kant himself draws attention: “But the perpetual hard fate
of metaphysics would not allow Hume to be understood. We cannot without a
certain sense of pain consider how utterly his opponents, Reid, Oswald,
Beattie, and even Priestley, missed the point of the problem. For while they
were ever assuming as conceded what he doubted, and demonstrating with
eagerness and often with arrogance what he never thought of disputing, they
so overlooked his inclination towards a better state of things, that everything
remained undisturbed in its old condition.”—Prolegomena, p. 6; Mahaffy and
Bernard’s trans. p. 5.
[12] Sulzer’s translation of Hume’s Essays (including the Enquiries)
appeared in 1754-56.
[13] The word which Kant uses is Erinnerung (cf. below, p. xxix, n. 4).
There are two main reasons for believing that Kant had not himself read the
Treatise. He was imperfectly acquainted with the English language, and there
was no existing German translation. (Jakob’s translation did not appear till
1790-91. On Kant’s knowledge of English, cf. Erdmann: Archiv für
Geschichte der Philosophie, Bd. i. (1888) pp. 62 ff., 216 ff.; and K. Groos:
Kant-Studien, Bd. v. (1900) p. 177 ff.: and below, p. 156.) And, secondly,
Kant’s statements reveal his entire ignorance of Hume’s view of mathematical
science as given in the Treatise.
[14] Cf. Vaihinger, Commentary, i. p. 344 ff. Beattie does, indeed, refer to
Hume’s view of mathematical science as given in the Treatise, but in so
indirect and casual a manner that Kant could not possibly gather from the
reference any notion of what that treatment was. Cf. Beattie’s Essay on the
Nature and Immutability of Truth (sixth edition), pp. 138, 142, 269.
[15] These Hume had himself pointed out both in the Treatise and in the
Enquiry; and because of them he rejects scepticism as a feasible philosophy of
life. Kant’s statement above quoted that Hume’s critics (among whom Beattie
is cited) “were ever assuming what Hume doubted, and demonstrating with
eagerness and often with arrogance what he never thought of disputing,”
undoubtedly refer in a quite especial degree to Beattie.
 [16] Werke, x. p. 123 ff. It is dated February 21, 1772. Cf. below, pp. 219-
20.
[17] In Prolegomena, p. 6 (above quoted, p. xxviii, n. 1), and p. 8 (trans. p.
6): “I should think Hume might fairly have laid as much claim to sound sense
as Beattie, and besides to a critical understanding (such as the latter did not
possess).”
[18] Cf. Prolegomena, p. 8: “I honestly confess that my recollection of
David Hume’s teaching (die Erinnerung des David Hume) was the very thing
which many years ago [Kant is writing in 1783] first interrupted my dogmatic
slumber, and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy
quite a new direction.” Kant’s employment of the term Erinnerung may
perhaps be interpreted in view of the indirect source of his knowledge of
Hume’s main position. He would bring to his reading of Beattie’s quotations
the memory of Hume’s other sceptical doctrines as expounded in the Enquiry.
[19] Kant, it should be noted, classifies philosophies as either dogmatic (=
rationalistic) or sceptical. Empiricism he regards as a form of scepticism.
[20] Quoted by Beattie (op. cit., sixth edition, p. 295), who, however
incapable of appreciating the force of Hume’s arguments, was at least awake
to certain of their ultimate consequences.
[21] For a more detailed statement of Kant’s relation to his philosophical
predecessors, cf. below, Appendix B, p. 583 ff.
[22] The term “recognition” is employed by Kant in its widest sense, as
covering, for instance, recognition of the past as past, or of an object as being
a certain kind of object.
[23] Consciousness of time, consciousness of objects in space,
consciousness of self, are the three modes of experience which Kant seeks to
analyse. They are found to be inseparable from one another and in their union
to constitute a form of conscious experience that is equivalent to an act of
judgment—i.e. to be a form of awareness that involves relational categories
and universal concepts.
[24] As we have noted (above, pp. xxvi-xxvii), it was Hume’s insistence
upon the synthetic, non-self-evident character of the causal axiom that
awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber. Cf. below, pp. 61 ff., 593 ff.
[25] Cf. below, pp. lvi ff., 571 ff.
[26] Cf. below, pp. 36-7.
[27] Cf. below, p. 543 ff.
[28] Cf. below, pp. liii-iv.
[29] Cf. below, pp. 45, 238-43.
[30] Cf. below, pp. 33-6, 181, 183-6.
[31] Cf. below, pp. 33-42, 394-5, 398.
[32] With the sole exception of Malebranche, who on this point anticipated
Kant.
[33] This is the position that Kant endeavours to expound in the very
unsatisfactory form of a doctrine of “inner sense.” Cf. below, pp. l-ii, 291 ff.
[34] This was Kant’s chief reason for omitting the so-called “subjective
deduction of the categories” from the second edition. The teaching of the
subjective deduction is, however, preserved in almost unmodified form
throughout the Critique as a whole, and its “transcendental psychology”
forms, as I shall try to show, an essential part of Kant’s central teaching. In this
matter I find myself in agreement with Vaihinger, and in complete
disagreement with Riehl and the majority of the neo-Kantians. The neo-
Kantian attempt to treat epistemology in independence of all psychological
considerations is bound to lead to very different conclusions from those which
Kant himself reached. Cf. below, pp. 237 ff., 263-70.
[35] This subjectivism finds expression in Kant’s doctrine of the
“transcendental object” which, as I shall try to prove, is a doctrine of early
date and only semi-Critical. That doctrine is especially prominent in the
section on the Antinomies. See below p. 204 ff.
[36] Cf. pp. 270 ff., 298 ff., 308-21, 373-4, 414-17.
[37] That this statement holds of feelings and desires, and therefore of all
the emotions, as well as of our sense-contents, is emphasised by Kant in the
Critique of Practical Reason. Cf. below, pp. 276, 279-80, 312, 384-5.
[38] The connection of this teaching with Kant’s theory of consciousness
may be noted. If consciousness in all its forms, however primitive, is already
awareness of meaning, its only possible task is to define, modify, reconstruct,
and develop such meaning, never to obtain for bare contents or existences
objective or other significance. Cf. above, pp. xli-ii, xliv.
[39] Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, 207.
[40] In sketch of a letter (summer 1792) to Fürst von Beloselsky (W. xi. p.
331).
[41] May 26, 1789 (W. xi. p. 52).
[42] That Kant has not developed a terminology really adequate to the
statement of his meaning, is shown by a parenthesis which I have omitted
from the above quotation.
[43] This interpretation of Kant appears in a very crude form in James’s
references to Kant in his Principles of Psychology. It appears in a more subtle
form in Lotze and Green. Caird and Watson, on the other hand, have carefully
guarded themselves against this view of Kant’s teaching, and as I have
maintained (pp. xliii-v), lie open to criticism only in so far as they tend to
ignore those aspects of Kant’s teaching which cannot be stated in terms of
logical implication.
[44] It may be objected that this is virtually what Kant is doing when he
postulates synthetic activities as the source of the categories. Kant would
probably have replied that he has not attempted to define these activities save
to the extent that is absolutely demanded by the known character of their
products, and that he is willing to admit that many different explanations of
their nature are possible. They may be due to some kind of personal or
spiritual agency, but also they may not. On the whole question of the
legitimacy of Kant’s general method of procedure, cf. below, pp. 235-9, 263
ff., 273-4, 277 ff., 461-2, 473-7.
[45] Cf. Concerning the Advances made by Metaphysics since Leibniz and
Wolff (Werke (Hartenstein), viii. 530-1): “I am conscious to myself of myself
—this is a thought which contains a twofold I, the I as subject and the I as
object. How it should be possible that I, the I that thinks, should be an object
… to myself, and so should be able to distinguish myself from myself, it is
altogether beyond our powers to explain. It is, however, an undoubted fact …
and has as a consequence the complete distinguishing of us off from the whole
animal kingdom, since we have no ground for ascribing to animals the power
to say I to themselves.”
[46] Cf. above, p. xxxiv; below, pp. 250-3, 260-3, 285-6.
[47] Cf. A 651 = B 679: “The law of Reason, which requires us to seek for
this unity, is a necessary law, as without it we should have no Reason at all,
and without Reason no coherent employment of the understanding, and in the
absence of this no sufficient criterion of empirical truth.” Cf. also below, pp.
390-1, 414-17, 429-31, 519-21, 558-61.
[48] Regarding a further complication, due to the fact that the Dialectic
was written before the teaching of the Analytic was properly matured, cf.
above, p. xxiv.
[49] Cf. below, pp. 331, 390-1, 414-17.
[50] Cf. below, pp. 22, 33, 56, 66 ff.
[51] Reflexionen (B. Erdmann’s edition) ii. 204.
[52] For an alternative and perhaps more adequate method of describing
Kant’s general position, cf. below, p. 571 ff.
[53] Above, pp. xxxviii-ix, xlii, xliv.
[54] Cf. below, p. 577.
[55] Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 32; Abbott’s trans. pp. 120-1.
[56] Op. cit. p. 86; Abbott’s trans. p. 180.
[57] Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse (Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 624). Cf.
below, pp. 577-8. Kant claims for all men equality of political rights, and in
his treatise on Perpetual Peace maintains that wars are not likely to cease until
the republican form of government is universally adopted. He distinguishes,
however, between republicanism and democracy. By the former he means a
genuinely representative system; the latter he interprets as being the (in
principle) unlimited despotism of majority rule. Kant accordingly contends
that the smaller the staff of the executive, and the more effective the
representation of minorities, the more complete will be the approximation to
the ideal constitution. In other words, the less government we can get along
with, the better.
[58] On the Radical Evil in Human Nature, W. vi. p. 20; Abbott’s trans. p.
326. “This opinion [that the world is constantly advancing from worse to
better] is certainly not founded on experience if what is meant is moral good
or evil (not civilisation), for the history of all times speaks too powerfully
against it. Probably it is merely a good-natured hypothesis … designed to
encourage us in the unwearied cultivation of the germ of good that perhaps
lies in us….”
[59] Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, W. iv. p. 407; Abbott’s
trans. p. 24.
[60] Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. pp. 84-5; Abbott’s trans. pp. 178-9.
[61] Cf. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, W. iv. p. 463; Abbott’s
trans. p. 84: “While we do not comprehend the practical unconditional
necessity of the moral imperative, we yet comprehend its incomprehensibility,
and this is all that can be fairly demanded of a philosophy which strives to
carry its principles up to the very limit of human reason.”
[62] On the Radical Evil in Human Nature, W. vi. pp. 49-50; Abbott’s trans.
pp. 357-8.
[63] Cf. Pringle-Pattison: The Idea of God in the Light of Recent
Philosophy, p. 25 ff.
[64] Einleitung, i.
[65] Henry Home, Lord Kames, published his Elements of Criticism in
1762.
[66] W. ii. p. 311. In referring to his course in logic, Kant states that he will
consider the training of the power of sound judgment in ordinary life, and adds
that “in the Kritik der Vernunft the close kinship of subject-matter gives
occasion for casting some glances upon the Kritik des Geschmacks, i.e. upon
Aesthetics.” This passage serves to confirm the conjecture that the term Kritik
was borrowed from the title of Home’s work.
[67] For Kant’s other uses of the term pure, cf. below, p. 55.
[68] Commentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, i. pp. 117-20.
[69] For a definition, less exclusively titular, and more adequate to the
actual scope of the Critique, cf. below, p. 56. Reason, when distinguished from
understanding, I shall hereafter print with a capital letter, to mark the very
special sense in which it is being employed.
[70] Philosophical Works of Francis Bacon (edited by J. M. Robertson,
1905), p. 247.
[71] For Zedlitz’s severe strictures (Dec. 1775) upon the teaching in
Königsberg University, and his incidental appreciative reference to Kant, cf.
Schubert’s edition of Kant’s Werke, xi. pt. ii. pp. 59-61.
[72] Cf. W. x. p. 207.
[73] Op. cit. pp. 212-13.
[74] Cf. op. cit. pp. 208-9.
[75] Op. cit. p. 219.
[76] A v.-vi.
[77] A v. n.
[78] Cf. above on title, pp. 2-3.
[79] Cf. below, pp. 543, 576-7.
[80] A vii.-viii.
[81] A xiv.
[82] Cf. below, pp. 543 ff.
[83] Cf. A 86 = B 118-19.
[84] Morgenstunden; Gesammelte Schriften, 1863 edition, ii. pp. 246, 288.
Cf. below, pp. 160-1.
[85] Cited by R. A. Sigsbee, Philosophisches System Joseph Priestleys
(1912), p. 33.
[86] A v. n.
 [87] A viii.
[88] Prolegomena, Anhang, Trans. of Mahaffy and Bernard, p. 147.
[89] A 1.
[90] B 21. Cf. Prolegomena, § 60 ff., and below, pp. 427-9, 552.
[91] A 297-8 = B 353-5. Cf. below, pp. 427-9.
[92] A iii.
[93] i. p. 50.
[94] P. 9.
[95] This statement, as we shall find, calls for modification. Kant’s Critical
position is more correctly described as phenomenalism than as subjectivism.
Cf. above, pp. xlv-vii; below, p. 270 ff.
[96] A 769 = B 797.
[97] A 761 = B 789-90. Cf. Sections I.-III. in the Methodology.
[98] A iii.
[99] A v. n.
[100] A v. n.
[101] Cf. Kant’s Beantwortung der Frage: Was heist Aufklärung? 1784.
[102] A v.
[103] Cf. above, pp. 2-3.
[104] Cf. above, pp. xliv-v; below, pp. 19, 33, 56, 66 ff.
[105] A ix.
[106] A x.-xi.
[107] A xii.-xiii.
[108] A xv.
[109] A xv. Cf. below, pp. 66-7.
[110] B xiv.
[111] B ix.
[112] B xi.
[113] Cf. below, pp. 22-5.
[114] Cf. above, p. lvi; below, p. 571 ff.
[115] Dissertation, § 7.
[116] All these assertions call for later modification and restatement.
[117] B xxx.
[118] B xxxii.
[119] B xxxvii.
[120] B xxxviii.
[121] B vii.
[122] B viii.
 [123] B xvi.
[124] Cf. above, pp. xxvi-vii; below, pp. 594-5.
[125] Cf. “Malebranche’s Theory of the Perception of Distance and
Magnitude,” in British Journal of Psychology (1905), i. pp. 191-204.
[126] Cf. below, pp. 143 ff., 604.
[127] B xviii.-xix.
[128] Cf. below, pp. 33, 56, 66 ff.
[129] B xx.
[130] B xxii.
[131] B xvi.; B xxii. n.
[132] Watson’s The Philosophy of Kant Explained (p. 37) is the only work
in which I have found correct and unambiguous indication of the true
interpretation of Kant’s analogy.
[133] Prolegomena to Ethics, bk i. ch. i. § 11.
[134] Text-Book to Kant (1881), p. 29.
[135] History of Materialism, Eng. transl., ii. pp. 156, 158, 237.
[136] Geschichte der neueren Philosophie (1896), ii. p. 64.
[137] Hibbert Journal, October 1910, p. 49.
[138] De Revolutionibus, I. v.
[139] Ibid. I. x.
[140] B xxii. n.
[141] Cf. below, p. 543 ff.
[142] B xxvi. Cf. above, pp. lv-vi, 20; below, pp. 290-1, 331, 342, 404 ff.
[143] This restatement will continue up to p. 33. In pp. 33-43 I shall then
give general comment on the Introduction as a whole. In p. 43 ff. I add the
necessary detailed treatment of special points.
[144] Cf. below, p. 219 ff.
[145] Cf. above, p. xxv ff.; below, pp. 61 ff., 593 ff.
[146] This statement is first made in the Introduction to the second edition.
It is really out of keeping with the argument of the Introduction in either
edition. Cf. below, pp. 39-40, 57, 85, 168, 222, 245 ff. (especially pp. 278,
288).
[147] This is the argument of the Introduction to the second edition. In the
first edition Kant assumes without question the existence of the a priori. He
enquires only whether it is also valid in its metaphysical employment beyond
the field of possible experience.
[148] The argument of the first edition, though briefer, is substantially the
same.
[149] Quoted below, pp. 219-20.
[150] Cf. below, pp. 114, 290, 590.
[151] A 6 = B 10. I here follow the wording of the second edition.
 [152] Kant’s view of the a priori differs from that of Leibniz in two
respects. For Kant a priori concepts are merely logical functions, i.e. empty;
and secondly, are always synthetic. Cf. above, pp. xxxiii-vi, 186, 195-6, 257-8,
290-1, 404 ff.
[153] Cf. above, pp. xxv-vii; below, pp. 61 ff., 593 ff.
[154] B 24.
[155] Cf. above, pp. xliv-xlv, 22; below, pp. 52-3, 55-6, 66 ff.
[156] Needless to say, this “Aristotelian” logic, in the traditional form in
which alone Kant was acquainted with it, diverges very widely from
Aristotle’s actual teaching.
[157] Cf. above, pp. xxxvi-ix; below, pp. 36, 181, 184-6.
[158] A vii.
[159] B xxiii-iv.
[160] Above, pp. xxv-vii, 26; below, p. 593 ff.
[161] Cf. above, p. xxxvi ff.
[162] Cf. above, pp. xxxvii-viii; below, pp. 238-42.
[163] Cf. below, pp. 176 ff., 181, 191, 257.
[164] A 6 = B 10.
[165] Leibniz’s interpretation of the judgment seems to result in an
atomism which is the conceptual counterpart of his metaphysical monadism
(cf. Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy, i. p. 77 ff.; and my Studies
in the Cartesian Philosophy, p. 160 ff.; also below, p. 603). Each concept is
regarded as having exclusive jurisdiction, so to speak, over a content wholly
internal to itself. The various concepts are like sovereign states with no
mediating tribunals capable of prescribing to them their mutual dealings. Cf.
below, pp. 394-400, 418 ff.
[166] A 9 = B 13.
[167] Erste Betrachtung, §§ 2, 3; dritte Betrachtung, § 1.
[168] Cf. below, p. 162.
[169] § 12, 15 C.
[170] Cf. B 15-16.
[171] Cf. below, p. 128 ff., on Kant’s views regarding arithmetical science.
[172] Cf. below, p. 117 ff., on Kant and modern geometry, and p. 128 ff.,
on Kant’s views regarding arithmetical science.
[173] Cf. below, pp. 131-3, 338-9, 418 ff.
[174] That certain parts of the Introduction were written at different dates is
shown below, pp. 71-2. That other parts may be of similarly composite origin
is always possible. There is, however, no sufficient evidence to establish this
conclusion. Adickes’ attempt to do so (K. pp. 35-7 n.) is not convincing.
[175] Cf. above, pp. xxxiii ff., 1-2, 26 ff.
[176] i. pp. 317 and 450 ff.
[177] i. p. 412 ff.; cf. p. 388 ff.
[178] Cf. below, pp. 219-20.
 [179] Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 394. Cf. above, p. 28.
[180] Cf. Vaihinger, i. pp. 415-17.
[181] Paulsen objects that if synthetic a priori judgments are valid without
explanation, they do not need it. For two reasons the objection does not hold.
(a) Without this explanation it would be impossible to repel the pretensions of
transcendent metaphysics (cf. A 209 = B 254-5; A 283 = B 285). (b) This
solution of the theoretical problem has also, as above stated, its own intrinsic
interest and value. Without such explanation the validity of these judgments
might be granted, but could not be understood. (Cf. Prolegomena, §§ 4-5 and
§ 12 at the end. Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 394.)
[182] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 336. The argument of the Analytic, which is still
more complicated, will be considered later.
[183] Cf. A 46-9 = B 64-6. The corresponding sections of the
Prolegomena, Vaihinger contends, were developed from this first edition
passage, and the transcendental exposition of space in the second edition from
the argument of the Prolegomena.
[184] The synthetic method of argument is, as we shall see later, further
extended in the Analytic by being connected with the problem of the validity
of ordinary experience. But as the mathematical sciences are proved to have
the same conditions as—neither more nor less than—the consciousness of
time, this also allows of a corresponding extension of the analytic method. The
mathematical sciences can be substituted for the de facto premiss by which
these conditions are proved.
[185] Cf. above, p. 43.
[186] What follows should be read along with p. 235 ff. below, in which
this distinction between the “subjective” and “objective” deductions is
discussed in greater detail.
[187] A x-xi.
[188] This is a criticism to which Cohen, Caird, and Riehl lay themselves
open.
[189] Cf. below, pp. 219-20.
[190] Cf. above, pp. 49-50.
[191] Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 405. The existing sciences can, as Vaihinger says,
be treated en bloc, whereas each of the principles of the new philosophy must
be separately established.
[192] A 1.
[193] A 1-2.
[194] B 6 = A 2.
[195] A 2.
[196] Cf. above, pp. xxxv, 36 ff.; below, pp. 565-7.
[197] A 2.
[198] A 2.
[199] B 1.
[200] Cf. below, p. 55.
[201] B 1.
 [202] Cf. below, p. 54.
[203] B 2-3.
[204] Cf. below, p. 55.
[205] B 1.
[206] B 1.
[207] B 1.
[208] Cf. below, p. 88 ff.
[209] Cf. below, p. 237 ff.
[210] B 1.
[211] Cf. below, pp. 55-6.
[212] B 2.
[213] Cf. above, p. 27 n.
[214] B 2.
[215] Cf. above, pp. 39 ff., 53; below, pp. 57-8, 222 ff., 241, 286-9.
[216] B 2-3.
[217] Cf. above, p. 53.
[218] A 9-10 = B 13.
[219] Cf. above, p. 39 ff., and below, pp. 286-9.
