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FOOTNOTES FOR
THE INTRODUCTION
Footnote 1.
Says Horace:
" Rusticus expectat, dum defluat amnis, at ille
Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."
Translation:
" A rustic [peasant] waits on the shore
For the river to flow away,
But the river flows, and flows on as before,
And so it flows forever."
Footnote 2.
Nevertheless Hume
called this very destructive science metaphysics and attached to it
great value. "Metaphysics and morals" he declares "are
the most important branches of science; mathematics and physics are not
nearly so important" ["On the Rise and Progress of Arts and
Sciences," Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary]. But the
acute man merely regarded the negative use arising from the moderation
of extravagant claims of speculative reason, and the complete settlement
of the many endless and troublesome controversies that mislead mankind.
He overlooked the positive injury which results, if reason be deprived
of its most important prospects, which can alone supply to the will the
highest aim for all its endeavors.
265
| Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
For information about this text, click
here.
PROLEGOMENA
PREAMBLE ON THE PECULIARITIES OF ALL METAPHYSICAL COGNITION.
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Section 1: Of the
Sources of Metaphysics
If
it becomes desirable to formulate any cognition as science, it will be
necessary first to determine accurately those peculiar features which no
other science has in common with it, constituting its characteristics;
otherwise the. boundaries of all sciences become confused, and none of
them can be treated thoroughly according to its nature.
The
unique characteristics of a science may consist of a simple difference of
object, or of the sources of cognition, or of the kind of cognition, or
perhaps of all three conjointly. On this, therefore, depends the idea of
a possible science and its territory.
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266
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First,
as concerns the sources of metaphysical cognition, its very concept
implies that they cannot be empirical. Its principles (including not
only its maxims but its basic notions) must never be derived from
experience. It must not be physical but metaphysical knowledge, viz.,
knowledge lying beyond experience. It can therefore have for its basis
neither external experience, which is the source of physics proper, nor
internal, which is the basis of empirical psychology. It is therefore a
priori knowledge, coming from pure Understanding and pure reason.
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But
so far Metaphysics would not be distinguishable from pure Mathematics;
it must therefore be called pure philosophical cognition; and for the
meaning of this term I refer to the Critique of the Pure Reason (II.
"Methodology," Chap. I., Sec. 1), where the
distinction between these two employments of the reason is sufficiently
explained. So much concerning the sources of metaphysical cognition.
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267
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Section
2. Concerning the Kind of Cognition which can alone be called
Metaphysical
a.
Of
the Distinction Between Analytical and Synthetical Judgments in General.
--- The peculiarity of its sources demands that metaphysical cognition
must consist of nothing but a priori judgments. But whatever be their
origin, or their logical form, there is a distinction in judgments, as
to their content, according to which they are either merely explicative,
adding nothing to the content of the cognition, or expansive [ampliative], increasing
the given cognition: the former may be called analytical, the latter
synthetical, judgments.
Analytical judgments express nothing in the predicate but what has
been already actually thought in the concept of the subject, though not
so distinctly or with the same (full) consciousness. When
I say: "All bodies are extended," I have not amplified
in the least my concept of body, but have only analyzed it, as extension
was really thought to belong to that concept before the judgment was
made, though it was not expressed, this judgment is therefore
analytical. On the other hand,
this judgment, "All bodies have weight," contains in its predicate something not
actually thought in the general concept of the body; it amplifies my
knowledge by adding something to my concept, and must therefore be
called synthetical.
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b.
The
Common Principle of all Analytical Judgments is the Law of Contradiction.
--- All analytical judgments depend wholly on the law of
Contradiction, and are in their nature a priori cognitions, whether the
concepts that supply them with matter be empirical or not. For the
predicate of an affirmative analytical judgment is already contained in
the concept of the subject, of which it cannot be denied without
contradiction. In the same way its opposite is necessarily denied of the
subject in an analytical, but negative, judgment, by the same law of
contradiction. Such is the nature of the judgments: all bodies are
extended, and no bodies are unextended (i.e., simple).
For this very
reason all analytic judgments are a priori even when the concepts are
empirical, as, for example, "Gold is a yellow metal," for to know this I require no experience beyond
my concept of gold as a yellow metal. It is, in fact, the very concept,
and I need only analyze it, without looking beyond it elsewhere.
c. Synthetical
Judgments Require a Different Principle from the Law of Contradiction.
--- There
are synthetical a posteriori judgments of empirical origin; but there
are also others which are proved to be certain a priori, and which
spring from pure Understanding and Reason. Yet they both agree in this,
that they cannot possibly spring from the principle of analysis, viz.,
the law of contradiction, alone; they require a quite different
principle, though, from whatever they may be deduced, they must be
subject to the law of contradiction, which must never be violated, even
though everything cannot be deduced from it. I
shall first classify synthetic judgments.
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1.
Judgments of experience [empirical judgments] are always
synthetical. For it would be absurd to base an analytical
judgment on experience, as our concept suffices for the purpose without
requiring any testimony from experience. That body is extended, is a
judgment established a priori, and not an empirical judgment. For before
appealing to experience, we already have all the conditions of the
judgment in the concept, from which we have but to elicit the predicate
according to the law of contradiction, and thereby to become conscious
of the necessity of the judgment, which experience could not even teach
us. |
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2. Mathematical
judgments are all synthetical. This fact seems
hitherto to have altogether escaped the observation of those who have
analyzed human reason; it even seems directly opposed to all their
conjectures, though incontestably certain, and most important in its
consequences. For as it was found that the conclusions of mathematicians
all proceed according to the law of contradiction (as is demanded by all
apodictic certainty), men persuaded themselves that the fundamental
principles were known from the same law. This was a great mistake, for a
synthetical proposition can indeed be comprehended according to the law
of contradiction, but only by presupposing another synthetical
proposition from which it follows, but never in and by itself.
First of all, we
must observe that all proper mathematical judgments are a priori, and
not empirical, because they carry with them necessity, which cannot be
obtained from experience. But if this be not conceded to me, very good;
I shall confine my assertion pure Mathematics, the very notion of which
implies that it contains pure a priori and not empirical cognitions.
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269
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It
might at first be thought that the proposition 7 + 5 = 12 is a mere
analytical judgment, following from the concept of the sum of seven and
five, according to the law of contradiction. But on closer examination
it appears that the concept of the sum of 7+5 contains merely their
union in a single number, without its being at all thought what the
particular number is that unites them. The concept of twelve is by no
means thought by merely thinking of the combination of seven and five;
and analyze this possible sum as we may, we shall not discover twelve in
the concept. We must go beyond these concepts, by calling to our aid
some intuition [Anschauung], i.e., either our five fingers, or five
points (as Segner has it in his Arithmetic), and we must add
successively the units of the five, given in some intuition [Anschauung],
to the concept of seven. Hence our concept is really amplified by the
proposition 7 + 5 = 12, and we add to the first a second, not thought
in it. Arithmetical
judgments are therefore synthetical, and the more plainly
according as
we take larger numbers; for in such cases it is clear that,
however
closely we analyze our concepts without calling images
[Anschauung] to our aid, we can never find the sum by such mere
dissection. |
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All
principles of geometry are no less synthetical. That a straight line is
the shortest path between two points is a synthetical proposition. For
my concept of straight contains nothing of quantity, but only a quality.
The concept of shortness is therefore altogether additional, and
cannot be obtained by any analysis of the concept of straight. Here, too,
intuition [Anschauung] must come to aid us. It alone makes the
synthesis possible.
Some
other principles, assumed by geometers, are indeed actually analytical,
and depend on the law of contradiction; but they only serve, as
identical propositions, as a method of concatenation, and not as
principles, e. g., a=a, the whole is equal to itself, or a + b > a, the
whole is greater than its part. And yet even these, though they are
recognized as valid from mere concepts, are only admitted in
mathematics, because they can be represented in some intuition [Anschauung].
What
usually makes us believe that the predicate of such apodeictic [certain]
judgments
is already contained in our concept, and that the judgment is therefore
analytical, is the duplicity of the expression, requesting us to think a
certain predicate as of necessity implied in the thought of a given
concept, which necessity attaches to the concept. But the question is
not what we are requested to join in thought to the given concept, but
what we actually think together with and in it, though obscurely; and so
it appears that the predicate belongs to these concepts necessarily
indeed, yet not directly but indirectly by an added visualization [Anschauung].
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Section
3. A
Remark on the General Division of judgments into Analytical and
Synthetical |
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This division is indispensable, as concerns the Critique of
human understanding, and therefore deserves to be called
classical,
though otherwise it is of little use, but this is the reason why
dogmatic philosophers, who always seek the sources of
metaphysical
judgments in Metaphysics itself, and not apart from it, in the
pure laws
of reason generally, altogether neglected this apparently
obvious
distinction. Thus the celebrated Wolf,
and his acute follower Baumgarten, came to seek the proof of the
principle of Sufficient Reason, which is clearly synthetical, in
the principle of Contradiction. In
Locke's Essay, however, I find an indication of my division. For in the
fourth book (chap. iii. Section 9, seq.), having discussed the various
connections of representations in judgments, and their sources, one of
which he makes "identity and contradiction" (analytical
judgments), and another the coexistence of representations in a subject
(synthetical judgments),
he confesses (Section 10) that our a priori knowledge of the latter is
very narrow, and almost nothing. But in his remarks on this species of
cognition, there is so little of what is definite, and reduced to rules,
that we cannot wonder if no one, not even Hume, was led to make
investigations concerning this sort of judgments. For such general and
yet definite principles are not easily learned from other men, who have
had them obscurely in their minds. We must hit on them first by our own
reflection, then we find them elsewhere, where we could not possibly
nave found them at first, because the authors themselves did not know
that such an idea lay at the basis of their observations. Men who never
think independently have nevertheless the acuteness to discover
everything, after it has been once shown them, in what was said long
since, though no one ever saw it there before. |
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Section
4. The
General Question of the Prolegemena: Is Metaphysics at all Possible? |
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Were
a metaphysics, which could maintain its place as a science,
really in
existence; could we say, here is metaphysics, learn it, and it
will
convince you irresistibly and irrevocably of its truth: this
question
would be useless, and there would only remain that other
question (which
would rather be a test of our acuteness, than a proof of the
existence
of the thing itself), "How is the science possible, and how does
reason come to attain it?" But human reason has not been so
fortunate in this case. There is no single book to which you can
point
as you do to Euclid, and say: This is Metaphysics; here you may
find the
noblest objects of this science, the knowledge of a highest
Being, and
of a future existence, proved from principles of pure reason. We
can be shown indeed many judgments, demonstrably
certain, and never questioned; but these are all analytical, and
rather concern the materials and the scaffolding for Metaphysics,
than the extension of knowledge, which is our proper object in
studying it (Sect 2). Even supposing you produce synthetical
judgments (such as the law of Sufficient Reason, which you have
never proved, as you ought to, from pure reason
a priori, though
we gladly concede its truth), you lapse when they come to be
employed for your principal object, into such doubtful
assertions, that in all ages one Metaphysics has contradicted
another, either in its assertions, or their proofs, and thus has
itself destroyed its own claim to lasting assent. Nay,
the very attempts to set up such a science are the main cause of
the
early appearance of skepticism, a mental attitude in which
reason treats
itself with such violence that it could never have arisen save
from
complete despair of ever satisfying our most important
aspirations. For
long before men began to inquire into nature methodically, they
consulted abstract reason, which had to some extent been
exercised by
means of ordinary experience; for reason is ever present, while
laws of
nature must usually be discovered with labor. So Metaphysics
floated to
the surface, like foam, which dissolved the moment it was
scooped off. But immediately
there appeared a new supply on the surface, to be ever eagerly
gathered up by some, while others, instead of seeking in the
depths the cause of the phenomenon, thought they showed their
wisdom by ridiculing the idle labor of their neighbors. |
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The
essential and distinguishing feature of pure mathematical cognition
among all other a priori cognitions is, that it cannot at all proceed
from concepts, but only by means of the construction of concepts (see
Critique, "Methodology," Chap. I., Section 1). As
therefore in its judgments it must proceed beyond the concept to that
which its corresponding visualization [Anschauung] contains, these
judgments neither can, nor ought to, arise analytically, by dissecting
the concept, but are all synthetical. |
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I
cannot refrain from pointing out the disadvantage resulting to
philosophy from the neglect of this easy and apparently insignificant
observation. Hume being prompted (a task worthy of a philosopher) to
cast his eye over the whole field of a priori cognitions in which human
understanding claims such mighty possessions, heedlessly severed from it
a whole, and indeed its most valuable, province, viz., pure mathematics;
for he thought its nature, or, so to speak, the state-constitution of
this empire, depended on totally different principles, namely, on the
law of contradiction alone; and although he did not divide judgments in
this manner formally and universally as I have done here, what he said
was equivalent to this: that mathematics contains only analytical, but
metaphysics synthetical, a priori judgments. In this, however, he was
greatly mistaken, and the mistake had a decidedly injurious effect upon
his whole conception. But for this, he would have extended his question
concerning the origin of our synthetical judgments far beyond the
metaphysical concept of causality, and included in it the possibility of
mathematics a priori also, for this latter he must have
assumed to be
equally synthetical. And then he could not have based his
metaphysical judgments on mere experience
without subjecting the axioms of mathematics equally to
experience, a thing which he was far too acute to do. The good company
into
which metaphysics would thus have been brought, would have saved
it from the danger of a contemptuous ill-treatment, for the
thrust intended for it must have reached mathematics, which was
not and could not have been Hume's intention. Thus that acute
man would have been led into considerations which must needs be
similar to those that now occupy us, but which would have gained
inestimably by his inimitably elegant style.
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3.
Metaphysical judgments, properly so called, are all synthetical. We must distinguish
judgments pertaining to metaphysics from metaphysical judgments properly
so called. Many of the former are analytical, but they only afford the
means for metaphysical judgments, which are the whole end of the
science, and which are always synthetical. For if there be concepts
pertaining to metaphysics (as, for example, that of substance), the
judgments springing from simple analysis of them also pertain to
metaphysics, as, for example, substance is that which only exists as
subject; and by means of several such analytical judgments, we seek to
approach the definition of the concept. But
as the analysis of a pure concept of the understanding pertaining to
metaphysics, does not proceed in any different manner from the
dissection of any other, even empirical, concepts, not pertaining to
metaphysics (such as: air is an elastic fluid, the elasticity of which
is not destroyed by any known degree of cold), it follows that the
concept indeed, but not the analytical judgment, is properly
metaphysical. This science has something peculiar in the production of
its a priori cognitions, which must therefore be distinguished from the
features it has in common with other rational knowledge. Thus the
judgment, that all the substance in things is permanent, is a
synthetical and properly metaphysical judgment. |
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If
the a priori concepts, which constitute the materials of metaphysics,
have first been collected according to fixed principles, then their
analysis will be of great value. It might be taught as a particular part
(as a philosophia definitiva), containing nothing but analytical
judgments pertaining to metaphysics, and could be treated separately
from the synthetical which constitute metaphysics proper. For indeed
these analyses are not elsewhere of much value, except in metaphysics,
i.e., as regards the synthetical judgments, which are to be generated by
these previously analyzed concepts.
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The
conclusion drawn in this section then is, that metaphysics is properly
concerned with synthetical propositions a priori, and these alone
constitute its end, for which it indeed requires various dissections of
its concepts, viz., of its analytical judgments, but wherein the
procedure is not different from that in every other kind of knowledge,
in which we merely seek to render our concepts distinct by analysis. But
the generation of a priori cognition by concrete images as well as by
concepts, in fine of synthetical propositions a priori in philosophical
cognition, constitutes the essential subject of metaphysics. |
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Weary
therefore of dogmatism, which teaches us nothing, and of
skepticism, which does not even promise us anything, not even the quiet
state of a contented ignorance; disquieted by the importance of
knowledge so much needed; and lastly, rendered suspicious by long
experience of all knowledge which we believe we possess, or which offers
itself, under the title of pure reason: there remains but one critical
question on the answer to which our future procedure depends, viz., is
metaphysics at all possible? But this question must be answered not by
skeptical objections to the asseverations of some actual system of
metaphysics (for we do not as yet admit such a thing to exist), but from
the conception, as yet only problematical, of a science of this sort. |
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In
the Critique of Pure Reason I have treated this question synthetically,
by making inquiries into pure reason itself, and endeavoring in this
source to determine the elements as well as the laws of its pure use
according to principles. The task is difficult, and requires a resolute
reader to penetrate by degrees into a system, based on no data except
reason itself, and which therefore seeks, without resting upon any fact,
to unfold knowledge from its original germs. These Prolegomena,
however, are designed for preparatory exercises; they are intended
rather to point out what we have to do in order if possible to actualize
a science, than to propound it. They must therefore rest upon something
already known as trustworthy, from which we can set out with confidence,
and ascend to sources as yet unknown, the discovery of which will not
only explain to us what we knew, but exhibit a sphere of many cognitions
which all spring from the same sources. The method of such Prolegomena,
especially of those designed as a preparation for future metaphysics, is
consequently analytical. |
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But
it happens fortunately, that though we cannot assume metaphysics to be
an actual science, we can say with confidence that certain pure a priori
synthetical cognitions, pure Mathematics and pure Physics are actual and
given; for both contain propositions, which are thoroughly recognized as
apodictically certain, partly by mere reason, partly by general consent
arising from experience, and yet as independent of experience. We have
therefore some at least uncontested synthetical knowledge a priori, and
need not ask whether it be possible, for it is actual, but how it is
possible, in order that we may deduce from the principle which makes the
given cognitions possible the possibility of all the rest.
Section
5. The
General Problem: How is Cognition from Pure Reason Possible? |
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We
have above learned the significant distinction between analytical and
synthetical judgments. The possibility of analytical propositions was
easily comprehended, being entirely founded on the law of Contradiction.
The possibility of synthetical a posteriori judgments, of those which
are gathered from experience, also requires no particular explanation;
for experience is nothing but a continual synthesis of perceptions.
There remain therefore only synthetical propositions a priori, of which
the possibility must be sought or investigated, because they must depend
upon other principles than the law of contradiction.
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But
here we need not first establish the possibility of such propositions so
as to ask whether they are possible. For there are enough of them which
indeed are of undoubted certainty, and as our present method is
analytical, we shall start from the fact, that such synthetical but
purely rational cognition actually exists; but we must now inquire into
the reason of this possibility, and ask, how such cognition is possible,
in order that we may from the principles of its possibility be enabled
to determine the conditions of its use, its sphere and its limits.
The
proper problem upon which all depends, when expressed with scholastic
precision, is therefore: |
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How are
synthetic propositions a priori
possible?
For the sake of popularity I have above expressed this problem
somewhat differently, as an inquiry into purely rational cognition,
which I could do for once without detriment to the desired
comprehension, because, as we have only to do here with metaphysics and
its sources, the reader will, I hope, after the foregoing remarks, keep
in mind that when we speak of purely rational cognition, we do not mean
analytical, but synthetical cognition.[1]
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| Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
For information about this text, click
here.
FIRST
PART OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEM:
HOW IS PURE MATHEMATICS POSSIBLE?
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Sect.
6. Here is a great and established branch of knowledge, encompassing
even now a wonderfully large domain and promising an unlimited extension
in the future. Yet it carries with it thoroughly apodeictical certainty,
i.e., absolute necessity, which therefore rests upon no empirical
grounds. Consequently it is a pure product of reason, and moreover is
thoroughly synthetical. [Here the question arises:] "How then is it
possible for human reason to produce a cognition of this nature entirely
a priori?" Does not this faculty [which produces mathematics], as
it neither is nor can be based upon experience, presuppose some ground
of cognition a priori, which lies deeply hidden, but which might
reveal itself by these its effects, if their first beginnings were but
diligently ferreted out? |
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Sect.
7. But we find that all mathematical cognition has this peculiarity: it
must first exhibit its concept in a visual intuition [Anschauung] and indeed
a priori, therefore in an intuition which is not empirical, but pure.
Without this mathematics cannot take a single step; hence its judgments
are always visual, viz., intuitive; whereas philosophy must
be satisfied with discursive judgments from mere concepts, and though it
may illustrate its doctrines through a visual figure, can never derive
them from it. This
observation on the nature of mathematics gives us a clue to the first
and highest condition of its possibility, which is, that some pure
intuition [reine Anschauung]
must form its basis, in which all its concepts can be exhibited or
constructed, in concreto and yet a priori. If we can
locate this pure
intuition and its possibility, we may thence easily explain how
synthetical propositions a priori are possible in pure mathematics, and
consequently how this science itself is possible. Empirical
intuition [viz., sense-perception] enables us without difficulty to
enlarge the concept which we frame of an object of intuition [or
sense-perception], by new predicates, which intuition [i.e.,
sense-perception] itself presents synthetically in experience. Pure
intuition [viz., the visualization of forms in our imagination, from
which every thing sensual, i.e., every thought of material qualities, is
excluded] does so likewise, only with this difference, that in the
latter case the synthetical judgment is a priori certain and
apodeictical,
in the former, only a posteriori and empirically certain; because this
latter contains only that which occurs in contingent empirical
intuition, but the former, that which must necessarily be discovered in
pure intuition. Here intuition, being an intuition a priori, is before
all experience, viz., before any perception of particular objects,
inseparably conjoined with its concept. |
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Sect.
8. But with this step our perplexity seems rather to increase than to
lessen. For the question now is, "How is it possible to intuit [in
a visual form] anything a priori?" An intuition [viz., a visual
sense perception] is such a representation as immediately depends upon
the presence of the object. Hence it seems impossible to intuit from the
outset a priori, because intuition would in that event take place
without either a former or a present object to refer to, and by
consequence could not be intuition. Concepts indeed are such, that we
can easily form some of them a priori, viz., such as contain nothing but
the thought of an object in general; and we need not find ourselves in
an immediate relation to the object. Take,
for instance, the concepts of Quantity, of Cause, etc. But even these
require, in order to make them understood, a certain concrete use--that
is, an application to some sense-experience [Anschauung], by which an
object of them is given us. But how can the intuition of the object [its
visualization] precede the object itself? |
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Sect.
9. If our intuition [i.e., our sense-experience] were perforce of such a
nature as to represent things as they are in themselves, there would not
be any intuition a priori, but intuition would be always empirical. For
I can only know what is contained in the object in itself when it is
present and given to me. It is indeed even then incomprehensible how the
intuition [Anschauung] of a present thing should make me know this
thing as it is in itself, as its properties cannot migrate into my
faculty of representation. But even granting this possibility, a
visualizing of that sort would not take place a priori, that is, before
the object were presented to me; for without this latter fact no reason
of a relation between my representation and the object can be imagined,
unless it depend upon a direct inspiration Therefore
in one way only can my intuition anticipate the actuality
of the object, and be a cognition a priori, viz.: if my intuition
contains nothing but the form of sensibility, antedating in my
subjectivity all the actual impressions through which I am affected by
objects. For that objects of sense can only be intuited according to
this form of sensibility I can know a priori. Hence it follows: that
propositions, which concern this form of sensuous intuition only, are
possible and valid for objects of the senses; as also, conversely, that
intuitions which are possible a priori can never concern any other
things than objects of our senses. |
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Sect.
10. Accordingly, it is only the form of sensuous intuition by which we
can intuit things a priori, but by which we can know objects only as
they appear to us (to our senses), not as they are in themselves; and
this assumption is absolutely necessary if synthetical propositions a
priori be granted as possible, or if, in case they actually occur, their
possibility is to be comprehended and determined beforehand. |
|
Now,
the intuitions which pure mathematics lays at the foundation of all its
cognitions and judgments which appear at once apodictic and necessary
are Space and Time. For mathematics must first have all its concepts in
intuition, and pure mathematics in pure intuition, that is, it must
construct them. If it proceeded in any other way, it would be impossible
to make any headway, for mathematics proceeds, not analytically by
dissection of concepts, but synthetically, and if pure intuition be
wanting, there is nothing in which the matter for synthetical judgments
a priori can be given. Geometry
is based upon the pure intuition of space. Arithmetic accomplishes its
concept of number by the successive addition of units in time; and pure
mechanics especially cannot attain its concepts of motion without
employing the representation of time. Both representations, however, are
only intuitions; for if we omit from the empirical intuitions of bodies
and their alterations (motion) everything empirical, or belonging to
sensation, space and time still remain, which are therefore pure
intuitions that lie a priori at the basis of the empirical. Hence they
can never be omitted, but at the same time, by their being pure
intuitions a priori, they prove that they are mere forms of our
sensibility, which must precede all empirical intuition, or perception
of actual objects, and conformably to which objects can be known a
priori, but only as they appear to us. |
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284
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Sect.
11. The problem of the present section is therefore solved. Pure
mathematics, as synthetical cognition a priori, is only possible by
referring to no other objects than those of the senses. At the basis of
their empirical intuition lies a pure intuition (of space and of time)
which is a priori. This is possible, because the latter intuition is
nothing but the mere form of sensibility, which precedes the actual
appearance of the objects, in that it, in fact, makes them possible. Yet
this faculty of intuiting a priori affects not the matter of the
phenomenon (that is, the sense-element in it, for this constitutes that
which is empirical), but its form, viz., space and time. Should any man
venture to doubt that these are determinations adhering not to things in
themselves, but to their relation to our sensibility, I should be glad
to know how it can be possible to know the constitution of things a
priori, viz., before we have any acquaintance with them and before they
are presented to us. Such, however, is the case with space and time. But
this is quite comprehensible as soon as both count for nothing more than
formal conditions of our sensibility, while the objects count merely as
phenomena; for then the form of the phenomenon, i.e., pure intuition,
can by all means be represented as proceeding from ourselves, that is, a
priori. |
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Sect.
12. In order to add something by way of illustration and confirmation,
we need only watch the ordinary and necessary procedure of geometers.
All proofs of the complete congruence of two given figures (where the
one can in every respect be substituted for the other) come ultimately
to this that they may be made to coincide; which is evidently nothing
else than a synthetical proposition resting upon immediate intuition,
and this intuition must be pure, or given a priori, otherwise the
proposition could not rank as apodictically certain, but would have
empirical certainty only. In that case, it could only be said that it is
always found to be so, and holds good only as far as our perception
reaches. That
everywhere space (which (in its entirety] is itself no longer the
boundary of another space) has three dimensions, and that space cannot
in any way have more, is based on the proposition that not more than
three lines can intersect at right angles in one point. But this
proposition cannot by any means be shown from concepts, but rests
immediately on intuition, and indeed on pure and a priori intuition,
because it is apodictically certain. That we can require a line to be
drawn to infinity (in indefinitum), or that a series of changes (for
example, spaces traversed by motion) shall be infinitely continued,
presupposes a representation of space and time, which can only attach to
intuition, namely, so far as it in itself is bounded by nothing, for
from concepts it could never be inferred. Consequently, the basis of
mathematics actually are pure intuitions, which make its synthetical and
apodictically valid propositions possible. Hence our transcendental
[critical] deduction of the
notions of space and of time explains at the same time the possibility
of pure mathematics. Without some such deduction its truth may be
granted, but its existence could by no means be understood, and we must
assume "that everything which can be given to our senses (to the
external senses in space, to the internal one in time) is intuited by us
as it appears to us, not as it is in itself." |
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Sect. 13.
Those who cannot yet rid themselves of the notion that space and time
are actual qualities inhering in things in themselves, may exercise
their acumen on the following paradox. When they have in vain attempted
its solution, and are free from prejudices at least for a few moments,
they will suspect that the degradation of space and of time to mere
forms of our sensuous intuition may perhaps be well founded. |
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If two things are quite equal in all respects as much as can be
ascertained by all means possible, quantitatively and qualitatively, it
must follow, that the one can in all cases and under all circumstances
replace the other, and this substitution would not occasion the least
perceptible difference. This in fact is true of plane figures in
geometry; but some spherical figures exhibit, notwithstanding a complete
internal agreement, such a contrast in their external relation, that the
one figure cannot possibly be put in the place of the other. For
instance, two spherical triangles on opposite hemispheres, which have an
arc of the equator as their common base, may be quite equal, both as
regards sides and angles, so that nothing is to be found in either, if
it be described for itself alone and completed, that would not equally
be applicable to both; and yet the one cannot be put in the place of the
other (being situated upon the opposite hemisphere). Here then is an
internal difference between the two triangles, which difference our
understanding cannot describe as internal, and which only manifests
itself by external relations in space. But
I shall adduce examples, taken from common life, that are more obvious
still. |
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What can be more similar in every respect and in every part more
alike to my hand and to my ear, than their images in a mirror? And yet I
cannot put such a hand as is seen in the glass in the place of its
archetype; for if this is a right hand, that in the glass is a left one,
and the image or reflection of the right ear is a left one which never
can serve as a substitute for the other. There are in this case no
internal differences which our understanding could determine by thinking
alone. Yet the differences are internal as the senses teach, for,
notwithstanding their complete equality and similarity, the left hand
cannot be enclosed in the same bounds as the right one (they are not
congruent); the glove of one hand cannot be used for the other. What is
the solution? These objects are not representations of things as they
are in themselves, and as the pure understanding would know them, but
sensuous intuitions, that is, appearances, the possibility of which
rests upon the relation of certain things unknown in themselves to
something else, viz., to our sensibility. Space
is the form of the external intuition of this sensibility, and the
internal determination of every space is only possible by the
determination of its external relation to the whole space, of which it
is a part (in other words, by its relation to the external sense). That
is to say, the part is only possible through the whole, which is never
the case with things in themselves, as objects of the mere
understanding, but with appearances only. Hence the difference between
similar and equal things, which are yet not congruent (for instance, two
symmetric helices), cannot be made intelligible by any concept, but only
by the relation to the right and the left hands which immediately refers
to intuition.
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REMARK 1
Pure Mathematics, and especially pure geometry, can only have
objective reality on condition that they refer to objects of sense. But
in regard to the latter the principle holds good, that our sense
representation is not a representation of things in themselves but of
the way in which they appear to us. Hence it follows, that the
propositions of geometry are not the results of a mere creation of our
poetic imagination, and that therefore they cannot be referred with
assurance to actual objects; but rather that they are necessarily valid
of space, and consequently of all that may be found in space, because
space is nothing else than the form of all external appearances, and it
is this form alone in which objects of sense can be given. |
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Sensibility,
the form of which is the basis of geometry, is that upon which the
possibility of external appearance depends. Therefore these appearances
can never contain anything but what geometry prescribes to them. It
would be quite otherwise if the senses were so constituted as to
represent objects as they are in themselves. For then it would not by
any means follow from the conception of space, which with all its
properties serves to the geometer as an a priori foundation, together
with what is thence inferred, must be so in nature. The
space of the geometer would be considered a mere fiction, and it would
not be credited with objective validity, because we cannot see how
things must of necessity agree with an image of them, which we make
spontaneously and previous to our acquaintance with them. But if this
image, or rather this formal intuition, is the essential property of our
sensibility, by means of which alone objects are given to us, and if
this sensibility represents not things in themselves, but their
appearances: we shall easily comprehend, and at the same time
indisputably prove, that all external objects of our world of sense must
necessarily coincide in the most rigorous way with the propositions of
geometry; because sensibility by means of its form of external
intuition, viz., by space, the same with which the geometer is occupied,
makes those objects at all possible as mere appearances. |
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It
will always remain a remarkable phenomenon in the history of philosophy,
that there was a time, when even mathematicians, who at the same time
were philosophers, began to doubt, not of the accuracy of their
geometrical propositions so far as they concerned space, but of their
objective validity and the applicability of this concept itself, and of
all its corollaries, to nature. They showed much concern whether a line
in nature might not consist of physical points, and consequently that
true space in the object might consist of simple [discrete] parts, while
the space which the geometer has in his mind [being continuous] cannot
be such. They
did not recognize that this mental space renders possible the physical
space, i.e., the extension of matter; that this pure space is not at all
a quality of things in themselves, but a form of our sensuous faculty of
representation; and that all objects in space are mere appearances,
i.e., not things in themselves but representations of our sensuous
intuition. But
such is the case, for the space of the geometer is exactly the form of
sensuous intuition which we find a priori in us, and contains the ground
of the possibility of all external appearances (according to their
form), and the latter must necessarily and most rigidly agree with the
propositions of the geometer, which he draws not from any fictitious
concept, but from the subjective basis of all external phenomena, which
is sensibility itself. In this and no other way can geometry be made
secure as to the undoubted objective reality of its propositions against
all the intrigues of a shallow Metaphysics, which is surprised at them
[the geometrical propositions], because it has not traced them to the
sources of their concepts. |
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REMARK
II.
