Appendix
THE AMPHIBOLY OF THE CONCEPTS OF REFLECTION[1317]
In this appendix Kant gives a criticism of the Leibnizian rationalism--a criticism already partially stated in the section on the Postulates--and he does this in a manner which very clearly reveals the influence which that rationalism continued to exercise upon his own thinking. Thus Kant speaks of the “mere concept,”[1318] and in doing so evidently means to imply that it exists in its own right, with a nature determined solely by intrinsic factors of a strictly a priori character, in complete independence of the specific material of sense-experience. He denies, it is true, the objective validity of such concepts, and maintains that in their empirical employment they are completely transformed through the addition of new factors. None the less he allows to the concepts an intrinsic nature, and practically maintains that from the point of view of the pure concept, and therefore from the point of view of a logic based upon it, the Leibnizian rationalism is the one true system of metaphysics. For pure thought, Leibniz’s system is the ultimate and only possible philosophy; and were thought capable of determining the nature of things in themselves, we should be constrained to adopt it as metaphysically valid. This is the standpoint which underlies much of Kant’s argument in the Dialectic. It leads him to maintain that the self must necessarily, in virtue of an unavoidable transcendental illusion, believe in its own independent substantial reality, that the mind is constrained to conceive reality as an unconditioned unity, and that the notions of God, freedom, and immortality are Ideas necessarily involved in the very constitution of human thought.
But we must not regard Kant’s doctrine of the pure concept merely as a survival from a standpoint which the Critical teaching is destined to displace and supersede. For Kant is not led through inconsistency, or through any mere lack of thoroughness in the development of his Critical principles, to retain this rationalistic doctrine. To understand the really operative grounds of Kant’s argumentation, and so to place the contents of this section in proper focus, we must recall the fundamental antithesis, developed in my introduction,[1319] between the alternative positions, which are represented for Kant by the philosophies of Hume and Leibniz. Kant, as already observed, is profoundly convinced of the essential truth of the Leibnizian position. He holds to the Leibnizian view of reason. Human reason is essentially metaphysical; its ultimate function is to emancipate us from the limiting conditions of animal existence; it reveals its nature in those Ideas of the unconditioned, the discussion of which Kant reserves for the Dialectic.
The chief defect in Kant’s criticism of Leibniz, as developed in this section, is that the deeper issues, which determine the extent of his agreement with Leibniz, are not raised or even indicated. Consequently, his references to pure thought, and his assertion[1320] that from the point of view of pure thought Leibniz is entirely justified in his teaching, bewilder the reader, who has been made to adopt a Critical standpoint, and therefore to believe that thought can function only in connection with the data of sense-experience. Kant would seem, indeed, to have lapsed into the dogmatic standpoint of the Dissertation, distinguishing between a sensible and an intelligible world, and maintaining that pure thought is capable of determining the nature of the latter. The only difference between his teaching here and in the Dissertation consists in the admission that all knowledge is limited to sense-experience, and that we are therefore unable to determine whether this intelligible world which we must think, and think in the precise manner defined by Leibniz, does or does not exist.
This section is, indeed, like the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, wrongly located. Giving, as it does, Kant’s criticism of the Leibnizian ontology, it discusses problems of metaphysics; and ought therefore to have found its place in the Dialectic, in natural connection with the corresponding examination of the metaphysical sciences of rational psychology, cosmology, and theology. Architectonic, that ever-present source of so many of Kant’s idiosyncrasies, has again interposed its despotic mandate. As there are only three forms of syllogism, only three main divisions can be recognised in the Dialectic; and the criticism of ontology, to its great detriment, must therefore be located, where it does not in the least belong, in the concluding section of the Analytic.[1321]
But we must follow Kant’s argument as here given. Leibniz views thought as capable of prescribing, antecedently to all experience, the fundamental conditions to which reality must conform. The possible is prior to, and independent of, the actual; and can be adequately determined by pure reason from its own inherent resources. Kant does not here question this assertion of the independence and priority of pure thought. He is content to maintain that what is valid for thought need not hold of those appearances which are the only possible objects of human knowledge, since in sense-experience conditions, unforeseen by pure thought, partly limitative and partly extensive of its concepts, intervene to modify the conclusions which from its own point of view are logically valid. Leibniz, through failure to realise the dual character of thought and sense, overlooked this all-important fact; and, in asserting that what is true for pure thought is valid of the sensuously real, fell victim to the fallacy which Kant entitles transcendental amphiboly.
Kant’s clearest statement of the fallacy is in A 280 = B 336. It reduces, formally stated, to the fallacy of denying the antecedent. In accordance with the dictum de omni et nullo, we can validly assert that what belongs to or contradicts a universal concept, belongs to or contradicts the particulars which fall under that concept. Leibniz employs the principle in a negative and invalid form. He argues that what is not contained in a universal concept is also not contained in the particulars to which it applies. “The entire intellectualist system of Leibniz is reared upon this latter principle.” And as Kant points out,[1322] the reason why so acute and powerful a thinker succumbed to this obvious fallacy is to be found in his view of sense as merely confused thought; or, to state the same point in another way, in his interpretation of appearances as being the confused representations of things in themselves.[1323] All differences between appearance and reality are, on this view, due merely to lack of clearness in our apprehension of the given. Sense, when completely clarified, reduces without remainder to pure thought; and in the concepts, which thought develops from within itself, lie the whole content alike of knowledge and of real existence. Owing to a metaphysical theory of the nature of the real, itself due to a false interpretation of the nature and function of pure thought, and ultimately traceable to an excessive preoccupation with knowledge of the strictly mathematical type,[1324] Leibniz failed to do justice to the fundamental characteristics of our human experience, and in especial to the actual given nature of space, time, and dynamical causality. His rationalistic metaphysics has its roots in the Cartesian philosophy,[1325] and is, in Kant’s view, the perfected product of philosophical thinking, when developed on dogmatic, i.e. non-Critical, lines. It is the opposite counterpart of the empirical or sceptical type of philosophy which in modern times found its first great supporter in Locke, and which, as Kant held, obtained its perfected expression in the philosophy of Hume. While Descartes and Leibniz intellectualise appearances, Locke and Hume regard the a priori concepts of understanding as merely empirical products of discursive reflection. Both commit the same fundamental error of failing to recognise that understanding and sensibility are two distinct sources of representations.[1326] Both consequently strive, in equally one-sided fashion, to reduce the complexity of experience to one alone of its constituent elements. This section of the Critique ought to have developed the Critical teaching in its opposition to both these alternative attitudes; Kant arbitrarily limits it to criticism of the Leibnizian rationalism.
Kant’s method of introducing and arranging his criticism is artificial, and need be no more than mentioned. Critical reflection upon the sources of our knowledge, which Kant, in order to distinguish it from reflection of the ordinary type, entitles transcendental reflection, is, he states, a duty imposed upon all who would profess to pass a priori judgments upon the real. It will trace the concepts employed to their corresponding faculties, intellectual and sensuous, and will reveal the independence and disparity of sensibility and understanding, and so will effectually prevent that false locating of concepts to which transcendental amphiboly is due. Such reflection, he further argues, consists in a comparison of the representations with the faculty to which they are due, and like ordinary comparison will determine the relations of (1) identity and difference, (2) agreement and opposition, (3) inner and outer, (4) determinable and determining (matter and form). In this arbitrary but ingenious fashion Kant contrives to obtain the four main headings required for his criticism of the Leibnizian ontology.
(1) Under the first heading he deals with the principle of the identity of indiscernibles. It is, Kant maintains, a typical example of the fallacy of transcendental amphiboly. Leibniz argues that if no difference is discoverable in the concept of things, there can be none in the things themselves; things which are identical in conception must be identical in all respects. But this, Kant replies, is true only so long as the concepts abstract from the sensuous conditions of existence. Thus no two cubic feet of space are alike. They are distinguishable from one another by their spatial location; and that is a difference which concerns the conditions of intuition; it is not to be discovered in the pure concept.[1327] Spaces, alike for thought, are distinguishable for sense. To take another of Kant’s illustrations: two drops of water, if indistinguishable in all their internal properties of quality or quantity, are conceptually identical. Through differences of location in space, irrelevant to their conception, they can none the less be intuited as numerically different. The principle of indiscernibles is not a law of nature, but only an analytic rule for the comparison of things through mere concepts.[1328]
(2) A second principle of the Leibnizian metaphysics is that realities can never conflict with one another. This is supposed to follow from the fact that in pure thought the only form of opposition is logical negation. Realities, being pure affirmations, must necessarily harmonise with one another. This principle ignores the altogether different conditions of sense-existence. Space, time, and the resulting possibility of dynamical causality supply the conditions for real opposition. Two existences, though equally real and positive, may annul one another. Two forces acting upon a body may neutralise one another. From the above logical principle Leibniz’s successors[1329] profess to obtain the far-reaching metaphysical conclusions, that all realities agree with one another, that evil is merely negative, consisting exclusively in limitation of existence, and that God, without detriment to the unity of his being, can be constituted of all possible realities.
(3) Viewing space and time, which condition external relation, as merely confused forms of apprehension, Leibniz further concluded that the reality of substance is purely internal. And ruling out position, shape, contact and motion, all of which involve external relations, he felt justified in endowing the monads with the sole remaining form of known existence, namely consciousness. The assertion that the monads are incapable of external relation leads to the further conclusion that they are incapable of interaction, and stand in systematic relation to one another, solely in virtue of a pre-established harmony.
(4) From the point of view of pure thought matter must precede form. The universal must precede the particular which is a specification of it.[1330] Unlimited reality is taken as being the matter of all possibility, and its limitation or form as being due to negation. Substances must antecedently exist in order that external relations may have something upon which to ground themselves. Space and time must be interpreted as confused apprehensions of purely intellectual orders, space representing a certain order in the reciprocal (pre-established) correspondence of substances, and time the dynamical sequence of their states. On the other hand, from the standpoint of sense and its intuitional forms the reverse holds. The world of appearance is conditioned by the forms of space and time; the objectively possible coincides with the actual; and the substantia phaenomenon has no independent essence, but reduces without remainder to external relations. For pure thought this world of given appearance is an utterly paradoxical form of existence; it is the direct opposite of everything that genuine reality ought to be. In this strange conclusion the problems of the Dialectic, in one of their most suggestive forms, at once loom up before us. As stated above, this entire discussion is an anticipation of questions which cannot be adequately treated within the limits of the Analytic.
The text of this section is highly composite. The entire content of the Appendix is twice reintroduced and restated at full length in the accompanying Note. These successive expositions of one and the same argument were doubtless independently written, and then later pieced together in this external fashion. A 277-8 = B 333-4, on the nature of the substantia phaenomenon, would by its references to the transcendental object seem to be of early origin.[1331] It has already been commented upon.[1332] A 285-9 = B 342-6, on the other hand, which supplements the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena,[1333] would seem to be of late origin. It is so dated by Adickes,[1334] owing to the reference to schemata in its opening sentence.
=A 289-91 = B 346-9. Table of the division of the conception of nothing.=--This curious and ingenious classification of the various meanings of the term ‘nothing’ is chiefly of interest through its first division: “empty conception without object, ens rationis.” The ens rationis can best be defined in its distinction from the fourth division: “empty object without conception, nihil negativum.” The former is a Gedankending; the latter is an Unding. The former indeed, though not contradictory, is mere fiction (bloss Erdichtung), and consequently must not be taken as falling within the field of the possible. The latter is a concept which destroys itself, and which therefore stands in direct conflict with the possible. The ens rationis includes, Kant explicitly states,[1335] the conception of noumena, “which must not be reckoned among the possibilities, although they must not for that reason be declared to be also impossible.” Kant must here be taking noumena in the positive sense.[1336] As usual Kant’s attempt to obtain parallels for the four classes of category breaks down. The so-called nihil privativum and the ens imaginarium do not properly come within the denotation of the term ‘nothing.’ This is very evident in the examples which Kant cites. Cold is as real as the opposite with which it is contrasted, while pure space and pure time are not negative even in a conventional sense.
TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC
DIVISION II
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC
INTRODUCTORY COMMENT UPON THE COMPOSITE ORIGIN AND CONFLICTING TENDENCIES OF THE DIALECTIC.
We have had constant occasion to observe the composite origin and conflicting tendencies of the Analytic. The Dialectic is hardly less composite in character, and is certainly not more uniform in its fundamental teaching.
The composite nature of the text, though bewildering to the unsophisticated reader, is not, however, without its compensations. The text, as it stands, preserves the record of the manifold influences which presided over its first inception, and of the devious paths by which Kant travelled to his later conclusions. It thus enables us to determine, with considerable accuracy, the successive stages through which it has passed in the process of settling into its present form. As we shall find, the sections on the antinomies contain the original argument, out of which by varied processes of supplementation and modification the other parts have arisen.
The conflict of doctrine has also its counter-advantages. The problems are impartially discussed from opposed standpoints; the difficulties peculiar to each of the competing possible solutions are frankly recognised, and indeed insisted upon; and the internal dialectic of Kant’s own personal thinking obtains dramatic expression. We are thus the better enabled to appreciate the open-minded pertinacity with which Kant set himself to do justice to every significant aspect of his many-sided problems, and are consequently in less danger of simplifying his argument in any arbitrary manner, or of ignoring the tentative character of the solutions at which he arrives.
