The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)
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Title: The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer
Translator: Viscount R. B. Haldane Haldane
J. Kemp
Release date: June 27, 2012 [eBook #40097]
Most recently updated: June 15, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/40097
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD AS WILL AND IDEA (VOL. 2 OF 3) ***
The World As Will And Idea
By
Arthur Schopenhauer
Translated From The German By
R. B. Haldane, M.A.
And
J. Kemp, M.A.
Vol. II.
Containing the Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy, and the Supplements to
the First and Part of the Second Book of Vol. I.
“Paucis natus est, qui populum ætatis suæ cogitat.”—SEN.
Sixth Edition
London
Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co.
1909
CONTENTS
Appendix: Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy.
Supplements to the First Book.
First Half. The Doctrine Of The Idea Of Perception. (To § 1-7 of the
First Volume.)
Chapter I. The Standpoint of Idealism.
Chapter II. The Doctrine of Perception or Knowledge Of The
Understanding.
Chapter III. On The Senses.
Chapter IV. On Knowledge _A Priori_.
Second Half. The Doctrine of the Abstract Idea, or Thinking.
Chapter V. On The Irrational Intellect.
Chapter VI. On The Doctrine of Abstract or Rational Knowledge.
Chapter VII. On The Relation of the Concrete Knowledge of Perception
to Abstract Knowledge.
Chapter VIII. On The Theory Of The Ludicrous.
Chapter IX. On Logic In General.
Chapter X. On The Syllogism.
Chapter XI. On Rhetoric.
Chapter XII. On The Doctrine Of Science.
Chapter XIII. On The Methods Of Mathematics.
Chapter XIV. On The Association Of Ideas.
Chapter XV. On The Essential Imperfections Of The Intellect.
Chapter XVI. On The Practical Use Of Reason And On Stoicism.
Chapter XVII. On Man’s Need Of Metaphysics.
Supplements to the Second Book.
Chapter XVIII. On The Possibility Of Knowing The Thing In Itself.
Chapter XIX. On The Primacy Of The Will In Self-Consciousness.
Chapter XX. Objectification Of The Will In The Animal Organism.
Note On What Has Been Said About Bichat.
Footnotes
APPENDIX: CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
C’est le privilège du vrai génie, et surtout du génie qui ouvre
une carrière,
de faire impunément de grandes fautes.—_Voltaire._
It is much easier to point out the faults and errors in the work of a
great mind than to give a distinct and full exposition of its value. For
the faults are particular and finite, and can therefore be fully
comprehended; while, on the contrary, the very stamp which genius
impresses upon its works is that their excellence is unfathomable and
inexhaustible. Therefore they do not grow old, but become the instructor
of many succeeding centuries. The perfected masterpiece of a truly great
mind will always produce a deep and powerful effect upon the whole human
race, so much so that it is impossible to calculate to what distant
centuries and lands its enlightening influence may extend. This is always
the case; for however cultivated and rich the age may be in which such a
masterpiece appears, genius always rises like a palm-tree above the soil
in which it is rooted.
But a deep-reaching and widespread effect of this kind cannot take place
suddenly, because of the great difference between the genius and ordinary
men. The knowledge which that one man in one lifetime drew directly from
life and the world, won and presented to others as won and arranged,
cannot yet at once become the possession of mankind; for mankind has not
so much power to receive as the genius has power to give. But even after a
successful battle with unworthy opponents, who at its very birth contest
the life of what is immortal and desire to nip in the bud the salvation of
man (like the serpents in the cradle of Hercules), that knowledge must
then traverse the circuitous paths of innumerable false constructions and
distorted applications, must overcome the attempts to unite it with old
errors, and so live in conflict till a new and unprejudiced generation
grows up to meet it. Little by little, even in youth, this new generation
partially receives the contents of that spring through a thousand indirect
channels, gradually assimilates it, and so participates in the benefit
which was destined to flow to mankind from that great mind. So slowly does
the education of the human race, the weak yet refractory pupil of genius,
advance. Thus with Kant’s teaching also; its full strength and importance
will only be revealed through time, when the spirit of the age, itself
gradually transformed and altered in the most important and essential
respects by the influence of that teaching, will afford convincing
evidence of the power of that giant mind. I have, however, no intention of
presumptuously anticipating the spirit of the age and assuming here the
thankless _rôle_ of Calchas and Cassandra. Only I must be allowed, in
accordance with what has been said, to regard Kant’s works as still very
new, while many at the present day look upon them as already antiquated,
and indeed have laid them aside as done with, or, as they express it, have
left them behind; and others, emboldened by this, ignore them altogether,
and with brazen face go on philosophising about God and the soul on the
assumption of the old realistic dogmatism and its scholastic teaching,
which is as if one sought to introduce the doctrines of the alchemists
into modern chemistry. For the rest, the works of Kant do not stand in
need of my feeble eulogy, but will themselves for ever praise their
author, and though perhaps not in the letter, yet in the spirit they will
live for ever upon earth.
Certainly, however, if we look back at the first result of his teaching,
at the efforts and events in the sphere of philosophy during the period
that has elapsed since he wrote, a very depressing saying of Goethe
obtains confirmation: “As the water that is displaced by a ship
immediately flows in again behind it, so when great minds have driven
error aside and made room for themselves, it very quickly closes in behind
them again by the law of its nature” (_Wahrheit und Dichtung_, Theil 3, s.
521). Yet this period has been only an episode, which is to be reckoned as
part of the lot referred to above that befalls all new and great
knowledge; an episode which is now unmistakably near its end, for the
bubble so long blown out yet bursts at last. Men generally are beginning
to be conscious that true and serious philosophy still stands where Kant
left it. At any rate, I cannot see that between Kant and myself anything
has been done in philosophy; therefore I regard myself as his immediate
successor.
What I have in view in this Appendix to my work is really only a defence
of the doctrine I have set forth in it, inasmuch as in many points that
doctrine does not agree with the Kantian philosophy, but indeed
contradicts it. A discussion of this philosophy is, however, necessary,
for it is clear that my train of thought, different as its content is from
that of Kant, is yet throughout under its influence, necessarily
presupposes it, starts from it; and I confess that, next to the impression
of the world of perception, 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 Hindus, and by Plato. But I can only justify the contradictions of
Kant which are nevertheless present in my work by accusing him of error in
these points, and exposing mistakes which he committed. Therefore in this
Appendix I must proceed against Kant in a thoroughly polemical manner, and
indeed seriously and with every effort; for it is only thus that his
doctrine can be freed from the error that clings to it, and its truth
shine out the more clearly and stand the more firmly. It must not,
therefore, be expected that the sincere reverence for Kant which I
certainly feel shall extend to his weaknesses and errors also, and that I
shall consequently refrain from exposing these except with the most
careful indulgence, whereby my language would necessarily become weak and
insipid through circumlocution. Towards a living writer such indulgence is
needed, for human frailty cannot endure even the most just refutation of
an error, unless tempered by soothing and flattery, and hardly even then;
and a teacher of the age and benefactor of mankind deserves at least that
the human weakness he also has should be indulged, so that he may not be
caused pain. But he who is dead has thrown off this weakness; his merit
stands firm; time will purify it more and more from all exaggeration and
detraction. His mistakes must be separated from it, rendered harmless, and
then given over to oblivion. Therefore in the polemic against Kant I am
about to begin, I have only his mistakes and weak points in view. I oppose
them with hostility, and wage a relentless war of extermination against
them, always mindful not to conceal them indulgently, but rather to place
them in the clearest light, in order to extirpate them the more surely.
For the reasons given above, I am not conscious either of injustice or
ingratitude towards Kant in doing this. However, in order that, in the
eyes of others also, I may remove every appearance of malice, I wish first
to bring out clearly my sincere reverence for Kant and gratitude to him,
by expressing shortly what in my eyes appears to be his chief merit; and I
shall do this from a standpoint so general that I shall not require to
touch upon the points in which I must afterwards controvert him.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
_Kant’s greatest merit is the distinction of the phenomenon from the thing
in itself_, based upon the proof that between things and us there still
always stands the _intellect_, so that they cannot be known as they may be
in themselves. He was led into this path through Locke (see _Prolegomena
zu jeder Metaph._, § 13, Anm. 2). The latter had shown that the secondary
qualities of things, such as sound, smell, colour, hardness, softness,
smoothness, and the like, as founded on the affections of the senses, do
not belong to the objective body, to the thing in itself. To this he
attributed only the primary qualities, _i.e._, such as only presuppose
space and impenetrability; thus extension, figure, solidity, number,
mobility. But this easily discovered Lockeian distinction was, as it were,
only a youthful introduction to the distinction of Kant. The latter,
starting from an incomparably higher standpoint, explains all that Locke
had accepted as _primary qualities_, _i.e._, qualities of the thing in
itself, as also belonging only to its phenomenal appearance in our faculty
of apprehension, and this just because the conditions of this faculty,
space, time, and causality, are known by us _a priori_. Thus Locke had
abstracted from the thing in itself the share which the organs of sense
have in its phenomenal appearance; Kant, however, further abstracted the
share of the brain-functions (though not under that name). Thus the
distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in itself now received an
infinitely greater significance, and a very much deeper meaning. For this
end he was obliged to take in hand the important separation of our _a
priori_ from our _a posteriori_ knowledge, which before him had never been
carried out with adequate strictness and completeness, nor with distinct
consciousness. Accordingly this now became the principal subject of his
profound investigations. Now here we would at once remark that Kant’s
philosophy has a threefold relation to that of his predecessors. First, as
we have just seen, to the philosophy of Locke, confirming and extending
it; secondly, to that of Hume, correcting and making use of it, a relation
which is most distinctly expressed in the “_Prolegomena_” (that most
beautiful and comprehensible of all Kant’s important writings, which is
far too little read, for it facilitates immensely the study of his
philosophy); thirdly, a decidedly polemical and destructive relation to
the Leibnitz-Wolfian philosophy. All three systems ought to be known
before one proceeds to the study of the Kantian philosophy. If now,
according to the above, the distinction of the phenomenon from the thing
in itself, thus the doctrine of the complete diversity of the ideal and
the real, is the fundamental characteristic of the Kantian philosophy,
then the assertion of the absolute identity of these two which appeared
soon afterwards is a sad proof of the saying of Goethe quoted above; all
the more so as it rested upon nothing but the empty boast of intellectual
intuition, and accordingly was only a return to the crudeness of the
vulgar opinion, masked under bombast and nonsense, and the imposing
impression of an air of importance. It became the fitting starting-point
for the still grosser nonsense of the clumsy and stupid Hegel. Now as
Kant’s separation of the phenomenon from the thing in itself, arrived at
in the manner explained above, far surpassed all that preceded it in the
depth and thoughtfulness of its conception, it was also exceedingly
important in its results. For in it he propounded, quite originally, in a
perfectly new way, found from a new side and on a new path, the same truth
which Plato never wearies of repeating, and in his language generally
expresses thus: This world which appears to the senses has no true being,
but only a ceaseless becoming; it is, and it is not, and its comprehension
is not so much knowledge as illusion. This is also what he expresses
mythically at the beginning of the seventh book of the Republic, the most
important passage in all his writings, which has already been referred to
in the third book of the present work. He says: Men, firmly chained in a
dark cave, see neither the true original light nor real things, but only
the meagre light of the fire in the cave and the shadows of real things
which pass by the fire behind their backs; yet they think the shadows are
the reality, and the determining of the succession of these shadows is
true wisdom. The same truth, again quite differently presented, is also a
leading doctrine of the Vedas and Puranas, the doctrine of Mâyâ, by which
really nothing else is understood than what Kant calls the phenomenon in
opposition to the thing in itself; for the work of Mâyâ is said to be just
this visible world in which we are, a summoned enchantment, an inconstant
appearance without true being, like an optical illusion or a dream, a veil
which surrounds human consciousness, something of which it is equally
false and true to say that it is and that it is not. But Kant not only
expressed the same doctrine in a completely new and original way, but
raised it to the position of proved and indisputable truth by means of the
calmest and most temperate exposition; while both Plato and the Indian
philosophers had founded their assertions merely upon a general perception
of the world, had advanced them as the direct utterance of their
consciousness, and presented them rather mythically and poetically than
philosophically and distinctly. In this respect they stand to Kant in the
same relation as the Pythagoreans Hicetas, Philolaus, and Aristarchus, who
already asserted the movement of the earth round the fixed sun, stand to
Copernicus. Such distinct knowledge and calm, thoughtful exposition of
this dream-like nature of the whole world is really the basis of the whole
Kantian philosophy; it is its soul and its greatest merit. He accomplished
this by taking to pieces the whole machinery of our intellect by means of
which the phantasmagoria of the objective world is brought about, and
presenting it in detail with marvellous insight and ability. All earlier
Western philosophy, appearing in comparison with the Kantian unspeakably
clumsy, had failed to recognise that truth, and had therefore always
spoken just as if in a dream. Kant first awakened it suddenly out of this
dream; therefore the last sleepers (Mendelssohn) called him the
“all-destroyer.” He showed that the laws which reign with inviolable
necessity in existence, _i.e._, in experience generally, are not to be
applied to deduce and explain _existence itself_ that thus the validity of
these laws is only relative, _i.e._, only arises after existence; the
world of experience in general is already established and present; that
consequently these laws cannot be our guide when we come to the
explanation of the existence of the world and of ourselves. All earlier
Western philosophers had imagined that these laws, according to which the
phenomena are combined, and all of which—time and space, as well as
causality and inference—I comprehend under the expression “the principle
of sufficient reason,” were absolute laws conditioned by nothing, _æternæ
veritates_; that the world itself existed only in consequence of and in
conformity with them; and therefore that under their guidance the whole
riddle of the world must be capable of solution. The assumptions made for
this purpose, which Kant criticises under the name of the Ideas of the
reason, only served to raise the mere phenomenon, the work of Mâyâ, the
shadow world of Plato, to the one highest reality, to put it in the place
of the inmost and true being of things, and thereby to make the real
knowledge of this impossible; that is, in a word, to send the dreamers
still more soundly to sleep. Kant exhibited these laws, and therefore the
whole world, as conditioned by the form of knowledge belonging to the
subject; from which it followed, that however far one carried
investigation and reasoning under the guidance of these laws, yet in the
principal matter, _i.e._, in knowledge of the nature of the world in
itself and outside the idea, no step in advance was made, but one only
moved like a squirrel in its wheel. Thus, all the dogmatists may be
compared to persons who supposed that if they only went straight on long
enough they would come to the end of the world; but Kant then
circumnavigated the world and showed that, because it is round, one cannot
get out of it by horizontal movement, but that yet by perpendicular
movement this is perhaps not impossible. We may also say that Kant’s
doctrine affords the insight that we must seek the end and beginning of
the world, not without, but within us.
All this, however, rests on the fundamental distinction between dogmatic
and _critical_ or _transcendental philosophy_. Whoever wishes to make this
quite clear to himself, and realise it by means of an example, may do so
very briefly by reading, as a specimen of dogmatic philosophy, an essay of
Leibnitz entitled “_De Rerum Originatione Radicali_,” and printed for the
first time in the edition of the philosophical works of Leibnitz by
Erdmann (vol. i. p. 147). Here the origin and excellence of the world is
demonstrated _a priori_, so thoroughly in the manner of
realistic-dogmatism, on the ground of the _veritates æternæ_ and with the
assistance of the ontological and cosmological proofs. It is indeed once
admitted, by the way, that experience shows the exact opposite of the
excellence of the world here demonstrated; but experience is therefore
given to understand that it knows nothing of the matter, and ought to hold
its tongue when philosophy has spoken a priori. Now, with Kant, the
_critical philosophy_ appeared as the opponent of this whole method. It
takes for its problem just these _veritates æternæ_, which serve as the
foundation of every such dogmatic structure, investigates their origin,
and finds it in the human mind, where they spring from the peculiar forms
which belong to it, and which it carries in itself for the purpose of
comprehending an objective world. Thus, here, in the brain, is the quarry
which supplies the material for that proud dogmatic edifice. But because
the critical philosophy, in order to attain to this result, was obliged to
go beyond the _veritates æternæ_ upon which all the preceding dogmatism
was founded, and make these truths themselves the objects of
investigation, it became _transcendental_ philosophy. From this, then, it
also follows that the objective world, as we know it, does not belong to
the true being of the thing in itself, but is merely its phenomenal
appearance conditioned by those very forms which lie _a priori_ in the
intellect (_i.e._, the brain), therefore it cannot contain anything but
phenomena.
Kant, indeed, did not attain to the knowledge that the phenomenon is the
world as idea, and the thing in itself is the will. But he showed that the
phenomenal world is conditioned just as much through the subject as
through the object, and because he isolated the most universal forms of
its phenomenal appearance, _i.e._, of the idea, he proved that we may know
these forms and consider them in their whole constitution, not only by
starting from the object, but also just as well by starting from the
subject, because they are really the limits between object and subject
which are common to them both; and he concluded that by following these
limits we never penetrate to the inner nature either of the object or of
the subject, consequently never know the true nature of the world, the
thing in itself.
He did not deduce the thing in itself in the right way, as I shall show
presently, but by means of an inconsistency, and he had to pay the penalty
of this in frequent and irresistible attacks upon this important part of
his teaching. He did not recognise the thing in itself directly in the
will; but he made a great initial step towards this knowledge in that he
explained the undeniable moral significance of human action as quite
different from and not dependent upon the laws of the phenomenon, nor even
explicable in accordance with them, but as something which touches the
thing in itself directly: this is the second important point of view for
estimating his services.
We may regard as the third the complete overthrow of the Scholastic
philosophy, a name by which I wish here to denote generally the whole
period beginning with Augustine, the Church Father, and ending just before
Kant. For the chief characteristic of Scholasticism is, indeed, that which
is very correctly stated by Tennemann, the guardianship of the prevailing
national religion over philosophy, which had really nothing left for it to
do but to prove and embellish the cardinal dogmas prescribed to it by
religion. The Schoolmen proper, down to Suarez, confess this openly; the
succeeding philosophers do it more unconsciously, or at least unavowedly.
It is held that Scholastic philosophy only extends to about a hundred
years before Descartes, and that then with him there begins an entirely
new epoch of free investigation independent of all positive theological
doctrine. Such investigation, however, is in fact not to be attributed to
Descartes and his successors,(1) but only an appearance of it, and in any
case an effort after it. Descartes was a man of supreme ability, and if we
take account of the age he lived in, he accomplished a great deal. But if
we set aside this consideration and measure him with reference to the
freeing of thought from all fetters and the commencement of a new period
of untrammelled original investigation with which he is credited, we are
obliged to find that with his doubt still wanting in true seriousness, and
therefore surrendering so quickly and so entirely, he has, indeed, the
appearance of wishing to throw off at once all the early implanted
opinions belonging to his age and nation, but does so only apparently and
for a moment, to assume them again immediately and hold them all the more
firmly; and so is it with all his successors down to Kant. Goethe’s lines
are, therefore, very applicable to a free independent thinker of this
kind:
“Saving Thy gracious presence, he to me
A long-legged grasshopper appears to be,
That springing flies, and flying springs,
And in the grass the same old ditty sings.”(2)
Kant had reasons for assuming the air of also intending nothing more. But
the pretended spring, which was permitted because it was known that it
leads back to the grass, this time became a flight, and now those who
remain below can only look after him, and can never catch him again.