Whatever is given us as object, must be given us in intuition. All
our intuition however takes place by means of the senses only; the
understanding intuits nothing, but only reflects. And as we have just
shown that the senses never and in no manner enable us to know things in
themselves, but only their appearances, which are mere representations
of the sensibility, we conclude that "all bodies, together with the space
in which they are, must be considered nothing but mere representations
in us, and exist nowhere but in our thoughts." Now, is not this
manifest idealism? |
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Idealism consists in the assertion, that there are none but thinking
beings, all other things, which we think are perceived in intuition,
being nothing but representations in the thinking beings, to which no
object external to them corresponds in fact. Whereas I say, that things
as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know
nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their
appearances, i. e., the representations which they cause in us by
affecting our senses. Consequently I grant by all means that there are
bodies without us, that is, things which, though quite unknown to us as
to what they are in themselves, we yet know by the representations which
their influence on our sensibility procures us, and which we call
bodies, a term signifying merely the appearance of the thing which is
unknown to us, but not therefore less actual. Can this be termed
idealism? It is the very contrary. |
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Long before Locke's time, but assuredly since him, it has been generally
assumed and granted without detriment to the actual existence of
external things, that many of their predicates may be said to belong not
to the things in themselves, but to their appearances, and to have no
proper existence outside our representation. Heat, color, and taste, for
instance, are of this kind. Now, if I go farther, and for weighty
reasons rank as mere appearances the remaining qualities of bodies also,
which are called primary, such as extension, place, and in general
space, with all that which belongs to it (impenetrability or
materiality, space, etc.)---no one in the least can adduce the reason of
its being inadmissible. As little as the man who admits colors not to be
properties of the object in itself, but only as modifications of the
sense of sight, should on that account be called an idealist, so little
can my system be named idealistic, merely because I find that more, nay,
all the properties which constitute the intuition of a body belong
merely to its appearance. The existence of the thing that appears is
thereby not destroyed, as in genuine idealism, but it is only shown,
that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself. |
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I should be glad to know what my assertions must be in order to avoid
all idealism. Undoubtedly, I should say, that the representation of
space is not only perfectly conformable to the relation which our
sensibility has to objects---that I have said--- but that it is quite
similar to the object,---an assertion in which I can find as little
meaning as if I said that the sensation of red has a similarity to the
property of vermilion, which excites this sensation in me. |
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REMARK
III
Hence
we may at once dismiss an easily foreseen but futile objection,
"that by admitting the ideality of space and of time the whole
sensible world would be turned into mere sham." At first all
philosophical insight into the nature of sensuous cognition was spoiled,
by making the sensibility merely a confused mode of representation,
according to which we still know things as they are, but without being
able to reduce everything in this our representation to a clear
consciousness; whereas proof is offered by us that sensibility consists,
not in this logical distinction of clearness and obscurity, but in the
genetic one of the origin of cognition itself. For sensuous perception
represents things not at all as they are, but only the mode in which
they affect our senses, and consequently by sensuous perception
appearances only and not things themselves are given to the
understanding for reflection. After this necessary corrective, an
objection rises from an unpardonable and almost intentional
misconception, as if my doctrine turned all the things of the world of
sense into mere illusion. |
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When an appearance is given us, we are still quite free as to how
we should judge the matter. The appearance depends upon the senses, but
the judgment upon the understanding, and the only question is, whether
in the determination of the object there is truth or not. But the
difference between truth and dreaming is not ascertained by the nature
of the representations, which are referred to objects (for they are the
same in both cases), but by their connection according to those rules,
which determine the coherence of the representations in the concept of
an object, and by ascertaining whether they can subsist together in
experience or not. And it is not the fault of the appearances if our
cognition takes illusion for truth, i.e., if the intuition, by which an
object is given us, is considered a concept of the thing or of its
existence also, which the understanding can only think The
senses represent to us the paths of the planets as now progressive, now
retrogressive, and herein is neither falsehood nor truth, because as
long as we hold this path to be nothing but appearance, we do not judge
of the objective nature of their motion. But as a false judgment may
easily arise when the understanding is not on its guard against this
subjective mode of representation being considered objective, we say
they appear to move backward; it is not the senses however which must be
charged with the illusion, but the understanding, whose province alone
it is to give an objective judgment on appearances. |
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Thus,
even if we did not at all reflect on the origin of our representations,
whenever we connect our intuitions of sense (whatever they may contain),
in space and in time, according to the rules of the coherence of all
cognition in experience, illusion or truth will arise according as we
are negligent or careful. It is merely a question of the use of sensuous
representations in the understanding, and not of their origin. In
the same way, if I consider all the representations of the senses,
together with their form, space and time, to be nothing but appearances,
and space and time to be a mere form of the sensibility, which is not to
be met with in objects out of it, and if I make use of these
representations in reference to possible experience only, there is
nothing in my regarding them as appearances that can lead astray or
cause illusion. For all that they can correctly cohere according to
rules of truth in experience. Thus
all the propositions of geometry hold good of space as well as of all
the objects of the senses, consequently of all possible experience,
whether I consider space as a mere form of the sensibility, or as
something cleaving to the things themselves. In the former case however
I comprehend how I can know a priori these propositions concerning all
the objects of external intuition. Otherwise, everything else as regards
all possible experience remains just as if I had not departed from the
ordinary view. |
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But
if I venture to go beyond all possible experience with my notions of
space and time, which I cannot refrain from doing if I proclaim them
qualities inherent in things in themselves (for what should prevent me
from letting them hold good of the same things, even though my senses
might be different, and unsuited to them?), then a grave error may arise
due to illusion, for thus I would proclaim to be universally valid what
is merely a subjective condition of the intuition of things and sure
only for all objects of sense, viz., for all possible experience; I
would refer this condition to things in themselves, and do not limit it
to the conditions of experience |
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My
doctrine of the ideality of space and of time, therefore, far from
reducing the whole sensible world to mere illusion, is the only means of
securing the application of one of the most important cognitions (that
which mathematics propounds a priori) to actual objects, and of
preventing its being regarded as mere illusion. For without this
observation it would be quite impossible to make out whether the
intuitions of space and time, which we borrow from no experience, and
which yet lie in our representation a priori, are not mere phantasms of
our brain, to which objects do not correspond, at least not adequately,
and consequently, whether we have been able to show its unquestionable
validity with regard to all the objects of the sensible world just
because they are mere appearances. |
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Secondly,
though these my principles make appearances of the representations of
the senses, they are so far from turning the truth of experience into
mere illusion, that they are rather the only means of preventing the
transcendental illusion, by which metaphysics has hitherto been
deceived, leading to the childish endeavor of catching at bubbles,
because appearances, which are mere representations, were taken for
things in themselves. Here originated the remarkable event of the antimony of Reason which I
shall mention by and by, and which is destroyed by the single observation, that appearance, as long as it is
employed in experience, produces truth, but the moment it transgresses the
bounds of experience, and consequently becomes transcendent, produces nothing but illusion. |
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Inasmuch therefore, as I leave to things as we obtain them
by the senses their actuality, and only limit our sensuous
intuition of these things to this, that they represent in no
respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and of time,
anything more than mere
appearance of those things, but never their constitution in
themselves, this is not a sweeping illusion
invented for nature by me. My protestation too against all
charges of idealism is so valid and clear as even to seem
superfluous, were there not incompetent judges, who, while they
would have an old name for every deviation from their perverse
though common opinion, and never judge of the spirit of
philosophic nomenclature, but
cling to the letter only, are ready to put their own conceits in
the place of well-defined
notions, and thereby deform and distort them. I have myself
given this my
theory the name of transcendental idealism, but that cannot
authorize any one to confound it either with the empirical
idealism of Descartes, (indeed, his was only an insoluble
problem, owing to which he thought every one at liberty to deny
the existence of the corporeal world, because it could never be
proved satisfactorily), or with the mystical and visionary
idealism of Berkeley, against which and other similar phantasms
our Critique contains the proper antidote. My idealism concerns
not the existence of things (the doubting of which, however,
constitutes idealism in the ordinary sense), since it never came
into my head to doubt it, but it concerns the sensuous
representation of things, to which space and time
especially belong. Of these [viz., space and time], consequently
of all appearances in general, I have only shown, that they are neither
things (but mere modes of representation), nor determinations
belonging to things in themselves. But the word
"transcendental," which with me means a reference of our
cognition, i.e., not to
things, but only to the cognitive faculty, was meant to obviate
this misconception. Yet rather than
give further occasion to it by this word, I now retract it, and
desire this idealism of mine
to be called critical. But if it be really an objectionable
idealism to convert actual
things (not appearances) into mere representations, by what name
shall we call him who conversely
changes mere representations to things? It may, I think, be
called dreaming
idealism, in contradistinction to the former, which may be called visionary, both of which are to be refuted
by my transcendental, or, better, critical idealism.
FOOTNOTES
Footnote 1.
I freely grant that these examples do not represent such judgments of
perception as ever could become judgments of experience, even though a
concept of the understanding were superadded, because they refer merely
to feeling, which everybody knows to be merely subjective, and which of
course can never be attributed to the object, and consequently never
become objective. I only wished to give here an example of a judgment
that is merely subjectively valid, containing no ground for universal
validity, and thereby for a relation to the object. An example of the
judgments of perception, which become judgments of experience by
superadded concepts of the understanding, will be given in the next
note.
Footnote 2.
As an easier example, we may take the
following: " When the sun shines on the stone, it grows warm."
This judgment, however often I and others may have perceived it, is a
mere judgment of perception, and contains no necessity; perceptions are
only usually conjoined in this manner. But if I say, "The sun warms
the stone," I add to the perception a concept of the understanding,
viz., that of cause, which connects with the concept of sunshine that of
heat as a necessary consequence, and the synthetical judgment becomes of
necessity universally valid, viz., objective, and is converted from a
perception into experience.
Footnote 3.
This name seems preferable to the term
particularia, which is used for these judgments in logic. For the
latter implies the idea that they are not universal. But when I start
from unity (in single judgments) and so proceed to universality, I must
not [even indirectly and negatively] imply any reference to
universality. I think plurality merely without universality, and not the
exception from universality. This is necessary, if logical
considerations shall form the basis of the pure concepts of the
understanding. However, there is no need of making changes in logic.
Footnote 4.
But how does this proposition, that
judgments of experience contain necessity in the synthesis of
perceptions," agree with my statement so often before inculcated,
that "experience as cognition a posteriori can afford
contingent judgments only? "When I say that experience teaches me
something, I mean only the perception that lies in experience,--for
example, that heat always follows the shining of the sun on a stone;
consequently the proposition of experience is always so far accidental.
That this heat necessarily follows the shining of the sun is contained
indeed in the judgment of experience (by means of the concept of cause),
yet is a fact not learned by experience; for conversely, experience is
first of all generated by this addition of the concept of the
understanding (of cause) to perception. How perception attains this
addition may be seen by referring in the Critique itself to the
section on the Transcendental faculty of Judgment.
Footnote 5.
The three following paragraphs will
hardly be understood unless reference be made to what the Critique
itself says on the subject of the Principles; they will, however, be of
service in giving a general view of the Principles, and in fixing the
attention of the main points. [Critique, B187 ff.]
Footnote 6.
Heat and light are in a small space
just as large as to degree as in a large one; in like manner the
internal representations, pain, consciousness in general, whether they
last a short or a long time, need not vary as to the degree. Hence the
quantity is here in a point and in a moment just as great as in any
space or time however great. Degrees are therefore capable of increase,
but not in intuition, rather in mere sensation (or the quantity of the
degree of an intuition). Hence they can only be estimated quantitatively
by the relation of 1 to 0, viz, by their capability of decreasing by
infinite intermediate degrees to disappearance, or of increasing from
naught through infinite gradations to a determinate sensation in a
certain time. Quantitas qualitatis est gradus [the quantity of
quality is degree].
Footnote 7.
We speak of the "intelligible
world," not (as the usual expression is) "intellectual
world." For cognitions are intellectual through the understanding,
and refer to our world of sense also; but objects, so far as they can be
represented merely by the understanding, and to which none of our
sensible intuitions can refer, are termed " intelligible." But
as some possible intuition must correspond to every object, we would
have to assume an understanding that intuits things immediately; but of
such we have not the least notion, nor have we of the things of the
understanding, to which it should be applied.
Footnote 8.
Crusius alone thought of a compromise:
that a spirit, who can neither err nor deceive, implanted these laws in
us originally. But since false principles often intrude themselves, as
indeed the very system of this man shows in not a few examples, we are
involved ill difficulties as to the use of such a principle in the
absence of sure criteria to distinguish the genuine origin from the
spurious as we never can know certainly what the Spirit of truth or the
father of lies may have instilled into us.
Footnote 9.
1. Substantia, 2. Qualitas 3,
Quamtitas, 4. Relatio, 5. Actio,
6. Passio, 7. Quando, 8. Ubi, 9. Situs, 10. Habitus.
Footnote 10.
On the table of the categories many
neat observations may be made, for instance (1) that the third arises
from the first and the second joined in one concept (2) that in those of
Quantity and of Quality there is merely a progress from unity to
totality or from something to nothing (for this purpose the categories
of Quality must stand thus: reality, limitation, total negation),
without correlata or opposita, whereas those of Relation
and of Modality have them; (3) that, as in Logic categorical judgments
are the basis of all others, so the category of Substance is the basis
of all concepts of actual things; (4) that as Modality in the judgment
is not a particular predicate, so by the modal concepts a determination
is not superadded to things, etc., etc. Such observations are of great
use. If we besides enumerate all the predicables, which we can find
pretty completely in any good ontology (for example, Baumgarten's), and
arrange them in classes under the categories, in which operation we must
not neglect to add as complete a dissection of all these concepts as
possible, there will then arise a merely analytical part of metaphysics,
which does not contain a single synthetical proposition. which might
precede the second (the synthetic), and would by its precision and
completeness be not only useful, but, in virtue of its system, be even
to some extent elegant.
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Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
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here.
SECOND
PART OF THE MAIN TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEM:
HOW
IS THE SCIENCE OF NATURE POSSIBLE?
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Sect.
14. Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is determined
according to universal laws. Should nature signify the existence of
things in themselves, we could never know it either a priori or a
posteriori. Not
a priori, for how can we know what belongs to things in themselves,
since this never can be done by the dissection of our concepts (in
analytical judgments)? We do not want to know what is contained in our
concept of a thing (for the [concept describes what] belongs to its
logical being), but what is in the actuality of the thing superadded to
our concept, and by what the thing itself is determined in its existence
outside the concept. Our
understanding, and the conditions on which alone it can connect the
determinations of things in their existence, do not prescribe any rule
to things themselves; these do not conform to our understanding, but it
must conform itself to them; they must therefore be first given us in
order to gather these determinations from them, wherefore they would not
be known a priori.
A
cognition of the nature of things in themselves a posteriori would be
equally impossible. For, if experience is to teach us laws, to which the
existence of things is subject, these laws, if they regard things in
themselves, must belong to them of necessity even outside our
experience. But experience teaches us what exists and how it exists, but
never that it must necessarily exist so and not otherwise. Experience
therefore can never teach us the nature of things in themselves. |
295
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Sect.
15. We nevertheless actually possess a pure science of nature in which
are propounded, a priori and with all the necessity requisite to
apodeictical propositions, laws to which nature is subject. I
need only call to witness that propaedeutic of natural science which,
under the title of the universal Science of Nature, precedes all Physics
(which is founded upon empirical principles). In it we have Mathematics
applied to appearance, and also merely discursive principles (or those
derived from concepts), which constitute the philosophical part of the
pure cognition of nature. But there are several things in it, which are
not quite pure and independent of empirical sources: such as the concept
of motion, that of impenetrability (upon which the empirical concept of
matter rests), that of inertia, and many others, which prevent its being
called a perfectly pure science of nature. Besides, it only refers to
objects of the external sense and therefore does not give an
example of a universal science of nature, in the strict sense,
for such a science must reduce nature in general, whether it
regards the object of the external or that of the internal sense
(the object of Physics as well as Psychology), to universal laws. But
among the principles of this universal physics there are a few which
actually have the required universality; for instance, the propositions
that "substance is permanent, " and that "every event is
determined by a cause according to constant laws," etc. These are
actually universal laws of nature, which subsist completely a priori.
There is then in fact a pure science of nature, and the question arises,
How is it possible? |
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Section
16. The word nature assumes yet another meaning, which
determines the object, whereas in the former sense it only denotes the
conformity to law of the determinations of the
existence of things generally. If we consider it materialiter (i.e., in
the matter that forms its objects), nature is the complex of all
the objects of experience. And with this only are we now
concerned, for besides, things which can never be objects of experience,
if they must be known as to their nature, would oblige us to have
recourse to concepts whose meaning could never be given in concreto
(by
any example of possible experience). Consequently we must form
for ourselves a list of concepts of their nature, the
reality whereof (i.e., whether they actually refer to objects,
or are mere creations of thought) could never be determined. The
cognition of what cannot be an object of experience would be
hyperphysical, and with things hyperphysical we are here not
concerned, but only with the cognition of nature, the actuality
of which can be confirmed by experience, though it [the cognition
of nature] is possible a priori and precedes all experience. |
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Section
17. The formal aspect of nature in this narrower sense is therefore
the conformity to law of all the objects of experience, and so far as it
is known a priori, their necessary conformity. But it has just been
shown that the laws of nature can never be known a priori in objects so
far as they are considered not in reference to possible experience, but
as things in themselves. And our inquiry here extends not to things in
themselves (the properties of which we pass by), but to things as
objects of possible experience, and the complex of these is what we
properly call nature. And now I ask when the possibility of a cognition of nature
a priori is in question,
whether it is better to arrange the problem thus: How can we know a priori that things as objects of experience necessarily conform
to law? or thus: How is it possible to know a priori the necessary conformity to law of experience itself as regards all
its objects generally?
Closely
considered, the solution of the problem, represented in either way,
amounts, with regard to the pure cognition of nature (which is the point
of the question at issue), entirely to the same thing. For the
subjective laws, under which alone an empirical cognition of things is
possible, hold good of these things, as objects of possible experience
(not as things in themselves, which are not considered here). Either of
the following statements means quite the same: "A judgment of
observation can never rank as experience, without the law, that
'whenever an event is observed, it is always referred to some
antecedent, which it follows according to a universal rule" or else
"Everything, of which experience teaches that it happens, must have
a cause."
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It is,
however, more convenient to choose the first formula. For we can a
priori and previous to all given objects have a cognition of those
conditions, on which alone experience is possible, but never of the laws
to which things may in themselves be subject, without reference to
possible experience. We cannot therefore study the nature of things a
priori otherwise than by investigating the conditions and the universal
(though subjective) laws, under which alone such a cognition as
experience (as to mere form) is possible, and we determine accordingly
the possibility of things, as objects of experience. For if I should
choose the second formula, and seek the conditions a priori, on which
nature as an object of experience is possible, I might easily fall into
error, and fancy that I was speaking of nature as a thing in itself, and
then move round in endless circles, in a vain search for laws concerning
things of which nothing is given me. |
|
Accordingly
we shall here be concerned with experience only, and the universal
conditions of its possibility which are given a priori.
Thence
we shall determine nature as the whole object of all possible
experience. I think it will be understood that I here do not
mean the rules of the observation of a nature that is already given, for
these already presuppose experience. I do not mean how (through
experience) we can study the laws of nature; for these would not
then be laws a priori, and would yield us no pure science of nature;
but
[I mean to ask] how the conditions a priori of the possibility
of experience are at the same time the sources from which all the
universal laws of nature must be derived.
Sect.
18. In the first place we must state that, while all judgments of
experience [Erfahrungsurtheile] are empirical (i.e., have their ground
in immediate sense perception), vice versa, all empirical judgments [empirische
Urtheile] are not judgments of experience, but, besides the empirical,
and in general besides what is given to the sensuous intuition,
particular concepts must yet be superadded--concepts which have their
origin quite a priori in the pure understanding, and under which every
perception must be first of all subsumed and then by their means changed
into experience.
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Empirical judgments, so far as they have objective validity, are
judgments of experience; but those which are only subjectively valid, I
name mere judgments of perception. The latter require no pure concept of
the understanding, but only the logical connection of perception in a
thinking subject. But
the former always require, besides the representation of the sensuous
intuition, particular concepts originally begotten in the
understanding,
which produce the objective validity of the judgment of experience. |
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All
our judgments are at first merely judgments of perception; they hold
good only for us (i.e., for our subject), and we do not till afterwards
give them a new reference (to an object), and desire that they shall
always hold good for us and in the same way for everybody else; for when
a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments concerning the same
object must likewise agree among themselves, and thus the objective
validity of the judgment of experience signifies nothing else than its
necessary universality of application. And
conversely when we have reason to consider a judgment necessarily
universal (which never depends upon perception, but upon the pure
concept of the understanding, under which the perception is subsumed),
we must consider it objective also, that is, that it expresses not
merely a reference of our perception to a subject, but a quality of the
object. For there would be no reason for the judgments of other men
necessarily agreeing with mine, if it were not the unity of the object
to which they all refer, and with which they accord; hence they must all
agree with one another. |
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Sect.
19. Therefore objective validity and necessary universality (for
everybody) are equivalent terms, and though we do not know the
object in
itself, yet when we consider a judgment as universal, and also
necessary, we understand it to have objective validity. By this
judgment
we know the object (though it remains unknown as it is in
itself) by the
universal and necessary connection of the given perceptions. As
this is the case with all objects of sense, judgments of
experience take
their objective validity not from the immediate cognition of the
object
(which is impossible), but from the condition of universal
validity in
empirical judgments, which, as already said, never rests upon
empirical,
or, in short, sensuous conditions, but upon a pure concept of
the
understanding. The object always remains unknown in itself; but
when by the concept of the understanding
the connection of the representations of the object, which are
given to our sensibility, is determined as universally valid, the
object is determined by this relation, and it is the judgment
that is objective. |
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To
illustrate the matter: When we say, "the room is warm, sugar sweet,
and wormwood bitter,"[1] we have only subjectively valid
judgments, I do not at all expect that I or any other person shall
always find it as I now do; each of these sentences only expresses a
relation of two sensations to the same subject, to myself, and that only
in my present state of perception; consequently they are not valid of
the object. Such are judgments of perception. Judgments
of experience are of quite a different nature. What experience teaches
me under certain circumstances, it must always teach me and everybody;
and its validity is not limited to the subject nor to its state at a
particular time. Hence I pronounce all such judgments as being
objectively valid. For instance, when I say the air is elastic, this
judgment is as yet a judgment of perception only--I do nothing but refer
two of my sensations to one another. But, if I would have it called a
judgment of experience, I require this connection to stand under a
condition, which makes it universally valid. I desire therefore that I
and everybody else should always connect necessarily the same
perceptions under the same circumstances. |
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Section
20. We must consequently analyze experience in order to see what is
contained in this product of the senses and of the understanding, and
how the judgment of experience itself is possible. The foundation is the
intuition of which I become conscious, i.e., perception (perceptio),
which pertains merely to the senses. But in the next place, there are
acts of judging (which belong only to the understanding). But
this judging may be twofold-first, I may merely compare perceptions and
connect them in a particular state of my consciousness; or, secondly, I
may connect them in consciousness generally. The former judgment is
merely a judgment of perception, and of subjective validity only: it is
merely a connection of perceptions in my mental state, without reference
to the object. Hence it is not, as is commonly imagined, enough for
experience to compare perceptions and to connect them in consciousness
through judgment; there arises no universality and necessity, for which
alone judgments can become objectively valid and be called experience. |
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Quite
another judgment therefore is required before perception can become
experience. The given intuition must be subsumed under a concept, which
determines the form of judging in general relatively to the intuition,
connects its empirical consciousness in consciousness generally, and
thereby procures universal validity for empirical judgments. A concept
of this nature is a pure a priori concept of the Understanding, which
does nothing but determine for an intuition the general way in which it
can be used for judgments. Let
the concept be that of cause, then it determined the intuition which is
subsumed under it, e.g., that of air, relative to judgments in general,
viz., the concept of air serves with regard to its expansion in the
relation of antecedent to consequent in a hypothetical judgment. The
concept of cause accordingly is a pure concept of the understanding,
which is totally disparate from all possible perception, and only serves
to determine the representation subsumed under it, relatively to
judgments in general, and so to make a universally valid judgment
possible. |
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Before,
therefore, a judgment of perception can become a judgment of experience,
it is requisite that the perception should be subsumed under some such a
concept of the understanding.; for instance, air ranks under the concept
of causes, which determines our judgment about it in regard to its
expansion as hypothetical.[2] Thereby the expansion of the air is
represented not as merely belonging to the perception of the air in my
present state or in several states of mine, or in the state of
perception of others, but as belonging to it necessarily. The judgment,
"the air is elastic," becomes universally valid, and a
judgment of experience, only by certain judgments preceding it, which
subsume the intuition of air under the concept of cause and effect: and
they thereby determine the perceptions not merely as regards one another
in me, but relatively to the form of judging in general, which is here
hypothetical, and in this way they render the empirical judgment
universally valid. |
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If
all our synthetical judgments are analyzed so far as they are
objectively valid, it will be found that they never consist of mere
intuitions connected only (as is commonly believed) by comparison into a
judgment; but that they would be impossible were not a pure concept of
the understanding superadded to the concepts abstracted from intuition,
under which concept these latter are subsumed, and in this manner only
combined into an objectively valid judgment. Even
the judgments of pure mathematics in their simplest axioms are not
exempt from this condition. The principle, “a straight line is the
shortest between two points," presupposes that the line is subsumed
under the concept of quantity, which certainly is no mere intuition, but
has its seat in the understanding alone, and serves to determine the
intuition (of the line) with regard to the judgments which may be made
about it, relatively to their quantity, that is, to plurality (as
judicia plurativa).[3] For under them it is understood that in a given
intuition there is contained a plurality of homogenous parts. |
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Section
21. To prove, then, the possibility of experience so far as it rests
upon pure concepts of the understanding a priori, we must first
represent what belongs to judgments in general and the various functions
of the understanding, in a complete table. For the pure concepts of the
understanding must run parallel to these functions, as such concepts are
nothing more than concepts of intuitions in general, so far as these are
determined by one or other of these functions of judging, in themselves,
that is, necessarily and universally. Hereby also the a priori
principles of the possibility of all experience, as of an objectively
valid empirical cognition, will be precisely determined. For they are
nothing but propositions by which all perception is (under certain
universal conditions of intuition) subsumed under those pure concepts of
the understanding. |
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LOGICAL
TABLE OF JUDGMENTS.
1.
As to Quantity.
Universal.
Particular.
Singular. |
2.
As to Quality.
Affirmative.
Negative.
Infinite. |
3.
As to Relation.
Categorical.
Hypothetical.
Disjunctive. |
4.
As to Modality.
Problematical.
Assertorical.
Apodeictical. |
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TRANSCENDENTAL TABLE
OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
1 . As to Quantity.
Unity (the Measure).
Plurality (the Quantity).
Totality (the Whole). |
2. As to Quality.
Reality.
Negation.
Limitation. |
3. As to Relation.
Substance.
Cause.
Community. |
4.
As to Modality.
Possibility.
Existence.
Necessity. |
PURE PHYSICAL TABLE
OF THE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF NATURE.
1. Axioms of Intuition.
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2. Anticipations of Perception. |
3. Analogies of Experience.
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4.
Postulates of Empirical Thinking generally. |
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304
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Section
21a. In order to comprise the whole matter in one idea, it is first
necessary to remind the reader that we are discussing not the origin of
experience, but of that which lies in experience. The former pertains to
empirical psychology, and would even then never be adequately explained
without the latter, which belongs to the Critique of cognition, and
particularly of the understanding. |
|
Experience
consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of
judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the
judgments, which the understanding forms alone from sensuous intuitions,
are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the
judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in the sensuous
intuition, while in the other the judgments must express what experience
in general, and not what the mere perception (which possesses only
subjective validity) contains. The
judgment of experience must therefore add to the sensuous intuition and
its logical connection in a judgment (after it has been rendered
universal by comparison) something that determines the synthetical
judgment as necessary and therefore as universally valid. This can be
nothing else than that concept which represents the intuition as
determined in itself with regard to one form of judgment rather than
another, viz., a concept of that synthetical unity of intuitions which
can only be represented by a given logical function of judgments. |
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Section 22. The sum of the matter is
this: the business of the senses is to intuit -- that of the
understanding is to think. But thinking is uniting representations in
one consciousness. This union originates either merely relative to the
subject, and is accidental and subjective, or is absolute, and is
necessary or objective. The union of representations in one
consciousness is judgment. Thinking therefore is the same as judging, or
referring representations to judgments in general. Hence judgments are
either merely subjective, when representations are referred to a
consciousness in one subject only, and united in it, or objective, when
they are united in a consciousness generally, that is, necessarily. The
logical functions of all judgments are but various modes of uniting
representations in consciousness. But if they serve for concepts, they
are concepts of their necessary union in a consciousness, and so
principles of objectively valid judgments. This
union in a consciousness is either analytical, by identity, or
synthetical, by the combination and addition of various representations
one to another. Experience consists in the synthetical connection of
phenomena (perceptions) in consciousness, so far as this connection is
necessary. Hence the pure concepts of the understanding are those under
which all perceptions must be subsumed ere they can serve for judgments
of experience, in which the synthetical unity of the perceptions is
represented as necessary and universally valid.[4] |
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Section 23. Judgments, when considered merely as the condition of the
union of given representations in a consciousness, are rules. These rules, so far
as they represent the union as necessary, are rules a priori, and so far
as they cannot be deduced from higher rules, are fundamental principles.
But
in regard to the possibility of all experience, merely in relation to
the form of thinking in it, no conditions of judgments of experience are
higher than those which bring the phenomena, according to the various
form of their intuition, under pure concepts of the understanding, and
render the empirical judgment objectively valid. These concepts are
therefore the a priori principles of possible experience.
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The
principles of possible experience are then at the same time universal
laws of nature, which can be known a priori. And thus the problem in our
second question, "How is the pure Science of Nature possible?"
is solved. For the system which is required for the form of a science is
to be met with in perfection here, because, beyond the above-mentioned
formal conditions of all judgments in general offered in logic, no
others are possible, and these constitute a logical system. The concepts
grounded thereupon, which contain the a priori conditions of all
synthetical and necessary judgments, accordingly constitute a logical system.
The concepts grounded thereupon, which contain the a priori
conditions of all synthetical and necessary judgments, accordingly
constitute a transcendental system. Finally the principles, by means of
which all phenomena are subsumed under these concepts, constitute a
physical system, that is, a system of nature, which precedes all
empirical cognition of nature, makes it even possible, and hence may in
strictness be called the universal and pure natural science. |
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Section
24. The first [5] one of the physiological principles
[The Axioms of Intuition]] subsumes all
phenomena, as intuitions in space and time, under the concept of quantity, and is so far a principle of the application of
mathematics to
experience. The
second one [The Anticipations of Perception] subsumes the empirical element, viz., sensation, which
denotes the real in intuitions, not indeed directly under the concept of
quantity, because sensation is not an intuition that contains either
space or time, though it places the respective object into both. But
still there is between reality (sense-representation) and the zero, or
total void of intuition in time, a difference which has a quantity. For
between every given degree of light and of darkness, between every
degree of beat and of absolute cold, between every degree of weight and
of absolute lightness, between every degree of occupied space and of
totally void space, diminishing degrees can be conceived, in the same
manner as between consciousness and total unconsciousness (the darkness
of a psychological blank) ever diminishing degrees obtain. Hence
there is no perception that can prove an absolute absence of it; for
instance, no psychological darkness that cannot be considered as a kind
of consciousness, which is only out-balanced by a stronger
consciousness. This occurs in all cases of sensation, and so the
understanding can anticipate even sensations, which constitute the
peculiar quality of empirical representations (appearances), by means of
the principle: "that they all have (consequently that what is real
in all phenomena has) a degree." Here is the second application of
mathematics (mathesis intensortim) to the science of nature.
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Section
25. In the relation of appearances merely with a view to their
existence, the determination is not mathematical but dynamical, and can
never be objectively valid, consequently never fit for experience, if it
does not come under a priori principles [The Analogies of
Experience] by which the cognition of
experience relative to appearances becomes even possible. Hence
appearances must be subsumed under the concept of Substance, which is
the foundation of all determination of existence, as a concept of the
thing itself; or secondly so far as a succession is found among
phenomena, that is, an event--under the concept of an effect with
reference to cause; or lastly--so far as coexistence is to be known
objectively, that is, by a judgment of experience--under the concept of
community (action and reaction). Thus
a priori principles form the basis of objectively valid, though
empirical judgments, that is, of the possibility of experience so far as
it must connect objects as existing in nature. These principles are the
proper laws of nature, which may be termed dynamical. |
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308
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Finally
the cognition of the agreement and connection not only of appearances
among themselves in experience [The Postulates of Empirical Thought], but of their relation to experience in
general, belongs to the judgments of experience. This relation contains
either their agreement with the formal conditions, which the
understanding knows, or their coherence with the materials of the senses
and of perception, or combines both into one concept. Consequently it
contains Possibility, Actuality, and Necessity according to universal
laws of nature; and this constitutes the physical doctrine of method, or
the distinction of truth and of hypotheses, and the bounds of the
certainty of the latter. |
|
Section
26. The third table of principles drawn from the nature of the
understanding itself after the critical method, shows an inherent
perfection, which raises it far above every other table which has
hitherto though in vain been tried or may yet be tried by analyzing the
objects themselves dogmatically. It exhibits all synthetical a priori
principles completely and according to one principle, viz., the faculty
of judging in general, constituting the essence of experience as regards
the understanding, so that we can be certain that there are no more such
principles, which affords a satisfaction such as can never be attained
by the dogmatic method. Yet is this not all: there is a still greater merit in it.
We must carefully bear in mind the proof which shows the possibility of
this cognition a priori, and at the same time limits all such
principles to a condition which must never be lost sight of, if we
desire it not to be misunderstood, and extended in use beyond the
original sense which the understanding attaches to it. This limit is
that they contain nothing but the conditions of possible experience in
general so far as it is Subjected to laws a priori. Consequently
I do not say, that things in themselves possess a quantity, that
their actuality possesses a degree, their existence a connection of
accidents in a substance, etc. This nobody can prove, because such a
synthetical connection from mere concepts, without any reference to
sensuous intuition on the one side, or connection of it in a possible
experience on the other, is absolutely impossible. The
essential limitation of the concepts in these principles then is: That
all things stand necessarily a priori under the aforementioned
conditions only as objects of experience. |
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Hence
there follows secondly a specifically peculiar mode of proof of these
principles: they are not directly referred to appearances and to their
relations, but to the possibility of experience, of which appearances
constitute the matter only, not the form. Thus they are referred to
objectively and universally valid synthetical propositions, in which we
distinguish judgments of experience from those of perception. This takes place
because appearances, as mere intuitions, occupying a part of space
and time, come under the concept of quantity, which unites their
multiplicity a priori according to rules synthetically. Again, so
far as the perception contains, besides intuition, sensibility, and
between the latter and nothing (i.e., the total disappearance of
sensibility), there is an ever-decreasing transition, it is apparent
that that which is in appearances must have a degree, so far as it
(viz., the perception) does not itself occupy any part of space or of
time.[6] Still the transition to actuality from
empty time or empty space is only possible in time; consequently though
sensibility, as the quality of empirical intuition, can never be known a
priori, by its specific difference from other sensibilities, yet it
can, in a possible experience in general, as a quantity of perception be
intensely distinguished from every other similar perception. Hence the
application of mathematics to nature, as regards the sensuous intuition
by which nature is given to us, becomes possible and is thus determined.