[220] P. 53; cf. also pp. 1-2.
[221] Cf. also above, pp. 2-3.
[222] B 3.
[223] Cf. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe, Hauptstück ii. Lehrs. 8, Zus. 2, in
which elasticity and gravity are spoken of as the only universal properties of
matter which can be apprehended a priori.
[224] B 3-4.
[225] Cf. above, p. 27 ff.
[226] B 4.
[227] Cf. above, pp. xxxiii-iv, 27, 599 ff.
[228] Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, 30; below, pp. 185-6, 257-9.
[229] Loc. cit.
[230] B 5.
[231] Cf. above, pp. xxx, 599 ff.
[232] Cf. above, pp. 39, 54.
[233] A 2 = B 6.
[234] B 7.
[235] Cf. Kritik der Urtheilskraft, § 91, W. v. p. 473. Fortschritte, Werke
(Hartenstein), viii. pp. 572-3.
[236] Cf. above, pp. 22, 49-50, 52.
[237] Cf. Prolegomena, § 40; Fortschritte, pp. 577-8.
 [238] i. p. 238.
[239] P. 579.
[240] A 712 ff. = B 740 ff.; cf. also Fortschritte, p. 522.
[241] A 4 = B 8; cf. below, p. 563 ff.
[242] A 4 = B 8.
[243] A 5 = B 9.
[244] Cf. B 18.
[245] Cf. above, p. 29.
[246] A 6 ff. = B 10 ff.
[247] Prolegomena, § 2, b, c; Eng. trans, pp. 15-16. On the connection of
mathematical reasoning with the principle of contradiction, cf. below, pp. 64-
5.
[248] P. 582; cf. Logik, § 37.
[249] ii. p. 257.
[250] Prolegomena, § 4.
[251] Cf. B 290.
[252] § 2, c.
[253] B 161.
[254] B 218.
[255] A 9 = B 13.
[256] Cf. above, pp. xxv ff., 26; below, p. 593 ff.; cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 340 ff.
[257] A 9 = B 13, B 11, B 19.
[258] In A 9 = B 13, B 11, B 19.
[259] Cf. Borowski’s Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Im. Kants
(Hoffmann’s edition, 1902), p. 252. The German translation of Hume’s
Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding appeared in 1755, and Kant
probably made his first acquaintance with Hume through it. Cf. above, p.
xxviii; below, p. 156.
[260] Cf. below, Appendix B, p. 593 ff.
[261] A 9 = B 13.
[262] A 733 = B 761.
[263] A 737 = B 764.
[264] i. p. 291.
[265] B 14.
[266] B 14. Cf. above, pp. 59-60.
[267] i. p. 294.
[268] B 15.
[269] B 15. Cf. above, p. 41.
[270] Cf. Vaihinger, i. p. 296.
[271] A 164.
 [272] A 164.
[273] In Prolegomena and in second edition.
[274] B 15.
[275] § 2 c.
[276] Cf. below, p. 128 ff.
[277] Cf. A 713 = B 741.
[278] A 140 = B 179. Cf. below, p. 337 ff.
[279] B 15.
[280] B 17.
[281] i. p. 304 ff.
[282] § 15.
[283] This latter Kant developed in his Metaphysische Anfangsgründe
(1786).
[284] Cf. A 840 = B 869. “Nature” means, in the Kantian terminology, “all
that is.”
[285] Cf. above, pp. xliv-v, 19, 22, 33, 52-3, 55-6.
[286] § 4.
[287] The propositions of pure natural science are not separately treated in
§ 4 of the Prolegomena, though the subsequent argument implies that this has
been done. Vaihinger’s inference (i. p. 310) that a paragraph, present in Kant’s
manuscript, has been dropped out in the process of printing the fourth section
(the section which contains the paragraphs transposed from the end of § 2)
seems unavoidable. The missing paragraph was very probably that which is
here given in B 17.
[288] B 18.
[289] In § 4 (at end of paragraphs transposed from § 2).
[290] B 19.
[291] B 19.
[292] B 20.
[293] B 20.
[294] Cf. B 17.
[295] B 20.
[296] B 21.
[297] B 22.
[298] Vaihinger’s analysis (i. p. 371 ff.) is invaluable. I follow it
throughout.
[299] When corrected as above, pp. 51-2, 66-7.
[300] Cf. above, p. 38 ff.
[301] By J. Erdmann (cited by Vaihinger, i. p. 371).
[302] By B. Erdmann, Kriticismus, p. 183.
[303] As above noted, pp. 66-7.
 [304] Above, p. 66.
[305] A 11.
[306] A 11 = B 24.
[307] Cf. Dissertation, § 23: usus logicus—usus realis.
[308] Cf. above, p. 2.
[309] A 11 = B 24.
[310] i. p. 459 ff.
[311] Entwickelungsgeschichte der Kantischen Erkenntnistheorie, p. 113.
[312] Cf. A 795 = B 823. Cf. below, pp. 170, 174.
[313] Cf. A 796 = B 824.
[314] Cf. Vaihinger, i. pp. 461-2 for the very varied meanings in which
Kant “capriciously” employs the terms Organon, Canon, Doctrine, and
Discipline.
[315] A 11 = B 25.
[316] Erklärung in Beziehung auf Fichte’s Wissenschaftslehre (1799),
Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 600.
[317] B 25.
[318] Cf. A xv.
[319] Cf. B xxiv.
[320] A 11 = B 25.
[321] De vera religione, 72; De civitate Dei, viii. 6. Cited by Eisler,
Wörterbuch, p. 1521.
[322] Cf. Prantl, Geschichte der Logik im Abendlande, iii. pp. 114, 244-5.
[323] Ethica (Vloten and Land), ii. prop. xl. schol. 1.
[324] Principles of Human Knowledge, cxviii. The above citations are from
Eisler, loc. cit. pp. 1524-5. I have also myself come upon the term in Swift’s
Gulliver’s Travels (Dent, 1897, p. 166): “And as to ‘ideas, entities,
abstractions, and transcendentals,’ I could never drive the least conception into
their heads.”
[325] Organon, i. 484, cited by Eucken in Geschichte der philosophischer
Terminologie, p. 205.
[326] A 11 = B 25, A 56 = B 80.
[327] Cited by Vaihinger, i. p. 468.
[328] Cf. Text-Book to Kant, p. 13.
[329] Cf. Kant Explained, p. 89.
[330] Cf. below, p. 238.
[331] Cf. below, pp. 116-17, 302.
[332] Adickes has taken the liberty in his edition of the Critique of
substituting in A 297 = B 354 transcendental for transcendent. The Berlin
edition very rightly retains the original reading.
[333] B 27.
 [334] A vi.
[335] A 14-15 = B 28. Cf. below, p. 570n.
[336] This alteration is not given in Max Müller’s translation.
[337] Cf. the corresponding alteration made in the second edition at end of
note to A 21 = B 35.
[338] A 15 = B 29.
[339] Loc. cit.
[340] Loc. cit. Cf. A 835 = B 863.
[341] Cf. A 124, B 151-2, and below, pp. 225, 265.
[342] Cf. A 141 = B 180-1. Cf. Critique of Judgment, § 57: “Thus here [in
the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment], as also in the Critique of Practical
Reason, the antinomies force us against our will to look beyond the sensible
and to seek in the supersensible the point of union for all our a priori faculties;
because no other expedient is left to make our Reason harmonious with itself.”
Cf. also below, p. 473 ff., in comment on A 649 = B 677.
[343] A 16 = B 30.
[344] Introduction (W. v. p. 16). Cf. below, p. 438.
[345] Cf. also above, p. 25.
[346] Cf. A 51 = B 75.
[347] That thought finds in intuition its sole possible content is, of course, a
conclusion first established in the Analytic. Kant is here defining his terms in
the light of his later results.
[348] A 51 = B 75.
[349] Cf. Prolegomena, § 12, Remark ii. at the beginning.
[350] Cf. below, p. 88 ff.; B 146-7.
[351] Prolegomena, § 8 (Eng. trans. p. 33).
[352] Quoted by Vaihinger, ii. p. 4.
[353] Cf. Ueber das Organ der Seele (1796) and Anthropologie, § 22.
[354] § 3.
[355] A 27 = B 43, A 34 = B 51, A 42 = B 59, A 51 = B 75.
[356] Cf. B 72.
[357] In the second paragraph, A 20 = B 34.
[358] Dissertation, § 4.
[359] A 320 = B 376.
[360] Dissertation, § 4.
[361] A 50 = B 74.
[362] This view, as I shall endeavour to show, is only semi-Critical, and is
profoundly modified by the more revolutionary conclusions to which Kant
finally worked his way. Cf. below, p. 274 ff.
[363] In this he was anticipated by Tetens, Philosophische Versuche über
die menschliche Natur, Bd. i. (1777), Versuch X. v. Cf. below, p. 294.
 [364] Critique of Judgment, § 3 (Eng. trans, p. 49). Kant was the first to
adopt the threefold division of mental powers—“the faculty of knowledge, the
feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculty of desire.” This threefold division
is first given in his Ueber Philosophie überhaupt (Hartenstein, vi. p. 379),
which was written some time between 1780 and 1790, being originally
designed as an Introduction to the Critique of Judgment.
[365] A 248 (occurs in a lengthy section omitted in B).
[366] This distinction between intuition and appearance practically
coincides with that above noted between intuition and its object.
[367] For statement of the precise meaning in which these terms are here
employed, cf. above, pp. xlv-vii; below, pp. 270 ff., 312 ff.
[368] This would harmonise with the view developed in A 166 (in its
formulation of the principle of the Anticipations), A 374 ff., B 274 ff., A 723 =
B 751.
[369] Cf. A 50 = B 74: “We may name sensation the matter of sensuous
knowledge.” Similarly in A 42 = B 59; Prolegomena, § 11; Fortschritte,
(Hartenstein, viii. p. 527).
[370] Cf. below, p. 274 ff.
[371] Cf. below, pp. 366-7, 370-2, 377.
[372] ii. p. 59.
[373] A 42 = B 60.
[374] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. note to 469; also note to 357.
[375] Cf. above, p. xxxiii ff.
[376] A 266 = B 322.
[377] In discussing a and b we may for the present identify form with
space. The problem has special complications in reference to time.
[378] Cf. B 207.
[379] Herbart’s doctrine of space, Lotze’s local sign theory, also the
empiricist theories of the Mills and Bain, all rest upon this same assumption. It
was first effectively called in question by William James. Cf. Bergson: Les
Données immédiates, pp. 70-71, Eng. trans. pp. 92-3: “The solution given by
Kant does not seem to have been seriously disputed since his time: indeed, it
has forced itself, sometimes without their knowledge, on the majority of those
who have approached the problem anew, whether nativists or empiricists.
Psychologists agree in assigning a Kantian origin to the nativistic explanation
of Johann Müller; but Lotze’s hypothesis of local signs, Bain’s theory, and the
more comprehensive explanation suggested by Wundt, may seem at first sight
quite independent of the Transcendental Aesthetic. The authors of these
theories seem indeed to have put aside the problem of the nature of space, in
order to investigate simply by what process our sensations come to be situated
in space and to be set, so to speak, alongside one another: but this very
question shows that they regard sensations as inextensive, and make a radical
distinction, just as Kant did, between the matter of representation and its form.
The conclusion to be drawn from the theories of Lotze and Bain, and from
Wundt’s attempt to reconcile them, is that the sensations by means of which
we come to form the notion of space are themselves unextended and simply
qualitative: extensity is supposed to result from their synthesis, as water from
the combination of two gases. The empirical or genetic explanations have thus
taken up the problem of space at the very point where Kant left it: Kant
separated space from its contents: the empiricists ask how these contents,
which are taken out of space by our thought, manage to get back again.”
Bergson proceeds to argue that the analogy of chemical combination is quite
inapplicable, and that some “unique act very like what Kant calls an a priori
form” must still be appealed to. With the Kantian standpoint in this matter
Bergson does not, of course, agree. He is merely pointing out what the
consequences must be of this initial assumption of inextensive sensations.
[380] Cf. Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im
Raume, in its penultimate paragraph.
[381] Cf. Dissertation, last sentence of § 4, quoted below, p. 87.
[382] A 291 = B 347; A 429 = B 457.
[383] Reflexionen, ii. 334.
[384] ii. p. 73.
[385] Cf. Stout: Manual of Psychology (3rd edition), pp. 465-6. “We find
that the definite apprehension of an order of coexistence, as such, arises and
develops only in connection with that peculiar aspect of sense-experience
which we have called extensity, and more especially the extensity of sight and
touch. Two sounds or a sound and a smell may be presented as coexistent in
the sense of being simultaneous; but taken by themselves apart from
association with experiences of touch and sight, they are not apprehended as
spatially juxtaposed or separated by a perceived spatial interval or as having
perceived spatial direction and distance relatively to each other. Such relations
can only be perceived or imagined, except perhaps in a very rudimentary way,
when the external object is determined for us as an extensive whole by the
extensity of the same presentation through which we apprehend it.”
[386] Principles of Psychology, § 399, cited by Vaihinger.
[387] § 4.
[388] Sich ordnen has here, in line with common German usage, the force
of a passive verb.
[389] Riehl: Kriticismus (1876-1879) ii. Erster Theil, p. 104. As already
noted, Kant tacitly admits this in regard to time relations of coexistence and
sequence. He continues, however, to deny it in regard to space relations.
[390] Cf. below, pp. 101-2, 105.
[391] A 20 = B 34.
[392] A 20 = B 34.
[393] A 42 = B 60. Cf. Dissertation, § 12: [“Space and time, the objects of
pure mathematics,] are not only formal principles of all intuition, but
themselves original intuitions.”
[394] A 196 = B 241; A 293 = B 349.
[395] That is to say, in his published writings. It finds expression in one,
and only one, of the Reflexionen (ii. 410: “Both space and time are nothing but
combinations of sensuous impressions”).
[396] § 15, Coroll. at the end.
[397] Cf. § 12, quoted above, p. 89 n. 2.
 [398] There also Kant teaches that the representation of space is gained
from the space-endowed objects of experience.
[399] Cf. B 1.
[400] § 43.
[401] Ueber eine Entdeckung nach der alle neue Kritik der reinen Kritik
durch eine ältere entbehrlich gemacht werden soll.
[402] Op. cit. W. viii. pp. 221-2.
[403] Loc. cit. p. 222.
[404] Especially those which he had offered in support of the contention
that pure mathematical science is intuitive, not merely conceptual.
[405] Cf. below, p. 291 ff., on Kant’s reasons for developing his doctrine of
inner sense.
[406] As no one passage can be regarded as quite decisively proving Kant’s
belief in a pure manifold of intuition, the question can only be decided by a
collation of all the relevant statements in the light of the general tendencies of
Kant’s thinking.
[407] This at least would seem to be implied in the wording of his later
positions; it is not explicitly avowed.
[408] Cf. A 76-7 = B 102.
[409] Cf. above, pp. xlii, 38-42; below, pp. 118-20, 128-34.
[410] The last statement may be more freely translated: “Only in this way
can I get the intuition before me in visible form.” Cf. below, pp. 135-6, 347-8,
359.
[411] B 202-3.
[412] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 393, 409, 465, 630, 649.
[413] This, indeed, is Kant’s reason for describing space as an Idea of
reason. Cf. below, pp. 97-8.
[414] Geometry is for Kant the fundamental and chief mathematical
science (cf. A 39 = B 56 and Dissertation, § 15 c). In this respect he is a
disciple of Newton, not a follower of Leibniz. His neglect to take adequate
account of arithmetic and algebra is due to this cause. Just as in speaking of
the manifold of sense he almost invariably has sight alone in view, so in
speaking of mathematical science he usually refers only to geometry and the
kindred discipline of pure mechanics.
[415] A 76-7 = B 102. Cf. B 160-1 n.
[416] Cf. above, pp. 90, 92 ff.; below, pp. 171, 226-9, 267-70, 337.
[417] Cf. B 160.
[418] Metaphysical First Principles, W. iv. p. 559, cf. p. 481.
[419] Op. cit. p. 560.
[420] Critique of Judgment, §§ 26-7, Eng. trans. pp. 115-16 and 121.
[421] Cf. below, pp. 102 n., 165-6, 390-1.
[422] The title of this section, and the points raised in the opening
paragraph, are commented upon below. Cf. pp. 110, 114-15, 134 ff. I pass at
once to the first space argument.
 [423] Added in second edition.
[424] This argument is an almost verbal repetition of the first argument on
space in the Dissertation, § 15.
[425] Cf. below, pp. 106-7, 126, 132-3, 177-84, 338-9.
[426] Cf. above, p. 37 ff.; below, p. 178 ff.
[427] That is particularly obvious in Kant’s formulation of his problem in
the Introduction. For that is the assumption which underlies his mode of
distinguishing between analytic and synthetic judgments. Cf. above, p. 37.
[428] Cf. above, p. xxii.
[429] Cf. especially, pp. 184, 332-6, 419, 474, 479.
[430] I here use the more modern terms. Kant, in Anthropologie, § 14,
distinguishes between them as Organenempfindungen and Vitalempfindungen.
[431] ii. p. 165.
[432] Cf. above, pp. 85-8.
[433] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “Space is not anything objective and real. It
is neither substance, nor accident, nor relation, but is subjective and ideal,
proceeding by a fixed law from the nature of the mind, and being, as it were, a
schema for co-ordinating, in the manner which it prescribes, all external
sensations whatsoever.” And § 15, corollary at end: “Action of the mind co-
ordinating its sensations in accordance with abiding laws.”
[434] Especially in view of the third and fourth arguments on space, and of
Kant’s teaching in the transcendental exposition.
[435] E.g. Cohen, Riehl, Caird, Watson.
[436] Cf. Watson, The Philosophy of Kant explained, p. 83: “Kant,
therefore, concludes from the logical priority of space that it is a priori.”
[437] Upon it Kant bases the assertion that space is an Idea of reason; cf.
above, pp. 96-8, and below, pp. 165-6, 390-1.
[438] This second argument is not in the Dissertation.
[439] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. pp. 196-7. The corresponding argument on time, in
the form in which it is given in the second edition, is, as we shall find,
seriously misleading. It has caused Herbart and others to misinterpret the
connection in which this corollary stands to the main thesis. Herbart’s
interpretation is considered below, p. 124.
[440] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 220.
[441] Reflexionen, ii. 403.
[442] “That in space there are no more than three dimensions, that between
two points there can be but one straight line, that in a plane surface from a
given point with a given straight line a circle is describable, cannot be inferred
from any universal notion of space, but can only be discerned in space as in
the concrete.” Cf. also Prolegomena, § 12.
[443] In the second edition, the third.
[444] For a different view cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 233.
[445] Cf. above, pp. 99-100; below, pp. 126, 180-1, 184, 338-9.
[446] Cf. below, p. 180.
 [447] Cf. above, p. xxxvi; below, pp. 176 ff., 191, 195-6, 257, 290-1, 404
ff., 413.
[448] This statement occurs in a parenthesis; it has already been dwelt upon
in the fourth (third) argument.
[449] It has led Kant to substitute erörtern for betrachten in A 23 = B 38.
[450] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 151.
[451] § 1 (Eng. trans, p. 13). Cf. above, p. 64.
[452] This is, no doubt, one reason why Kant employs, in reference to
space, the unfortunate and confusing term concept (Begriff) in place of the
wider term representation (Vorstellung). Cf. B 37, and above, p. 64.
[453] Cf. A 729 = B 757: “In place of the term definition I should prefer to
employ the term exposition. For that is a more guarded expression, the claims
of which the critic may allow as being in a certain degree valid even though he
entertain doubts as to the completeness of the analysis.” Cf. Logic, §§ 99 ff.,
105. Cf. also Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze, W. ii. pp.
183-4: “Augustine has said, ‘I know well what time is, but if any one asks me,
I cannot tell.’”
[454] For explanation of the phrase “construction of concepts” cf. below,
pp. 132-3.
[455] Cf. below, p. 117. ff.
 [456] Cf. conclusion of fourth argument on space.
[457] A priori is here employed in its ambiguous double sense, as a priori
in so far as it precedes experience (as a representation), and in so far as it is
valid independently of experience (as a proposition). Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 268.
[458] Cf. below, p. 114 ff.
[459] Cf. below, pp. 115-16.
[460] Cf. Lose Blätter, i. p. 18: “This is a proof (Beweis) that space is a
subjective condition. For its propositions are synthetic and through them
objects can be known a priori. This would be impossible if space were not a
subjective condition of the representation of these objects.” Cf. Reflexionen, ii.
p. 396, in which this direct proof of the ideality of space is distinguished from
the indirect proof by means of the antinomies.
[461] By “concepts” Kant seems to mean the five arguments, though as a
matter of fact other conclusions and presuppositions are taken into account,
and quite new points are raised.
[462] This, according to Vaihinger (ii. p. 287), is the first occurrence of the
phrase Dinge an sich in Kant’s writings.
[463] Cf. Vaihinger’s analysis of this discussion, ii. pp. 290-313.
[464] ii. pp. 289-90.
[465] Cf. below, pp. 415 ff., 515 ff., 558 ff.
[466] In B 166 ff.
[467] This is likewise true of the references in the letter to Herz, 21st Feb.
1772. Cf. below, pp. 219-20.
[468] The Critical Philosophy of Kant, i. pp. 306-9.
[469] Cf. letter to Herz, W. x. p. 126. It is, Kant there says, the most absurd
explanation which can be offered of the origin and validity of our knowledge,
involving an illegitimate circulus in probando, and also throwing open the
door to the wildest speculations. Cf. above, p. 28; below, pp. 141-2, 290, 590.