I shall first define the main lines of conflict, and shall then attempt to trace those conflicts to the considerations in which they have their source. The two chief lines of thought traceable throughout the Dialectic are represented by its negative and by its positive tendencies respectively. From one point of view, Reason is merely the understanding in its self-limiting, self-regulative employment, and the main purpose of the Dialectic is to guard against the delusive power of fictitious principles. From the other point of view, Reason is a faculty distinct from understanding, and its problems run parallel with those of the Analytic, forming no less important a subject of philosophical reflection, and no less fruitful a source of positive teaching. The one line of argument connects with Kant’s more sceptical tendencies, the other with his deep-rooted belief in the ultimate validity of the absolute claims of pure thought.
When we approach the Dialectic from the standpoint of the Analytic, it is the negative aspect that is naturally most prominent. In the Analytic Kant has proved that all knowledge is limited to sense-experience, and that a metaphysical interpretation of reality is altogether impossible. But as the human mind would seem to be possessed by an inborn need of metaphysical construction, this conclusion cannot obtain its due influence until the sources of the metaphysical tendency have been detected and laid bare. The Dialectic must yield a psychology of metaphysics as well as a logic of illusion.
But when, on the other hand, the problems of the Dialectic are viewed in their distinction from those of the Analytic, and their independent character is recognised, they appear in a perspective which sets them in a very different light. Reason is a faculty co-ordinate with understanding, and yields a priori concepts distinct in function, no less than in nature, from the categories. To mark this distinction Kant entitles the concepts of Reason Ideas. They demand both a metaphysical and a transcendental deduction. These requirements are fulfilled through their derivation from the three forms of syllogism, and by the proof that they exercise an indispensable function, at once limiting and directing the understanding. As limiting concepts, they condition the consciousness of those Ideal standards through which the human mind is enabled to distinguish between appearance and things in themselves. As regulative, they prescribe the problems which the understanding in its search for knowledge is called upon to solve.
These two tendencies, sceptical and constructive, are never, indeed, in complete opposition. Common to both, rendering possible the psychological explanation of the metaphysical impulse, which even the negative standpoint demands, is the doctrine of the regulative function of Ideal principles. This doctrine, which already appears in the Dissertation of 1770, was later developed into the Critical theory of transcendental illusion; and by means of that theory Kant succeeded in bringing the two standpoints into a very real and vital connection with one another. At first sight it may seem to achieve their complete reconciliation, accounting for their distinction while rendering them mutually complementary; and Kant’s teaching may perhaps be so restated as to bear out that impression. But the harmony is never completely attained by Kant. Here, as in the Analytic, there is an equipoise of tendencies that persist in opposition.
Kant’s mediating doctrine of transcendental illusion may first be stated. It rests upon a distinction between appearance and illusion. Appearance (Erscheinung) is a transcript in phenomenal terms of some independent reality; and of such appearances we can acquire what from the human point of view is genuine knowledge. On the other hand, all professed insight into the nature of the transcendent or non-empirical is sheer illusion (Schein), and purely subjective. There are three species of illusion, logical, empirical and transcendental. Logical illusion stands apart by itself. It is due merely to inattention or ignorance; and vanishes immediately the attention is aroused. Empirical and transcendental illusion, on the other hand, have a twofold point of agreement, first, in being unavoidable, and secondly, in that they originate in our practical needs. We may know that the moon at its rising is no larger than in mid-heavens, that the ocean is no higher in the distance than at the shore; this makes not the least difference in the perceptions as they continue to present themselves. That the illusions are adapted to our practical needs, and are consequently beneficial, is less often observed. Changes in the colour, form, and size of objects as they recede from us, the seeing of the parallel sides of a street as converging, enable us to achieve what would not otherwise be possible. By their means we acquire the power of compressing a wide extent of landscape into a single visual field, of determining distance, and the like. Their practical usefulness is in almost exact proportion to the freedom with which they depart from the standards of the independently real. Kant argues that, in these respects, transcendental illusion is analogous to the empirical. Just as the illusory characteristics of our perceptions are to be understood only in terms of their practical function, so the Ideas of pure Reason have always a practical bearing, and can only be explained and justified in terms of the needs which they satisfy. As theoretical enquirers, we accept all that affords us orientation in the attainment of knowledge; as moral agents, we postulate the conditions which are necessary for the realisation of the moral imperative. And as the Ideals of natural science are found (such is Kant’s contention) to be in general form akin to those of the moral consciousness, they thus acquire a twofold footing in the mental life, maintaining their place there quite independently of theoretical proof. Though illusory, they are unavoidable; and though theoretically false,[1337] they are from a practical point of view both legitimate and indispensable.
Kant, in developing this thesis, might profitably have pointed to still another respect in which the analogy holds between sense-experience and transcendental beliefs. The illusions of sense-perception come in the ordinary processes of experience to be detected as such by the mind. From the theoretical standpoint of the outside observer who compares the situation of one percipient with that of another, and so is enabled to cancel the differences which variety of situation carries with it, the useful illusions of ordinary experience are reduced to the level of mere appearance. In contradicting one another they reveal their subjective character, and also at the same time afford data for determining the objective conditions to which their subjectively necessary existence is causally due. In similar fashion the transcendental illusions result in contradictions, which compel the mind to recognise that the Ideals to which it is committed by its practical needs are of a merely subjective character, and may never be legitimately interpreted as representing the actual nature of the independently real.
The chief transcendental illusion, and ultimately the cause of all the others, consists in the belief that the Ideals of explanation which satisfy Reason must in general outline represent the nature of ultimate reality. What the individual seeks to discover he naturally believes to exist prior to the discovery. As practical beings, we regard the objects of sense-experience as absolute realities--they are the realities of practical life, and we are practical rather than theoretical beings--and the existing empirical sciences, conceived as Ideally completed, are therefore viewed as yielding an adequate representation of ultimate reality. But such a belief involves us in contradictions. The world of phenomena in space and time is endlessly relative. It can have no outer bounds or first beginning, and no smallest parts; and in the series of causal antecedents there can be no member that is not effect as well as cause. Viewed as representing a pre-existent goal, the Ideas of Reason are imaginary completions of the intrinsically and merely relative, and are in their very notion self-contradictory. All that is definite in their content conflicts with their absoluteness; and yet, as it would seem, only in their empirical reference can they hope for objective verification.
Such are the problems of the Dialectic, so far as they can be formulated in terms common to the two opposed standpoints. Their deeper significance, and the grounds of Kant’s alternating treatment of them, only appear when he raises the further questions, what those Ideals of explanation which Reason prescribes really are, and how, if they conflict with the content of experience, it is possible that they should be conceived at all. To these questions Kant propounds both a sceptical and an Idealist answer. The former, in bare outline, may be stated as follows. The so-called Ideas are based upon experience and are derived from it. The understanding removes the limitations to which its pure concepts are subject in sense-experience, and proceeds to use them in their widest possible application, i.e. to things in general. As thus employed, they are without real significance, and are indeed self-contradictory. To form the Idea of the unconditioned, we have to omit all those conditions through which alone anything can be apprehended, even as possible. To construct the concept of absolute or unconditioned necessity, we have similarly to leave aside the conditions upon which necessity, as revealed in experience, in all cases depends; in eliminating conditions, we eliminate necessity in the only forms in which it is conceivable by us. Such Ideas are, indeed, simply schematic forms, whereby we body forth to ourselves, in more or less metaphorical terms, the concept of a maximum. They are imaginary extensions, in Ideal form, of the unity and system which understanding has discovered in actual experience, and which, under the inspiration of such Ideals, it seeks to realise in ever-increasing degree. If the understanding, as thus insisting upon Ideal satisfaction, be entitled Reason, the Ideas must be taken as expressing a subjective interest, and as exhausting their legitimate employment in the regulation of the understanding. Their transcendental deduction will consist in the proof that they are necessary to the understanding for the perfecting of its experience. They do not justify us in attempting to decide, in anticipation of actual experience, how far the contingent collocations and the inexhaustible complexities of brute experience are really reducible to a completely unified system; but they quite legitimately demand that through all discouragements we persist in the endeavour towards their realisation. In any case, it is by experience that the degree of their reality has to be decided. We judge of things by the standard of that for which they exist, and not vice versa. As the sole legitimate function of the Ideas is that of inspiring the understanding in its empirical employment, they must never be interpreted as having metaphysical significance. As the Ideas exist solely for the sake of experience, it is they that must be condemned, if the two really diverge. We do not say “that a man is too long for his coat, but that the coat is too short for the man.”[1338] It is experience, not Ideas, which forms the criterion alike of truth and of reality.
Kant’s teaching, when on Idealist lines, is of a very different character. Reason is distinct from understanding, and yet is no less indispensably involved in the conditioning of experience. All consciousness is consciousness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. Such consciousness cannot be accounted for by assuming that we are first conscious of the conditioned, and then proceed through omission of its limitations to form to ourselves, by means of the more positive factors involved in this antecedent consciousness, an Idea of an unconditioned whole. The Idea of the unconditioned is distinct in nature from all other concepts, and cannot be derived from them. It must be a pure a priori product of what may be named the faculty of Reason. Its uniqueness is what causes its apparent meaninglessness. As it is involved in all consciousness, it conditions all other concepts; and cannot, therefore, be defined in terms of them. Its significance must not be looked for save in that Ideal, to which no experience, and no concept other than itself, can ever be adequate. That in this Ideal form it has a very real and genuine meaning is proved by our capacity to distinguish between appearance and reality. For upon it this distinction, in ultimate analysis, is found to rest. Consciousness of limitation presupposes a consciousness of what is beyond the limit; consciousness of the unconditioned is prior to, and renders possible, our consciousness of the contingently given. The Idea of the unconditioned must therefore be counted as being, like the categories, though in a somewhat different manner, a condition of the possibility of experience. With it our standards both of truth and of reality are inextricably bound up.[1339] The Ideas in which it specifies itself, so far from depending upon empirical verification, are the touchstone by which we detect the unreality of the sensible world, and by which a truer reality, such as would be adequate to the Ideal demands of pure Reason, is prefigured to the mind.
These two standpoints are extremely divergent in their consequences. Each leads to a very different interpretation of the content of the Ideas, of their function in experience, and of their objective validity. On the one view, their content is merely empirical, and sense-experience is our sole criterion of truth and reality; on the other, they have to be recognised as containing a pure a priori concept, and are themselves the standards by which even empirical truth can alone be determined. In the one case, they are Ideals projected by experience for its own empirical guidance; they are built upon contingent experience, and depend upon it alike for the content which makes them conceivable and for their validity. In the other, they are presuppositions of experience, at once conditioning its possibility and revealing its merely phenomenal character. According to the sceptical view, Reason is concerned only with itself and its own subjective demands; on the Idealist view, it is a metaphysical faculty, and outlines possibilities that may perhaps be established by practical Reason.
Such, in broad outline, are the central doctrines of the Dialectic. They constitute an extraordinarily stimulating and suggestive body of Critical teaching. In no other division of the Critique do the power and originality of Kant’s thinking gain such abundant, forceful and illuminating expression. The accumulated results of the painstaking analyses of the earlier sections contribute a solidity and fulness of meaning, which render the argument extremely impressive, even to those who are out of sympathy with Kant’s ultimate purposes. Its persistent influence, on sceptical no less than on Idealist lines, and often conveyed by very devious channels, can frequently be detected even in thinkers--Herbert Spencer is an instance--who would indignantly repudiate the charge of being indebted to such a source.
THE HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT OF KANT’S VIEWS IN REGARD TO THE PROBLEMS OF THE DIALECTIC[1340]
We may now proceed to consider the evidence in support of the early origin of the central portions of the Dialectic--the sections on the antinomies. As Benno Erdmann[1341] has very conclusively shown, preoccupation with the problem of antinomy was the chief cause of the revolution which took place in Kant’s views in 1769, and which found expression in his Dissertation of 1770. It was the existence of antinomy which led Kant to recognise the subjectivity of space and time. That is to say, it led him to develop that doctrine of transcendental idealism which reappears in the concluding sections of the Aesthetic, and which was recast and developed in the Analytic. Already in the Dissertation it supplies the key for the solution of the problems concerning infinity. The impossibility of completing the space, time, and causal series, and the consequent impossibility of satisfying the demands of the mind for totality, simplicity and unconditionedness, do not, it is there maintained, discredit reason, but only serve to establish the subjectivity of the sensuous forms to which the element of infinitude is in all cases due.
Kant’s thinking was, of course, diverted into an entirely new channel (as his letter to Herz of February 21, 1772,[1342] shows), when he came to realise that the metaphysical validity or invalidity of thought must be decided prior to any attempt to discover a positive solution of such problems as are presented by the antinomies. And when, owing to the renewed influence of Hume, at some time subsequent to the date of the letter to Herz, this new problem was recognised as being the problem of a priori synthesis, all questions regarding the nature of the absolutely real were made to take secondary rank, yielding precedence to those of logical theory. When the antinomy problems re-emerge, their discussion assumes Critical form.
In three fundamental respects Kant’s treatment of the antinomies in the Dissertation differs from that of the Critique. In the first place, the demand for totality or absoluteness is not in the Dissertation ascribed to a separate faculty. Indeed Kant’s words would seem to show that at times he had inclined to ascribe it merely to the free-ranging fancy or imagination.[1343] Secondly, as the various antinomies were traced exclusively to the influence of space and time upon pure thought, they were treated together, and no classification of them was attempted. And lastly, though Kant’s utterances are somewhat ambiguous,[1344] the illusory character of the antinomies was in the main viewed as being of a more or less logical nature. That is to say, it was regarded as entirely preventable and as “vanishing like smoke”[1345] upon adoption of a true philosophical standpoint.