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Above
all, the reader must pay attention to the mode of proof of the
principles which occur under the title of Analogies of Experience. For
these do not refer to the genesis of intuitions, as do the principles of
applied mathematics, but to the connection of their existence in
experience; and this can be nothing but the determination of their
existence in time according to necessary laws, under which alone the
connection is objectively valid, and thus becomes experience. The proof
therefore does not turn on the synthetical unity in the connection of
things in themselves, but merely of perceptions, and of these not in
regard to their matter, but to the determination of time and of the
relation of their existence in it, according to universal laws. If the
empirical determination in relative time is indeed objectively valid
(i.e., experience), these universal laws contain the necessary
determination of existence in time generally (viz., according to a rule
of the understanding a priori). In a Prolegomena I cannot further
descant on the subject, but my reader (who has probably been long
accustomed to consider experience a mere empirical synthesis of
perceptions, and hence not considered that it goes much beyond them, as
it imparts to empirical judgments universal validity, and for that
purpose requires a pure and a priori unity of the understanding)
is recommended to pay special attention to this distinction of
experience from a mere aggregate of perceptions, and to judge the mode
of proof from this point of view. |
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311
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Section
27. Now we are prepared to remove Hume's doubt. He justly maintains,
that we cannot comprehend by reason the possibility of causality, that
is, of the reference of the existence of one thing to the existence of
another, which is necessitated by the former. I
add, that we comprehend just as little the concept of Subsistence, that
is, the necessity that at the foundation of the existence of things
there lies a subject which cannot itself be a predicate of any other
thing; nay, we cannot even form a notion of the possibility of such a
thing (though we can point out examples of its use in experience). The
very same incomprehensibility affects the Community of things, as we
cannot comprehend how from the state of one thing an inference to the
state of quite another thing beyond it, and vice versa, can be drawn,
and how substances which have each their own separate existence should
depend upon one another necessarily. But
I am very far from holding these concepts to be derived merely from
experience, and the necessity represented in them, to be imaginary and a
mere illusion produced in us by long habit. On the contrary, I have
amply shown, that they and the theorems derived from them are firmly
established a priori, or before all experience, and have their undoubted
objective value, though only with regard to experience. |
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Sect. 28. Though I have no notion of such
a connection of things in themselves, that they can either exist as
substances, or act as causes, or stand in community with others (as
parts of a real whole), and I can just as little conceive such
properties in appearances as such (because those concepts contain
nothing that lies in the appearances, but only what the understanding
alone must think): we have yet a notion of such a connection of
representations in our understanding, and in judgments generally;
consisting in this that representations appear in one sort of judgments
as subject in relation to predicates, in another as reason in relation
to consequences, and in a third as parts, which constitute together a
total possible cognition. Besides we know a priori that without
considering the representation of an object as determined in some of
these respects, we can have no valid cognition of the object, and, if we
should occupy ourselves about the object in itself, there is no possible
attribute, by which I could know that it is determined under any of
these aspects, that is, under the concept either of substance, or of
cause, or (in relation to other substances) of community, for I have no
notion of the possibility of such a connection of existence. But the
question is not how things in themselves, but how the empirical
cognition of things is determined as regards the above aspects of
judgments in general, that is, how things, as objects of experience, can
and shall be subsumed under these concepts of the understanding. And
then it is clear, that I completely comprehend not only the possibility,
but also the necessity of subsuming all phenomena under these concepts,
that is, of using them for principles of the possibility of experience. |
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Sect.
29. When making an experiment with Hume's problematical concept (his
crux metaphysicorum), the concept of cause, we have, in the first place,
given a priori, by means of logic, the form of a conditional judgment in
general, i.e., we have one given cognition as antecedent and another as
consequence. But
it is possible, that in perception we may meet with a rule of relation,
which runs thus: that a certain phenomenon is constantly followed by
another (though not conversely), and this is a case for me to use the
hypothetical judgment, and, for instance, to say, if the sun shines long
enough upon a body, it grows warm. Here there is indeed as yet no
necessity of connection, or concept of cause. But
I proceed and say, that if this proposition, which is merely a
subjective connection of perceptions, is to be a judgment of experience,
it must be considered as necessary and universally valid. Such a
proposition would be, ”the sun is by its light the cause of
heat." The empirical rule is now considered as a law, and as valid
not merely of appearances but valid of them for the purposes of a
possible experience which requires universal and therefore necessarily
valid rules. I
therefore easily comprehend the concept of cause, as a concept
necessarily belonging to the mere form of experience, and its
possibility as a synthetical union of perceptions in consciousness
generally; but I do not at all comprehend the possibility of a thing
generally as a cause, because the concept of cause denotes a condition
not at all belonging to things, but to experience. It is nothing in fact
but an objectively valid cognition of appearances and of their
succession, so far as the antecedent can be conjoined with the
consequent according to the rule of hypothetical judgments. |
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Sect.
30. Hence if the pure concepts of the understanding do not refer to
objects of experience but to things in themselves (noumena), they
have no signification whatever. They serve, as it were, only to decipher
appearances, that we may be able to read them as experience. The
principles which arise from their reference to the sensible world, only
serve our understanding for empirical use. Beyond this they are
arbitrary combinations, without objective reality, and we can neither
know their possibility a priori, nor verify their reference to
objects, let alone make it intelligible by any example; because examples
can only be borrowed from some possible experience, consequently the
objects of these concepts can be found nowhere but in a possible
experience. |
|
This complete (though to its originator unexpected) solution of
Hume's problem rescues for the pure concepts of the understanding their
a priori origin, and for the universal laws of nature their validity, as
laws of the understanding, yet in such a way as to limit their use to
experience, because their possibility depends solely on the reference of
the understanding to experience, but with a completely reversed mode of
connection which never occurred to Hume, not by deriving them from
experience, but by deriving experience from them.
This
is therefore the result of all our foregoing inquiries: "All
synthetical principles a priori are nothing more than principles of
possible experience," and can never be referred to things in themselves,
but to appearances as objects of experience. And hence pure mathematics
as well as a pure science of nature can never be referred to anything
more than mere appearances, and can only represent either that which
makes experience generally possible, or else that which, as it is
derived from these principles, must always be capable of being
represented in some possible experience.
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Sect. 31. And thus we have at last
something definite, upon which to depend in all metaphysical
enterprises, which have hitherto, boldly enough but always at random,
attempted everything without discrimination. That the aim of their
exertions should be so near, struck neither the dogmatical thinkers nor
those who, confident in their supposed sound common sense, started with
concepts and principles of pure reason (which were legitimate and
natural, but destined for mere empirical use) in quest of fields of
knowledge, to which they neither knew nor could know any determinate
bounds, because they bad never reflected nor were able to reflect on the
nature or even on the possibility of such a pure understanding. |
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Many a naturalist of pure reason (by
which I mean the man who believes he can decide in matters of
metaphysics without any science) may pretend, that lie long ago by the
prophetic spirit of his sound sense, not only suspected, but knew and
comprehended, what is here propounded with so much ado, or, if he likes,
with prolix and pedantic pomp: "that with all our reason we can
never reach beyond the field of experience." But when he is
questioned about his rational principles individually, he must grant,
that there are many of them which be has not taken from experience, and
which are therefore independent of it and valid a priori. How
then and on what grounds will he restrain both himself and the
dogmatist, who makes use of these concepts and principles beyond all
possible experience, because they are recognized to be independent of
it? And even he, this adept in sound sense, in spite of all his assumed
and cheaply acquired wisdom, is not exempt from wandering inadvertently
beyond objects of experience into the field of chimeras. He is often
deeply enough involved in them, though in announcing everything as mere
probability, rational conjecture, or analogy, be gives by his popular
language a color to his groundless pretensions.
Sect. 32. Since the oldest days of
philosophy inquirers into pure reason have conceived, besides the things
of sense, or appearances (phenomena), which make up the sensible
world, certain creations of the understanding, called noumena,
which should constitute an intelligible world. And as appearance and
illusion were by those men identified (a thing which we may well excuse
in an undeveloped epoch), actuality was only conceded to the beings of
thought. |
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315
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And we
indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances,
confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we
know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances,
viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown
something. The understanding therefore, by assuming appearances, grants
the existence of things in themselves also, and so far we may say, that
the representation of such things as form the basis of phenomena,
consequently of mere creations of the understanding, is not only
admissible, but unavoidable. |
|
Our
critical deduction by no means excludes things of that sort (noumena),
but rather limits the principles of the Aesthetic [the science of the
sensibility] in such a way that they shall not extend to all things, as
everything would then be turned into mere appearance, but that they
shall only hold good of objects of possible experience. Hereby then
objects of the understanding are granted, but with the inculcation of
this rule which admits of no exception: that we neither know nor can
know anything at all definite of these pure objects of the
understanding, because our pure concepts of the understanding as well as
our pure intuitions extend to nothing but objects of possible
experience, consequently to mere things of sense, and as soon as we
leave this sphere these concepts retain no meaning whatever.
Sect. 33. There is indeed something
seductive in our pure concepts of the understanding, which tempts us to
a transcendent use, -- a use which transcends all possible experience.
Not only are our concepts of substance, of power, of action, of reality,
and others, quite independent of experience, containing nothing of sense
appearance, and so apparently applicable to things in themselves (noumena),
but, what strengthens this conjecture, they contain a necessity of
determination in themselves, which experience never attains. The concept
of cause implies a rule, according to which one state follows another
necessarily; but experience can only show us, that one state of things
often, or at most, commonly, follows another, and therefore affords
neither strict universality, nor necessity. |
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316
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Hence the
concepts of the understanding [categories] have a deeper meaning and
import than can be exhausted by their empirical use, and so the
understanding inadvertently adds for itself to the house of experience a
much more extensive wing, which it fills with nothing but creatures of
thought, without ever observing that it has transgressed with its
otherwise lawful concepts the bounds of their use.
|
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317
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Sect. 34. Two important, and even
indispensable, though very dry, investigations had therefore become
indispensable in the Critique of Pure Reason [viz., the two
chapters "The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding" and "The Ground of the Distinction of All
Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena]. In the former it is
shown, that the senses furnish not the pure concepts of the
understanding in concreto, but only the schedule for their use,
and that the object conformable to it occurs only in experience (as the
product of the understanding from materials of the sensibility). In the
latter it is shown, that, although our pure concepts of the
understanding and our principles are independent of experience, and
despite of the apparently greater sphere of their use, still nothing
whatever can be thought by them beyond the field of experience, because
they can do nothing but merely determine the logical form of the
judgment relatively to given intuitions. But as there is no intuition at
all beyond the field of the sensibility, these pure concepts, as they
cannot possibly be exhibited in concreto, are void of all
meaning; consequently all these noumena, together with their
complex, the intelligible world,[7] are nothing but
representation of a problem, of which the object in itself is possible,
but the solution, from the nature of our understanding, totally
impossible. For our understanding is not a faculty of intuition, but of
the connection of given intuitions in experience. Experience must
therefore contain all the objects for our concepts; but beyond it no
concepts have any significance, as there is no intuition that might be
subsumed under them. |
|
Sect.
35. The imagination may perhaps be forgiven for occasional vagaries, and
for not keeping carefully within the limits of experience, since it
gains life and vigor by such flights, and since it is always easier to
moderate its boldness, than to stimulate its languor. But the
understanding which ought to think can never be forgiven for indulging
in vagaries; for we depend upon it alone for assistance to set bounds,
when necessary, to the vagaries of the imagination.
But the
understanding begins its aberrations very innocently and modestly. It
first elucidates the elementary cognitions, which inhere in it prior to
all experience, but yet must always have their application in
experience. It gradually drops these limits, and what is there to
prevent it, as it has quite freely derived its principles from itself?
And then it proceeds first to newly-imagined powers in nature, then to
beings outside nature; in short to a world, for whose construction the
materials cannot be wanting, because fertile fiction furnishes them
abundantly, and though not confirmed, is never refuted, by experience.
This is the reason that young thinkers arc so partial to metaphysics of
the truly dogmatical kind, and often sacrifice to it their time and
their talents, which might be otherwise better employed.
But there is no use in trying to moderate these fruitless endeavors of
pure reason by all manner of cautions as to the difficulties of solving
questions so occult, by complaints of the limits of our reason, and by
degrading our assertions into mere conjectures. For if their
impossibility is not distinctly shown, and reason's cognition of its own
essence does not become a true science, in which the field of its right
use is distinguished, so to say, with mathematical certainty from that
of its worthless and idle use, these fruitless efforts will never be
abandoned for good. |
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318 |
How is Nature itself possible? |
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Section
36. This question -- the highest point
that transcendental philosophy can ever reach, and to which, as its
boundary and completion, it must proceed-properly contains two
questions. First:
How is nature at all possible in the material sense, by intuition,
considered as the totality of appearances; how are space, time, and that
which fills both -- the object of sensation, in general possible? The
answer is: By means of the constitution of our Sensibility, according to
which it is specifically affected by objects, which are in themselves
unknown to it, and totally distinct from those appearances. This answer is
given in the Critique itself in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and
in these Prolegomena by the solution of the first general problem.
Secondly:
How is nature possible in the formal sense, as the totality of the
rules, under which all phenomena must come, in order to be thought as
connected in experience? The answer must be this: it is only possible by
means of the constitution of our Understanding, according to which all
the above representations of the sensibility are necessarily referred to
a consciousness, and by which the peculiar way in which we think (viz.,
by rules), and hence experience also, are possible, but must be clearly
distinguished from an insight into the objects in themselves. This answer is given in the
Critique itself in the Transcendental Logic, and in these Prolegomena, in the course of the solution of
the second main problem.
But
how this peculiar property of our sensibility itself is possible, or
that of our understanding and of the apperception which is necessarily
its basis and that of all thinking, cannot be further analyzed or
answered, because it is of them that we are in need for all our answers
and for all our thinking about objects.
|
|
319 |
There are many laws of nature,
which we can only know by means of experience; but conformity to law in
the connection of appearances, i.e., in nature in general, we cannot
discover by any experience, because experience itself requires laws
which are a priori at the basis of its possibility. |
|
The
possibility of experience in general is therefore at the same time the
universal law of nature, and the principles of the experience are the
very laws of nature. For we do not know nature but as the totality of
appearances, i.e., of representations in us, and hence we can only
derive the laws of its connection from the principles of their
connection in us, that is, from the conditions of their necessary union
in consciousness, which constitutes the possibility of experience.
Even the main proposition expounded throughout this section -- that
universal laws of nature can be distinctly known a priori --
leads naturally to the proposition: that the highest legislation of
nature must lie in ourselves, i.e., in our understanding, and that we
must not seek the universal laws of nature in nature by means of
experience, but conversely must seek nature, as to its universal
conformity to law, in the conditions of the possibility of experience,
which lie in our sensibility and in our understanding. For how were it
otherwise possible to know a priori these laws, as they are not
rules of analytical cognition, but truly synthetical extensions of it?
Such a necessary agreement of the principles of possible experience with
the laws of the possibility of nature, can only proceed from one of two
reasons: either these laws are drawn from nature by means of experience,
or conversely nature is derived from the laws of the possibility of
experience in general, and is quite the same as the mere universal
conformity to law of the latter. The former is self-contradictory, for
the universal laws of nature can and must be known a priori (that
is, independent of all experience), and be the foundation of all
empirical use of the understanding; the latter alternative therefore
alone remains.[8] |
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320
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But we
must distinguish the empirical laws of nature, which always presuppose
particular perceptions, from the pure or universal laws of nature,
which, without being based on particular perceptions, contain merely the
conditions of their necessary union in experience. In relation to the
latter, nature and possible experience are quite the same, and as the
conformity to law here depends upon the necessary connection of
appearances in experience (without which we cannot know any object
whatever in the sensible world), consequently upon the original laws of
the understanding, it seems at first strange, but is not the less
certain, to say: the understanding does not derive its laws (a
priori) from, but prescribes them to, nature. |
|
Section
37. We shall illustrate this seemingly bold proposition by an example,
which will show, that laws, which we discover in objects of sensuous
intuition (especially when these laws are known as necessary), are
commonly held by us to be such as have been placed there by the
understanding, in spite of their being similar in all points to the laws
of nature, which we ascribe to experience. |
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321
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Section 38. If we consider the properties
of the circle, by which this figure combines so many arbitrary
determinations of space in itself, at once in a universal rule, we
cannot avoid attributing a nature to this geometrical thing. Two right
lines, for example, which intersect one another and the circle,
howsoever they may be drawn, are always divided so that the rectangle
constructed with the segments of the one is equal to that constructed
with the segments of the other. The question now is: Does this law lie
in the circle or in the understanding, that is, Does this figure,
independently of the understanding, contain in itself the ground of the
law, or does the understanding, having constructed according to its
concepts (according to the quality of the radii) the figure itself,
introduce into it this law of the chords cutting one another in
geometrical proportion? When we follow the proofs of this law, we soon
perceive, that it can only be derived from the condition on which the
understanding founds the construction of this figure, and which is that
of the equality of the radii. But, if we enlarge this concept, to pursue
further the unity of various properties of geometrical figures under
common laws, and consider the circle as a conic section, which of course
is subject to the same fundamental conditions of construction as other
conic sections, we shall find that all the chords which intersect within
the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, always intersect so that the
rectangles of their segments are not indeed equal, but always bear a
constant ratio to one another. If we proceed still farther, to the
fundamental laws of physical astronomy, we find a
physical law of reciprocal attraction diffused over all material nature,
the rule of which is: “that it decreases inversely as the square of
the distance from each attracting point, i.e., as the spherical surfaces
increase, over which this force spreads," which law seems to be
necessarily inherent in the very nature of things, and hence is usually
propounded as knowable a priori. Simple as the sources of this law are,
merely resting upon the relation of spherical surfaces of different
radii, its consequences are so valuable with regard to the variety of
their agreement and its regularity, that not only are all possible
orbits of the celestial bodies conic sections, but such a relation of
these orbits to each other results, that no other law of attraction,
than that of the inverse square of the distance, can be imagined as fit
for a cosmical system. |
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322
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Here
accordingly is a nature that rests upon laws which the understanding
knows a priori, and chiefly from the universal principles of the
determination of space. Now I ask:
Do the laws of nature lie in space, and does the understanding learn
them by merely endeavoring to find out the enormous wealth of meaning
that lies in space; or do they inhere in the understanding and in the
way in which it determines space according to the conditions of the
synthetical unity in which its concepts are all centered? Space is
something so uniform and as to all particular properties so
indeterminate, that we should certainly not seek a store of laws of
nature in it. Whereas that which determines space to assume the form of a circle or the figures of a cone and
a sphere, is the understanding, so far as it contains the ground of the unity of their constructions.
The mere universal form of intuition,
called space, must therefore be the substratum of all intuitions
determinable to particular objects, and in it of course the condition of
the possibility and of the variety of these intuitions lies. But the
unity of the objects is entirely determined by the understanding, and on
conditions which lie in its own nature; and thus the understanding is
the origin of the universal order of nature, in that it comprehends all
appearances under its own laws, and thereby first constructs, a
priori,
experience (as to its form), by means of which whatever is to be
known
only by experience, is necessarily subjected to its laws. For we
are not now concerned
with the nature of things in themselves, which is independent of
the conditions both of our sensibility and our understanding, but
with nature, as an object of possible experience, and in this
case the understanding, whilst it makes experience possible,
thereby insists that the sensuous world is either not an object
of experience at all, or
else is nature. |
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APPENDIX
TO THE PURE SCIENCE OF NATURE. |
|
Sect.
39. Of the System of the Categories. There can be nothing more
desirable to a philosopher, than to be able to derive the scattered
multiplicity of the concepts or the principles, which had occurred to
him in concrete use, from a principle a priori, and to
unite everything
in this way in one cognition. He formerly only believed that
those things, which
remained after a certain abstraction, and seemed by comparison
among one another to constitute a particular kind of cognitions,
were completely collected; but this was only an aggregate.
Now he
knows, that just so many, neither more nor less, can constitute
the mode of cognition, and perceives the necessity of his
division, which constitutes comprehension; and now only he has
attained a
system. |
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323
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To
search in our daily cognition for the concepts, which do not rest upon
particular experience, and yet occur in all cognition of experience,
where they as it were constitute the mere form of connection,
presupposes neither greater reflection nor deeper insight, than to
detect in a language the rules of the actual use of words generally, and
thus to collect elements for a grammar. In fact both researches are very
nearly related, even though we are not able to give a reason why each
language has just this and no other formal constitution, and still less
why an exact number of such formal determinations in general are found
in it. |
|
Aristotle collected ten pure elementary concepts under the
name of Categories.[9] To these, which are also called
predicaments, he found himself obliged afterwards to add five post-predicaments, some of which however
(prius, simul, and motus) are contained in
the former; but this random collection
must be considered (and commended) as a mere hint for future
inquirers, not as a regularly developed idea, and hence it has,
in the present more advanced state of philosophy, been rejected
as quite useless.
After
long reflection on the pure elements of human knowledge (those
which
contain nothing empirical), I at last succeeded in
distinguishing with
certainty and in separating the pure elementary notions of the
Sensibility (space and time) from those of the Understanding.
Thus the 7th, 8th, and 8th Categories
had to be excluded from the old list. And the others were of no
service to me; because there was no principle [in them], on which
the understanding could be investigated, measured in its
completion, and all the functions, whence its pure concepts
arise, determined exhaustively and with precision.
|
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324
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But in order to discover such a principle,
I looked about for an act of the
understanding which comprises all the rest, and is distinguished only by
various modifications or phases, in reducing the multiplicity of
representation to the unity of thinking in general: I found this act of
the understanding to consist in judging. Here then the labors of the
logicians were ready at hand, though not yet quite free from defects,
and with this help I was enabled to exhibit a complete table of the pure
functions of the understanding, which are however undetermined in regard
to any object. I finally referred these functions of judging to objects
in general, or rather to the condition of determining judgments as
objectively valid, and so there arose the pure concepts of the
understanding, concerning which I could make certain, that these, and
this exact number only, constitute our whole cognition of things from
pure understanding. I was justified in calling them by their old name, categories, while I
reserved for myself the liberty of adding, under the title of predicables,
a complete list of all the concepts deducible from
them, by combinations whether among themselves, or with the pure
form of the appearance, i.e., space or time, or with its matter,
so far as it is not yet empirically determined (viz., the object
of sensation in general), as soon as a system of transcendental
philosophy should be completed with the construction of which I
am engaged in the
Critique of Pure Reason itself.
Now the essential point
in this system of
categories, which
distinguishes it from the old rhapsodical collection without any
principle, and for which alone it deserves to be considered as
philosophy, consists in this: that by means of it the true
significance of the pure concepts of the understanding and the
condition of their use could be precisely determined. For here
it became obvious that they are themselves nothing but logical
functions, and as such do not produce the least concept of an
object, but require some sensuous intuition as a basis. They
therefore only serve to determine empirical judgments, which are
otherwise undetermined and indifferent as regards all functions
of judging, relatively to these functions, thereby procuring
them universal validity, and by means of them making judgments of
experience in general possible. |
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325
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Such an insight into the
nature of the categories, which limits them at the same time to the mere
use of experience, never
occurred either to their first author, or to any of his
successors; but without this insight (which immediately depends
upon their derivation or deduction), they are quite useless and
only a miserable list of names, without explanation or rule for
their use. Had the ancients ever conceived such a notion,
doubtless the whole study of the pure rational knowledge, which
under the name of metaphysics has for centuries spoiled many a
sound mind, would have reached
us in quite another shape, and
would have enlightened the human understanding, instead of
actually exhausting it in obscure and vain speculations, thereby
rendering it unfit for true science. |
|
This system of categories
makes all treatment of every object of pure reason itself systematic,
and affords a direction
or clue how and through what points of inquiry every
metaphysical consideration must proceed, in order to be complete; for it
exhausts all the possible movements (momenta) of the
understanding, among which every concept must be classed. In like
manner the table of Principles has been formulated, the
completeness of which we can only vouch for by the system of the
categories. Even in the division of the concepts,22 which must
go beyond the physical application of the understanding, it is
always the very same clue, which, as it must always be
determined a priori by the same fixed points of the human
understanding,
always forms a closed circle. There is no doubt that the object
of a pure conception either of the understanding or of reason, so
far as it is to be estimated philosophically and on a priori principles, can in this way be completely known. I could not
therefore omit to make use of this clue with regard to one of the most abstract ontological divisions, viz., the various
distinctions of "the notions of something and of nothing," and to construct accordingly
(Critique, B402, B442-3) a regular and necessary
table of their divisions (Critique, B348).[10] |
|
326
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And this system, like
every other true one founded on a universal principle, shows its
inestimable value in this, that it
excludes all foreign concepts, which might otherwise intrude
among the pure concepts of the understanding, and determines the
place of every cognition. Those concepts, which under the name
of "concepts of reflection" have been likewise arranged in a table
according to the clue of the categories, intrude, without having
any privilege or title to be among the pure concepts of the
understanding in Ontology. They are concepts of connection, and
thereby of the objects themselves, whereas the former are only
concepts of a mere comparison of concepts already given, hence
of quite another nature and use. By my systematic division24 they
are saved from this confusion. But the value of my special table
of the categories will be still more obvious, when we separate
the table of the transcendental concepts of Reason from the
concepts of the understanding. The latter being of quite another
nature and origin, they must have quite another form than the
former. This so necessary separation has never yet been made in
any system of metaphysics for, as a rule, these rational
concepts all mixed up with the categories, like children of one family,
which confusion was unavoidable in the absence of a definite
system of categories.
FOOTNOTES
Footnote 1.
I freely grant that these examples do not represent such judgments of
perception as ever could become judgments of experience, even though a
concept of the understanding were superadded, because they refer merely
to feeling, which everybody knows to be merely subjective, and which of
course can never be attributed to the object, and consequently never
become objective. I only wished to give here an example of a judgment
that is merely subjectively valid, containing no ground for universal
validity, and thereby for a relation to the object. An example of the
judgments of perception, which become judgments of experience by
superadded concepts of the understanding, will be given in the next
note.
Footnote 2.
As an easier example, we may take the
following: " When the sun shines on the stone, it grows warm."
This judgment, however often I and others may have perceived it, is a
mere judgment of perception, and contains no necessity; perceptions are
only usually conjoined in this manner. But if I say, "The sun warms
the stone," I add to the perception a concept of the understanding,
viz., that of cause, which connects with the concept of sunshine that of
heat as a necessary consequence, and the synthetical judgment becomes of
necessity universally valid, viz., objective, and is converted from a
perception into experience.
Footnote 3.
This name seems preferable to the term
particularia, which is used for these judgments in logic. For the
latter implies the idea that they are not universal. But when I start
from unity (in single judgments) and so proceed to universality, I must
not [even indirectly and negatively] imply any reference to
universality. I think plurality merely without universality, and not the
exception from universality. This is necessary, if logical
considerations shall form the basis of the pure concepts of the
understanding. However, there is no need of making changes in logic.
Footnote 4.
But how does this proposition, that
judgments of experience contain necessity in the synthesis of
perceptions," agree with my statement so often before inculcated,
that "experience as cognition a posteriori can afford
contingent judgments only? "When I say that experience teaches me
something, I mean only the perception that lies in experience,--for
example, that heat always follows the shining of the sun on a stone;
consequently the proposition of experience is always so far accidental.
That this heat necessarily follows the shining of the sun is contained
indeed in the judgment of experience (by means of the concept of cause),
yet is a fact not learned by experience; for conversely, experience is
first of all generated by this addition of the concept of the
understanding (of cause) to perception. How perception attains this
addition may be seen by referring in the Critique itself to the
section on the Transcendental faculty of Judgment.
Footnote 5.
The three following paragraphs will
hardly be understood unless reference be made to what the Critique
itself says on the subject of the Principles; they will, however, be of
service in giving a general view of the Principles, and in fixing the
attention of the main points. [Critique, B187 ff.]
Footnote 6.
Heat and light are in a small space
just as large as to degree as in a large one; in like manner the
internal representations, pain, consciousness in general, whether they
last a short or a long time, need not vary as to the degree. Hence the
quantity is here in a point and in a moment just as great as in any
space or time however great. Degrees are therefore capable of increase,
but not in intuition, rather in mere sensation (or the quantity of the
degree of an intuition). Hence they can only be estimated quantitatively
by the relation of 1 to 0, viz, by their capability of decreasing by
infinite intermediate degrees to disappearance, or of increasing from
naught through infinite gradations to a determinate sensation in a
certain time. Quantitas qualitatis est gradus [the quantity of
quality is degree].
Footnote 7.
We speak of the "intelligible
world," not (as the usual expression is) "intellectual
world." For cognitions are intellectual through the understanding,
and refer to our world of sense also; but objects, so far as they can be
represented merely by the understanding, and to which none of our
sensible intuitions can refer, are termed " intelligible." But
as some possible intuition must correspond to every object, we would
have to assume an understanding that intuits things immediately; but of
such we have not the least notion, nor have we of the things of the
understanding, to which it should be applied.
Footnote 8.
Crusius alone thought of a compromise:
that a spirit, who can neither err nor deceive, implanted these laws in
us originally. But since false principles often intrude themselves, as
indeed the very system of this man shows in not a few examples, we are
involved ill difficulties as to the use of such a principle in the
absence of sure criteria to distinguish the genuine origin from the
spurious as we never can know certainly what the Spirit of truth or the
father of lies may have instilled into us.
Footnote 9.
1. Substantia, 2. Qualitas 3,
Quamtitas, 4. Relatio, 5. Actio,
6. Passio, 7. Quando, 8. Ubi, 9. Situs, 10. Habitus.
Footnote 10.
On the table of the categories many
neat observations may be made, for instance (1) that the third arises
from the first and the second joined in one concept (2) that in those of
Quantity and of Quality there is merely a progress from unity to
totality or from something to nothing (for this purpose the categories
of Quality must stand thus: reality, limitation, total negation),
without correlata or opposita, whereas those of Relation
and of Modality have them; (3) that, as in Logic categorical judgments
are the basis of all others, so the category of Substance is the basis
of all concepts of actual things; (4) that as Modality in the judgment
is not a particular predicate, so by the modal concepts a determination
is not superadded to things, etc., etc. Such observations are of great
use. If we besides enumerate all the predicables, which we can find
pretty completely in any good ontology (for example, Baumgarten's), and
arrange them in classes under the categories, in which operation we must
not neglect to add as complete a dissection of all these concepts as
possible, there will then arise a merely analytical part of metaphysics,
which does not contain a single synthetical proposition. which might
precede the second (the synthetic), and would by its precision and
completeness be not only useful, but, in virtue of its system, be even
to some extent elegant.
|
FOOTNOTES
Footnote 1.
If we can say, that a science is
actual at least in the idea of all men, as soon as it appears that the
problems which lead to it are proposed to everybody by the nature of
human reason, and that therefore many (though faulty) endeavors are
unavoidably made in its behalf, then we are bound to say that
metaphysics is subjectively (and indeed necessarily) actual, and
therefore we justly ask, how is it (objectively) possible.
Footnote 2.
In disjunctive judgments we consider
all possibility as divided in respect to a particular concept. By the
ontological principle of the universal determination of a thing in
general, I understand the principle that either the one or the other of
all possible contradictory predicates must be assigned to any object.
This is at the same time the principle of all disjunctive judgments,
constituting the foundation of our conception of possibility, and in it
the possibility of every object in general is considered as determined.
This may serve as a slight explanation of the above proposition: that
the activity of reason in disjunctive syllogisms is formally the same as
that by which it fashions the idea of a universal conception of all
reality, containing in itself that which is positive in all
contradictory predicates.
Footnote 3.
Were the representation of the
apperception (the Ego) a concept, by which anything could be thought, it
could be used as a predicate 'of other things or contain predicates in
itself. But it is nothing more than the feeling of an existence without
the least definite conception and is only the representation of that to
which all thinking stands in relation (relative accidentis).
Footnote 4.
It is indeed very remarkable how
carelessly metaphysicians have always passed over the principle of the
permanents of substances without ever attempting a proof of it;
doubtless because they found themselves abandoned by all proofs as soon
as they began to deal with the concept of substance. Common sense, which
felt distinctly that without this presupposition no union of perceptions
in experience is possible, supplied the want by a postulate. From
experience itself it never could derive such a principle, partly because
substances cannot be so traced in all their alterations and
dissolutions, that the matter can always be found undiminished, partly
because the principle contains necessity, which is always the
sign of an a priori principle. People then boldly applied this
postulate to the concept of soul as a substance, and concluded a
necessary continuance of the soul after the death of man (especially as
the simplicity of this substance, which is interred from the
indivisibility of consciousness, secured it from destruction by
dissolution). Had they found the genuine source of this principles --a
discovery which requires deeper researches than they were ever inclined
to make-- they would have seen, that the law of the permanence of
substances has place for the purposes of experience only, and hence can
hold good of things so far as they are to be known and conjoined with
others in experience, but never independently of all possible
experience, and consequently cannot hold good of the soul after death.
Footnote 5.
I therefore would be pleased to have
the critical reader to devote to this antinomy of pure reason his chief
attention, because nature itself seems to have established it with a
view to stagger reason in its daring pretensions, and to force it to
self-examination. For every proof, which I have given, as well of the
thesis as of the antithesis, I undertake to be responsible, and thereby
to show the certainty of the inevitable antinomy of reason. When the
reader is brought by this curious phenomenon to fall back upon the proof
of the presumption upon which it rests, he will feet himself obliged to
investigate the ultimate foundation of all the cognition of pure reason
with me more thoroughly.
Footnote 6.
The idea of freedom occurs only in the
relation of the intellectual, as cause, to the appearance, as effect.
Hence we cannot attribute freedom to matter in regard to the incessant
action by which it fills its space. though this action takes place from
an internal principle. We can likewise find no notion of freedom
suitable to purely rational beings, for instance, to God, so far as his
action is immanent. For his action, though independent of external
determining causes, is determined in his eternal reason, that is, in the
divine nature. It is only, if something, is to start by an
action, and so the effect occurs in the sequence of time, or in the
world of sense (e.g., the beginning of the world), that we can put the
question, whether the causality of the cause must in its turn have been
started, or whether the cause can originate an effect without its
causality itself beginning. In the former case the concept of this
causality is a concept of natural necessity, in the latter, that of
freedom. From this the reader will see. that, as I explained freedom to
be the faculty of starting an event spontaneously, I have exactly hit
the notion which is the problem of metaphysics.
Footnote 7.
Herr Platner in his Aphorisms
acutely says (Sects. 728, 729), "If reason be a criterion, no
concept, which is incomprehensible to human reason, can be possible.
Incomprehensibility has place in what is actual only. Here
incomprehensibility arises from the insufficiency of the acquired
ideas." It sounds paradoxical, but is otherwise not strange to say,
that in nature there is much incomprehensible (e.g., the faculty of
generation) but if we mount still higher, and even go beyond nature,
everything again becomes comprehensible; for we then quit entirely the
objects, which can be given us, and occupy ourselves merely about ideas,
in which occupation we can easily comprehend the law that reason
prescribes by them to the understanding for its use in experience,
because the law is the reason's own product. |
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FOOTNOTES
Footnote 1
Thus there is an analogy between the
juridical relation of human actions and the mechanical relation of
motive powers. I never can do anything to an. other man without giving
him a right to do the same to me on the same conditions; just as no mass
can act with its motive power on another mass without thereby
occasioning the other to react equally against it. Here right and motive
power are quite dissimilar things, but in their relation there is
complete similarity. By means of such an analogy I can obtain a notion
of the relation of things which absolutely are unknown to me. For
instance, as the promotion of the welfare of children (= a) is to the
love of parents (= b), so the welfare of the human species (= c) is to
that unknown [quantity which is] in God (= x), which we call love; not
as if it had the least similarity to any human inclination, but because
we can suppose its relation to the world to be similar to that which
things of the world bear one another. But the concept of relation in
this case is a mere category, viz., the concept of cause, which has
nothing to do with sensibility.