[470] Cf. B 167-8.
[471] That is, in the first edition. Cf. above, p. 85 ff.; and below, p. 116.
[472] Above, pp. 111-12.
[473] ii. p. 335.
[474] §§ 6-11.
[475] This identification of the two is especially clear in A 39 = B 56.
[476] A 27 = B 43.
[477] Cf. above, p. xxxv; below, pp. 117-20, 142, 185-6, 241-2, 257, 290-1.
[478] A 28 = B 44, cf. A 35 = B 52.
[479] Cf. Vaihinger, i. pp. 351-4; and above, p. 76; below, p. 302. Cf.
Caird, The Critical Philosophy, i. pp. 298-9, 301; and Watson, Kant
Explained, p. 91.
[480] Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1747), §
10.
 [481] This important and far-reaching assertion we cannot at this point
discuss. Kant’s reasoning is really circular in the bad sense. Kant may
legitimately argue from the a priori character of space to the apodictic
character of pure mathematical science; but when he proceeds similarly to
infer the apodictic character of applied mathematics, he is constrained to make
the further assumption that space is a fixed and absolutely uniform mode in
which alone members of the human species can intuit objects. That, as we
point out below (p. 120), is an assumption which Kant does not really succeed
in proving. In any case the requirements of the strict synthetic method
preclude him from arguing, as he does both in the Dissertation (§ 15) and in
the third space argument of the first edition, that the a priori certitude of
applied mathematics affords proof of the necessary uniformity of all space.
[482] § 15 D.
[483] Cf. above, p. 111.
[484] Cf. above, pp. 40-2, 93-4; below, pp. 131-3, 338-9, 418 ff.
[485] A 99-100.
[486] A 78 = B 104. Cf. A 159 = B 198, B 147.
[487] § 38, Eng. trans, p. 81.
[488] Cf. p. 241 ff.
[489] A 28-9. Cf. B 1; Prolegomena, § 13, Remark II. at the end:
“Cinnabar excites the sensation of red in me.” Cf. above, pp. 80-8; below, pp.
146 ff., 274 ff.
[490] Kant continues the discussion of this general problem in A 45 ff. = B
62 ff.
[491] Kant himself again uses the confusing term conception.
[492] § 14, 1.
[493] Herbart, Werke, ii. 30. Quoted by Vaihinger, iii. p. 198.
[494] The third argument on time will be considered below in its
connection with the transcendental exposition.
[495] The chief omission goes, as we shall see, to form the concluding
argument on time.
[496] In the second edition, the third.
[497] In the second edition, the third.
[498] In the second edition, the fourth.
[499] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. pp. 380-1.
[500] Cf. second part of fourth (third) argument on space.
[501] Kant’s Logik, Einleitung, § 8, Eng. trans, p. 49.
[502] Cf. above, pp. 99-100.
[503] These axioms are: (1) time has only one dimension; (2) different
times are not simultaneous but successive. In the fourth argument the synthetic
character of these axioms is taken as further evidence of the intuitive nature of
time. This passage also is really part of the transcendental exposition. That
exposition has to account for the synthetic character of the axioms as well as
for their apodictic character; and as a matter of fact the intuitive and
consequent synthetic character of the a priori knowledge which arises from
time is much more emphasised in the transcendental exposition than its
apodictic nature.
[504] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 374 ff.
[505] Vaihinger, ii. p. 387.
[506] Cf. A 41 = B 58: “Motion which combines both [space and time]
presupposes something empirical.”
[507] W. iv. p. 471.
[508] Ueber Philosophie überhaupt (Hartenstein, vi. p. 395).
[509] § 12.
[510] Loc. cit.
[511] A 78 = B 104.
[512] A 142-3 = B 182. It should be observed that in Kant’s view schemata
“exist nowhere but in thought” (A 141 = B 180). It may also be noted that time
is taken as conditioning the schemata of all the categories.
[513] A 717 ff. = B 745 ff.
[514] § 10.
[515] Erläuterungen über des Herrn Professor Kant Critik der reinen
Vernunft (Königsberg, 1784), p. 24. Johann Schulze (or Schultz) was professor
of mathematics in Königsberg. He was also Hofprediger, and is frequently
referred to as Pastor Schulze. Kant has eulogised him (W. x. p. 128) as “the
best philosophical head that I am acquainted with in our part of the world.” In
preparing the Erläuterungen, which is a paraphrase or simplified statement of
the argument of the Critique, with appended comment, Schulze had the
advantage of Kant’s advice in all difficulties. Kant also read his manuscript,
and suggested a few modifications (op. cit. pp. 329, 343).
[516] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. pp. 388-9.
[517] Werke (Frauenstädt’s ed., 1873), i. p. 133.
[518] P. 129.
[519] W. x. p. 530. Italics not in Kant.
[520] Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze: Erste
Betrachtung, §§ 2, 3; dritte Betrachtung, § 1; Dissertation, §§ 12, 15 C.
[521] P. 128.
[522] Dissertation, § 15 C.
[523] Cf. above, pp. 40-2, 118-20; below, pp. 338-9.
[524] Kant und die moderne Mathematik in Kant-Studien, xii. (1907) p. 34
n.
[525] Cf. A 713 ff. = B 741 ff.; A 4 = B 8; B 15-16; A 24; A 47-8 = B 64-5.
[526] Cf. below, pp. 337-8.
[527] Cf. above, pp. 112 n. 4.
[528] The content of the second Conclusion in regard to space.
[529] This expresses the matter a little more clearly than Kant himself
does. The term representation is ambiguous. In the first paragraph it is made to
cover the appearances as well as their representation.
 [530] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 Coroll.: “Space properly concerns the intuition
of the object; time the state, especially the representative state.”
[531] Cf. below, pp. 309 ff., 347-8, 359.
[532] Cf. Reflexionem, ii. 365 ff.
[533] § 14, 5 and note to 5.
[534] The opposite is, however, asserted in B 67.
[535] Cf. A 427-8 n. = B 456 n.
[536] A 99. Cf. A 162 = B 203: “I cannot represent to myself a line,
however small, without drawing it in thought, i.e. generating from a point all
its parts one after another.” Cf. pp. 94, 347-8.
[537] Cf. Lose Blätter, i. 54: “Without space time itself would not be
represented as quantity (Grösse), and in general this conception would have no
object.” Cf. Dissertation, § 14. 5.
[538] Cf. below, p. 365 ff.
[539] In the Dissertation time is treated before space.
[540] Cf. above, pp. xxxiv, 120; below, pp. 241-2, 365, 367-70, 390-1.
[541] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 C.
[542] Cf. below, pp. 272 ff., 294-5, 308 ff., 365 ff.
[543] A 23 = B 37.
[544] They correspond to the third paragraph dealing with space. Cf.
above, p. 116.
[545] Cf. above, pp. 116-17.
[546] Cf. W. x. p. 102. Mendelssohn had also protested; cf. op. cit. x. p.
110.
[547] W. x. pp. 128-9. Italics not in Kant. Kant is entirely justified in
protesting against the view that in denying things in themselves to be in time
he is asserting that they remain eternally the same with themselves. To make a
dancer preserve one and the same posture is not to take him out of time, but to
bring home to him the reality of time in an extremely unpleasant manner.
Duration is one of the modes of time.
[548] This is Kant’s reply to Mendelssohn’s objection (December 1770, W.
x. p. 110): “Succession is at least a necessary condition of the representations
of finite spirits. Now the finite spirits are not only subjects but also objects of
representations, both for God and for our fellow-men. The succession must
therefore be regarded as something objective.”
[549] Cf. A 277 = B 333: “It is not given to us to observe even our own
mind with any intuition but that of our inner sense.”
[550] Quoted by Vaihinger, ii. p. 406.
[551] In the fourth Paralogism, A 366, and in the Refutation of Idealism, B
274.
[552] Cf. A 42 = B 59.
[553] Above, pp. 113-14.
[554] Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 114.
 [555] The date of Kant’s Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der
Gegenden im Raume.
[556] Cf. below, p. 161 ff.
[557] Cf. Dissertation, § 15 D: “Those who defend the reality of space
conceive it either as an absolute and immense receptacle of possible things—a
view which appeals not only to the English [thinkers] but to most
geometricians—or they contend that it is nothing but a relation holding
between existing things, which must vanish when the things are removed, and
which is thinkable only in actual things. This latter is the teaching of Leibniz
and of most of our countrymen.” That the account of Leibniz’s teaching given
in the paragraphs under consideration is not altogether accurate, need hardly
be pointed out. Kant, following his usual method in the discussion of opposing
systems, is stating what he regards as being the logical consequences of
certain of Leibniz’s tenets, rather than his avowed positions.
[558] Cf. A 275-6 = B 331-2: “Leibniz conceived space as a certain order
in the community of substances, and time as the dynamical sequence of their
states. But that which both seem to possess as proper to themselves, in
independence of things, he ascribed to the confused character of their
concepts, asserting this confusion to be the reason why what is a mere form of
dynamical relations has come to be regarded as a special intuition, self-
subsistent and antecedent to the things themselves. Thus space and time were
[for Leibniz] the intelligible form of the connection of things (substances and
their states) in themselves.” Cf. also Prolegomena, § 13, Anm. i.
[559] Kant has stated that both views conflict with “the principles of
experience.” But his criticisms are not altogether on that line. The statement
strictly applies only to his criticism of the Leibnizian view. Cf. Dissertation, §
15 D: “That first inane invention of reason, assuming as it does the existence
of true infinite relations in the absence of all interrelated entities, belongs to
the realm of fable. But those who adopt the other view fall into a much worse
error. For whereas the former place an obstacle in the way only of certain
rational concepts, i.e. concepts that concern noumena, and which also in
themselves are extremely obscure bearing upon questions as to the spiritual
world, omnipresence, etc., the latter set themselves in direct antagonism to the
phenomena themselves and to geometry, the most faithful interpreter of all
phenomena. For—not to dwell upon the obvious circle in which they
necessarily become involved in defining space—they cast geometry down
from its position at the highest point of certitude, and throw it back into the
class of those sciences the principles of which are empirical. For if all
modifications of space are derived only through experience from external
relations, geometrical axioms can have only comparative universality, like that
acquired through induction, in other words, such as extends only as far as
observation has gone. They cannot lay claim to any necessity save that of
being in accordance with the established laws of nature, nor to any precision
except of the artificial sort, resting upon assumptions. And as happens in
matters empirical, the possibility is not excluded that a space endowed with
other original modifications, and perhaps even a rectilineal figure enclosed by
two lines, may sometime be discovered.” Cf. above, p. 114; below, p. 290.
[560] In B 155 n. Kant distinguishes between motion of an object in space,
and motion as generation of a geometrical figure. The former alone involves
experience; the latter is a pure act of the productive imagination, and belongs
not only to geometry but also to transcendental philosophy. This note, as
Erdmann has pointed out (Kriticismus, pp. 115, 168), was introduced by Kant
into the second edition as a reply to a criticism of Schütz. The distinction as
thus drawn is only tenable on the assumption of a pure manifold distinct from
the manifold of sense.
[561] A 230 = B 283. Cf. above, pp. 57, 118; below, pp. 185-6, 257.
[562] A 41 = B 58.
[563] Cf. below, pp. 359-60.
[564] Les Données Immédiates, p. 75.
[565] ii. p. 446.
[566] §§ 4 and 27.
[567] Cf. Ueber eine Entdeckung, etc.: W. viii. p. 220.
[568] A 44 = B 61.
[569] A 277 = B 334. Cf. A 278-9 = B 335-6.
[570] When Kant says that the distinction is not logical (that of relative
clearness and obscurity) but transcendental, the latter term is taken as
practically equivalent to epistemological. It does not mean ‘relating to the a
priori,’ but relating to transcendental philosophy, just as logical here means
relating to logic. Cf. Vaihinger, ii. p. 452.
[571] Cf. A 270 ff. = B 326 ff.
[572] § 7 (I read autem for autor). Cf. below, p. 187.
[573] Cf. Prolegomena, § 13, Remark II.
[574] Cf. above, pp. 120-1.
[575] Cf. A 257 = B 313.
[576] A 46 = B 63. This is the first occurrence in the Critique of the phrase
transcendental object. Transcendental is employed as synonymous with
transcendent. Cf. below, p. 204 ff.
[577] Cf. above, pp. 120-2.
[578] A 271 = B 327.
[579] A 46-9 = B 63-6.
[580] A 48 = B 65-6. Vaihinger (ii. pp. 470-2) gives what appears to be a
sufficient explanation of what Kant had in mind in its employment.
[581] A 46 = B 64. Cf. Dissertation, § 15 C. In the concluding sentence of
the first edition’s Aesthetic, Kant for the first time uses the singular Ding an
sich in place of the more usual Dinge an sich and also refers to it in
problematic terms as what may underlie appearances.
[582] B 66-73.
[583] a does not contain anything not to be found elsewhere in the first
edition. It is a restatement of A 265 ff. = B 321 ff., A 274 = B 330, A 277 ff. =
B 333 ff., A 283-5 = B 339-41.
[584] An assertion, it may be noted, which conflicts with Kant’s view of it
as a pure manifold.
[585] Kant was probably influenced by Tetens. Cp. below, p. 294.
[586] Cf. below, p. 291 ff. b together with B 152-8 is a more explicit
statement of the doctrine of inner sense than Kant had given in the first
edition.
[587] Vaihinger (ii. p. 486 ff.), who has done more than any other
commentator to clear up the ambiguities of this passage, distinguishes only
two views.
[588] A 38 = B 55.
[589] Cf. Prolegomena, W. iv. p. 376 n., Eng. trans. p. 149: “The reviewer
often fights his own shadow. When I oppose the truth of experience to
dreaming, he never suspects that I am only concerned with the somnium
objective sumtum of Wolff’s philosophy, which is merely formal, and has
nothing to do with the distinction of dreaming and waking, which indeed has
no place in any transcendental philosophy.”
[590] Cf. below, p. 270 ff.
[591] B 69. For explanation of the references to time and self-
consciousness, cf. below, pp. 308, 323.
[592] This view of illusion likewise appears in A 293 = B 349, A 377-8, A
396, and Prolegomena, § 13, III., at the beginning.
[593] Prolegomena, loc. cit.
[594] Cf. in the 1863 edition, Bd. ii. 267 ff. The examples of illusion
employed by Mendelssohn are reflection in a mirror and the rainbow.
[595] W. x. p. 405.
[596] Schein is so used by Kant himself (W. x. p. 105) in a letter to Lambert
in 1770.
[597] A 38.
[598] Cf. above, A 39 = B 57. This is, however, merely asserted by
implication; it is not proved. As already noted, Kant does not really show that
space and time, viewed as absolute realities, are “inconsistent with the
principles of experience.” Nor does Kant here supply sufficient grounds for his
description of space and time as Undinge. Kant, it must be observed, does not
regard the conception of the actual infinite as in itself self-contradictory. Cf.
below, p. 486.
[599] B 275.
[600] Cf. below, p. 298 ff., on Kant’s Refutations of Idealism. This is also
the meaning in which Kant employs the term in his pre-Critical writings. Cf.
Dilucidatio (1755), prop. xii. usus; Träume eines Geistersehers (1766), ii. 2,
W. ii. p. 364. These citations are given by Janitsch (Kant’s Urtheile über
Berkeley, 1879, p. 20), who also points out that the term is already used in this
sense by Bülffinger as early as 1725, Dilucidationes philos. This is also the
meaning in which the term is employed in B xxxiv. Cf. A 28 = B 44.
[601] Prolegomena; Anhang. W. iv. pp. 374-5.
[602] In his Kleine Aufsätze (3. Refutation of Problematic Idealism,
Hartenstein, v. p. 502) Kant would seem very inconsistently to accuse
Berkeley of maintaining a solipsistic position. “Berkeley denies the existence
of all things save that of the being who asserts them.” This is probably,
however, merely a careless formulation of the statement that thinking beings
alone exist. Cf. Prolegomena, § 13, Anm. ii.
[603] Prolegomena, W. iv. p. 375; Eng. trans. p. 148.
 [604] Borowski (Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant,
in Hoffman’s ed. 1902, p. 248 ff.) gives a list of English writers with whom
Kant was acquainted. They were, according to Janitsch (loc. cit. p. 35),
accessible in translation. Cf. above, pp. xxviii n. 3, 63 n. 1.
[605] Cf. W. i. pp. 318, 322. When Kant cites Hume in the Prolegomena
(Introduction), the reference is to the German translation.
[606] This was the first of Berkeley’s writings to appear in German. The
translation was published in Leipzig in 1781.
[607] Cf. below, pp. 307-8. The opposite view has, however, been defended
by Vaihinger: Philos. Monatshefte, 1883, p. 501 ff.
[608] Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding (sec. xii. pt. ii. at the
end).
[609] Sixth edition, pp. 132, 214, 243 ff.
[610] A 38.
[611] A 377.
[612] A 377-8. Though Kant here distinguishes between perceptions and
their “outer objects,” the latter are none the less identified with mental
representations.
[613] Cf. below, p. 305 ff.
[614] Prolegomena, § 13, Remark III.; and Anhang (W. iv. p. 374).
[615] Kant’s description of Berkeley’s idealism as visionary and mystical is
doubtless partly due to the old-time association of idealism in Kant’s mind
with the spiritualistic teaching of Swedenborg (W. ii. p. 372). This association
of ideas was further reinforced owing to his having classed Berkeley along
with Plato.
[616] Prolegomena, Anhang, W. iv. p. 374; Eng. trans. p. 147.
[617] Cf. above, pp. 140-1.
[618] § 27. In translating Kant’s somewhat difficult Latin I have found
helpful the English translation of the Dissertation by W. J. Eckoff (New York,
1894).
[619] Besides the internal evidence of the passage before us, we also have
Kant’s own mention of Mendelssohn in this connection in notes (to A 43 and
A 66) in his private copy of the first edition of the Critique. Cf. Erdmann’s
Nachträge zu Kant’s Kritik, xx. and xxxii.; and above, p. 11.
[620] Cf. Morgenstunden, Bd. ii. of Gesammelte Schriften (1863), pp. 246,
288.
[621] Cf. above, p. 116.
[622] B 72.
[623] Upon this subject cf. Vaihinger’s exhaustive discussion in ii. p. 518
ff.
[624] Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1747).
[625] Op. cit. § 10. Cf. above, p. 117 ff.
[626] Von dem ersten Grunde des Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume.
 [627] Euler, Réflexions sur l’espace et le temps (1748). Vaihinger (ii. p.
530) points out that Kant may also have been here influenced by certain
passages in the controversy between Leibniz and Clarke.
[628] Loc. cit., at the end.
[629] In the Dorpater manuscript, quoted by Erdmann in his edition of the
Prolegomena, p. xcvii n.
[630] § 15 C.
[631] So also in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science
(1786), Erstes Hauptstück, Erklärung 2, Anmerkung 3.
[632] Cf. above, p. 105.
[633] A 289 = B 345.
[634] More exactly between the writing of the Metaphysical First
Principles (in which as above noted the argument of the Prolegomena is
endorsed) and 1787.
[635] Cf. A 260 ff. = B 316 ff. on the Amphiboly of Reflective Concepts.
[636] The Dissertation cites the argument only with this purpose in view.
And yet it is only from the Dissertation standpoint that the wider argument of
the Prolegomena can be legitimately propounded.
[637] Above, pp. 96-8, 102 n. 4; below, pp. 390-1.
[638] B 73.
[639] A 50 = B 74.
[640] Cf. below, p. 176 n. 1.
[641] K. p. 99 n.
[642] A 64 = B 89.
[643] The definition of intuition given in A 19 = B 33 also applies only to
empirical intuition.
[644] For discussion of Kant’s view of sensation as the matter of sensuous
intuition, cf. above, p. 80 ff.
[645] Second paragraph, A 51 = B 75.
[646] Object (Gegenstand) is here used in the strict sense and no longer as
merely equivalent to content (Inhalt).
[647] Cf. above, p. 79 ff.
[648] P. 85.
[649] Third paragraph, A 52 = B 77.
[650] K. p. 100.
[651] Kant’s Logik: Einleitung, i. (Abbott’s trans. p. 4).
[652] Cf. A 796 = B 824; A 130 = B 169; also above, pp. 71-2.
[653] A 709 = B 737.
[654] Logik: Einleitung, i. (Eng. trans. p. 3).
[655] Cf. below, p. 194.
[656] Einleitung, i. (Eng. trans. p. 4).
 [657] Cf. A 796 = B 824.
[658] Logik: Einleitung, i. (Eng. trans. p. 5).
[659] A 57 = B 81.
[660] Einleitung, vii. (Eng. trans. p. 40 ff.).
[661] Kant might have added that transcendental logic defines further
conditions, those of possible experience, and that by implication it refers us to
coherence as the ultimate test even of material truth.
[662] A 60-2 = B 84-6.
[663] Einleitung, ii. (Eng. trans. pp. 6-7).
[664] Cf. above, pp. 71-2, 170; below, pp. 438, 563.
[665] Cf. below, p. 425 ff.
[666] Kant employs Gegenstand and Object as synonymous terms.
[667] Cf. below, p. 426.
[668] A 64 = B 89.
[669] A 65 = B 90.
[670] The opening statement, A 67 = B 92, that hitherto understanding has
been defined only negatively, is not correct, and would seem to prove that this
section was written prior to the introduction to the Analytic, cf. above, p. 167.
[671] See above, pp. 170-1.
[672] A 79 = B 105. ‘Element’ translates the misleading term ‘Inhalt.’