Kant, then, ventured to show by his teaching that all those dogmas which
had been so often professedly proved were incapable of proof. Speculative
theology, and the rational psychology connected with it, received from him
their deathblow. Since then they have vanished from German philosophy, and
one must not allow oneself to be misled by the fact that here and there
the word is retained after the thing has been given up, or some wretched
professor of philosophy has the fear of his master in view, and lets truth
take care of itself. Only he who has observed the pernicious influence of
these conceptions upon natural science, and upon philosophy in all, even
the best writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, can estimate
the extent of this service of Kant’s. The change of tone and of
metaphysical background which has appeared in German writing upon natural
science since Kant is remarkable; before him it was in the same position
as it still occupies in England. This merit of Kant’s is connected with
the fact that the unreflecting pursuit of the laws of the phenomenon, the
elevation of these to the position of eternal truths, and thus the raising
of the fleeting appearance to the position of the real being of the world,
in short, _realism_ undisturbed in its illusion by any reflection, had
reigned throughout all preceding philosophy, ancient, mediæval, and
modern. Berkeley, who, like Malebranche before him, recognised its
one-sidedness, and indeed falseness, was unable to overthrow it, for his
attack was confined to _one_ point. Thus it was reserved for Kant to
enable the idealistic point of view to obtain the ascendancy in Europe, at
least in philosophy; the point of view which throughout all non-Mohammedan
Asia, and indeed essentially, is that of religion. Before Kant, then, we
were in time; now time is in us, and so on.
Ethics also were treated by that realistic philosophy according to the
laws of the phenomenon, which it regarded as absolute and valid also for
the thing in itself. They were therefore based now upon a doctrine of
happiness, now upon the will of the Creator, and finally upon the
conception of perfection; a conception which, taken by itself, is entirely
empty and void of content, for it denotes a mere relation that only
receives significance from the things to which it is applied. “To be
perfect” means nothing more than “to correspond to some conception which
is presupposed and given,” a conception which must therefore be previously
framed, and without which the perfection is an unknown quantity, and
consequently has no meaning when expressed alone. If, however, it is
intended tacitly to presuppose the conception “humanity,” and accordingly
to make it the principle of morality to strive after human perfection,
this is only saying: “Men ought to be as they ought to be,”—and we are
just as wise as before. In fact “perfect” is very nearly a mere synonym of
“complete,” for it signifies that in one given case or individual, all the
predicates which lie in the conception of its species appear, thus are
actually present. Therefore the conception “perfection,” if used
absolutely and in the abstract, is a word void of significance, and this
is also the case with the talk about the “most perfect being,” and other
similar expressions. All this is a mere jingle of words. Nevertheless last
century this conception of perfection and imperfection had become current
coin; indeed it was the hinge upon which almost all speculation upon
ethics, and even theology, turned. It was in every one’s mouth, so that at
last it became a simple nuisance. We see even the best writers of the
time, for example Lessing, entangled in the most deplorable manner in
perfections and imperfections, and struggling with them. At the same time,
every thinking man must at least dimly have felt that this conception is
void of all positive content, because, like an algebraical symbol, it
denotes a mere relation _in abstracto_. Kant, as we have already said,
entirely separated the undeniably great ethical significance of actions
from the phenomenon and its laws, and showed that the former directly
concerned the thing in itself, the inner nature of the world, while the
latter, _i.e._, time, space, and all that fills them, and disposes itself
in them according to the law of causality, is to be regarded as a changing
and unsubstantial dream.
The little I have said, which by no means exhausts the subject, may
suffice as evidence of my recognition of the great merits of Kant,—a
recognition expressed here both for my own satisfaction, and because
justice demands that those merits should be recalled to the memory of
every one who desires to follow me in the unsparing exposure of his errors
to which I now proceed.
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It may be inferred, upon purely historical grounds, that Kant’s great
achievements must have been accompanied by great errors. For although he
effected the greatest revolution in philosophy and made an end of
Scholasticism, which, understood in the wider sense we have indicated, had
lasted for fourteen centuries, in order to begin what was really the third
entirely new epoch in philosophy which the world has seen, yet the direct
result of his appearance was only negative, not positive. For since he did
not set up a completely new system, to which his disciples could only have
adhered for a period, all indeed observed that something very great had
happened, but yet no one rightly knew what. They certainly saw that all
previous philosophy had been fruitless dreaming, from which the new age
had now awakened, but what they ought to hold to now they did not know. A
great void was felt; a great need had arisen; the universal attention even
of the general public was aroused. Induced by this, but not urged by
inward inclination and sense of power (which find utterance even at
unfavourable times, as in the case of Spinoza), men without any
exceptional talent made various weak, absurd, and indeed sometimes insane,
attempts, to which, however, the now interested public gave its attention,
and with great patience, such as is only found in Germany, long lent its
ear.
The same thing must once have happened in Nature, when a great revolution
had altered the whole surface of the earth, land and sea had changed
places, and the scene was cleared for a new creation. It was then a long
time before Nature could produce a new series of lasting forms all in
harmony with themselves and with each other. Strange and monstrous
organisations appeared which did not harmonise either with themselves or
with each other, and therefore could not endure long, but whose still
existing remains have brought down to us the tokens of that wavering and
tentative procedure of Nature forming itself anew.
Since, now, in philosophy, a crisis precisely similar to this, and an age
of fearful abortions, was, as we all know, introduced by Kant, it may be
concluded that the services he rendered were not complete, but must have
been negative and one-sided, and burdened with great defects. These
defects we now desire to search out.
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First of all we shall present to ourselves clearly and examine the
fundamental thought in which the aim of the whole “Critique of Pure
Reason” lies. Kant placed himself at the standpoint of his predecessors,
the dogmatic philosophers, and accordingly he started with them from the
following assumptions:—(1.) Metaphysics is the science of that which lies
beyond the possibility of all experience. (2.) Such a science can never be
attained by applying principles which must first themselves be drawn from
experience (_Prolegomena_, § 1); but only what we know _before_, and thus
_independently of_ all experience, can reach further than possible
experience. (3.) In our reason certain principles of this kind are
actually to be found: they are comprehended under the name of Knowledge of
pure reason. So far Kant goes with his predecessors, but here he separates
from them. They say: “These principles, or this knowledge of pure reason,
are expressions of the absolute possibility of things, _æternæ veritates_,
sources of ontology; they stand above the system of the world, as fate
stood above the gods of the ancients.” Kant says, they are mere forms of
our intellect, laws, not of the existence of things, but of our idea of
them; they are therefore valid merely for our apprehension of things, and
hence they cannot extend beyond the possibility of experience, which,
according to assumption 1, is what was aimed at; for the _a priori_ nature
of these forms of knowledge, since it can only rest on their subjective
origin, is just what cuts us off for ever from the knowledge of the nature
of things in themselves, and confines us to a world of mere phenomena, so
that we cannot know things as they may be in themselves, even _a
posteriori_, not to speak of _a priori_. Accordingly metaphysics is
impossible, and criticism of pure reason takes its place. As opposed to
the old dogmatism, Kant is here completely victorious; therefore all
dogmatic attempts which have since appeared have been obliged to pursue an
entirely different path from the earlier systems; and I shall now go on to
the justification of my own system, according to the expressed intention
of this criticism. A more careful examination, then, of the reasoning
given above will oblige one to confess that its first fundamental
assumption is a _petitio principii_. It lies in the proposition (stated
with particular clearness in the _Prolegomena_, § 1): “The source of
metaphysics must throughout be non-empirical; its fundamental principles
and conceptions must never be taken from either inner or outer
experience.” Yet absolutely nothing is advanced in proof of this cardinal
assertion except the etymological argument from the word metaphysic. In
truth, however, the matter stands thus: The world and our own existence
presents itself to us necessarily as a riddle. It is now assumed, without
more ado, that the solution of this riddle cannot be arrived at from a
thorough understanding of the world itself, but must be sought in
something entirely different from the world (for that is the meaning of
“beyond the possibility of all experience”); and that everything must be
excluded from that solution of which we can in any way have _immediate_
knowledge (for that is the meaning of possible experience, both inner and
outer); the solution must rather be sought only in that at which we can
arrive merely indirectly, that is, by means of inferences from universal
principles _a priori_. After the principal source of all knowledge has in
this way been excluded, and the direct way to truth has been closed, we
must not wonder that the dogmatic systems failed, and that Kant was able
to show the necessity of this failure; for metaphysics and knowledge _a
priori_ had been assumed beforehand to be identical. But for this it was
first necessary to prove that the material for the solution of the riddle
absolutely cannot be contained in the world itself, but must be sought for
only outside the world in something we can only attain to under the
guidance of those forms of which we are conscious _a priori_. But so long
as this is not proved, we have no grounds for shutting ourselves off, in
the case of the most important and most difficult of all questions, from
the richest of all sources of knowledge, inner and outer experience, in
order to work only with empty forms. I therefore say that the solution of
the riddle of the world must proceed from the understanding of the world
itself; that thus the task of metaphysics is not to pass beyond the
experience in which the world exists, but to understand it thoroughly,
because outer and inner experience is at any rate the principal source of
all knowledge; that therefore the solution of the riddle of the world is
only possible through the proper connection of outer with inner
experience, effected at the right point, and the combination thereby
produced of these two very different sources of knowledge. Yet this
solution is only possible within certain limits which are inseparable from
our finite nature, so that we attain to a right understanding of the world
itself without reaching a final explanation of its existence abolishing
all further problems. Therefore _est quadam prodire tenus_, and my path
lies midway between the omniscience of the earlier dogmatists and the
despair of the Kantian Critique. The important truths, however, which Kant
discovered, and through which the earlier metaphysical systems were
overthrown, have supplied my system with data and materials. Compare what
I have said concerning my method in chap. xvii. of the Supplements. So
much for the fundamental thought of Kant; we shall now consider his
working out of it and its details.
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Kant’s style bears throughout the stamp of a pre-eminent mind, genuine
strong individuality, and quite exceptional power of thought. Its
characteristic quality may perhaps be aptly described as a _brilliant
dryness_, by virtue of which he was able to grasp firmly and select the
conceptions with great certainty, and then to turn them about with the
greatest freedom, to the astonishment of the reader. I find the same
brilliant dryness in the style of Aristotle, though it is much simpler.
Nevertheless Kant’s language is often indistinct, indefinite, inadequate,
and sometimes obscure. Its obscurity, certainly, is partly excusable on
account of the difficulty of the subject and the depth of the thought; but
he who is himself clear to the bottom, and knows with perfect distinctness
what he thinks and wishes, will never write indistinctly, will never set
up wavering and indefinite conceptions, compose most difficult and
complicated expressions from foreign languages to denote them, and use
these expressions constantly afterwards, as Kant took words and formulas
from earlier philosophy, especially Scholasticism, which he combined with
each other to suit his purposes; as, for example, “transcendental
synthetic unity of apperception,” and in general “unity of synthesis”
(_Einheit der Synthesis_), always used where “union” (_Vereinigung_) would
be quite sufficient by itself. Moreover, a man who is himself quite clear
will not be always explaining anew what has once been explained, as Kant
does, for example, in the case of the understanding, the categories,
experience, and other leading conceptions. In general, such a man will not
incessantly repeat himself, and yet in every new exposition of the thought
already expressed a hundred times leave it in just the same obscure
condition, but he will express his meaning once distinctly, thoroughly,
and exhaustively, and then let it alone. “_Quo enim melius rem aliquam
concipimus eo magis determinati sumus ad eam unico modo exprimendam_,”
says Descartes in his fifth letter. But the most injurious result of
Kant’s occasionally obscure language is, that it acted as _exemplar vitiis
imitabile_; indeed, it was misconstrued as a pernicious authorisation. The
public was compelled to see that what is obscure is not always without
significance; consequently, what was without significance took refuge
behind obscure language. Fichte was the first to seize this new privilege
and use it vigorously; Schelling at least equalled him; and a host of
hungry scribblers, without talent and without honesty, soon outbade them
both. But the height of audacity, in serving up pure nonsense, in
stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had
previously only been heard in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel, and
became the instrument of the most barefaced general mystification that has
ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity,
and will remain as a monument of German stupidity. In vain, meanwhile,
Jean Paul wrote his beautiful paragraph, “Higher criticism of
philosophical madness in the professorial chair, and poetical madness in
the theatre” (_Æsthetische Nachschule_); for in vain Goethe had already
said—
“They prate and teach, and no one interferes;
All from the fellowship of fools are shrinking;
Man usually believes, if only words he hears,
That also with them goes material for thinking.”(3)
But let us return to Kant. We are compelled to admit that he entirely
lacks grand, classical simplicity, _naïveté_, _ingénuité_, _candeur_. His
philosophy has no analogy with Grecian architecture, which presents large
simple proportions revealing themselves at once to the glance; on the
contrary, it reminds us strongly of the Gothic style of building. For a
purely individual characteristic of Kant’s mind is a remarkable love of
_symmetry_, which delights in a varied multiplicity, so that it may reduce
it to order, and repeat this order in subordinate orders, and so on
indefinitely, just as happens in Gothic churches. Indeed, he sometimes
carries this to the extent of trifling, and from love of this tendency he
goes so far as to do open violence to truth, and to deal with it as Nature
was dealt with by the old-fashioned gardeners, whose work we see in
symmetrical alleys, squares, and triangles, trees shaped like pyramids and
spheres, and hedges winding in regular curves. I will support this with
facts.
After he has treated space and time isolated from everything else, and has
then dismissed this whole world of perception which fills space and time,
and in which we live and are, with the meaningless words “the empirical
content of perception is given us,” he immediately arrives with one spring
at _the logical basis of his whole philosophy, the table of judgments_.
From this table he deduces an exact dozen of categories, symmetrically
arranged under four heads, which afterwards become the fearful procrustean
bed into which he violently forces all things in the world and all that
goes on in man, shrinking from no violence and disdaining no sophistry if
only he is able to repeat everywhere the symmetry of that table. The first
that is symmetrically deduced from it is the pure physiological table of
the general principles of natural science—the axioms of intuition,
anticipations of perception, analogies of experience, and postulates of
empirical thought in general. Of these fundamental principles, the first
two are simple; but each of the last two sends out symmetrically three
shoots. The mere categories were what he calls _conceptions_; but these
principles of natural science are _judgments_. In accordance with his
highest guide to all wisdom, symmetry, the series must now prove itself
fruitful in the syllogisms, and this, indeed, is done symmetrically and
regularly. For, as by the application of the categories to sensibility,
experience with all its _a priori_ principles arose for the understanding,
so by the application of _syllogisms_ to the categories, a task performed
by the _reason_ in accordance with its pretended principle of seeking the
unconditioned, the _Ideas_ of the reason arise. Now this takes place in
the following manner: The three categories of relation supply to
syllogistic reasoning the three only possible kinds of major premisses,
and syllogistic reasoning accordingly falls into three kinds, each of
which is to be regarded as an egg out of which the reason hatches an Idea;
out of the categorical syllogism the Idea of the _soul_, out of the
hypothetical the Idea of the _world_, and out of the disjunctive the Idea
of _God_. In the second of these, the Idea of the world, the symmetry of
the table of the categories now repeats itself again, for its four heads
produce four theses, each of which has its antithesis as a symmetrical
pendant.
We pay the tribute of our admiration to the really exceedingly acute
combination which produced this elegant structure, but we shall none the
less proceed to a thorough examination of its foundation and its parts.
But the following remarks must come first.
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It is astonishing how Kant, without further reflection, pursues his way,
following his symmetry, ordering everything in accordance with it, without
ever taking one of the subjects so handled into consideration on its own
account. I will explain myself more fully. After he has considered
intuitive knowledge in a mathematical reference only, he neglects
altogether the rest of knowledge of perception in which the world lies
before us, and confines himself entirely to abstract thinking, although
this receives the whole of its significance and value from the world of
perception alone, which is infinitely more significant, generally present,
and rich in content than the abstract part of our knowledge. Indeed, and
this is an important point, he has nowhere clearly distinguished
perception from abstract knowledge, and just on this account, as we shall
afterwards see, he becomes involved in irresolvable contradictions with
himself. After he has disposed of the whole sensible world with the
meaningless “it is given,” he makes, as we have said, the logical table of
judgments the foundation-stone of his building. But here again he does not
reflect for a moment upon that which really lies before him. These forms
of judgment are indeed _words_ and _combinations of words_; yet it ought
first to have been asked what these directly denote: it would have been
found that they denote _conceptions_. The next question would then have
been as to the nature of _conceptions_. It would have appeared from the
answer what relation these have to the ideas of perception in which the
world exists; for perception and reflection would have been distinguished.
It would now have become necessary to examine, not merely how pure and
merely formal intuition or perception _a priori_, but also how its
content, the empirical perception, comes into consciousness. But then it
would have become apparent what part the _understanding_ has in this, and
thus also in general what the _understanding_ is, and, on the other hand,
what the _reason_ properly is, the critique of which is being written. It
is most remarkable that he does not once properly and adequately define
the latter, but merely gives incidentally, and as the context in each case
demands, incomplete and inaccurate explanations of it, in direct
contradiction to the rule of Descartes given above.(4) For example, at p.
11; V. 24, of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” it is the faculty of
principles _a priori_; but at p. 299; V. 356, it is said that reason is
the faculty of _principles_, and it is opposed to the understanding, which
is the faculty of _rules_! One would now think that there must be a very
wide difference between principles and rules, since it entitles us to
assume a special faculty of knowledge for each of them. But this great
distinction is made to lie merely in this, that what is known _a priori_
through pure perception or through the forms of the understanding is a
rule, and only what results from mere conceptions is a principle. We shall
return to this arbitrary and inadmissible distinction later, when we come
to the Dialectic. On p. 330; V. 386, reason is the faculty of inference;
mere judging (p. 69; V. 94) he often explains as the work of the
understanding. Now, this really amounts to saying: Judging is the work of
the understanding so long as the ground of the judgment is empirical,
transcendental, or metalogical (Essay on the Principle of Sufficient
Reason, § 31, 32, 33); but if it is logical, as is the case with the
syllogism, then we are here concerned with a quite special and much more
important faculty of knowledge—the reason. Nay, what is more, on p. 303;
V. 360, it is explained that what follows directly from a proposition is
still a matter of the understanding, and that only those conclusions which
are arrived at by the use of a mediating conception are the work of the
reason, and the example given is this: From the proposition, “All men are
mortal,” the inference, “Some mortals are men,” may be drawn by the mere
understanding. On the other hand, to draw the conclusion, “All the learned
are mortal,” demands an entirely different and far more important
faculty—the reason. How was it possible for a great thinker to write the
like of this! On p. 553; V. 581, reason is all at once the constant
condition of all voluntary action. On p. 614; V. 642, it consists in the
fact that we can give an account of our assertions; on pp. 643, 644; V.