Footnote 2
I may say, that the causality
of the Supreme Cause holds the
same place with regard to the world that human reason does with
regard to its works of art. Here the nature of the Supreme Cause
itself remains unknown to me: I only compare its effects (the
order of the world) which I know, and their conformity to reason,
to the effects of human reason which I also know; and hence I
term the former reason, without attributing to it on that account
what I understand in man by this term, or attaching to it
anything else known to me, as its property.
Footnote 3
Throughout in the Critique
I never lost sight of the plan not
to neglect anything, were it ever so recondite, that could
render the inquiry into the nature of pure reason complete. Everybody
may afterwards carry his researches as far as he pleases, when
he has been merely shown what yet remains to be done. It is this a
duty which must reasonably be expected of him who has made it
his business to survey the whole field, in order to consign it to
others for future cultivation and allotment. And to this branch
both the scholia belong, which will hardly recommend themselves
by their dryness to amateurs, and hence are added here for
connoisseurs only. |
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365
| Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
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SOLUTION OF THE GENERAL QUESTION OF THE
PROLEGOMENA |
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"HOW IS METAPHYSICS POSSIBLE AS A SCIENCE?"
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Metaphysics, as a natural disposition of reason, is actual, but if
considered by itself alone (as the analytical solution of the third
principal question showed), dialectical and illusory. If we think of
taking principles from it, and in using them follow the natural, but on
that account not less false, illusion, we can never produce science, but
only a vain dialectical art, in which one school may outdo another, but
none can ever acquire a just and lasting approbation.
In order that as a science metaphysics may be entitled to claim not mere
fallacious plausibility, but insight and conviction, a Critique of
Reason must itself exhibit the whole stock of a priori concepts,
their division according to their various sources (Sensibility,
Understanding, and Reason), together with a complete table of them, the
analysis of all these concepts, with all their consequences, especially
by means of the deduction of these concepts, the possibility of
synthetical cognition a priori, the principles of its application
and finally its bounds, all in a complete system. Critique, therefore,
and critique alone, contains in itself the whole well-proved and
well-tested plan, and even all the means required to accomplish
metaphysics, as a science; by other ways and means it is impossible. The
question here therefore is not so much how this performance is possible,
as how to set it going, and induce men of clear heads to quit their
hitherto perverted and fruitless cultivation for one that will not
deceive, and how such a union for the common end may best be directed.
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This much is certain, that whoever has once tasted critique will be ever
after disgusted with all dogmatical twaddle which be formerly put up
with, because his reason must have something, and could find
nothing better for its support. Critique stands in the same relation to
the common metaphysics of the schools, as chemistry does to alchemy, or
as astronomy to the astrology of the fortune-teller. I pledge myself
that nobody who has read through and through, and grasped the principles
of critique, even in these Prolegomena only, will ever return to
that old and sophistical pseudo-science; but will rather with a certain
delight look forward to metaphysics which is now indeed in his power,
requiring no more preparatory discoveries, and now at last affording
permanent satisfaction to reason. For here is an advantage upon which,
of all possible sciences, metaphysics alone can with certainty reckon:
that it can be brought to such completion and fixity as to be incapable
of further change, or of any augmentation by new discoveries; because
here reason has the sources of its knowledge in itself, not in objects
and their observation [Anschauung], by which latter its stock of
knowledge cannot be further increased. When therefore it has exhibited
the fundamental laws of its faculty completely and so definitely as to
avoid all misunderstanding, there remains nothing for pure reason to
know a priori, nay, there is even no ground to raise further
questions. The sure prospect of knowledge so definite and so compact has
a peculiar charm, even though we should set aside all its advantages, of
which I shall hereafter speak.
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All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time, but finally destroys
itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay. That
this time is come for metaphysics appears from the state into which it
has fallen among all learned nations, despite of all the zeal with which
other sciences of every kind are prosecuted. The old arrangement of our
university studies still preserves its shadow; now and then an Academy
of Science tempts men by offering prizes to write essays on it, but it
is no longer numbered among thorough sciences; and let any one judge for
himself how a man of genius, if he were called a great metaphysician,
would receive the compliment, which may be well- meant, but is scarce
envied by anybody.
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Yet, though the period of the downfall of all dogmatical metaphysics has
undoubtedly arrived, we are yet far from being able to say that the
period of its regeneration is come by means of a thorough and complete
Critique of Reason. All transitions from a tendency to its contrary pass
through the stage of indifference, and this moment is the most dangerous
for an author, but, in my opinion, the most favorable for the science.
For, when party spirit has died out by a total dissolution of former
connections, minds are in the best state to listen to several proposals
for an organization according to a new plan.
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When I say, that I hope these Prolegomena will excite
investigation in the field of critique and afford a new and promising
object to sustain the general spirit of philosophy, which seems on its
speculative side to want sustenance, I can imagine beforehand, that
every one, whom the thorny paths of my Critique have tired and
put out of humor, will ask me, upon what I found this hope. My answer
is: upon the irresistible law of necessity.
That the human mind will ever give up metaphysical researches is as
little to be expected as that we should prefer to give up breathing
altogether, to avoid inhaling impure air. There will therefore always be
metaphysics in the world; nay, every one, especially every man of
reflection, will have it, and for want of a recognized standard, will
shape it for himself after his own pattern. What has hitherto been
called metaphysics, cannot satisfy any critical mind, but to forego it
entirely is impossible; therefore a critique of pure reason itself must
now be attempted or, if one exists, investigated, and brought to the
full test, because there is no other means of supplying this pressing
want, which is something more than mere thirst for knowledge.
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Ever since I have come to know critique, whenever I finish reading a
book of metaphysical contents, which, by the preciseness of its notions,
by variety, order, and an easy style, was not only entertaining but also
helpful, I cannot help asking, "Has this author indeed advanced
metaphysics a single step?" The learned men, whose works have been
useful to me in other respects and always contributed to the culture of
my mental powers, will, I hope, forgive me for saying, that I have never
been able to find either their essays or my own less important ones
(though self-love may recommend them to me) to have advanced the
science of metaphysics in the least, and why? Here is the very obvious
reason: metaphysics did not then exist as a science, nor can it be
gathered piecemeal, but its germ must be fully preformed in the
Critique. But in order to prevent all misconception, we must remember
what has been already said, that by the analytical treatment of
our concepts the understanding gains indeed a great deal, but the
science (of metaphysics) is thereby not in the least advanced, because
these dissections of concepts are nothing but the materials from which
the intention is to carpenter our science. Let the concepts of substance
and of accident be ever so well dissected and determined, all this is
very well as a preparation for some future use. But if we cannot prove,
that in all which exists the substance endures, and only the accidents
vary, our science is not the least advanced by all our analyzes.
Metaphysics has hitherto never been able to prove a priori either
this proposition, or that of sufficient reason, still less any more
complex theorem, such as belongs to psychology or cosmology, or indeed
any synthetical proposition. By all its analyzing therefore nothing is
affected, nothing obtained or forwarded and the science, after all this
bustle and noise, still remains as it was in the days of Aristotle,
though far better preparations were made for it than of old, if the clue
to synthetical cognitions had only been discovered.
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If any one thinks himself offended, he is at liberty to refute my charge
by producing a single synthetical proposition belonging to metaphysics,
which he would prove dogmatically a priori, for until he has
actually performed this feat, I shall not grant that he has truly
advanced the science; even should this proposition be sufficiently
confirmed by common experience. No demand can be more moderate or more
equitable, and in the (inevitably certain) event of its non-performance,
no assertion more just, than that hitherto metaphysics has never existed
as a science.
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But there are two things which, in case the challenge be accepted, I
must deprecate: first, trifling about probability and conjecture, which
are suited as little to metaphysics, as to geometry; and secondly, a
decision by means of the magic wand of common sense, which does not
convince every one, but which accommodates itself to personal
peculiarities.
For as to the former, nothing can be more absurd, than in metaphysics, a
philosophy from pure reason to think of grounding our judgments upon
probability and conjecture. Everything that is to be cognized a
priori is thereby announced as apodeictically certain, and must
therefore be proved in this way. We might as well think of grounding
geometry or arithmetic upon conjectures. As to the doctrine of chances
in the latter, it does not contain probable, but perfectly certain,
judgments concerning the degree of the probability of certain cases,
under given uniform conditions, which, in the sum of all possible cases,
infallibly happen according to the rule, though it is not sufficiently
determined in respect to every single chance. Conjectures (by means of
induction and of analogy) can be suffered in an empirical science of
nature only, yet even there the possibility at least of what we assume
must be quite certain.
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The
appeal to common sense is even more absurd, when concept and principles
are announced as valid, not in so far as they hold with regard to
experience, but even beyond the conditions of experience. For what is
common sense? It is normal good sense, so far it judges right. But
what is normal good sense? It is the faculty of the knowledge and use of
rules in concreto, as distinguished from the speculative
understanding, which is a faculty of knowing rules in abstracto.
Common sense can hardly understand the rule, that every event is
determined by means of its cause, and can never comprehend it thus
generally. It therefore demands an example from experience, and when it
hears that this rule means nothing but what it always thought when a
pane was broken or a kitchen-utensil missing, it then understands the
principle and grants it. Common sense therefore is only of use so far as
it can see its rules (though they actually are a priori)
confirmed by experience; consequently to comprehend them a priori,
or independently of experience, belongs to the speculative
understanding, and lies quite beyond the horizon of common sense. But
the province of metaphysics is entirely confined to the latter kind of
knowledge, and it is certainly a bad index of common sense to appeal to
it as a witness, for it cannot here form any opinion whatever, and men
look down upon it with contempt until they are in trouble and can find
in their speculation neither advice nor help.
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It is a common subterfuge of those false friends of common sense (who
occasionally prize it highly, but usually despise it) to say, that there
must surely be at all events some propositions which are immediately
certain, and of which there is no occasion to give any proof, or even
any account at all, because we otherwise could never stop inquiring into
the grounds of our judgments. But if we except the principle of
contradiction, which is not sufficient to show the truth of synthetical
judgments, they can never adduce, in proof of this privilege, anything
else indubitable, which they can immediately ascribe to common sense,
except mathematical propositions, such as twice two make four, between
two points there is but one straight line, etc. But these judgments are
radically different from those of metaphysics. For in mathematics I
myself can, by thinking, construct whatever I represent to myself as
possible by a concept: I add to the first two the other two, one by one,
and myself make the number four, or I draw in thought from one point to
another all manner of lines, equal as well as unequal; yet I can draw
one only, which is like itself in all its parts. But I cannot, by all my
power of thinking, extract from the concept of a thing the concept of
something else, whose existence is necessarily connected with the
former, but I must call in experience. And though my understanding
furnishes me a priori (yet only in reference to possible
experience) with the concept of such a connection (i.e., causation), I
cannot exhibit it a priori in intuition, like the concepts
of mathematics, and so show its possibility a priori. This
concept, together with the principles of its application, always
requires, if it is to hold a priori --as is requisite in
metaphysics-- a justification and deduction of its possibility, because
we cannot otherwise know how far it holds good, and whether it can be
used in experience only or beyond it also. Therefore
in metaphysics, as a speculative science of pure reason, we can never
appeal to common sense, but may do so only when we are forced to
surrender it, and to renounce all purely speculative cognition, which
must always be knowledge, and consequently when we forego metaphysics
itself and its instruction, for the sake of adopting a rational faith
which alone may be possible for us, and sufficient to our wants, perhaps
even more salutary than knowledge itself. For in this case the attitude
of the question is quite altered. Metaphysics must be science, not only
as a whole, but in all its parts, otherwise it is nothing; because, as a
speculation of pure reason, it finds a hold only on general opinions.
Beyond its field, however, probability and common sense may be used with
advantage and justly, but on quite special principles, of which the
importance always depends on the reference to practical life.
This is what I hold myself justified in requiring for the possibility of metaphysics as a science.
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Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
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CONCLUSION:
ON
THE DETERMINATION OF THE BOUNDS OF PURE REASON
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Section
57. Having adduced the clearest arguments, it would be absurd for us to
hope that we can know more of any object, than belongs to the possible
experience of it, or lay claim to the least atom of knowledge about
anything not assumed to be an object of possible experience, which would
determine it according to the constitution it has in itself. For how
could we determine anything in this way, since time, space, and the
categories, and still more all the concepts formed by empirical
experience or perception in the sensible world [Anschauung], have and
can have no other use, than to make experience possible. And if this
condition is omitted from the pure concepts of the understanding, they
do not determine any object, and have no meaning whatever.
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But
it would be on the other hand a still greater absurdity if we conceded
no things in themselves, or set up our experience for the only possible
mode of knowing things, our mode of intuition of them in space
and in time for the only possible way, and our discursive understanding
for the archetype of every possible understanding; in fact if we wished
to have the principles of the possibility of experience considered
universal conditions of things in themselves.
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Our
principles, which limit the use of reason to possible experience, might
in this way become transcendent, and the limits of our reason be set up
as limits of the possibility of things in themselves (as Hume's Dialogues may illustrate), if a careful critique did not guard the
bounds of our reason with respect to its empirical use, and set a limit
to its pretensions. Skepticism originally arose from metaphysics and its
licentious dialectics. At first it might, merely to favor the empirical
use of reason, announce everything that transcends this use as worthless
and deceitful; but by and by, when it was perceived that the very same
principles that are used in experience, insensibly, and apparently with
the same right, led still further than experience extends, then men
began to doubt even the propositions of experience. But here there is no
danger; for common sense will doubtless always assert its rights. A
certain confusion, however, arose in science which cannot determine how
far reason is to be trusted, and why only so far and no further, and
this confusion can only be cleared up and all future relapses obviated
by a formal determination, on principle, of the boundary of the use of
our reason.
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352
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We cannot indeed, beyond all possible experience, form a
definite notion of what things in themselves may be. Yet we are not at
liberty to abstain entirely from inquiring into them; for experience
never satisfies reason fully, but in answering questions, refers us
further and further back, and leaves us dissatisfied with regard to
their complete solution. This any one may gather from the Dialectics of
pure reason, which therefore has its good subjective grounds. Having
acquired, as regards the nature of our soul, a clear conception of the
subject, and having come to the conviction, that its manifestations
cannot be explained materialistically, who can refrain from asking what
the soul really is, and, if no concept of experience suffices for the
purpose, from accounting for it by a concept of reason (that of a simple
immaterial being), though we cannot by any means prove its objective
reality? Who
can satisfy himself with mere empirical knowledge in all the
cosmological questions of the duration and of the quantity of the world,
of freedom or of natural necessity, since every answer given on
principles of experience begets a fresh question, which likewise
requires its answer and thereby clearly shows the insufficiency of all
physical modes of explanation to satisfy reason? Finally,
who does not see in the thoroughgoing contingency and dependence of all
his thoughts and assumptions on mere principles of experience, the
impossibility of stopping there? And who does not feel himself
compelled, notwithstanding all interdictions against losing himself in
transcendent ideas, to seek rest and contentment beyond all the concepts
which he can vindicate by experience, in the concept of a Being, the
possibility of which we cannot conceive, but at the same time cannot be
refuted, because it relates to a mere being of the understanding, and
without it reason must needs remain forever dissatisfied?
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Bounds
(in extended beings) always presuppose a space existing outside a
certain definite place, and enclosing it; limits do not require this,
but are mere negations, which affect a quantity, so far as it is not
absolutely complete. But our reason, as it were, sees in its
surroundings a space for the cognition of things in themselves, though
we can never have definite notions of them, and are limited to
appearances only.
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As long as the cognition of reason is homogeneous,
definite bounds to it are inconceivable. In mathematics and in natural
philosophy human reason admits of limits but not of bounds, viz., that
something indeed lies without it, at which it can never arrive, but not
that it will at any point find completion in its internal progress. The
enlarging of our views in mathematics, and the possibility of new
discoveries, are infinite; and the same is the case with the discovery
of new properties of nature, of new powers and laws, by continued
experience and its rational combination. But limits cannot be mistaken
here, for mathematics refers to appearances only, and what cannot be an
object of sensuous contemplation, such as the concepts of metaphysics
and of morals, lies entirely without its sphere, and it can never lead
to them; neither does it require them. It is therefore not a continual
progress and an approximation towards these sciences, and there is not,
as it were, any point or line of contact. Natural
science will never reveal to us the internal constitution of things,
which though not appearance, yet can serve as the ultimate ground of
explaining appearance. Nor does that science require this for its
physical explanations. Nay even if such grounds should be offered from
other sources (for instance, the influence of immaterial beings), they
must be rejected and not used in the progress of its explanations. For
these explanations must only be grounded upon that which as an object of
sense can belong to experience, and be brought into connection with our
actual perceptions and empirical laws.
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But
metaphysics leads us towards bounds in the dialectical attempts of pure
reason (not undertaken arbitrarily or wantonly, but stimulated thereto
by the nature of reason itself). And the transcendental Ideas, as they
do not admit of evasion, and are never capable of realization, serve to
point out to us actually not only the bounds of the pure use of reason,
but also the way to determine them. Such is the end and the use of this
natural predisposition of our reason, which has brought forth
metaphysics as its favorite child, whose generation, like every other in
the world, is not to be ascribed to blind chance, but to an original
germ, wisely organized for great ends. For
metaphysics, in its fundamental features, perhaps more than any other
science, is placed in us by nature itself, and cannot be considered the
production of an arbitrary choice or a casual enlargement in the
progress of experience from which it is quite disparate.
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Reason with all
its concepts and laws of the understanding, which suffice for empirical
use, i.e., within the sensible world, finds in itself no satisfaction
because ever-recurring questions deprive us of all hope of their
complete solution. The transcendental ideas, which have that completion
in view, are such problems of reason. But
it sees clearly, that the sensuous world cannot contain this completion,
neither consequently can all the concepts, which serve merely for
understanding the world of sense, such as space and time, and whatever
we have adduced under the name of pure concepts of the understanding.
The sensuous world is nothing but a chain of appearances connected
according to universal laws; it has therefore no subsistence by itself;
it is not the thing in itself, and consequently must point to that which
contains the basis of this experience, to beings which cannot be known
merely as phenomena, but as things in themselves. In the cognition of
them alone reason can hope to satisfy its desire of completeness in
proceeding from the conditioned to its conditions.
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We
have above (Sections 33, 34) indicated the limits of reason with regard to
all cognition of mere creations of thought. Now, since the
transcendental ideas have urged us to approach them, and thus have led
us, as it were, to the spot where the occupied space (viz., experience)
touches the void (that of which we can know nothing, viz., noumena), we
can determine the bounds of pure reason. For in all bounds there is
something positive (e.g., a surface is the boundary of corporeal space,
and is therefore itself a space, a line is a space, which is the
boundary of the surface, a point the boundary of the line, but yet
always a place in space), whereas limits contain mere negations. The
limits pointed out in those paragraphs are not enough after we have
discovered that beyond them there still lies something (though we can
never know what it is in itself). For
the question now is, What is the attitude of our reason in this
connection of what we know with what we do not, and never shall, know?
This is an actual connection of a known thing with one quite unknown
(and which will always remain so), and though what is unknown should not
become the least more known-which we cannot even hope-yet the notion of
this connection must be definite, and capable of being rendered
distinct.
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We must therefore accept an immaterial being, a world of
understanding, and a Supreme Being (all merely noumena), because in them
only, as things in themselves, reason finds that completion and
satisfaction, which it can never hope for in the derivation of
appearances from their homogeneous grounds, and because these actually
have reference to something distinct from them (and totally
heterogeneous), as appearances always presuppose an object in itself,
and therefore suggest its existence whether we can know more of it or
not.
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But
as we can never cognize these beings of understanding as they are in
themselves, that is, definitely, yet must assume them as regards the
sensible world, and connect them with it by reason, we are at least able
to think this connection by means of such concepts as express their
relation to the world of sense. Yet if we represent to ourselves a being
of the understanding by nothing but pure concepts of the understanding,
we then indeed represent nothing definite to ourselves, consequently our
concept has no significance; but if we think it by properties borrowed
from the sensuous world, it is no longer a being of understanding, but
is conceived as an appearance, and belongs to the sensible world. Let
us take an instance from the notion of the Supreme Being.
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Our deistic
conception is quite a pure concept of reason, but represents only a
thing containing all realities, without being able to determine any one
of them; because for that purpose an example must be taken from the
world of sense, in which case we should have an object of sense only,
not something quite heterogeneous, which can never be an object of
sense. Suppose
I attribute to the Supreme Being understanding, for instance; I have no
concept of an understanding other than my own, one that must receive its
intuitions by the senses, and which is occupied in
bringing them under rules of the unity of consciousness. Then the
elements of my concept would always lie in the appearance; I should
however by the insufficiency of the appearance be necessitated to go
beyond them to the concept of a being which neither depends upon
appearance, nor is bound up with them as conditions of its
determination. But
if I separate understanding from sensibility to obtain a pure
understanding, then nothing remains but the mere form of thinking
without intuition, by which form alone I can know nothing
definite, and consequently no object. For that purpose I should conceive
another understanding, such as would directly perceive its objects,
but of which I have not the least notion; because the human
understanding is discursive, and can
only cognize [indirectly] by means of general concepts. And
the very same difficulties arise if I attribute a will to the Supreme
Being; for I have this concept only by drawing it from my internal
experience, and therefore from my dependence for satisfaction upon
objects whose existence we require; and so the notion rests upon
sensibility, which is absolutely incompatible with the pure concept of
the Supreme Being.
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Hume's
objections to deism are weak, and affect only the proofs, and not the
deistic assertion itself. But as regards theism, which depends on a
stricter determination of the concept of the Supreme Being which in
deism is merely transcendent, they are very strong, and as this concept
is formed, in certain (in fact in all common) cases irrefutable. Hume
always insists, that by the mere concept of an original being, to which
we apply only ontological predicates (eternity, omnipresence,
omnipotence), we think nothing definite, and that properties which can
yield a concept in concreto must be superadded; that it is not enough to
say, it is cause, but we must explain the nature of its causality, for
example, that of an understanding and of a will. He then begins his
attacks on the essential point itself, i.e., theism, as he; had
previously directed his battery only against the proofs of deism, an
attack which is not very dangerous to it in its consequences. All his
dangerous arguments refer to anthropomorphism, which he holds to be
inseparable from theism, and to make it absurd in itself; but if the
former be abandoned, the latter must vanish with it, and nothing remain
but deism, of which nothing can come, which is of no value, and which
cannot serve as any foundation to religion or morals. If this
anthropomorphism were really unavoidable, no proofs whatever of the
existence of a Supreme Being, even were they all granted, could
determine for us the concept of this Being without involving us in
contradictions.
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357
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If
we connect with the command to avoid all transcendent judgments of pure
reason, the command (which apparently conflicts with it) to proceed to
concepts that lie beyond the field of its immanent (empirical) use, we
discover that both can subsist together, but only at the boundary of all
lawful use of reason. For this boundary belongs as well to the field of
experience, as to that of the creations of thought, and we are thereby
taught, as well, bow these so remarkable ideas serve merely for marking
the bounds of human reason. On the one hand they give warning not
boundlessly to extend cognition of experience, as if nothing but world remained for us to
cognize, and yet, on the other hand, not to transgress
the bounds of experience, and to think of judging about things beyond
them, as things in themselves.
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But we stop at this boundary we
limit our judgment merely to the relation which the world may have to a
Being whose very concept lies beyond all the knowledge which we can
attain within the world. For we then do not attribute to the Supreme
Being any of the properties in themselves, by which we represent objects
of experience, and thereby avoid dogmatic anthropomorphism; but we
attribute them to his relation to the world, and allow ourselves a symbolic anthropomorphism, which in fact concerns language only, and
not the object itself.
If I say that we are compelled to consider the
world as if it were the work of a Supreme Understanding and Will, I
really say nothing more, than that a watch, a ship, a regiment, bears
the same relation to the watchmaker, the shipbuilder, the commanding
officer, as the world of sense (or whatever constitutes the substratum
of this complex of appearances) does to the unknown, which I do not
hereby cognize as it is in itself, but as it is for me or in relation to
the world, of which I am a part.
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358
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Section
58. Such a cognition is one of analogy, and does not signify (as is
commonly understood) an imperfect similarity of two things, but a
perfect similarity of relations between two quite dissimilar things.[1]
By means of this analogy, however, there remains a concept of the
Supreme Being sufficiently determined for us, though we have left out
everything that could determine it absolutely and in itself; for we
determine it as regards the world and as regards ourselves, and more do
we not require. The attacks which Hume makes upon those who would
determine this concept absolutely, by taking the materials for so doing
from themselves and the world, do not affect us; and he cannot object to
us, that we have nothing left if we give up the objective
anthropomorphism of the concept of the Supreme Being.
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359
360
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For let us assume at the outset (as Hume in his
Dialogues makes Philo grant Cleanthes), as a necessary hypothesis, the
deistical concept of the First Being, in which this Being is thought by
the mere ontological predicates of substance, of cause, etc. This must
be done, because reason, actuated in the sensible world by mere
conditions, which are themselves always conditional, cannot otherwise
have any satisfaction, and it therefore can be done without falling into
anthropomorphism (which transfers predicates from the world of sense to
a Being quite distinct from the world), because those predicates are
mere categories, which, though they do not give a determinate concept of
God, yet give a concept not limited to any conditions of sensibility.
Thus nothing
can prevent our predicating of this Being a causality through reason
with regard to the world, and thus passing to theism, without being
obliged to attribute to God in himself this kind of reason, as a
property inhering in him. For as to the former, the only possible way of
prosecuting the use of reason (as regards all possible experience, in
complete harmony with itself) in the world of sense to the highest
point, is to assume a supreme reason as a cause of all the connections
in the world. Such a principle must be quite advantageous to reason and
can hurt it nowhere in its application to nature. As to the latter,
reason is thereby not transferred as a property to the First Being in
himself, but only to his relation to the world of sense, and so
anthropomorphism is entirely avoided. For
nothing is considered here but the cause of the form of reason which is
perceived everywhere in the world, and reason is attributed to the
Supreme Being, so far as it contains the ground of this form of reason
in the world, but according to analogy only, that is, so far as this
expression shows merely the relation, which the Supreme Cause unknown to
us has to the world, in order to determine everything in it conformably
to reason in the highest degree. We
are thereby kept from using reason as an attribute for the purpose of
conceiving God, but instead of conceiving the world in such a manner as
is necessary to have the greatest possible use of reason according to
principle. We thereby acknowledge that the Supreme Being is quite
inscrutable and even unthinkable in any definite way as to what he is in
himself. We are thereby kept, on the one band, from making a
transcendent use of the concepts which we have of reason as an efficient
cause (by means of the will), in order to determine the Divine Nature by
properties, which are only borrowed from human nature, and from losing
ourselves in gross and extravagant notions, and on the other hand from
deluging the contemplation of the world with hyperphysical modes of
explanation according to our notions of human reason, which we transfer
to God, and so losing for this contemplation its proper application,
according to which it should be a rational study of mere nature, and not
a presumptuous derivation of its appearances from a Supreme Reason. The
expression suited to our feeble notions is, that we conceive the world
as if it came, as regarding its existence and internal plan, from a Supreme
Reason. By this notion we both know the constitution, which belongs to
the world itself, yet without pretending to determine the nature of its
cause in itself, and on the other hand, we transfer the ground of this
constitution (of the form of reason in the world) upon the relation of
the Supreme Cause to the world, without finding the world sufficient by
itself for that purpose.[2]
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Thus
the difficulties which seem to oppose theism disappear by combining with
Hume's principle, "not to carry the use of reason dogmatically
beyond the field of all possible experience," this other
principle, which be quite overlooked: "not to consider the field of
experience as one which bounds itself in the eye of our reason." The
Critique of Pure Reason here points out the true mean between dogmatism,
which Hume combats, and skepticism, which he would substitute for it--a
mean which is not like other means that we find advisable to determine
for ourselves as it were mechanically (by adopting something from one
side and something from the other), and by which nobody is taught a
better way, but such a one as can be accurately determined on
principles.
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361
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Section
59. At the beginning of this note I made use of the metaphor of a
boundary, in order to establish the limits of reason in regard to its
suitable use. The world of sense contains merely appearances, which are
not things in themselves, but the understanding must assume these latter
ones, viz., noumena, because it knows the objects of experience to be
mere appearances. In our reason both are comprised together, and the question
is, How does reason proceed to set boundaries to the understanding as
regards both these fields? Experience,
which contains all that belongs to the sensuous world, does not bound
itself; it only proceeds in every case from the conditioned to some
other equally conditioned object. Its boundary must lie quite without
it, and this field is that of the pure beings of the understanding. But
this field, so far as the determination of the nature of these beings is
concerned, is an empty space for us; and if dogmatically determined
concepts alone are in question, we cannot pass out of the field of
possible experience. But as a boundary itself is something positive,
which belongs as well to that which lies within, as to the space that
lies without the given complex, it is still an actual positive
cognition, which reason only acquires by enlarging itself to this
boundary, yet without attempting to pass it; because it there finds
itself in the presence of an empty space, in which it can conceive forms
of things, but not things themselves. But
the setting of a boundary to the field of the understanding by
something, which is otherwise unknown to it, is still a cognition which
belongs to reason even at this standpoint, and by which it is neither
confined within the sensible, nor straying without it, but only refers,
as befits the knowledge of a boundary, to the relation between that
which lies without it, and that which is contained within it.
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Natural
theology is such a concept at the boundary of human reason, being
constrained to look beyond this boundary to the Idea of a Supreme Being
(and, for practical purposes to that of an intelligible world also), not
in order to determine anything relatively to this pure creation of the
understanding, which lies beyond the world of sense, but in order to
guide the use of reason within it according to principles of the
greatest possible (theoretical as well as practical) unity. For
this purpose we make use of the reference of the world of sense to an
independent reason, as the cause of all its connections. Thereby we do
not purely invent a being, but, as beyond the sensible world there must
be something that can only be thought by the pure understanding, we
determine that something in this particular way, though only of course
according to analogy.
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362
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And
thus there remains our original proposition, which is the resume of the
whole Critique: "that reason by all its a priori principles never
teaches us anything more than objects of possible experience, and even
of these nothing more than can be known in experience." But this
limitation does not prevent reason leading us to the objective boundary
of experience, viz., to the reference to something which is not itself
an object of experience, but is the ground of all experience. Reason
does not however teach us anything concerning the thing in itself: it
only instructs us as regards its own complete and highest use in the
field of possible experience. But this is all that can be reasonably
desired in the present case, and with which we have cause to be
satisfied.
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Section
60. Thus we have fully exhibited metaphysics as it is actually
given in
the natural predisposition of human reason, and in that which
constitutes the essential end of its pursuit, according to its
subjective possibility. Though we have found, that this merely
natural use of such a predisposition of our
reason, if no discipline arising only from a scientific critique
bridles and sets limits to it, involves us in transcendent,
either apparently or really conflicting, dialectical syllogisms;
and this fallacious metaphysics is not only unnecessary as
regards the promotion of our knowledge of nature, but even
disadvantageous to it: there yet remains a problem worthy of solution,
which is to find out the natural ends intended by this
disposition to
transcendent concepts in our reason, because everything that
lies in
nature must be originally intended for some useful purpose.
Such
an inquiry is of a doubtful nature; and I acknowledge, that what I can
say about it is conjecture only, like every speculation about the first
ends of nature. The question does not concern the objective validity of
metaphysical judgments, but our natural predisposition to them, and
therefore does not belong to the system of metaphysics but to
anthropology.
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363
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When
I compare all the transcendental Ideas, the totality of
which constitutes the particular problem of natural pure reason,
compelling it to quit the mere contemplation of nature, to
transcend all possible experience, and in this endeavor to
produce the thing (be it knowledge or fiction) called
metaphysics, I think I perceive that the aim of this natural
tendency
is, to free our notions from the fetters of experience and from
the
limits of the mere contemplation of nature so far as at least to
open to
us a field containing mere objects for the pure understanding,
which no
sensibility can reach, not indeed for the purpose of
speculatively
occupying ourselves with them (for there we can find no ground
to stand
on), but because practical principles, which, without finding
some such
scope for their necessary expectation and hope, could not expand
to the
universality which reason unavoidably requires from a moral
point of
view.
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So
I find that the psychological idea (however little it may reveal to me
the nature of the human soul, which is higher than all concepts of
experience), shows the insufficiency of these concepts plainly enough,
and thereby deters me from materialism, the psychological notion of
which is unfit for any explanation of nature, and besides confines
reason in practical respects. The
cosmological ideas, by the obvious insufficiency of all possible
cognition of nature to satisfy reason in its lawful inquiry, serve in
the same manner to keep us from naturalism, which asserts nature to be
sufficient for itself. Finally, all natural necessity in the sensible
world is conditional, as it always presupposes the dependence of things
upon others, and unconditional necessity must be sought only in the
unity of a cause different from the world of sense. But as the causality
of this cause, in its turn, were it merely nature, could never render
the existence of the contingent (as its consequent) comprehensible,
reason frees itself by means of the Theological Idea from fatalism,
(both as a blind natural necessity in the coherence of nature itself,
without a first principle, and as a blind causality of this principle
itself), and leads to the concept of a cause possessing freedom, or of a
Supreme Intelligence. Thus the
transcendental Ideas serve, if not to instruct us positively, at least
to destroy the rash assertions of Materialism, of Naturalism, and of
Fatalism, and thus to afford scope for the moral Ideas beyond the field
of speculation. These considerations, I should think, explain in some
measure the natural predisposition of which I spoke.
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364
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The
practical value, which a merely speculative science may have, lies
without the bounds of this science, and can therefore be considered as a
scholium merely, and like all scholia does not form part of the science
itself. This application however surely lies within the bounds of
philosophy, especially of philosophy drawn from the pure sources of
reason, where its speculative use in metaphysics must necessarily be at
unity with its practical use in morals. Hence the unavoidable dialectics
of pure reason, considered in metaphysics, as a natural tendency,
deserves to be explained not as an illusion merely, which is to be
removed, but also, if possible, as a natural provision as regards its
end, though this duty, a work of supererogation, cannot justly be
assigned to metaphysics proper.
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The
solutions of these questions which are treated in the Critique
[in the chapter on the
Regulative Use of the Ideas of Pure Reason] should be considered a
second scholium which, however, has a greater affinity with the subject of
metaphysics. For there certain rational principles are expounded which
determine a priori the order of nature or rather of the understanding,
which seeks nature's laws through experience. They seem to be
constitutive and legislative with regard to experience, though they
spring from pure reason, which cannot be considered, like the
understanding, as a principle of possible experience. Now whether or not
this harmony rests upon the fact, that just as nature does not inhere in
appearances or in their source (the sensibility) itself, but only in so
far as the latter is in relation to the understanding, as also a
systematic unity in applying the understanding to bring about an
entirety of all possible experience can only belong to the understanding
when in relation to reason; and whether or not experience is in this way
mediately subordinate to the legislation of reason: may be discussed by
those who desire to trace the nature of reason even beyond its use in
metaphysics, into the general principles of a history of nature. I have
represented this task as important, but not attempted its solution, in
the book itself.[3]
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365
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And
thus I conclude the analytical solution of the main question which I had
proposed: "How is metaphysics in general possible?" by ascending from the
data of its actual use in its consequences, to the grounds of its
possibility.