A number of the Reflexionen reveal the various tentative schemes, by trial of which Kant worked his way toward a more genuinely Critical treatment of the problems of infinity. The intellectual factors receive fuller recognition, and as a consequence a definite classification results. At some time prior to the discovery of the table of categories, Kant adopted a threefold division of what he names first principles or presuppositions--principles of substance-accident, of ground-consequence, and of whole-part. Reflexion ii. 578 is typical.
“Three principia: (1) in the field of the actual there is the relation of substance to accident (inhaerentia): (2) of ground to consequence (dependentia): (3) of parts and of composition (compositio). There are three presuppositions: of the subject, of the ground, and of the parts; of insition [Kant’s own term], of subordination, and of composition; therefore also three first principia: (1) subject, which is never a predicate; (2) ground, which is never a consequence; (3) unity, which is not itself composite.”
There are numerous other Reflexionen to the same effect.[1346] The resulting conceptions are defined both as limits[1347] and as absolute totalities, and in Reflexion ii. 1252 are enumerated as follows:
“The first subject; the first ground; the first part. The subject which holds everything in itself; the ground which takes everything under itself; the whole which comprehends everything. The totalitas absoluta of reality, of series, of co-ordination.”
The introduction of the terms ‘absolute’ and ‘totality’ indicate that Kant has also come to recognise the presence of a unique notion (equivalent to the “unconditioned” of the Critique), distinct in content from any of the three enumerated principia, but common to them all. From the very first Kant would seem to have appropriated for it the title Idea. Reflexionen ii. 1243, 1244, and 124 may be quoted:
“The Idea is single (individuum), self-sufficient, and eternal. The divinity of our soul is its capacity to form the Idea. The senses give only copies or rather apparentia.” “Idea is the representation of the whole in so far as it necessarily precedes the determination of the parts. It can never be empirically represented, for the reason that in experience we proceed from the parts through successive syntheses to the whole. It is the archetype (Urbild) of things, for certain objects are only possible through an Idea. Transcendental Ideas are those in which the absolute whole determines the parts in an aggregate or as series.” “Metaphysics proper is the application of transcendental philosophy to concepts supplied by Reason and necessary to it, to which, however, no corresponding objects can be given in experience. The concepts must therefore refer to the supersensible. That, however, can be nothing but the unconditioned, for that is the sole theoretical Idea of reason. [Not italicised in the original.] Metaphysics thus relates: (1) to that of which only the whole can be represented as absolutely unconditioned: (2) to things so far as they are in themselves sensuously unconditioned. The first part is cosmology, the second rational doctrine of the soul, pneumatology and theology.”
At this stage, therefore, Kant would seem to have held that there is but one Idea strictly so called, and that the above three principia are merely specifications of it in terms of the concepts of substance-accident, ground-consequence, and whole-part. The classification thus obtained is in certain respects more satisfactory than that which is adopted in the Critique. It locates the cosmological argument with the causal category, and so would enable the conceptions of freedom or causa sui, and of Divine Existence, to be dealt with in their natural connection with one another. It also supplies, in the category of whole and part, a more fitting heading for those antinomy problems which deal with the unlimited and the limited, the divisible and the indivisible, the complex and the simple. The classification would, however, in separating the problem of the simple from that of substance, remain open to the same criticism as that of the Critique.[1348]
This classification must, as we have stated, be of a date prior to Kant’s discovery of the table of categories. That is quite clear from its ignoring the category of reciprocity, and from its combination of the other two categories of relation with the merely quantitative category of whole and part. For though the last is also entitled composition and co-ordination, it is conceived in these particular Reflexionen in exclusively quantitative terms. When Kant formulated the “metaphysical” deduction of the categories he was, of course, compelled to recast the classification, and did so in the only possible manner, consistent with his architectonic, by substituting the category of reciprocity for that of whole and part,[1349] and by taking the new heading, obtained through combination of reciprocity with the Idea of the unconditioned, as equivalent to the Idea of Divine Existence. But this could not be done without dislocating the entire scheme. The category of ground and consequence is deprived of its chief application, that expressed in the cosmological argument; and in order to provide a new content for it, Kant is compelled to force upon it the problems previously classified under the displaced category of whole and part. Even so, the problem of the causa sui cannot be eliminated, and reappears, partly as the problem of freedom, and partly as the modal problem of necessary existence.
The identification of the theological Idea with the category of reciprocity has a further consequence. It carries the problem of Divine Existence outside the sphere of the problems of infinity, and necessitates a very different treatment from that which it would naturally have received at Kant’s hands, if developed in its connection with his own Critical teaching. He is driven to expound it in the extreme rationalistic form in which it had been formulated by Leibniz and Wolff, as a doctrine of the Ens realissimum.
Prior to the rearrangement, necessitated by recognition of the category of reciprocity, Kant would seem to have expected to bring the entire body of Wolffian metaphysics within the scope of a general doctrine of antinomy. The problems of the divisible and the indivisible, of the simple and the complex, leading as they do to discussion of the presuppositions underlying the Leibnizian monadology, concern spiritual as well as material substance. Similarly, the main problems of theology would have been treated in connection with the cosmological inference to a first cause, and with the discussion of the possibility of first beginnings in space and time.[1350]
The sections in the Critique devoted to the antinomies reveal, in many ways, Kant’s original design. It is especially noticeable in his discussion of the third and fourth antinomies. The problems of freedom and of necessary existence are by no means treated in merely cosmological fashion. Indeed Kant makes no pretence of concealing their psychological and theological implications. Even the first and second antinomies have obvious bearings of a similar character. But it is in the section entitled The Interest of Reason in this Self-conflict[1351] that the broader significance of the antinomies finds its fullest expression. In its suggestive contrast of the two possible types of philosophy, Epicurean and Platonic, the argument entirely transcends the bounds prescribed to it by its cosmological setting. As we follow the comprehensive sweep of its argument, we can hardly avoid regretting that Kant failed to keep to his original plan, as here unfolded,[1352] of expounding the self-conflict of Reason in the form of a broad judicial statement of the grounds and claims of the two opposing authorities which divide the allegiance of the human spirit, namely, the intellectual and the moral, science with its cognitive demands on the one hand, the consciousness of duty with its no less imperious prescriptions on the other. The materialist philosophies would then have been presented as inevitably arising when intellectual values are made supreme; and the Idealist philosophies as equally cogent when moral values are taken as primary and are allowed to determine speculative tenets. Against this background of conflicting dogmatisms the comprehensive and satisfying character of the Critical standpoint would have stood out the more clearly; and its historical affiliations, its debt to the sceptics and materialists, no less than to the Idealists, would have been depicted in more adequate terms. As it is, in the chapters on the Paralogisms and the Ideal of Pure Reason there is almost entire failure to recognise the possibility of a naturalistic solution of the problems with which they deal, and Kant so far succumbs to the outworn influences of his day and generation--the very influences from which the Critical philosophy, consistently developed, is a final breaking away--as to maintain, almost in the manner of the English Deists, of Voltaire and Rousseau, that God, Freedom, and Immortality are conceptions which the mind must necessarily form, and in the validity of which it must spontaneously believe. Kant is here, indeed, interpreting “natural reason” in the light of his own personal history. The Christian beliefs, in which he had been nurtured from childhood, and their rationalist counterparts in the Wolffian philosophy, had become, as it were, a second nature to him; and the resistance, which in his own person they had offered to the development of Critical teaching, he not unnaturally interpreted as evidence of their being imposed by the very structure of reason. He transforms the metaphysical sciences in their Wolffian form into inevitable illusions of the human mind.[1353]
There is evidence that the theological problems were the first to be withdrawn from the sphere of the “sceptical method,”[1354] peculiar to the antinomies. Thus Reflexion ii. 125[1355] states that “metaphysics proper consists of cosmologia rationalis and theologia naturalis”--rational psychology being, as it would seem, still included within cosmology.[1356] What the considerations were which induced Kant to claim similarly independent treatment for rational psychology, we can only conjecture. For a time, while still holding to the bipartite division, he would seem to have made the further change of also separating psychology from cosmology, classing psychology and theology together as subdivisions of the rational science of soul.
”[Metaphysics has two parts]: the first is cosmology, the second rational doctrine of soul, pneumatology and theology.”[1357]
A main factor deciding Kant in favour of a dogmatic, non-sceptical treatment of rational psychology may have been the greater opportunity which it seemed to afford him of connecting its doctrines with the teaching of the Analytic, and especially with his central doctrine of apperception. But to whatever cause the decision was due, it resulted in the impoverishment of the second antinomy, through withdrawal of the more important half of its natural content. This antinomy could no longer be made to comprehend a discussion of the logical bases of monadology, and of its professed proofs of the simplicity and immortality of the soul. Nothing is left to it save the discussion of the monadistic theory of matter (somatologia pura).[1358] This change has also, as already noted, the unfortunate effect of precluding Kant from recognition of the physical application of the category of substance. By the simple he means the substantial, and yet he may not say so; his architectonic forbids.
I may hazard the further suggestion that Kant’s interpretation of rational psychology in terms of the Critical doctrine of apperception is of earlier date than his doctrine of transcendental illusion. For the chapter on the Paralogisms seems in its first form to have contained no reference to that latter doctrine.[1359] The few passages which take account of it, all bear evidence of being later intercalations. This is the more remarkable in that the Paralogisms can easily be shown to be typical examples of transcendental illusion. Indeed, neither the antinomies nor the theological Ideal conform to its definition in the same strict fashion.
The problem as to whether the doctrine of transcendental illusion and the deduction of the Ideas from the three species of syllogism originated early or late, is largely bound up with the question as to when Kant finally adopted the terms Analytic and Dialectic as titles for the two main divisions of his Transcendental Logic. That Kant was at first very uncertain as to what the main divisions of his system ought to be, appears very clearly from the Reflexionen.[1360] To his teaching as a whole he usually applies the title Transcendental Philosophy, and in Reflexion ii. 123 he enumerates the following subdivisions within it: Aesthetic, Logic, Critique, and Architectonic. By Critique Kant must here mean what in other Reflexionen he names Discipline, and which he finally named Dialectic. As thus identified with the Discipline, the Dialectic is at times viewed as a division of a Methodology or Organon, whose other divisions are entitled Canon and Architectonic.[1361] This earlier scheme may therefore be represented as follows:
{Aesthetic. {Doctrine of Elements {Logic. Transcendental { Philosophy { {Critique = Discipline [corresponding {Doctrine of Methods {to the Dialectic { (Methodology) {of the Critique]. {Canon. {Architectonic.
The terms Analytic and Dialectic do not occur in these Reflexionen, and their adoption may therefore be inferred to synchronise with Kant’s later decision to include the treatment of the metaphysical sciences within his Logic; and that decision was probably an immediate result of his having developed meantime a doctrine of transcendental illusion. The new scheme in its final form is therefore as follows:
{ {Aesthetic. {Doctrine of { { Elements { {Analytic {of Concepts. { {Logic { {of Judgement. Transcendental { {Dialectic--of Reason. Philosophy { or Critique of { Pure Reason { {Discipline (retained but given a new {Doctrine of {and more general content). {Methods {Canon. {(Methodology) {Architectonic. {History.
In thus transferring Dialectic from the Methodology to the Doctrine of Elements, Kant stands committed to the view that it contains positive teaching of a character analogous to that of the Analytic, with which it is now co-ordinated. As we have already noted, the fundamental opposition which runs through the entire Dialectic is due to the conflict between the older view of Reason as merely understanding in its transcendent employment, and this later view of it as a distinct faculty, yielding concepts with a positive and indispensable function, different from, and yet also analogous to, that exercised by the categories of the understanding.
Adickes, to whom students of Kant are indebted for a convincing demonstration of the constant influence of Kant’s logical architectonic upon the content of the Critical teaching, would seem at this point to rely too exclusively upon that method of explanation. He contends that Kant’s deduction of the Ideas of Reason from the three species of syllogism is entirely traceable to this source, and is without real philosophical significance. That is perhaps in the main true. But it need not prevent us from appreciating the importance of the doctrines which Kant contrives to expound under guise of this logical machinery. We have already observed that prior to the discovery of this deduction Kant had recognised the connection between the concept of the unconditioned and the three Ideas through which it finds expression. As the forms of syllogism are differentiated in terms of the three categories of relation, the deduction does not interfere with Kant’s retention of this classification of Ideas; while in connecting Reason as a faculty with reasoning as a logical process, an excellent opportunity is found for explaining the grounds and significance of the demand for unconditionedness, i.e. for completeness of explanation. This demand, as he has also come to recognise, lies open to question, and therefore calls for more precise definition.