671, 672, in the circumstance that it brings unity into the conceptions of
the understanding by means of Ideas, as the understanding brings unity
into the multiplicity of objects by means of conceptions. On p. 646; V.
674, it is nothing else than the faculty which deduces the particular from
the general.
The understanding also is constantly being explained anew. In seven
passages of the “Critique of Pure Reason” it is explained in the following
terms. On p. 51; V. 75, it is the faculty which of itself produces ideas
of perception. On p. 69; V. 94, it is the faculty of judging, _i.e._, of
thinking, _i.e._, of knowing through conceptions. On p. 137 of the fifth
edition, it is the faculty of knowledge generally. On p. 132; V. 171, it
is the faculty of rules. On p. 158; V. 197, however, it is said: “It is
not only the faculty of rules, but the source of principles (_Grundsätze_)
according to which everything comes under rules;” and yet above it was
opposed to the reason because the latter alone was the faculty of
principles (_Principien_). On p. 160; V. 199, the understanding is the
faculty of conceptions; but on p. 302; V. 359, it is the faculty of the
unity of phenomena by means of rules.
Against such really confused and groundless language on the subject (even
though it comes from Kant) I shall have no need to defend the explanation
which I have given of these two faculties of knowledge—an explanation
which is fixed, clearly defined, definite, simple, and in full agreement
with the language of all nations and all ages. I have only quoted this
language as a proof of my charge that Kant follows his symmetrical,
logical system without sufficiently reflecting upon the subject he is thus
handling.
Now, as I have said above, if Kant had seriously examined how far two such
different faculties of knowledge, one of which is the specific difference
of man, may be known, and what, in accordance with the language of all
nations and all philosophers, reason and understanding are, he would
never, without further authority than the _intellectus theoreticus_ and
_practicus_ of the Schoolmen, which is used in an entirely different
sense, have divided the reason into theoretical and practical, and made
the latter the source of virtuous conduct. In the same way, before Kant
separated so carefully conceptions of the understanding (by which he
sometimes means his categories, sometimes all general conceptions) and
conceptions of the reason (his so-called Ideas), and made them both the
material of his philosophy, which for the most part deals only with the
validity, application, and origin of all these conceptions;—first, I say,
he ought to have really examined what in general a _conception_ is. But
this very necessary investigation has unfortunately been also neglected,
and has contributed much to the irremediable confusion of intuitive and
abstract knowledge which I shall soon refer to. The same want of adequate
reflection with which he passed over the questions: what is perception?
what is reflection? what is conception? what is reason? what is
understanding? allowed him to pass over the following investigations,
which were just as inevitably necessary: what is it that I call the
_object_, which I distinguish from the _idea_? what is existence? what is
object? what is subject? what is truth, illusion, error? But he follows
his logical schema and his symmetry without reflecting or looking about
him. The table of judgments ought to, and must, be the key to all wisdom.
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I have given it above as the chief merit of Kant that he distinguished the
phenomenon from the thing in itself, explained the whole visible world as
phenomenon, and therefore denied all validity to its laws beyond the
phenomenon. It is certainly remarkable that he did not deduce this merely
relative existence of the phenomenon from the simple undeniable truth
which lay so near him, “_No object without a subject_,” in order thus at
the very root to show that the object, because it always exists merely in
relation to a subject, is dependent upon it, conditioned by it, and
therefore conditioned as mere phenomenon, which does not exist in itself
nor unconditioned. Berkeley, to whose merits Kant did not do justice, had
already made this important principle the foundation-stone of his
philosophy, and thereby established an immortal reputation. Yet he himself
did not draw the proper conclusions from this principle, and so he was
both misunderstood and insufficiently attended to. In my first edition I
explained Kant’s avoidance of this Berkeleian principle as arising from an
evident shrinking from decided idealism; while, on the other hand, I found
idealism distinctly expressed in many passages of the “Critique of Pure
Reason,” and accordingly I charged Kant with contradicting himself. And
this charge was well founded, if, as was then my case, one only knew the
“Critique of Pure Reason” in the second or any of the five subsequent
editions printed from it. But when later I read Kant’s great work in the
first edition, which is already so rare, I saw, to my great pleasure, all
these contradictions disappear, and found that although Kant does not use
the formula, “No object without a subject,” he yet explains, with just as
much decision as Berkeley and I do, the outer world lying before us in
space and time as the mere idea of the subject that knows it. Therefore,
for example, he says there without reserve (p. 383): “If I take away the
thinking subject, the whole material world must disappear, for it is
nothing but a phenomenon in the sensibility of our subject, and a class of
its ideas.” But the whole passage from p. 348-392, in which Kant expounded
his pronounced idealism with peculiar beauty and clearness, was suppressed
by him in the second edition, and instead of it a number of remarks
controverting it were introduced. In this way then the text of the
“Critique of Pure Reason,” as it has circulated from the year 1787 to the
year 1838, was disfigured and spoilt, and it became a self-contradictory
book, the sense of which could not therefore be thoroughly clear and
comprehensible to any one. The particulars about this, and also my
conjectures as to the reasons and the weaknesses which may have influenced
Kant so to disfigure his immortal work, I have given in a letter to
Professor Rosenkranz, and he has quoted the principal passage of it in his
preface to the second volume of the edition of Kant’s collected works
edited by him, to which I therefore refer. In consequence of my
representations, Professor Rosenkranz was induced in the year 1838 to
restore the “Critique of Pure Reason” to its original form, for in the
second volume referred to he had it printed according to the _first_
edition of 1781, by which he has rendered an inestimable service to
philosophy; indeed, he has perhaps saved from destruction the most
important work of German literature; and this should always be remembered
to his credit. But let no one imagine that he knows the “Critique of Pure
Reason” and has a distinct conception of Kant’s teaching if he has only
read the second or one of the later editions. That is altogether
impossible, for he has only read a mutilated, spoilt, and to a certain
extent ungenuine text. It is my duty to say this here decidedly and for
every one’s warning.
Yet the way in which Kant introduces the _thing in itself_ stands in
undeniable contradiction with the distinctly idealistic point of view so
clearly expressed in the first edition of the “Critique of Pure Reason,”
and without doubt this is the chief reason why, in the second edition, he
suppressed the principal idealistic passage we have referred to, and
directly declared himself opposed to the Berkeleian idealism, though by
doing so he only introduced inconsistencies into his work, without being
able to remedy its principal defect. This defect, as is known, is the
introduction of the _thing in itself_ in the way chosen by him, the
inadmissibleness of which was exposed at length by G. E. Schulze in
“_Ænesidemus_,” and was soon recognised as the untenable point of his
system. The matter may be made clear in a very few words. Kant based the
assumption of the thing in itself, though concealed under various modes of
expression, upon an inference from the law of causality—an inference that
the empirical perception, or more accurately the _sensation_, in our
organs of sense, from which it proceeds, must have an external cause. But
according to his own account, which is correct, the law of causality is
known to us _a priori_, consequently is a function of our intellect, and
is thus of _subjective_ origin; further, sensation itself, to which we
here apply the law of causality, is undeniably _subjective_; and finally,
even space, in which, by means of this application, we place the cause of
this sensation as object, is a form of our intellect given _a priori_, and
is consequently _subjective_. Therefore the whole empirical perception
remains always upon a _subjective_ foundation, as a mere process in us,
and nothing entirely different from it and independent of it can be
brought in as a _thing in itself_, or shown to be a necessary assumption.
The empirical perception actually is and remains merely our idea: it is
the world as idea. An inner nature of this we can only arrive at on the
entirely different path followed by me, by means of calling in the aid of
self-consciousness, which proclaims the will as the inner nature of our
own phenomenon; but then the thing in itself will be one which is _toto
genere_ different from the idea and its elements, as I have explained.
The great defect of the Kantian system in this point, which, as has been
said, was soon pointed out, is an illustration of the truth of the
beautiful Indian proverb: “No lotus without a stem.” The erroneous
deduction of the thing in itself is here the stem; yet only the method of
the deduction, not the recognition of a thing in itself belonging to the
given phenomenon. But this last was Fichte’s misunderstanding of it, which
could only happen because he was not concerned with truth, but with making
a sensation for the furtherance of his individual ends. Accordingly he was
bold and thoughtless enough to deny the thing in itself altogether, and to
set up a system in which, not, as with Kant, the mere form of the idea,
but also the matter, its whole content, was professedly deduced _a priori_
from the subject. In doing this, he counted with perfect correctness upon
the want of judgment and the stupidity of the public, which accepted
miserable sophisms, mere hocus-pocus and senseless babble, for proofs; so
that he succeeded in turning its attention from Kant to himself, and gave
the direction to German philosophy in which it was afterwards carried
further by Schelling, and ultimately reached its goal in the mad sophistry
of Hegel.
I now return to the great mistake of Kant, already touched on above, that
he has not properly separated perceptible and abstract knowledge, whereby
an inextricable confusion has arisen which we have now to consider more
closely. If he had sharply separated ideas of perception from conceptions
merely thought _in abstracto_, he would have held these two apart, and in
every case would have known with which of the two he had to do. This,
however, was unfortunately not the case, although this accusation has not
yet been openly made, and may thus perhaps be unexpected. His “object of
experience,” of which he is constantly speaking, the proper object of the
categories, is not the idea of perception; neither is it the abstract
conception, but it is different from both, and yet both at once, and is a
perfect chimera. For, incredible as it may seem, he lacked either the
wisdom or the honesty to come to an understanding with himself about this,
and to explain distinctly to himself and others whether his “object of
experience, _i.e._, the knowledge produced by the application of the
categories,” is the idea of perception in space and time (my first class
of ideas), or merely the abstract conception. Strange as it is, there
always runs in his mind something between the two, and hence arises the
unfortunate confusion which I must now bring to light. For this end I must
go through the whole theory of elements in a general way.
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The “Transcendental Æsthetic” is a work of such extraordinary merit that
it alone would have been sufficient to immortalise the name of Kant. Its
proofs carry such perfect conviction, that I number its propositions among
incontestable truths, and without doubt they are also among those that are
richest in results, and are, therefore, to be regarded as the rarest thing
in the world, a real and great discovery in metaphysics. The fact,
strictly proved by him, that a part of our knowledge is known to us _a
priori_, admits of no other explanation than that this constitutes the
forms of our intellect; indeed, this is less an explanation than merely
the distinct expression of the fact itself. For _a priori_ means nothing
else than “not gained on the path of experience, thus not come into us
from without.” But what is present in the intellect, and has not come from
without, is just what belongs originally to the intellect itself, its own
nature. Now if what is thus present in the intellect itself consists of
the general mode or manner in which it must present all its objects to
itself, this is just saying that what is thus present is the intellect’s
forms of knowing, _i.e._, the mode, fixed once for all, in which it
fulfils this its function. Accordingly, “knowledge _a priori_” and “the
intellect’s own forms” are at bottom only two expressions for the same
things thus to a certain extent synonyms.
Therefore from the doctrine of the Transcendental Æsthetic I knew of
nothing to take away, only of something to add. Kant did not carry out his
thought to the end, especially in this respect, that he did not reject
Euclid’s whole method of demonstration, even after having said on p. 87;
V. 120, that all geometrical knowledge has direct evidence from
perception. It is most remarkable that one of Kant’s opponents, and indeed
the acutest of them, G. E. Schulze (_Kritik der theoretischen
Philosophie_, ii. 241), draws the conclusion that from his doctrine an
entirely different treatment of geometry from that which is actually in
use would arise; and thus he thought to bring an apagogical argument
against Kant, but, in fact, without knowing it, he only began the war
against the method of Euclid. Let me refer to § 15 of the first book of
this work.
After the full exposition of the universal _forms_ of perception given in
the Transcendental Æsthetic, one necessarily expects to receive some
explanation as to its _content_, as to the way in which the _empirical_
perception comes into our consciousness, how the knowledge of this whole
world, which is for us so real and so important, arises in us. But the
whole teaching of Kant contains really nothing more about this than the
oft-repeated meaningless expression: “The empirical element in perception
is _given_ from without.” Consequently here also from the _pure forms of
perception_ Kant arrives with one spring at _thinking_ at the
_Transcendental Logic_. Just at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic
(Critique of Pure Reason, p. 50; V. 74), where Kant cannot avoid touching
upon the content of the empirical perception, he takes the first false
step; he is guilty of the πρωτον ψευδος. “Our knowledge,” he says, “has
two sources, receptivity of impressions and spontaneity of conceptions:
the first is the capacity for receiving ideas, the second that of knowing
an object through these ideas: through the first an _object_ is given us,
through the second it is thought.” This is false; for according to it the
_impression_, for which alone we have mere receptivity, which thus comes
from without and alone is properly “given,” would be already an _idea_,
and indeed an _object_. But it is nothing more than a mere _sensation_ in
the organ of sense, and only by the application of the _understanding_
(_i.e._, of the law of causality) and the forms of perception, space and
time, does our _intellect_ change this mere _sensation_ into an _idea_,
which now exists as an object in space and time, and cannot be
distinguished from the latter (the object) except in so far as we ask
after the thing in itself, but apart from this is identical with it. I
have explained this point fully in the essay on the principle of
sufficient reason, § 21. With this, however, the work of the understanding
and of the faculty of perception is completed, and no conceptions and no
thinking are required in addition; therefore the brute also has these
_ideas_. If conceptions are added, if thinking is added, to which
spontaneity may certainly be attributed, then knowledge of _perception_ is
entirely abandoned, and a completely different class of ideas comes into
consciousness, non-perceptible abstract conceptions. This is the activity
of the _reason_, which yet obtains the whole content of its thinking only
from the previous perception, and the comparison of it with other
perceptions and conceptions. But thus Kant brings thinking into the
perception, and lays the foundation for the inextricable confusion of
intuitive and abstract knowledge which I am now engaged in condemning. He
allows the perception, taken by itself, to be without understanding,
purely sensuous, and thus quite passive, and only through thinking
(category of the understanding) does he allow an _object_ to be
apprehended: thus he brings _thought into the perception_. But then,
again, the object of thinking is an individual real object; and in this
way thinking loses its essential character of universality and
abstraction, and instead of general conceptions receives individual things
as its object: thus again he _brings perception into thinking_. From this
springs the inextricable confusion referred to, and the consequences of
this first false step extend over his whole theory of knowledge. Through
the whole of his theory the utter confusion of the idea of perception with
the abstract idea tends towards a something between the two which he
expounds as the object of knowledge through the understanding and its
categories, and calls this knowledge _experience_. It is hard to believe
that Kant really figured to himself something fully determined and really
distinct in this object of the understanding; I shall now prove this
through the tremendous contradiction which runs through the whole
Transcendental Logic, and is the real source of the obscurity in which it
is involved.
In the “Critique of Pure Reason,” p. 67-69; V. 92-94; p. 89, 90; V. 122,
123; further, V. 135, 139, 153, he repeats and insists: the understanding
is no faculty of perception, its knowledge is not intuitive but
discursive; the understanding is the faculty of judging (p. 69; V. 94),
and a judgment is indirect knowledge, an idea of an idea (p. 68; V. 93);
the understanding is the faculty of thinking, and thinking is knowledge
through conceptions (p. 69; V. 94); the categories of the understanding
are by no means the conditions under which objects are given in perception
(p. 89; V. 122), and perception in no way requires the functions of
thinking (p. 91; V. 123); our understanding can only think, not perceive
(V. pp. 135, 139). Further, in the “Prolegomena,” § 20, he says that
perception, sensation, _perceptio_, belongs merely to the senses; judgment
to the understanding alone; and in § 22, that the work of the senses is to
perceive, that of the understanding to think, _i.e._, to judge. Finally,
in the “Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth edition, p. 247;
Rosenkranz’s edition, p. 281, he says that the understanding is
discursive; its ideas are thoughts, not perceptions. All this is in Kant’s
own words.
From this it follows that this perceptible world would exist for us even
if we had no understanding at all; that it comes into our head in a quite
inexplicable manner, which he constantly indicates by his strange
expression the perception is _given_, without ever explaining this
indefinite and metaphorical expression further.
Now all that has been quoted is contradicted in the most glaring manner by
the whole of the rest of his doctrine of the understanding, of its
categories, and of the possibility of experience as he explains it in the
Transcendental Logic. Thus (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 79; V. 105), the
understanding through its categories brings unity into the manifold of
_perception_, and the pure conceptions of the understanding refer _a
priori_ to objects of _perception_. P. 94; V. 126, the “categories are the
condition of experience, whether of perception, which is found in it, or
of thought.” V. p. 127, the understanding is the originator of experience.
V. p. 128, the categories determine the _perception_ of objects. V. p.
130, all that we present to ourselves as connected in the object (which is
yet certainly something perceptible and not an abstraction), has been so
connected by an act of the understanding. V. p. 135, the understanding is
explained anew as the faculty of combining _a priori_, and of bringing the
multiplicity of given ideas under the unity of apperception; but according
to all ordinary use of words, apperception is not the thinking of a
conception, but is _perception_. V. p. 136, we find a first principle of
the possibility of all perception in connection with the understanding. V.
p. 143, it stands as the heading, that all sense perception is conditioned
by the categories. At the same place the _logical function of the
judgment_ also brings the manifold of given perceptions under an
apperception in general, and the manifold of a given perception stands
necessarily under the categories. V. p. 144, unity comes into perception,
by means of the categories, through the understanding. V. p. 145, the
thinking of the understanding is very strangely explained as synthetically
combining, connecting, and arranging the manifold of perception. V. p.
161, experience is only possible through the categories, and consists in
the connection of _sensations_, which, however, are just perceptions. V.
p. 159, the categories are _a priori_ knowledge of the objects of
perception in general. Further, here and at V. p. 163 and 165, a chief
doctrine of Kant’s is given, this: _that the understanding first makes
Nature possible_, because it prescribes laws for it _a priori_, and Nature
adapts itself to the system of the understanding, and so on. Nature,
however, is certainly perceptible and not an abstraction; therefore, the
understanding must be a faculty of perception. V. p. 168, it is said, the
conceptions of the understanding are the principles of the possibility of
experience, and the latter is the condition of phenomena in space and time
in general; phenomena which, however, certainly exist in perception.
Finally, p. 189-211; V. 232-265, the long proof is given (the
incorrectness of which is shown in detail in my essay on the principle of
sufficient reason, § 23) that the objective succession and also the
coexistence of objects of experience are not sensuously apprehended, but
are only brought into Nature by the understanding, and that Nature itself
first becomes possible in this way. Yet it is certain that Nature, the
course of events, and the coexistence of states, is purely perceptible,
and no mere abstract thought.