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327
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Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
For information about this text, click
here.
THIRD
PART OF THE MAIN TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEM.
HOW
IS METAPHYSICS IN GENERAL POSSIBLE?
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Sect.
40. Pure mathematics and pure science of nature had no occasion for such
a deduction, as we have made of both, for their own safety and
certainty. For the former rests upon its own evidence; and the latter
(though sprung from pure sources of the understanding) upon experience
and its thorough confirmation. Physics cannot altogether refuse and
dispense with the testimony of the latter; because with all its
certainty, it can never, as philosophy, rival mathematics. Both
sciences therefore stood in need of this inquiry, not for themselves,
but for the sake of another science, metaphysics.
Metaphysics has to do
not only with concepts of nature, which always find their application in
experience, but also with pure rational concepts, which never can be
given in any possible experience. Consequently the objective reality of
these concepts (viz., that they are not mere chimeras), and the truth or
falsity of metaphysical assertions, cannot be discovered or confirmed by
any experience. This
part of metaphysics however is precisely what constitutes its essential
end, to which the rest is only a means, and thus this science is in need
of such a deduction for its own
sake. The third question now proposed relates therefore as it were to
the root and essential difference of metaphysics, i.e., the occupation
of Reason with itself, and the supposed knowledge of objects arising
immediately from this incubation of its own concepts, without requiring,
or indeed being able to reach that knowledge through, experience.[1]
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328
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Without solving this problem reason never is justified.
The
empirical use to which reason limits the pure understanding, does not
fully satisfy the proper destination of the latter. Every single
experience is only a part of the whole sphere of its domain, but the
absolute totality of all possible experience is itself not experience.
Yet it is a necessary [concrete] problem for reason, the mere
representation of which requires concepts quite different from the
categories, whose use is only immanent, or refers to experience, so far
as it can be given. Whereas the concepts of reason aim at the
completeness, i.e., the collective unity of all possible experience, and
thereby transcend every given experience. Thus they become transcendent. |
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As
the understanding stands in need of categories for experience, reason
contains in itself the source of ideas, by which I mean necessary
concepts, whose object cannot be given in any experience. The latter are
inherent in the nature of reason, as the former are in that of the
understanding. While the former carry with them an illusion
likely to mislead, the illusion of the latter is inevitable, though it
certainly can be kept from misleading us.
Since all illusion consists in holding the subjective ground of our
judgments to be objective, a self-knowledge of pure reason in its
transcendent (exaggerated) use is the sole preservative from the
aberrations into which reason falls when it mistakes its destination, and
refers that to the object transcendently, which only regards its own
subject and its guidance in all immanent use.
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329
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Sect.
41. The distinction of ideas, that is, of pure concepts of reason, from
categories, or pure concepts of the understanding, as cognitions of a
quite distinct species, origin and use, is so important a point in
founding a science which is to contain the system of all these a priori
cognitions, that without this distinction metaphysics is absolutely
impossible, or is at best a random, bungling attempt to build a castle
in the air without a knowledge of the materials or of their fitness for
any purpose. Had the Critique of Pure Reason done nothing but
first point out this distinction, it had thereby contributed more to
clear up our conception of, and to guide our inquiry in, the field of
metaphysics, than all the vain efforts which have hitherto been made to
satisfy the transcendent problems of pure reason, without ever surmising
that we were in quite another field than that of the understanding, and
hence classing concepts of the understanding and those of reason
together, as if they were of the same kind.
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Sect.
42. All pure cognitions of the understanding have this feature, that
their concepts present themselves in experience, and their principles
can be confirmed by it; whereas the transcendent cognitions of reason
cannot, either as ideas, appear in experience, or, as propositions, ever
be confirmed or refuted by it. Hence whatever errors may slip in
unawares, can only be discovered by pure reason itself--a discovery of
much difficulty, because this very reason naturally becomes dialectical
by means of its ideas, and this unavoidable illusion cannot be limited
by any objective and dogmatical researches into things, but by a
subjective investigation of reason itself as a source of ideas.
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330
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Sect.
43. In the Critique of Pure Reason it was always my greatest care to
endeavor not only carefully to distinguish the several species of
cognition, but to derive concepts belonging to each one of them from
their common source. I did this in order that by knowing whence
they originated, I might determine their use with safety, and also have
the unanticipated but invaluable advantage of knowing the completeness
of my enumeration, classification and specification of concepts a
priori, and therefore knowing it according to principles. Without
this, metaphysics is mere rhapsody, in which no one knows whether he has
enough, or whether and where something is still wanting. We can indeed
have this advantage only in pure philosophy, but of this philosophy it
constitutes the very essence.
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As I had found the origin of the categories in the four logical functions
of all the judgments of the understanding, it was quite natural to seek
the origin of the ideas in the three functions of the syllogisms of
reason. For as soon as these pure concepts of reason (the
transcendental ideas) are given, they could hardly, except they be held
innate, be found anywhere else, than in the same activity of reason,
which, so far as it regards mere form, constitutes the logical element of
the syllogisms of reason; but, so far as it represents judgments of the
understanding with respect to the one or to the other form a priori,
constitutes transcendental concepts of pure reason.
The
formal distinction of syllogisms renders their division into
categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive necessary. The concepts of
reason founded on them contained therefore, first, the idea of the
complete subject (the substantial); secondly, the idea of the complete
series of conditions; thirdly, the determination of all concepts in the
idea of a complete complex of that which is possible.[2] The first idea
is psychological, the second cosmological, the third theological, and,
as all three give occasion to Dialectics, yet each in its own way, the
division of the whole Dialects of pure reason into its paralogism, its
Antinomy, and its Ideal, was arranged accordingly. Through
this deduction we may feel assured that all the claims of pure reason
are completely represented, and that none can be wanting; because the
faculty of reason itself, whence they all take their origin, is thereby
completely surveyed.
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331
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Sect.
44. In these general considerations it is also remarkable that the ideas
of reason are unlike the categories, of no service to the use of our
understanding in experience, but quite dispensable, and become even an
impediment to the maxims of a rational cognition of nature. Yet in
another aspect still to be determined they are necessary. Whether
the soul is or is not a simple substance, is of no consequence to us in
the explanation of its phenomena. For we cannot render the notion of a
simple being intelligible by any possible experience that is sensuous or
concrete. The notion is therefore quite void as regards all hoped-for
insight into the cause of phenomena, and cannot at all serve as a
principle of the explanation of that which internal or external
experience supplies. So
the cosmological ideas of the beginning of the world or of its eternity
(a parte ante) cannot be of any greater service to us for the
explanation of any event in the world itself. And finally we must,
according to a right maxim of the philosophy of nature, refrain from all
explanations of the design of nature, drawn from the will of a Supreme
Being; because this would not be natural philosophy, but an
acknowledgment that we have come to the end of it. The
use of these ideas, therefore, is quite different from that of those
categories by which (and by the principles built upon which) experience
itself first becomes possible. But our laborious analytics of the
understanding would be superfluous if we had nothing else in view than
the mere cognition Of nature as it can be given in experience; for
reason does its work, both in mathematics and in the science of nature,
quite safely and well without any of this subtle deduction. Therefore
our critique of the understanding combines with the ideas of pure reason
for a purpose which lies beyond the empirical use of the understanding;
but this we have above declared to be in this aspect totally
inadmissible, and without any object or meaning. Yet there must be a
harmony between that of the nature of reason and that of the
understanding, and the former must contribute to the perfection of the
latter, and cannot possibly upset it.
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332
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The
solution of this question is as follows: Pure reason does not in its
ideas point to particular objects, which lie beyond the field of
experience, but only requires completeness of the use of the
understanding in the system of experience. But this completeness can be
a completeness of principles only, not of intuitions and of objects. In order however to represent
the ideas definitely, reason conceives them after the fashion of the
cognition of an object. The cognition is as far as these rules are
concerned completely determined, but the object is only an idea invented
for the purpose of bringing the cognition of the understanding as near
as possible to the completeness represented by that idea.
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Prefatory
Remark to the Dialectics of Pure Reason
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Sect. 45. We have above shown
in Sections 33 and 34 that the purity of the categories from all
admixture of sensuous determinations may mislead reason into extending
their use, quite beyond all experience, to things in themselves; though
as these categories themselves find no intuition which can give them
meaning or sense in concreto, they, as mere logical functions, can
represent a thing in general, but not give by themselves alone a
determinate concept of anything.
Such
hyperbolical objects are distinguished by the appellation of noumena, or
pure beings of the understanding (or better, beings of thought), such
as, for example, "substance," but conceived without permanence
in time, or "cause," but not acting in time, etc. Here
predicates, that only serve to make the conformity-to-law of experience
possible, are applied to these concepts, and yet they are deprived of
all the conditions of intuition, on which alone experience is possible,
and so these concepts lose all significance.
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333
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There is no danger,
however, of the understanding spontaneously making an excursion so very
wantonly beyond its own bounds into the field of the mere creatures of
thought, without being impelled by foreign laws. But
when reason, which cannot be fully satisfied with any empirical use of
the rules of the understanding, as being always conditioned, requires a
completion of this chain of conditions, then the understanding is forced
out of its sphere. And then it partly represents objects of experience
in a series so extended that no experience can grasp, partly even (with
a view to complete the series) it seeks entirely beyond it noumena, to
which it can attach that chain, and so, having at last escaped from the
conditions of experience, make its attitude as it were final. These
are then the transcendental ideas, which, though according to the true
but hidden ends of the natural determination of our reason, they may aim
not at extravagant concepts, but at an unbounded extension of their
empirical use, yet seduce the understanding by an unavoidable illusion
to a transcendent use, which, though deceitful, cannot be restrained
within the bounds of experience by any resolution, but only by
scientific instruction and with much difficulty.
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I. The
Psychological Idea
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334
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Sect.
46. People have long since observed, that in all substances the proper
subject, that which remains after all the accidents (as predicates) are
abstracted, consequently that which forms the substance of things
remains unknown, and various complaints have been made concerning these
limits to our knowledge. But it will be well to consider that the human
understanding is not to be blamed for its inability to know the
substance of things, that is, to determine it by itself, but rather for
requiring to know it which is a mere idea definitely as though it were a
given object. Pure
reason requires us to seek for every predicate of a thing its proper
subject, and for this subject, which is itself necessarily nothing but a
predicate, its subject, and so on indefinitely (or as far as we can
reach). But hence it follows, that we must not hold anything, at which
we can arrive, to be an ultimate subject, and that substance itself
never can be thought by our understanding, however deep we may
penetrate, even if all nature were unveiled to us. For
the specific nature of our understanding consists in thinking everything
discursively, that is, representing it by concepts, and so by mere
predicates, to which therefore the absolute subject must always be
wanting. Hence all the real properties, by which we know bodies, are
mere accidents, not excepting impenetrability, which we can only
represent to ourselves as the effect of a power of which the subject is
unknown to us.
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Now
we appear to have this substance in the consciousness of ourselves (in
the thinking subject), and indeed in an immediate intuition; for all the
predicates of an internal sense refer to the ego, as a subject, and I
cannot conceive myself as the predicate of any other subject. Hence
completeness in the reference of the given concepts as predicates to a
subject -- not merely an idea, but an object--that is, the absolute
subject itself, seems to be given in experience. But this expectation is
disappointed. For the ego is not a concept,[3] but only the indication of
the object of the internal sense, so far as we know it by no further
predicate. Consequently it cannot be in itself a predicate of any other
thing; but just as little can it be a determinate concept of an absolute
subject, but is, as in all other cases, only the reference of the
internal phenomena to their unknown subject. Yet
this idea (which serves very well, as a regulative principle, totally to
destroy all materialistic explanations of the internal phenomena of the
soul) occasions by a very natural misunderstanding a very specious
argument, which, from this supposed cognition of the substance of our
thinking being, infers its nature, so far as the knowledge of it falls
quite without the complex of experience.
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Sect.
47. But though we may call this thinking self (the soul) substance, as
being the ultimate subject of thinking which cannot be further
represented as the predicate of another thing; it remains quite empty
and without significance, if permanence--the quality which renders the
concept of substances in experience fruitful--cannot be proved of it.
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335
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But
permanence can never be proved of the concept of a substance, as a thing
in itself, but for the purposes of experience only. This is sufficiently
shown by the first Analogy of Experience [Critique, B224 ff.], and whoever will not yield
to this proof may try for himself whether he can succeed in proving,
from the concept of a subject which does not exist itself as the
predicate of another thing, that its existence is thoroughly permanent,
and that it cannot either in itself or by any natural cause original or
be annihilated. These synthetical a priori propositions can never be
proved in themselves, but only in reference to things as objects of
possible experience.
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Sect.
48. If therefore from the concept of the soul as a substance, we would
infer its permanence, this can hold good as regards possible experience
only, not [of the soul] as a thing in itself and beyond all possible
experience. But life is the subjective condition of all our possible
experience, consequently we can only infer the permanence of the soul in
life; for the death of man is the end of all experience which concerns
the soul as an object of experience, except the contrary be proved,
which is the very question in hand. The
permanence of the soul can therefore only be proved (and no one cares
for that) during the life of man, but not, as we desire to do, after
death; and for this general reason, that the concept of substance, so
far as it is to be considered necessarily combined with the concept of
permanence, can be so combined only according to the principles of
possible experience, and therefore for the purposes of experience only.[4]
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336
337
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Sect.
49. That there is something real without us which not only corresponds,
but must correspond, to our external perceptions, can likewise be proved
to be not a connection of things in themselves, but for the sake of
experience. This means that there is something empirical, i.e., some
phenomenon in space without us, that admits of a satisfactory proof, for
we have nothing to do with other objects than those which belong to
possible experience; because objects which cannot be given us in any
experience, do not exist for us. Empirically
without me is that which appears in space, and space, together with all
the phenomena which it contains, belongs to the representations, whose
connection according to laws of experience proves their objective truth,
just as the connection of the phenomena of the internal sense proves the
actuality of my soul (as an object of the internal sense). By means of
external experience I am conscious of the actuality of bodies, as
external phenomena in space, in the same manner as by means of the
internal experience I am conscious of the existence of my soul in time,
but this soul is only known as an object of the internal sense by
phenomena that constitute an internal state, and of which the essence in
itself, which forms the basis of these phenomena, is unknown. Cartesian
idealism therefore does nothing but distinguish external experience from
dreaming; and the conformity to law (as a criterion of its truth) of the
former, from the irregularity and the false illusion of the latter. In
both it presupposes space and time as conditions of the existence of
objects, and it only inquires whether the objects of the external senses,
which we when awake put in space, are as actually to be found in it, as
the object of the internal sense, the soul, is in time; that is, whether
experience carries with it sure criteria to distinguish it from
imagination. This doubt, however, may easily be disposed of, and we always
do so in common life by investigating the connection of phenomena in both
space and time according to universal laws of experience, and we cannot
doubt, when the representation of external things throughout agrees
therewith, that they constitute truthful experience. Material idealism, in
which phenomena are considered as such only according to their connection
in experience, may accordingly be very easily refuted; and it is just as
sure an experience, that bodies exist without us (in space), as that I
myself exist according to the representation of the internal sense (in
time): for the notion without us, only signifies existence in space.
However
as the Ego in the proposition, I am," means not only the object of
internal intuition (in time), but the subject of consciousness, just as
body means not only external intuition (in space), but the
thing-in-itself, which is the basis of this phenomenon; [as this is the
case] the question, whether bodies (as phenomena of the external sense)
exist as bodies in nature apart from my thoughts, may without any hesitation be
denied. But
the question, whether I myself as a phenomenon of the internal sense
(the soul according to empirical psychology) exist apart from my faculty
of representation in time, is an exactly similar inquiry, and must
likewise be answered in the negative. Arid in this manner everything,
when it is reduced to its true meaning, is decided and certain. The formal
(which I have also called transcendental) actually abolishes the material,
or Cartesian, idealism. For if space be nothing but a form of my
sensibility, it is as a representation in me just as actual as I myself
am, and nothing but the empirical truth of the representations in it
remains for consideration. But, if this is not the case, if space and the
phenomena in it are something existing without us, then all the criteria
of experience beyond our perception can never prove the actuality of these
objects without us.
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338
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II. The
Cosmological Idea
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Sect.
50. This product of pure reason in its transcendent use is its most
remarkable curiosity. It serves as a very powerful agent to rouse
philosophy from its dogmatic slumber, and to stimulate it to the arduous
task of undertaking a critique of reason itself [Critique
B432-595].
I
term this idea cosmological, because it always takes its object only
from the sensible world, and does not use any other than those whose
object is given to sense, consequently it remains in this respect in its
native home, it does not become transcendent, and is therefore so far
not mere idea; whereas, to conceive the soul as a simple substance,
already means to conceive such an object (the simple) as cannot be
presented to the senses. Yet
the cosmological idea extends the connection of the conditioned with its
condition (whether the connection is mathematical or dynamical) so far,
that experience never can keep up with it. It is therefore with regard
to this point always an idea, whose object never can be adequately given
in any experience.
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339
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Sect.
51. In the first place, the use of a system of categories becomes here
so obvious and unmistakable, that even if there were not several other
proofs of it, this alone would sufficiently prove it indispensable in
the system of pure reason. There are only four such transcendent ideas,
as there are so many classes of categories; in each of which, however,
they refer only to the absolute completeness of the series of the
conditions for a given conditioned. In analogy to these cosmological
ideas there are only four kinds of dialectical assertions of pure
reason, which, as they are dialectical, thereby prove, that to each of
them, all equally specious principles of pure reason, a contradictory
assertion stands opposed. As all the metaphysical art of the most subtle
distinction cannot prevent this opposition, it compels the philosopher
to recur to the first sources of pure reason itself. This
antinomy, not arbitrarily invented, but founded in the nature of human
reason, and hence unavoidable and never ceasing, contains the following
four theses together with their antitheses:
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1
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Thesis: The World has, as to, Time and
Space, a Beginning (limit).
Antithesis: The World is, as to Time
and Space, infinite.
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2
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Thesis: Everything in the World
consists of [elements that are] simple.
Antithesis: There is nothing simple,
but everything is composite.
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3
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Thesis: There are in the World Causes
through Freedom.
Antithesis: There is no Liberty,
but all is Nature.
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4
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Thesis: In the Series of the
World-Causes there is some necessary Being.
Antithesis: There is Nothing necessary
in the World, but in this Series All is incidental.
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Sect. 52 a. Here is the most singular phenomenon of human reason, no other
instance of which can be shown in any other use. If we, as is commonly
done, represent to ourselves the appearances of the sensible world as
things in themselves, if we assume the principles of their combination
as principles universally valid of things in themselves and not merely
of experience, as is usually, nay without our Critique, unavoidably
done, there arises an unexpected conflict, which never can be removed in
the common dogmatical way; because the thesis, as well as the
antithesis, can be shown by equally clear, evident, and irresistible
proofs--for I pledge myself as to the correctness of all these proofs--and
reason therefore perceives that it is divided with itself, a state at
which the skeptic rejoices, but which must make the critical philosopher
pause and feel ill at ease.
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340
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Sect.
52b. We may blunder in various ways in metaphysics without any fear of
being detected in falsehood. For we never can be refuted by experience
if we but avoid self-contradiction, which in synthetical, though purely
fictitious propositions, may be done whenever the concepts, which we
connect, are mere ideas, that cannot be given (in their whole content)
in experience. For how can we make out by experience, whether the world
is from eternity or had a beginning, whether matter is infinitely
divisible or consists of simple parts? Such concept cannot be given in
any experience, be it ever so extensive, and consequently the falsehood
either of the positive or the negative proposition cannot be discovered
by this touchstone.
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The
only possible way in which reason could have revealed unintentionally
its secret Dialectics, falsely announced as Dogmatics, would be when it
were made to ground an assertion upon a universally admitted principle,
and to deduce the exact contrary with the greatest accuracy of inference
from another which is equally granted. This is actually here the case
with regard to four natural ideas of reason, whence four assertions on
the one side, and as many counter-assertions on the other arise, each
consistently following from universally-acknowledged principles. Thus
they reveal by the use of these principles the dialectical illusion of
pure reason which would otherwise forever remain concealed.
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This is
therefore a decisive experiment, which must necessarily expose any error
lying hidden in the assumptions of reason.[5] Contradictory
propositions cannot both be false, except the concept, which is the
subject of both, is self-contradictory; for example, the propositions,
"a square circle is round, and a square circle is not round,"
are both false. For, as to the former it is false, that the circle is
round, because it is quadrangular; and it is likewise false, that it is
not round, that is, angular, because it is a circle. For the logical
criterion of the impossibility of a concept consists in this, that if we
presuppose it, two contradictory propositions both become false;
consequently, as no middle between them is conceivable, nothing at all
is thought by that concept.
Sect.
52c. The first two antinomies, which I call mathematical, because they
are concerned with the addition or division of the homogeneous, are
founded on such a self-contradictory concept; and hence I explain how
it happens, that both the Thesis and Antithesis of the two are false.
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342
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When
I speak of objects in time and in space, it is not of things in
themselves, of which I know nothing, but of things in appearance, that
is, of experience, as the particular way of cognizing objects which is
afforded to man. I must not say of what I think in time or in space,
that in itself, and independent of these my thoughts, it exists in space
and in time; for in that case I should contradict myself; because space
and time, together with the appearances in them, are nothing existing in
themselves and outside of my representations, but are themselves only
modes of representation, and it is palpably contradictory to say, that a
mere mode of representation exists without our representation. Objects of the
senses therefore exist only in experience; whereas to give them a
self-subsisting existence apart from experience or before it, is merely
to represent to ourselves that experience actually exists apart from
experience or prior to it.
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Now
if I inquire after the magnitude of the world, as to space and
time, it
is equally impossible, as regards all my notions, to declare it
infinite
or to declare it finite. For neither assertion can be contained
in
experience, because experience either of an infinite space, or
of an
infinite time elapsed, or again, of the boundary of the world by
a void
space, or by an antecedent void time, is impossible; these are
mere
ideas. This quantity of the world, which is determined in either
way,
should therefore exist in the world itself apart from all
experience.
This contradicts the notion of a world of sense, which is merely
a
complex of the appearances whose existence and connection occur
only in
our representations, that is, in experience, since this latter
is not an
object in itself, but a mere mode of representation. Hence it
follows,
that as the concept of an absolutely existing world of sense is
self-contradictory, the solution of the problem concerning its quantity,
whether attempted affirmatively or negatively, is always false.
The
same holds good of the second antinomy, which relates to the division of
phenomena. For these are mere representations, and the parts exist
merely in their representation, consequently in the division, or in a
possible experience where they are given, and the division reaches only
as far as this latter reaches. To assume that an appearance, e.g., that
of body, contains in itself before all experience all the parts, which
any possible experience can ever reach, is to impute to a mere
appearance, which can exist only in experience, an existence previous to
experience. In other words, it would mean that mere representations
exist before they can be found in our faculty of representation. Such an
assertion is self-contradictory, as also every solution of our
misunderstood problem, whether we maintain, that bodies in themselves
consist of an infinite number of parts, or of a finite number of simple
parts.
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343
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Sect. 53. In the first (the mathematical) class of antinomies the
falsehood of the assumption consists in representing in one concept
something self-contradictory as if it were compatible (i.e., an appearance
as an object in itself). But, as to the second (the dynamical) class of
antinomies, the falsehood of the representation consists in representing
as contradictory what is compatible; so that, as in the former case, the
opposed assertions are both false, in this case, on the other hand, where
they are opposed to one another by mere misunderstanding, they may both be
true.
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Any
mathematical connection necessarily presupposes homogeneity of what is
connected (in the concept of magnitude), while the dynamical one by no
means requires the same. When we have to deal with extended magnitudes,
all the parts must be homogeneous with one another and with the whole;
whereas, in the connection of cause and effect, homogeneity may indeed
likewise be found, but is not necessary; for the concept of causality
(by means of which something is posited through something else quite
different from it), at all events, does not require it.
If
the objects of the world of sense are taken for things in themselves,
and the above laws of nature for the laws of things in themselves, the
contradiction would be unavoidable. So also, if the subject of freedom
were, like other objects, represented as mere appearance, the
contradiction would be just as unavoidable, for the same predicate would
at once be affirmed and denied of the same kind of object in the same
sense. But
if natural necessity is referred merely to appearances, and freedom
merely to things in themselves, no contradiction arises, if we at once
assume, or admit both kinds of causality, however difficult or
impossible it may be to make the latter kind conceivable.
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344
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In appearance
every effect is an event, or something that happens in time; it must,
according to the universal law of nature, be preceded by a determination
of the causality of its cause (a state of the cause), which the effect follows according to a
constant law. But
this determination of the cause as causality must likewise be something
that takes place or happens; the cause must have begun to act, otherwise
no succession between it and the effect could be conceived. Otherwise
the effect, as well as the causality of the cause, would have always
existed. Therefore
the determination of the cause to act must also have originated among
appearances, and must consequently, as well as its effect, be an event,
which must again have its cause, and so on; hence natural necessity must
be the condition, on which effective causes are determined. Whereas
if freedom is to be a property of certain causes of appearances, it
must, as regards these, which are events, be a faculty of starting them
spontaneously, that is, without the causality of the cause itself, and
hence without requiring any other ground to determine its start. But
then the cause, as to its causality, must not rank under
time-determinations of its state, that is, it cannot be an appearance,
and must be considered a thing in itself, while its effects would be
only appearances.[6] If
without contradiction we can think of the beings of understanding
as exercising such an influence on appearances, then natural necessity
will attach to all connections of cause and effect in the sensuous
world, though on the other hand, freedom can be granted to such cause,
as is itself not an appearance (but the foundation of appearance).
Nature therefore and freedom can without contradiction be
attributed to the very same thing, but in different relations--on one
side as a phenomenon, on the other as a thing in itself.
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345
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We
have in us a faculty, which not only stands in connection with its
subjective determining grounds that are the natural causes of its
actions, and is so far the faculty of a being that itself belongs to
appearances, but is also referred to objective grounds, that are only
ideas, so far as they can determine this faculty, a connection which is
expressed by the word ought. This faculty is called reason, and, so far
as we consider a being (man) entirely according to this objectively
determinable reason, he cannot be considered as a being of sense, but
this property is that of a thing in itself, of which we cannot
comprehend the possibility--I mean how the ought (which however has never
yet taken place) should determine its activity, and can become the cause
of actions, whose effect is an appearance in the sensible world. Yet
the causality of reason would be freedom with regard to the effects in
the sensuous world, so far as we can consider objective grounds, which
are themselves ideas, as their determinants. For its action in that case
would not depend upon subjective conditions, consequently not upon those
of time, and of course not upon the law of nature, which serves to
determine them, because grounds of reason give to actions the rule
universally, according to principles, without the influence of the
circumstances of either time or place.
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What
I adduce here is merely meant as an example to make the thing
intelligible, and does not necessarily belong to our problem, which must
be decided from mere concepts, independently of the properties which we
meet in the actual world.
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346
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Now I may say without contradiction: that all
the actions of rational beings, so far as they are appearances
(occurring in any experience), are subject to the necessity of nature;
but the same actions, as regards merely the rational subject and its
faculty of acting according to mere reason, are free. For
what is required for the necessity of nature? Nothing more than the
determinability of every event in the world of sense according to
constant laws, that is, a reference to cause in the appearance; in this
process the thing in itself at its foundation and its causality remain
unknown. But I say, that the law of nature remains, whether the rational
being is the cause of the effects in the sensuous world from reason,
that is, through freedom, or whether it does not determine them on
grounds of reason. For, if the former is the case, the action is
performed according to maxims, the effect of which as appearance is
always conformable to constant laws; if the latter is the case, and the
action not performed on principles of reason, it is subjected to the
empirical laws of the sensibility, and in both cases the effects are
connected according to constant laws; more than this we do not require
or know concerning natural necessity. But
in the former case reason is the cause of these laws of nature, and
therefore free; in the latter the effects follow according to mere
natural laws of sensibility, because reason does not influence it; but
reason itself is not determined on that account by the sensibility, and
is therefore free in this case too. Freedom is therefore no hindrance to
natural law in appearance, neither does this law abrogate the freedom of
the practical use of reason, which is connected with things in
themselves, as determining grounds.
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347
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Thus practical freedom, viz., the
freedom in which reason possesses causality according to objectively
determining grounds, is rescued and yet natural necessity is not in the
least curtailed with regard to the very same effects, as appearances.
The
same remarks will serve to explain what we had to say concerning
transcendental freedom and its compatibility with natural necessity (in
the same subject, but not taken in the same reference). For, as to this,
every beginning of the action of a being from objective causes regarded
as determining grounds, is always a first start, though the same action
is in the series of appearances only a subordinate start, which must be
preceded by a state of the cause, which determines it, and is itself
determined in the same manner by another immediately preceding. Thus
we are able, in rational beings, or in beings generally, so far as their
causality is determined in them as things in themselves, to imagine a
faculty of beginning from itself a series of states, without falling
into contradiction with the laws of nature. For the relation of the
action to objective grounds of reason is not a time-relation; in this
case that which determines the causality does not precede in time the
action, because such determining grounds represent not a reference to
objects of sense, e.g., to causes in the appearances, but to determining
causes, as things in themselves, which do not rank under conditions of
time. And in this way the action, with regard to the causality of
reason, can be considered as a first start in respect to the series of
appearances, and yet also as a merely subordinate beginning. We may
therefore without contradiction consider it in the former aspect as
free, but in the latter (in so far as it is merely appearance) as
subject to natural necessity.
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As
to the fourth Antinomy, it is solved in the same way as the conflict of
reason with itself in the third. For, provided the cause in the
appearance is distinguished from the cause of the appearance (so far as
it can be thought as a thing in itself), both propositions are perfectly
reconcilable: the one, that there is nowhere in the sensuous world a
cause (according to similar laws of causality), whose existence is
absolutely necessary; the other, that this world is nevertheless
connected with a Necessary Being as its cause (but of another kind and
according to another law). The incompatibility of these propositions
entirely rests upon the mistake of extending what is valid merely of
appearances to things in themselves, and in general confusing both in
one concept.
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348
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Sect.
54. This then is the proposition and this the solution of the whole
antinomy, in which reason finds itself involved in the application of
its principles to the sensible world. The former alone (the mere
proposition) would be a considerable service in the cause of our
knowledge of human reason, even though the solution might fail to fully
satisfy the reader, who has here to combat a natural illusion, which has
been but recently exposed to him, and which he had hitherto always
regarded as genuine. For one result at least is unavoidable. As it is
quite impossible to prevent this conflict of reason with itself-so long
as the objects of the sensible world are taken for things in themselves,
and not for mere appearances, which they are in fact-the reader is
thereby compelled to examine over again the deduction of all our a
priori cognition and the proof which I have given of my deduction in
order to come to a decision on the question. This is all I require at
present; for when in this occupation he shall have thought himself deep
enough into the nature of pure reason, those concepts by which alone the
solution of the conflict of reason is possible, will become sufficiently
familiar to him. Without this preparation I cannot expect an unreserved
assent even from the most attentive reader.
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III.
The Theological Idea
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Sect.
55. The third transcendental idea, which affords matter for the most
important, but, if pursued only speculatively, transcendent and thereby
dialectical use of reason, is the ideal of pure reason. Reason in this
case does not, as with the psychological and the cosmological Ideas,
begin from experience, and err by exaggerating its grounds, in striving
to attain, if possible, the absolute completeness of their series. It
rather totally breaks with experience, and from mere concepts of what
constitutes the absolute completeness of a thing in general,
consequently by means of the idea of a most perfect primal Being, it
proceeds to determine the possibility and therefore the actuality of all
other things. And
so the mere presupposition of a Being, who is conceived not in the
series of experience, yet for the purposes of experience-for the sake of
comprehending its connection, order, and unity -- i.e., the idea [the
notion of it], is more easily distinguished from the concept of the
understanding here, than in the former cases. Hence we can easily expose
the dialectical illusion which arises from our making the subjective
conditions of our thinking objective conditions of objects themselves,
and an hypothesis necessary for the satisfaction of our reason, a dogma.
As the observations of the Critique on the pretensions of transcendental
theology are intelligible, clear, and decisive [Critique,
B595-670), I have nothing more to
add on the subject.
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General
Remark on the Transcendental Ideas.
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349
350
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Sect.
56. The objects, which are given us by experience, are in many respects
incomprehensible, and many questions, to which the law of nature leads
us, when carried beyond a certain point (though quite conformably to the
laws of nature), admit of no answer; as for example the question: why
substances attract one another? But if we entirely quit nature, or in
pursuing its combinations, exceed all possible experience, and so enter
the realm of mere ideas, we cannot then say that the object is
incomprehensible, and that the nature of things proposes to us insoluble
problems. For we are not then concerned with nature or in general with
given objects, but with concepts, which have their origin merely in our
reason, and with mere creations of thought; and all the problems that
arise from our notions of them must be solved, because of course reason
can and must give a full account of its own procedure.[7]
As
the psychological, cosmological, and theological Ideas are nothing but
pure concepts of reason, which cannot be given in any experience, the
questions which reason asks us about them are put to us not by the
objects, but by mere maxims of our reason for the sake of its own
satisfaction. They must all be capable of satisfactory answers, which is
done by showing that they are principles which bring our use of the
understanding into thorough agreement, completeness, and synthetical
unity, and that they so far hold good of experience only, but of
experience as a whole. Although an absolute whole of experience is
impossible, the idea of a whole of cognition according to principles
must impart to our knowledge a peculiar kind of unity, that of a system,
without which it is nothing but piecework, and cannot be used for
proving the existence of a highest purpose (which can only be the
general system of all purposes), I
do not here refer only to the practical, but also to the highest purpose
of the speculative use of reason.
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The transcendental Ideas therefore
express the peculiar application of reason as a principle of systematic
unity in the use of the understanding. Yet if we assume this unity of
the mode of cognition to be attached to the object of cognition, if we
regard that which is merely regulative to be constitutive, and if we
persuade ourselves that we can by means of these Ideas enlarge our
cognition transcendently, or far beyond all possible experience, while
it only serves to render experience within itself as nearly complete as
possible, i.e., to limit its progress by nothing that cannot belong to
experience: we suffer from a mere misunderstanding in our estimate of
the proper application of our reason and of its principles, and from a
Dialectic, which both confuses the empirical use of reason, and also
sets reason at variance with itself.