The artificial character of the metaphysical deduction lies not so much in this derivation of the three Ideas of the unconditioned--unconditioned substance, unconditioned causality, unconditioned system--from the categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive forms of syllogism respectively, as in the further equating of them with the Ideas of the Self, the World, and God. The Idea of unconditioned substance has many possible applications besides the use to which it is put in rational psychology. The Idea of an unconditioned causality may be conceived in psychological and theological as well as in cosmological terms; and as a matter of fact Kant himself frequently identifies it with the concept of freedom, as in the third and fourth antinomies, or when he enumerates the Ideas as being those of God, Freedom, and Immortality.[1362] Similarly, the Idea of system is the inspiring principle of materialism, and also finds in such philosophies as that of Spinoza much more adequate expression than in the Ens realissimum of the Wolffian School. But further comment is not, at this stage, really profitable. These are questions which can best be discussed as they emerge in the course of the argument.[1363]
Kant carried his logical architectonic one stage further. Not satisfied with connecting the three Ideas of Reason with the categories that underlie the three species of syllogism, he also attempted to organise the various particular applications of each Idea in terms of the fourfold division of the table of categories. By the use of his usual high-handed methods he succeeded in doing so in the case of the psychological and cosmological Ideas. There are four paralogisms and four antinomies. But when the attempt failed in regard to the theological Idea, he very wisely abstained from either apology or explanation. That the failure was not due to lack of desire or perseverance appears from Reflexion ii. 1573, which would seem to be the record of an unavailing attempt to obtain a satisfactory articulation of the theological Ideal. Doubtless, had he been sufficiently bent upon it, he could have worked out some sort of fourfold division; but there were limits even to Kant’s devotion to the architectonic scheme. It is difficult to see how any such arrangement could have been followed without serious perversion of the argument.
Adickes has suggested[1364] that the distinction between the faculty of understanding and the faculty of judgment is subsequent to, and suggested by, Kant’s successful tracing of the Ideas to a separate faculty of Reason. Some such distinction was demanded in order that the parallelism of transcendental and formal logic might be complete. This conjecture of Adickes is probably correct. It would seem to be supported by the internal evidence of the Analytic of Principles. As we have had occasion to note,[1365] the doctrine of schematism, in terms of which the distinction between understanding and judgment is formulated, is late in date of origin.[1366] This distinction is of the same artificial character as that between understanding and Reason; and though, like the latter distinction, it supplies Kant with a convenient framework for the arrangement of genuine Critical material, it also tends to conceal the simpler and more inward bonds of true relationship.
TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC
Introduction
I. Transcendental Illusion
=Dialectic is a Logic of Illusion.=[1367]--The meaning which Kant attaches to the term dialectic has already been considered. The passage above quoted[1368] from his Logic shows the meaning which he supposed the term historically to possess, namely, as being a sophistical art of disputation, presenting false principles in the guise of truth by means of a seeming fulfilment of the demands of strict logical proof. The incorrectness of this historical derivation hardly needs to be pointed out. Kant professes[1369] to be following his contemporaries in thus using the term as a title for the treatment of false reasoning. But even this statement must be challenged. Adickes, after examination of a large number of eighteenth-century text-books, reports[1370] that in the six passages in which alone he has found it to occur it is never so employed. In Meier it is used as a title for the theory of probable reasoning,[1371] and in Baumgarten it occurs only in adjectival form as equivalent to sophistical. This last is the nearest approach to Kant’s definition. All historical considerations may therefore be swept aside. We are concerned only with the specific meaning which Kant thought good to attach to the term. He adapts it in the freest manner to the needs of his system. In A 61 = B 85, as in his Logic, he has defined it in merely negative fashion. He is now careful to specify the more positive aspects of the problems with which it deals. Though definable as the logic of illusion, the deceptive inferences with which it concerns itself are of a quite unique and supremely significant character. They must, as above noted,[1372] be distinguished alike from logical and from empirical illusion. They have their roots in the fundamental needs of the human mind, and the recognition of their illusory character does not render unnecessary either a positive explanation of their occurrence or a Critical valuation of their practical function as regulative ideals.
=A 293 = B 349.=--Regarding the connection between illusion and error cf. B 69, and above, pp. 148-53.
=A 295 = B 352.=--Logical, empirical, and transcendental illusion. Cf. above, pp. 13, 427-9, 437.
=A 296 = B 352.=--Kant here defines the terms transcendental and transcendent in a very unusual manner. The two terms are not, he states, synonymous. The principles of pure understanding are of merely empirical validity, and consequently are not of transcendental employment beyond the limits of experience. A principle is transcendent when it not only removes these limits, but prescribes the overstepping of them.
II. Pure Reason as the Seat of Transcendental Illusion[1373]
(a) Reason in General
Reason, like understanding, is employed in two ways, formal or logical and real. The logical use of Reason consists in mediate inference, the real in the generation of concepts and principles. Reason is thus both a logical and a transcendental faculty, and we may therefore expect that its logical functions will serve as a clue to those that are transcendental. The argument which follows is extremely obscure. It is a foreshadowing in logical terms of a distinction which, as Kant himself indicates, cannot at this stage be adequately stated. The distinction may be extended and paraphrased as follows. Reason, generically taken as including both activities, is the faculty of principles, in distinction from understanding which is the faculty of rules.[1374] Principles, properly so-called, are absolutely a priori. Universals which imply the element of intuition must not, therefore, be ranked as principles in the strict sense. They are more properly to be entitled rules. A true principle is one that affords knowledge of the particulars which come under it, and which does so from its own internal resources, that is to say, through pure concepts. In other words, it yields a priori synthetic knowledge, and yet does so independently of all given experience. Now, as the Analytic has proved, knowledge obtained through understanding, whether in mathematical or in physical science, is never of this character. Its principles, even though originating in pure intuition or in the pure understanding, are valid only as conditions of possible experience, and are applicable only to such objects as can occur in the context of a sense-perception. That is to say, the understanding can never obtain synthetic knowledge through pure concepts. Though, for instance, it prescribes the principle that everything which happens must have a cause, that principle does not establish itself by means of the concepts which it contains, but only as being a presupposition necessary to the possibility of sense-experience. If, then, principles in the strict sense actually exist, they must be due to a faculty distinct from understanding, and will call for a deduction of a different character from that of the categories.
In the last paragraph but one of the section Kant indicates the doctrine which he is foreshadowing. The rules of understanding apply to appearances, prescribing the conditions under which the unity necessary to any and every experience can alone be attained. The principles of Reason do not apply directly to appearances, but only to the understanding, defining the standards to which its activities must conform, if a completely unified experience is to be achieved. Whereas the rules of understanding are the conditions of objective existence in space and time, principles in the strict sense are criteria for the attainment of such absoluteness and totality as will harmonise Reason with itself. Reason, determined by principles which issue from its own inherent nature, prescribes what the actual ought to be; understanding, proceeding from rules which express the conditions of possible experience, can yield knowledge only of what is found to exist in the course of sense-experience. The unity of Reason is Ideal; the unity of understanding is empirical. Principles are due to the self-determination of reason; the rules of understanding express the necessitated determinations of sense. The former demand a more perfect and complete unity than is ever attainable by means of the latter. Two passages from the Lose Blätter will help to define the distinction.
“There is a synthesis prototypon and a synthesis ectypon. The one ... simpliciter, a termino a priori, ... the other secundum quid, a termino a posteriori.... Reason advances from the universal to the particular, the understanding from the particular to the universal.... The first is absolute and belongs to the free or metaphysical, and also to the moral, employment of Reason.”[1375] “The principles of the synthesis of pure Reason are all metaphysical.... [They] are principles of the subjective unity of knowledge through Reason, i.e. of the agreement of Reason with itself.”[1376]
The chief interest of this section lies in its clear indication of the dual standpoint to which Kant is committing himself by the manner in which he formulates this distinction between rules and principles. The indispensableness of the latter, upon which Kant is prepared to insist, points to the Idealist interpretation of their grounds and validity; their derivation from mere concepts, without reference to or basis in experience, must, on the other hand, in view of the teaching of the Analytic, commit Kant to a sceptical treatment of their objective validity. In the above account, suggestions of the Idealist point of view are not entirely absent; but, on the whole, it is the sceptical view that is dominant. The Ideas of Reason can be justified as necessary only for the perfecting of experience, not as conditions of experience as such. They express a subjective interest in the attainment of unity, not conditions of the possibility of objective existence.
”[Civil Laws] are only limitations imposed upon our freedom in order that such freedom may completely harmonise with itself; hence they are directed to something which is entirely our own work, and of which we ourselves, through these concepts, can be the cause. But that objects in themselves, the very nature of things, should stand under principles, and should be determined according to mere concepts, is a demand which, if not impossible, is at least quite contrary to common sense [Widersinnisches].”[1377]
(b) The Logical Use of Reason[1378]
In this subsection Kant introduces the distinction between understanding and judgment which he has sought to justify in A 130 ff. = B 169 ff. By showing that inference determines the relation between a major premiss (due to the understanding) and the condition defined in the minor premiss (due to the faculty of judgment), he professes to obtain justification for classifying the possible forms of reasoning according to the three categories of relation. The general remark is added that the purpose of Reason, in its logical employment as inference, is to obtain the highest possible unity, through subsumption of all multiplicity under the smallest possible number of universals.
(c) The Pure Use of Reason[1379]
Kant here states the alternatives between which the Dialectic has to decide. Is Reason merely formal, arranging given material according to given forms of unity, or is it a source of principles which prescribe higher forms of unity than any revealed by actual experience? Further examination of its formal and logical procedure constrains us, Kant asserts, to adopt the latter position; and at the same time indicates how those principles must be interpreted, namely, as subjective laws that apply not to objects but only to the activities of the understanding.
In the first place, a syllogism is not directly concerned with intuitions, but only with concepts and judgments. This may be taken as indicating that pure Reason relates to objects only mediately by way of understanding and its judgments. The unity which it seeks is higher than that of any possible experience; it is a unity which must be constructed and cannot be given.[1380]
Secondly, Reason in its logical use seeks the universal condition of its judgment; and when such is not found in the major premiss proceeds to its discovery through a regressive series of prosyllogisms. In so doing it is obviously determined by a principle expressive of the peculiar function of Reason in its logical employment, namely, that for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned unity in which that knowledge may find completion must be discovered. Such a principle is synthetic, since from analysis of the conception of the conditioned we can discover its relation to a condition, but never its relation to the unconditioned. That is a notion which falls entirely outside the sphere of the understanding, and which therefore demands a separate enquiry. How is the above a priori synthetic principle to be accounted for, if it cannot be traced to understanding? Has it objective, or has it merely subjective validity? And lastly, what further synthetic principles can be based upon it? Such are the questions to which Critical Dialectic must supply an answer. This Dialectic will be composed of two main divisions, the doctrine of “the transcendent concepts of pure Reason” and the doctrine of “transcendent and dialectical inferences of Reason.”
I. THE CONCEPTS OF PURE REASON[1381]
The distinction here drawn between concepts obtained by reflection and concepts gained by inference is a somewhat misleading mode of stating the fact that, whereas the categories of understanding condition experience and so make possible the unity of consciousness necessary to all reflection, or, in other words, are conditions of the material supplied for inference, the concepts of Reason are Ideal constructions which though in a certain sense resting upon experience none the less transcend it. The function of the Ideas is to organise experience in its totality; that of the categories is to render possible the sense-perceptions constitutive of its content. The former refer to the unconditioned, and though that is a conception under which everything experienced is conceived to fall, it represents a type of knowledge to which no actual experience can ever be adequate.
=Conceptus ratiocinati--conceptus ratiocinantes.= When such transcendent concepts possess “objective validity,” they are correctly inferred, and may be entitled conceptus ratiocinati. If, on the other hand, they are due to merely sophistical[1382] reasoning, they are purely fictitious, conceptus ratiocinantes. This distinction raises many difficulties. Kant’s intention cannot be to deny that the conceptus ratiocinati are “mere Ideas” (entia rationis)[1383]--for such is his avowed and constant contention--or that the inference to them is dialectical and is based upon a transcendental illusion. Two alternatives are open. He may mean that they are only valid when the results of such inference are Critically reinterpreted, and when the function of the Ideas is realised to be merely regulative; or his intention may be to mark off the Ideas, strictly so-called, which are inevitable and beneficial products of Reason, from the many idle and superfluous inventions of speculative thought. Kant’s concluding remark, that the questions at issue can be adequately discussed only at a later stage, may be taken as in the nature of an apology for the looseness of these preliminary statements, and as a warning to the reader not to insist upon them too absolutely. The participles ratiocinati and ratiocinantes[1384] are of doubtful latinity. The distinction of meaning here imposed upon them has not been traced in any other writer, and is perhaps Kant’s own invention.[1385]
SECTION I
IDEAS IN GENERAL[1386]
Kant connects his use of the term Idea with the meaning in which it is employed by Plato. He urges upon all true lovers of philosophy the imperative need of rescuing from misuse a term so indispensable to mark a distinction more vital than any other to the very existence of the philosophical disciplines.
”[For Plato] Ideas are the archetypes of the things themselves, and not, like the categories, merely keys to possible experiences. In his view they issued from the Supreme Reason, and from that source have come to be shared in by human Reason.... He very well realised that our faculty of knowledge feels a much higher need than merely to spell out appearances according to a synthetic unity, in order to read them as experience. He knew that our Reason naturally exalts itself to forms of knowledge which so far transcend the bounds of experience that no given empirical object can ever coincide with them, but which must none the less be recognised as having their own reality and which are by no means mere fictions of the brain.”[1387]
Plato found these ideas chiefly, though not exclusively, in the practical sphere. When moral standards are in question, experience is the mother of illusion.
“For nothing can be more injurious or more unworthy of a philosopher than the vulgar appeal to so-called adverse experience. Such experience would never have existed at all, if those institutions had been established at the proper time in accordance with Ideas, and if Ideas had not been displaced by crude conceptions which, just because they have been derived from experience, have nullified all good intentions.”[1388]
Even in the natural sphere Ideas which are never themselves adequately embodied in the actual must be postulated in order to account for the actual. Certain forms of existences “are possible only according to Ideas.”