I challenge every one who shares my respect towards Kant to reconcile
these contradictions and to show that in his doctrine of the object of
experience and the way it is determined by the activity of the
understanding and its twelve functions, Kant thought something quite
distinct and definite. I am convinced that the contradiction I have
pointed out, which extends through the whole Transcendental Logic, is the
real reason of the great obscurity of its language. Kant himself, in fact,
was dimly conscious of the contradiction, inwardly combated it, but yet
either would not or could not bring it to distinct consciousness, and
therefore veiled it from himself and others, and avoided it by all kinds
of subterfuges. This is perhaps also the reason why he made out of the
faculties of knowledge such a strange complicated machine, with so many
wheels, as the twelve categories, the transcendental synthesis of
imagination, of the inner sense, of the transcendental unity of
apperception, also the schematism of the pure conceptions of the
understanding, &c., &c. And notwithstanding this great apparatus, not even
an attempt is made to explain the perception of the external world, which
is after all the principal fact in our knowledge; but this pressing claim
is very meanly rejected, always through the same meaningless metaphorical
expression: “The empirical perception is given us.” On p. 145 of the fifth
edition, we learn further that the perception is given through the object;
therefore the object must be something different from the perception.
If, now, we endeavour to investigate Kant’s inmost meaning, not clearly
expressed by himself, we find that in reality such an object, different
from the perception, but which is by no means a conception, is for him the
proper object for the understanding; indeed that it must be by means of
the strange assumption of such an object, which cannot be presented in
perception, that the perception first becomes experience. I believe that
an old deeply-rooted prejudice in Kant, dead to all investigation, is the
ultimate reason of the assumption of such an _absolute object_, which is
an object in itself, _i.e._, without a subject. It is certainly not the
_perceived object_, but through the conception it is added to the
perception by thought, as something corresponding to it; and now the
perception is experience, and has value and truth, which it thus only
receives through the relation to a conception (in diametrical opposition
to my exposition, according to which the conception only receives value
and truth from the perception). It is then the proper function of the
categories to add on in thought to the perception this directly
non-perceptible object. “The object is given only through perception, and
is afterwards thought in accordance with the category” (Critique of Pure
Reason, first edition, p. 399). This is made specially clear by a passage
on p. 125 of the fifth edition: “Now the question arises whether
conceptions _a priori_ do not also come first as conditions under which
alone a thing can be, not perceived certainly, but yet _thought_ as an
_object_ in general,” which he answers in the affirmative. Here the source
of the error and the confusion in which it is involved shows itself
distinctly. For the _object_ as such exists always only for _perception_
and in it; it may now be completed through the senses, or, when it is
absent, through the imagination. What is thought, on the contrary, is
always an universal non-perceptible _conception_, which certainly can be
the conception of an object in general; but only indirectly by means of
conceptions does thought relate itself to _objects_, which always are and
remain _perceptible_. For our thinking is not able to impart reality to
perceptions; this they have, so far as they are capable of it (empirical
reality) of themselves; but it serves to bring together the common element
and the results of perceptions, in order to preserve them, and to be able
to use them more easily. But Kant ascribes the objects themselves to
thought, in order to make experience and the objective world dependent
upon _understanding_, yet without allowing understanding to be a faculty
of _perception_. In this relation he certainly distinguishes perception
from thought, but he makes particular things sometimes the object of
perception and sometimes the object of thought. In reality, however, they
are only the object of the former; our empirical perception is at once
_objective_, just because it proceeds from the causal nexus. Things, not
ideas different from them, are directly its object. Particular things as
such are perceived in the understanding and through the senses; the
one-sided impression upon the latter is at once completed by the
imagination. But, on the contrary, as soon as we pass over to thought, we
leave the particular things, and have to do with general conceptions,
which cannot be presented in perception, although we afterwards apply the
results of our thought to particular things. If we hold firmly to this,
the inadmissibleness of the assumption becomes evident that the perception
of things only obtains reality and becomes experience through the thought
of these very things applying its twelve categories. Rather in perception
itself the empirical reality, and consequently experience, is already
given; but the perception itself can only come into existence by the
application to sensation of the knowledge of the causal nexus, which is
the one function of the understanding. Perception is accordingly in
reality intellectual, which is just what Kant denies.
Besides in the passages quoted, the assumption of Kant here criticised
will be found expressed with admirable clearness in the “Critique of
Judgment,” § 36, just at the beginning; also in the “Metaphysical
Principles of Natural Science,” in the note to the first explanation of
“Phenomenology.” But with a _naïveté_ which Kant ventured upon least of
all with reference to this doubtful point, it is to be found most
distinctly laid down in the book of a Kantian, Kiesewetter’s “_Grundriss
einer algemeinen Logik_,” third edition, part i., p. 434 of the
exposition, and part ii., § 52 and 53 of the exposition; similarly in
Tieftrunk’s “_Denklehre in rein Deutschem Gewande_” (1825). It there
appears so clearly how those disciples who do not themselves think become
a magnifying mirror of the errors of every thinker. Once having determined
his doctrine of the categories, Kant was always cautious when expounding
it, but his disciples on the contrary were quite bold, and thus exposed
its falseness.
According to what has been said, the object of the categories is for Kant,
not indeed the thing in itself, but yet most closely akin to it. It is the
_object in itself_; it is an object that requires no subject; it is a
particular thing, and yet not in space and time, because not perceptible;
it is an object of thought, and yet not an abstract conception.
Accordingly Kant really makes a triple division: (1.) the idea; (2.) the
object of the idea; (3.) the thing in itself. The first belongs to the
sensibility, which in its case, as in that of sensation, includes the pure
forms of perception, space and time. The second belongs to the
understanding, which thinks it through its twelve categories. The third
lies beyond the possibility of all knowledge. (In support of this, _cf._
Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, p. 108 and 109.) The distinction
of the idea from the object of the idea is however unfounded; this had
already been proved by Berkeley, and it appears from my whole exposition
in the first book, especially chap. i. of the supplements; nay, even from
Kant’s own completely idealistic point of view in the first edition. But
if we should not wish to count the object of the idea as belonging to the
idea and identify it with the idea, it would be necessary to attribute it
to the thing in itself: this ultimately depends on the sense which is
attached to the word object. This, however, always remains certain, that,
when we think clearly, nothing more can be found than idea and thing in
itself. The illicit introduction of that hybrid, the object of the idea,
is the source of Kant’s errors; yet when it is taken away, the doctrine of
the categories as conceptions _a priori_ also falls to the ground; for
they bring nothing to the perception, and are not supposed to hold good of
the thing in itself, but by means of them we only think those “objects of
the ideas,” and thereby change ideas into experience. For every empirical
perception is already experience; but every perception which proceeds from
sensation is empirical: this sensation is related by the understanding, by
means of its sole function (knowledge _a priori_ of the law of causality),
to its cause, which just on this account presents itself in space and time
(forms of pure perception) as object of experience, material object,
enduring in space through all time, yet as such always remains idea, as do
space and time themselves. If we desire to go beyond this idea, then we
arrive at the question as to the thing in itself, the answer to which is
the theme of my whole work, as of all metaphysics in general. Kant’s error
here explained is connected with his mistake, which we condemned before,
that he gives no theory of the origin of empirical perception, but,
without saying more, treats it as _given_, identifying it with the mere
sensation, to which he only adds the forms of intuition or perception,
space and time, comprehending both under the name sensibility. But from
these materials no objective idea arises: this absolutely demands the
relation of the idea to its cause, thus the application of the law of
causality, and thus understanding; for without this the sensation still
remains always subjective, and does not take the form of an object in
space, even if space is given with it. But according to Kant, the
understanding must not be assigned to perception; it is supposed merely to
_think_, so as to remain within the transcendental logic. With this again
is connected another mistake of Kant’s: that he left it to me to adduce
the only valid proof of the _a priori_ nature of the law of causality
which he rightly recognised, the proof from the possibility of objective
empirical perception itself, and instead of it gives a palpably false one,
as I have already shown in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason,
§ 23. From the above it is clear that Kant’s “object of the idea” (2) is
made up of what he has stolen partly from the idea (1), and partly from
the thing in itself (3). If, in reality, experience were only brought
about by the understanding applying its twelve different functions in
order to _think_ through as many conceptions _a priori_, the objects which
were previously merely perceived, then every real thing would necessarily
as such have a number of determinations, which, as given _a priori_,
absolutely could not be thought away, just like space and time, but would
belong quite essentially to the existence of the thing, and yet could not
be deduced from the properties of space and time. But only one such
determination is to be found—that of causality. Upon this rests
materiality, for the essence of matter consists in action, and it is
through and through causality (_cf._ Bk. II. ch. iv.) But it is
materiality alone that distinguishes the real thing from the picture of
the imagination, which is then only idea. For matter, as permanent, gives
to the thing permanence through all time, in respect of its matter, while
the forms change in conformity with causality. Everything else in the
thing consists either of determinations of space or of time, or of its
empirical properties, which are all referable to its activity, and are
thus fuller determinations of causality. But causality enters already as a
condition into the empirical perception, and this is accordingly a thing
of the understanding, which makes even perception possible, and yet apart
from the law of causality contributes nothing to experience and its
possibility. What fills the old ontologies is, with the exception of what
is given here, nothing more than relations of things to each other, or to
our reflection, and a farrago of nonsense.
The language in which the doctrine of the categories is expressed affords
an evidence of its baselessness. What a difference in this respect between
the Transcendental Æsthetic and the Transcendental Analytic! In the
former, what clearness, definiteness, certainty, firm conviction which is
freely expressed and infallibly communicates itself! All is full of light,
no dark lurking-places are left: Kant knows what he wants and knows that
he is right. In the latter, on the other hand, all is obscure, confused,
indefinite, wavering, uncertain, the language anxious, full of excuses and
appeals to what is coming, or indeed of suppression. Moreover, the whole
second and third sections of the Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the
Understanding are completely changed in the second edition, because they
did not satisfy Kant himself, and they have become quite different from
the first edition, though not clearer. We actually see Kant in conflict
with the truth in order to carry out his hypothesis which he has once
fixed upon. In the Transcendental Æsthetic all his propositions are really
proved from undeniable facts of consciousness, in the Transcendental
Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it closely, mere
assertions that thus it is and must be. Here, then, as everywhere, the
language bears the stamp of the thought from which it has proceeded, for
style is the physiognomy of the mind. We have still to remark, that
whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose of fuller
explanation, he almost always takes for this end the category of
causality, and then what he has said turns out correct; for the law of
causality is indeed the real form of the understanding, but it is also its
only form, and the remaining eleven categories are merely blind windows.
The deduction of the categories is simpler and less involved in the first
edition than in the second. He labours to explain how, according to the
perception given by sensibility, the understanding produces experience by
means of thinking the categories. In doing so, the words recognition,
reproduction, association, apprehension, transcendental unity of
apperception, are repeated to weariness, and yet no distinctness is
attained. It is well worth noticing, however, that in this explanation he
does not once touch upon what must nevertheless first occur to every
one—the relation of the sensation to its external cause. If he did not
intend this relation to hold good, he ought to have expressly denied it;
but neither does he do this. Thus in this way he evades the point, and all
the Kantians have in like manner evaded it. The secret motive of this is,
that he reserves the causal nexus, under the name “ground of the
phenomenon,” for his false deduction of the thing in itself; and also that
perception would become intellectual through the relation to the cause,
which he dare not admit. Besides this, he seems to have been afraid that
if the causal nexus were allowed to hold good between sensation and
object, the latter would at once become the thing in itself, and introduce
the empiricism of Locke. But this difficulty is removed by reflection,
which shows us that the law of causality is of subjective origin, as well
as the sensation itself; and besides this, our own body also, inasmuch as
it appears in space, already belongs to ideas. But Kant was hindered from
confessing this by his fear of the Berkeleian idealism.
“The combination of the manifold of perception” is repeatedly given as the
essential operation of the understanding, by means of its twelve
categories. Yet this is never adequately explained, nor is it shown what
this manifold of perception is before it is combined by the understanding.
But time and space, the latter in all its three dimensions, are
_continua_, _i.e._, all their parts are originally not separate but
combined. Thus, then, everything that exhibits itself in them (is given)
appears originally as a _continuum_, _i.e._, its parts appear already
combined and require no adventitious combination of a manifold. If,
however, some one should seek to interpret that combining of the manifold
of perception by saying that I refer the different sense-impressions of
one object to this one only—thus, for example, perceiving a bell, I
recognise that what affects my eye as yellow, my hand as smooth and hard,
my ear as sounding, is yet only one and the same body,—then I reply that
this is rather a consequence of the knowledge _a priori_ of the causal
nexus (this actual and only function of the understanding), by virtue of
which all those different effects upon my different organs of sense yet
lead me only to one common cause of them, the nature of the body standing
before me, so that my understanding, in spite of the difference and
multiplicity of the effects, still apprehends the unity of the cause as a
single object, which just on that account exhibits itself in perception.
In the beautiful recapitulation of his doctrine which Kant gives at p.
719-726 or V. 747-754 of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” he explains the
categories, perhaps more distinctly than anywhere else, as “the mere rule
of the synthesis of that which empirical apprehension has given _a
posteriori_.” It seems as if here he had something in his mind, such as
that, in the construction of the triangle, the angles give the rule for
the composition of the lines; at least by this image one can best explain
to oneself what he says of the function of the categories. The preface to
the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” contains a long
note which likewise gives an explanation of the categories, and says that
they “differ in no respect from the formal acts of the understanding in
judging,” except that in the latter subject and predicate can always
change places; then the judgment in general is defined in the same passage
as “an act through which given ideas first become knowledge of an object.”
According to this, the brutes, since they do not judge, must also have no
knowledge of objects. In general, according to Kant, there are only
conceptions of objects, no perceptions. I, on the contrary, say: Objects
exist primarily only for perception, and conceptions are always
abstractions from this perception. Therefore abstract thinking must be
conducted exactly according to the world present in perception, for it is
only their relation to this that gives content to conceptions; and we must
assume for the conceptions no other _a priori_ determined form than the
faculty of reflection in general, the nature of which is the construction
of conceptions, _i.e._, of abstract non-perceptible ideas, which
constitutes the sole function of the _reason_, as I have shown in the
first book. I therefore require that we should reject eleven of the
categories, and only retain that of causality, and yet that we should see
clearly that its activity is indeed the condition of empirical perception,
which accordingly is not merely sensuous but intellectual, and that the
object so perceived, the object of experience, is one with the idea, from
which there remains nothing to distinguish except the thing in itself.
After repeated study of the “Critique of Pure Reason” at different periods
of my life, a conviction has forced itself upon me with regard to the
origin of the Transcendental Logic, which I now impart as very helpful to
an understanding of it. Kant’s only discovery, which is based upon
objective comprehension and the highest human thought, is the _apperçu_
that time and space are known by us _a priori_. Gratified by this happy
hit, he wished to pursue the same vein further, and his love of
architectonic symmetry afforded him the clue. As he had found that a pure
intuition or perception _a priori_ underlay the empirical _perception_ as
its condition, he thought that in the same way certain _pure conceptions_
as presuppositions in our faculty of knowledge must lie at the foundation
of the empirically obtained _conceptions_, and that real empirical thought
must be only possible through a pure thought _a priori_, which, however,
would have no objects in itself, but would be obliged to take them from
perception. So that as the _Transcendental Æsthetic_ establishes an _a
priori_ basis of mathematics, there must, he supposed, also be a similar
basis for logic; and thus, then for the sake of symmetry, the former
received a pendant in a _Transcendental Logic_. From this point onwards
Kant was no more free, no more in the position of purely, investigating
and observing what is present in consciousness; but he was guided by an
assumption and pursued a purpose—the purpose of finding what he assumed,
in order to add to the Transcendental Æsthetic so happily discovered a
Transcendental Logic analogous to it, and thus symmetrically corresponding
to it, as a second storey. Now for this purpose he hit upon the table of
judgments, out of which he constructed, as well as he could, the table of
categories, the doctrine of twelve pure _a priori_ conceptions, which are
supposed to be the conditions of our _thinking_ those very _things_ the
_perception_ of which is conditioned by the two _a priori_ forms of
sensibility: thus a _pure understanding_ now corresponded symmetrically to
a _pure sensibility_. Then another consideration occurred to him, which
offered a means of increasing the plausibility of the thing, by the
assumption of the _schematism_ of the pure conceptions of the
understanding. But just through this the way in which his procedure had,
unconsciously indeed, originated betrayed itself most distinctly. For
because he aimed at finding something _a priori_ analogous to every
empirical function of the faculty of knowledge, he remarked that between
our empirical perception and our empirical thinking, conducted in abstract
non-perceptible conceptions, a connection very frequently, though not
always, takes place, because every now and then we try to go back from
abstract thinking to perception; but try to do so merely in order really
to convince ourselves that our abstract thought has not strayed far from
the safe ground of perception, and perhaps become exaggeration, or, it may
be, mere empty talk; much in the same way as, when we are walking in the
dark, we stretch out our hand every now and then to the guiding wall. We
go back, then, to the perception only tentatively and for the moment, by
calling up in imagination a perception corresponding to the conceptions
which are occupying us at the time—a perception which can yet never be
quite adequate to the conception, but is merely a temporary
_representative_ of it. I have already adduced what is needful on this
point in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 28. Kant calls
a fleeting phantasy of this kind a schema, in opposition to the perfected
picture of the imagination. He says it is like a monogram of the
imagination, and asserts that just as such a schema stands midway between
our abstract thinking of empirically obtained conceptions, and our clear
perception which comes to us through the senses, so there are _a priori
schemata of the pure conceptions of the understanding_ between the faculty
of perception _a priori_ of pure sensibility and the faculty of thinking
_a priori_ of the pure understanding (thus the categories). These
schemata, as monograms of the pure imagination _a priori_, he describes
one by one, and assigns to each of them its corresponding category, in the
wonderful “Chapter on the Schematism of the Pure Conceptions of the
Understanding,” which is noted as exceedingly obscure, because no man has
ever been able to make anything out of it. Its obscurity, however,
vanishes if it is considered from the point of view here indicated, but
there also comes out more clearly in it than anywhere else the intentional
nature of Kant’s procedure, and of the determination formed beforehand of
finding what would correspond to the analogy, and could assist the
architectonic symmetry; indeed this is here the case to such a degree as
to be almost comical. For when he assumes schemata of the pure (empty) _a
priori_ conceptions of the understanding (categories) analogous to the
empirical schemata (or representatives through the fancy of our actual
conceptions), he overlooks the fact that the end of such schemata is here
entirely wanting, For the end of the schemata in the case of empirical
(real) thinking is entirely connected with the _material content_ of such
conceptions. For since these conceptions are drawn from empirical
perception, we assist and guide ourselves when engaged in abstract
thinking by now and then casting a momentary glance back at the perception
out of which the conceptions are framed, in order to assure ourselves that
our thought has still real content. This, however, necessarily presupposes
that the conceptions which occupy us are sprung from perception, and it is
merely a glance back at their material content, indeed a mere aid to our
weakness. But in the case of _a priori_ conceptions which as yet have no
content at all, clearly this is necessarily omitted. For these conceptions
are not sprung from perception, but come to it from within, in order to
receive a content first from it. Thus they have as yet nothing on which
they could look back. I speak fully upon this point, because it is just
this that throws light upon the secret origin of the Kantian
philosophising, which accordingly consists in this, that Kant, after the
happy discovery of the two forms of intuition or perception _a priori_,
exerted himself, under the guidance of the analogy, to prove that for
every determination of our empirical knowledge there is an _a priori_
analogue, and this finally extended, in the schemata, even to a mere
psychological fact. Here the apparent depth and the difficulty of the
exposition just serve to conceal from the reader that its content remains
a wholly undemonstrable and merely arbitrary assumption. But he who has
penetrated at last to the meaning of such an exposition is then easily
induced to mistake this understanding so painfully attained for a
conviction of the truth of the matter. If, on the contrary, Kant had kept
himself here as unprejudiced and purely observant as in the discovery of
_a priori_ intuition or perception, he must have found that what is added
to the pure intuition or perception of space and time, if an empirical
perception arises from it, is on the one hand the sensation, and on the
other hand the knowledge of causality, which changes the mere sensation
into objective empirical perception, but just on this account is not first
derived and learned from sensation, but exists _a priori_, and is indeed
the form and function of the pure understanding. It is also, however, its
sole form and function, yet one so rich in results that all our empirical
knowledge rests upon it. If, as has often been said, the refutation of an
error is only complete when the way it originated has been psychologically
demonstrated, I believe I have achieved this, with regard to Kant’s
doctrine of the categories and their schemata, in what I have said above.