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294
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Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
For information about this text, click
here.
SECOND
PART OF THE MAIN TRANSCENDENTAL PROBLEM:
HOW
IS THE SCIENCE OF NATURE POSSIBLE?
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Sect.
14. Nature is the existence of things, so far as it is determined
according to universal laws. Should nature signify the existence of
things in themselves, we could never know it either a priori or a
posteriori. Not
a priori, for how can we know what belongs to things in themselves,
since this never can be done by the dissection of our concepts (in
analytical judgments)? We do not want to know what is contained in our
concept of a thing (for the [concept describes what] belongs to its
logical being), but what is in the actuality of the thing superadded to
our concept, and by what the thing itself is determined in its existence
outside the concept. Our
understanding, and the conditions on which alone it can connect the
determinations of things in their existence, do not prescribe any rule
to things themselves; these do not conform to our understanding, but it
must conform itself to them; they must therefore be first given us in
order to gather these determinations from them, wherefore they would not
be known a priori.
A
cognition of the nature of things in themselves a posteriori would be
equally impossible. For, if experience is to teach us laws, to which the
existence of things is subject, these laws, if they regard things in
themselves, must belong to them of necessity even outside our
experience. But experience teaches us what exists and how it exists, but
never that it must necessarily exist so and not otherwise. Experience
therefore can never teach us the nature of things in themselves. |
295
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Sect.
15. We nevertheless actually possess a pure science of nature in which
are propounded, a priori and with all the necessity requisite to
apodeictical propositions, laws to which nature is subject. I
need only call to witness that propaedeutic of natural science which,
under the title of the universal Science of Nature, precedes all Physics
(which is founded upon empirical principles). In it we have Mathematics
applied to appearance, and also merely discursive principles (or those
derived from concepts), which constitute the philosophical part of the
pure cognition of nature. But there are several things in it, which are
not quite pure and independent of empirical sources: such as the concept
of motion, that of impenetrability (upon which the empirical concept of
matter rests), that of inertia, and many others, which prevent its being
called a perfectly pure science of nature. Besides, it only refers to
objects of the external sense and therefore does not give an
example of a universal science of nature, in the strict sense,
for such a science must reduce nature in general, whether it
regards the object of the external or that of the internal sense
(the object of Physics as well as Psychology), to universal laws. But
among the principles of this universal physics there are a few which
actually have the required universality; for instance, the propositions
that "substance is permanent, " and that "every event is
determined by a cause according to constant laws," etc. These are
actually universal laws of nature, which subsist completely a priori.
There is then in fact a pure science of nature, and the question arises,
How is it possible? |
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Section
16. The word nature assumes yet another meaning, which
determines the object, whereas in the former sense it only denotes the
conformity to law of the determinations of the
existence of things generally. If we consider it materialiter (i.e., in
the matter that forms its objects), nature is the complex of all
the objects of experience. And with this only are we now
concerned, for besides, things which can never be objects of experience,
if they must be known as to their nature, would oblige us to have
recourse to concepts whose meaning could never be given in concreto
(by
any example of possible experience). Consequently we must form
for ourselves a list of concepts of their nature, the
reality whereof (i.e., whether they actually refer to objects,
or are mere creations of thought) could never be determined. The
cognition of what cannot be an object of experience would be
hyperphysical, and with things hyperphysical we are here not
concerned, but only with the cognition of nature, the actuality
of which can be confirmed by experience, though it [the cognition
of nature] is possible a priori and precedes all experience. |
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Section
17. The formal aspect of nature in this narrower sense is therefore
the conformity to law of all the objects of experience, and so far as it
is known a priori, their necessary conformity. But it has just been
shown that the laws of nature can never be known a priori in objects so
far as they are considered not in reference to possible experience, but
as things in themselves. And our inquiry here extends not to things in
themselves (the properties of which we pass by), but to things as
objects of possible experience, and the complex of these is what we
properly call nature. And now I ask when the possibility of a cognition of nature
a priori is in question,
whether it is better to arrange the problem thus: How can we know a priori that things as objects of experience necessarily conform
to law? or thus: How is it possible to know a priori the necessary conformity to law of experience itself as regards all
its objects generally?
Closely
considered, the solution of the problem, represented in either way,
amounts, with regard to the pure cognition of nature (which is the point
of the question at issue), entirely to the same thing. For the
subjective laws, under which alone an empirical cognition of things is
possible, hold good of these things, as objects of possible experience
(not as things in themselves, which are not considered here). Either of
the following statements means quite the same: "A judgment of
observation can never rank as experience, without the law, that
'whenever an event is observed, it is always referred to some
antecedent, which it follows according to a universal rule" or else
"Everything, of which experience teaches that it happens, must have
a cause."
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It is,
however, more convenient to choose the first formula. For we can a
priori and previous to all given objects have a cognition of those
conditions, on which alone experience is possible, but never of the laws
to which things may in themselves be subject, without reference to
possible experience. We cannot therefore study the nature of things a
priori otherwise than by investigating the conditions and the universal
(though subjective) laws, under which alone such a cognition as
experience (as to mere form) is possible, and we determine accordingly
the possibility of things, as objects of experience. For if I should
choose the second formula, and seek the conditions a priori, on which
nature as an object of experience is possible, I might easily fall into
error, and fancy that I was speaking of nature as a thing in itself, and
then move round in endless circles, in a vain search for laws concerning
things of which nothing is given me. |
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Accordingly
we shall here be concerned with experience only, and the universal
conditions of its possibility which are given a priori.
Thence
we shall determine nature as the whole object of all possible
experience. I think it will be understood that I here do not
mean the rules of the observation of a nature that is already given, for
these already presuppose experience. I do not mean how (through
experience) we can study the laws of nature; for these would not
then be laws a priori, and would yield us no pure science of nature;
but
[I mean to ask] how the conditions a priori of the possibility
of experience are at the same time the sources from which all the
universal laws of nature must be derived.
Sect.
18. In the first place we must state that, while all judgments of
experience [Erfahrungsurtheile] are empirical (i.e., have their ground
in immediate sense perception), vice versa, all empirical judgments [empirische
Urtheile] are not judgments of experience, but, besides the empirical,
and in general besides what is given to the sensuous intuition,
particular concepts must yet be superadded--concepts which have their
origin quite a priori in the pure understanding, and under which every
perception must be first of all subsumed and then by their means changed
into experience.
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Empirical judgments, so far as they have objective validity, are
judgments of experience; but those which are only subjectively valid, I
name mere judgments of perception. The latter require no pure concept of
the understanding, but only the logical connection of perception in a
thinking subject. But
the former always require, besides the representation of the sensuous
intuition, particular concepts originally begotten in the
understanding,
which produce the objective validity of the judgment of experience. |
|
All
our judgments are at first merely judgments of perception; they hold
good only for us (i.e., for our subject), and we do not till afterwards
give them a new reference (to an object), and desire that they shall
always hold good for us and in the same way for everybody else; for when
a judgment agrees with an object, all judgments concerning the same
object must likewise agree among themselves, and thus the objective
validity of the judgment of experience signifies nothing else than its
necessary universality of application. And
conversely when we have reason to consider a judgment necessarily
universal (which never depends upon perception, but upon the pure
concept of the understanding, under which the perception is subsumed),
we must consider it objective also, that is, that it expresses not
merely a reference of our perception to a subject, but a quality of the
object. For there would be no reason for the judgments of other men
necessarily agreeing with mine, if it were not the unity of the object
to which they all refer, and with which they accord; hence they must all
agree with one another. |
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299
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Sect.
19. Therefore objective validity and necessary universality (for
everybody) are equivalent terms, and though we do not know the
object in
itself, yet when we consider a judgment as universal, and also
necessary, we understand it to have objective validity. By this
judgment
we know the object (though it remains unknown as it is in
itself) by the
universal and necessary connection of the given perceptions. As
this is the case with all objects of sense, judgments of
experience take
their objective validity not from the immediate cognition of the
object
(which is impossible), but from the condition of universal
validity in
empirical judgments, which, as already said, never rests upon
empirical,
or, in short, sensuous conditions, but upon a pure concept of
the
understanding. The object always remains unknown in itself; but
when by the concept of the understanding
the connection of the representations of the object, which are
given to our sensibility, is determined as universally valid, the
object is determined by this relation, and it is the judgment
that is objective. |
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To
illustrate the matter: When we say, "the room is warm, sugar sweet,
and wormwood bitter,"[1] we have only subjectively valid
judgments, I do not at all expect that I or any other person shall
always find it as I now do; each of these sentences only expresses a
relation of two sensations to the same subject, to myself, and that only
in my present state of perception; consequently they are not valid of
the object. Such are judgments of perception. Judgments
of experience are of quite a different nature. What experience teaches
me under certain circumstances, it must always teach me and everybody;
and its validity is not limited to the subject nor to its state at a
particular time. Hence I pronounce all such judgments as being
objectively valid. For instance, when I say the air is elastic, this
judgment is as yet a judgment of perception only--I do nothing but refer
two of my sensations to one another. But, if I would have it called a
judgment of experience, I require this connection to stand under a
condition, which makes it universally valid. I desire therefore that I
and everybody else should always connect necessarily the same
perceptions under the same circumstances. |
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300
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Section
20. We must consequently analyze experience in order to see what is
contained in this product of the senses and of the understanding, and
how the judgment of experience itself is possible. The foundation is the
intuition of which I become conscious, i.e., perception (perceptio),
which pertains merely to the senses. But in the next place, there are
acts of judging (which belong only to the understanding). But
this judging may be twofold-first, I may merely compare perceptions and
connect them in a particular state of my consciousness; or, secondly, I
may connect them in consciousness generally. The former judgment is
merely a judgment of perception, and of subjective validity only: it is
merely a connection of perceptions in my mental state, without reference
to the object. Hence it is not, as is commonly imagined, enough for
experience to compare perceptions and to connect them in consciousness
through judgment; there arises no universality and necessity, for which
alone judgments can become objectively valid and be called experience. |
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Quite
another judgment therefore is required before perception can become
experience. The given intuition must be subsumed under a concept, which
determines the form of judging in general relatively to the intuition,
connects its empirical consciousness in consciousness generally, and
thereby procures universal validity for empirical judgments. A concept
of this nature is a pure a priori concept of the Understanding, which
does nothing but determine for an intuition the general way in which it
can be used for judgments. Let
the concept be that of cause, then it determined the intuition which is
subsumed under it, e.g., that of air, relative to judgments in general,
viz., the concept of air serves with regard to its expansion in the
relation of antecedent to consequent in a hypothetical judgment. The
concept of cause accordingly is a pure concept of the understanding,
which is totally disparate from all possible perception, and only serves
to determine the representation subsumed under it, relatively to
judgments in general, and so to make a universally valid judgment
possible. |
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301
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Before,
therefore, a judgment of perception can become a judgment of experience,
it is requisite that the perception should be subsumed under some such a
concept of the understanding.; for instance, air ranks under the concept
of causes, which determines our judgment about it in regard to its
expansion as hypothetical.[2] Thereby the expansion of the air is
represented not as merely belonging to the perception of the air in my
present state or in several states of mine, or in the state of
perception of others, but as belonging to it necessarily. The judgment,
"the air is elastic," becomes universally valid, and a
judgment of experience, only by certain judgments preceding it, which
subsume the intuition of air under the concept of cause and effect: and
they thereby determine the perceptions not merely as regards one another
in me, but relatively to the form of judging in general, which is here
hypothetical, and in this way they render the empirical judgment
universally valid. |
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302
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If
all our synthetical judgments are analyzed so far as they are
objectively valid, it will be found that they never consist of mere
intuitions connected only (as is commonly believed) by comparison into a
judgment; but that they would be impossible were not a pure concept of
the understanding superadded to the concepts abstracted from intuition,
under which concept these latter are subsumed, and in this manner only
combined into an objectively valid judgment. Even
the judgments of pure mathematics in their simplest axioms are not
exempt from this condition. The principle, “a straight line is the
shortest between two points," presupposes that the line is subsumed
under the concept of quantity, which certainly is no mere intuition, but
has its seat in the understanding alone, and serves to determine the
intuition (of the line) with regard to the judgments which may be made
about it, relatively to their quantity, that is, to plurality (as
judicia plurativa).[3] For under them it is understood that in a given
intuition there is contained a plurality of homogenous parts. |
|
Section
21. To prove, then, the possibility of experience so far as it rests
upon pure concepts of the understanding a priori, we must first
represent what belongs to judgments in general and the various functions
of the understanding, in a complete table. For the pure concepts of the
understanding must run parallel to these functions, as such concepts are
nothing more than concepts of intuitions in general, so far as these are
determined by one or other of these functions of judging, in themselves,
that is, necessarily and universally. Hereby also the a priori
principles of the possibility of all experience, as of an objectively
valid empirical cognition, will be precisely determined. For they are
nothing but propositions by which all perception is (under certain
universal conditions of intuition) subsumed under those pure concepts of
the understanding. |
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LOGICAL
TABLE OF JUDGMENTS.
1.
As to Quantity.
Universal.
Particular.
Singular. |
2.
As to Quality.
Affirmative.
Negative.
Infinite. |
3.
As to Relation.
Categorical.
Hypothetical.
Disjunctive. |
4.
As to Modality.
Problematical.
Assertorical.
Apodeictical. |
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|
TRANSCENDENTAL TABLE
OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING.
1 . As to Quantity.
Unity (the Measure).
Plurality (the Quantity).
Totality (the Whole). |
2. As to Quality.
Reality.
Negation.
Limitation. |
3. As to Relation.
Substance.
Cause.
Community. |
4.
As to Modality.
Possibility.
Existence.
Necessity. |
PURE PHYSICAL TABLE
OF THE UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES OF THE SCIENCE OF NATURE.
1. Axioms of Intuition.
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2. Anticipations of Perception. |
3. Analogies of Experience.
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4.
Postulates of Empirical Thinking generally. |
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Section
21a. In order to comprise the whole matter in one idea, it is first
necessary to remind the reader that we are discussing not the origin of
experience, but of that which lies in experience. The former pertains to
empirical psychology, and would even then never be adequately explained
without the latter, which belongs to the Critique of cognition, and
particularly of the understanding. |
|
Experience
consists of intuitions, which belong to the sensibility, and of
judgments, which are entirely a work of the understanding. But the
judgments, which the understanding forms alone from sensuous intuitions,
are far from being judgments of experience. For in the one case the
judgment connects only the perceptions as they are given in the sensuous
intuition, while in the other the judgments must express what experience
in general, and not what the mere perception (which possesses only
subjective validity) contains. The
judgment of experience must therefore add to the sensuous intuition and
its logical connection in a judgment (after it has been rendered
universal by comparison) something that determines the synthetical
judgment as necessary and therefore as universally valid. This can be
nothing else than that concept which represents the intuition as
determined in itself with regard to one form of judgment rather than
another, viz., a concept of that synthetical unity of intuitions which
can only be represented by a given logical function of judgments. |
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Section 22. The sum of the matter is
this: the business of the senses is to intuit -- that of the
understanding is to think. But thinking is uniting representations in
one consciousness. This union originates either merely relative to the
subject, and is accidental and subjective, or is absolute, and is
necessary or objective. The union of representations in one
consciousness is judgment. Thinking therefore is the same as judging, or
referring representations to judgments in general. Hence judgments are
either merely subjective, when representations are referred to a
consciousness in one subject only, and united in it, or objective, when
they are united in a consciousness generally, that is, necessarily. The
logical functions of all judgments are but various modes of uniting
representations in consciousness. But if they serve for concepts, they
are concepts of their necessary union in a consciousness, and so
principles of objectively valid judgments. This
union in a consciousness is either analytical, by identity, or
synthetical, by the combination and addition of various representations
one to another. Experience consists in the synthetical connection of
phenomena (perceptions) in consciousness, so far as this connection is
necessary. Hence the pure concepts of the understanding are those under
which all perceptions must be subsumed ere they can serve for judgments
of experience, in which the synthetical unity of the perceptions is
represented as necessary and universally valid.[4] |
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306
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Section 23. Judgments, when considered merely as the condition of the
union of given representations in a consciousness, are rules. These rules, so far
as they represent the union as necessary, are rules a priori, and so far
as they cannot be deduced from higher rules, are fundamental principles.
But
in regard to the possibility of all experience, merely in relation to
the form of thinking in it, no conditions of judgments of experience are
higher than those which bring the phenomena, according to the various
form of their intuition, under pure concepts of the understanding, and
render the empirical judgment objectively valid. These concepts are
therefore the a priori principles of possible experience.
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The
principles of possible experience are then at the same time universal
laws of nature, which can be known a priori. And thus the problem in our
second question, "How is the pure Science of Nature possible?"
is solved. For the system which is required for the form of a science is
to be met with in perfection here, because, beyond the above-mentioned
formal conditions of all judgments in general offered in logic, no
others are possible, and these constitute a logical system. The concepts
grounded thereupon, which contain the a priori conditions of all
synthetical and necessary judgments, accordingly constitute a logical system.
The concepts grounded thereupon, which contain the a priori
conditions of all synthetical and necessary judgments, accordingly
constitute a transcendental system. Finally the principles, by means of
which all phenomena are subsumed under these concepts, constitute a
physical system, that is, a system of nature, which precedes all
empirical cognition of nature, makes it even possible, and hence may in
strictness be called the universal and pure natural science. |
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307
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Section
24. The first [5] one of the physiological principles
[The Axioms of Intuition]] subsumes all
phenomena, as intuitions in space and time, under the concept of quantity, and is so far a principle of the application of
mathematics to
experience. The
second one [The Anticipations of Perception] subsumes the empirical element, viz., sensation, which
denotes the real in intuitions, not indeed directly under the concept of
quantity, because sensation is not an intuition that contains either
space or time, though it places the respective object into both. But
still there is between reality (sense-representation) and the zero, or
total void of intuition in time, a difference which has a quantity. For
between every given degree of light and of darkness, between every
degree of beat and of absolute cold, between every degree of weight and
of absolute lightness, between every degree of occupied space and of
totally void space, diminishing degrees can be conceived, in the same
manner as between consciousness and total unconsciousness (the darkness
of a psychological blank) ever diminishing degrees obtain. Hence
there is no perception that can prove an absolute absence of it; for
instance, no psychological darkness that cannot be considered as a kind
of consciousness, which is only out-balanced by a stronger
consciousness. This occurs in all cases of sensation, and so the
understanding can anticipate even sensations, which constitute the
peculiar quality of empirical representations (appearances), by means of
the principle: "that they all have (consequently that what is real
in all phenomena has) a degree." Here is the second application of
mathematics (mathesis intensortim) to the science of nature.
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Section
25. In the relation of appearances merely with a view to their
existence, the determination is not mathematical but dynamical, and can
never be objectively valid, consequently never fit for experience, if it
does not come under a priori principles [The Analogies of
Experience] by which the cognition of
experience relative to appearances becomes even possible. Hence
appearances must be subsumed under the concept of Substance, which is
the foundation of all determination of existence, as a concept of the
thing itself; or secondly so far as a succession is found among
phenomena, that is, an event--under the concept of an effect with
reference to cause; or lastly--so far as coexistence is to be known
objectively, that is, by a judgment of experience--under the concept of
community (action and reaction). Thus
a priori principles form the basis of objectively valid, though
empirical judgments, that is, of the possibility of experience so far as
it must connect objects as existing in nature. These principles are the
proper laws of nature, which may be termed dynamical. |
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308
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Finally
the cognition of the agreement and connection not only of appearances
among themselves in experience [The Postulates of Empirical Thought], but of their relation to experience in
general, belongs to the judgments of experience. This relation contains
either their agreement with the formal conditions, which the
understanding knows, or their coherence with the materials of the senses
and of perception, or combines both into one concept. Consequently it
contains Possibility, Actuality, and Necessity according to universal
laws of nature; and this constitutes the physical doctrine of method, or
the distinction of truth and of hypotheses, and the bounds of the
certainty of the latter. |
|
Section
26. The third table of principles drawn from the nature of the
understanding itself after the critical method, shows an inherent
perfection, which raises it far above every other table which has
hitherto though in vain been tried or may yet be tried by analyzing the
objects themselves dogmatically. It exhibits all synthetical a priori
principles completely and according to one principle, viz., the faculty
of judging in general, constituting the essence of experience as regards
the understanding, so that we can be certain that there are no more such
principles, which affords a satisfaction such as can never be attained
by the dogmatic method. Yet is this not all: there is a still greater merit in it.
We must carefully bear in mind the proof which shows the possibility of
this cognition a priori, and at the same time limits all such
principles to a condition which must never be lost sight of, if we
desire it not to be misunderstood, and extended in use beyond the
original sense which the understanding attaches to it. This limit is
that they contain nothing but the conditions of possible experience in
general so far as it is Subjected to laws a priori. Consequently
I do not say, that things in themselves possess a quantity, that
their actuality possesses a degree, their existence a connection of
accidents in a substance, etc. This nobody can prove, because such a
synthetical connection from mere concepts, without any reference to
sensuous intuition on the one side, or connection of it in a possible
experience on the other, is absolutely impossible. The
essential limitation of the concepts in these principles then is: That
all things stand necessarily a priori under the aforementioned
conditions only as objects of experience. |
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Hence
there follows secondly a specifically peculiar mode of proof of these
principles: they are not directly referred to appearances and to their
relations, but to the possibility of experience, of which appearances
constitute the matter only, not the form. Thus they are referred to
objectively and universally valid synthetical propositions, in which we
distinguish judgments of experience from those of perception. This takes place
because appearances, as mere intuitions, occupying a part of space
and time, come under the concept of quantity, which unites their
multiplicity a priori according to rules synthetically. Again, so
far as the perception contains, besides intuition, sensibility, and
between the latter and nothing (i.e., the total disappearance of
sensibility), there is an ever-decreasing transition, it is apparent
that that which is in appearances must have a degree, so far as it
(viz., the perception) does not itself occupy any part of space or of
time.[6] Still the transition to actuality from
empty time or empty space is only possible in time; consequently though
sensibility, as the quality of empirical intuition, can never be known a
priori, by its specific difference from other sensibilities, yet it
can, in a possible experience in general, as a quantity of perception be
intensely distinguished from every other similar perception. Hence the
application of mathematics to nature, as regards the sensuous intuition
by which nature is given to us, becomes possible and is thus determined.
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Above
all, the reader must pay attention to the mode of proof of the
principles which occur under the title of Analogies of Experience. For
these do not refer to the genesis of intuitions, as do the principles of
applied mathematics, but to the connection of their existence in
experience; and this can be nothing but the determination of their
existence in time according to necessary laws, under which alone the
connection is objectively valid, and thus becomes experience. The proof
therefore does not turn on the synthetical unity in the connection of
things in themselves, but merely of perceptions, and of these not in
regard to their matter, but to the determination of time and of the
relation of their existence in it, according to universal laws. If the
empirical determination in relative time is indeed objectively valid
(i.e., experience), these universal laws contain the necessary
determination of existence in time generally (viz., according to a rule
of the understanding a priori). In a Prolegomena I cannot further
descant on the subject, but my reader (who has probably been long
accustomed to consider experience a mere empirical synthesis of
perceptions, and hence not considered that it goes much beyond them, as
it imparts to empirical judgments universal validity, and for that
purpose requires a pure and a priori unity of the understanding)
is recommended to pay special attention to this distinction of
experience from a mere aggregate of perceptions, and to judge the mode
of proof from this point of view. |
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311
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Section
27. Now we are prepared to remove Hume's doubt. He justly maintains,
that we cannot comprehend by reason the possibility of causality, that
is, of the reference of the existence of one thing to the existence of
another, which is necessitated by the former. I
add, that we comprehend just as little the concept of Subsistence, that
is, the necessity that at the foundation of the existence of things
there lies a subject which cannot itself be a predicate of any other
thing; nay, we cannot even form a notion of the possibility of such a
thing (though we can point out examples of its use in experience). The
very same incomprehensibility affects the Community of things, as we
cannot comprehend how from the state of one thing an inference to the
state of quite another thing beyond it, and vice versa, can be drawn,
and how substances which have each their own separate existence should
depend upon one another necessarily. But
I am very far from holding these concepts to be derived merely from
experience, and the necessity represented in them, to be imaginary and a
mere illusion produced in us by long habit. On the contrary, I have
amply shown, that they and the theorems derived from them are firmly
established a priori, or before all experience, and have their undoubted
objective value, though only with regard to experience. |
|
Sect. 28. Though I have no notion of such
a connection of things in themselves, that they can either exist as
substances, or act as causes, or stand in community with others (as
parts of a real whole), and I can just as little conceive such
properties in appearances as such (because those concepts contain
nothing that lies in the appearances, but only what the understanding
alone must think): we have yet a notion of such a connection of
representations in our understanding, and in judgments generally;
consisting in this that representations appear in one sort of judgments
as subject in relation to predicates, in another as reason in relation
to consequences, and in a third as parts, which constitute together a
total possible cognition. Besides we know a priori that without
considering the representation of an object as determined in some of
these respects, we can have no valid cognition of the object, and, if we
should occupy ourselves about the object in itself, there is no possible
attribute, by which I could know that it is determined under any of
these aspects, that is, under the concept either of substance, or of
cause, or (in relation to other substances) of community, for I have no
notion of the possibility of such a connection of existence. But the
question is not how things in themselves, but how the empirical
cognition of things is determined as regards the above aspects of
judgments in general, that is, how things, as objects of experience, can
and shall be subsumed under these concepts of the understanding. And
then it is clear, that I completely comprehend not only the possibility,
but also the necessity of subsuming all phenomena under these concepts,
that is, of using them for principles of the possibility of experience. |
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312
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Sect.
29. When making an experiment with Hume's problematical concept (his
crux metaphysicorum), the concept of cause, we have, in the first place,
given a priori, by means of logic, the form of a conditional judgment in
general, i.e., we have one given cognition as antecedent and another as
consequence. But
it is possible, that in perception we may meet with a rule of relation,
which runs thus: that a certain phenomenon is constantly followed by
another (though not conversely), and this is a case for me to use the
hypothetical judgment, and, for instance, to say, if the sun shines long
enough upon a body, it grows warm. Here there is indeed as yet no
necessity of connection, or concept of cause. But
I proceed and say, that if this proposition, which is merely a
subjective connection of perceptions, is to be a judgment of experience,
it must be considered as necessary and universally valid. Such a
proposition would be, ”the sun is by its light the cause of
heat." The empirical rule is now considered as a law, and as valid
not merely of appearances but valid of them for the purposes of a
possible experience which requires universal and therefore necessarily
valid rules. I
therefore easily comprehend the concept of cause, as a concept
necessarily belonging to the mere form of experience, and its
possibility as a synthetical union of perceptions in consciousness
generally; but I do not at all comprehend the possibility of a thing
generally as a cause, because the concept of cause denotes a condition
not at all belonging to things, but to experience. It is nothing in fact
but an objectively valid cognition of appearances and of their
succession, so far as the antecedent can be conjoined with the
consequent according to the rule of hypothetical judgments. |
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313
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Sect.
30. Hence if the pure concepts of the understanding do not refer to
objects of experience but to things in themselves (noumena), they
have no signification whatever. They serve, as it were, only to decipher
appearances, that we may be able to read them as experience. The
principles which arise from their reference to the sensible world, only
serve our understanding for empirical use. Beyond this they are
arbitrary combinations, without objective reality, and we can neither
know their possibility a priori, nor verify their reference to
objects, let alone make it intelligible by any example; because examples
can only be borrowed from some possible experience, consequently the
objects of these concepts can be found nowhere but in a possible
experience. |
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This complete (though to its originator unexpected) solution of
Hume's problem rescues for the pure concepts of the understanding their
a priori origin, and for the universal laws of nature their validity, as
laws of the understanding, yet in such a way as to limit their use to
experience, because their possibility depends solely on the reference of
the understanding to experience, but with a completely reversed mode of
connection which never occurred to Hume, not by deriving them from
experience, but by deriving experience from them.
This
is therefore the result of all our foregoing inquiries: "All
synthetical principles a priori are nothing more than principles of
possible experience," and can never be referred to things in themselves,
but to appearances as objects of experience. And hence pure mathematics
as well as a pure science of nature can never be referred to anything
more than mere appearances, and can only represent either that which
makes experience generally possible, or else that which, as it is
derived from these principles, must always be capable of being
represented in some possible experience.
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314
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Sect. 31. And thus we have at last
something definite, upon which to depend in all metaphysical
enterprises, which have hitherto, boldly enough but always at random,
attempted everything without discrimination. That the aim of their
exertions should be so near, struck neither the dogmatical thinkers nor
those who, confident in their supposed sound common sense, started with
concepts and principles of pure reason (which were legitimate and
natural, but destined for mere empirical use) in quest of fields of
knowledge, to which they neither knew nor could know any determinate
bounds, because they bad never reflected nor were able to reflect on the
nature or even on the possibility of such a pure understanding. |
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Many a naturalist of pure reason (by
which I mean the man who believes he can decide in matters of
metaphysics without any science) may pretend, that lie long ago by the
prophetic spirit of his sound sense, not only suspected, but knew and
comprehended, what is here propounded with so much ado, or, if he likes,
with prolix and pedantic pomp: "that with all our reason we can
never reach beyond the field of experience." But when he is
questioned about his rational principles individually, he must grant,
that there are many of them which be has not taken from experience, and
which are therefore independent of it and valid a priori. How
then and on what grounds will he restrain both himself and the
dogmatist, who makes use of these concepts and principles beyond all
possible experience, because they are recognized to be independent of
it? And even he, this adept in sound sense, in spite of all his assumed
and cheaply acquired wisdom, is not exempt from wandering inadvertently
beyond objects of experience into the field of chimeras. He is often
deeply enough involved in them, though in announcing everything as mere
probability, rational conjecture, or analogy, be gives by his popular
language a color to his groundless pretensions.
Sect. 32. Since the oldest days of
philosophy inquirers into pure reason have conceived, besides the things
of sense, or appearances (phenomena), which make up the sensible
world, certain creations of the understanding, called noumena,
which should constitute an intelligible world. And as appearance and
illusion were by those men identified (a thing which we may well excuse
in an undeveloped epoch), actuality was only conceded to the beings of
thought. |
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And we
indeed, rightly considering objects of sense as mere appearances,
confess thereby that they are based upon a thing in itself, though we
know not this thing as it is in itself, but only know its appearances,
viz., the way in which our senses are affected by this unknown
something. The understanding therefore, by assuming appearances, grants
the existence of things in themselves also, and so far we may say, that
the representation of such things as form the basis of phenomena,
consequently of mere creations of the understanding, is not only
admissible, but unavoidable. |
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Our
critical deduction by no means excludes things of that sort (noumena),
but rather limits the principles of the Aesthetic [the science of the
sensibility] in such a way that they shall not extend to all things, as
everything would then be turned into mere appearance, but that they
shall only hold good of objects of possible experience. Hereby then
objects of the understanding are granted, but with the inculcation of
this rule which admits of no exception: that we neither know nor can
know anything at all definite of these pure objects of the
understanding, because our pure concepts of the understanding as well as
our pure intuitions extend to nothing but objects of possible
experience, consequently to mere things of sense, and as soon as we
leave this sphere these concepts retain no meaning whatever.
Sect. 33. There is indeed something
seductive in our pure concepts of the understanding, which tempts us to
a transcendent use, -- a use which transcends all possible experience.
Not only are our concepts of substance, of power, of action, of reality,
and others, quite independent of experience, containing nothing of sense
appearance, and so apparently applicable to things in themselves (noumena),
but, what strengthens this conjecture, they contain a necessity of
determination in themselves, which experience never attains. The concept
of cause implies a rule, according to which one state follows another
necessarily; but experience can only show us, that one state of things
often, or at most, commonly, follows another, and therefore affords
neither strict universality, nor necessity. |
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316
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Hence the
concepts of the understanding [categories] have a deeper meaning and
import than can be exhausted by their empirical use, and so the
understanding inadvertently adds for itself to the house of experience a
much more extensive wing, which it fills with nothing but creatures of
thought, without ever observing that it has transgressed with its
otherwise lawful concepts the bounds of their use.
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317
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Sect. 34. Two important, and even
indispensable, though very dry, investigations had therefore become
indispensable in the Critique of Pure Reason [viz., the two
chapters "The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the
Understanding" and "The Ground of the Distinction of All
Objects in General into Phenomena and Noumena]. In the former it is
shown, that the senses furnish not the pure concepts of the
understanding in concreto, but only the schedule for their use,
and that the object conformable to it occurs only in experience (as the
product of the understanding from materials of the sensibility). In the
latter it is shown, that, although our pure concepts of the
understanding and our principles are independent of experience, and
despite of the apparently greater sphere of their use, still nothing
whatever can be thought by them beyond the field of experience, because
they can do nothing but merely determine the logical form of the
judgment relatively to given intuitions. But as there is no intuition at
all beyond the field of the sensibility, these pure concepts, as they
cannot possibly be exhibited in concreto, are void of all
meaning; consequently all these noumena, together with their
complex, the intelligible world,[7] are nothing but
representation of a problem, of which the object in itself is possible,
but the solution, from the nature of our understanding, totally
impossible. For our understanding is not a faculty of intuition, but of
the connection of given intuitions in experience. Experience must
therefore contain all the objects for our concepts; but beyond it no
concepts have any significance, as there is no intuition that might be
subsumed under them. |
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Sect.
35. The imagination may perhaps be forgiven for occasional vagaries, and
for not keeping carefully within the limits of experience, since it
gains life and vigor by such flights, and since it is always easier to
moderate its boldness, than to stimulate its languor. But the
understanding which ought to think can never be forgiven for indulging
in vagaries; for we depend upon it alone for assistance to set bounds,
when necessary, to the vagaries of the imagination.
But the
understanding begins its aberrations very innocently and modestly. It
first elucidates the elementary cognitions, which inhere in it prior to
all experience, but yet must always have their application in
experience. It gradually drops these limits, and what is there to
prevent it, as it has quite freely derived its principles from itself?
And then it proceeds first to newly-imagined powers in nature, then to
beings outside nature; in short to a world, for whose construction the
materials cannot be wanting, because fertile fiction furnishes them
abundantly, and though not confirmed, is never refuted, by experience.
This is the reason that young thinkers arc so partial to metaphysics of
the truly dogmatical kind, and often sacrifice to it their time and
their talents, which might be otherwise better employed.