“A plant, an animal, the orderly arrangement of the cosmos--probably, therefore, the entire natural world--clearly show that they are possible only according to Ideas, and that though no single creature in the conditions of its individual existence coincides with the Idea of what is most perfect in its kind--just as little as does any individual man exactly conform to the Idea of humanity, which he actually carries in his soul as the archetype of his actions--yet these Ideas are none the less completely determined in the Supreme Understanding, each as an individual and each as unchangeable, and are the original causes of things. But only the totality of things, in their interconnection as constituting the universe, is completely adequate to the Idea.”[1389]
Though Kant avows the intention of adapting the term Idea freely to the needs of his more Critical standpoint, all these considerations contribute to the rich and varied meanings in which he employs it.
Reflexionen and passages from the Lectures on Metaphysics may be quoted to show the thoroughly Platonic character of Kant’s early use of the term, and to illustrate its gradual adjustment to Critical demands.
“The Idea is the unity of knowledge, through which the manifold either of knowledge or of the object is possible. In the former, the whole of knowledge precedes its parts, the universal precedes the particular; in the latter, knowledge of the objects precedes their possibility, as e.g. in [objects that possess] order and perfection.”[1390] “That an object is possible only through a form of knowledge is a surprising statement; but all teleological relations are possible only through a form of knowledge [i.e. a concept].”[1391] “The Idea is single (individuum), self-sufficient, and eternal. The divinity of our soul is its capacity to form the Idea. The senses give only copies or rather apparentia.”[1392] “As the Understanding of God is the ground of all possibility, archetypes, Ideas, are in God.... The divine Intuitus contains Ideas according to which we ourselves are possible; cognitio divina est cognitio archetypa, and His Ideas are archetypes of things. The [corresponding] forms of knowledge possessed by the human understanding we may also entitle (in a comparative sense) archetypes or Ideas. They are those representations of our understanding which serve for judgment upon things.”[1393] “Idea is the representation of the whole in so far as it necessarily precedes the determination of the parts. It can never be empirically represented, because in experience we proceed from the parts through successive synthesis to the whole. It is the archetype of things, for certain objects are only possible through an Idea. Transcendental Ideas are those in which the absolute whole determines the parts in an aggregate or as series.”[1394] “The pure concepts of Reason have no exemplaria; they are themselves archetypes. But the concepts of our pure Reason have as their archetypes this Reason itself and are therefore subjective, not objective.”[1395] “The transcendental Ideas serve to limit the principles of experience, forbidding their extension to things in themselves, and showing that what is never an object of possible experience is not therefore a non-entity [Unding], and that experience is not adequate either to itself or to Reason, but always refers us further to what is beyond itself.”[1396] “The employment of the concept of understanding was immanent, that of the Ideas as concepts of objects is transcendent. But as regulative principles alike of the completion and of the limitation of our knowledge, they are Critically immanent.”[1397] “The difficulties of metaphysics all arise in connection with the reconciling of empirical principles with Ideas. The possibility of the latter cannot be denied, but neither can they be made empirically intelligible. The Idea is never a conceptus dabilis; it is not an empirically possible conception.”[1398]
Kant[1399] appends the following ‘Stufenleiter’ (ladder-like) arrangement of titles for the various kinds of representation. Representation (Vorstellung) is the term which he substitutes for the Cartesian and Lockian employment of the term idea, now reserved for use in its true Platonic meaning. To entitle such a representation as that of red colour an idea is, in Kant’s view, an intolerable and barbaric procedure; that representation is not even a concept of the understanding.
Representation { (Vorstellung, { Perception = Repraesentatio) { Representation ---> with or without { with consciousness consciousness {
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{ Idea (Idee) or concept of { Reason [formed, Kant here { says, from notions, but { Pure { transcending the possibility { { of experience]. { Objective = { Concept { { Notion (notio) [= category { Knowledge { (Begriff) { { of understanding]. -->{ (Erkenntnis) { { Empirical. { { Intuition (Anschauung). { Subjective = Sensation (Empfindung).
SECTION II
THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1400]
This section completes the metaphysical deduction of the Ideas. In the preceding sections on the logical and on the pure use of Reason, Kant has pointed out that Reason proceeds in accordance with the principle, that for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned, in which it finds completion, must be discovered. This principle is synthetic, involving a concept which transcends the understanding; and as Reason in its logical use is merely formal, that concept must be due to Reason in its creative or transcendental activity. In the section before us Kant deduces from the three kinds of syllogism the three possible forms in which such an Idea of Reason can present itself. The deduction is, as already noted, wholly artificial, and masks Kant’s real method of obtaining the Ideas, namely, through combination of the unique concept of the unconditioned with the three categories of relation. The deduction is based upon an extremely ingenious analogy between the logical function of Reason in deductive inference and its transcendental procedure in prescribing the Ideal of unconditioned totality. In the syllogism the predicate of the conclusion is shown to be connected with its subject in accordance with a condition which is stated in its universality in the major premiss. Thus if the conclusion be: Caius is mortal, in constructing the syllogism, required to establish it, we seek for a conception which contains the condition under which the predicate is given--in this case the conception “man”--and we state that condition in its universality: All men are mortal. Under this major premiss is then subsumed Caius, the object dealt with: Caius is a man. And so indirectly, by reference to the universal condition, we obtain the knowledge that Caius is mortal. Universality, antecedently stated, is restricted in the conclusion to a specific object. Now what corresponds in the synthesis of intuition to the universality (universalitas) of a logical premiss is allness (universitas) or totality of conditions. The transcendental concept of Reason, to which the logical procedure is to serve as clue, can therefore be no other than that of the totality of conditions for any given conditioned. And as totality of conditions is equivalent to the unconditioned, this latter must be taken as the fundamental concept of Reason; the unconditioned is conceived as being the ground of the synthesis of everything conditioned. But there are three species of relation, and consequently there are three forms in which the concept of Reason seeks to realise its demand for the unconditioned: (1) through categorical synthesis in one subject, (2) through hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series, and (3) through disjunctive synthesis of the parts in one system. To these three correspond the three species of syllogism, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, in each of which thought passes through a regressive series of prosyllogisms back to an unconditioned: the first to a concept which stands for what is always a subject and never a predicate; the second to a presupposition which itself presupposes nothing further; and the third to such an aggregate of the members of the division as will make that division complete. It may be observed that in this proof the threefold specification of the concept of the unconditioned is really obtained directly from the categories of relation, or at least from the judgments of relation, and not from the corresponding species of syllogism.
Totality and unconditionedness, when taken as equivalent, become synonymous with the absolute.[1401] This last term, however, especially when taken as defining possibility and necessity, is ambiguous. The absolutely possible may signify either that which in itself, i.e. so far as regards its internal content, is possible; or else that which is in every respect and in all relations possible. The two meanings have come to be connected largely owing to the fact that the internally impossible is impossible in every respect. Otherwise, however, the two meanings fall completely apart. Absolute necessity and inner necessity are quite diverse in character. We must not, for instance, argue that the opposite of what is absolutely necessary must be inwardly impossible, nor consequently that absolute necessity must in the end reduce to an inner necessity. Examination will show that, in certain types of cases, not the slightest meaning can be attached to the phrase ‘inner necessity.’ As we possess the terms inner and logical to denote the first form of necessity, there is no excuse for employing the term absolute in any but the wider sense. That, Kant holds, is its original and proper meaning. The absolute totality to which the concept of Reason refers is that form of completeness which is in every respect unconditioned.
In A 326 = B 383 Kant’s mode of statement emphasises the connection of the Ideas with the categories of relation. Reason, he claims, “seeks to extend the synthetic unity, which is thought in the category, to the absolutely unconditioned.” Such positive content as the Ideas can possess lies in the experience which they profess to unify; in so far as they transcend experience and point to an Ideal completion that is not empirically attainable, they refer to things of which the understanding can have no concept. It is necessary, however, that they should present themselves in this absolute and transcendent form, since otherwise the understanding would be without stimulus and without guidance. Though mere Ideas, they are neither arbitrary nor superfluous. They regulate the understanding in its empirical pursuit of that systematic unity which it requires for its own satisfaction.
In A 327-8 = B 383-4 one and the same ground is assigned for entitling the Ideas transcendental and also transcendent, namely, that, as they surpass experience, no object capable of being given through the senses corresponds to them. But a difference would none the less seem to be implied in the connotation of the two terms. In being prescribed by the very nature of Reason, they are transcendental; as overstepping the limits of experience, they are transcendent. Kant’s use of the terms subject and object in this passage is also somewhat puzzling. ‘Object’ is employed in the metaphysical sense proper only from the pre-Critical standpoint of the Dissertation, as meaning an existence apprehended through pure thought. The term ‘subject’ receives a correspondingly un-Critical connotation. The further phrase “the merely speculative use of Reason” is somewhat misleading, even though we recognise that for Kant speculative and theoretical are synonymous terms; we should rather expect “Reason in its legitimate or Critical or directive function.” Kant’s intended meaning, however, is sufficiently clear. When we say that a concept of Reason is an Idea merely, we have in mind the degree to which it can be empirically verified. We are asserting that it prescribes an Ideal to which experience may be made to approach, but which it can never attain. It defines “a problem to which there is no solution.” In the practical sphere of morals, on the other hand, the Ideal of Reason must never be so described. Though only partially realisable, it is genuinely actual. Even those actions which imperfectly embody it none the less presuppose it as their indispensable condition. In two respects, therefore, as Kant points out, the statement that the transcendental concepts of Reason are merely Ideas calls for qualification. In the first place they are by no means “superfluous and void.” They supply a canon for the fruitful employment of understanding. And secondly, they may perhaps be found to make possible a transition from natural to moral concepts, and so to bring the Ideas of practical Reason into connection with the principles of speculative thought. The reader may again note the genuinely Platonic character of Kant’s use of the term Idea.
In A 330-1 = B 386-7 Kant returns to the problem of the metaphysical deduction, and analyses the nature of syllogistic reasoning. The analysis differs from that of A 321 ff. = C 377 ff. only in emphasising that when a conclusion is given as valid the totality of the premisses required for its establishment can be postulated as likewise given, and that when completely stated in the implied prosyllogisms the premisses form a regressive series. In this way Kant contrives to bring the logical process into closer connection with the transcendental principle, which he now definitively formulates as follows: When the conditioned is given, the series of conditions up to the unconditioned is likewise given. The series of antecedent conditions may either have a first term or may be incapable of such. In either case it has to be viewed as unconditioned, in the one case in virtue of its unconditioned beginning, in the other in its character as an unending and therefore unlimited series. In one or other form Reason demands that the unconditioned be recognised as underlying and determining everything conditioned.[1402]
SECTION III
SYSTEM OF THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1403]
The three Ideas of Reason, as derived from the three kinds of syllogism, are now brought into connection with the three possible relations in which representations are found to stand: first, to the thinking subject; secondly, to objects as appearances; thirdly, to objects of thought in general. Kant argues that the completed totalities towards which Reason strives are likewise three in number. Reason seeks: (1) in regard to the subject known, as constituting the fact of inner experience, a representation of the self or soul that will render completely intelligible what is peculiar to the inner life; (2) in regard to the object known, a conception of the completed totality of the world of phenomena, the cosmos; (3) in regard to the ultimate synthesis of the subject known and the object known, such a conception of all existing things as will render intelligible the co-operation of mind and external nature in one experience. In this way Kant professes to obtain transcendental justification for the threefold division of metaphysical science into rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology. The absolute unity of the thinking subject is dealt with by psychology, the totality of all appearances by cosmology, and the Being, which contains the condition of the possibility of all that can be thought, by theology.
In thus proceeding, Kant is assuming that the concepts of unconditioned substance and of unconditioned necessity can be interpreted only in spiritualist and theological terms.[1404] This assumption stands in direct conflict with what the history of philosophy records. The Absolute has frequently been materialistically defined, and, as Kant himself admits, we cannot prove that the thinking subject may not be naturalistically conditioned. Architectonic is again exercising its baleful influence. That the argument is lacking in cogency is indeed so evident that Kant takes notice of the deficiency,[1405] and promises that it will be remedied in the sequel. This promise he is unable to fulfil. Such further reasons as he is able to offer are of the same external character.[1406]
“Of these transcendental Ideas, strictly speaking, no objective deduction, such as we were able to give of the categories, is possible.”[1407] As Kant indicates by use of the phrase ‘strictly speaking,’ this statement is subject to modification. He himself formulates a transcendental deduction of the Ideas, as principles regulative of experience.[1408] The deduction from the three forms of syllogism, which Kant here entitles subjective, ought properly to be named ‘metaphysical.’[1409]
I. THE PARALOGISMS OF PURE REASON[1411]
As rational psychology fails to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves, it identifies mere apperception with inner sense; the self in experiencing the succession of its inner states is supposed to acquire knowledge of its own essential nature. “I, as thinking, am an object of inner sense, and am entitled soul,” in contrast to the body which is an object of outer sense. Empirical psychology deals with the concrete detail of inner experience; rational psychology abstracts from all such special experiences, indeed from everything empirical, professing to establish its doctrine upon the single judgment, “I think.” That judgment has already been investigated in its connection with the problem of the possibility, within the field of experience, of synthetic a priori judgments. It has now to be considered as a possible basis for knowledge of the self as a thinking being (ein denkend Wesen) or soul (Seele).