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After Kant had thus introduced such great errors into the first simple
outlines of a theory of the faculty of perception, he adopted a variety of
very complicated assumptions. To these belongs first of all the synthetic
unity of apperception: a very strange thing, very strangely explained.
“The _I think_ must be able to accompany all my ideas.” Must—be able: this
is a problematic-apodictic enunciation; in plain English, a proposition
which takes with one hand what it gives with the other. And what is the
meaning of this carefully balanced proposition? That all knowledge of
ideas is thinking? That is not the case: and it would be dreadful; there
would then be nothing but abstract conceptions, or at any rate a pure
perception free from reflection and will, such as that of the beautiful,
the deepest comprehension of the true nature of things, _i.e._, of their
Platonic Ideas. And besides, the brutes would then either think also, or
else they would not even have ideas. Or is the proposition perhaps
intended to mean: no object without a subject? That would be very badly
expressed by it, and would come too late. If we collect Kant’s utterances
on the subject, we shall find that what he understands by the synthetic
unity of apperception is, as it were, the extensionless centre of the
sphere of all our ideas, whose radii converge to it. It is what I call the
subject of knowing, the correlative of all ideas, and it is also that
which I have fully described and explained in the 22d chapter of the
Supplements, as the focus in which the rays of the activity of the brain
converge. Therefore, to avoid repetition, I now refer to that chapter.
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That I reject the whole doctrine of the categories, and reckon it among
the groundless assumptions with which Kant burdened the theory of
knowledge, results from the criticism given above; and also from the proof
of the contradictions in the Transcendental Logic, which had their ground
in the confusion of perception and abstract knowledge; also further from
the proof of the want of a distinct and definite conception of the nature
of the understanding and of the reason, instead of which we found in
Kant’s writings only incoherent, inconsistent, insufficient, and incorrect
utterances with regard to these two faculties of the mind. Finally, it
results from the explanations which I myself have given of these faculties
of the mind in the first book and its Supplements, and more fully in the
essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21, 26, and
34,—explanations which are very definite and distinct, which clearly
follow from the consideration of the nature of our knowledge, and which
completely agree with the conceptions of those two faculties of knowledge
that appear in the language and writings of all ages and all nations, but
were not brought to distinctness. Their defence against the very different
exposition of Kant has, for the most part, been given already along with
the exposure of the errors of that exposition. Since, however, the table
of judgments, which Kant makes the foundation of his theory of thinking,
and indeed of his whole philosophy, has, in itself, as a whole, its
correctness, it is still incumbent upon me to show how these universal
forms of all judgment arise in our faculty of knowledge, and to reconcile
them with my exposition of it. In this discussion I shall always attach to
the concepts understanding and reason the sense given them in my
explanation, which I therefore assume the reader is familiar with.
An essential difference between Kant’s method and that which I follow lies
in this, that he starts from indirect, reflected knowledge, while I start
from direct or intuitive knowledge. He may be compared to a man who
measures the height of a tower by its shadow, while I am like him who
applies the measuring-rule directly to the tower itself. Therefore, for
him philosophy is a science _of_ conceptions, but for me it is a science
_in_ conceptions, drawn from knowledge of perception, the one source of
all evidence, and comprehended and made permanent in general conceptions.
He passes over this whole world of perception which surrounds us, so
multifarious and rich in significance, and confines himself to the forms
of abstract thinking; and, although he never expressly says so, this
procedure is founded on the assumption that reflection is the ectype of
all perception, that, therefore, all that is essential in perception must
be expressed in reflection, and expressed in very contracted forms and
outlines, which are thus easily surveyed. According to this, what is
essential and conformable to law in abstract knowledge would, as it were,
place in our hands all the threads by which the varied puppet-show of the
world of perception is set in motion before our eyes. If Kant had only
distinctly expressed this first principle of his method, and then followed
it consistently, he would at least have been obliged to separate clearly
the intuitive from the abstract, and we would not have had to contend with
inextricable contradictions and confusions. But from the way in which he
solves his problem we see that that fundamental principle of his method
was only very indistinctly present to his mind, and thus we have still to
arrive at it by conjecture even after a thorough study of his philosophy.
Now as concerns the specified method and fundamental maxim itself, there
is much to be said for it, and it is a brilliant thought. The nature of
all science indeed consists in this, that we comprehend the endless
manifold of perceptible phenomena under comparatively few abstract
conceptions, and out of these construct a system by means of which we have
all those phenomena completely in the power of our knowledge, can explain
the past and determine the future. The sciences, however, divide the wide
sphere of phenomena among them according to the special and manifold
classes of the latter. Now it was a bold and happy thought to isolate what
is absolutely essential to the conceptions as such and apart from their
content, in order to discover from these forms of all thought found in
this way what is essential to all intuitive knowledge also, and
consequently to the world as phenomenon in general; and because this would
be found _a priori_ on account of the necessity of those forms of thought,
it would be of subjective origin, and would just lead to the ends Kant had
in view. Here, however, before going further, the relation of reflection
to knowledge of perception ought to have been investigated (which
certainly presupposes the clear separation of the two, which was neglected
by Kant). He ought to have inquired in what way the former really repeats
and represents the latter, whether quite pure, or changed and to some
extent disguised by being taken up into its special forms (forms of
reflection); whether the form of abstract reflective knowledge becomes
more determined through the form of knowledge of perception, or through
the nature or constitution which unalterably belongs to itself, _i.e._, to
reflective knowledge, so that even what is very heterogeneous in intuitive
knowledge can no longer be distinguished when it has entered reflective
knowledge, and conversely many distinctions of which we are conscious in
the reflective method of knowledge have also sprung from this knowledge
itself, and by no means point to corresponding differences in intuitive
knowledge. As the result of this investigation, however, it would have
appeared that knowledge of perception suffers very nearly as much change
when it is taken up into reflection as food when it is taken into the
animal organism whose forms and compounds are determined by itself, so
that the nature of the food can no longer be recognised from the result
they produce. Or (for this is going a little too far) at least it would
have appeared that reflection is by no means related to knowledge of
perception as the reflection in water is related to the reflected objects,
but scarcely even as the mere shadow of these objects stands to the
objects themselves; which shadow repeats only a few external outlines, but
also unites the most manifold in the same form and presents the most
diverse through the same outline; so that it is by no means possible,
starting from it, to construe the forms of things with completeness and
certainty.
The whole of reflective knowledge, or the reason, has only one chief form,
and that is the abstract conception. It is proper to the reason itself,
and has no direct necessary connection with the world of perception, which
therefore exists for the brutes entirely without conceptions, and indeed,
even if it were quite another world from what it is, that form of
reflection would suit it just as well. But the combination of conceptions
for the purpose of judging has certain definite and normal forms, which
have been found by induction, and constitute the table of judgments. These
forms are for the most part deducible from the nature of reflective
knowledge itself, thus directly from the reason, because they spring from
the four laws of thought (called by me metalogical truths) and the _dictum
de omni et nullo_. Certain others of these forms, however, have their
ground in the nature of knowledge of perception, thus in the
understanding; yet they by no means point to a like number of special
forms of the understanding, but can all be fully deduced from the sole
function which the understanding has—the direct knowledge of cause and
effect. Lastly, still others of these forms have sprung from the
concurrence and combination of the reflective and intuitive modes of
knowledge, or more properly from the assumption of the latter into the
former. I shall now go through the moments of the judgment one by one, and
point out the origin of each of them in the sources referred to; and from
this it follows of itself that a deduction of categories from them is
wanting, and the assumption of this is just as groundless as its
exposition was found to be entangled and self-conflicting.
1. The so-called _Quantity_ of judgments springs from the nature of
concepts as such. It thus has its ground in the reason alone, and has
absolutely no direct connection with the understanding and with knowledge
of perception. It is indeed, as is explained at length in the first book,
essential to concepts, as such, that they should have an extent, a sphere,
and the wider, less determined concept includes the narrower and more
determined. The latter can therefore be separated from the former, and
this may happen in two ways,—either the narrower concept may be indicated
as an indefinite part of the wider concept in general, or it may be
defined and completely separated by means of the addition of a special
name. The judgment which carries out this operation is in the first case
called a particular, and in the second case an universal judgment. For
example, one and the same part of the sphere of the concept tree may be
isolated through a particular and through an universal judgment,
thus—“Some trees bear gall-nuts,” or “All oaks bear gall-nuts.” One sees
that the difference of the two operations is very slight; indeed, that the
possibility of it depends upon the richness of the language. Nevertheless,
Kant has explained this difference as disclosing two fundamentally
different actions, functions, categories of the pure understanding which
determines experience _a priori_ through them.
Finally, a concept may also be used in order to arrive by means of it at a
definite particular idea of perception, from which, as well as from many
others, this concept itself is drawn; this happens in the singular
judgment. Such a judgment merely indicates the boundary-line between
abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception, and passes directly to the
latter, “This tree here bears gall-nuts.” Kant has made of this also a
special category.
After all that has been said there is no need of further polemic here.
2. In the same way the _Quality_ of the judgment lies entirely within the
province of reason, and is not an adumbration of any law of that
understanding which makes perception possible, _i.e._, it does not point
to it. The nature of abstract concepts, which is just the nature of the
reason itself objectively comprehended, carries with it the possibility of
uniting and separating their spheres, as was already explained in the
first book, and upon this possibility, as their presupposition, rest the
universal laws of thought of identity and contradiction, to which I have
given the name of _metalogical_ truths, because they spring purely from
the reason, and cannot be further explained. They determine that what is
united must remain united, and what is separated must remain separate,
thus that what is established cannot at the same time be also abolished,
and thus they presuppose the possibility of the combination and separation
of spheres, _i.e._, of judgment. This, however, lies, according to its
_form_, simply and solely in the reason, and this _form_ has not, like the
_content_ of the judgments, been brought over from the perceptible
knowledge of the understanding, and therefore there is no correlative or
analogue of it to be looked for there. After the perception has been
brought about through the understanding and for the understanding, it
exists complete, subject to no doubt nor error, and therefore knows
neither assertion nor denial; for it expresses itself, and has not, like
the abstract knowledge of the reason, its value and content in its mere
relation to something outside of it, according to the principle of the
ground of knowing. It is, therefore, pure reality; all negation is foreign
to its nature, can only be added on through reflection, and just on this
account remains always in the province of abstract thought.
To the affirmative and negative Kant adds the infinite judgment, making
use of a crotchet of the old scholastics, an ingeniously invented
stop-gap, which does not even require to be explained, a blind window,
such as many others he made for the sake of his architectonic symmetry.
3. Under the very wide conception of _Relation_ Kant has brought three
entirely different properties of judgments, which we must, therefore,
examine singly, in order to recognise their origin.
(_a._) The _hypothetical judgment_ in general is the abstract expression
of that most universal form of all our knowledge, the principle of
sufficient reason. In my essay on this principle, I already showed in 1813
that it has four entirely different meanings, and in each of these
originally originates in a different faculty of knowledge, and also
concerns a different class of ideas. It clearly follows from this, that
the source of the hypothetical judgment in general, of that universal form
of thought, cannot be, as Kant wishes to make it, merely the understanding
and its category of causality; but that the law of causality which,
according to my exposition, is the one form of knowledge of the pure
understanding, is only one of the forms of that principle which embraces
all pure or _a priori_ knowledge—the principle of sufficient reason—which,
on the other hand, in each of its meanings has this hypothetical form of
judgment as its expression. We see here, however, very distinctly how
kinds of knowledge which are quite different in their origin and
significance yet appear, if thought _in abstracto_ by the reason, in one
and the same form of combination of concepts and judgments, and then in
this form can no longer be distinguished, but, in order to distinguish
them, we must go back to knowledge of perception, leaving abstract
knowledge altogether. Therefore the path which was followed by Kant,
starting from the point of view of abstract knowledge, to find the
elements and the inmost spring of intuitive knowledge also, was quite a
wrong one. For the rest, my whole introductory essay on the principle of
sufficient reason is, to a certain extent, to be regarded merely as a
thorough exposition of the significance of the hypothetical form of
judgment; therefore I do not dwell upon it longer here.
(_b._) The form of the _categorical judgment_ is nothing but the form of
judgment in general, in its strictest sense. For, strictly speaking,
judging merely means thinking, the combination of, or the impossibility of
combining, the spheres of the concepts. Therefore the hypothetical and the
disjunctive combination are properly no special forms of the judgment; for
they are only applied to already completed judgments, in which the
combination of the concepts remains unchanged the categorical. But they
again connect these judgments, for the hypothetical form expresses their
dependence upon each other, and the disjunctive their incompatibility.
Mere concepts, however, have only _one_ class of relations to each other,
those which are expressed in the categorical judgment. The fuller
determination, or the sub-species of this relation, are the intersection
and the complete separateness of the concept-spheres, _i.e._, thus
affirmation and negation; out of which Kant has made special categories,
under quite a different title, that of _quality_. Intersection and
separateness have again sub-species, according as the spheres lie within
each other entirely, or only in part, a determination which constitutes
the _quantity_ of the judgments; out of which Kant has again made a quite
special class of categories. Thus he separates what is very closely
related, and even identical, the easily surveyed modifications of the one
possible relation of mere concepts to each other, and, on the other hand,
unites what is very different under this title of relation.
Categorical judgments have as their metalogical principle the laws of
thought of identity and contradiction. But the _ground_ of the connection
of the concept-spheres which gives _truth_ to the judgment, which is
nothing but this connection, may be of very different kinds; and,
according to this, the truth of the judgment is either logical, or
empirical, or metaphysical, or metalogical, as is explained in the
introductory essay, § 30-33, and does not require to be repeated here. But
it is apparent from this how very various the direct cognitions may be,
all of which exhibit themselves in the abstract, through the combination
of the spheres of two concepts, as subject and predicate, and that we can
by no means set up the sole function of the understanding as corresponding
to them and producing them. For example, the judgments, “Water boils, the
sine measures the angle, the will resolves, business distracts,
distinction is difficult,” express through the same logical form the most
different kinds of relations; but from this we obtain the right, however
irregular the beginning may be, of placing ourselves at the standpoint of
abstract knowledge to analyse direct intuitive knowledge. For the rest,
the categorical judgment springs from knowledge of the understanding
proper, in my sense, only when causation is expressed by it; this is,
however, the case in all judgments which refer to a physical quality. For
if I say, “This body is heavy, hard, fluid, green, sour, alkaline,
organic, &c., &c.,” this always refers to its effect, and thus is
knowledge which is only possible through the pure understanding. Now,
after this, like much which is quite different from it (for example, the
subordination of very abstract concepts), has been expressed in the
abstract through subject and predicate, these mere relations of concepts
have been transferred back to knowledge of perception, and it has been
supposed that the subject and predicate of the judgment must have a
peculiar and special correlative in perception, substance and accident.
But I shall show clearly further on that the conception substance has no
other true content than that of the conception matter. Accidents, however,
are quite synonymous with kinds of effects, so that the supposed knowledge
of substance and accident is never anything more than the knowledge of
cause and effect by the understanding. But the special manner in which the
idea of matter arises is explained partly in § 4 of the first book, and
still more clearly in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason at
the end of § 21, p. 77 (3d ed., p. 82), and in some respects we shall see
it still more closely when we investigate the principle of the permanence
of substance.
(_c._) _Disjunctive judgments_ spring from the law of thought of excluded
third, which is a metalogical truth; they are, therefore, entirely the
property of the reason, and have not their origin in the understanding.
The deduction of the category of community or _reciprocity_ from them is,
however, a glaring example of the violence which Kant sometimes allowed to
be done to truth, merely in order to satisfy his love of architectonic
symmetry. The illegitimacy of that deduction has already often been justly
condemned and proved upon various grounds, especially by G. E. Schulze in
his “_Kritik der theoretischen Philosophie_,” and by Berg in his
“_Epikritik der Philosophie_.” What real analogy is there, indeed, 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 two things in the relation of reciprocity,
the affirmation of one is also necessarily the affirmation of the other,
and _vice versa_. Therefore, unquestionably, the real logical analogue of
reciprocity is the vicious circle, for in it, as nominally in the case of
reciprocity, what is proved is also the proof, and conversely. And just as
logic rejects the vicious circle, so 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. First of all, the reader must call to mind what
causality really is, and to assist my exposition, see upon this subject §
20 of the introductory essay, also my prize-essay on the freedom of the
will, chap. iii. p. 27 _seq._, and lastly the fourth chapter of the second
book of this work. Causality is the law according to which the conditions
or states of matter which appear determine their position in time.
Causality has to do merely with conditions or states, indeed, properly,
only with _changes_, and neither with matter as such, nor with permanence
without change. _Matter_, as such, does not come under the law of
causality, for it neither comes into being nor passes away; thus neither
does the whole _thing_, as we commonly express ourselves, come under this
law, but only the _conditions_ or _states_ of matter. Further, the law of
causality has nothing to do with _permanence_, for where nothing changes
there is no producing of _effects_ and no causality, but a continuing
quiet condition or state. But if, now, such a state is changed, then the
new state is either again permanent or it is not, but immediately
introduces a third state, and the necessity with which this happens is
just the law of causality, which is a form of the principle of sufficient
reason, and therefore cannot be further explained, because the principle
of sufficient reason is the principle of all explanation and of all
necessity. From this it is clear that cause and effect stand in intimate
connection with, and necessary relation to, the _course of time_. Only
because the state A. precedes in time the state B., and their succession
is necessary and not accidental, _i.e._, no mere sequence but a
consequence—only because of this is the state A. cause and the state B.
effect. The conception _reciprocity_, however, contains this, that both
are cause and 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. For that both states are simultaneous, and indeed
necessarily simultaneous, cannot be admitted, because, as necessarily
belonging to each other and existing at the same time, they constitute
only _one_ state. For the permanence of this state there is certainly
required the continued existence of all its determinations, but we are
then no longer concerned with change and causality, but with duration and
rest, and nothing further is said than that if _one_ determination of the
whole state be changed, the new state which then appears cannot continue,
but becomes the cause of the change of all the other determinations of the
first state, so that a new third state appears; which all happens merely
in accordance with the simple law of causality, and does not establish a
_new_ law, that of reciprocity.