But there is no use in trying to moderate these fruitless endeavors of
pure reason by all manner of cautions as to the difficulties of solving
questions so occult, by complaints of the limits of our reason, and by
degrading our assertions into mere conjectures. For if their
impossibility is not distinctly shown, and reason's cognition of its own
essence does not become a true science, in which the field of its right
use is distinguished, so to say, with mathematical certainty from that
of its worthless and idle use, these fruitless efforts will never be
abandoned for good. |
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318 |
How is Nature itself possible? |
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Section
36. This question -- the highest point
that transcendental philosophy can ever reach, and to which, as its
boundary and completion, it must proceed-properly contains two
questions. First:
How is nature at all possible in the material sense, by intuition,
considered as the totality of appearances; how are space, time, and that
which fills both -- the object of sensation, in general possible? The
answer is: By means of the constitution of our Sensibility, according to
which it is specifically affected by objects, which are in themselves
unknown to it, and totally distinct from those appearances. This answer is
given in the Critique itself in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and
in these Prolegomena by the solution of the first general problem.
Secondly:
How is nature possible in the formal sense, as the totality of the
rules, under which all phenomena must come, in order to be thought as
connected in experience? The answer must be this: it is only possible by
means of the constitution of our Understanding, according to which all
the above representations of the sensibility are necessarily referred to
a consciousness, and by which the peculiar way in which we think (viz.,
by rules), and hence experience also, are possible, but must be clearly
distinguished from an insight into the objects in themselves. This answer is given in the
Critique itself in the Transcendental Logic, and in these Prolegomena, in the course of the solution of
the second main problem.
But
how this peculiar property of our sensibility itself is possible, or
that of our understanding and of the apperception which is necessarily
its basis and that of all thinking, cannot be further analyzed or
answered, because it is of them that we are in need for all our answers
and for all our thinking about objects.
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319 |
There are many laws of nature,
which we can only know by means of experience; but conformity to law in
the connection of appearances, i.e., in nature in general, we cannot
discover by any experience, because experience itself requires laws
which are a priori at the basis of its possibility. |
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The
possibility of experience in general is therefore at the same time the
universal law of nature, and the principles of the experience are the
very laws of nature. For we do not know nature but as the totality of
appearances, i.e., of representations in us, and hence we can only
derive the laws of its connection from the principles of their
connection in us, that is, from the conditions of their necessary union
in consciousness, which constitutes the possibility of experience.
Even the main proposition expounded throughout this section -- that
universal laws of nature can be distinctly known a priori --
leads naturally to the proposition: that the highest legislation of
nature must lie in ourselves, i.e., in our understanding, and that we
must not seek the universal laws of nature in nature by means of
experience, but conversely must seek nature, as to its universal
conformity to law, in the conditions of the possibility of experience,
which lie in our sensibility and in our understanding. For how were it
otherwise possible to know a priori these laws, as they are not
rules of analytical cognition, but truly synthetical extensions of it?
Such a necessary agreement of the principles of possible experience with
the laws of the possibility of nature, can only proceed from one of two
reasons: either these laws are drawn from nature by means of experience,
or conversely nature is derived from the laws of the possibility of
experience in general, and is quite the same as the mere universal
conformity to law of the latter. The former is self-contradictory, for
the universal laws of nature can and must be known a priori (that
is, independent of all experience), and be the foundation of all
empirical use of the understanding; the latter alternative therefore
alone remains.[8] |
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320
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But we
must distinguish the empirical laws of nature, which always presuppose
particular perceptions, from the pure or universal laws of nature,
which, without being based on particular perceptions, contain merely the
conditions of their necessary union in experience. In relation to the
latter, nature and possible experience are quite the same, and as the
conformity to law here depends upon the necessary connection of
appearances in experience (without which we cannot know any object
whatever in the sensible world), consequently upon the original laws of
the understanding, it seems at first strange, but is not the less
certain, to say: the understanding does not derive its laws (a
priori) from, but prescribes them to, nature. |
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Section
37. We shall illustrate this seemingly bold proposition by an example,
which will show, that laws, which we discover in objects of sensuous
intuition (especially when these laws are known as necessary), are
commonly held by us to be such as have been placed there by the
understanding, in spite of their being similar in all points to the laws
of nature, which we ascribe to experience. |
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321
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Section 38. If we consider the properties
of the circle, by which this figure combines so many arbitrary
determinations of space in itself, at once in a universal rule, we
cannot avoid attributing a nature to this geometrical thing. Two right
lines, for example, which intersect one another and the circle,
howsoever they may be drawn, are always divided so that the rectangle
constructed with the segments of the one is equal to that constructed
with the segments of the other. The question now is: Does this law lie
in the circle or in the understanding, that is, Does this figure,
independently of the understanding, contain in itself the ground of the
law, or does the understanding, having constructed according to its
concepts (according to the quality of the radii) the figure itself,
introduce into it this law of the chords cutting one another in
geometrical proportion? When we follow the proofs of this law, we soon
perceive, that it can only be derived from the condition on which the
understanding founds the construction of this figure, and which is that
of the equality of the radii. But, if we enlarge this concept, to pursue
further the unity of various properties of geometrical figures under
common laws, and consider the circle as a conic section, which of course
is subject to the same fundamental conditions of construction as other
conic sections, we shall find that all the chords which intersect within
the ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola, always intersect so that the
rectangles of their segments are not indeed equal, but always bear a
constant ratio to one another. If we proceed still farther, to the
fundamental laws of physical astronomy, we find a
physical law of reciprocal attraction diffused over all material nature,
the rule of which is: “that it decreases inversely as the square of
the distance from each attracting point, i.e., as the spherical surfaces
increase, over which this force spreads," which law seems to be
necessarily inherent in the very nature of things, and hence is usually
propounded as knowable a priori. Simple as the sources of this law are,
merely resting upon the relation of spherical surfaces of different
radii, its consequences are so valuable with regard to the variety of
their agreement and its regularity, that not only are all possible
orbits of the celestial bodies conic sections, but such a relation of
these orbits to each other results, that no other law of attraction,
than that of the inverse square of the distance, can be imagined as fit
for a cosmical system. |
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Here
accordingly is a nature that rests upon laws which the understanding
knows a priori, and chiefly from the universal principles of the
determination of space. Now I ask:
Do the laws of nature lie in space, and does the understanding learn
them by merely endeavoring to find out the enormous wealth of meaning
that lies in space; or do they inhere in the understanding and in the
way in which it determines space according to the conditions of the
synthetical unity in which its concepts are all centered? Space is
something so uniform and as to all particular properties so
indeterminate, that we should certainly not seek a store of laws of
nature in it. Whereas that which determines space to assume the form of a circle or the figures of a cone and
a sphere, is the understanding, so far as it contains the ground of the unity of their constructions.
The mere universal form of intuition,
called space, must therefore be the substratum of all intuitions
determinable to particular objects, and in it of course the condition of
the possibility and of the variety of these intuitions lies. But the
unity of the objects is entirely determined by the understanding, and on
conditions which lie in its own nature; and thus the understanding is
the origin of the universal order of nature, in that it comprehends all
appearances under its own laws, and thereby first constructs, a
priori,
experience (as to its form), by means of which whatever is to be
known
only by experience, is necessarily subjected to its laws. For we
are not now concerned
with the nature of things in themselves, which is independent of
the conditions both of our sensibility and our understanding, but
with nature, as an object of possible experience, and in this
case the understanding, whilst it makes experience possible,
thereby insists that the sensuous world is either not an object
of experience at all, or
else is nature. |
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APPENDIX
TO THE PURE SCIENCE OF NATURE. |
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Sect.
39. Of the System of the Categories. There can be nothing more
desirable to a philosopher, than to be able to derive the scattered
multiplicity of the concepts or the principles, which had occurred to
him in concrete use, from a principle a priori, and to
unite everything
in this way in one cognition. He formerly only believed that
those things, which
remained after a certain abstraction, and seemed by comparison
among one another to constitute a particular kind of cognitions,
were completely collected; but this was only an aggregate.
Now he
knows, that just so many, neither more nor less, can constitute
the mode of cognition, and perceives the necessity of his
division, which constitutes comprehension; and now only he has
attained a
system. |
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323
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To
search in our daily cognition for the concepts, which do not rest upon
particular experience, and yet occur in all cognition of experience,
where they as it were constitute the mere form of connection,
presupposes neither greater reflection nor deeper insight, than to
detect in a language the rules of the actual use of words generally, and
thus to collect elements for a grammar. In fact both researches are very
nearly related, even though we are not able to give a reason why each
language has just this and no other formal constitution, and still less
why an exact number of such formal determinations in general are found
in it. |
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Aristotle collected ten pure elementary concepts under the
name of Categories.[9] To these, which are also called
predicaments, he found himself obliged afterwards to add five post-predicaments, some of which however
(prius, simul, and motus) are contained in
the former; but this random collection
must be considered (and commended) as a mere hint for future
inquirers, not as a regularly developed idea, and hence it has,
in the present more advanced state of philosophy, been rejected
as quite useless.
After
long reflection on the pure elements of human knowledge (those
which
contain nothing empirical), I at last succeeded in
distinguishing with
certainty and in separating the pure elementary notions of the
Sensibility (space and time) from those of the Understanding.
Thus the 7th, 8th, and 8th Categories
had to be excluded from the old list. And the others were of no
service to me; because there was no principle [in them], on which
the understanding could be investigated, measured in its
completion, and all the functions, whence its pure concepts
arise, determined exhaustively and with precision.
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324
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But in order to discover such a principle,
I looked about for an act of the
understanding which comprises all the rest, and is distinguished only by
various modifications or phases, in reducing the multiplicity of
representation to the unity of thinking in general: I found this act of
the understanding to consist in judging. Here then the labors of the
logicians were ready at hand, though not yet quite free from defects,
and with this help I was enabled to exhibit a complete table of the pure
functions of the understanding, which are however undetermined in regard
to any object. I finally referred these functions of judging to objects
in general, or rather to the condition of determining judgments as
objectively valid, and so there arose the pure concepts of the
understanding, concerning which I could make certain, that these, and
this exact number only, constitute our whole cognition of things from
pure understanding. I was justified in calling them by their old name, categories, while I
reserved for myself the liberty of adding, under the title of predicables,
a complete list of all the concepts deducible from
them, by combinations whether among themselves, or with the pure
form of the appearance, i.e., space or time, or with its matter,
so far as it is not yet empirically determined (viz., the object
of sensation in general), as soon as a system of transcendental
philosophy should be completed with the construction of which I
am engaged in the
Critique of Pure Reason itself.
Now the essential point
in this system of
categories, which
distinguishes it from the old rhapsodical collection without any
principle, and for which alone it deserves to be considered as
philosophy, consists in this: that by means of it the true
significance of the pure concepts of the understanding and the
condition of their use could be precisely determined. For here
it became obvious that they are themselves nothing but logical
functions, and as such do not produce the least concept of an
object, but require some sensuous intuition as a basis. They
therefore only serve to determine empirical judgments, which are
otherwise undetermined and indifferent as regards all functions
of judging, relatively to these functions, thereby procuring
them universal validity, and by means of them making judgments of
experience in general possible. |
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325
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Such an insight into the
nature of the categories, which limits them at the same time to the mere
use of experience, never
occurred either to their first author, or to any of his
successors; but without this insight (which immediately depends
upon their derivation or deduction), they are quite useless and
only a miserable list of names, without explanation or rule for
their use. Had the ancients ever conceived such a notion,
doubtless the whole study of the pure rational knowledge, which
under the name of metaphysics has for centuries spoiled many a
sound mind, would have reached
us in quite another shape, and
would have enlightened the human understanding, instead of
actually exhausting it in obscure and vain speculations, thereby
rendering it unfit for true science. |
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This system of categories
makes all treatment of every object of pure reason itself systematic,
and affords a direction
or clue how and through what points of inquiry every
metaphysical consideration must proceed, in order to be complete; for it
exhausts all the possible movements (momenta) of the
understanding, among which every concept must be classed. In like
manner the table of Principles has been formulated, the
completeness of which we can only vouch for by the system of the
categories. Even in the division of the concepts,22 which must
go beyond the physical application of the understanding, it is
always the very same clue, which, as it must always be
determined a priori by the same fixed points of the human
understanding,
always forms a closed circle. There is no doubt that the object
of a pure conception either of the understanding or of reason, so
far as it is to be estimated philosophically and on a priori principles, can in this way be completely known. I could not
therefore omit to make use of this clue with regard to one of the most abstract ontological divisions, viz., the various
distinctions of "the notions of something and of nothing," and to construct accordingly
(Critique, B402, B442-3) a regular and necessary
table of their divisions (Critique, B348).[10] |
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326
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And this system, like
every other true one founded on a universal principle, shows its
inestimable value in this, that it
excludes all foreign concepts, which might otherwise intrude
among the pure concepts of the understanding, and determines the
place of every cognition. Those concepts, which under the name
of "concepts of reflection" have been likewise arranged in a table
according to the clue of the categories, intrude, without having
any privilege or title to be among the pure concepts of the
understanding in Ontology. They are concepts of connection, and
thereby of the objects themselves, whereas the former are only
concepts of a mere comparison of concepts already given, hence
of quite another nature and use. By my systematic division24 they
are saved from this confusion. But the value of my special table
of the categories will be still more obvious, when we separate
the table of the transcendental concepts of Reason from the
concepts of the understanding. The latter being of quite another
nature and origin, they must have quite another form than the
former. This so necessary separation has never yet been made in
any system of metaphysics for, as a rule, these rational
concepts all mixed up with the categories, like children of one family,
which confusion was unavoidable in the absence of a definite
system of categories.
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365
| Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
For information about this text, click
here.
SOLUTION OF THE GENERAL QUESTION OF THE
PROLEGOMENA |
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"HOW IS METAPHYSICS POSSIBLE AS A SCIENCE?"
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Metaphysics, as a natural disposition of reason, is actual, but if
considered by itself alone (as the analytical solution of the third
principal question showed), dialectical and illusory. If we think of
taking principles from it, and in using them follow the natural, but on
that account not less false, illusion, we can never produce science, but
only a vain dialectical art, in which one school may outdo another, but
none can ever acquire a just and lasting approbation.
In order that as a science metaphysics may be entitled to claim not mere
fallacious plausibility, but insight and conviction, a Critique of
Reason must itself exhibit the whole stock of a priori concepts,
their division according to their various sources (Sensibility,
Understanding, and Reason), together with a complete table of them, the
analysis of all these concepts, with all their consequences, especially
by means of the deduction of these concepts, the possibility of
synthetical cognition a priori, the principles of its application
and finally its bounds, all in a complete system. Critique, therefore,
and critique alone, contains in itself the whole well-proved and
well-tested plan, and even all the means required to accomplish
metaphysics, as a science; by other ways and means it is impossible. The
question here therefore is not so much how this performance is possible,
as how to set it going, and induce men of clear heads to quit their
hitherto perverted and fruitless cultivation for one that will not
deceive, and how such a union for the common end may best be directed.
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| 366
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This much is certain, that whoever has once tasted critique will be ever
after disgusted with all dogmatical twaddle which be formerly put up
with, because his reason must have something, and could find
nothing better for its support. Critique stands in the same relation to
the common metaphysics of the schools, as chemistry does to alchemy, or
as astronomy to the astrology of the fortune-teller. I pledge myself
that nobody who has read through and through, and grasped the principles
of critique, even in these Prolegomena only, will ever return to
that old and sophistical pseudo-science; but will rather with a certain
delight look forward to metaphysics which is now indeed in his power,
requiring no more preparatory discoveries, and now at last affording
permanent satisfaction to reason. For here is an advantage upon which,
of all possible sciences, metaphysics alone can with certainty reckon:
that it can be brought to such completion and fixity as to be incapable
of further change, or of any augmentation by new discoveries; because
here reason has the sources of its knowledge in itself, not in objects
and their observation [Anschauung], by which latter its stock of
knowledge cannot be further increased. When therefore it has exhibited
the fundamental laws of its faculty completely and so definitely as to
avoid all misunderstanding, there remains nothing for pure reason to
know a priori, nay, there is even no ground to raise further
questions. The sure prospect of knowledge so definite and so compact has
a peculiar charm, even though we should set aside all its advantages, of
which I shall hereafter speak.
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All false art, all vain wisdom, lasts its time, but finally destroys
itself, and its highest culture is also the epoch of its decay. That
this time is come for metaphysics appears from the state into which it
has fallen among all learned nations, despite of all the zeal with which
other sciences of every kind are prosecuted. The old arrangement of our
university studies still preserves its shadow; now and then an Academy
of Science tempts men by offering prizes to write essays on it, but it
is no longer numbered among thorough sciences; and let any one judge for
himself how a man of genius, if he were called a great metaphysician,
would receive the compliment, which may be well- meant, but is scarce
envied by anybody.
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Yet, though the period of the downfall of all dogmatical metaphysics has
undoubtedly arrived, we are yet far from being able to say that the
period of its regeneration is come by means of a thorough and complete
Critique of Reason. All transitions from a tendency to its contrary pass
through the stage of indifference, and this moment is the most dangerous
for an author, but, in my opinion, the most favorable for the science.
For, when party spirit has died out by a total dissolution of former
connections, minds are in the best state to listen to several proposals
for an organization according to a new plan.
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When I say, that I hope these Prolegomena will excite
investigation in the field of critique and afford a new and promising
object to sustain the general spirit of philosophy, which seems on its
speculative side to want sustenance, I can imagine beforehand, that
every one, whom the thorny paths of my Critique have tired and
put out of humor, will ask me, upon what I found this hope. My answer
is: upon the irresistible law of necessity.
That the human mind will ever give up metaphysical researches is as
little to be expected as that we should prefer to give up breathing
altogether, to avoid inhaling impure air. There will therefore always be
metaphysics in the world; nay, every one, especially every man of
reflection, will have it, and for want of a recognized standard, will
shape it for himself after his own pattern. What has hitherto been
called metaphysics, cannot satisfy any critical mind, but to forego it
entirely is impossible; therefore a critique of pure reason itself must
now be attempted or, if one exists, investigated, and brought to the
full test, because there is no other means of supplying this pressing
want, which is something more than mere thirst for knowledge.
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Ever since I have come to know critique, whenever I finish reading a
book of metaphysical contents, which, by the preciseness of its notions,
by variety, order, and an easy style, was not only entertaining but also
helpful, I cannot help asking, "Has this author indeed advanced
metaphysics a single step?" The learned men, whose works have been
useful to me in other respects and always contributed to the culture of
my mental powers, will, I hope, forgive me for saying, that I have never
been able to find either their essays or my own less important ones
(though self-love may recommend them to me) to have advanced the
science of metaphysics in the least, and why? Here is the very obvious
reason: metaphysics did not then exist as a science, nor can it be
gathered piecemeal, but its germ must be fully preformed in the
Critique. But in order to prevent all misconception, we must remember
what has been already said, that by the analytical treatment of
our concepts the understanding gains indeed a great deal, but the
science (of metaphysics) is thereby not in the least advanced, because
these dissections of concepts are nothing but the materials from which
the intention is to carpenter our science. Let the concepts of substance
and of accident be ever so well dissected and determined, all this is
very well as a preparation for some future use. But if we cannot prove,
that in all which exists the substance endures, and only the accidents
vary, our science is not the least advanced by all our analyzes.
Metaphysics has hitherto never been able to prove a priori either
this proposition, or that of sufficient reason, still less any more
complex theorem, such as belongs to psychology or cosmology, or indeed
any synthetical proposition. By all its analyzing therefore nothing is
affected, nothing obtained or forwarded and the science, after all this
bustle and noise, still remains as it was in the days of Aristotle,
though far better preparations were made for it than of old, if the clue
to synthetical cognitions had only been discovered.
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If any one thinks himself offended, he is at liberty to refute my charge
by producing a single synthetical proposition belonging to metaphysics,
which he would prove dogmatically a priori, for until he has
actually performed this feat, I shall not grant that he has truly
advanced the science; even should this proposition be sufficiently
confirmed by common experience. No demand can be more moderate or more
equitable, and in the (inevitably certain) event of its non-performance,
no assertion more just, than that hitherto metaphysics has never existed
as a science.
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But there are two things which, in case the challenge be accepted, I
must deprecate: first, trifling about probability and conjecture, which
are suited as little to metaphysics, as to geometry; and secondly, a
decision by means of the magic wand of common sense, which does not
convince every one, but which accommodates itself to personal
peculiarities.
For as to the former, nothing can be more absurd, than in metaphysics, a
philosophy from pure reason to think of grounding our judgments upon
probability and conjecture. Everything that is to be cognized a
priori is thereby announced as apodeictically certain, and must
therefore be proved in this way. We might as well think of grounding
geometry or arithmetic upon conjectures. As to the doctrine of chances
in the latter, it does not contain probable, but perfectly certain,
judgments concerning the degree of the probability of certain cases,
under given uniform conditions, which, in the sum of all possible cases,
infallibly happen according to the rule, though it is not sufficiently
determined in respect to every single chance. Conjectures (by means of
induction and of analogy) can be suffered in an empirical science of
nature only, yet even there the possibility at least of what we assume
must be quite certain.
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The
appeal to common sense is even more absurd, when concept and principles
are announced as valid, not in so far as they hold with regard to
experience, but even beyond the conditions of experience. For what is
common sense? It is normal good sense, so far it judges right. But
what is normal good sense? It is the faculty of the knowledge and use of
rules in concreto, as distinguished from the speculative
understanding, which is a faculty of knowing rules in abstracto.
Common sense can hardly understand the rule, that every event is
determined by means of its cause, and can never comprehend it thus
generally. It therefore demands an example from experience, and when it
hears that this rule means nothing but what it always thought when a
pane was broken or a kitchen-utensil missing, it then understands the
principle and grants it. Common sense therefore is only of use so far as
it can see its rules (though they actually are a priori)
confirmed by experience; consequently to comprehend them a priori,
or independently of experience, belongs to the speculative
understanding, and lies quite beyond the horizon of common sense. But
the province of metaphysics is entirely confined to the latter kind of
knowledge, and it is certainly a bad index of common sense to appeal to
it as a witness, for it cannot here form any opinion whatever, and men
look down upon it with contempt until they are in trouble and can find
in their speculation neither advice nor help.
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It is a common subterfuge of those false friends of common sense (who
occasionally prize it highly, but usually despise it) to say, that there
must surely be at all events some propositions which are immediately
certain, and of which there is no occasion to give any proof, or even
any account at all, because we otherwise could never stop inquiring into
the grounds of our judgments. But if we except the principle of
contradiction, which is not sufficient to show the truth of synthetical
judgments, they can never adduce, in proof of this privilege, anything
else indubitable, which they can immediately ascribe to common sense,
except mathematical propositions, such as twice two make four, between
two points there is but one straight line, etc. But these judgments are
radically different from those of metaphysics. For in mathematics I
myself can, by thinking, construct whatever I represent to myself as
possible by a concept: I add to the first two the other two, one by one,
and myself make the number four, or I draw in thought from one point to
another all manner of lines, equal as well as unequal; yet I can draw
one only, which is like itself in all its parts. But I cannot, by all my
power of thinking, extract from the concept of a thing the concept of
something else, whose existence is necessarily connected with the
former, but I must call in experience. And though my understanding
furnishes me a priori (yet only in reference to possible
experience) with the concept of such a connection (i.e., causation), I
cannot exhibit it a priori in intuition, like the concepts
of mathematics, and so show its possibility a priori. This
concept, together with the principles of its application, always
requires, if it is to hold a priori --as is requisite in
metaphysics-- a justification and deduction of its possibility, because
we cannot otherwise know how far it holds good, and whether it can be
used in experience only or beyond it also. Therefore
in metaphysics, as a speculative science of pure reason, we can never
appeal to common sense, but may do so only when we are forced to
surrender it, and to renounce all purely speculative cognition, which
must always be knowledge, and consequently when we forego metaphysics
itself and its instruction, for the sake of adopting a rational faith
which alone may be possible for us, and sufficient to our wants, perhaps
even more salutary than knowledge itself. For in this case the attitude
of the question is quite altered. Metaphysics must be science, not only
as a whole, but in all its parts, otherwise it is nothing; because, as a
speculation of pure reason, it finds a hold only on general opinions.
Beyond its field, however, probability and common sense may be used with
advantage and justly, but on quite special principles, of which the
importance always depends on the reference to practical life.
This is what I hold myself justified in requiring for the possibility of metaphysics as a science.
71 | Immanuel Kant
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
For information about this text, click
here.
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APPENDIX:
ON WHAT CAN BE DONE
TO MAKE METAPHYSICS AS A SCIENCE ACTUAL
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Since all the ways heretofore taken have failed to attain
the goal, and since without a preceding critique of pure reason
it is not likely ever to be attained, the present essay now
before the public has a fair title to an accurate and careful
investigation, except it be thought more advisable to give up all
pretensions to metaphysics, to which, if men but would
consistently adhere to their purpose, no objection can be made.
If we take the course of things as it is, not as it ought to be,
there are two sorts of judgments: (1) one a judgment which
precedes investigation (in our case one in which the reader from
his own metaphysics pronounces judgment on the
Critique of Pure Reason which was intended to discuss
the very possibility of
metaphysics); (2) the other a judgment subsequent to
investigation. In the latter the reader is enabled to waive for
a while the consequences of the critical researches that may be
repugnant to his formerly adopted metaphysics, and first examines
the grounds whence those consequences are derived. If what
common metaphysics propounds were demonstrably certain, as for instance
the theorems of geometry, the former way of judging would bold
good. For if the consequences of certain principles are repugnant
to established truths, these principles are false and without
further inquiry to be repudiated. But if metaphysics does not
possess a stock of indisputably certain (synthetical)
propositions, and should it even be the case that there are a
number of them, which, though among the most specious, are by
their consequences in mutual collision, and if no sure criterion
of the truth of peculiarly metaphysical (synthetical)
propositions is to be met with in it, then the former way of
judging is not admissible, but the investigation of the
principles of the
Critique must precede all judgments as to its
value.
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On A Specimen Of A Judgment Of The Critique Prior To Its
Examination
A judgment is to be found in the Gottingischen gelehrten
Anzeigen, in the supplement to the third division, of January 19,
1782, pages 40 et seq. [a review authored by Christian Garve] |
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When an author who is familiar with the subject of his work and
endeavors to present his independent reflections in its elaboration,
falls into the hands of a reviewer who in his turn, is keen enough to
discern the points on which the worth or worthlessness of the book
rests, who does not cling to words, but goes to the heart of the
subject, sifting and testing more than the mere principles which the
author takes as his point of departure, the severity of the judgment may
indeed displease the latter, but the public does not care, because it gains
thereby. And the author himself may be contented, as an opportunity of
correcting or explaining his positions is afforded to him at an early
date by the examination of a competent judge, in such a manner, that if
he believes himself fundamentally right, he can remove in time any stone
of offense that might hurt the success of his work. |
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I find myself, with my reviewer, in quite another position. He seems not
to see at all the real matter of the investigation with which
(successfully or unsuccessfully) I have been occupied. It is either
impatience at thinking out a lengthy work, or vexation at a threatened
reform of a science in which he believed he had brought everything to
perfection long ago, or, what I am unwilling to imagine, real
narrow-mindedness, that prevents him from ever carrying his thoughts
beyond his school-metaphysics. In short, he passes impatiently in review
a long series of propositions, by which, without knowing their premises,
we can think nothing, intersperses here and there his censure, the
reason of which the reader understands just as little as the
propositions against which it is directed; and hence [his report] can
neither serve the public nor damage me, in the judgment of experts. I
should, for these reasons, have passed over this judgment altogether,
were it not that it may afford me occasion for some explanations which
may in some cases save the readers of these Prolegomena from a
misconception.
In
order to take a position from which my reviewer could most easily set
the whole work in a most unfavorable light, without venturing to trouble
himself with any special investigation, he begins and ends by saying:
"This work is a system of transcendent (or, as he translates it, of
higher) Idealism."[1] |
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A glance at this line soon showed me the sort of criticism that I
had to expect, much as though the reviewer were one who
had never seen or heard of geometry, having found a Euclid, and
coming upon various figures in turning over its leaves, were to
say, on being asked his opinion of it: "The work is a text-book
of drawing; the author introduces a peculiar terminology, in
order to give dark, incomprehensible directions, which in the
end teach nothing more than what every one can effect by a fair
natural accuracy of eye, etc." |
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Let us see, in the meantime, what sort of an idealism it is
that goes through my whole work, although it does not by a long way constitute the soul of the system.
The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to
Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition
through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion,
and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there
is truth."
The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely
from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth."
But this is directly
contrary to idealism proper. How came I then to use this expression for
quite an opposite purpose, and
how came my reviewer to see it everywhere? |
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The solution of this difficulty
rests on something that could have been very easily understood from the
general bearing of the work, if the reader had only desired to do so.
Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor
qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the
latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above
idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley,
regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the
phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or
perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove
in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not
consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us,
because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form
before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same,
and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as
truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience,
according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its
phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation;
whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas
with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the
understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori,
and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing
truth from illusion therein.[2] |
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My so-called (properly critical)
idealism is of quite a special character, in that it subverts the ordinary idealism, and
that through it all cognition a priori, even that of
geometry, first receives objective reality, which, without my
demonstrated
ideality of space and time, could not be maintained by the most
zealous realists. This being the state of the case, I could have
wished, in order to avoid all misunderstanding, to have named
this conception of mine otherwise, but to alter it altogether was
impossible. It may be permitted me however, in future, as has
been above intimated, to term it
"formal," or better still, "critical" idealism, to distinguish
it from the dogmatic
idealism of Berkeley, and from the skeptical idealism of
Descartes. |
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Beyond this, I find nothing further remarkable in the judgment of my
book. The reviewer criticizes here and there, makes sweeping criticisms,
a mode prudently chosen, since it does not betray one's own knowledge or
ignorance; a single thorough criticism in detail, had it touched the
main question, as is only fair, would have exposed, it may be my error,
or it may be my reviewer's measure of insight into this species of
research. It was, moreover, not a badly conceived plan, in order at once
to take from readers (who are accustomed to form their conceptions of
books from newspaper reports) the desire to read the book itself, to
pour out in one breath a number of passages in succession, torn from
their connection, and their grounds of proof and explanations, and which
must necessarily sound senseless, especially considering how
antipathetic they are to all school-metaphysics; to exhaust the reader's
patience ad nauseam, and then, after having made me acquainted with the
sensible proposition that persistent illusion is truth, to conclude with
the crude paternal moralization: to what end, then, the quarrel with
accepted language, to what end, and whence, the idealistic distinction?
A judgment which seeks all that is characteristic of my book, first
supposed to be metaphysically heterodox, in a mere innovation of the
nomenclature, proves clearly that my would-be judge has understood
nothing of the subject, and in addition, has not understood himself.[3] |
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My reviewer speaks like a man who is conscious of important and superior
insight which he keeps hidden; for I am aware of nothing recent with
respect to metaphysics that could justify his tone. But he should not
withhold his discoveries from the world, for there are doubtless many
who, like myself, have not been able to find in all the fine things that
have for long past been written in this department, anything that has
advanced the science by so much as a finger-breadth; we find indeed the
giving a new point to definitions, the supplying of lame proofs with new
crutches, the adding to the crazy-quilt of metaphysics fresh patches or
changing its pattern; but all this is not what the world requires. The
world is tired of metaphysical assertions; it wants the possibility of
the science, the sources from which certainty therein can be derived,
and certain criteria by which it may distinguish the dialectical
illusion of pure reason from truth. To this the critic seems to possess
a key, otherwise he would never have spoken out in such a high tone. |
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But I am inclined to suspect that no such requirement of the science has
ever entered his thoughts, for in that case he would have directed his
judgment to this point, and even a mistaken attempt in such an important
matter, would have won his respect. If that be the case, we are once
more good friends. He may penetrate as deeply as he likes into
metaphysics, without any one hindering him; only as concerns that which
lies outside metaphysics, its sources, which are to be found in reason,
he cannot form a judgment. That my suspicion is not without foundation,
is proved by the fact that he does not mention a word about the
possibility of synthetic knowledge a priori, the special problem
upon the solution of which the fate of metaphysics wholly rests, and
upon which my Critique (as well as the present Prolegomena)
entirely hinges. The Idealism he encountered, and which he hung upon,:
was only taken up in the doctrine as the sole means of solving the above
problem (although it received its confirmation on other grounds), and
hence he must have shown either that the above problem does not possess
the importance I attribute to it (even in these Prolegomena), or
that by my conception of appearances, it is either not solved at all, or
can be better solved in another way; but I do not find a word of this in
the criticism. The reviewer, then, understands nothing of my work, and
possibly also nothing of the spirit and essential nature of metaphysics
itself; and it is not, what I would rather assume, the hurry of a man
incensed at the labor of plodding through so many obstacles, that threw
an unfavorable shadow over the work lying before him, and made its
fundamental features unrecognizable. |
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There is a good deal to be done before a learned journal, it matters not
with what care its writers may be selected, can maintain its otherwise
well-merited reputation, in the field of metaphysics as elsewhere. Other
sciences and branches of knowledge have their standard. Mathematics has
it, in itself; history and theology, in profane or sacred books; natural
science and the art of medicine, in mathematics and experience;
jurisprudence, in law books; and even matters of taste in the examples
of the ancients. But for the judgment of the thing called metaphysics,
the standard has yet to be found. I have made an attempt to determine
it, as well as its use. What is to be done, then, until it be found,
when works of this kind have to be judged of? If they are of a dogmatic
character, one may do what one likes; no one will play the master over
others here for long, before some one else appears to deal with him in
the same manner. If, however, they are critical in their character, not
indeed with reference to other works, but to reason itself, so that the
standard of judgment cannot be assumed but has first of all to be sought
for, then, though objection and blame may indeed be permitted, yet a
certain degree of leniency is indispensable, since the need is common to
us all, and the lack of the necessary insight makes the high-handed
attitude of judge unwarranted. |
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In order, however, to connect my defense with the interest of the
philosophical commonwealth, I propose a test, which must be decisive as
to the mode, whereby all metaphysical investigations may be directed to
their common purpose. This is nothing more than what formerly
mathematicians have done, in establishing the advantage of their methods
by competition. I challenge my critic to demonstrate, as is only just,
on a priori grounds, in his way, a single really metaphysical
principle asserted by him. Being metaphysical it must be synthetic and
cognized a priori from concepts, but it may also be any one of
the most indispensable principles, as for instance, the principle of the
persistence of substance, or of the necessary determination of events in
the world by their causes. If he cannot do this (silence however is
confession), he must admit, that as metaphysics without apodictic
certainty of propositions of this kind is nothing at all, its
possibility or impossibility must before all things be established in a
critique of the pure reason. Thus he is bound either to confess that my
principles in the Critique are correct, or he must prove their
invalidity. But as I can already foresee, that, confidently as he has
hitherto relied on the certainty of his principles, when it comes to a
strict test he will not find a single one in the whole range of
metaphysics he can bring forward, I will concede to him an advantageous
condition, which can only be expected in such a competition, and will
relieve him of the onus probandi by laying it on myself. |
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He finds in these Prolegomena and in my Critique [chapter
on the theses and antitheses in "The Antinomy of Pure Reason"]
eight propositions, of which two and two contradict one another, but
each of which necessarily belongs to metaphysics, by which it must
either be accepted or rejected (although there is not one that has not
in this time been held by some philosopher). Now he has the liberty of
selecting any one of these eight propositions at his pleasure, and
accepting it without any proof, of which I shall make him a present, but
only one (for waste of time will be just as little serviceable to him as
to me), and then of attacking my proof of the opposite proposition. If I
can save this one, and at the same time show, that according to
principles which every dogmatic metaphysics must necessarily recognize,
the opposite of the proposition adopted by him can be just as clearly
proved, it is thereby established that metaphysics has an hereditary
failing, not to be explained, much less set aside, until we ascend to
its birth-place, pure reason itself, and thus my Critique must
either be accepted or a better one take its place; it must at least be
studied, which is the only thing I now require. If, on the other hand, I
cannot save my demonstration, then a synthetic proposition a priori
from dogmatic principles is to be reckoned to the score of my opponent,
then also I will deem my impeachment of ordinary metaphysics as unjust,
and pledge myself to recognize his stricture on my Critique as
justified (although this would not be the consequence by a long way). To
this end it would be necessary, it seems to me, that he should step out
of his incognito. Otherwise I do not see how it could be avoided, that
instead of dealing with one, I should be honored by several problems
coming from anonymous and unqualified opponents.