[673] Kant’s definition of transcendental logic as differing from general
logic in that it does not abstract from a priori content must not be taken as
implying that the categories of understanding are contents, though of a priori
nature. As we shall find, though that is Kant’s view of the forms of sense, it is
by no means his view of the categories. They are, he repeatedly insists, merely
functions, and are quite indeterminate in meaning save in so far as a content is
yielded to them by sense. In A 76-7 = B 102, in distinguishing between the
two logics, Kant is careful to make clear that the a priori content of
transcendental logic consists exclusively of the a priori manifolds of sense.
[674] § 20, Eng. trans. p. 58.
[675] The view of the two as co-ordinate reappears in the Prolegomena (§
20) in a section the general tendency of which runs directly counter to any
such standpoint.
[676] A 78 = B 103.
[677] Cf. below, pp. 196, 204, 226.
[678] Einleitung, viii., Eng. trans. p. 48.
[679] Cf. above, pp. 37-8.
[680] The Mistaken Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures (1762). W. ii. p.
47, Eng. trans. p. 79.
[681] Cf. above, pp. 99-100, 106-7.
[682] W. ii. pp. 58-9, Eng. trans. pp. 92-3.
[683] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 599.
 [684] Below, pp. 185-6.
[685] The same indefiniteness of statement is discernible in Caird’s (i. p.
322 ff.) and Watson’s (Kant Explained, pp. 121-2) discussions of the principle
supposed to be involved.
[686] Cf. A 80 = B 106.
[687] § 39.
[688] P. 176 ff.
[689] B 145-6. Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, xliv, 57, 142; below, pp. 257, 291.
[690] §§ 5-6.
[691] §§ 7-8. Cf. above, pp. 144-5.
[692] W. x. p. 126. Italics not in Kant.
[693] The relevant Reflexionen have been carefully discussed by Adickes
(Kant’s Systematik, p. 21 ff.). In what follows I have made extensive use of his
results, though not always arriving at quite the same conclusions.
[694] § 15, Coroll.
[695] In his later writings Kant recognises that the representations of space
and time involve an Idea of Reason. Cf. above, pp. 97-8; below, pp. 390-1.
[696] § 39.
[697] Reflexionen, ii. 513, cf. 502, 525-7.
[698] Op. cit. ii. 513.
[699] Cf. op. cit. ii. 537.
[700] Cf. above, p. 90 ff.
[701] Only in one passage, Rechtslehre, i., Anhang 3, 2, cited by Adickes,
op. cit. p. 13, does Kant so far depart from his own orthodoxy as to speak of
the possibility of an a priori tetrachotomy. But he never wavers in the view
that the completeness of a division cannot be guaranteed on empirical grounds.
[702] Introduction, § 9 n. Eng. trans. p. 41.
[703] §§ 4-6, 9.
[704] A 70-6 = B 95-101.
[705] Cf. Adickes, Kant’s Systematik, p. 36 ff.
[706] Cf. Adickes, op. cit. p. 89 ff.
[707] Organon, § 137. Cited by Adickes.
[708] i. p. 343 ff.
[709] Cf. below, p. 391 ff.
[710] A 76-79 = B 102-5.
[711] Cf. above, p. 171.
[712] A 55.
[713] Cf. also B 160.
[714] Kant’s Theorie der Erfahrung, 2nd ed. p. 257 ff.
[715] The Critical Philosophy of Kant, i. p. 327 ff.
 [716] Philosophischer Kriticismus, 2nd ed. i. p. 484 ff.
[717] Kant explained, p. 124 ff.
[718] Cf. below, p. 198.
[719] P. 226.
[720] A 79 = B 105.
[721] Cf. above, p. 177 ff.
[722] A 79-80.
[723] Cf. above, p. 192.
[724] Cf. B 111.
[725] Cf. Adickes, Systematik, pp. 42-3.
[726] Kant Explained, p. 128.
[727] Cf. above, p. 37.
[728] Cf. Dissertation, §§ 16 to 28, and below, p. 381 ff.
[729] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 795.
[730] B 111-13.
[731] World as Will and Idea, Werke (Frauenstädt), ii. p. 544; Eng. trans. ii.
p. 61.
[732] Cf. Stadler, Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntnisstheorie(1876), p. 122.
Cf. also below, pp. 387-9.
[733] Cf. below, p. 391 ff.
[734] A 81.
[735] Cf. Prolegomena, § 39.
[736] Cf. above, p. 186 ff.
[737] Kant Explained, p. 120.
[738] A 81.
[739] A 82.
[740] A 82.
[741] B 110.
[742] B 110-11.
[743] Cf. below, pp. 199-200.
[744] W. x. p. 344-5.
[745] Cf. below, p. 382 ff.
[746] Cf. below, pp. 433-4, 451, 480, 529, 559-60.
[747] B 114.
[748] Cf. 904-5.
[749] Cf. 907-10.
[750] Cf. B. Erdmann, Mittheilungen in Phil. Monatshefte, 1884, p. 80, and
Adickes, Systematik, pp. 55-9.
[751] Reflexionen, ii. p. 252 n.
 [752] “Die transcendentale Deduktion der Kategorien” in the Gedenkschrift
für Rudolf Haym. Published separately in 1902.
[753] Readers who are not immediately interested in the analysis of the text
or in the history of Kant’s earlier semi-Critical views may omit pp. 203-34,
with exception of pp. 204-19, on Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object,
which should be read.
[754] The reader is recommended to mark off the passages in a copy of the
Critique.
[755] Its first occurrence in the Critique is in the Aesthetic A 46 = B 63. It
there signifies the thing in itself.
[756] A 104.
[757] A 109.
[758] A 109.
[759] A 104.
[760] Cf. above, p. 28; below, pp. 219-20.
[761] W. x. pp. 124-5.
[762] Cf. below, pp. 209-10.
[763] Hume’s view of the self is not developed in the Enquiry, and is not
mentioned by Beattie.
[764] A 107.
[765] Cf. Reflexionen, ii. 952 (belonging, as Erdmann notes, to the earliest
Critical period): “Appearances are representations whereby we are affected.
The representation of our free self-activity (Selbsttätigkeit) does not involve
affection, and accordingly is not appearance, but apperception.” Cf. below, p.
296.
[766] § 8. Cf. above, pp. l-ii; below, pp. 243, 260-3, 272-3, 327-8, 473-7,
515.
[767] A 107. It is significant that Kant in A 107 uses, in reference to
apperception, the very unusual phrase, “unwandelbares Bewusstsein.”
[768] A 108.
[769] A 107.
[770] Reicke, Lose Blätter, p. 19. The bearing and date of this passage is
discussed below, p. 233.
[771] Op. cit. p. 20.
[772] Op. cit. p. 22 (written on a letter dated May 20, 1775).
[773] This last statement cannot possibly be taken literally. In view of the
manner in which the transcendental object is spoken of elsewhere in this
section, and also in the Dialectic, we must regard it as standing for an
independent existence, and the relation of representations to it as being,
therefore, something else than simply the unity of consciousness.
[774] It may be observed that when Kant in A 107, quoted above, refers to
“a priori concepts,” he adds in explanation, and within brackets, “space and
time.”
[775] A 105-6.
 [776] The actual nature of Kant’s teaching as to the origin and constitution
of the notion of the transcendental object is largely masked by the fact that he
places this proof of its validity so prominently in the foreground. The general
nature of this proof is, of course, identical with that of his later positions.
[777] A 109.
[778] As in the Lose Blätter. Cf. below, p. 233.
[779] Cf. below, pp. 227, 233-4, 268-9.
[780] Cf. below, pp. 322-8; also pp. 260-3.
[781] As above noted (p. 204 n.) it also occurs in the Aesthetic (A 46 = B
63), as signifying the thing in itself.
[782] A 238 = B 298.
[783] Cf. below, p. 238.
[784] A 238 ff. = B 298 ff.
[785] A 250-1.
[786] Cf. below, p. 407 ff.
[787] A 253.
[788] A 191 = B 236.
[789] A 277-8 = B 333-4; A 288 = B 344.
[790] Cf. mundus phaenomenon in A 272 = B 328.
[791] It is so dated by Adickes (K. p. 272 n.), owing to a single reference to
schemata in A 286 = B 342.
[792] A 358 and A 361 (cf. A 355); A 366; A 372 and A 379-80; A 390-1,
A 393, and A 394.
[793] A 366.
[794] “Transcendental” here means “transcendent.” Cf. A 379.
[795] A 372; so also in A 613-14 = B 641-2.
[796] The passage in A 393 is given below, p. 464.
[797] A 494 = B 522. Cf. A 492 = B 521: “The true self (das eigentliche
Selbst) as it exists in itself, i.e. the transcendental subject.”
[798] A 495 = B 523.
[799] A 496 = B 524.
[800] Loc. cit.
[801] Cf. also A 538 = B 566; A 540 = B 568; A 557 = B 585; A 564 = B
592; A 565-6 = B 593-4; A 613 = B 641-2.
[802] Above, p. 206.
[803] Cf. above, pp. liii-v; below, pp. 280, 331, 373-4, 390-1, 414-17, 429-
31, 558-61.
[804] Viz. the first layer of the deduction of the first edition, the relevant
sections in the chapter on phenomena and noumena (A 250 ff.), and the
Paralogisms with the subsequent Reflection.
 [805] Viz. the Note on Amphiboly, the chapter on the Antinomies, and the
chapter on the Ideal.
[806] To the statement that the alterations in the second edition cease at the
close of the chapter on the Paralogisms, there is only one single exception,
namely, the very brief note appended to A 491 = B 519. This exception,
however, supports our general thesis. It is of polemical origin, referring to the
nature of the distinction between transcendental and subjective idealism, and
was demanded by the new Refutation of Idealism which in the second edition
he had attached to the Postulates.
[807] It follows immediately upon the passage quoted above, p. 206.
[808] W. x. pp. 125-6.
[809] A 89 = B 121. I adopt B. Erdmann’s reading of auf for als.
[810] A 88 = B 120.
[811] A 90.
[812] As we have already found (above, p. 27 n. 1), it had not been attained
at the time when the Introduction to the first edition was written.
[813] A 95-96.
[814] A 97.
[815] A. 95; cf. A 96.
[816] A 111.
[817] Loc. cit.
[818] A 112.
[819] A 111.
[820] A 112-14.
[821] A 110-14.
[822] I. § 14 C Vaihinger regards as intermediate in date, but it is a
comparatively unimportant paragraph, and may for the present be left out of
account. Cf. below, pp. 225-6.
[823] A 118-19.
[824] A 124.
[825] Loc. cit.
[826] A 115.
[827] A 76-9 = B 102-4. Not yet commented upon.
[828] Cf. Vaihinger, loc. cit. p. 63.
[829] A 77 = B 102. Cf. above, pp. 96-7.
[830] Loc. cit.
[831] For explanation of the exact meaning in which these terms are
employed and for discussion of the complicated issues involved, cf. below, p.
270 ff.
[832] Cf. A 118.
[833] A 102.
 [834] A 99-100.
[835] A 102.
[836] A 100.
[837] A 101. Cf. below, p. 255.
[838] Pp. 238, 263 ff.
[839] Cf. above, p. 211.
[840] For Vaihinger’s own statement of it, cf. op. cit. pp. 79-98.
[841] Nos. 64-5, 117, 140-5.
[842] No. 146.
[843] Nos. 41, 81.
[844] No. 104.
[845] Cf. Nos. 964-5.
[846] No. 947.
[847] No. 948.
[848] No. 949.
[849] No. 952.
[850] This is Erdmann’s reading. Vaihinger substitutes allgemein for allein,
but without reason given.
[851] No. 935. The translation is literal. Kant in the last sentence changes
from singular to plural.
[852] No. 964.
[853] Cf. also Nos. 957, 961. The latter shows how Kant already connected
the categories of relation with the logical functions of judgment.
[854] Reicke, Nos. 7, 8, 10-18 (pp. 16-26, 29-49).
[855] The chief relevant passages have been quoted above, p. 209.
[856] The letter is given in W. x. p. 173.
[857] Reicke, pp. 113-16.
[858] According to Adickes the Critique was “brought to completion” in
the first half of 1780; in Vaihinger’s view, on the other hand, Kant was
occupied with it from April to September. Cf. above, p. xx.
[859] In two respects, however, fragment B 12 anticipates the teaching of
the fourth stage: (a) in suggesting (p. 114) the necessity of a pure synthesis of
pure intuition, and (b) in equating (p. 115) synthesis of apprehension with
synthesis of imagination.
[860] Pp. 231-3.
[861] Cf. below, pp. 268-9.
[862] In B 160 Kant states that the synthesis of apprehension is only
empirical; and in B 152 we find the following emphatic sentence: “In so far as
the faculty of imagination is spontaneously active I sometimes also name it
[i.e. in addition to entitling it transcendental and figurative] productive, and
thereby distinguish it from the reproductive imagination whose synthesis is
subject only to empirical laws, i.e. those of association, and which therefore
contributes nothing in explanation of the possibility of a priori knowledge.
Hence it belongs, not to transcendental philosophy, but to psychology.” Cf. the
directly counter statement in A 102: “The reproductive synthesis of the faculty
of imagination must be counted among the transcendental actions of the
mind.”
[863] Though, as we shall find, the deduction of the second edition is in
certain respects more mature, it is in other respects less complete.
[864] A 314 = B 370.
[865] A x-xi. Cf. above, pp. 50-1.
[866] Cf. below, pp. 543 ff., 576-7.
[867] Whether it was the chief reason is decidedly open to question. The
un-Critical character of its teaching as regards the function of empirical
concepts and of the transcendental object, and the unsatisfactoriness of its
doctrine of a threefold synthesis, would of themselves account for the
omission. The passage in the chapter on phenomena and noumena (A 250 ff.)
in which the doctrine of the transcendental object is again developed was
likewise omitted in the second edition.
[868] Cf. below, pp. 238, 263 ff.
[869] Cf. also in Methodology, below, p. 543 ff.
[870] Cf. above, pp. xxxvi, xxxvii-viii, 36; below, pp. 241-3.
[871] Cf. below, p. 543 ff.
[872] A xi.
[873] A 100-1.
[874] Kant’s failure either to distinguish or to connect the two deductions
in any really clear and consistent manner is a defect which is accentuated
rather than diminished in the second edition. Though the sections devoted to
the subjective enquiry are omitted, and the argument of the objective
deduction is so recast as to increase the emphasis laid upon its more strictly
logical aspects, the teaching of the subjective deduction is retained and
influences the argument at every point. For the new deduction, no less than
that of the first edition, rests throughout upon the initial assumption that
though connection or synthesis can never be given, it is yet the generative
source of all consciousness of order and relation.
[875] It appears most clearly in Kant’s proof of the category of causality in
the second Analogy. Cf. below, p. 364 ff.
[876] Cf. below, pp. 252-3, 258, 287, 333, 343.
[877] Cf. above, p. 208 ff.
[878] Cf. above, pp. l-ii, 207-12; below, pp. 260-3, 272-3, 327-8, 473-7,
515.
[879] P. 239.
[880] A 99.
[881] A 102.
[882] A 103.
[883] Loc. cit.
[884] Loc. cit.
 [885] A 100-1.
[886] A 106.
[887] A 101.
[888] Such statements are in direct conflict with his own repeated
assertions in other passages that reproduction and recognition are always
merely empirical. Cf. above, pp. 227-31, and below, pp. 264, 268-9.
[889] B 139-40.
[890] In the first edition the subjective and objective deductions shade into
one another; and this question is raised in the section on synthesis of
recognition (A 104), where, as above noted (p. 204 ff.), Kant’s argument is
largely pre-Critical, empirical concepts exercising the functions which Kant
later ascribed to the categories. But as we have already considered the
resulting doctrine of the transcendental object both in its earlier and in its
subsequent form, we may at once pass to the more mature teaching of the
other sections.
[891] Cf. above, p. 204 ff.
[892] Memory is only one particular mode in which recognition presents
itself in our experience; Kant’s purpose is to show that it is not more
fundamental, nor more truly constitutive of apperception, than is recognition
in any of its other manifestations. Indeed the central contention of the
objective deduction is that it is through consciousness of objects, i.e. through
consciousness of objective meanings, that self-consciousness comes to be
actualised at all. Only in contrast with, and through relation to, an objective
system is consciousness of inner experience, past or present, and therefore
self-consciousness in its contingent empirical forms, possible to the mind. Cf.
above, pp. li-ii; below, pp. 260-3.
[893] B 134.
[894] A 116.
[895] Cf. above, p. 242; below, pp. 258, 332-3.
[896] Cf. A 111.
[897] A 117 n.
[898] This transcendental psychology is considered below (p. 263 ff.), in its
connection with the later stages of the subjective deduction. Cf. above, p. 238.
[899] A 113-14.
[900] Cf. above, p. 229.
[901] Cf. A 100-1.
[902] A 122-3.
[903] Cf. B 140-3; B 151-2; B 164-5 5 and below, p. 286.
[904] Here again the second edition text is more explicit than the first:
“This peculiarity of our understanding, that it can produce a priori unity of
apperception solely by means of the categories, and only by such and so many,
is as little capable of further explanation as why we have just these and no
other functions of judgment, or why space and time are the sole forms of our
possible intuition.”—B 145-6. Cf. above, pp. xxxiii-vi, xliv, 57, 142, 186;
below, pp. 291, 411.
 [905] Cf. above, pp. 252-3.
[906] The second Analogy embodies the argument which is implied in, and
necessary to, the establishment of the assertions dogmatically made in A 111-
12.
[907] A 119.
[908] Cf. A 128. On this whole question cf. above, p. 242; below, pp. 287-
8.
[909] Cf. A 113, 125-9.
[910] A 107, 111.
[911] The explanation given in the second edition (B 132) is artificial, and
does not reveal Kant’s real reasons. It is also obscure owing to its employment
of dynamical terms to denote the relation of apperception to self-
consciousness.
 [912] Cf. above, pp. 251-3.
[913] Cf. A 112, 113, 128.
[914] A 114.
[915] A 94, 115, 118. Cf. also end of note to B 134.
[916] Cf. above, pp. lii, 207-12, 243; below, pp. 327-8, 473-7, 515.
[917] This is shown, not only by Kant’s ethical writings, but also by his
less formal utterances, especially in his Lectures on Metaphysics and on
Religion, in his Reflexionen, and in his Lose Blätter.
[918] Cf. below, pp. 277-8.
[919] Cf. above, pp. l-lii; below, pp. 277 ff., 461-2, 473-7.
[920] In note to B 162 they are indeed identified.
[921] Kant’s vacillating attitude appears in the added phrase “of whose
activity we are hardly ever conscious.” Cf. A 78: it is a “blind” power.
[922] Cf. above, p. 225; below, p. 337.
[923] A 138 = B 177.
[924] A 118.
[925] Cf. above, p. 253 ff.
[926] A 123.
[927] A 121-3.
[928] A 125-6.
[929] Above, pp. 74 ff., 238, 252.
[930] Cf. above, pp. 96-7.
[931] Cf. below, pp. 367, 371-2.
[932] Cf. above, pp. 211, 227, 233-4.
[933] In direct contradiction of his previous view of transcendental
imagination as purely productive, it is now stated that it is reproductive. Cf. A
102.
[934] Cf. above, pp. 225 ff., 264.
[935] It must be remembered that this was also rendered necessary by the
archaic character of their teaching in regard to the transcendental object and
the function of empirical concepts.
[936] Cf. B 151-2. There is no mention, however, of objective affinity.
[937] B 160-1. Cf. above, pp. 226-9.
[938] In what follows I make use of an article, entitled “The Problem of
Knowledge,” which I have contributed to the Journal of Philosophy,
Psychology, and Scientific Methods (1912), vol. ix. pp. 113-28.
[939] The same wide sense in which Kant employs “empirical idealism.”
[940] Cf. above, pp. xliii-v, 208; below, pp. 295-6, 298 ff. Hume and
Spinoza are the only pre-Kantian thinkers of whose position the last statement
is not strictly descriptive, but even they failed to escape its entangling
influence.
 [941] Cf. A 28-9; also Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz’s edition, 1821), p.
188 ff. In Kant’s posthumously published work, his Transition from the
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to Physics, it is asserted in at
least twenty-six distinct passages that sensations are due to the action of “the
moving forces of matter” upon the sense-organs. Cf. below, p. 283 n. 2. In his
Ueber das Organ der Seele (1796) (Hartenstein, vi. p. 457 ff.), Kant agrees
with Sömmerring in holding that the soul has virtual, i.e. dynamical, though
not local, presence in the fluid contained in the cavity of the brain.
[942] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Bk. i. ch. i. § iii.
[943] Cf. below, pp. 279 ff., 293-6, 312 ff., 321, 361 n. 3, 384-5, 464-5,
476.
[944] Cf. below, pp. 279-80, and pp. 293-4, on inner sense.
[945] i. p. 339: “Each pulse of cognitive consciousness, each Thought, dies
away and is replaced by another…. Each later Thought, knowing and
including thus the Thoughts which went before, is the final receptacle—and
appropriating them is the final owner—of all that they contain and own. Each
Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it
realized as its Self to its own later proprietor. As Kant says [cf. below, pp. 461-
2], it is as if elastic balls were to have not only motion but knowledge of it,
and a first ball were to transmit both its motion and its consciousness to a
second, which took both up into its consciousness and passed them to a third,
until the last ball held all that the other balls had held, and realized it as its
own.”
[946] I here use “objective” in its modern meaning: I am not concerned
with the special meaning which Descartes himself attached to the terms
objective and formaliter.
[947] Pp. 277-8.