I also definitely assert that the conception _reciprocity_ cannot be
supported by a single example. Everything that one seeks to pass off as
such is either a state of rest, to which the conception of causality,
which has only significance with reference to changes, finds no
application at all, or else it is an alternating succession of states of
the same name which condition each other, for the explanation of which
simple causality is quite sufficient. An example of the first class is
afforded by 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. That the
taking away of one weight produces a second state, which at once becomes
the cause of the third, the sinking of the other scale, happens according
to the simple law of cause and effect, and requires no special category of
the understanding, and not even a special name. An example of the second
class is 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_. The burning, A., produces free heat, B., this
produces new burning, C. (_i.e._, a new effect which has the same name as
the cause A., but is not individually identical with it), this produces
new heat, D. (which is not really identical with the effect B., but only
according to the concept, _i.e._, it has the same name), and so on
indefinitely. A good example of what in ordinary life is called
reciprocity is afforded by a theory about deserts given by Humboldt
(_Ansichten der Natur_, 2d ed., vol. ii. p. 79). In the sandy deserts it
does not rain, but it rains upon the wooded mountains surrounding them.
The cause is not the attraction of the clouds by the mountains; but it is
the column of heated air rising from the sandy plain which prevents the
particles of vapour from condensing, and drives the clouds high into the
heavens. On the mountains the perpendicular rising stream of air is
weaker, the clouds descend, and the rainfall ensues in the cooler air.
Thus, want of rain and the absence of plants in the desert stand in the
relation of reciprocity; it does not rain because the heated sand-plain
sends out more heat; the desert does not become a steppe or prairie
because it does not rain. But clearly we have here again, as in the
example given above, only a succession of causes and effects of the same
names, and throughout nothing essentially different from simple causality.
This is also the case with the swinging of the pendulum, and indeed also
with the self-conservation of the organised body, in which case likewise
every state introduces a new one, which is of the same kind as that by
which it was itself brought about, but individually is new. Only here the
matter is complicated, because the chain no longer consists of links of
two kinds, but of many kinds, so that a link of the same name only recurs
after several others have intervened. But we always 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.
Or is it perhaps advanced in support of the conception of reciprocity that
action and reaction are equal? But the reason of this is what I urge so
strongly and have fully explained in the essay on the principle of
sufficient reason, that the cause and the effect are not two bodies, but
two successive states of bodies, consequently each of the two states
implicates all bodies concerned; thus the effect, _i.e._, the newly
appearing state, for example, in the case of an impulse, extends to both
bodies in the same proportion; therefore the body impelled produces just
as great a change in the body impelling as it itself sustains (each in
proportion to its mass and velocity). If one pleases to call this
reciprocity, then absolutely every effect is a reciprocal effect, and no
new conception is introduced on this account, still less does it require a
new function of the understanding, but we only have a superfluous synonym
for causality. But Kant himself, in a moment of thoughtlessness, exactly
expressed this view in the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural
Science” at the beginning of the proof of the fourth principle of
mechanics: “All external effect in the world is reciprocal effect.” How
then should different functions lie _a priori_ in the understanding for
simple causality and for reciprocity, and, indeed, how should the real
succession of things only be possible and knowable by means of the first,
and their co-existence by means of the second? According to this, if all
effect is reciprocal effect, succession and simultaneity would be the same
thing, and therefore everything in the world would take place at the same
moment. If there were true reciprocity, then perpetual motion would also
be possible, and indeed _a priori_ certain; but it is rather the case that
the _a priori_ conviction that there is no true reciprocity, and no
corresponding form of the understanding, is the ground of the assertion
that perpetual motion is impossible.
Aristotle also denies reciprocity in the strict sense; for he remarks that
two things may certainly be reciprocal causes of each other, but only if
this is understood in a different sense of each of them; for example, that
one acts upon the other as the motive, but the latter acts upon the former
as the cause of its movement. We find in two passages the same words:
Physic., lib. ii. c. 3, and Metaph., lib. v. c. 2. Εστι δε τινα και
αλληλων αιτια; οἱον το πονειν αιτιον της ευεξιας, και αὑτη του πονειν;
αλλ᾽ ου τον αυτον τροπον, αλλα το μεν ὡς τελος, το δε ὡς αρχη κινησεως.
(_Sunt præterea quæ sibi sunt mutuo causæ, ut exercitium bonæ habitudinis,
et hæc exercitii: at non eodem modo, sed hæc ut finis, aliud ut principium
motus._) If, besides this, he had accepted a reciprocity proper, he would
have introduced it here, for in both passages he is concerned with
enumerating all the possible kinds of causes. In the _Analyt. post._, lib.
ii. c. 11, he speaks of a circle of causes and effects, but not of
reciprocity.
4. The categories of _Modality_ have this advantage over all others, that
what is expressed through each of them really corresponds to the form of
judgment from which it is derived; which with the other categories is
scarcely ever the case, because for the most part they are deduced from
the forms of judgment with the most capricious violence.
Thus that it is the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the
necessary which occasion the problematic, assertatory, and apodictic forms
of judgment, is perfectly true; but that those conceptions are special,
original forms of knowledge of the understanding which cannot be further
deduced is not true. On the contrary, they spring from the single original
form of all knowledge, which is, therefore, known to us _a priori_, the
principle of sufficient reason; and indeed out of this the knowledge of
_necessity_ springs directly. On the other hand, it is only because
reflection is applied to this that the conceptions of contingency,
possibility, impossibility, and actuality arise. Therefore all these do
not by any means spring from _one_ faculty of the mind, the understanding,
but arise through the conflict of abstract and intuitive knowledge, as
will be seen directly.
I hold that to be necessary and to be the consequent of a given reason are
absolutely interchangeable notions, and completely identical. We can never
know, nor even think, anything as necessary, except so far as we regard it
as the consequent of a given reason; and the conception of necessity
contains absolutely nothing more than this dependence, this being
established through something else, and this inevitable following from it.
Thus it arises and exists simply and solely through the application of the
principle of sufficient reason. Therefore, there is, according to the
different forms of this principle, a physical necessity (the effect from
the cause), a logical (through the ground of knowing, in analytical
judgments, syllogisms, &c.), a mathematical (according to the ground of
being in time and space), and finally a practical necessity, by which we
intend to signify not determination through a pretended categorical
imperative, but the necessary occurrence of an action according to the
motives presented, in the case of a given empirical character. But
everything necessary is only so relatively, that is, under the
presupposition of the reason from which it follows; therefore absolute
necessity is a contradiction. With regard to the rest, I refer to § 49 of
the essay on the principle of sufficient reason.
The contradictory opposite, _i.e._, the denial of necessity, is
_contingency_. The content of this conception is, therefore,
negative—nothing more than this: absence of the connection expressed by
the principle of sufficient reason. Consequently the contingent is also
always merely relative. It is contingent in relation to something which is
not its reason. Every object, of whatever kind it may be—for example,
every event in the actual world—is always at once necessary and
contingent, _necessary_ in relation to the _one_ condition which is its
cause: _contingent_ in relation to everything else. For its contact in
time and space with everything else is a mere coincidence without
necessary connection: hence also the words chance, συμπτωμα, _contingens_.
Therefore an absolute contingency is just as inconceivable as an absolute
necessity. For the former would be simply an object which stood to no
other in the relation of consequent to its reason. But the
inconceivability of such a thing is just the content of the principle of
sufficient reason negatively expressed, and therefore this principle must
first be upset before we can think an absolute contingency; and even then
it itself would have lost all significance, for the conception of
contingency has meaning only in relation to that principle, and signifies
that two objects do not stand to each other in the relation of reason and
consequent.
In nature, which consists of ideas of perception, everything that happens
is necessary; for it proceeds from its cause. If, however, we consider
this individual with reference to everything else which is not its cause,
we know it as contingent; but this is already an abstract reflection. Now,
further, let us abstract entirely from a natural object its causal
relation to everything else, thus its necessity and its contingency; then
this kind of knowledge comprehends the conception of the _actual_, in
which one only considers the _effect_, without looking for the cause, in
relation to which one would otherwise have to call it _necessary_, and in
relation to everything else _contingent_. All this rests ultimately upon
the fact that the _modality_ of the judgment does not indicate so much the
objective nature of things as the relation of our knowledge to them.
Since, however, in nature everything proceeds from a cause, everything
_actual_ is also _necessary_, yet only so far as it is _at this time, in
this place;_ for only so far does determination by the law of causality
extend. Let us leave, however, concrete nature and pass over to abstract
thinking; then we can present to ourselves in reflection all the natural
laws which are known to us partly _a priori_, partly only _a posteriori_,
and this abstract idea contains all that is in nature at _any_ time, in
_any_ place, but with abstraction from every definite time and place; and
just in this way, through such reflection, we have entered the wide
kingdom of _the possible_. But what finds no place even here is the
_impossible_. It is clear that possibility and impossibility exist only
for reflection, for abstract knowledge of the reason, not for knowledge of
perception; although it is the pure forms of perception which supply the
reason with the determination of the possible and impossible. According as
the laws of nature, from which we start in the thought of the possible and
impossible, are known _a priori_ or _a posteriori_, is the possibility or
impossibility metaphysical or physical.
From this exposition, which requires no proof because it rests directly
upon the knowledge of the principle of sufficient reason and upon the
development of the conceptions of the necessary, the actual, and the
possible, it is sufficiently evident how entirely groundless is Kant’s
assumption of three special functions of the understanding for these three
conceptions, and that here again he has allowed himself to be disturbed by
no reflection in the carrying out of his architectonic symmetry.
To this, however, we have to add the other great mistake, that, certainly
according to the procedure of earlier philosophy, he has confounded the
conceptions of necessity and contingency with each other. That earlier
philosophy has applied abstraction to the following mistaken use. It was
clear that that of which the reason is given inevitably follows, _i.e._,
cannot not be, and thus necessarily is. But that philosophy held to this
last determination alone, and said that is necessary which cannot be
otherwise, or the opposite of which is impossible. It left, however, the
ground and root of such necessity out of account, overlooked the
relativity of all necessity which follows from it, and thereby made the
quite unthinkable fiction of an _absolute necessity_, _i.e._, of something
the existence of which would be as inevitable as the consequent of a
reason, but which yet was not the consequent of a reason, and therefore
depended upon nothing; an addition which is an absurd _petitio_, for it
conflicts with the principle of sufficient reason. Now, starting from this
fiction, it explained, in diametrical opposition to the truth, all that is
established by a reason as contingent, because it looked at the relative
nature of its necessity and compared this with that entirely imaginary
_absolute_ necessity, which is self-contradictory in its conception.(5)
Now Kant adheres to this fundamentally perverse definition of the
contingent and gives it as explanation. (Critique of Pure Reason, V. p.
289-291, 243. V. 301, 419. V. 447, 486, 488.) He falls indeed into the
most evident contradiction with himself upon this point, for on p. 301 he
says: “Everything contingent has a cause,” and adds, “That is contingent
which might possibly not be.” But whatever has a cause cannot possibly not
be: thus it is necessary. For the rest, the source of the whole of this
false explanation of the necessary and the contingent is to be found in
Aristotle in “_De Generatione et Corruptione_,” lib. ii. c. 9 et 11, where
the necessary is explained as that which cannot possibly not be: there
stands in opposition to it that which cannot possibly be, and between
these two lies that which can both be and not be,—thus that which comes
into being and passes away, and this would then be the contingent. In
accordance with what has been said above, it is clear that this
explanation, like so many of Aristotle’s, has resulted from sticking to
abstract conceptions without going back to the concrete and perceptible,
in which, however, the source of all abstract conceptions lies, and by
which therefore they must always be controlled. “Something which cannot
possibly not be” can certainly be thought in the abstract, but if we go
with it to the concrete, the real, the perceptible, we find nothing to
support the thought, even as possible,—as even merely the asserted
consequent of a given reason, whose necessity is yet relative and
conditioned.
I take this opportunity of adding a few further remarks on these
conceptions of modality. Since all necessity rests upon the principle of
sufficient reason, and is on this account relative, all _apodictic_
judgments are originally, and according to their ultimate significance,
_hypothetical_. They become _categorical_ only through the addition of an
_assertatory_ minor, thus in the conclusion. If this minor is still
undecided, and this indecision is expressed, this gives the problematical
judgment.
What in general (as a rule) is apodictic (a law of nature), is in
reference to a particular case only problematical, because the condition
must actually appear which brings the case under the rule. And conversely,
what in the particular as such is necessary (apodictic) (every particular
change necessary through the cause), is again in general, and predicated
universally, only problematical; because the causes which appear only
concern the particular case, and the apodictic, always hypothetical
judgment, always expresses merely the general law, not the particular case
directly. All this has its ground in the fact that possibility exists only
in the province of reflection and for the reason; the actual, in the
province of perception and for the understanding; the necessary, for both.
Indeed, the distinction between necessary, actual, and possible really
exists only in the abstract and according to the conception; in the real
world, on the other hand, all three fall into one. For all that happens,
happens _necessarily_, because it happens from causes; but these
themselves have again causes, so that the whole of the events of the
world, great and small, are a strict concatenation of necessary
occurrences. Accordingly everything actual is also necessary, and in the
real world there is no difference between actuality and necessity, and in
the same way no difference between actuality and possibility; for what has
not happened, _i.e._, has not become actual, was also not possible,
because the causes without which it could never appear have not themselves
appeared, nor could appear, in the great concatenation of causes; thus it
was an impossibility. Every event is therefore either necessary or
impossible. All this holds good only of the empirically real world,
_i.e._, the complex of individual things, thus of the whole particular as
such. If, on the other hand, we consider things generally, comprehending
them _in abstracto_, necessity, actuality, and possibility are again
separated; we then know everything which is in accordance with the _a
priori_ laws which belong to our intellect as possible in general; that
which corresponds to the empirical laws of nature as possible in this
world, even if it has never become actual; thus we distinguish clearly the
possible from the actual. The actual is in itself always also necessary,
but is only comprehended as such by him who knows its cause; regarded
apart from this, it is and is called contingent. This consideration also
gives us the key to that _contentio_ περι δυνατων between the Megaric
Diodorus and Chrysippus the Stoic which Cicero refers to in his book _De
Fato_. Diodorus says: “Only what becomes actual was possible, and all that
is actual is also necessary.” Chrysippus on the other hand says: “Much
that is possible never becomes actual; for only the necessary becomes
actual.” We may explain this thus: Actuality is the conclusion of a
syllogism to which possibility gives the premises. But for this is
required not only the major but also the minor; only the two give complete
possibility. The major gives a merely theoretical, general possibility _in
abstracto_, but this of itself does not make anything possible, _i.e._,
capable of becoming actual. For this the minor also is needed, which gives
the possibility for the particular case, because it brings it under the
rule, and thereby it becomes at once actual. For example:
_Maj._ All houses (consequently also my house) can be destroyed by fire.
_Min._ My house is on fire.
_Concl._ My house is being destroyed by fire.
For every general proposition, thus every major, always determines things
with reference to actuality only under a presupposition, therefore
hypothetically; for example, the capability of being burnt down has as a
presupposition the catching fire. This presupposition is produced in the
minor. The major always loads the cannon, but only if the minor brings the
match does the shot, _i.e._, the conclusion, follow. This holds good
throughout of the relation of possibility to actuality. Since now the
conclusion, which is the assertion of actuality, always follows
_necessarily_, it is evident from this that all that is actual is also
necessary, which can also be seen from the fact that necessity only means
being the consequent of a given reason: this is in the case of the actual
a cause: thus everything actual is necessary. Accordingly, we see here the
conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the necessary unite, and not
merely the last presuppose the first, but also the converse. What keeps
them apart is the limitation of our intellect through the form of time;
for time is the mediator between possibility and actuality. The necessity
of the particular event may be fully seen from the knowledge of all its
causes; but the concurrence of the whole of these different and
independent causes seems to us _contingent_; indeed their independence of
each other is just the conception of contingency. Since, however, each of
them was the necessary effect of _its_ causes, the chain of which has no
beginning, it is evident that contingency is merely a subjective
phenomenon, arising from the limitation of the horizon of our
understanding, and just as subjective as the optical horizon at which the
heavens touch the earth.
Since necessity is the same thing as following from given grounds, it must
appear in a special way in the case of every form of the principle of
sufficient reason, and also have its opposite in the possibility and
impossibility which always arises only through the application of the
abstract reflection of the reason to the object. Therefore the four kinds
of necessity mentioned above stand opposed to as many kinds of
impossibility, physical, logical, mathematical and practical. It may
further be remarked that if one remains entirely within the province of
abstract concepts, possibility is always connected with the more general,
and necessity with the more limited concept; for example, “An animal _may_
be a bird, a fish, an amphibious creature, &c.” “A nightingale _must_ be a
bird, a bird _must_ be an animal, an animal _must_ be an organism, an
organism _must_ be a body.” This is because logical necessity, the
expression of which is the syllogism, proceeds from the general to the
particular, and never conversely. In the concrete world of nature (ideas
of the first class), on the contrary, everything is really necessary
through the law of causality; only added reflection can conceive it as
also contingent, comparing it with that which is not its cause, and also
as merely and purely actual, by disregarding all causal connection. Only
in this class of ideas does the conception of the _actual_ properly occur,
as is also shown by the derivation of the word from the conception of
causality. In the third class of ideas, that of pure mathematical
perception or intuition, if we confine ourselves strictly to it, there is
only necessity. Possibility occurs here also only through relation to the
concepts of reflection: for example, “A triangle _may_ be right-angled,
obtuse-angled, or equiangular; its three angles _must_ be equal to two
right-angles.” Thus here we only arrive at the possible through the
transition from the perceptible to the abstract.
After this exposition, which presupposes the recollection of what was said
both in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason and in the first
book of the present work, there will, it is hoped, be no further doubt as
to the true and very heterogeneous source of those forms which the table
of judgments lays before us, nor as to the inadmissibility and utter
groundlessness of the assumption of twelve special functions of the
understanding for the explanation of them. The latter point is also
supported by a number of special circumstances very easily noted. Thus,
for example, it requires great love of symmetry and much trust in a clue
derived from it, to lead one to assume that an affirmative, a categorical,
and an assertatory judgment are three such different things that they
justify the assumption of an entirely special function of the
understanding for each of them.