Following the guiding thread of the table of categories, but placing them in what he regards as being, in this connection, the most convenient order, Kant obtains a “topic” or classification of the possible rubrics for the doctrines of a rational psychology: (1) the soul is substance; (2) is simple; (3) is numerically identical; (4) stands in relation to possible objects in space. Now all those four doctrines are, Kant holds, incapable of demonstration. The proofs propounded by rational psychology are logically imperfect, committing the logical fallacy which is technically named paralogism.[1412] The fallacy is not, however, of merely logical character. Had that been the case, it could never have gained such general currency. Certainly no metaphysical science, widely accepted by profound thinkers, could ever have come to be based upon it. The paralogism is transcendental in character, resting upon a transcendental ground. It represents an illusion which from any non-Critical standpoint is altogether unavoidable. Its dialectic is a natural dialectic, wrongly interpreted by the Schools, but not capriciously invented by them. The key to its proper treatment is first supplied by the results of the transcendental deduction. We are now called upon to apply these results in explanation of the occurrence of the paralogisms, and in judgment upon their false claims. Little that is really new is to be found in this chapter; but many of the established results of the Analytic receive interesting illustration, and are thereby set in a clearer light.
In rational psychology the “I think” is taken in its universal, or to use Kant’s somewhat misleading term, problematic aspect, that is to say, not as a judgment expressive of the self’s own existence but “in its mere possibility,”[1413] as representing the self-consciousness of all possible thinking beings. As we cannot gain a representation of thinking beings through outer experience, we are constrained to think them in terms of our own self-consciousness. The “I think” is thus taken as a universal judgment, expressing what belongs to the conception of thinking being in general. The judgment is so interpreted by rational psychology, “in order to see what predicates applicable to its subject (be that subject actually existent or not) may flow from so simple a judgment.”
In summarising what is directly relevant in the argument of the transcendental deduction, Kant emphasises that the I, as representation, is altogether empty of content.[1414]
“We cannot even say that it is a conception, but only that it is a bare (blosses) consciousness which accompanies all conceptions. Through this I or he or it (the thing) which thinks, nothing further is represented than a transcendental subject of the thoughts = x....”
It is apprehended only in its relation to the thoughts which are its predicates; apart from them we cannot form any conception whatever of it, but can only revolve in a perpetual circle, since any judgment upon it has already made use of its representation.[1415]
The patchwork character of the Critique, the artificial nature of the connections between its various parts, is nowhere more evident than in this section on the Paralogisms. According to the definition given of transcendental illusion, we naturally expect Kant’s argument to show that the Paralogisms rest upon a failure to distinguish between appearance and reality. As a matter of fact, the cause of their fallacy is traced in the first three Paralogisms solely to a failure to distinguish between the logical and the real application of the categories. The argument can indeed be restated so as to agree with the introductory sections of the Dialectic. But Kant’s manner of expounding the Paralogisms shows that this chapter must originally have been written independently of any intention to develop such teaching as that of the sections which in the ultimate arrangement of the Critique are made to lead up to it.[1416]
=First Paralogism: of Substantiality.=[1417]--Save for the phrase ‘subject in itself,’ there is, in Kant’s comment upon this Paralogism, not a word regarding the necessity of a distinction between appearance and reality, but only an insistence that the “I think” yields no knowledge of the thinking self. Consciousness of the self and knowledge of its underlying substance are by no means identical. The self, so far as it enters into consciousness, is a merely logical subject; the underlying substrate is that to which this self-consciousness and all other thoughts are due. It is in the light of this distinction that Kant discusses the substantiality of the subject. As expressive of the “I think,” the category of substance and attribute can be employed only to define the relation in which consciousness stands to its thoughts; it expresses the merely logical relation of a subject to its predicates. It tells us nothing regarding the nature of the “I,” save only that it is the invariable centre of reference for all thoughts. In order to know the self as substance, and so as capable of persisting throughout all change, and as surviving even the death of the body, we should require to have an intuition of it, and of such intuition there is not the slightest trace in the “I think.” It “signifies a substance only in Idea, not in reality.”[1418] As Kant adds later,[1419] the permanence and self-identity of the representation of the self justifies no argument to the permanence and self-identity of its underlying conditions. Inference from the nature of representation to the nature of the object represented is entirely illegitimate. In the equating of the two, and not, as the introduction to the Dialectic would lead us to expect, in a failure to distinguish appearance from reality, consists the paralogistic fallacy of this first syllogism.
=Second Paralogism: of Simplicity.=[1420]--We may follow Adickes[1421] in his analysis of A 351-62. (a) The original criticism, parallel to that of the first Paralogism, would seem to be contained in paragraphs five to nine. (b) The opening paragraphs, and (c) the concluding paragraphs, would seem, for reasons stated below, to be independent and later additions.
(a) The argument of the central paragraphs runs almost exactly parallel with the criticism of the first Paralogism, applying the same line of thought, in disproof of the assumed argument for the simplicity of the soul. It may be noted, in passing, that Kant here departs from his table of categories. There is no category of simplicity. The connection which he seeks to establish between the concept of simplicity and the categories of quality is arbitrary. It more naturally connects with the category of unity; but the category of unity is required for the third Paralogism. For explanation of the way in which he equates the concept of simplicity with the category of reality Kant is satisfied to refer the reader to the section on the second antinomy in which this same identification occurs.[1422] Indeed the simplicity here dwelt upon seems hardly distinguishable from substantiality, and therefore it is not surprising that Kant’s criticism of the second Paralogism should be practically identical with that of the first.[1423] Since the “I,” as logical subject of thought, signifies only a something in general, and embodies no insight into the constitution of this something, it is for that reason empty of all content, and consequently simple. “The simplicity of the representation of a subject is not eo ipso a knowledge of the simplicity of the subject itself....” The second Paralogism thus, in Kant’s view, falsely argues from the merely logical unity of the subject in representation to the actual simplicity of the subject in itself.
(b) One reason for regarding the first four paragraphs as a later addition is their opening reference to the introductory sections of the Dialectic, of which this chapter otherwise takes little or no account. This Paralogism is, Kant declares, “the Achilles of all the dialectical inferences in the pure doctrine of the soul,” meaning that it may well seem a quite invulnerable argument.[1424]
“It is no mere sophistical play contrived by a dogmatist in order to impart to his assertions a superficial plausibility (Schein), but an inference which appears to withstand even the keenest scrutiny and the most scrupulously exact investigation.”
The second paragraph is a very pointed restatement of a main supporting argument of this second Paralogism. This argument well deserves the eulogy with which Kant has ushered it in. It is as follows. The unity of consciousness can not be explained as due to the co-operative action of independent substances. Such a merely external effect as that of motion in a material body may be the resultant of the united motions of its parts. But it is otherwise with thought. For should that which thinks be viewed as composite, and the different representations, as, for instance, of the single words of a verse, be conceived as distributed among the several parts, a multiplicity of separate consciousnesses would result, and the single complex consciousness, that of the verse as a whole, would be rendered impossible. Consciousness cannot therefore--such is the argument--inhere in the composite. The soul must be a simple substance.[1425]
As there is no reference in this argument to the “I think,” the criticism cannot be that of the first Paralogism, nor that of the central paragraphs of this second Paralogism. Kant’s reply--as given in the third and fourth paragraphs--is in effect to refer the reader to the results of the Analytic, and is formulated in the manner of his Introduction to the Critique. The principle that multiplicity of representation presupposes absolute unity in the thinking subject can neither be demonstrated analytically from mere concepts, nor derived from experience. Being a synthetic a priori judgment, it can be established only by means of a transcendental deduction. But in that form it will define only a condition required for the possibility of consciousness; it can tell us nothing in regard to the noumenal nature of the thinking being. And, as Kant argues in the third Paralogism,[1426] there may be a possible analogy between thought and motion, though of a different kind from that above suggested.
The entire absence of all connection between the argument of these paragraphs and the argument of those which immediately follow upon them, at least suffices to show that this second Paralogism has not been written as a continuous whole; and taken together with the fact that the problem is here formulated in terms of the Introduction to the Critique, would seem to show that this part of the section is of comparatively late origin.
(c) The concluding paragraphs, which are of considerable intrinsic interest, also reflect an independent line of criticism. As the phrase “the above proposition”[1427] seems to indicate, they were not originally composed in this present connection. They give expression to Kant’s partial agreement with the line of argument followed by the rationalists, but also seek to show that, despite such partial validity, the argument does not lend support to any metaphysical extension of our empirical knowledge. In A 358 we have what may be a reference to the argument of the introductory sections of the Dialectic. The argument under criticism is praised as being “natural and popular,” “occurring even to the least sophisticated understanding,” and as leading it to view the soul as an altogether different existence from the body. The argument is as follows. None of the qualities proper to material existence, such as impenetrability or motion, are to be discovered in our inner experience. Nor can feelings, desires, thoughts, etc., be externally intuited. In view of these differences, we seem justified in asserting that the soul cannot be an appearance in space, and cannot therefore be corporeal. Kant replies by drawing attention to the fundamental Critical distinction between appearances and things in themselves.[1428] If material bodies, as apprehended, were things in themselves, the argument would certainly justify us in refusing to regard the soul and its states as of similar nature. But since, as the Aesthetic has shown, bodies, as known, are mere appearances of outer sense, the real question at issue is not that of the distinction between the soul and bodies in space, but of the distinction between the soul and that something which conditions all outer appearances.
“...this something which underlies the outer appearances and which so affects our sense that it obtains the representations of space, matter, shape, etc., this something, viewed as noumenon (or better, as transcendental object), might yet also at the same time serve as the subject of our thoughts....”[1429]
Thus the argument criticised serves only to enforce the very genuine distinction between inner and outer appearances; it justifies no assertion, either positive or negative, as to the nature of the soul or as to its relation to body in its noumenal aspect. The monadistic, spiritualist theory of material existence remains an open possibility, though only as an hypothesis incapable either of proof or of disproof. We cannot obtain, by way of inference from the character of our apperceptive consciousness, any genuine addition to our speculative insight.
=Third Paralogism: of Personality.=[1430]--Kant’s criticism again runs parallel with that of the preceding Paralogisms. The fallacy involved is traced to a confusion between the numerical identity of the self in representation and the numerical identity of the subject in itself. The logical subject of knowledge must, as the transcendental deduction has proved, think itself as self-identical throughout all its experiences. This is indeed all that the judgment “I think” expresses. It is mere identity, “I am I.” But from the identity of representation we must not argue to identity of the underlying self. So far as the unity of self-consciousness is concerned, there is nothing to prevent the noumenal conditions of the self from undergoing transformation so complete as to involve the loss of identity, while yet supporting the representation of an identical self.
“Although the dictum of certain ancient Schools, that everything in the world is in a flux and nothing permanent and abiding, cannot be reconciled with the admission of substances, it is not refuted by the unity of self-consciousness. For we are unable from our own consciousness to determine whether, as souls, we are permanent or not. Since we reckon as belonging to our identical self only that of which we are conscious, we must necessarily judge that we are one and the same throughout the whole time of which we are conscious. We cannot, however, claim that such a judgment would be valid from the standpoint of an outside observer. As the only permanent appearance which we meet with in the soul is the representation ‘I’ that accompanies and connects them all, we are unable to prove that this ‘I,’ a mere thought, may not be in the same state of flux as the other thoughts which are connected together by its means.”[1431]
And Kant adds an interesting illustration.[1432]
“An elastic ball which impinges on another similar ball in a straight line communicates to the latter its whole motion, and therefore its whole state (i.e. if we take account only of the positions in space). If, then, in analogy with such bodies, we postulate substances such that the one communicates to the other representations together with the consciousness of them, we can conceive a whole series of substances of which the first transmits its state together with its consciousness to the second, the second its own state with that of the preceding substance to the third, and this in turn the states of all the preceding substances together with its own consciousness and with their consciousness to another. The last substance would then be conscious of all the states of the substances, which had undergone change before its own change, as being its own states, because they would have been transferred to it together with the consciousness of them. And yet it would not have been one and the same person in all these states.”[1433]
The perversely Hegelian character of Caird’s and Watson’s manner of interpreting the Critique is especially evident in their treatment of the Paralogisms. They make not the least mention of this part of Kant’s teaching.
Kant employs a further argument which would seem to show that at the time when these paragraphs were written the general tendency of his thought was predominantly subjectivist in character. There are, he implies, as many different times as there are selves that represent time.[1434] The argument is as follows. As the “I think” is equivalent to “I am I,” we may say either that all time of which I am conscious is in me, or that I am conscious of myself as numerically identical in each and every part of it. In my individual consciousness, therefore, identity of my person is unfailingly present. But an observer, viewing me from the outside,[1435] represents me in the time of his own consciousness; and as the time in which he thus sets me is not that of my own thinking, the self-identity of my consciousness, even if he recognises its existence, does not justify him in inferring the objective permanence of my self.
The two concluding paragraphs seem to have been independently composed.[1436] They contribute nothing of importance.