[948] On this whole matter cf. above, p. xlv; below, pp. 312-21 on Kant’s
Refutation of Idealism; pp. 373-4 on the Second Analogy; pp. 407 ff., 414 ff.
on Phenomena and Noumena; p. 461 ff. on the Paralogisms; and p. 546. Cf.
also A 277-8 = B 334.
[949] P. 267 ff.
[950] Though the posthumously published work of Kant’s old age, his
Transition from the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to
Physics, bears the marks of weakening powers, and is much too incomplete
and obscure to allow of any very assured deductions from its teaching, it is
none the less significant that it is largely occupied in attempting to define the
relation in which the objective world of physical science stands to the sensible
world of ordinary consciousness. As above noted (p. 275 n.), it is there
asserted in at least twenty-six distinct passages that sensations are due to the
action of “the moving forces of matter” upon the sense-organs. What is even
more significant is the adoption and frequent occurrence (Altpreussische
Monatsschrift (1882), pp. 236, 287, 289, 290, 292, 294, 295-6, 300, 308, 429,
436, 439) of the phrase “Erscheinung von der Erscheinung.” Kant would seem
to mean by “Erscheinung vom ersten Range” (op. cit. p. 436) (i.e. appearance
as such), the objective world as determined by physical science; and by
“Erscheinung vom zweiten Range” (i.e. appearance of the appearance), this
same objective world as known in terms of the sensations which material
bodies generate by acting on the sense-organs. Kant adds that the former is
known directly, and the latter indirectly—meaning, apparently, that the former
is known through a priori forms native to the understanding, and the latter
only in terms of sense-data which are mechanically conditioned (cf. loc. cit.
pp. 286, 292, and 444 n. The terms latter and former on p. 300 have got
transposed).
[951] Cf. below pp. 312-21, 373-4, 414 ff., 425 ff., 558 ff.
[952] B 129.
[953] B 161 n.
[954] B 130-1.
[955] B 131.
[956] B 131-4.
[957] B 131.
[958] Cf. B 138.
[959] B 135.
[960] B 136-40.
[961] B 140-2.
[962] B 143.
[963] §§ 21-27.
[964] Above, pp. 252-3, 258, 287.
[965] Prolegomena, § 18.
[966] Op. cit. § 20.
[967] Op. cit. §§ 18-19; Eng. trans. pp. 54-5.
[968] Cf. above, pp. 39-40, 286-7.
[969] Cf. below, p. 370.
[970] Op. cit. § 22. Cf. below, p. 311 n. 4.
[971] §§ 21-7.
[972] B 143.
[973] This leads on in the second paragraph of § 21 to further statements,
already commented upon above, pp. 186, 257-8. Cf. also § 23.
[974] Cf. also § 24.
[975] Cf. above, pp. 90 ff., 171, 226-9, 267-70; below, p. 337.
[976] Cf. above, pp. 28, 47, 114, 141-2.
[977] Cf. § 21, second paragraph.
[978] Cf. above, pp. 160, 186, 257, and below, pp. 325-6, 330-1, 390-1,
404 ff.
[979] Cf. below, pp. 324, 329.
[980] Above, p. 148.
[981] Cf. above, pp. xliii-v, l-ii, 238, 261-2, 263 ff., 273 ff.; below, pp. 295
ff., 322 ff.
[982] Cf. B 67-8; A 33 = B 49.
[983] B 67.
 [984] B xxxix n.
[985] Kant very probably arrived at this view of inner sense under the
influence of Tetens who teaches a similar doctrine in his Philosophische
Versuche über die menschliche Natur und ihre Entwickelung. Cf. Bd. i.;
Versuch i. 7, 8. The first volume of Tetens’ work was published in 1777 (re-
issued by the Kantgesellschaft in 1913), and had been carefully read by Kant
prior to the final preparation of the Critique. Cf. B. Erdmann, Kriticismus, p.
51.
[986] Cf. A. 128-9.
[987] As just noted, it is in the second edition that the above view of the
content of inner sense is first definitely formulated.
[988] A 33 = B 49-50.
[989] A 34 = B 50.
[990] Cf. above, pp. 208-9, 251-2, 260-4; below, 311 n. 4. It may be
observed that Caird (i. pp. 625-7) interprets inner sense as equivalent to inner
reflection. This is one of the respects in which Caird’s Hegelian standpoint has
led him to misrepresent even Kant’s most central doctrines.
[991] Cf. below, pp. 399-400, and A 277-8 = B 333-4.
[992] Above, p. 292.
[993] Cf. above, p. 155.
[994] Cf. Vaihinger in Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie (1884),
p. 106 ff.
[995] Section III., Prop. XII Usus.
[996] Theil II. Hauptstück II. W. ii. p. 364.
[997] § 11.
[998] Pölitz’s edition (1821), pp. 100-2.
[999] W. iv. p. 373 ff.
[1000] It may be noted that in the Aesthetic (A 38 = B 55) Kant employs
the term idealism, without descriptive epithet, in the same manner as in his
pre-Critical writings, as signifying a position that must be rejected.
[1001] Cf. below, p. 301 ff.
[1002] Pp. 307-8.
[1003] Cf. A 368-9 and 372.
[1004] A 377: a passage which bears signs of being a later interpolation.
[1005] B 274.
[1006] A 368-9.
[1007] A 369.
[1008] A 28 = B 44. Cf. above, pp. 76, 116-17.
[1009] A 370.
[1010] Loc. cit.
[1011] A 372.
[1012] A 373: Weil indessen, etc.
 [1013] Adickes regards them as later additions. To judge by their content
(cf. above, pp. 204 ff., 215-16, on Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental
object), they are more probably of quite early origin.
[1014] A 377-8.
[1015] Adickes argues that this paragraph is subsequent to the main body
of the Analytic, but that is in keeping with the tendency which he seems to
show of dating passages, which cannot belong to the “Brief Outline,” later
rather than earlier.
[1016] A 375.
[1017] The remaining passages in the fourth Paralogism, together with the
corresponding passages in B 274 ff., in Kant’s note to B xxxix, and in B 291-
3, are separately dealt with below, pp. 308 ff., 322 ff., 462-3.
[1018] A 377.
[1019] Loc. cit.
[1020] E.g. Garve.
[1021] § 13, W. iv. pp. 288-9: Eng. trans. p. 42.
[1022] Loc. cit.
[1023] Op. cit. pp. 289-90: Eng. trans. pp. 43-4.
[1024] In Note II.
[1025] § 49, W. iv. 336: Eng. trans. p. 99.
[1026] Anhang, W. iv. p. 375 n.
[1027] W. iv. p. 374: Eng. trans. p. 147.
[1028] Cf. above, p. 155 ff.
[1029] W. iv. p. 375.
[1030] W. iv. p. 375: Eng. trans. p. 147-8.
[1031] Cf. above, p. 156.
[1032] As already noted above, p. 299, it is employed by Kant in his
lectures on Metaphysics.
[1033] Kant’s phrase “in space outside me” is on Kant’s principles really
pleonastic. Cf. Prolegomena, § 49; Eng. trans, p. 101: “the notion ‘outside me’
only signifies existence in space.” Cf. A 373.
[1034] Cf. text as altered by note to B xxxviii.
[1035] B xxxix.
[1036] B 291-2. The remaining points in B 274 ff. as well as in B xxxix n.
are separately dealt with below, p. 322 ff.
[1037] The nearest approach to such teaching in the first edition is in A 33
= B 50. Cf. above, pp. 135-8.
[1038] Cf. below, pp. 333, 341, 360, 384-5.
[1039] Adamson (Development of Modern Philosophy, i. p. 241) takes the
opposite view as to what is Kant’s intended teaching, but remarks upon its
inconsistency with Kant’s own fundamental principles. “Now, in truth, Kant
grievously endangers his own doctrine by insisting on the absence of a priori
elements from our apprehension of the mental life; for it follows from that, if
taken rigorously, that according to Kant sense and understanding are not so
much sources which unite in producing knowledge, as, severally, sources of
distinct kinds of apprehension. If we admit at all, in respect to inner sense, that
there is some kind of apprehension without the work of understanding, then it
has been acknowledged that sense is per se adequate to furnish a kind of
apprehension.” As pointed out above (p. 296), by the same line of reasoning
Kant is disabled from viewing inner consciousness as merely reflective. In
other words it can neither be more immediate nor less sensuous than outer
perception. Cf. below, pp. 361, n. 3, 384-5.
[1040] Above, pp. xlvi, 275-82; below, pp. 313-14, 384-5.
[1041] Above, pp. 276, 279-80; below, pp. 312, 384-5.
[1042] Cf. below, p. 361.
[1043] Cf. Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786), W. iv.
pp. 470-1. It should be observed, however, that the reasons which Kant gives
in this treatise for denying that psychology can ever become more than a
merely historical or descriptive discipline are not that the objects of inner
sense fall outside the realm of mechanically determined existence. Kant makes
no assertion that even distantly implies any such view. His reasons are—(1)
that, as time has only one dimension, the main body of mathematical science
is not applicable to the phenomena of inner sense and their laws; (2) that such
phenomena are capable only of a merely ideal, not of an experimental,
analysis; (3) that, as the objects of inner sense do not consist of parts outside
each other, their parts are not substances, and may therefore be conceived as
diminishing in intensity or passing out of existence without prejudice to the
principle of the permanence of substance (op. cit. p. 542, quoted below, p. 361,
n. 2); (4) that inner observation is limited to the individual’s own existence; (5)
that the very act of introspection alters the state of the object observed.
[1044] A 370.
[1045] B 275. These two sentences are cited in this connection by
Vaihinger: Strassburger Abhandlungen zur Philosophie (1884), p. 131.
[1046] Above, pp. xlv-vii, 279 ff.
[1047] Cf. also above, pp. 275-7.
[1048] § 13, Anmerkung II.
[1049] Kriticismus, p. 197 ff.
[1050] Mind (1879), iv. p. 408 ff.; (1880), v. p. 111.
[1051] A Defence of Philosophic Doubt (1879), p. 107 ff.; Mind (1878), iii.
p. 481; iv. p. 115; vi. p. 260.
[1052] Op. cit. p. 128 ff.
[1053] Critical Philosophy, i. 632 ff.; Mind (1879), iv. pp. 112, 560-1; v. p.
115.
[1054] The Philosophy of Kant, p. 249 ff.
[1055] The one fundamental question to which Erdmann would seem to
allow that Kant gives conflicting answers is as to whether or not categories
can be transcendently employed. The assumption of a uniform teaching is
especially obvious in Sidgwick’s comments; cf. Mind (1880), v. p. 113;
Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant (1905), p. 28.
[1056] Cf. above, pp. 303-4.
 [1057] A 491 = B 520.
[1058] A 225-6 = B 273.
[1059] A 495-6 = B 523-4.
[1060] Cf. below, p. 506.
[1061] Viz. A 225-6 = B 273.
[1062] B 277.
[1063] Above, p. 208 ff.
[1064] A 346 = B 404.
[1065] A 224-5 = B 272-3.
[1066] Cf. B 277.
[1067] Quoted by B. Erdmann: Kriticismus, p. 107.
[1068] B xxxix n., 67-8, 70, 157-8 with appended note, 276-8, 422 n., 427-
9.
[1069] B 70, 157, 428.
[1070] B 157.
[1071] B 157 n. Regarding the un-Critical character of Kant’s language in
this passage, and of the tendencies which inspire it, cf. below, p. 329.
[1072] B 157.
[1073] B 429.
[1074] Cf. B 277-8 and B 157.
[1075] B 278.
[1076] B 420 and B 422 n.
[1077] B 422 n.
[1078] Cf. above, pp. 204 ff., 404 ff.
[1079] Cf. above, p. 204 ff.
[1080] B 406.
[1081] B 422 n. Though both concepts are denoted by the same term, they
may not—such is the implication—be for that reason identified.
[1082] B 429. Kant does not, however, even in the second edition, hold
consistently to this position. In the sentence immediately preceding that just
quoted he equates the transcendental self with the notion of “object in
general.” “I represent myself to myself neither as I am nor as I appear to
myself, but think myself only as I do any object in general from whose mode
of intuition I abstract.”
[1083] The broader bearing of this view may be noted. If consistently
developed, it must involve the assertion that noumenal reality is apprehended
in terms of the Ideas of reason, for these are the only other concepts at the
disposal of the mind. Cf. above, pp. liii-v, 217-18; below, pp. 331, 390-1, 414-
17, 426 ff., 558-61.
[1084] A 402.
[1085] It is doubtful whether A 401-2 represents a genuinely Critical
position. Several of its phrases seem reminiscent of Kant’s semi-Critical view
of the nature of apperception. This is especially true of the assertion that self-
consciousness is “itself unconditioned.”
[1086] A 346 = B 404. Cf. below, pp. 456, 461-2.
[1087] Cf. A 345.
[1088] That he does not really do so is clear from the context and also from
the manner in which he restated this argument in the second edition (B 421-2).
[1089] A 401-2, B 421-2; below, pp. 461-2.
[1090] A 402; cf. B 407.
[1091] Cf. B 421-2.
[1092] Cf. above, pp. l-ii, 208-9, 260-3.
[1093] Cf. above, loc. cit.
[1094] Cf. B 157-8 and 157 n., B 278, B 428-9.
[1095] Above, pp. 295-6, 311 n. 4.
[1096] There is this difference between the category of existence and the
categories of relation, namely, that it would seem to be impossible to
distinguish between a determinate and an indeterminate application of it.
Either we assert existence or we do not; there is no such third alternative as in
the case of the categories of substance and causality. The category of
substance, determinately used, signifies material existence in space and time;
indeterminately applied it is the purely problematic and merely logical notion
of something that is always a subject and never a predicate. The determinate
category of causality is the conception of events conditioning one another in
time; indeterminately employed it signifies only the quite indefinite notion of
a ground or condition. Also, Kant’s explicit teaching (A 597 ff. = B 625 ff.) is
that the notion of existence stands in an altogether different position from
other predicates. It is not an attribute constitutive of the concept of the subject
to which it is applied, but is simply the positing of the content of that concept
as a whole. Nor, again, is it a relational form for the articulation of content.
These would seem to be the reasons why no distinction is possible between a
determinate and an indeterminate application of the notion of existence, and
why, therefore, Kant, in defending the possible dual employment of it, has
difficulty in holding consistently to the doctrines expounded in the Postulates.
He is, by his own explicit teaching, interdicted from declaring that the notion
of existence is both a category and not a category, or, in other words, that it
may vary in meaning according as empirical or noumenal reality is referred to,
and that only in the former case is it definite and precise. Yet such a view
would, perhaps, better harmonise with certain other lines of thought which
first obtain statement in the Dialectic. For though it is in the Dialectic that
Kant expounds his grounds for holding that existence and content are separate
and independent, it is there also that he first begins to realise the part which
the Ideas of Reason are called upon to play in the drawing of the distinction
between appearance and reality.
[1097] In the Fortschritte (Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 548 ff.) this final
step is quite definitely taken. Cf. below, pp. 390-1, 414-17, 426 ff., 558-61.
We have, as we shall find, to recognise a second fundamental conflict in
Kant’s thinking, additional to that between subjectivism and phenomenalism.
He alternates between what may be entitled the sceptical and the Idealist views
of the function of Reason and of its relation to the understanding, or otherwise
stated, between the regulative and the absolutist view of the nature of thought.
But this conflict first gains explicit expression in the Dialectic.
[1098] For Kant’s use of the terms ‘canon’ and ‘dialectic’ cf. above, pp. 72,
77-8, 173-4, and below, p. 425 ff.
[1099] Above, pp. 181-2.
[1100] As we shall have occasion to observe below (p. 336), when Kant
defines judgment as “the faculty of subsumption under rules,” he is really
defining it in terms of the process of reasoning, and thus violating the principle
which he is professedly following in dividing the Transcendental Logic into
the Analytic of Concepts, the Analytic of Judgment, and the Dialectic of
Reasoning.
[1101] A 132 = B 171.
[1102] Pp. 252-3, 258-9, 287-8.
[1103] The passages that have gone to constitute this chapter are probably
quite late in date of writing. This would seem to be proved by the view taken
of productive imagination, and also by the fact that in the Reflexionen there is
no mention of schematism.
[1104] Cf. above, p. 176 ff.
[1105] Cf. A 137 = B 176. “The empirical concept of a plate is
homogeneous with the pure geometrical concept of a circle, since the
roundness which is thought in the former can be intuited in the latter.”
[1106] A 138 = B 177.
[1107] Above, p. 334.
[1108] Cf. E. Curtius, Das Schematismuskapitel in der Kritik der reinen
Vernunft (Kantstudien, Bd. xix. p. 348 ff.).
[1109] Op. cit. § 58.
[1110] A 138 = B 177. Cf. above, pp. 96-7.
[1111] A 141 = B 180.
[1112] Cf. above, pp. 268-9.
[1113] Cf. above, pp. 133-4.
[1114] A 140 = B 179.
[1115] Loc. cit.
[1116] Cf. E. Curtius, op. cit. p. 356.
[1117] Kant’s other definition of the schema as “a rule for the
determination of our intuition in accordance with a certain universal concept”
(A 141 = B 180) is open to similar objections. When, however, Kant states that
“schemata, and not images, underlie our pure sensuous concepts,” he seems to
be inclining to the truer view that the schema is the concept.
[1118] Above, pp. 131-3.
[1119] Cf. Riehl, Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. pp. 488, 533. Cf. above, pp. 195-6,
198; below, pp. 404-5.
[1120] Critical Philosophy, i. bk. i. chap. v., especially pp. 437 and 440.
[1121] Theorie der Erfahrung, second edition, p. 384.
 [1122] Op. cit. p. 532.
[1123] Cf. above, pp. 240-3.
[1124] For comment upon the definition of number, which Kant takes as
being the schema of quantity, and upon the view of arithmetic which this
definition may seem to imply, cf. above, p. 128 ff.
[1125] Cf. above, p. 192.
[1126] Cf. above, pp. 339-40, and below, pp. 357, 404 ff.
[1127] Cf. above, pp. 20, 25, 290-1; below, pp. 407, 412, 414-17.
[1128] E.g. Riehl, Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. pp. 535-6.
[1129] Above, pp. 258, 332-3.
[1130] A 148 = B 188.
[1131] A 156 = B 195.
[1132] A 157 = B 196.
[1133] A 24.
[1134] § 13, Anmerkung i.
[1135] B 40-1.
[1136] B 110.
[1137] A 160 = B 199-200.
[1138] Cf. above, pp. 288-9.
[1139] A 161-2 = B 201-2.
[1140] Cf. below, pp. 510-11.
[1141] A 178-9 = B 221.
[1142] Cf. above, pp. 94-5.
[1143] Cf. below, pp. 358-9, 367-8, 371-2, 381-2.
[1144] Above, p. 309 ff.
[1145] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 190 n.
[1146] Cf. above, p. 127 ff.
[1147] That is to say, in the first edition.
[1148] The phrase is followed, it may be observed, by a verb in the
irregular.
[1149] A 143 = B 182.
[1150] Loc. cit. in the chapter on Schematism.
[1151] Loc. cit. Italics not in Kant.
[1152] Cf. A 175 = B 217. Cf. above, pp. 350-1.
[1153] B 217-18.
[1154] Cf. above, pp. 192, 341.
[1155] A 169-70 = B 211-12. For comment upon Kant’s view of the point
as a limit, cf. below, p. 489 ff.
 [1156] Though Kant maintains in A 171 = B 212-13 that owing to our
dependence upon empirical data and our necessary ignorance of the nature of
the causal relation we cannot similarly demonstrate the principle of the
continuity of change, he has himself, in characteristically inconsistent fashion,
given three such demonstrations. Cf. below, pp. 380-1.
[1157] Cf. Kant’s Monadologia physica (1756), and New Doctrine of
Motion and Rest (1758). Kant’s final statement of this dynamical theory is
given in his Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786).
[1158] In this matter Kant regards himself as defending the Newtonian
theory of an attractive gravitational force. The mechanistic view admits only
one form of action, viz. transference of motion through impact and pressure.
“From … Democritus to Descartes, indeed up to our own day, the mechanistic
method of explanation … has, under the title of atomism or corpuscular
philosophy, maintained its authority with but slight modification; and has
continued to exercise its influence upon the principles of natural science. Its
essential teaching consists in the assumption of the absolute impenetrability of
primitive matter, in the absolute homogeneity of its constitution (difference of
shape being the sole remaining difference), and in the absolutely indestructible
coherence of matter in its fundamental corpuscles” (Metaphysical First
Principles, W. vol. iv. p. 533; ii. Allgemeine Anmerkung, 4).
[1159] This is additional to its other correlative assumption of the absolute
void. “The absolute void and the absolutely full are in the doctrine of nature
very much what blind chance and blind fate are in metaphysical cosmology,
namely, a barrier to the enquiring reason, which either causes its place to be
taken by arbitrary fictions, or lays it to rest on the pillow of obscure qualities”
(Metaphysical First Principles, W. vol. iv. p. 532 (I read forschende for
herrschende)). “There are only two methods of procedure …: the mechanistic,
through combination of the absolutely full with the absolute void, or an
opposite dynamical method, that of explaining all material differences through
mere differences in the combination of the original forces of repulsion and
attraction” (loc. cit.).
[1160] In the first edition Kant formulates this principle in the light of his
extremely misleading distinction between mathematical and dynamical
principles (cf. above, pp. 345-7): “All appearances, as regards their existence,
are subject a priori to rules determining their relation to one another in one
time.”
[1161] Cf. below, p. 358.
[1162] In A 182 = B 225 the stronger term change (Wechsel) is employed.