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Proposals As To An Investigation Of The Critique Upon Which A
Judgment May Follow. |
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I feel obliged to the honored public even for the silence with which it
for a long time favored my Critique, for this proves at least a
postponement of judgment, and some supposition that in a work, leaving
all beaten tracks and striking out on a new path, in which one cannot at
once perhaps so easily find one's way, something may perchance lie, from
which an important but at present dead branch of human knowledge may
derive new life and productiveness. Hence may have originated a
solicitude for the as yet tender shoot, lest it be destroyed by a hasty
judgment. A specimen of a judgment, delayed for the above reasons, is
now before my eye in the Gothaischen gelehrten Zeitung [24 August
1782], the thoroughness of which (without taking into consideration my
praise, which might be suspicious) every reader will himself perceive,
from the clear and unperverted presentation of a fragment of one of the
first principles of my work. |
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Since an extensive structure cannot be judged of as a whole from a
hurried glance, I propose to test it piece by piece from its
foundations, so thereby the present Prolegomena may fitly be used
as a general outline with which the work itself may occasionally be
compared. This notion, if it were founded on nothing more than my
conceit of importance, such as vanity commonly attributes to one's own
productions, would be immodest and would deserve to be repudiated with
disgust. But now, the interests of speculative philosophy have arrived
at the point of total extinction, while human reason hangs upon them
with inextinguishable affection, and only after having been ceaselessly
deceived does it vainly attempt to change this into indifference. |
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In our thinking age it is not to be supposed but that many deserving men
would use any good opportunity of working for the common interest of the
more and more enlightened reason, if there were only some hope of
attaining the goal. Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even
morality, etc., do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space
left over, reserved for pure and speculative reason, the vacuity of
which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for
what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere
pastime; in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which in
accordance with its nature requires something that can satisfy it, and
not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our inclinations. A
consideration, therefore, which is concerned only with reason as it
exists for it itself, has as I may reasonably suppose a great
fascination for every one who has attempted thus to extend his
conceptions, and I may even say a greater than any other theoretical
branch of knowledge, for which he would not willingly exchange it,
because here all other cognitions, and even purposes, must meet and
unite themselves in a whole. |
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I offer, therefore, these Prolegomena as a sketch and text-book for
this investigation, and not the work itself. Although I am even now
perfectly satisfied with the latter as far as contents, order, and mode
of presentation, and the care that I have expended in weighing and
testing every sentence before writing it down, are concerned (for it has
taken me years to satisfy myself fully, not only as regards the whole
but in some cases even as to the sources of one particular proposition);
yet I am not quite satisfied with my exposition in some sections of the
doctrine of elements, as for instance in the deduction of the
conceptions of the Understanding, or in that on the paralogisms of pure
reason, because a certain diffuseness takes away from their clearness,
and in place of them, what is here said in the Prolegomena respecting
these sections, may be made the basis of the test. |
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It is the boast of the Germans that where steady and continuous industry
are requisite, they can carry things farther than other nations. If this
opinion be well founded, an opportunity, a business, presents itself,
the successful issue of which we can scarcely doubt, and in which all
thinking men can equally take part, though they have hitherto been
unsuccessful in accomplishing it and in thus confirming the above good
opinion. This is chiefly because the science in question is of so
peculiar a kind, that it can be at once brought to completion and to
that enduring state that it will never be able to be brought in the
least degree farther or increased by later discoveries, or even changed
(leaving here out of account adornment by greater clearness in some
places, or additional uses), and this is an advantage no other science
has or can have, because there is none so fully isolated and independent
of others, and which is concerned with the faculty of cognition pure and
simple. And the present moment seems, moreover, not to be unfavorable to
my expectation, for just now, in Germany, no one seems to know wherewith
to occupy himself, apart from the so-called useful sciences, so as to
pursue not mere play, but a business possessing an enduring purpose. |
|
To
discover the means how the endeavors of the learned may be united in
such a purpose, I must leave to others. In the meantime, it is my
intention to persuade any one merely to follow my propositions, or even
to flatter me with the hope that he will do so; but attacks,
repetitions, limitations, or confirmation, completion, and extension, as
the case may be, should be appended. If the matter be but investigated
from its foundation, it cannot fail that a system, albeit not my own,
shall be erected, that shall be a possession for future generations for
which they may have reason to be grateful. |
|
383
|
It would lead us too far here to show what kind of metaphysics may be
expected, when only the principles of criticism have been perfected, and
how, because the old false feathers have been pulled out, she need by no
means appear poor and reduced to an insignificant figure, but may be in
other respects richly and respectably adorned. But other and great uses
which would result from such a reform, strike one immediately. The
ordinary metaphysics had its uses, in that it sought out the elementary
conceptions of the pure understanding in order to make them clear
through analysis, and definite by explanation. In this way it was a
training for reason, in whatever direction it might be turned. But this
was all the good it did. This service was subsequently effaced when it
favored conceit by venturesome assertions, sophistry by subtle dodges
and adornment, and shallowness by the ease with which it decided the
most difficult problems by means of a little school-wisdom, which is
only the more seductive the more it has the choice, on the one hand, of
taking something from the language of science, and on the other from
that of popular discourse --thus being everything to everybody, but in
reality nothing at all. By criticism, however, a standard is given to
our judgment, whereby knowledge may be with certainty distinguished from
pseudo-science, and firmly founded, being brought into full operation in
metaphysics--a mode of thought extending by degrees its beneficial
influence over every other use of reason, at once infusing into it the
true philosophical spirit. But the service also that metaphysics
performs for theology, by making it independent of the judgment of
dogmatic speculation, thereby assuring it completely against the attacks
of all such opponents, is certainly not to be valued lightly. For
ordinary metaphysics, although it promised the latter much advantage,
could not keep this promise, and moreover, by summoning speculative
dogmatics to its assistance, did nothing but arm enemies against itself.
Mysticism, which can prosper in a rationalistic age only when it hides
itself behind a system of school-metaphysics, under the protection of
which it may venture to rave with a semblance of rationality, is driven
from this, its last hiding-place, by critical philosophy. Last, but not
least, it cannot be otherwise than important to a teacher of
metaphysics, to be able to say with universal assent, that what he
expounds is science, and that thereby genuine services will be
rendered to the commonweal.
FOOTNOTES
Footnote
1
By no means
"higher." High towers, and metaphysically-great man resembling
them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me.
My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the
word transcendental, the meaning of which is so often explained by me
but not once grasped by my reviewer (so carelessly has he regarded
everything), does not signify something passing beyond all experience,
but some. thing that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended
simply to make cognition of experience possible. If these conceptions
overstep experience, their employment is termed transcendent, a word
which must be distinguished from transcendental, the latter being
limited to the immanent use, that is, to experience. All
misunderstandings of this kind have been sufficiently guarded against in
the work itself, but my reviewer found his advantage in misunderstanding
me.
Footnote
2
Idealism proper always has a mystical tendency, and can have
no other, but mine is solely designed for the purpose of comprehending the possibility of our cognition
a priori as to objects of experience, which is a
problem never hitherto solved
or even suggested. In this way all mystical idealism falls to
the ground, for (as may be seen already in Plato) it inferred from
our cognitions a priori (even from those of geometry) another intuition different from that of the senses (namely, an
intellectual intuition), because it never occurred to any one that the senses themselves might intuit
a priori.
Footnote
3
The reviewer often fights with his own shadow. When I oppose
the truth of experience to dream, he never thinks that I am here speaking simply of the well-known
somnio objective sumto ["dreams taken objectively"] of
the
Wolffian philosophy, which is merely formal, and with which the
distinction between sleeping and waking is in no way concerned,
and in a transcendental philosophy indeed can have no place. For
the rest, he calls my deduction of the categories and table of
the principles of the understanding, "common well-known axioms
of logic and ontology, expressed in an idealistic manner." The
reader need only consult these Prolegomena upon this point, to convince himself that a more miserable and historically
incorrect judgment could hardly be made.
|
On A Specimen Of A Judgment Of The Critique Prior To Its
Examination
A judgment is to be found in the Gottingischen gelehrten
Anzeigen, in the supplement to the third division, of January 19,
1782, pages 40 et seq. [a review authored by Christian Garve] |
|
373
|
When an author who is familiar with the subject of his work and
endeavors to present his independent reflections in its elaboration,
falls into the hands of a reviewer who in his turn, is keen enough to
discern the points on which the worth or worthlessness of the book
rests, who does not cling to words, but goes to the heart of the
subject, sifting and testing more than the mere principles which the
author takes as his point of departure, the severity of the judgment may
indeed displease the latter, but the public does not care, because it gains
thereby. And the author himself may be contented, as an opportunity of
correcting or explaining his positions is afforded to him at an early
date by the examination of a competent judge, in such a manner, that if
he believes himself fundamentally right, he can remove in time any stone
of offense that might hurt the success of his work. |
|
I find myself, with my reviewer, in quite another position. He seems not
to see at all the real matter of the investigation with which
(successfully or unsuccessfully) I have been occupied. It is either
impatience at thinking out a lengthy work, or vexation at a threatened
reform of a science in which he believed he had brought everything to
perfection long ago, or, what I am unwilling to imagine, real
narrow-mindedness, that prevents him from ever carrying his thoughts
beyond his school-metaphysics. In short, he passes impatiently in review
a long series of propositions, by which, without knowing their premises,
we can think nothing, intersperses here and there his censure, the
reason of which the reader understands just as little as the
propositions against which it is directed; and hence [his report] can
neither serve the public nor damage me, in the judgment of experts. I
should, for these reasons, have passed over this judgment altogether,
were it not that it may afford me occasion for some explanations which
may in some cases save the readers of these Prolegomena from a
misconception.
In
order to take a position from which my reviewer could most easily set
the whole work in a most unfavorable light, without venturing to trouble
himself with any special investigation, he begins and ends by saying:
"This work is a system of transcendent (or, as he translates it, of
higher) Idealism."[1] |
| 374
|
A glance at this line soon showed me the sort of criticism that I
had to expect, much as though the reviewer were one who
had never seen or heard of geometry, having found a Euclid, and
coming upon various figures in turning over its leaves, were to
say, on being asked his opinion of it: "The work is a text-book
of drawing; the author introduces a peculiar terminology, in
order to give dark, incomprehensible directions, which in the
end teach nothing more than what every one can effect by a fair
natural accuracy of eye, etc." |
|
Let us see, in the meantime, what sort of an idealism it is
that goes through my whole work, although it does not by a long way constitute the soul of the system.
The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to
Bishop Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition
through the senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion,
and only, in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason there
is truth."
The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely
from pure understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only in experience is there truth."
But this is directly
contrary to idealism proper. How came I then to use this expression for
quite an opposite purpose, and
how came my reviewer to see it everywhere? |
|
375
|
The solution of this difficulty
rests on something that could have been very easily understood from the
general bearing of the work, if the reader had only desired to do so.
Space and time, together with all that they contain, are not things nor
qualities in themselves, but belong merely to the appearances of the
latter: up to this point I am one in confession with the above
idealists. But these, and amongst them more particularly Berkeley,
regarded space as a mere empirical presentation that, like the
phenomenon it contains, is only known to us by means of experience or
perception, together with its determinations. I, on the contrary, prove
in the first place, that space (and also time, which Berkeley did not
consider) and all its determinations a priori, can be known by us,
because, no less than time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form
before all perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same,
and therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as
truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria, experience,
according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth, because its
phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at their foundation;
whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer illusion; whereas
with us, space and time (in conjunction with the pure conceptions of the
understanding) prescribe their law to all possible experience a priori,
and at the same time afford the certain criterion for distinguishing
truth from illusion therein.[2] |
|
My so-called (properly critical)
idealism is of quite a special character, in that it subverts the ordinary idealism, and
that through it all cognition a priori, even that of
geometry, first receives objective reality, which, without my
demonstrated
ideality of space and time, could not be maintained by the most
zealous realists. This being the state of the case, I could have
wished, in order to avoid all misunderstanding, to have named
this conception of mine otherwise, but to alter it altogether was
impossible. It may be permitted me however, in future, as has
been above intimated, to term it
"formal," or better still, "critical" idealism, to distinguish
it from the dogmatic
idealism of Berkeley, and from the skeptical idealism of
Descartes. |
|
376
|
Beyond this, I find nothing further remarkable in the judgment of my
book. The reviewer criticizes here and there, makes sweeping criticisms,
a mode prudently chosen, since it does not betray one's own knowledge or
ignorance; a single thorough criticism in detail, had it touched the
main question, as is only fair, would have exposed, it may be my error,
or it may be my reviewer's measure of insight into this species of
research. It was, moreover, not a badly conceived plan, in order at once
to take from readers (who are accustomed to form their conceptions of
books from newspaper reports) the desire to read the book itself, to
pour out in one breath a number of passages in succession, torn from
their connection, and their grounds of proof and explanations, and which
must necessarily sound senseless, especially considering how
antipathetic they are to all school-metaphysics; to exhaust the reader's
patience ad nauseam, and then, after having made me acquainted with the
sensible proposition that persistent illusion is truth, to conclude with
the crude paternal moralization: to what end, then, the quarrel with
accepted language, to what end, and whence, the idealistic distinction?
A judgment which seeks all that is characteristic of my book, first
supposed to be metaphysically heterodox, in a mere innovation of the
nomenclature, proves clearly that my would-be judge has understood
nothing of the subject, and in addition, has not understood himself.[3] |
|
377
|
My reviewer speaks like a man who is conscious of important and superior
insight which he keeps hidden; for I am aware of nothing recent with
respect to metaphysics that could justify his tone. But he should not
withhold his discoveries from the world, for there are doubtless many
who, like myself, have not been able to find in all the fine things that
have for long past been written in this department, anything that has
advanced the science by so much as a finger-breadth; we find indeed the
giving a new point to definitions, the supplying of lame proofs with new
crutches, the adding to the crazy-quilt of metaphysics fresh patches or
changing its pattern; but all this is not what the world requires. The
world is tired of metaphysical assertions; it wants the possibility of
the science, the sources from which certainty therein can be derived,
and certain criteria by which it may distinguish the dialectical
illusion of pure reason from truth. To this the critic seems to possess
a key, otherwise he would never have spoken out in such a high tone. |
|
But I am inclined to suspect that no such requirement of the science has
ever entered his thoughts, for in that case he would have directed his
judgment to this point, and even a mistaken attempt in such an important
matter, would have won his respect. If that be the case, we are once
more good friends. He may penetrate as deeply as he likes into
metaphysics, without any one hindering him; only as concerns that which
lies outside metaphysics, its sources, which are to be found in reason,
he cannot form a judgment. That my suspicion is not without foundation,
is proved by the fact that he does not mention a word about the
possibility of synthetic knowledge a priori, the special problem
upon the solution of which the fate of metaphysics wholly rests, and
upon which my Critique (as well as the present Prolegomena)
entirely hinges. The Idealism he encountered, and which he hung upon,:
was only taken up in the doctrine as the sole means of solving the above
problem (although it received its confirmation on other grounds), and
hence he must have shown either that the above problem does not possess
the importance I attribute to it (even in these Prolegomena), or
that by my conception of appearances, it is either not solved at all, or
can be better solved in another way; but I do not find a word of this in
the criticism. The reviewer, then, understands nothing of my work, and
possibly also nothing of the spirit and essential nature of metaphysics
itself; and it is not, what I would rather assume, the hurry of a man
incensed at the labor of plodding through so many obstacles, that threw
an unfavorable shadow over the work lying before him, and made its
fundamental features unrecognizable. |
| 378
|
There is a good deal to be done before a learned journal, it matters not
with what care its writers may be selected, can maintain its otherwise
well-merited reputation, in the field of metaphysics as elsewhere. Other
sciences and branches of knowledge have their standard. Mathematics has
it, in itself; history and theology, in profane or sacred books; natural
science and the art of medicine, in mathematics and experience;
jurisprudence, in law books; and even matters of taste in the examples
of the ancients. But for the judgment of the thing called metaphysics,
the standard has yet to be found. I have made an attempt to determine
it, as well as its use. What is to be done, then, until it be found,
when works of this kind have to be judged of? If they are of a dogmatic
character, one may do what one likes; no one will play the master over
others here for long, before some one else appears to deal with him in
the same manner. If, however, they are critical in their character, not
indeed with reference to other works, but to reason itself, so that the
standard of judgment cannot be assumed but has first of all to be sought
for, then, though objection and blame may indeed be permitted, yet a
certain degree of leniency is indispensable, since the need is common to
us all, and the lack of the necessary insight makes the high-handed
attitude of judge unwarranted. |
|
379
|
In order, however, to connect my defense with the interest of the
philosophical commonwealth, I propose a test, which must be decisive as
to the mode, whereby all metaphysical investigations may be directed to
their common purpose. This is nothing more than what formerly
mathematicians have done, in establishing the advantage of their methods
by competition. I challenge my critic to demonstrate, as is only just,
on a priori grounds, in his way, a single really metaphysical
principle asserted by him. Being metaphysical it must be synthetic and
cognized a priori from concepts, but it may also be any one of
the most indispensable principles, as for instance, the principle of the
persistence of substance, or of the necessary determination of events in
the world by their causes. If he cannot do this (silence however is
confession), he must admit, that as metaphysics without apodictic
certainty of propositions of this kind is nothing at all, its
possibility or impossibility must before all things be established in a
critique of the pure reason. Thus he is bound either to confess that my
principles in the Critique are correct, or he must prove their
invalidity. But as I can already foresee, that, confidently as he has
hitherto relied on the certainty of his principles, when it comes to a
strict test he will not find a single one in the whole range of
metaphysics he can bring forward, I will concede to him an advantageous
condition, which can only be expected in such a competition, and will
relieve him of the onus probandi by laying it on myself. |
|
380
|
He finds in these Prolegomena and in my Critique [chapter
on the theses and antitheses in "The Antinomy of Pure Reason"]
eight propositions, of which two and two contradict one another, but
each of which necessarily belongs to metaphysics, by which it must
either be accepted or rejected (although there is not one that has not
in this time been held by some philosopher). Now he has the liberty of
selecting any one of these eight propositions at his pleasure, and
accepting it without any proof, of which I shall make him a present, but
only one (for waste of time will be just as little serviceable to him as
to me), and then of attacking my proof of the opposite proposition. If I
can save this one, and at the same time show, that according to
principles which every dogmatic metaphysics must necessarily recognize,
the opposite of the proposition adopted by him can be just as clearly
proved, it is thereby established that metaphysics has an hereditary
failing, not to be explained, much less set aside, until we ascend to
its birth-place, pure reason itself, and thus my Critique must
either be accepted or a better one take its place; it must at least be
studied, which is the only thing I now require. If, on the other hand, I
cannot save my demonstration, then a synthetic proposition a priori
from dogmatic principles is to be reckoned to the score of my opponent,
then also I will deem my impeachment of ordinary metaphysics as unjust,
and pledge myself to recognize his stricture on my Critique as
justified (although this would not be the consequence by a long way). To
this end it would be necessary, it seems to me, that he should step out
of his incognito. Otherwise I do not see how it could be avoided, that
instead of dealing with one, I should be honored by several problems
coming from anonymous and unqualified opponents.
|
|
Proposals As To An Investigation Of The Critique Upon Which A
Judgment May Follow. |
|
I feel obliged to the honored public even for the silence with which it
for a long time favored my Critique, for this proves at least a
postponement of judgment, and some supposition that in a work, leaving
all beaten tracks and striking out on a new path, in which one cannot at
once perhaps so easily find one's way, something may perchance lie, from
which an important but at present dead branch of human knowledge may
derive new life and productiveness. Hence may have originated a
solicitude for the as yet tender shoot, lest it be destroyed by a hasty
judgment. A specimen of a judgment, delayed for the above reasons, is
now before my eye in the Gothaischen gelehrten Zeitung [24 August
1782], the thoroughness of which (without taking into consideration my
praise, which might be suspicious) every reader will himself perceive,
from the clear and unperverted presentation of a fragment of one of the
first principles of my work. |
|
Since an extensive structure cannot be judged of as a whole from a
hurried glance, I propose to test it piece by piece from its
foundations, so thereby the present Prolegomena may fitly be used
as a general outline with which the work itself may occasionally be
compared. This notion, if it were founded on nothing more than my
conceit of importance, such as vanity commonly attributes to one's own
productions, would be immodest and would deserve to be repudiated with
disgust. But now, the interests of speculative philosophy have arrived
at the point of total extinction, while human reason hangs upon them
with inextinguishable affection, and only after having been ceaselessly
deceived does it vainly attempt to change this into indifference. |
|
381
|
In our thinking age it is not to be supposed but that many deserving men
would use any good opportunity of working for the common interest of the
more and more enlightened reason, if there were only some hope of
attaining the goal. Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even
morality, etc., do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space
left over, reserved for pure and speculative reason, the vacuity of
which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for
what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere
pastime; in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which in
accordance with its nature requires something that can satisfy it, and
not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our inclinations. A
consideration, therefore, which is concerned only with reason as it
exists for it itself, has as I may reasonably suppose a great
fascination for every one who has attempted thus to extend his
conceptions, and I may even say a greater than any other theoretical
branch of knowledge, for which he would not willingly exchange it,
because here all other cognitions, and even purposes, must meet and
unite themselves in a whole. |
|
I offer, therefore, these Prolegomena as a sketch and text-book for
this investigation, and not the work itself. Although I am even now
perfectly satisfied with the latter as far as contents, order, and mode
of presentation, and the care that I have expended in weighing and
testing every sentence before writing it down, are concerned (for it has
taken me years to satisfy myself fully, not only as regards the whole
but in some cases even as to the sources of one particular proposition);
yet I am not quite satisfied with my exposition in some sections of the
doctrine of elements, as for instance in the deduction of the
conceptions of the Understanding, or in that on the paralogisms of pure
reason, because a certain diffuseness takes away from their clearness,
and in place of them, what is here said in the Prolegomena respecting
these sections, may be made the basis of the test. |
|
382
|
It is the boast of the Germans that where steady and continuous industry
are requisite, they can carry things farther than other nations. If this
opinion be well founded, an opportunity, a business, presents itself,
the successful issue of which we can scarcely doubt, and in which all
thinking men can equally take part, though they have hitherto been
unsuccessful in accomplishing it and in thus confirming the above good
opinion. This is chiefly because the science in question is of so
peculiar a kind, that it can be at once brought to completion and to
that enduring state that it will never be able to be brought in the
least degree farther or increased by later discoveries, or even changed
(leaving here out of account adornment by greater clearness in some
places, or additional uses), and this is an advantage no other science
has or can have, because there is none so fully isolated and independent
of others, and which is concerned with the faculty of cognition pure and
simple. And the present moment seems, moreover, not to be unfavorable to
my expectation, for just now, in Germany, no one seems to know wherewith
to occupy himself, apart from the so-called useful sciences, so as to
pursue not mere play, but a business possessing an enduring purpose. |
|
To
discover the means how the endeavors of the learned may be united in
such a purpose, I must leave to others. In the meantime, it is my
intention to persuade any one merely to follow my propositions, or even
to flatter me with the hope that he will do so; but attacks,
repetitions, limitations, or confirmation, completion, and extension, as
the case may be, should be appended. If the matter be but investigated
from its foundation, it cannot fail that a system, albeit not my own,
shall be erected, that shall be a possession for future generations for
which they may have reason to be grateful. |
|
383
|
It would lead us too far here to show what kind of metaphysics may be
expected, when only the principles of criticism have been perfected, and
how, because the old false feathers have been pulled out, she need by no
means appear poor and reduced to an insignificant figure, but may be in
other respects richly and respectably adorned. But other and great uses
which would result from such a reform, strike one immediately. The
ordinary metaphysics had its uses, in that it sought out the elementary
conceptions of the pure understanding in order to make them clear
through analysis, and definite by explanation. In this way it was a
training for reason, in whatever direction it might be turned. But this
was all the good it did. This service was subsequently effaced when it
favored conceit by venturesome assertions, sophistry by subtle dodges
and adornment, and shallowness by the ease with which it decided the
most difficult problems by means of a little school-wisdom, which is
only the more seductive the more it has the choice, on the one hand, of
taking something from the language of science, and on the other from
that of popular discourse --thus being everything to everybody, but in
reality nothing at all. By criticism, however, a standard is given to
our judgment, whereby knowledge may be with certainty distinguished from
pseudo-science, and firmly founded, being brought into full operation in
metaphysics--a mode of thought extending by degrees its beneficial
influence over every other use of reason, at once infusing into it the
true philosophical spirit. But the service also that metaphysics
performs for theology, by making it independent of the judgment of
dogmatic speculation, thereby assuring it completely against the attacks
of all such opponents, is certainly not to be valued lightly. For
ordinary metaphysics, although it promised the latter much advantage,
could not keep this promise, and moreover, by summoning speculative
dogmatics to its assistance, did nothing but arm enemies against itself.
Mysticism, which can prosper in a rationalistic age only when it hides
itself behind a system of school-metaphysics, under the protection of
which it may venture to rave with a semblance of rationality, is driven
from this, its last hiding-place, by critical philosophy. Last, but not
least, it cannot be otherwise than important to a teacher of
metaphysics, to be able to say with universal assent, that what he
expounds is science, and that thereby genuine services will be
rendered to the commonweal.
|
FOOTNOTES
Footnote
1
By no means
"higher." High towers, and metaphysically-great man resembling
them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are not for me.
My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of experience; and the
word transcendental, the meaning of which is so often explained by me
but not once grasped by my reviewer (so carelessly has he regarded
everything), does not signify something passing beyond all experience,
but some. thing that indeed precedes it a priori, but that is intended
simply to make cognition of experience possible. If these conceptions
overstep experience, their employment is termed transcendent, a word
which must be distinguished from transcendental, the latter being
limited to the immanent use, that is, to experience. All
misunderstandings of this kind have been sufficiently guarded against in
the work itself, but my reviewer found his advantage in misunderstanding
me.
Footnote
2
Idealism proper always has a mystical tendency, and can have
no other, but mine is solely designed for the purpose of comprehending the possibility of our cognition
a priori as to objects of experience, which is a
problem never hitherto solved
or even suggested. In this way all mystical idealism falls to
the ground, for (as may be seen already in Plato) it inferred from
our cognitions a priori (even from those of geometry) another intuition different from that of the senses (namely, an
intellectual intuition), because it never occurred to any one that the senses themselves might intuit
a priori.
Footnote
3
The reviewer often fights with his own shadow. When I oppose
the truth of experience to dream, he never thinks that I am here speaking simply of the well-known
somnio objective sumto ["dreams taken objectively"] of
the
Wolffian philosophy, which is merely formal, and with which the
distinction between sleeping and waking is in no way concerned,
and in a transcendental philosophy indeed can have no place. For
the rest, he calls my deduction of the categories and table of
the principles of the understanding, "common well-known axioms
of logic and ontology, expressed in an idealistic manner." The
reader need only consult these Prolegomena upon this point, to convince himself that a more miserable and historically
incorrect judgment could hardly be made. |
|
Proposals As To An Investigation Of The Critique Upon Which A
Judgment May Follow. |
|
I feel obliged to the honored public even for the silence with which it
for a long time favored my Critique, for this proves at least a
postponement of judgment, and some supposition that in a work, leaving
all beaten tracks and striking out on a new path, in which one cannot at
once perhaps so easily find one's way, something may perchance lie, from
which an important but at present dead branch of human knowledge may
derive new life and productiveness. Hence may have originated a
solicitude for the as yet tender shoot, lest it be destroyed by a hasty
judgment. A specimen of a judgment, delayed for the above reasons, is
now before my eye in the Gothaischen gelehrten Zeitung [24 August
1782], the thoroughness of which (without taking into consideration my
praise, which might be suspicious) every reader will himself perceive,
from the clear and unperverted presentation of a fragment of one of the
first principles of my work. |
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Since an extensive structure cannot be judged of as a whole from a
hurried glance, I propose to test it piece by piece from its
foundations, so thereby the present Prolegomena may fitly be used
as a general outline with which the work itself may occasionally be
compared. This notion, if it were founded on nothing more than my
conceit of importance, such as vanity commonly attributes to one's own
productions, would be immodest and would deserve to be repudiated with
disgust. But now, the interests of speculative philosophy have arrived
at the point of total extinction, while human reason hangs upon them
with inextinguishable affection, and only after having been ceaselessly
deceived does it vainly attempt to change this into indifference. |
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381
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In our thinking age it is not to be supposed but that many deserving men
would use any good opportunity of working for the common interest of the
more and more enlightened reason, if there were only some hope of
attaining the goal. Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even
morality, etc., do not completely fill the soul; there is always a space
left over, reserved for pure and speculative reason, the vacuity of
which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and mysticism for
what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually is mere
pastime; in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason, which in
accordance with its nature requires something that can satisfy it, and
not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our inclinations. A
consideration, therefore, which is concerned only with reason as it
exists for it itself, has as I may reasonably suppose a great
fascination for every one who has attempted thus to extend his
conceptions, and I may even say a greater than any other theoretical
branch of knowledge, for which he would not willingly exchange it,
because here all other cognitions, and even purposes, must meet and
unite themselves in a whole. |
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I offer, therefore, these Prolegomena as a sketch and text-book for
this investigation, and not the work itself. Although I am even now
perfectly satisfied with the latter as far as contents, order, and mode
of presentation, and the care that I have expended in weighing and
testing every sentence before writing it down, are concerned (for it has
taken me years to satisfy myself fully, not only as regards the whole
but in some cases even as to the sources of one particular proposition);
yet I am not quite satisfied with my exposition in some sections of the
doctrine of elements, as for instance in the deduction of the
conceptions of the Understanding, or in that on the paralogisms of pure
reason, because a certain diffuseness takes away from their clearness,
and in place of them, what is here said in the Prolegomena respecting
these sections, may be made the basis of the test. |
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382
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It is the boast of the Germans that where steady and continuous industry
are requisite, they can carry things farther than other nations. If this
opinion be well founded, an opportunity, a business, presents itself,
the successful issue of which we can scarcely doubt, and in which all
thinking men can equally take part, though they have hitherto been
unsuccessful in accomplishing it and in thus confirming the above good
opinion. This is chiefly because the science in question is of so
peculiar a kind, that it can be at once brought to completion and to
that enduring state that it will never be able to be brought in the
least degree farther or increased by later discoveries, or even changed
(leaving here out of account adornment by greater clearness in some
places, or additional uses), and this is an advantage no other science
has or can have, because there is none so fully isolated and independent
of others, and which is concerned with the faculty of cognition pure and
simple. And the present moment seems, moreover, not to be unfavorable to
my expectation, for just now, in Germany, no one seems to know wherewith
to occupy himself, apart from the so-called useful sciences, so as to
pursue not mere play, but a business possessing an enduring purpose. |
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To
discover the means how the endeavors of the learned may be united in
such a purpose, I must leave to others. In the meantime, it is my
intention to persuade any one merely to follow my propositions, or even
to flatter me with the hope that he will do so; but attacks,
repetitions, limitations, or confirmation, completion, and extension, as
the case may be, should be appended. If the matter be but investigated
from its foundation, it cannot fail that a system, albeit not my own,
shall be erected, that shall be a possession for future generations for
which they may have reason to be grateful. |
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It would lead us too far here to show what kind of metaphysics may be
expected, when only the principles of criticism have been perfected, and
how, because the old false feathers have been pulled out, she need by no
means appear poor and reduced to an insignificant figure, but may be in
other respects richly and respectably adorned. But other and great uses
which would result from such a reform, strike one immediately. The
ordinary metaphysics had its uses, in that it sought out the elementary
conceptions of the pure understanding in order to make them clear
through analysis, and definite by explanation. In this way it was a
training for reason, in whatever direction it might be turned. But this
was all the good it did. This service was subsequently effaced when it
favored conceit by venturesome assertions, sophistry by subtle dodges
and adornment, and shallowness by the ease with which it decided the
most difficult problems by means of a little school-wisdom, which is
only the more seductive the more it has the choice, on the one hand, of
taking something from the language of science, and on the other from
that of popular discourse --thus being everything to everybody, but in
reality nothing at all. By criticism, however, a standard is given to
our judgment, whereby knowledge may be with certainty distinguished from
pseudo-science, and firmly founded, being brought into full operation in
metaphysics--a mode of thought extending by degrees its beneficial
influence over every other use of reason, at once infusing into it the
true philosophical spirit. But the service also that metaphysics
performs for theology, by making it independent of the judgment of
dogmatic speculation, thereby assuring it completely against the attacks
of all such opponents, is certainly not to be valued lightly. For
ordinary metaphysics, although it promised the latter much advantage,
could not keep this promise, and moreover, by summoning speculative
dogmatics to its assistance, did nothing but arm enemies against itself.
Mysticism, which can prosper in a rationalistic age only when it hides
itself behind a system of school-metaphysics, under the protection of
which it may venture to rave with a semblance of rationality, is driven
from this, its last hiding-place, by critical philosophy. Last, but not
least, it cannot be otherwise than important to a teacher of
metaphysics, to be able to say with universal assent, that what he
expounds is science, and that thereby genuine services will be
rendered to the commonweal.
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