=Fourth Paralogism: of Ideality.=[1437]--The main argument of this Paralogism, which contains the first edition refutation of idealism, has already been considered above.[1438] We require, therefore, only to treat of it in its connection with the other Paralogisms, and to note some few minor points that remain for consideration. Its argument differs from that of the other Paralogisms in that the fallacy involved is traced, in agreement with the requirements of the introductory sections of the Dialectic, to a failure to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves. Its connection with the table of categories is extremely artificial. In A 344 = B 402 the category employed is that of possibility, in A 404 and A 344 n. that of existence.[1439] Kant’s attempt to combine the problem here treated with that of the other Paralogisms can only be explained as due to the requirements of his architectonic.[1440] This Paralogism does not concern itself with the nature of the soul. It refers exclusively to the mode of existence to be ascribed to objective appearances. None the less, Kant contrives to bring it within the range of rational psychology in the following manner. He argues[1441] that rational psychologists are one and all adherents of empirical idealism. They confound appearances in space with things in themselves, and therefore assert that our knowledge of their existence is inferential and consequently uncertain. The errors of empirical idealism are thus bound up with the dogmatic assumptions of the rationalist position. They are traceable to its failure to distinguish between appearances and things in themselves. Such dogmatism may take the form of materialism or of ontological dualism, as well as of spiritualism.[1442] All three, in professing to possess knowledge of things in themselves, violate Critical principles. If the chief function of rational psychology consists in securing the conception of the soul against the onslaughts of materialism,[1443] that can be much more effectively attained through transcendental idealism.
“For, on [Critical] teaching, so completely are we freed from the fear that on the removal of matter all thought, and even the very existence of thinking beings, would be destroyed, that on the contrary it is clearly shown that if I remove the thinking subject the whole corporeal world must at once vanish, since it is nothing save appearance in the sensibility of our subject and a species of its representations.”[1444]
We do not, indeed, succeed in proving that the thinking self is in its existence independent of the “transcendental substrate”[1445] of outer appearances. But as both possibilities remain open, the admission of our ignorance leaves us free to look to other than speculative sources for proof of the independent and abiding existence of the self.
=Reflection on the Whole of Pure Psychology.=[1446]--This section affords Kant the opportunity of discussing certain problems which he desires to deal with, but is unable to introduce under the recognised rubrics of his logical architectonic.[1447] There are, Kant says, three other dialectical questions, essential to the purposes of rational psychology, grounded upon the same transcendental illusion (confusion of appearances with things in themselves), and soluble in similar fashion: (1) as to the possibility of the communion of soul and body, i.e. of the state of the soul during the life of the body; (2) as to the beginning of this association, i.e. of the soul in and before birth; (3) as to the termination of this association, i.e. of the soul in and after the death of the body. Kant treats these three problems from the extreme subjectivist standpoint, inner and outer sense being distinguished and related in the manner peculiar to the first edition. The contrast between mind and body is a difference solely between the appearances of inner and those of outer sense. Both alike exist only in and through the thinking subject, though the latter
“...have this deceptive property that, representing objects in space, they as it were detach themselves from the soul and appear to hover outside it.”[1448]
The problem, therefore, of the association of soul and body, properly understood, is not that of the interaction of the soul with other known substances of an opposite nature, but only
“...how in a thinking subject outer intuition, namely, that of space, with its filling in of figure and motion, is possible. And that is a question which no human being can possibly answer. The gap in our knowledge ... can only be indicated through the ascription of outer appearances to that transcendental object which is the cause of this species of representations, but of which we can have no knowledge whatsoever and of which we shall never acquire any conception.”[1449]
The familiar problem of the association of mind and body is thus due to a transcendental illusion which leads the mind to hypostatise representations, viewing them as independent existences that act upon the senses and generate our subjective states. The motions in space, which are merely the expression in terms of appearance of the influence of the transcendental object upon “our senses,”[1450] are thus wrongly regarded as the causes of our sensations. They themselves are mere representations, and, as Kant implies, are for that reason incapable of acting as causes. In this section, it may be noted in passing, there is not the least trace of the phenomenalist teaching, according to which spatial objects are viewed as acting upon the bodily sense-organs. Kant here denies all interaction of mind and body, and recognises only the interaction of their noumenal conditions. Appearances as such can never have causal efficacy. The position represented is pure subjectivism, and very significantly goes along with Kant’s earlier doctrine of the transcendental object.[1451]
The dogmatic character of the interaction theory appears very clearly, as Kant proceeds to point out, in the objections which have been made to it, whether by those who substitute for it the theories of pre-established harmony and occasionalism, or by those who adopt a sceptical non-committal attitude. Their objections rest upon exactly the same presupposition as the theory which they are attacking. To demonstrate the impossibility of interaction, they must be able to show that the transcendental object is not the cause of outer appearances; and owing to the limitations of our knowledge that is entirely beyond our powers. Failing, however, to draw a distinction between appearances and things in themselves, they have not realised the actual nature of the situation, and accordingly have directed their objections merely to showing that mind and body, taken as independent existences, must not be viewed as capable of interaction.
The Critical standpoint also supplies the proper formulation for the other two problems--a formulation which in itself decides the degree and manner of our possible insight in regard to them. The view that the thinking subject may be capable of thought prior to all association with the body should be stated as asserting
“...that prior to the beginning of that species of sensibility in virtue of which something appears to us in space, those transcendental objects, which in our present state appear to us as bodies, could have been intuited in an entirely different manner.”[1452]
The view that the soul, upon the cessation of all association with the corporeal world, may still continue to think, will similarly consist in the contention
“...that if that species of sensibility, in virtue of which transcendental objects (which in our present state are entirely unknown) appear to us as a material world, should cease, all intuition of them would not for that reason be removed; but that it would still be possible that those same unknown objects should continue to be known [sic] by the thinking subject, though no longer, indeed, in the quality of bodies.”[1453]
Not the least ground, Kant claims, can be discovered by means of speculation in support of such assertions. Even their bare possibility cannot be demonstrated. But it is equally impossible to establish any valid objection to them. Since we cannot pretend to knowledge of things in themselves, a modest acquiescence in the limitations of experience alone becomes us.
The remaining paragraphs (A 396-405) contain nothing that is new. They merely repeat points already more adequately stated. A 401-2, which deals with the nature of apperception and its relation to the categories, has been considered above.[1454] The argument that, as the self must presuppose the thought of itself in knowing anything, it cannot know itself as object, is also commented upon above.[1455]
The statement[1456] that the determining self (the thinking, das Denken) is to be distinguished from the determinable self (the thinking subject) as knowledge from its object, should be interpreted in the light of Kant’s argument in the second and third Paralogisms, that the simplicity and self-identity of the representation of an object must not be taken as knowledge of simplicity or numerical identity in the object represented.
The analysis given in A 402-3 of the fallacy involved in the Paralogisms is, as Adickes has pointed out,[1457] confused and misleading. Kant here declares that in the major premiss of each syllogism the assertion is intended in the merely logical sense, and therefore as applicable only to the subject in representation, but in the minor premiss and conclusion is asserted of the subject as bearer of consciousness, i.e. in itself. But were that so, the minor premiss would be a false assertion, and the false conclusion would not be traceable to logical fallacy. Kant gives the correct statement of his position in B 410-11.[1458] The attempted justification of the fourfold arrangement of the Paralogisms with which the section concludes suffers from the artificiality of Kant’s logical architectonic.
SECOND EDITION STATEMENT OF THE PARALOGISMS[1459]
Except for the introductory paragraphs, which remain unaltered, the chapter is completely recast in the second edition. The treatment of the four Paralogisms which in the first edition occupied thirty-three pages is reduced to five. The problems of the mutual interaction of mind and body, of its prenatal character and of its immortality, the discussion of which in the first edition required some ten pages, are now disposed of in a single paragraph (B 426-7). The remaining twenty-two pages of the new chapter are almost entirely devoted to more or less polemical discussion of criticisms which had been passed upon the first edition. These had been in great part directed against Kant’s doctrine of apperception and of inner sense, and so could fittingly be dealt with in connection with the problems of rational psychology. As Benno Erdmann has suggested,[1460] B 409-14 and 419-21 would seem to be directed against Ulrichs’[1461] Leibnizian position and especially against his metaphysical interpretation of apperception. B 428-30 treats of the difficulties raised by Pistorius[1462] in regard to the existence of the self. B 414-15 is similarly polemical, but in this case Kant cites his opponent, Mendelssohn, by name. Throughout, as in the alterations made in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, Kant insists more strongly than in the first edition upon the unknowableness of the self, and on the difference between thought and knowledge. The pure forms of thought are not, Kant now declares, concepts of objects, that is, are not categories,[1463] but “merely logical functions.” Though this involves no essential doctrinal change, it indicates the altered standpoint from which Kant now regards his problem. Its significance has already been dwelt upon.[1464]
In formulating the several arguments of the four Paralogisms, Kant develops and places in the forefront a statement which receives only passing mention in A 352-3, 362, 366-7, 381-2, namely, that the truths contained in the judgments of rational psychology find expression in merely identical (i.e. analytic) propositions. This enables Kant to formulate both the Paralogisms and his criticisms thereof in much briefer and more pointed fashion. In each case the Paralogism, as he shows, substitutes a synthetic a priori judgment, involving an extension of our knowledge and a reference to the noumenal self, for the given judgment which, in so far as it is valid, is always a merely analytic restatement of the purely formal “I think.” From the very start also, Kant introduces the distinctions of his own Critical teaching, especially that between thinking and intuiting, and that between the determining and the determinable self.
=First Paralogism.=--That the I which thinks must always in thought be viewed as subject and not as mere predicate, is an identical proposition. It must not be taken as meaning that the subject which underlies thought is an abiding substance. This latter proposition is of much wider scope, and would involve such data (in this case entirely lacking) as are required for the establishment of a synthetic a priori judgment.
=Second Paralogism.=--That the I of apperception and so of all thought is single and cannot be resolved into a multiplicity of subjects, is involved in the very conception of thought, and is therefore an analytic proposition. It must not be interpreted as signifying that the self is a simple substance. For the latter assertion is again a synthetic proposition, and presupposes for its possibility an intuition by the self of its own essential nature. As all our intuitions are merely sensuous, that cannot be looked for in the “I think.”
“It would, indeed, be surprising if what in other cases requires so much labour to discover--namely, what it is, of all that is presented by intuition, that is substance, and further, whether this substance is simple (e.g. in the parts of matter)--should be thus directly given me, as if by revelation, in the poorest of all representations.”[1465]
We may here observe how the practice, adopted by Caird, of translating Anschauung by ‘perception’ has misled him into serious misunderstanding of Kant’s teaching. It has caused him[1466] to interpret Kant as arguing that we have no knowledge of the self because we can have no sensuous perception of it. Kant’s argument rather is that as all human “intuition” is sensuous, we are cut off from all possibility of determining our noumenal nature. We are thrown back upon mere concepts which, as yielding only analytic propositions, cannot extend our insight beyond the limits of sense-experience. The term ‘intuition’ is much broader in meaning than the term ‘perception’; it can also be employed as equivalent to the phrase ‘immediate apprehension.’[1467] The grounds for Kant’s contention that we have no intuition or immediate knowledge of the self are embodied in, and inspire, his doctrine of inner sense.[1468] It may also be noted that in B 412 Kant, speaking of the necessity of intuition for knowledge of the self, uses the unusual phrase ‘a permanent intuition’--a phrase which, so far as I have observed, he nowhere employs in dealing with the intuition that conditions the sense perception of material bodies.[1469] Its employment here may perhaps be due to the fact that its implied reference is not to a given sensuous manifold but to some form of immediate apprehension, capable of revealing the permanent nature of the noumenal self.
=Third Paralogism.=--That I am identical with myself throughout the consciousness of my manifold experiences, is likewise an analytic proposition obtainable by mere analysis of the “I think.” And since that form of consciousness, as stated in the criticism of the preceding Paralogism, is purely conceptual, containing no element of intuition, no judgment based solely upon it can ever be taken as equivalent to the synthetic proposition that the self, as thinking being, is an identical substance.
=Fourth Paralogism.=--This Paralogism is somewhat altered. As noted above,[1470] the problem dealt with in the first edition concerns the outer world, and only quite indirectly the nature of the self. In the second edition that argument is restated,[1471] and is more properly located within the Analytic. The argument which now takes its place runs parallel with that of the three preceding Paralogisms. The assertion that I distinguish my own existence as a thinking being from other things outside me, including thereunder my own body, is an analytic proposition, since by other things is meant things which I think as different from myself.
“But I do not thereby learn whether this consciousness of myself would be at all possible apart from things outside me through which representations are given to me, and whether, therefore, I can exist merely as thinking being (i.e. without existing in human form).”
In =B 417-18= Kant points out that rational psychology, in asserting that the self can be conscious apart from all consciousness of outer things, commits itself to the acceptance of problematic idealism. If consciousness of outer objects is not necessary to consciousness of self, there can be no valid method of proving their existence. In the fourth Paralogism of the first edition, the inter-dependence of rational psychology and empirical idealism is also dwelt upon, but is there traced to a confusion of appearances with things in themselves.[1472]
=B 410-11.=--The correct formulation is here given of what in the first edition[1473] is quite incorrectly stated.[1474] A paralogism is a syllogism which errs in logical form (as contrasted with a syllogism erring in matter, i.e. the premisses of which are false). In the paralogisms of Rational Psychology, the logical fallacy committed is that of ambiguous middle, or as Kant names it, the sophisma figurae dictionis. In the major premiss the middle term is used as referring to real existence, in the minor only as expressive of the unity of consciousness.