Kant himself betrays his consciousness of the untenable nature of his
doctrine of the categories by the fact that in the third chapter of the
Analytic of Principles (_phænomena et noumena_) several long passages of
the first edition (p. 241, 242, 244-246, 248-253) are omitted in the
second—passages which displayed the weakness of that doctrine too openly.
So, for example, he says there (p. 241) that he has not defined the
individual categories, because he could not define them even if he had
wished to do so, inasmuch as they were susceptible of no definition. In
saying this he forgot that at p. 82 of the same first edition he had said:
“I purposely dispense with the definition of the categories although I may
be in possession of it.” This then was, _sit venia verbo_, wind. But this
last passage he has allowed to stand. And so all those passages wisely
omitted afterwards betray the fact that nothing distinct can be thought in
connection with the categories, and this whole doctrine stands upon a weak
foundation.
This table of the categories is now made the guiding clue according to
which every metaphysical, and indeed every scientific inquiry is to be
conducted (Prolegomena, § 39). And, in fact, it is not only the foundation
of the whole Kantian philosophy and the type according to which its
symmetry is everywhere carried out, as I have already shown above, but it
has also really become the procrustean bed into which Kant forces every
possible inquiry, by means of a violence which I shall now consider
somewhat more closely. But with such an opportunity what must not the
_imitatores servum pecus_ have done! We have seen. That violence then is
applied in this way. The meaning of the expressions denoted by the titles,
forms of judgment and categories, is entirely set aside and forgotten, and
the expressions alone are retained. These have their source partly in
Aristotle’s _Analyt. priora_, i. 23 (περι ποιοτητος και ποσοτητος των του
συλλογισμου ὁρων: _de qualitate et quantitate terminorum syllogismi_), but
are arbitrarily chosen; for the extent of the concepts might certainly
have been otherwise expressed than through the word _quantity_, though
this word is more suited to its object than the rest of the titles of the
categories. Even the word _quality_ has obviously been chosen on account
of the custom of opposing quality to quantity; for the name quality is
certainly taken arbitrarily enough for affirmation and negation. But now
in every inquiry instituted by Kant, every quantity in time and space, and
every possible quality of things, physical, moral, &c., is brought by him
under those category titles, although between these things and those
titles of the forms of judgment and of thought there is absolutely nothing
in common except the accidental and arbitrary nomenclature. It is needful
to keep in mind all the respect which in other regards is due to Kant to
enable one to refrain from expressing in hard terms one’s repugnance to
this procedure. The nearest example is afforded us at once by the pure
physiological table of the general principles of natural science. What in
all the world has the quantity of judgments to do with the fact that every
perception has an extensive magnitude? What has the quality of judgments
to do with the fact that every sensation has a degree? The former rests
rather on the fact that space is the form of our external perception, and
the latter is nothing more than an empirical, and, moreover, entirely
subjective feeling, drawn merely from the consideration of the nature of
our organs of sense. Further, in the table which gives the basis of
rational psychology (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 344; V. 402), the
_simplicity_ of the soul is cited under quality; but this is just a
quantitative property, and has absolutely no relation to the affirmation
or negation in the judgment. But quantity had to be completed by the
_unity_ of the soul, which is, however, already included in its
simplicity. Then modality is forced in in an absurd way; the soul stands
in connection with _possible_ objects; but connection belongs to relation,
only this is already taken possession of by substance. Then the four
cosmological Ideas, which are the material of the antinomies, are referred
to the titles of the categories; but of this we shall speak more fully
further on, when we come to the examination of these antinomies. Several,
if possible, still more glaring examples are to be found in the table of
the _Categories of Freedom!_ in the “Critique of Practical Reason;” also
in the first book of the “Critique of Judgment,” which goes through the
judgment of taste according to the four titles of the categories; and,
finally, in the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science,” which
are entirely adapted to the table of the categories, whereby the false
that is mingled here and there with what is true and excellent in this
important work is for the most part introduced. See, for example, at the
end of the first chapter how the unity, the multiplicity, and the totality
of the directions of lines are supposed to correspond to the categories,
which are so named according to the quantity of judgments.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The principle of the _Permanence of Substance_ is deduced from the
category of subsistence and inherence. This, however, we know only from
the form of the categorical judgment, _i.e._, from the connection of two
concepts as subject and predicate. With what violence then is that great
metaphysical principle made dependent upon this simple, purely logical
form! Yet this is only done _pro forma_, and for the sake of symmetry. The
proof of this principle, which is given here, sets entirely aside its
supposed origin in the understanding and in the category, and is based
upon the pure intuition or perception of time. But this proof also is
quite incorrect. It is false that in mere time there is _simultaneity_ and
_duration_; these ideas only arise from the union of _space_ with time, as
I have already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, §
18, and worked out more fully in § 4 of the present work. I must assume a
knowledge of both these expositions for the understanding of what follows.
It is false that time _remains_ the same through all change; on the
contrary, it is just time itself that is fleeting; a permanent time is a
contradiction. Kant’s proof is untenable, strenuously as he has supported
it with sophisms; indeed, he falls into the most palpable contradictions.
Thus, after he has falsely set up co-existence as a mode of time (p. 177;
V. 219), he says, quite rightly (p. 183; V. 226), “Co-existence is not a
mode of time, for in time there are absolutely no parts together, but all
in succession.” In truth, space is quite as much implicated in
co-existence as time. For if two things are co-existent and yet not one,
they are different in respect of space; if two states of one thing are
co-existent (_e.g._, the glow and the heat of iron), then they are two
contemporaneous effects of _one_ thing, therefore presuppose matter, and
matter presupposes space. Strictly speaking, co-existence is a negative
determination, which merely signifies that two things or states are not
different in respect of time; thus their difference is to be sought for
elsewhere. But in any case, our knowledge of the permanence of substance,
_i.e._, of matter, must be based upon insight _a priori_; for it is raised
above all doubt, and therefore cannot be drawn from experience. I deduce
it from the fact that the principle of all becoming and passing away, the
law of causality, of which we are conscious _a priori_, is essentially
concerned only with the _changes_, _i.e._, the successive _states_ of
matter, is thus limited to the form, and leaves the matter untouched,
which therefore exists in our consciousness as the foundation of all
things, which is not subject to becoming or passing away, which has
therefore always been and will always continue to be. A deeper proof of
the permanence of substance, drawn from the analysis of our perception of
the empirical world in general, is to be found in the first book of this
work, § 4, where it is shown that the nature of matter consists in the
absolute _union of space and time_, a union which is only possible by
means of the idea of causality, consequently only for the understanding,
which is nothing but the subjective correlative of causality. Hence, also,
matter is never known otherwise than as producing effects, _i.e._, as
through and through causality; to be and to act are with it one, which is
indeed signified by the word _actuality_. Intimate union of space and
time—causality, matter, actuality—are thus one, and the subjective
correlative of this one is the understanding. Matter must bear in itself
the conflicting properties of both factors from which it proceeds, and it
is the idea of causality which abolishes what is contradictory in both,
and makes their co-existence conceivable by the understanding, through
which and for which alone matter is, and whose whole faculty consists in
the knowledge of cause and effect. Thus for the understanding there is
united in matter the inconstant flux of time, appearing as change of the
accidents, with the rigid immobility of space, which exhibits itself as
the permanence of substance. For if the substance passed away like the
accidents, the phenomenon would be torn away from space altogether, and
would only belong to time; the world of experience would be destroyed by
the abolition of matter, annihilation. Thus from the share which space has
in matter, _i.e._, in all phenomena of the actual—in that it is the
opposite and counterpart of time, and therefore in itself and apart from
the union with the latter knows absolutely no change—the principle of the
permanence of substance, which recognises everything as _a priori_
certain, had to be deduced and explained; but not from mere time, to which
for this purpose and quite erroneously Kant has attributed _permanence_.
In the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23, I have fully
explained the incorrectness of the following proof of the _a priori_
nature and of the necessity of the law of causality from the mere
succession of events in time; I must, therefore, content myself here by
referring to that passage.(6) This is precisely the case with the proof of
reciprocity also, the concept of which I was obliged to explain above as
invalid. What is necessary has also been said of modality, the working out
of the principles of which now follows.
There are still a few points in the further course of the transcendental
analytic which I should have to refute were it not that I am afraid of
trying the patience of the reader; I therefore leave them to his own
reflection. But ever anew in the “Critique of Pure Reason” we meet that
principal and fundamental error of Kant’s, which I have copiously
denounced above, the complete failure to distinguish abstract, discursive
knowledge from intuitive. It is this that throws a constant obscurity over
Kant’s whole theory of the faculty of knowledge, and never allows the
reader to know what he is really speaking about at any time, so that
instead of understanding, he always merely conjectures, for he alternately
tries to understand what is said as referring to thought and to
perception, and remains always in suspense. In the chapter “On the
Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena,” Kant carries that
incredible want of reflection as to the nature of the idea of perception
and the abstract idea, as I shall explain more fully immediately, so far
as to make the monstrous assertion that without thought, that is, without
abstract conceptions, there is no knowledge of an object; and that
perception, because it is not thought, is also not knowledge, and, in
general, is nothing but a mere affection of sensibility, mere sensation!
Nay, more, that perception without conception is absolutely void; but
conception without perception is yet always something (p. 253; V. 309).
Now this is exactly the opposite of the truth; for concepts obtain all
significance, all content, only from their relation to ideas of
perception, from which they have been abstracted, derived, that is,
constructed through the omission of all that is unessential: therefore if
the foundation of perception is taken away from them, they are empty and
void. Perceptions, on the contrary, have in themselves immediate and very
great significance (in them, indeed, the thing in itself objectifies
itself); they represent themselves, express themselves, have no mere
borrowed content like concepts. For the principle of sufficient reason
governs them only as the law of causality, and determines as such only
their position in space and time; it does not, however, condition their
content and their significance, as is the case with concepts, in which it
appears as the principle of the ground of knowing. For the rest, it looks
as if Kant really wished here to set about distinguishing the idea of
perception and the abstract idea. He objects to Leibnitz and Locke that
the former reduced everything to abstract ideas, and the latter everything
to ideas of perception. But yet he arrives at no distinction; and although
Locke and Leibnitz really committed these errors, Kant himself is burdened
with a third error which includes them both—the error of having so mixed
up knowledge of perception and abstract knowledge that a monstrous hybrid
of the two resulted, a chimera of which no distinct idea is possible, and
which therefore necessarily only confused and stupefied students, and set
them at variance.
Certainly thought and perception are separated more in the chapter
referred to “On the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena”
than anywhere else, but the nature of this distinction is here a
fundamentally false one. On p. 253; V. 309, it is said: “If I take away
all thought (through the categories) from empirical knowledge, there
remains absolutely no knowledge of an object, for through mere perception
nothing at all is thought, and that this affection of sensibility is in me
establishes really no relation of such ideas to any object.” This sentence
contains, in some degree, all the errors of Kant in a nutshell; for it
brings out clearly that he has falsely conceived the relation between
sensation, perception, and thought, and accordingly identifies the
perception, whose form he yet supposes to be space, and indeed space in
all its three dimensions, with the mere subjective sensation in the organs
of sense, but only allows the knowledge of an object to be given through
thought, which is different from perception. I, on the contrary, say:
Objects are first of all objects of perception, not of thought, and all
knowledge of _objects_ is originally and in itself perception. Perception,
however, is by no means mere sensation, but the understanding is already
active in it. The thought, which is added only in the case of men, not in
the case of the brutes, is mere abstraction from perception, gives no
fundamentally new knowledge, does not itself establish objects which were
not before, but merely changes the form of the knowledge already won
through perception, makes it abstract knowledge in concepts, whereby its
concrete or perceptible character is lost, but, on the other hand,
combination of it becomes possible, which immeasurably extends the range
of its applicability. The material of our thought is, on the other hand,
nothing else than our perceptions themselves, and not something which the
perceptions did not contain, and which was added by the thought; therefore
the material of everything that appears in our thought must be capable of
verification in our perception, for otherwise it would be an empty
thought. Although this material is variously manipulated and transformed
by thought, it must yet be capable of being reduced to perception, and the
thought traced back to this—just as a piece of gold can be reduced from
all its solutions, oxides, sublimates, and combinations, and presented
pure and undiminished. This could not happen if thought itself had added
something, and, indeed, the principal thing, to the object.
The whole of the chapter on the Amphiboly, which follows this, is merely a
criticism of the Leibnitzian philosophy, and as such is on the whole
correct, though the form or pattern on which it is constructed is chosen
merely for the sake of architectonic symmetry, which here also is the
guiding clue. Thus, to carry out the analogy with the Aristotelian
Organon, a transcendental Topic is set up, which consists in this, that
every conception is to be considered from four points of view, in order to
make out to which faculty of knowledge it belongs. But these four points
of view are quite arbitrarily selected, and ten others might be added to
them with just as much right; but their fourfold number corresponds to the
titles of the categories, and therefore the chief doctrine of Leibnitz is
divided among them as best it may be. By this critique, also, to some
extent, certain errors are stamped as natural to the reason, whereas they
were merely false abstractions of Leibnitz’s, who, rather than learn from
his great philosophical contemporaries, Spinoza and Locke, preferred to
serve up his own strange inventions. In the chapter on the Amphiboly of
Reflection it is finally said that there may possibly be a kind of
perception entirely different from ours, to which, however, our categories
are applicable; therefore the objects of that supposed perception would be
_noumena_, things which can only be _thought_ by us; but since the
perception which would give that thought meaning is wanting to us, and
indeed is altogether quite problematical, the object of that thought would
also merely be a wholly indefinite possibility. I have shown above by
quotations that Kant, in utter contradiction with himself, sets up the
categories now as the condition of knowledge of perception, now as the
function of merely abstract thought. Here they appear exclusively in the
latter sense, and it seems quite as if he wished to attribute them merely
to discursive thought. But if this is really his opinion, then necessarily
at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic, before specifying the
different functions of thought at such length, he was necessarily bound to
characterise thought in general, and consequently to distinguish it from
perception; he ought to have shown what knowledge is given by mere
perception, and what that is new is added by thought. Then we would have
known what he was really speaking about; or rather, he would then have
spoken quite differently, first of perception, and then of thought;
instead of which, as it is, he is always dealing with something between
the two, which is a mere delusion. There would not then be that great gap
between the transcendental Æsthetic and the transcendental Logic, where,
after the exposition of the mere form of perception, he simply dismisses
its content, all that is empirically apprehended, with the phrase “It is
given,” and does not ask how it came about, _whether with or without
understanding_; but, with one spring, passes over to abstract thought; and
not even to thought in general, but at once to certain forms of thought,
and does not say a word about what thought is, what the concept is, what
is the relation of abstract and discursive to concrete and intuitive, what
is the difference between the knowledge of men and that of brutes, and
what is reason.
Yet it was just this distinction between abstract knowledge and knowledge
of perception, entirely overlooked by Kant, which the ancients denoted by
φαινομενα and νοουμενα,(7) and whose opposition and incommensurability
occupied them so much in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato’s
doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later the
Scholastics in the controversy between Nominalism and Realism, the seed of
which, so late in developing, was already contained in the opposite mental
tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who, in an inexcusable
manner, entirely neglected the thing to denote which the words φαινομενα
and νοουμενα had already been taken, took possession of the words, as if
they were still unappropriated, in order to denote by them his thing in
itself and his phenomenon.
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Since I have been obliged to reject Kant’s doctrine of the categories,
just as he rejected that of Aristotle, I wish here to indicate as a
suggestion a third way of reaching what is aimed at. What both Kant and
Aristotle sought for under the name of the categories were the most
general conceptions under which all things, however different, must be
subsumed, and through which therefore everything that exists would
ultimately be thought. Just on this account Kant conceived them as the
_forms_ of all thought.
Grammar is related to logic as clothes to the body. Should not, therefore,
these primary conceptions, the ground-bass of the reason, which is the
foundation of all special thought, without whose application, therefore,
no thought can take place, ultimately lie in those conceptions which just
on account of their exceeding generality (transcendentalism) have their
expression not in single words, but in whole classes of words, because one
of them is thought along with every word whatever it may be, whose
designation would therefore have to be looked for, not in the lexicon but
in the grammar? In fact, should they not be those distinctions of
conceptions on account of which the word which expresses them is either a
substantive or an adjective, a verb or an adverb, a pronoun, a
preposition, or some other particle—in short, the parts of speech? For
undoubtedly these denote the forms which all thought primarily assumes,
and in which it directly moves; accordingly they are the essential forms
of speech, the fundamental constituent elements of every language, so that
we cannot imagine any language which would not consist of at least
substantives, adjectives, and verbs. These fundamental forms would then
have subordinated to them those forms of thought which are expressed
through their inflections, that is, through declension and conjugation,
and it is unessential to the chief concern whether in denoting them we
call in the assistance of the article and the pronoun. We will examine the
thing, however, somewhat more closely, and ask the question anew: What are
the forms of thought?
(1.) Thought consists throughout of judging; judgments are the threads of
its whole web, for without making use of a verb our thought does not move,
and as often as we use a verb we judge.
(2.) Every judgment consists in the recognition of the relation between
subject and predicate, which it separates or unites with various
restrictions. It unites them from the recognition of the actual identity
of the two, which can only happen in the case of synonyms; then in the
recognition that the one is always thought along with the other, though
the converse does not hold—in the universal affirmative proposition; up to
the recognition that the one is sometimes thought along with the other, in
the particular affirmative proposition. The negative propositions take the
opposite course. Accordingly in every judgment the subject, the predicate,
and the copula, the latter affirmative or negative, must be to be found;
even although each of these is not denoted by a word of its own, as is
however generally the case. The predicate and the copula are often denoted
by _one_ word, as “Caius ages;” sometimes one word denotes all three, as
_concurritur_, _i.e._, “the armies engage.” From this it is evident that
the forms of thought are not to be sought for precisely and directly in
words, nor even in the parts of speech, for even in the same language the
same judgment may be expressed in different words, and indeed in different
parts of speech, yet the thought remains the same, and consequently also
its form; for the thought could not be the same if the form of thought
itself were different. But with the same thought and the same form of
thought the form of words may very well be different, for it is merely the
outward clothing of the thought, which, on the other hand, is inseparable
from _its_ form. Thus grammar only explains the clothing of the forms of
thought. The parts of speech can therefore be deduced from the original
forms of thought themselves which are independent of all language; their
work is to express these forms of thought in all their modifications. They
are the instrument and the clothing of the forms of thought, and must be
accurately adapted to the structure of the latter, so that it may be
recognised in them.
(3.) These real, unalterable, original forms of thought are certainly
_those of Kant’s logical table of judgments_; only that in this table are
to be found blind windows for the sake of symmetry and the table of the
categories; these must all be omitted, and also a false arrangement.
Thus:—
(_a._) _Quality_: affirmation and negation, _i.e._, combination and
separation of concepts: two forms. It depends on the copula.