[1163] A 178-80 = B 221-3 (on the distinction between mathematical and
dynamical principles) has been commented upon above, pp. 345-7.
[1164] Philos. Krit. 2nd ed. i. p. 545. Caird adopts a similar view, i. pp.
540, 580.
[1165] A 181 = B 224.
[1166] Cf. below, pp. 373-4.
[1167] That is to say, in the first edition.
[1168] Cf. above, pp. 332-3, 343-4.
[1169] Cf. above, p. 348; below, pp. 367-8, 371-2, 381-2.
[1170] Cf. above, pp. 94, 135-8, 309 ff., 347-8.
 [1171] That is to say, in the first edition.
[1172] The new proof added in the second edition calls for no special
comment. In all essentials it agrees with this second proof of the first edition.
It differs only in such ways as are called for by the mode of formulating the
principle in the second edition.
[1173] This statement, as Caird has pointed out (i. p. 541), is extremely
questionable. “It may be objected that to say that ‘time itself does not change’
is like saying that passing away does not itself pass away. So far the endurance
of time and the permanence of the changing might even seem to mean only
that the moments of time never cease to pass away, and the changing never
ceases to change. A perpetual flux would therefore sufficiently ‘represent’ all
the permanence that is in time.” This is not, however, in itself a vital objection
to Kant’s argument. For he is here stating more than his argument really
requires. Events are dated in a single time, not in an unchanging time. Kant’s
statement betrays the extent to which, as Bergson has very justly pointed out,
Kant spatialises time, i.e. interprets it on the analogy of space. It is based on
“the mixed idea of a measurable time, which is space in so far as it is
homogeneity, and duration in so far as it is succession; that is to say, at bottom,
the contradictory idea of succession in simultaneity” (Les Données
immédiates, p. 173, Eng. trans. p. 228).
[1174] Cf. A 184 = B 227: “the proposition, that substance is permanent, is
tautological.”
[1175] Cf. A 188 = B 231.
[1176] Above, p. 341.
[1177] Cf. above, p. 309 ff.
[1178] B. Erdmann’s edition of the Nachträge, lxxx. p. 32. Cited by Caird,
i. pp. 541-2.
[1179] Op. cit. pp. 33-4.
[1180] That Kant does not mean to imply that the category of substance has
no application to the contents of inner sense is made clear by a curious
argument in the Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science (1786), W.
iv. p. 542: “What in this proof essentially characterises substance, which is
possible only in space and under spatial conditions, and therefore only as
object of the outer senses, is that its quantity cannot be increased or
diminished without substance coming into being or ceasing to be. For the
quantity of an object which is possible only in space must consist of parts
which are external to one another, and these, therefore, if they are real
(something movable), must necessarily be substances. On the other hand, that
which is viewed as object of inner sense can, as substance, have a quantity
which does not consist of parts external to one another. Its parts are therefore
not substances, and their coming into being and ceasing to be must not be
regarded as creation or annihilation of a substance. Their increase or
diminution is therefore possible without prejudice to the principle of the
permanence of substance.” (Italics not in Kant.) Cf. also Prolegomena, § 49,
and below, pp. 367, 377 n. 3.
[1181] A 187 = B 230.
[1182] K. p. 211 n.
[1183] C. A 205-7 = B 252.
 [1184] Werke (Frauenstädt, 1873), i. p. 85 ff.
[1185] As evidence of this failure I may cite Schopenhauer’s comment
upon A 371 and 372: “From these passages it is quite clear that for Kant the
perception of outer things in space is antecedent to all application of the causal
law, and that this law does not therefore enter into it as its element and
condition: mere sensation amounts in Kant’s view to perception” (Werke, i. p.
81). Even when, as in the passages referred to, Kant is speaking in his most
subjectivist vein, he gives no justification for any such assertion.
Schopenhauer, notwithstanding his sincere admiration for Kant—“I owe what
is best in my own system to the impression made upon me by the works of
Kant, by the sacred writings of the Hindoos, and by Plato” (World as Will and
Idea, Werke, ii. p. 493, Eng. trans. ii. p. 5)—is one of the most unreliable of
Kant’s critics. His comments are extremely misleading, and largely for the
reason that he was interested in Kant only as he could obtain from him
confirmation of his own philosophical tenets. Several of these tenets he
certainly derived directly from the Critique; but they are placed by him in so
entirely different a setting that their essential meaning is greatly altered. We
have already noted (above, p. 41) Schopenhauer’s exaggerated statement of
Kant’s intuitive theory of mathematics. Kant’s subjectivism is similarly
expounded in a one-sided and quite unrepresentative manner (cf. below, p. 407
n.). Hutchison Stirling’s criticisms of Kant in his Text Book to Kant are vitiated
by a similar failure to recognise the completely un-Critical character of the
occasional passages in which Kant admits a distinction between “judgments of
perception” and “judgments of experience” (cf. above, pp. 288-9). Stirling (cf.
below, p. 377) has amplified his criticism of Kant in Princeton Review (Jan.
1879, pp. 178-210), Fortnightly Review (July 1872), and in Mind (ix., 1884, p.
531, and x., 1885, p. 45).
[1186] Cf. above, pp. 240-2, 365, and below, p. 377.
[1187] Cf. Stout, Manual of Psychology, third edition, pp. 444-6: “Unless
we assume from the outset that the primitive mind treats a perceived change
which challenges its interest and attention, not as something self-existent in
isolation, but as something conditioned by and conditioning other changes, it
seems hopeless to attempt to show how this causal point of view could have
arisen through any extension of knowledge in accordance with ascertained
psychological laws and conditions…. There is good reason for denying that
customary repetition is even required to furnish a first occasion or opportunity
for the first emergence of the apprehension of causal relations. For, as we have
already insisted, the process of learning by experience is from the first
experimental…. Regularities are only found because they are sought. But it is
in the seeking that the category of causal unity is primarily involved.” Cf.
below, pp. 371-2.
[1188] A 193 = B 238.
[1189] A 191 = B 236.
[1190] By an “arbitrary” order Kant does not, of course, mean an order of
succession that is not determined, but only one that is determined by
subjectively conditioned direction of attention. Cf. below, p. 377.
[1191] Cf. A 199 = B 244, and above, pp. 133, 288-9; below, p. 377.
[1192] Cf. A 195-6 = B 240-1, and above, pp. 172, 176 ff., 182-3, 263 ff.,
277-8.
[1193] A 736-7 = B 765. Italics of last sentence not in Kant.
 [1194] A 189-94 = B 234-9: first to fourth paragraphs (first edition).
[1195] Cf. above, pp. 348, 358.
[1196] Cf. A 192-3 = B 238-9.
[1197] Cf. Riehl, Philosophischer Kriticismus (second edition), i. pp. 551-
2. While recognising the above main point, Riehl seems to assert that
empirical sequence determines the application of the causal concept. It would
be truer, and more in accordance with the position which Kant is endeavouring
to establish, to assert that appeal to constancy of sequence enables us to
determine which antecedents of any given event are causal conditions. The
principle of causality is already applied when the sequent experiences are
apprehended as sequent events. This ambiguity, however, would seem to be
due only to Riehl’s mode of expression. For, as he himself says (p. 551), the
law of causality is a ground of experience, and cannot therefore be derived
from it. Cf. above, pp. 267-8, 367.
[1198] Pp. 365-71, 377.
[1199] A 191 = B 236. Cf. above, pp. 216-18.
[1200] As pointed out above, this is really a secondary meaning which
Kant reads into the term analogy; it is not the true explanation of his choice of
the term.
[1201] Critical Philosophy of Kant, vol. i. pp. 540, 580.
[1202] Kant, p. 198: trans. by Creighton and Lefevre, p. 196.
[1203] Cf. above, pp. 270 ff., 313-21.
[1204] Kant, of course, recognises that we cannot make any such positive
assertion; to do so would be to transcend the limits imposed by Critical
principles. Cf. below, p. 382.
[1205] A 194-6 = B 239-41: fifth to seventh paragraphs (first edition).
[1206] A 196-9 = B 241-4: eighth to tenth paragraphs (first edition).
[1207] A 199-201 = B 244-6: eleventh to thirteenth paragraphs (first
edition).
[1208] Cf. above, pp. 224 ff., 264 ff.; below, 377.
[1209] A 201-2 = B 246-7: fourteenth paragraph (first edition).
[1210] B 233-4: second paragraph (second edition).
[1211] B 233-4.
[1212] From A 202 = B 247 to the end.
[1213] Kant’s phenomenalist substitute for the Cartesian subjectivism (cf.
above, pp. 270 ff., 312 ff.) enables him to develop this thesis in a consistent
and thoroughgoing manner. The subjective is a subspecies within the class of
what is determined by natural law; and the principle of causality is therefore
applicable to subjective change in the same rigorous fashion as to the
objectively sequent.
[1214] A 204 = B 249.
[1215] W. i. pp. 87-92.
[1216] Grundsätze der reinen Erkenntniss-Theorie, p. 151. Quoted and
translated by Caird, i. p. 572. Caird sums up the matter in a sentence (p. 571):
“Kant is showing, not that objective succession is always causal, but that the
determination of a succession of perceptions as referring to a succession of
states in an object, involves the principle of causality.”
[1217] Loc. cit.
[1218] The connected question how we can determine the ball and the
cushion as objectively coexistent is the problem of the third Analogy.
[1219] III. Erklärung 1 and 2, Lehrsatz 1 (especially Anmerkung thereto).
Cf. also II. Erklärung 1 and 5, and the last pages of the Allgemeine
Anmerkung.
[1220] Pp. 351, 373-4. Cf. pp. 318-21.
[1221] A 170-1 = B 212-13, above, p. 353, n. 2.
[1222] A 208 = B 253-4.
[1223] Metaphysical First Principles, II. Lehrsatz 4, Anmerkung 2.
[1224] A 209-10 = B 255-6.
[1225] A 210 = B 256.
[1226] W. ii. p. 22.
[1227] W. ii. p. 168.
[1228] Loc. cit.
[1229] For lack of a more suitable English equivalent I have translated
Gemeinschaft as “communion.” As Kant points out in A 213 = B 260, the
German term is itself ambiguous, signifying commercium (i.e. dynamical
interaction) as well as communio.
[1230] Cf. above, pp. 348, 358-9, 367-8, 371-2.
[1231] § 17 ff. Cf. Nachträge zu Kants Kritik, lxxxvi, with B. Erdmann’s
comment, p. 35.
[1232] A 211-12 = B 258. Cf. A 211 = B 257.
[1233] A 211 = B 257.
[1234] A 211-13 = B 258-60: first three paragraphs (first edition).
[1235] A 213-14 = B 260-1: fourth paragraph (first edition).
[1236] A 214-15 = B 261-2: fifth paragraph (first edition).
[1237] Cf. above, pp. 189-90, 208 ff.
[1238] B 257-8: first paragraph (second edition).
[1239] Cf. B 291-3, partially quoted above, pp. 310-11. In the
Metaphysical First Principles (III. Lehrsatz, 4) the principle that action and
reaction are always equal is similarly limited to the outer relations of material
bodies in space, and Kant adds that all change in bodies is motion. Cf. W. xi. p.
234; and above, p. 147.
[1240] Above pp. 311-12; below, pp. 473-7.
[1241] A 213 = B 260.
[1242] The inconsistency of Kant’s view of pure manifolds of time and
space with the argument of the Analytic of Principles is too obvious to call for
detailed comment.
[1243] Cf. B 257.
 [1244] A 213-14 = B 260-1.
[1245] B 257.
[1246] Third edition, p. 438.
[1247] Stout does not himself offer it as complete.
[1248] World as Will and Idea, W. ii. pp. 544-5: Eng. trans. ii. pp. 61-3.
[1249] Cf. above, p. 197.
[1250] A 212-13 = B 259.
[1251] B 258.
[1252] Op. cit. pp. 545-6: Eng. trans. p. 63.
[1253] Op. cit. pp. 546-7: Eng. trans. pp. 63-5.
[1254] Cf. above, p. 379.
[1255] Cf. Stadler, Grundsätze, p. 124.
[1256] Op. cit. p. 546: Eng. trans. p. 63.
[1257] Cf. above, pp. 97-8, 102 n., 165-6; below, pp. 429 ff., 447 ff., 547 ff.
[1258] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 233 n.
[1259] A 222 = B 269. Cf. A 220 = B 268.
[1260] A 148 ff. = B 187 ff.
[1261] A 219 = B 266.
[1262] This, by Kant’s own account (A 232-4 = B 285-7), is what led him
to adopt the title ‘postulates.’ A geometrical postulate does not add anything to
the concept of its object but only defines the conditions of its production.
[1263] Cf. above, pp. 38-9; below, pp. 398-9, 418 ff.
[1264] Cf. A 220-3 = B 267-71.
[1265] A 223 = B 270.
[1266] Cf. A 220 = B 268.
[1267] A 223 = B 270-1.
[1268] K. p. 223 n.
[1269] A 224 = B 272.
[1270] Cf. above, pp. 288-9.
[1271] A 225 = B 272. Cf. above, pp. 394-6.
[1272] A 225 = B 273. Italics not in Kant.
[1273] The Critical Philosophy of Kant, i. p. 591.
[1274] Op. cit. p. 595.
[1275] A 226 = B 273-4.
[1276] A 226 ff. = B 279 ff.
[1277] A 218 = B 281.
[1278] A 232 = B 284.
[1279] A 231 = B 284.
 [1280] Cf. above, p. 309 ff.
[1281] Kant’s argument in the note to B 290 is that of his early essay on
Negative Quantity. Cf. below, pp. 527 ff., 533 ff., 536.
[1282] A 236 = B 295.
[1283] Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, xxxviii, 185-6, 191, 195-6, 257-8, 290-1,
325 ff., 339.
[1284] The mathematical illustrations which Kant proceeds to give (A 239
= B 299) are peculiarly crude and off-hand in manner of statement. Cf. per
contra A 140 = B 179 for Kant’s real view of the distinction between image,
schema, and concept.
[1285] Cf. above, pp. 195-6, 198, 339-42.
[1286] A 243 = B 301.
[1287] A 242 = B 302.
[1288] Cf. A 248 = B 305.
[1289] A 246-7 = B 303-4. A 247-8 = B 304-5 (beginning “Thought is the
action,” etc.) is merely a repetition of the preceding argument, and probably
represents a later intercalation.
[1290] Beginning “Appearances, so far as …,” which was omitted in the
second edition. It probably constitutes, as Adickes maintains (K. p. 254 n.), the
original beginning of this chapter. The “as we have hitherto maintained” of its
second paragraph, which obviously cannot apply to the pages which precede it
in its present position, must refer to the argument of the Analytic.
[1291] A 249, 251.
[1292] Above, p. 204 ff.
[1293] In large part it represents the Critical position as understood by
Schopenhauer, who never succeeded in acquiring any genuine understanding
of Kant’s more mature teaching (cf. above, p. 366 n.). Schopenhauer is correct
in maintaining that one chief ground of Kant’s belief in the existence of things
in themselves lies in his initial assumption that they must be postulated in
order to account for the given manifold. Schopenhauer is also justified in
stating that Kant, though starting from the dualistic Cartesian standpoint, so
far modified it as to conclude that the origin of this manifold must be
“objective, since there is no ground for regarding it as subjective” (Parerga
und Paralipomena, 1851 ed., p. 74 ff.). But for two reasons this is a very
incomplete, and therefore extremely misleading, account of Kant’s final
teaching. In the first place, Schopenhauer fails to take account of Kant’s
implied distinction between the sensations of the special senses and the
manifold of outer sense. When Kant recognises that the sensations of the
special senses are empirically conditioned, he is constrained in consistency to
distinguish between them and the manifold which constitutes the matter of all
experiences (cf. above, p. 275 ff.). Things in themselves, in accounting for the
latter, account also, but in quite indirect fashion, for the former. Though
sensations are empirically conditioned, the entire natural world is noumenally
grounded. Secondly, Kant’s subjectivism undergoes a similar transformation
on its inner or mental side. The analysis of self-consciousness, which is given
both in the Deductions and in the Paralogisms, indicates with sufficient
clearness Kant’s recognition that the form of experience is as little self-
explanatory as its content, and that it must not, without such proof as, owing to
the limitations of our experience, we are debarred from giving, be regarded as
more ultimate in nature. The realities which constitute and condition our
mental processes are not apprehended in any more direct manner than the
thing in itself. When, therefore, Schopenhauer asserts in the World as Will and
Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii. p. 494, Eng. trans, ii. p. 6) that Kant proves the
world to be merely phenomenal by demonstrating that it is conditioned by the
intellect, he is emphasising what is least characteristic in Kant’s teaching.
Schopenhauer’s occasional identification of the intellect with the brain—the
nearest approximation in his writings to what may be described as
phenomenalism—itself suffices to show how entirely he is lacking in any firm
grasp of Critical principles.
[1294] As we have noted (above, p. 204 ff.), the doctrine of the
transcendental object was entirely eliminated from those main sections that
were rewritten or substantially altered in the second edition, namely, the
chapters on the Transcendental Deduction, on Phenomena and Noumena, and
on the Paralogisms. That it remained in the section on Amphiboly, in the
Second Analogy, and in the Antinomies is sufficiently explained by Kant’s
unwillingness to make the very extensive alterations which such further
rewriting would have involved.
[1295] A 251.
[1296] Not even, as Kant teaches in his doctrine of inner sense, in the inner
world of apperception, cf. above, p. 295 ff.
[1297] Kant claims in the Dialectic that this process is also unavoidable,
constituting what he calls “transcendental illusion.”
[1298] A 254-7 = B 310-12.
[1299] A 255 = B 310-11.
[1300] Cf. below, p. 412 ff.
[1301] A 256 = B 312. For A 257 = B 312 on the empirical manner of
distinguishing between the sensuous and the intelligible, cf. above, pp. 143 ff.,
149 ff.
[1302] Cf. above, pp. 143-4, 147, 214-15, 291 ff.
[1303] Kant here (A 286 = B 342) speaks of this concept of the noumenon
as an object of non-sensuous intuition as being “merely negative.” This is apt
to confuse the reader, as he usually comes to it after having read the passage
introduced into the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena in the second edition,
in which, as above noted (p. 409), Kant describes this meaning of the term as
positive, in distinction from its more negative meaning as signifying a thing
merely so far as it is not an object of our sense-intuition. Cf. below, p. 413.
[1304] Kant’s meaning here is not quite clear. He may mean either that the
categories as such are inapplicable to things in themselves, or that, as this form
of intuition is altogether different from our own, it will not help in giving
meaning to the categories. What follows would seem to point to the former
view.
[1305] A 286 = B 343.
[1306] A 287-8 = B 344.
[1307] A 288 = B 345.
[1308] A 288 = B 344. Kant allowed the section within which this passage
occurs to remain, without the least modification, in the second edition.
 [1309] Benno Erdmann’s explanation (Kriticismus, p. 194) of Kant’s
omission of all references to the transcendental object, namely, because of
their being likely to conduce to a mistaken idealistic interpretation of his
teaching, we cannot accept. As already argued (above, p. 204 ff.), they
represent a view which he had quite definitely and consciously outgrown.
[1310] B 306. Cf. above, pp. 290-1.
[1311] B 308. This, it may be noted, is in keeping with the passages above
quoted from the section on Amphiboly.
[1312] A 255 = B 311.
[1313] Cf. above, p. 404 ff., especially pp. 409-10; also above, p. 331.
[1314] In order to form an adequate judgment upon Kant’s justification for
distinguishing between appearance and reality the reader must bear in mind
(1) the results obtained in the Transcendental Deduction (above, p. 270 ff.);
(2) the discussions developed in the Paralogisms (below, p. 457 ff.); (3) the
treatment of noumenal causality, that is of freedom, in the Third and Fourth
Antinomies; (4) the many connected issues raised in the Ideal (below, pp. 534-
7, 541-2), and in the Appendix to the Dialectic (below, p. 543 ff.). Professor
Dawes Hicks is justified in maintaining in his book, die Begriffe Phänomenon
und Noumenon in ihrem Verhältniss zu einander bei Kant (Leipzig, 1897, p.
167)—a work which unfortunately is not accessible to the English reader—
that “the thing in itself is by no means a mere excrescence or addendum of the
Kantian system, but forms a thoroughly necessary completion to the doctrine
of appearances. At every turn in Kant’s thought the doctrine of the noumenon,
in one form or another, plays an essential part.” Indeed it may be said that to
state Kant’s reasons for asserting the existence of things in themselves, is to
expound his philosophy as a whole. Upon this question there appears in Kant
the same alternation of view as in regard to his other main tenets. On Kant’s
discussion of the applicability of the category of existence to things in
themselves, cf. above, p. 322 ff. Also, on Kant’s extension of the concepts
possibility and actuality to noumena, cf. above, pp. 391 ff., 401-3.
[1315] ‘Ideal’ and ‘Idealist’ are printed with capitals, to mark the very
special sense in which these terms are being used. As already noted (above, p.
3), the same remark applies to the term ‘Reason.’
[1316] Cf. above, pp. xli-ii, xliv, liii-v, 331.
[1317] A 260 ff. = B 316 ff.
[1318] Cf. above, pp. 38-9, 119, 131-3, 338-9, 394-400.
[1319] Above, p. xxx ff., and below, p. 601 ff.
[1320] Cf. A 267 = B 323.
[1321] Cf. Adickes’ Systematik, pp. 60, 70, 72, and 111-12.
[1322] A 270 = B 326.
[1323] Cf. A 264 = B 319, and A 266 = B 322.
[1324] Cf. below, pp. 563-5, 589 ff., 601 ff.