=Refutation of Mendelssohn’s Proof of the Permanence of the Soul.=[1475]--Mendelssohn’s argument is that the soul, as it does not consist of parts,[1476] cannot disappear gradually by disintegration into its constituent elements. If, therefore, it perishes, it must pass out of existence suddenly; at one moment it will exist, at the next moment it will be non-existent. But, Mendelssohn maintains, for three closely connected reasons this would seem to be impossible. In the first place, the immediate juxtaposition of directly opposed states is never to be met with in the material world. Complete opposites, such as day and night, waking and sleeping, never follow upon one another abruptly, but only through a series of intermediate states.[1477] Secondly, among the opposites which material processes thus bridge over, the opposition of being and not-being is never to be found. Only by a miracle can a material existence be annihilated.[1478] If, therefore, empirical evidence is to be allowed as relevant, we must not assert of the invisible soul what is never known to befall the material existences of the visible world. Thirdly--the only part of Mendelssohn’s argument which Kant mentions--the sudden cessation of the soul’s existence would also violate the law of the continuity of time.[1479] Between any two moments there is always an intermediate time in which the one moment passes continuously into the other.
Kant’s reply to this third part of Mendelssohn’s argument is that though the soul must not be conceived as perishing suddenly, it may pass out of existence by a continuous diminution through an infinite number of smaller degrees of intensive reality; and in support of this view he maintains the very doubtful position that clearness and obscurity of representation are not features of the contents apprehended, but only of the intensity of the consciousness directed upon them.[1480]
=B 417-22.=--Kant here points out that rational psychology, as above expounded, proceeds synthetically, starting from the assertion of the substantiality of the soul and proceeding to the proof that its existence is independent of outer things. But it may proceed in the reverse fashion, analytically developing the implications supposed to be involved in the “I think,” viewed as an existential judgment, i.e. as signifying “I exist thinking.” Kant restates the argument in this analytic form in order, as it would seem, to secure the opportunity of replying to those criticisms of his teaching in the first edition which concern his doctrine of apperception and his employment of the categories, especially of the category of existence, in relation to the self. What is new and important in these pages, and also in the connected passages in B 428-30, has been discussed above.[1481]
=B 419-20.=--After remarking that simplicity or unity is involved in the very possibility of apperception, Kant proceeds to argue that it can never be explained from a strictly materialist standpoint, since nothing that is real in space is ever simple. Points are merely limits, and are not therefore themselves anything that can form part of space. The passage as a whole would seem to be directed against the Leibnizian teaching of Ulrichs.[1482]
=B 426-7.=--Kant makes a remark to which nothing in his argument yields any real support, namely, that the dialectical illusion in rational psychology is due to the substitution of an Idea of reason for the quite indeterminate concept of a thinking being in general. As is argued below,[1483] the assumption which he is here making that the concept of the self is an a priori and ultimate Idea of pure Reason, cannot be regarded as a genuine part of his Critical teaching.
=B 427-8= touches quite briefly upon questions more fully and adequately treated in the first edition. The scanty treatment here accorded to them would seem to indicate, as Benno Erdmann remarks,[1484] that the problem of the interaction of mind and body which so occupied Kant’s mind from 1747 to 1770 has meantime almost entirely lost interest for him. The problem of immortality remains central, but it is now approached from the ethical side.
In =B 421= and =B 423-6= Kant draws from his criticism of the Paralogisms the final conclusion that the metaphysical problems as to the nature and destiny of the self are essentially practical problems. When approached from a theoretical standpoint, as curious questions to be settled by logical dialectic, their speculative proof
“...so stands upon the point of a hair, that even the schools preserve it from falling only so long as they keep it unceasingly spinning round like a top; even in their own eyes it yields no abiding foundation upon which anything could be built.”[1485] “Rational psychology exists not as doctrine, ... but only as discipline. It sets impassable limits to speculative reason in this field, and thus keeps us, on the one hand, from throwing ourselves into the arms of soulless materialism, or, on the other hand, from losing ourselves in an unsubstantial spiritualism which can have no real meaning for us in this present life. But though it furnishes no positive doctrine, it reminds us that we should regard this refusal of Reason to give satisfying response to our inquisitive probings into what is beyond the limits of this present life as a hint from Reason to divert our self-knowledge from fruitless and extravagant speculation to its fruitful practical employment.”[1486] “The proofs which are serviceable for the world at large preserve their entire value undiminished, and indeed, upon the surrender of these dogmatic pretensions, gain in clearness and in natural force. For Reason is then located in its own peculiar sphere, namely the order of ends, which is also at the same time an order of nature; and since it is in itself a practical faculty which is not bound down to natural conditions, it is justified in extending the order of ends, and therewith our own existence, beyond the limits of experience and of life.”[1487]
Then follows brief indication of the central teaching of the Metaphysics of Ethics and of the two later Critiques. Through moral values that outweigh all considerations of utility and happiness, we become conscious of an inner vocation which inspires feelings of sublimity similar to those which are aroused by contemplation of the starry firmament; and to the verities thus disclosed we can add the less certain but none the less valuable confirmation yielded by natural beauty and design, and by the conformity of nature to our intellectual demands.
“Man’s natural endowments--not merely his talents and the impulses to employ them, but above all else the Moral Law within him--go so far beyond all utility and advantage which he may derive from them in this present life, that he learns thereby to prize the mere consciousness of a righteous will as being, apart from all advantageous consequences, apart even from the shadowy reward of posthumous fame, supreme over all other values; and so feels an inner call to fit himself, by his conduct in this world, and by the sacrifice of many of its advantages, for being a citizen of a better world upon which he lays hold in Idea. This powerful and incontrovertible proof is reinforced by our ever-increasing knowledge of purposiveness in all that we see around us, and by a glimpse of the immensity of creation, and therefore also by the consciousness of a certain illimitableness in the possible extension of our knowledge and of a striving commensurate therewith. All this still remains to us, though we must renounce the hope of ever comprehending, from the mere theoretical knowledge of ourselves, the necessary continuance of our existence.”[1488]
IS THE NOTION OF THE SELF A NECESSARY IDEA OF REASON?
One point of great importance must be dwelt upon before we pass from the Paralogisms. Though the negative consequences which follow from the teaching of the objective deduction are here developed in the most explicit manner, Kant does not within the limits of this chapter, in either edition, make any further reference to the doctrine expounded in the introductory sections of the Dialectic,[1489] viz. that the notion of the self as an immortal being is a necessary Idea of human Reason. The reader is therefore left under the impression that that doctrine is unaffected by the destructive criticism passed upon rational psychology, and that it still survives as an essential tenet of the Critical philosophy. And he is confirmed in this view when he finds the doctrine reappearing in the Appendix to the Dialectic and in the Methodology. The Idea of the self is there represented as performing a quite indispensable, regulative function in the development of the empirical science of psychology. Now it is one thing to maintain the existence of Ideal demands of Reason for unity, system and unconditionedness, and to assert that it is in virtue of these demands that we are led, in the face of immense discouragement and seeming contradictions, to reduce the chance collocations and bewildering complexities of ordinary experience to something more nearly approximating to what Reason prescribes. But it is a very different matter when Kant claims that in any one sphere, such as that of psychology, the unity and the unconditionedness must necessarily be of one predetermined type. He is then injecting into the Ideals that specific guidance which only the detail of experience is really capable of supplying. He is proving false to his own Critical empiricism, in which no function is ascribed to Reason that need in any way conflict with the autonomy of specialist research; and he is also violating his fundamental principle that the a priori can never be other than purely formal. Indeed, when Kant discloses somewhat more in detail what he means by the regulative function of the Idea of the self, the ambiguity of his statements reveals the unconsidered character of this part of his teaching. It is the expression only of a preconception, and has eluded the scrutiny of his Critical method largely because of the protective colouring which its admirable adaptation to the needs of his architectonic confers upon it. If, for instance, we compare the three passages in which it is expounded in the Appendix to the Dialectic, we find that Kant himself alternates between the authoritative prescription to psychology of a spiritualist hypothesis and what in ultimate analysis, when ambiguities of language are discounted, amounts simply to the demand for the greatest possible simplification of its complex phenomena. The passages are as follows.
“In conformity with these Ideas as principles we shall first, in psychology, connect in inner experience all appearances, all actions and receptivity of our mind, as if (als ob) the mind were a simple substance which persists with personal identity (in this life at least), while its states, to which those of the body belong only as outer conditions, are in continual change.”[1490]
“...in the human mind we have sensation, consciousness, imagination, memory, wit, power of discrimination, pleasure, desire, etc. Now, to begin with, a logical maxim requires that we should reduce, so far as may be possible, this seeming diversity, by comparing these with one another and detecting their hidden identity. We have to enquire whether imagination combined with consciousness may not be the same thing as memory, wit, power of discrimination, and perhaps even identical with understanding and Reason. Though logic is not capable of deciding whether a fundamental power actually exists, the Idea of such a power is the problem involved in a systematic representation of the multiplicity of powers. The logical principle of Reason calls upon us to bring about such unity as completely as possible; and the more appearances of this or that power are found to be identical with one another, the more probable it becomes that they are simply different manifestations of one and the same power, which may be entitled, relatively speaking, their fundamental power. The same is done with the other powers. The relatively fundamental powers must in turn be compared with one another, with a view to discovering their harmony, and so bringing them nearer to a single radical, i.e. absolutely fundamental, power. But this unity of Reason is purely hypothetical. We do not assert that such a power must necessarily be met with, but that we must seek it in the interest of Reason, that is, of establishing certain principles for the manifold rules which experience may supply to us. We must endeavour, wherever possible, to bring in this way systematic unity into our knowledge.”[1491]
In the third of the Appendix passages these two views are confusedly combined. Kant is insisting that an Idea never asserts, even as an hypothesis, the existence of a real thing.
”[An Idea] is only the schema of the regulative principle by which Reason, so far as lies in its power, extends systematic unity over the whole field of experience. The first object of such an Idea is the ‘I’ itself, viewed simply as thinking nature or soul. If I am to investigate the properties with which a thinking being exists in itself, I must interrogate experience. I cannot even apply any one of the categories to this object, except in so far as its schema is given in sense intuition. But I never thereby attain to a systematic unity of all appearances of inner sense. Instead, then, of the empirical concept (of that which the soul actually is), which cannot carry us far, Reason takes the concept of the empirical unity of all thought; and by thinking this unity as unconditioned and original, it forms from it a concept of Reason, i.e. the Idea of a simple substance, which, unchangeable in itself (personally identical), stands in association with other real things outside it; in a word, the Idea of a simple self-subsisting intelligence. Yet in so doing it has nothing in view save principles of systematic unity in the explanation of the appearances of the soul. It is endeavouring to represent all determinations as existing in a single subject, all powers, so far as possible, as derived from a single fundamental power, all change as belonging to the states of one and the same permanent being, and all appearances in space as completely different from the actions of thought. The simplicity and other properties of substance are intended to be only the schema of this regulative principle, and are not presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing. The soul in itself could not be known through these assumed predicates, not even if we regarded them as absolutely valid in regard to it. For they constitute a mere Idea which cannot be represented in concreto. Nothing but advantage can result from the psychological Idea thus conceived, if only we take heed that it is not viewed as more than a mere Idea, and that it is therefore taken as valid only in its bearing on the systematic employment of Reason in determining the appearances of our soul. For no empirical laws of bodily appearances, which are of a totally different kind, will then intervene in the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner sense. No windy hypotheses of generation, extinction, and palingenesis of souls will be permitted. The consideration of this object of inner sense will thus be kept completely pure and unmixed, without employing heterogeneous properties. Also, Reason’s investigations will be directed to reducing the grounds of explanation in this field, so far as may be possible, to a single principle. All this will be best obtained (indeed is obtainable in no other way) through such a schema, viewed as if (als ob) it were a real being. The psychological Idea, moreover, can signify nothing but the schema of a regulative principle. For were I to enquire whether the soul in itself is of spiritual nature, the question would have no meaning. In employing such a concept I not only abstract from corporeal nature, but from nature in general, i.e. from all predicates of a possible experience, and therefore from all conditions for thinking an object for such a concept: yet only as related to an object can it be said to have a meaning.”[1492]
The last passage would seem to indicate that Kant has still another and only partially avowed reason for insisting upon a special and spiritualist Idea, as regulative of empirical psychology. It is necessary, he would seem to argue, in order to mark off the peculiar nature of its subject matter, and to warn us against attempting to explain its phenomena in the mechanistic manner of physical science. But if that is Kant’s intention, he has failed to formulate the position in any really tenable way. It is impossible to maintain, as he here does, that “no empirical laws of bodily appearances [can] intervene in the explanation of what belongs exclusively to inner sense.”[1493] Indeed, in the immediately following sentences, he very clearly indicates how completely such a position conflicts with his own real teaching. To think away the corporeal is to think away all experience. Experience is not dualistically divided into separate worlds. It is one and single, and the principle of causality rules universally throughout, connecting inner experiences of sense, feeling, and desire, with their outer conditions, organic and physical.[1494] Thus Kant’s retention of the Idea of the self is chiefly of interest as revealing the strength and tenacity of his spiritualist leanings. We may judge of the disinterestedness and courage of his thinking by the contrary character of his pre-conceptions. For even when they have been shown to be theoretically indemonstrable, they continue to retain by honorific title the dignity from which they have been deposed. The full force of the objections is none the less recognised.
“The simplicity of substance ... is not presupposed as the real ground of the properties of the soul. For these may rest on altogether different grounds of which we can know nothing.”
That, however, is only Kant’s unbiassed estimate of the theoretical evidence; it is not an expression of his own personal belief.