(_b._) _Quantity_: the subject-concept is taken either in whole or in
part: totality or multiplicity. To the first belong also individual
subjects: Socrates means “all Socrateses.” Thus two forms. It depends on
the subject.
(_c._) _Modality_: has really three forms. It determines the quality as
necessary, actual, or contingent. It consequently depends also on the
copula.
These three forms of thought spring from the laws of thought of
contradiction and identity. But from the principle of sufficient reason
and the law of excluded middle springs—
(_d._) _Relation._ It only appears if we judge concerning completed
judgments, and can only consist in this, that it either asserts the
dependence of one judgment upon another (also in the plurality of both),
and therefore combines them in the _hypothetical_ proposition; or else
asserts that judgments exclude each other, and therefore separates them in
the _disjunctive_ proposition. It depends on the copula, which here
separates or combines the completed judgments.
The _parts of speech_ and grammatical forms are ways of expressing the
three constituent parts of the judgment, the subject, the predicate, and
the copula, and also of the possible relations of these; thus of the forms
of thought just enumerated, and the fuller determinations and
modifications of these. Substantive, adjective, and verb are therefore
essential fundamental constituent elements of language in general;
therefore they must be found in all languages. Yet it is possible to
conceive a language in which adjective and verb would always be fused
together, as is sometimes the case in all languages. Provisionally it may
be said, for the expression of the _subject_ are intended the substantive,
the article, and the pronoun; for the expression of the _predicate_, the
adjective, the adverb, and the preposition; for the expression of the
_copula_, the verb, which, however, with the exception of the verb to be,
also contains the predicate. It is the task of the philosophy of grammar
to teach the precise mechanism of the expression of the forms of thought,
as it is the task of logic to teach the operations with the forms of
thought themselves.
_Note._—As a warning against a false path and to illustrate the above, I
mention S. Stern’s “_Vorläufige Grundlage zur Sprachphilosophie_,” 1835,
which is an utterly abortive attempt to construct the categories out of
the grammatical forms. He has entirely confused thought with perception,
and therefore, instead of the categories of thought, he has tried to
deduce the supposed categories of perception from the grammatical forms,
and consequently has placed the grammatical forms in direct relation to
perception. He is involved in the great error that _language_ is
immediately related to _perception_, instead of being directly related
only to thought as such, thus to the _abstract concepts_, and only by
means of these to perception, to which they, however, have a relation
which introduces an entire change of the form. What exists in perception,
thus also the relations which proceed from time and space, certainly
becomes an object of thought; thus there must also be forms of speech to
express it, yet always merely in the abstract, as concepts. Concepts are
always the primary material of thought, and the forms of logic are always
related to these, never _directly_ to perception. Perception always
determines only the material, never the formal truth of the proposition,
for the formal truth is determined according to the logical rules alone.
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I return to the Kantian philosophy, and come now to the _Transcendental
Dialectic_. Kant opens it with the explanation of _reason_, the faculty
which is to play the principal part in it, for hitherto only sensibility
and understanding were on the scene. When considering his different
explanations of reason, I have already spoken above of the explanation he
gives here that “it is the faculty of principles.” It is now taught here
that all the _a priori_ knowledge hitherto considered, which makes pure
mathematics and pure natural science possible, affords only _rules_, and
no _principles_; because it proceeds from perceptions and forms of
knowledge, and not from mere conceptions, which is demanded if it is to be
called a principle. Such a principle must accordingly be knowledge _from
pure conceptions_ and yet _synthetical_. But this is absolutely
impossible. From pure conceptions nothing but _analytical_ propositions
can ever proceed. If conceptions are to be synthetically and yet _a
priori_ combined, this combination must necessarily be accomplished by
some third thing, through a pure perception of the formal possibility of
experience, just as synthetic judgments _a posteriori_ are brought about
through empirical perception; consequently a synthetic proposition _a
priori_ can never proceed from pure conceptions. In general, however, we
are _a priori_ conscious of nothing more than the principle of sufficient
reason in its different forms, and therefore no other synthetic judgments
_a priori_ are possible than those which proceed from that which receives
its content from that principle.
However, Kant finally comes forward with a pretended principle of the
reason answering to his demand, yet only with this _one_, from which
others afterwards follow as corollaries. It is the principle which Chr.
Wolf set up and explained in his “_Cosmologia_,” sect. i. c. 2, § 93, and
in his “_Ontologia_,” § 178. As now above, under the title of the
Amphiboly, mere Leibnitzian philosophemes were taken for natural and
necessary aberrations of the reason, and were criticised as such, so here
precisely the same thing happens with the philosophemes of Wolf. Kant
still presents this principle of the reason in an obscure light, through
indistinctness, indefiniteness, and breaking of it up (p. 307; V. 361, and
322; V. 379). Clearly expressed, however, it is as follows: “If the
conditioned is given, the totality of its conditions must also be given,
and therefore also the _unconditioned_, through which alone that totality
becomes complete.” We become most vividly aware of the apparent truth of
this proposition if we imagine the conditions and the conditioned as the
links of a suspended chain, the upper end of which, however, is not
visible, so that it might extend _ad infinitum_; since, however, the chain
does not fall, but hangs, there must be above _one_ link which is the
first, and in some way is fixed. Or, more briefly: the reason desires to
have a point of attachment for the causal chain which reaches back to
infinity; it would be convenient for it. But we will examine the
proposition, not in figures, but in itself. Synthetic it certainly is;
for, analytically, nothing more follows from the conception of the
conditioned than that of the condition. It has not, however, _a priori_
truth, nor even _a posteriori_, but it surreptitiously obtains its
appearance of truth in a very subtle way, which I must now point out.
Immediately, and _a priori_, we have the knowledge which the principle of
sufficient reason in its four forms expresses. From this immediate
knowledge all abstract expressions of the principle of sufficient reason
are derived, and they are thus indirect; still more, however, is this the
case with inferences or corollaries from them. I have already explained
above how _abstract_ knowledge often unites a variety of _intuitive_
cognitions in _one_ form or _one_ concept in such a way that they can no
longer be distinguished; therefore abstract knowledge stands to intuitive
knowledge as the shadow to the real objects, the great multiplicity of
which it presents through one outline comprehending them all. Now the
pretended principle of the reason makes use of this shadow. In order to
deduce from the principle of sufficient reason the unconditioned, which
directly contradicts it, it prudently abandons the immediate concrete
knowledge of the content of the principle of sufficient reason in its
particular forms, and only makes use of abstract concepts which are
derived from it, and have value and significance only through it, in order
to smuggle its unconditioned somehow or other into the wide sphere of
those concepts. Its procedure becomes most distinct when clothed in
dialectical form; for example, thus: “If the conditioned exists, its
condition must also be given, and indeed all given, thus completely, thus
the totality of its conditions; consequently, if they constitute a series,
the whole series, consequently also its first beginning, thus the
unconditioned.” Here it is false that the conditions of a conditioned can
constitute a _series_. Rather must the totality of the conditions of
everything conditioned be contained in its _nearest_ ground or reason from
which it directly proceeds, and which is only thus a _sufficient_ ground
or reason. For example, the different determinations of the state which is
the cause, all of which must be present together before the effect can
take place. But the series, for example, the chain of causes, arises
merely from the fact that we regard what immediately before was the
condition as now a conditioned; but then at once the whole operation
begins again from the beginning, and the principle of sufficient reason
appears anew with its claim. But there can never be for a conditioned a
properly successive _series_ of conditions, which exist merely as such,
and on account of that which is at last conditioned; it is always an
alternating series of conditioneds and conditions; as each link is laid
aside the chain is broken, and the claim of the principle of sufficient
reason entirely satisfied, it arises anew because the condition becomes
the conditioned. Thus the principle of _sufficient_ reason always demands
only the completeness of the _immediate or next condition_, never the
completeness of a _series_. But just this conception of the completeness
of the condition leaves it undetermined whether this completeness should
be simultaneous or successive; and since the latter is chosen, the demand
now arises for a complete series of conditions following each other. Only
through an arbitrary abstraction is a series of causes and effects
regarded as a series of causes alone, which exists merely on account of
the last effect, and is therefore demanded as its _sufficient_ reason.
From closer and more intelligent consideration, and by rising from the
indefinite generality of abstraction to the particular definite reality,
it appears, on the contrary, that the demand for a _sufficient_ reason
extends only to the completeness of the determinations of the _immediate_
cause, not to the completeness of a series. The demand of the principle of
sufficient reason is completely extinguished in each sufficient reason
given. It arises, however, immediately anew, because this reason is again
regarded as a consequent; but it never demands directly a series of
reasons. If, on the other hand, instead of going to the thing itself, we
confine ourselves to the abstract concepts, these distinctions vanish.
Then a chain of alternating causes and effects, or of alternating logical
reasons and consequents, is given out as simply a chain of causes of the
last effect, or reasons of the last consequent, and the _completeness of
the conditions_, through which alone a reason becomes _sufficient_,
appears as the completeness of that assumed _series_ of reasons alone,
which only exist on account of the last consequent. There then appears the
abstract principle of the reason very boldly with its demand for the
unconditioned. But, in order to recognise the invalidity of this claim,
there is no need of a critique of reason by means of antinomies and their
solution, but only of a critique of reason understood in my sense, an
examination of the relation of abstract knowledge to direct intuitive
knowledge, by means of ascending from the indefinite generality of the
former to the fixed definiteness of the latter. From such a critique,
then, it here appears that the nature of the reason by no means consists
in the demand for an unconditioned; for, whenever it proceeds with full
deliberation, it must itself find that an unconditioned is an absurdity.
The reason as a faculty of knowledge can always have to do only with
objects; but every object for the subject is necessarily and irrevocably
subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason, both _a parte ante_
and _a parte post_. The validity of the principle of sufficient reason is
so involved in the form of consciousness that we absolutely cannot imagine
anything objective of which no _why_ could further be demanded; thus we
cannot imagine an absolute absolute, like a blind wall in front of us.
That his convenience should lead this or that person to stop at some
point, and assume such an absolute at pleasure, is of no avail against
that incontestable certainty _a priori_, even if he should put on an air
of great importance in doing so. In fact, the whole talk about the
absolute, almost the sole theme of philosophies since Kant, is nothing but
the cosmological proof _incognito_. This proof, in consequence of the case
brought against it by Kant, deprived of all right and declared outlawed,
dare no longer show itself in its true form, and therefore appears in all
kinds of disguises—now in distinguished form, concealed under intellectual
intuition or pure thought; now as a suspicious vagabond, half begging,
half demanding what it wants in more unpretending philosophemes. If an
absolute must absolutely be had, then I will give one which is far better
fitted to meet all the demands which are made on such a thing than these
visionary phantoms; it is matter. It has no beginning, and it is
imperishable; thus it is really independent, and _quod per se est et per
se concipitur_; from its womb all proceeds, and to it all returns; what
more can be desired of an absolute? But to those with whom no critique of
reason has succeeded, we should rather say—
“Are not ye like unto women, who ever
Return to the point from which they set out,
Though reason should have been talked by the hour?”
That the return to an unconditioned cause, to a first beginning, by no
means lies in the nature of reason, is, moreover, practically proved by
the fact that the primitive religions of our race, which even yet have the
greatest number of followers upon earth, Brahmanism and Buddhaism, neither
know nor admit such assumptions, but carry the series of phenomena
conditioning each other into infinity. Upon this point, I refer to the
note appended to the criticism of the first antinomy, which occurs further
on; and the reader may also see Upham’s “Doctrine of Buddhaism” (p. 9),
and in general all genuine accounts of the religions of Asia. Judaism and
reason ought not to be identified.
Kant, who by no means desires to maintain his pretended principle of
reason as objectively valid, but merely as subjectively necessary, deduces
it even as such only by means of a shallow sophism, p. 307; V. 364. He
says that because we seek to subsume every truth known to us under a more
general truth, as far as this process can be carried, this is nothing else
than the pursuit of the unconditioned, which we already presuppose. But,
in truth, in this endeavour we do nothing more than apply reason, and
intentionally make use of it to simplify our knowledge by enabling us to
survey it—reason, which is that faculty of abstract, general knowledge
that distinguishes the reflective, thinking man, endowed with speech, from
the brute, which is the slave of the present. For the use of reason just
consists in this, that we know the particular through the universal, the
case through the rule, the rule through the more general rule; thus that
we seek the most general points of view. Through such survey or general
view our knowledge is so facilitated and perfected that from it arises the
great difference between the life of the brutes and that of men, and again
between the life of educated and that of uneducated men. Now, certainly
the series of _grounds of knowledge_, which exist only in the sphere of
the abstract, thus of reason, always finds an end in what is
indemonstrable, _i.e._, in an idea which is not further conditioned
according to this form of the principle of sufficient reason, thus in the
_a priori_ or _a posteriori_ directly perceptible ground of the first
proposition of the train of reasoning. I have already shown in the essay
on the principle of sufficient reason, § 50, that here the series of
grounds of knowledge really passes over into grounds of becoming or of
being. But one can only desire to make this circumstance hold good as a
proof of an unconditioned according to the law of causality, or even of
the mere demand for such an unconditioned, if one has not yet
distinguished the forms of the principle of sufficient reason at all, but,
holding to the abstract expression, has confounded them all. Kant,
however, seeks to establish that confusion, through a mere play upon
words, with _Universalitas_ and _Universitas_, p. 322; V. 379. Thus it is
fundamentally false that our search for higher grounds of knowledge, more
general truths, springs from the presupposition of an object unconditioned
in its being, or has anything whatever in common with this. Moreover, how
should it be essential to the reason to presuppose something which it must
know to be an absurdity as soon as it reflects? The source of that
conception of the unconditioned is rather to be found only in the
indolence of the individual who wishes by means of it to get rid of all
further questions, whether his own or of others, though entirely without
justification.
Now Kant himself denies objective validity to this pretended principle of
reason; he gives it, however, as a necessary subjective assumption, and
thus introduces an irremediable split into our knowledge, which he soon
allows to appear more clearly. With this purpose he unfolds that principle
of reason further, p. 322; V. 379, in accordance with the method of
architectonic symmetry of which he is so fond. From the three categories
of relation spring three kinds of syllogisms, each of which gives the clue
for the discovery of a special unconditioned, of which again there are
three: the soul, the world (as an object in itself and absolute totality),
and God. Now here we must at once note a great contradiction, of which
Kant, however, takes no notice, because it would be very dangerous to the
symmetry. Two of these unconditioneds are themselves conditioned by the
third, the soul and the world by God, who is the cause of their existence.
Thus the two former have by no means the predicate of unconditionedness in
common with the latter, though this is really the point here, but only
that of inferred being according to the principles of experience, beyond
the sphere of the possibility of experience.
Setting this aside, we recognise in the three unconditioneds, to which,
according to Kant, reason, following its essential laws, must come, the
three principal subjects round which the whole of philosophy under the
influence of Christianity, from the Scholastics down to Christian Wolf,
has turned. Accessible and familiar as these conceptions have become
through all these philosophers, and now also through the philosophers of
pure reason, this by no means shows that, without revelation, they would
necessarily have proceeded from the development of all reason as a
production peculiar to its very nature. In order to prove this it would be
necessary to call in the aid of historical criticism, and to examine
whether the ancient and non-European nations, especially the peoples of
Hindostan and many of the oldest Greek philosophers, really attained to
those conceptions, or whether it is only we who, by quite falsely
translating the Brahma of the Hindus and the Tien of the Chinese as “God,”
good-naturedly attribute such conceptions to them, just as the Greeks
recognised their gods everywhere; whether it is not rather the case that
theism proper is only to be found in the religion of the Jews, and in the
two religions which have proceeded from it, whose followers just on this
account comprise the adherents of all other religions on earth under the
name of heathen, which, by the way, is a most absurd and crude expression,
and ought to be banished at least from the writings of the learned,
because it identifies and jumbles together Brahmanists, Buddhists,
Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Gauls, Iroquois, Patagonians,
Caribbeans, Otaheiteans, Australians, and many others. Such an expression
is all very well for priests, but in the learned world it must at once be
shown the door: it can go to England and take up its abode at Oxford. It
is a thoroughly established fact that Buddhism, the religion which numbers
more followers than any other on earth, contains absolutely no theism,
indeed rejects it. As regards Plato, it is my opinion that he owes to the
Jews the theism with which he is periodically seized. On this account
Numenius (according to Clem. Alex., _Strom._, i. c. 22, Euseb. _præp.
evang._, xiii. 12, and Suidas under Numenius) called him the _Moses
græcisans_: Τι γαρ εστι Πλατων, η Μωσης αττικιζων; and he accuses him of
having stolen (αποσυλησας) his doctrine of God and the creation from the
Mosaical writings. Clemens often repeats that Plato knew and made use of
Moses, _e.g._, _Strom._, i. 25.—v. c. 14, § 90, &c., &c.; _Pædagog._, ii.
10, and iii. 11; also in the _Cohortatio ad gentes_, c. 6, where, after he
has bitterly censured and derided the whole of the Greek philosophers in
the preceding chapter because they were not Jews, he bestows on Plato
nothing but praise, and breaks out into pure exultation that as Plato had
learnt his geometry from the Egyptians, his astronomy from the
Babylonians, magic from the Thracians, and much also from the Assyrians,
so he had learnt his theism from the Jews: Οιδα σου τους διδασκαλους, καν
αποκρυπτειν εθελῇς, ... δοξαν την του θεου παρ᾽ αυτων ωφελησει των Εβραιων
(_Tuos magistros novi, licet eos celare velis, ... illa de Deo sententia
suppeditata tibi est ab Hebræis_). A pathetic scene of recognition. But I
see a remarkable confirmation of the matter in what follows. According to
Plutarch (_in Mario_), and, better, according to Lactantius (i. 3, 19),
Plato thanked Nature that he had been born a human being and not a brute,
a man and not a woman, a Greek and not a barbarian. Now in Isaac Euchel’s
“Prayers of the Jews,” from the Hebrew, second edition, 1799, p. 7, there
is a morning prayer in which God is thanked and praised that the
worshipper was born a Jew and not a heathen, a free man and not a slave, a
man and not a woman. Such an historical investigation would have spared
Kant an unfortunate necessity in which he now becomes involved, in that he
makes these three conceptions spring necessarily from the nature of
reason, and yet explains that they are untenable and unverifiable by the
reason, and thus makes the reason itself a sophisticator; for he says, p.
339; V. 397: “There are sophistications, not of man, but of pure reason
itself, from which even the wisest cannot free himself, and although after
much trouble he may be able to avoid error, yet he never can escape from
the illusion which unceasingly torments and mocks him.” Therefore these
Kantian “Ideas of the Reason” might be compared to the focus in which the
converging reflected rays from a concave mirror meet several inches before
its surface, in consequence of which, by an inevitable process of the
understanding, an object presents itself to us there which is a thing
without reality.
But the name “Idea” is very unfortunately chosen for these pretended
necessary productions of the pure theoretical reason, and violently
appropriated from Plato, who used it to denote the eternal forms which,
multiplied through space and time, become
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