[1325] I have dwelt upon this at length in my Studies in the Cartesian
Philosophy.
[1326] A 271 = B 327.
 [1327] The un-Critical character of Kant’s doctrine of the pure concept has
already been noted (above, pp. 418-19), and need not be further discussed.
[1328] A 272 = B 328.
[1329] A 273 = B 329.
[1330] This is Leibniz’s mode of stating the absolutist view of thought (cf.
above, p. xxx ff.) to which, as we shall find, Kant gives much more adequate
and incomparably deeper formulation in the Dialectic. Cf. pp. 430, 547 ff.,
558 ff.
[1331] Adickes, K. p. 272 n., allows that the passage may be of earlier
origin than the passages which precede and follow it.
[1332] Pp. 214-15.
 [1333] As such it is commented on above, p. 410 ff.
[1334] Loc. cit.
[1335] A 290 = B 347.
[1336] Cf. above, p. 409 ff.
[1337] Kant’s commentators have frequently misrepresented this aspect of
his teaching. Cf. below, pp. 498, 520-1, 527-37, 541-2, 543 ff., 555, 558-61.
[1338] A 490 = B 518.
[1339] Cf. above, pp. 416-17.
[1340] Those readers who are not already well acquainted with the
argument of the Dialectic may be recommended to pass at once to p. 441.
What here follows presupposes acquaintance with the nature and purposes of
the main divisions of the Dialectic.
[1341] Introd. to Reflexionen, Bd. ii.
[1342] W. x. p. 123 ff. Cf. above, pp. 219-20.
[1343] Cf. Dissertation, § 27 n.
[1344] Op. cit. Cf. § 24 with § 27.
[1345] Op. cit. § 27.
[1346] Cf. ii. 567, 571, 584, 585.
[1347] Cf. ii. 1251 and 586.
[1348] Cf. below, pp. 458, 488 ff.
[1349] In Reflexionen ii. 573, 576, and 582 we find Kant in the very act of
so doing. Compositio, co-ordinatio, and commercium are treated as
synonymous terms.
[1350] The problem of freedom is first met with in Kant’s Lectures on
Metaphysics (Pölitz, edition of 1821, pp. 89, 330), but is not there given as an
antinomy, and is treated as falling within the field of theology. In Reflexion ii.
585, also, it is equated in terms of the category of ground and consequence,
with the concept of Divine Existence, the “absolute or primum contingens
(libertas).” Upon elimination of theology, and therefore of the cosmological
argument, from the sphere of antinomy, Kant raised freedom to the rank of an
independent problem.
[1351] A 462 = B 490.
[1352] Cf. below, pp. 498-9, 571 ff.
[1353] Cf. below, p. 454, with references in n. 1.
[1354] A 507 = B 535. Cf. below, pp. 481, 545-6.
[1355] Cf. ii. 93, 94, 95, 1233, 1247.
[1356] This is the view represented in Reflexionen ii. 94, 95.
[1357] Cf. Reflexionen ii. 124.
[1358] Cf. Reflexionen ii. 95.
[1359] Cf. below, p. 457.
[1360] Cf. ii. 86 ff.
 [1361] Cf. Reflexionen ii. 114-15.
[1362] B 394 n. Immortality is here taken as representing the Idea of the
soul as unconditioned substance.
[1363] Cf. below, p. 454, with further references in n. 1.
[1364] Systematik, pp. 115-16.
[1365] Above, p. 334.
[1366] This conclusion is supported by the evidence of the Reflexionen:
they contain not a single reference to schematism.
[1367] A 293 = B 349.
[1368] Pp. 173-4.
[1369] Cf. A 61 = B 85.
[1370] Adickes, Systematik, p. 77 ff.
[1371] Cf. Kant’s caveat in A 293 = B 349 against identifying dialectic
with the doctrine of probable reasoning.
[1372] Pp. 427-8.
[1373] A 298 = B 355.
[1374] Cf. above, p. 332.
[1375] Reicke, i. p. 105.
[1376] Op. cit. i. pp. 109-10.
[1377] A 301-2 = B 358.
[1378] A 303 = B 359.
[1379] A 305 = B 362.
[1380] The wording of the concluding sentence of the third paragraph (A
307 = B 363-4) is so condensed as to be misleading. “It [viz. the principle of
causality] makes the unity of experience possible, and borrows nothing from
the Reason. The latter, if it were not for this [its indirect] reference [through
mediation of the understanding] to possible experience, could never [of itself],
from mere concepts, have imposed a synthetic unity of that kind.”
[1381] A 310 = B 366.
[1382] Schein des Schliessens would seem to be here used in that sense.
[1383] Cf. above, p. 424.
[1384] Cf. also A 669 = B 697; A 680 = B 709.
[1385] Cf. Vaihinger, “Kant—ein Metaphysiker?” in Philosophische
Abhandlungen (Sigwart Gedenkschrift), p. 144.
[1386] A 312 = B 368.
[1387] A 313 = B 370.
[1388] A 316-17 = B 373. The context of this passage is a defence of
Plato’s Republic against the charge that it is Utopian, because unrealisable.
[1389] A 317-18 = B 374-5.
[1390] Reflexionen ii. 1240. Cf. Schopenhauer: World as Will and Idea
(Werke, ii. p. 277: Eng. trans. i. p. 303): “The Idea is the unity that falls into
multiplicity on account of the temporal and spatial form of our intuitive
apprehension; the concept, on the contrary, is the unity reconstructed out of
multiplicity by the abstraction of our reason; the latter may be defined as
unitas post rem, the former as unitas ante rem.”
[1391] Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz, 1821), p. 79.
[1392] Reflexionen ii. 1243.
[1393] Lectures on Metaphysics, pp. 308-9.
[1394] Reflexionen ii. 1244.
[1395] Reflexionen ii. 1254.
[1396] Reflexionen ii. 1258.
[1397] Reflexionen ii. 1259.
[1398] Reflexionen ii. 1260.
[1399] A 320 = B 376-7.
[1400] A 321 = B 377.
[1401] A 323-4 = B 380-1. Cf. below, pp. 480, 529, 559-60.
[1402] Regarding the progressive series from the conditioned to its
consequences, cf. A 336-7 = B 393-4, A 410-11 = B 437-8, A 511 = B 539.
[1403] A 333 = B 390.
[1404] Cf. above, pp. 418, 436, 439-40; below, pp. 473-7, 520-1, 537, 543
ff., 575.
[1405] Cf. A 335.
[1406] Cf. A 337-8 = B 394-6 and note appended to B 394.
[1407] A 336 = B 393.
[1408] Cf. A 671 = B 699; above, pp. 426, 430, 436; below, pp. 552-4, 572
ff.
[1409] On the difference between the ascending and the descending series,
cf. A 331-2 = B 338 and A 410-11 = B 437-8.
[1410] The questions raised in the two introductory paragraphs (A 336-40
= B 396-8) as to the content of the Ideas, their problematic character, and their
possibility as concepts, are first adequately discussed in later chapters. The
three new terms here introduced, Paralogism, Antinomy, and Ideal, can also
best be commented upon in their own special context.
[1411] A 341 = B 399.
[1412] Cf. below, pp. 466, 470.
[1413] A 347.
[1414] A 345-6 = B 403-4.
[1415] Cf. A 354-5.
[1416] Cf. above, p. 437.
[1417] A 348.
[1418] A 351.
[1419] A 363-4.
 [1420] A 351.
[1421] K. 688 n.
[1422] A similar criticism holds true of the conception of identity
employed in the third Paralogism, and arbitrarily equated with the categories
of quantity.
[1423] Cf. A 355-6.
[1424] It is very forcibly developed in Mendelssohn’s “Phädon” (1767)
(Gesammelte Schriften, 1843, ii. p. 151 ff.). This is a work with which Kant
was familiar. Cf. below, p. 470.
[1425] This is the argument which William James has expounded in his
characteristically picturesque style. “Take a sentence of a dozen words, and
take twelve men and tell to each one word. Then stand the men in a row or jam
them in a bunch, and let each think of his word as intently as he will; nowhere
will there be a consciousness of the whole sentence” (Principles of
Psychology, i. p. 160).
[1426] A 363 n. Cf. below, pp. 461-2.
[1427] A 356. Cf. Adickes, K. p. 688 n.
[1428] The argument is here in harmony with Kant’s definition of
transcendental illusion.
[1429] A 358.
[1430] A 361.
[1431] A 364.
[1432] William James’s psychological description of self-consciousness is
simply an extension of this illustration. Cf. Principles of Psychology, i. p. 339;
quoted above, p. 278 n.
[1433] A 363 n.
[1434] A 362-3 and A 364. We must also, however, bear in mind that in
this chapter Kant occasionally argues in ad hominem fashion from the point of
view of the position criticised.
[1435] Cf. A 353-4.
[1436] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 695 n.
[1437] A 366.
[1438] P. 301 ff.
[1439] The note to A 344 has evidently got displaced; it must, as Adickes
points out, belong to A 404.
[1440] Cf. above, pp. 320, 455.
[1441] A 371-2.
[1442] A 380-1.
[1443] Cf. A 383.
[1444] A 383.
[1445] A 383.
[1446] A 381.
 [1447] The first four paragraphs are probably a later intercalation (Adickes,
K. p. 708 n.), since they connect both with the introductory sections of the
Dialectic and with the Introduction to the Critique. Also, the opening words of
the fifth paragraph seem to refer us not to anything antecedent in this section,
but directly to the concluding passages of the fourth Paralogism.
[1448] A 385.
[1449] A 393.
[1450] A 387.
[1451] Cf. above, pp. 215-16.
[1452] A 393-4.
[1453] A 394.
[1454] Pp. 326-7.
[1455] Pp. 327-8.
[1456] A 402. Cf. B 407.
[1457] K. p. 717 n.
[1458] Cf. below, p. 470.
[1459] B 406 ff.
[1460] Kriticismus, p. 227, cf. p. 106 ff.
[1461] A. H. Ulrichs, Institutiones logicae et metaphysicae (1785).
[1462] In his review of Kant’s Prolegomena in the Allgemeine Deutsche
Bibliothek (1784).
[1463] Obviously by categories Kant here really means schemata. Cf. A
348, where Kant states that “pure categories … have in themselves no
objective meaning…. Apart from intuition they are merely functions of a
judgment, without content.”
[1464] Above, pp. 404 ff., 413 ff.
[1465] B 408.
[1466] Critical Philosophy, ii. p. 34. So also in Watson’s Kant Explained,
p. 244.
[1467] Caird (op. cit. p. 35) takes account of Kant’s conception of a
possible intuitive understanding, but illegitimately assumes that by it he must
mean a creative understanding.
[1468] Cf. above, p. 295 ff.
[1469] Cf. B 415 n. In B xxxix. n. (at the end), quoted above pp. 309-10,
Kant is careful to point out that the representation of something permanent is
by no means identical with permanent representation.
[1470] P. 463.
[1471] Namely, as Refutation of Idealism, B 274 ff. Cf. above, p. 308 ff.
[1472] Cf. above, pp. 457, 462-3.
[1473] A 402.
[1474] Cf. above, p. 466.
[1475] B 413-15.
 [1476] Gesammelte Schriften, ii. p. 151 ff.
[1477] Op. cit. p. 121 ff.
[1478] Op. cit. pp. 128 ff., 168.
[1479] Op. cit. p. 125 ff.
[1480] Regarding the value of the hypotheses propounded by Kant in his
note to B 415, cf. below, p. 543 ff.
[1481] P. 321 ff.
[1482] Cf. above, p. 467.
[1483] Pp. 473-7.
[1484] Kriticismus, p. 226.
[1485] B 424.
[1486] B 421.
[1487] B 424-5.
[1488] B 425-6. Cf. above, pp. lvi-lxi; below, p. 570 ff.
[1489] The only approach to such a reference is in B 426-7, noted above, p.
471.
[1490] A 672 = B 700. Cf. below, p. 554.
[1491] A 649 = B 677-8. Tetens in his Philosophische Versuche (1777) had
devoted an entire chapter to this question. His term Grundkraft is that which
Kant here employs. Cf. Philosophische Versuche, Bd. i., Elfter Versuch:
“Concerning the fundamental power of the human soul.” Incidentally Tetens
discusses Rousseau’s suggestion that this fundamental power consists in man’s
capacity for perfecting himself. Cf. Kant’s Lectures on Metaphysics (Pölitz,
1821, p. 192 ff.).
[1492] A 682-4 = B 710-12. A 771-2 = B 799 in the Methodology is
similarly ambiguous, though tending to the spiritualist mode of formulation.
[1493] Cf. above, pp. 275-6, 279 ff., 312 ff., 384-5, 464-5.
[1494] Cf. end of B xxxix. n., quoted above, pp. 309-10.
[1495] A 405 = B 432.
[1496] A 408 = B 435.
[1497] Cf. A 414 = B 441, where it is stated that there is no transcendental
Idea of the substantial.
[1498] Cf. above, p. 434 ff.
[1499] A 419 = B 447.
[1500] A 420 = B 447.
[1501] A very curious sentence in Kant’s letter to Schulze (W. x. pp. 344-5,
quoted above, p. 199) seems to be traceable to this source.
[1502] Cf. below, pp. 529, 559-60, and above, pp. 199-200, 433-4, 451. For
A 410-11 = B 439-40 on the difference between the ascending and descending
series, cf. A 331-2 = B 387-8 and A 336-7 = B 393-4.
[1503] A 420 = B 448.
[1504] Cf. per contra A 486 = B 514.
 [1505] The limitation of Kant’s discussion to space, time, and causality is,
of course, due to his acceptance of the current view that the concepts of
infinity and continuity are derived from our intuitions of space and time. As
we have already noted in discussing his intuitional theory of mathematical
reasoning (above, pp. 40-1, 117 ff., 128 ff.), he fails to extend to mathematical
concepts his own “transcendental” view of the categories, namely, as
conditioning the possibility of intuitional experience. Such concepts as order,
plurality, whole and part, continuity, infinity, are prior to time and space in the
logical order of thought; and to be adequately treated must be considered in
their widest application.
[1506] Cf. A 507 = B 535, and above, p. 431 ff.; below, pp. 501, 545-6.
[1507] Cf. Kant’s posthumously published Transition from the
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science to Physics (Altpreussische
Monatsschrift, 1882), pp. 279-80: “If we take in regard to space, not its
definition, but only an a priori proposition, e.g. that space is a whole which
must be thought only as part of a still greater whole, it is clear … that it is an
irrational magnitude, measurable indeed, but in its comparison with unity
transcending all number.” “If space is something objectively existent, it is a
magnitude which can exist only as part of another given magnitude.”
[1508] Cf. Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii.
pp. 585-6; Eng. trans, ii. pp. 107-8). “I find and assert that the whole antinomy
is a mere delusion, a sham fight. Only the assertions of the antitheses really
rest upon the forms of our faculty of knowledge, i.e. if we express it
objectively, on the necessary, a priori certain, most universal laws of nature.
Their proofs alone are therefore drawn from objective grounds. On the other
hand, the assertions and proofs of the theses have no other than a subjective
ground, rest solely on the weakness of the reasoning individual; for his
imagination becomes tired with an endless regression, and therefore he puts an
end to it by arbitrary assumptions, which he tries to smooth over as well as he
can; and his judgment, moreover, is in this case paralysed by early and deeply
imprinted prejudices. On this account the proof of the thesis in all the four
conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the antithesis is a
necessary inference of the reason from the laws of the world as idea known to
us a priori. It is, moreover, only with great pains and skill that Kant is able to
sustain the thesis, and make it appear to attack its opponent, which is endowed
with native power…. I shall show that the proofs which Kant adduces of the
individual theses are sophisms, while those of the antitheses are quite fairly
and correctly drawn from objective grounds.”
[1509] Cf. F. Erhardt’s Kritik der Kantischen Antinomienlehre (1888), a
brief but excellent analysis of this section of the Critique.
[1510] § 1 n.
[1511] Cf. A 431-2 = B 460-1: “…the concept [of the infinite] is not the
concept of a maximum; by it we think only its relation to any assignable unit,
in respect to which it is greater than all number.”
[1512] Cf. Kant’s statement in the Observation to this antithesis, A 431-3 =
B 459-61.
[1513] Kant regarded the point as a limit, i.e. as a boundary (Dissertation,
§ 14, 4; § 15, C: “The simple in space is not a part but a limit”; A 169-70 = B
211); whereas certain modern mathematicians take the point as one of the
undefined elements. When the point is regarded in this latter manner, space
may perhaps be satisfactorily defined as a set of points. In arguing for the
antithesis, and in the passages just cited, Kant also assumes that, in the case of
space, the properties of the class are determined by the properties of its
elements. This questionable assumption is involved in his assertion that space
can consist only of spaces.
[1514] A 438 = B 466.
[1515] A 439-41 = B 467-9.
[1516] A 441 = B 469.
[1517] Developed in the Dissertation (1770).
[1518] Zweites Hauptstück, Lehrsatz 4, Anmerkung 1. Cf. also Anmerkung
2.
[1519] Principles of Mathematics, i. p. 460.
[1520] Cf. above, p. 481 n. 2.
[1521] P. 489 n.
[1522] Cf. Schopenhauer, World as Will and Idea (Werke, Frauenstädt, ii.
p. 590; Eng. trans. ii. pp. 111-12). “The argument for the third thesis is a very
fine sophism, and is really Kant’s pretended principle of pure reason itself
entirely unadulterated and unchanged. It tries to prove the finiteness of the
series of causes by saying that, in order to be sufficient, a cause must contain
the complete sum of the conditions from which the succeeding state, the
effect, proceeds. For the completeness of the determinations present together
in the state which is the cause, the argument now substitutes the completeness
of the series of causes by which that state itself was brought to actuality; and
because completeness presupposes the condition of being rounded off or
closed in, and this again presupposes finiteness, the argument infers from this
a first cause, closing the series and therefore unconditioned. But the juggling is
obvious. In order to conceive the state A as the sufficient cause of the state B,
I assume that it contains the sum of the necessary determinations from the
coexistence of which the state B inevitably follows. Now by this my demand
upon it as a sufficient cause is entirely satisfied, and has no direct connection
with the question how the state A itself came to be; this rather belongs to an
entirely different consideration, in which I regard the said state A no more as
cause, but as itself an effect; in which case another state again must be related
to it, just as it was related to B. The assumption of the finiteness of the series
of causes and effects, and accordingly of a first beginning, appears nowhere in
this as necessary, any more than the presentness of the present moment
requires us to assume a beginning of time itself.”
[1523] Op. cit. p. 24.
[1524] For comment upon Kant’s defence of his procedure cf. below, p.
496.
[1525] Cf. Kant’s Observation on the thesis.
[1526] A 451 = B 479.
[1527] Cf. also A 451 = B 479.
[1528] Cf. Schopenhauer, op. cit. p. 591; Eng. trans. p. 113. “The fourth
conflict is … really tautological with the third; and the proof of the thesis is
also essentially the same as that of the preceding one. Kant’s assertion that
every conditioned presupposes a complete series of conditions, and therefore a
series which ends with an unconditioned, is a petitio principii which must
simply be denied. Everything conditioned presupposes nothing but its
condition; that this is again conditioned raises a new consideration which is
not directly contained in the first.”
[1529] Above, p. 494.
[1530] A 459 = B 487.
[1531] Jean Jacques Dortous de Mairan (1678-1771), physicist and
mathematician. In 1740 he succeeded Fontenelle as perpetual Secretary of the
French Academy of Sciences.
[1532] Cf. above, pp. 435, 495 n. 4.
[1533] A 448-50 = B 476-8.
[1534] Cf. above, p. 427 ff.; below, pp. 520-1, 527-37, 541 ff.
[1535] A 462 = B 490.
[1536] Cf. above, pp. 434 ff., 479.
[1537] A 476 = B 504.
[1538] A 484 = B 512.
[1539] Ibid.
[1540] A 483 = B 511.
[1541] A 485 = B 513.
[1542] Cf. above, p. 481; below, pp. 545-6.
[1543] Kant is here playing on the double meaning of the German
“sinnleeres”—“empty of sense” and “non-sense.”
[1544] A 489 = B 517.
[1545] A 490 = B 518.
[1546] Above, p. 426 ff.
[1547] A 490 = B 518.
[1548] Cf. above p. 204 ff.
[1549] A 494 = B 522-3.
[1550] A 495 = B 523.
[1551] Cf. A 494 = B 522-3: “…we can say of the transcendental object
that it is given in itself prior to all experience.”
[1552] A 496 = B 524.
[1553] A 491 = B 519.
[1554] Pp. 306-7.
[1555] A 497 = B 525.
[1556] A 501-2 = B 529-30.
[1557] A 506 = B 534.
[1558] Cf. end of passage: “There can be no lack of conditions that are
given through this regress.”
[1559] Cf. below, pp. 507-8.
[1560] Cf. below, pp. 507-9.
 [1561] K. p. 414 n. The two last paragraphs of Section VII., which correct
its argument, that of the Transcendental Aesthetic, are probably later additions.
[1562] A 508 = B 536.
[1563] Loc. cit.
[1564] As to the distinction between the ascending and the descending
series, cf. above, pp. 453 n., 484.
[1565] Cf. A 522 = B 549-50.
[1566] A 514 = B 542.
[1567] Above, p. 506.
[1568] Cf. A 522 = B 550.
[1569] A 515 = B 543.
[1570] A 519-20 = B 547-8.
[1571] When Kant adds (A 521 = B 549), “and therefore absolutely also,”
he inconsistently reverts to the position ambiguously suggested in A 499 = B
527. Cf. above, p. 506.
[1572] A 523-6 = B 551-4.
[1573] The assertion of infinite divisibility is not applicable, Kant states (A
526-7 = B 554-5), to bodies as organised, but only to bodies as mere occupants
of space. Organisation involves distinction of parts, and therefore discreteness.
How far organisation can go in organised bodies, experience alone can show
us.
[1574] P. 508.
[1575] A 528 = B 556.
[1576] Cf. above, pp. 345-7.
[1577] A 535-6 = B 563-4.
[1578] Cf. A 537 = B 564-5; also A 546 = B 574-5, in which Kant asserts
that man knows himself not only through the senses but “also through pure
apperception, and indeed in actions and inner determinations which cannot be
reckoned as impressions of the senses.” Such statements would seem to show
that, at the time of writing, Kant had not yet developed his doctrine of inner
sense.
[1579] A 532 = B 560.
[1580] A 536-7 = B 564-5.
[1581] A 533 = B 561.
[1582] A 536 = B 564.
[1583] A 538 = B 566.
[1584] Cf. Kant’s Uebergang von der metaph. Anfangsgründe der
Naturwissenschaft zur Physik (Altpreussische Monatsschrift (1882), pp. 272-
3).
[1585] A 549 = B 577. Italics not in Kant.
[1586] In A 540 = B 568 a different and less satisfactory view finds
expression.
[1587] A 542 = B 570.
 [1588] A 544 = B 572.
[1589] A 546-7 = B 574-5.
[1590] A 548 = B 576.
[1591] A 552 = B 580.
[1592] A 553 = B 581.
[1593] A 557 = B 585.
[1594] A 553-4 = B 581-2.
[1595] Cf. A 537-41 = B 565-9 and A 544 = B 572.
[1596] Cf. A 566 = B 594.
[1597] Cf. above, p. 204 ff.
[1598] A 559 = B 587.
[1599] A 561 = B 589.
[1600] A 565 = B 593.
[1601] A 567 = B 593.
[1602] For Kant’s comparison of his Ideas with those of Plato, cf. above,
pp. 447-9.
[1603] §§ 803 ff. in 5th edition (Halle, 1763).
[1604] A 578 = B 606.
[1605] A 580 = B 608.
[1606] Cf. above, p. 418 ff.
[1607] A 272-4 = B 328-30.
[1608] Cf. Kant’s distinction between distributive and collective unity in A
582-3 = B 610 with A 644 = B 672.
[1609] A 583 = B 611.
[1610] A 603 = B 631.
[1611] A 603-4 = B 631-2.
[1612] Cf. below, pp. 533, 536.
[1613] A 592 = B 620.
[1614] A 593 = B 621.
[1615] Cf. A 4-5 = B 8-9; A 735-8 = B 763-6.
[1616] Cf. above, pp. 427-8, and references there given.
[1617] Cf. above, p. 424.
[1618] Cf. above, p. 392 ff.
[1619] K. p. 475 n.
[1620] A 603 = B 631.
[1621] Cf. above, p. 527. The concluding paragraphs A 613-14 = B 641-2
can best be treated later in another connection. Cf. below, p. 536.
[1622] A 614 = B 642.
[1623] A 613 = B 641.
 [1624] A 616 = B 644.
[1625] A 619-20 = B 647-8.
[1626] Cf. below, pp. 541-2, 552 ff.
[1627] A 620 = B 648.
[1628] A 624 = B 652.
[1629] Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (1755).
[1630] Critique of Judgment, §§ 64, 65.
[1631] Hamann completed his translation of Hume’s Dialogues on Natural
Religion on August 7, 1780 (cf. Hamann’s Werke, vi. 154 ff.): and Kant,
notwithstanding his being occupied in finishing the Critique, read through the
manuscript. It is highly likely that this first perusal of Hume’s Dialogues not
only confirmed Kant in his negative attitude towards natural theology, but also
enabled him to define more clearly than he otherwise would have done, the
negative consequences of his own Critical principles. The chapter on the Ideal,
as we have already observed (above, pp. 434-5, 527-9, 531), was probably one
of the last parts of the Critique to be brought into final form. It does not seem
possible, however, to establish in any specific manner the exact influence
which Hume’s Dialogues may thus have exercised upon the argument of this
portion of the Critique. When Schreiter’s translation of the Dialogues
appeared in 1781, Hamann, not unwilling to escape the notoriety of seeming to
father so sceptical a work, withdrew his own translation.
[1632] This is the main point of Hume’s argument in Section XI. of his
Enquiry concerning the Human Understanding.
[1633] A 631 = B 659.
[1634] A 641 = B 669.
[1635] Cf. above, p. 407 ff., and below, p. 552 ff.
[1636] Cf. above, p. 454, with further references in n. 1.
[1637] Cf. above, pp. 536-7.
[1638] A 642 = B 670.
[1639] A 769-82 = B 797-810.
[1640] A xiv, B xxiii-iv, and Reflexionen ii. 1451: “In metaphysics there
can be no such thing as uncertainty.” Cf. above, pp. 10, 35.
[1641] A 770-1 = B 798-9.
[1642] A 772 = B 800.
[1643] A 775 = B 803.
[1644] Cf. A 781-2 = B 809-10.
[1645] Cf. above, pp. 481, 501.
[1646] A 777-8 = B 805-6.
[1647] A 782 = B 810.
[1648] Cf. above, pp. 97-8, 102, 390-1, 426 ff., 447 ff.
[1649] A 651 = B 679.
[1650] Loc. cit.
 [1651] A 653 = B 681.
[1652] Dissertation, § 30.
[1653] The extremely un-Critical reason which Kant here (A 647 = B 675)
gives for its necessarily remaining hypothetical is the “impossibility of
knowing all possible consequences.” This use of the term hypothetical is also
confusing in view of Kant’s criticism of the hypothetical employment of
Reason in A 769 ff. = B 797 ff.
[1654] A 647 = B 675.
[1655] Loc. cit. and A 649 = B 677.
[1656] A 648 = B 676.
[1657] A 652 = B 680.
[1658] A 660-1 = B 688-9.
[1659] A 656 = B 684.
[1660] A 656 = B 684.
[1661] A 658 = B 686.
[1662] A 660 = B 688.
[1663] The opening paragraphs of the section, A 642-5 = B 670-3, may be
of the same date as the concluding paragraphs.
[1664] Cf. per contra A 669-70 = B 697-8.
[1665] A 666 = B 694.
[1666] A 669 = B 697.
[1667] Cf. above, pp. 446-7.
[1668] Cf. A 681 = B 709.
[1669] Cf. per contra A 663-4 = B 691-2.
[1670] A 670 = B 698.
[1671] I may here guard against misunderstanding. Though the Ideas of
Reason condition the experience which they regulate, this must not be taken as
nullifying Kant’s fundamental distinction between the regulative and the
constitutive. Even when he is developing his less sceptical view, he adopts, in
metaphysics as in ethics, a position which is radically distinct from that of
Hegel. Though the moral ideal represents reality of the highest order, it
transcends all possible realisation of itself in human life. Though it conditions
all our morality, it at the same time condemns it. The Christian virtue of
humility defines the only attitude proper to the human soul. In an exactly
similar manner, the fact that the Ideas of Reason have to be regarded as
conditioning the possibility of sense-experience need not prevent us from also
recognising that they likewise make possible our consciousness of its
limitations.
[1672] Cf. above, pp. 473-7.
[1673] A 679 = B 707.
[1674] A 678 = B 706.
[1675] A 674 = B 702. Cf. A 678-9 = B 706-7.
[1676] A 680 = B 708.
 [1677] As above noted (pp. 499 ff.), when we find Kant thus insisting upon
the completely soluble character of all problems of pure Reason, the sceptical,
subjectivist tendency is dominant.
[1678] A 669 = B 697.
[1679] Cf. above, pp. 536-7, 541-2.
[1680] A 686-7 = B 714-15.
[1681] A 693 = B 721.
[1682] A 699-700 = B 727-8.
[1683] A 701 = B 729.
[1684] Nearly all the important points raised in the Methodology, and
several of its chief sections, I have commented upon in their connection with
the earlier parts of the Critique. Also, the Methodology is extremely diffuse.
For these reasons I have found it advisable to give such additional comment as
seems necessary in the form of this Appendix.
[1685] On Kant’s use of the terms ‘discipline’ and ‘canon,’ cf. above, pp.
71-2, 170, 174, 438.
[1686] Cf. above, p. 438.
[1687] A 4-5 = B 8-9.
[1688] Untersuchung: Zweite Betrachtung, W. ii. p. 283.
[1689] Kant here disavows the position of the Untersuchung in which
(Erste Betrachtung, § 4) he had asserted that mathematics deals with quantity
and philosophy with qualities.
[1690] For comment upon this distinction, cf. above, pp. 131-3, 338-9.
[1691] Untersuchung: Erste Betrachtung, § 2.
[1692] A 728 = B 756.
[1693] Untersuchung: Zweite Betrachtung, W. ii. p. 283.
[1694] Untersuchung: Erste Betrachtung, § 1, W. ii. p. 276: “Mathematics
proceeds to all its definitions by a synthetic procedure, philosophy by an
analytic procedure.”
[1695] In the Untersuchung Kant’s statements are more cautious, and also
more adequate. Cf. Erste Betrachtung, § 3, W. ii. p. 279: “In mathematics there
are only a few but in philosophy there are innumerable irresolvable
concepts….”
[1696] A 731 n. = B 759 n.
[1697] The phrases which Kant employs (A 732-3 = B 760-1) are:
“unmittelbargewiss,” “evident,” “augenscheinlich.” Cf. above, pp. xxxv-vi, 36
ff., 53.
[1698] Cf. above, pp. 118, 142, 185-6.
[1699] Cf. above, p. 117 ff.
[1700] Cf. above, pp. 38-42, 93-4, 118-20, 133.
[1701] Cf. above, pp. 111-12, 114-15.
[1702] Cf. above, p. 131 ff.
[1703] A 737 = B 765.
 [1704] Cf. above, pp. 36 ff., 117 ff., 128 ff., 565-6.
[1705] A 743-4 = B 771-2.
[1706] A 753 = B 781. In A 745 = B 773 Kant’s mention of Hume can
hardly refer to Hume’s Dialogues (cf. above, pp. 539-40 n.). Kant probably
has in mind Section XI. of the Enquiry. The important discussion of Hume’s
position in A 760 ff. = B 788 ff. has been commented upon above, p. 61 ff.
With Priestley’s teaching (A 745-6 = B 773-4) Kant probably became
acquainted through some indirect source. The first of Priestley’s philosophical
writings to appear in German was his History of the Corruptions of
Christianity. The translation was published in 1782. In A 747-8 = B 775-6
Kant quite obviously has Rousseau in mind.
[1707] Section III., on The Discipline of Pure Reason in Regard to
Hypotheses, has been commented on above, pp. 543-6.
[1708] A 782 = B 810.
[1709] Even in mathematics the indirect method is not always available.
Cf. Russell, Principles of Mathematics, i. p. 15.
[1710] A 794 = B 822.
[1711] Cf. above, p. 563 n. 2.
[1712] A 797 = B 825.
[1713] Cf. Critique of Judgment, W. v. p. 473; Bernard’s trans. p. 411:
“God, freedom, and immortality are the problems at the solution of which all
the preparations of Metaphysics aim, as their ultimate and unique purpose.”
[1714] A 800-1 = B 829.
[1715] The statement in A 801 = B 829 that morals is a subject foreign to
transcendental philosophy is in line with that of A 14-15 = B 28, and conflicts
with the position later adopted in the Critique of Practical Reason. Cf. above,
p. 77.
[1716] A 803 = B 831-2.
[1717] Cf. below, pp. 571-5.
[1718] A 804 = B 832.
[1719] Cf. above, p. lvi.
[1720] These statements are subject to modification, if the distinction (not
clearly recognised by Kant, but really essential to his position) between
immanent and transcendent metaphysics is insisted upon. Cf. above, pp. liv-v,
22, 56, 66-70.
[1721] Cf. above, p. 541.
[1722] W. v. pp. 47-8; Abbott’s trans. (3rd edition) p. 136.
[1723] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. pp. 31-7; Abbott’s trans. p.
120.
[1724] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 43; Abbott’s trans. p. 132:
“The moral law, although it gives no view, yet gives us a fact absolutely
inexplicable from any data of the sensible world, or from the whole compass
of our theoretical use of reason, a fact which points to a pure world of the
understanding, nay, even defines it positively, and enables us to know
something of it, namely, a law.”
 [1725] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, in note to Preface.
[1726] Op. cit., Preface, at the beginning, Abbott’s trans. pp. 87-8. Cf. also
the concluding pages of Book I., W. v. pp. 103-6, Abbott, pp. 197-200.
[1727] Critique of Judgment, W. v. p. 468; Bernard’s trans. p. 406.
[1728] Op. cit. p. 474; Bernard’s trans. p. 413.
[1729] A 815 = B 843.
[1730] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. pp. 143-4 n.; Abbott’s trans.
p. 242: “It is a duty to realise the Summum Bonum to the utmost of our power,
therefore it must be possible, consequently it is unavoidable for every rational
being in the world to assume what is necessary for its objective possibility.
The assumption is as necessary as the moral law, in connexion with which
alone it is valid.”
[1731] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 142 ff.; Abbott’s trans. p.
240 ff.; Critique of Judgment, W. v. pp. 469-70; Bernard’s trans. pp. 406-8.
[1732] Critique of Judgment, W. v. pp. 369-72; Bernard’s trans. pp. 407-10.
Cf. note in same section: “It is a trust in the promise of the moral law; not,
however, such as is contained in it, but such as I put into it, and that on
morally adequate grounds.”
[1733] A 819 = B 847.
[1734] A 820 = B 848.
[1735] The distinction is less harshly drawn in Kant’s Logic, Einleitung, ix.
(Hartenstein), viii. p. 73; Eng. trans, p. 63: “Conviction is opposed to
persuasion. Persuasion is an assent from inadequate reasons, in respect to
which we do not know whether they are only subjective or are also objective.
Persuasion often precedes conviction.”
[1736] Cf. above, pp. 10, 543. Cf. Fortschritte; Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p.
561.
[1737] Cf. Logic, loc. cit. Cf. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals,
W. iv. pp. 416-17: Abbott’s trans. pp. 33-34.
[1738] Regarding Kant’s distinction in A 827 = B 855 between Ideas and
hypotheses cf. above, p. 543 ff. Cf. also Critique of Judgment, W. v. pp. 392
ff., 461 ff.; Bernard’s trans. pp. 302 ff., 395 ff.
[1739] A 829 = B 857.
[1740] Cf. Kant’s Preface to the Critique of Practical Reason, W. v. p. 8 n.;
Abbott’s trans. p. 93 n. “A reviewer who wanted to find some fault with this
work—[the Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals]—has hit the truth
better, perhaps, than he thought, when he says that no new principle of
morality is set forth in it, but only a new formula. But who would think of
introducing a new principle of all morality, and making himself as it were the
first inventor of it, just as if all the world before him were ignorant what duty
was, or had been in thorough-going error? But whoever knows of what
importance to a mathematician a formula is, which defines accurately what is
to be done to work out a problem, will not think that a formula is insignificant
and useless which does the same for all duty in general.” Cf. Fortschritte,
Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 563.
[1741] Fragmente aus dem Nachlasse, Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 624,
already quoted above, p. lvii. Cf. also op. cit. p. 630.
 [1742] Cf. Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion, W. v. pp. 161-2;
Abbott’s trans. p. 260.
[1743] A 832 = B 860.
[1744] K. p. 633 n. Cf. above, p. xxii.
[1745] Cf. Adickes, K. p. 635 n., and Vaihinger, i. p. 306. In this table
Critique is distinguished from the System of pure Reason (cf. above, pp. 71-2).
The transcendental philosophy of pure Reason of this table corresponds to the
Analytic of the Critique, and to “pure natural science” in the absolute sense
(cf. above, pp. 66-7). The rational physics of this table corresponds to the
Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science.
[1746] When Kant in A 840 = B 868 takes philosophy as including
empirical knowledge he contradicts the spirit, though not the letter of his own
preceding statements. In his Introduction to Logic (Hartenstein, viii. p. 22,
Abbott’s trans. p. 12) the empirical is identified with the historical.
[1747] Fortschritte, Werke (Hartenstein), viii. p. 554.
[1748] Op. cit. p. 520.
[1749] I.e. between the conception of philosophy as Schulbegriff and as
Weltbegriff (conceptus cosmicus). He explains in a note to A 839 = B 868 that
he employs these latter terms as indicating that philosophy in the traditional or
humanistic sense is concerned with “that which must necessarily interest every
one.” I have translated Weltbegriff as ‘universal concept.’ By conceptus
cosmicus Kant means ‘concept shared by the whole world,’ or ‘common to all
mankind.’
[1750] Cf. Kant’s Logic, Introduction, § iii.: Abbott’s trans. pp. 14-15: “In
this scholastic signification of the word, philosophy aims only at skill; in
reference to the higher concept common to all mankind, on the contrary, it
aims at utility. In the former aspect, therefore, it is a doctrine of skill; in the
latter a doctrine of wisdom; it is the lawgiver of reason; and hence the
philosopher is not a master of the art of reason, but a lawgiver. The master of
the art of reason, or as Socrates calls him, the philodoxus, strives merely for
speculative knowledge, without concerning himself how much this knowledge
contributes to the ultimate end of human reason: he gives rules for the use of
reason for all kinds of ends. The practical philosopher, the teacher of wisdom
by doctrine and example, is the true philosopher. For philosophy is the Ideal of
a perfect wisdom, which shows us the ultimate ends of all human reason.”
[1751] A 839 = B 867.
[1752] A 851 = B 879.
[1753] A 850 = B 878.
[1754] A 848-9 = B 876-7. Cf. above, pp. 237, 311 n., 312 n., 384-5, 473-7,
554.
[1755] A 852 = B 880.
[1756] Cf. A 313 ff. = B 370 ff., above, pp. 498-9.
[1757] Cf. above, pp. xxviii-xxix.
[1758] Einleitung, § iv.: Abbott’s trans, pp. 17-23.
[1759] Supplementary to pp. xxv-xxxiii. Throughout I shall make use of
my Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy, and may refer the reader to them for
further justification of the positions adopted.
 [1760] For recognition of this distinction, cf. Herbert Spencer, Principles of
Psychology, vol. i., 3rd ed., pp. 620-3.
[1761] Cf. Studies in the Cartesian Philosophy, pp. 80-2, 106-7.
[1762] This distinction is due to Galileo, though the terms “primary” and
“secondary” were first employed by Locke.
[1763] I have dealt with Avenarius’ criticism in “Avenarius’ Philosophy of
Pure Experience” (Mind, vol. xv. N.S., pp. 13-31, 149-160); with Bergson’s
criticism in “Subjectivism and Realism in Modern Philosophy” (Philosophical
Review, vol. xvii. pp. 138-148); and with the general issue as a whole in “The
Problem of Knowledge” (Journal of Philosophy, vol. ix. pp. 113-128).
[1764] On Descartes’ failure to distinguish between the mathematical and
the dynamical aspects of motion, cf. above, p. 584.
[1765] Essay concerning Human Understanding, IV. vi. 16.
[1766] Op. cit. IV. xii. 7.
[1767] Op. cit. IV. vi. 11.
[1768] Cf. above, pp. 27-8.
[1769] Though the concept of substance is also discussed by Hume, his
treatment of it is quite perfunctory.
[1770] Cf. above, pp. xxv ff., 61 ff.
[1771] Treatise on Human Nature (Green and Grose), i. p. 380.
[1772] Op. cit. p. 383.
[1773] Loc. cit.
[1774] For justification of the phrase “synthetic reason,” I must refer to my
articles in Mind, vol. xiv. N.S. pp. 149-73, 335-47, on “The Naturalism of
Hume.”
[1775] Treatise (Green and Grose), i. pp. 474-5.
[1776] Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Green and Grose), p.
40.
[1777] Treatise, p. 471.
[1778] Enquiry (Green and Grose), pp. 25-6.
[1779] Éclaircissement sur chap. iii. pt. ii. liv. vi. de la Recherche: tome iv.
(1712) p. 381.
[1780] Enquiry, p. 57.
[1781] Enquiry, p. 32.
[1782] This is the objection upon which Beattie chiefly insists.
[1783] Op. cit. pp. 33-4.
[1784] Cf. above, pp. 39 ff., 54, 222 ff., 241, 286-9.
[1785] How far Hume’s criticism of empiricism really influenced Kant in
his appreciation of this deeper problem, it seems impossible to decide. Very
probably Kant proceeded to it by independent development of his own
standpoint, after the initial impulse received on the more strictly logical issue.
[1786] The assertion, by Kuno Fischer and Paulsen, of an empirical period
in Kant’s development, has been challenged by Adickes, B. Erdmann, Riehl,
and Vaihinger.
 [1787] Cf. B. Erdmann’s Kriticismus, p. 147; Critique of Judgment, W. v. p.
391 (Bernard’s trans, p. 301).
[1788] Above, pp. xxx-iii.
[1789] Philosophischer Kriticismus, 2nd ed. p. 209.
[1790] Cf. above, pp. lv-vi, lxi, 543 ff.
 Typographical errors corrected by the etext
transcriber:
The transcenedntal doctrine=> The transcendental doctrine
{pg 77}
non-commital=> non-committal {pg 122}
widersinnisches=> Widersinnisches {pg 444}
Erkenntniss=> Erkenntnis {pg 449}
themelves=> themselves {pg 505}
which contain the the material=> which contain the
material {pg 523}
it as valid=> it is valid {pg 575}
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