Critique of Pure Kant: Or, A Real Realism Vs. a Fictitious Idealism; in a ...

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Preface

It is proposed in this dissertation and pyemic tP show up the bubble and mon^rosity of the Kantian metaphysic; its utter absurdity, its utter silliness, its utter — well, what stronger terms shall I use ? For surely and indeed, what does a man see when he lodes — or rather what perceive when he perceives? Perceives what primarily his perception is ainaed at, or something else short of it? Kant said he perceives in the direction of an outlying world absolute' — which he, Kant, when not contradicting himself, dogmatically assumed and affirmed to exist, -^ but perceives it not ; perceives in the direction of such world, but perceives only its some effects on the mind, and nothing of that world itself ; — or no, perceives, indeed, hardly even those any dfects on the mind, but only the mind's effects on those effects; — which is in fact not to perceive quite those any effects on the mind, even. And this pronouncement of Kant's is echoed from the chairs of philosophy of a thousand universities the world over.

The only alternative proposition, of course, is that a man peers out at an external world absolute and perceives it; perceives it, something of it, very it itself, the external world absolute that his per-

8 Preface

ception primarily is aimed at. And that proposition we will find the true one; any other and contrary one, only ridiculous.^ .

That, as perceiving that world, very it itself, I

we should, or should not perceive it for such altogether as it is in itself, does not matter; we still perceive it, very it itself. That, for the distance, I should not distinguish between a horse and a cow, '

does not matter as wherefore that I should not still perceive the horse or the cow; should not still perceive something, something common to them both ; should not still, as it is an absolute object, perceive the absolute object.

But now, mind you, that on the truth or I

JPAI.SITY 01? THE DOCTRINE 01^ OUR PERCEPTION Ot AN 0UTI,YING WORU) ABSOI.UTE, HINGES PRIMARII.Y THE VAIylDlTY 01? THE WHOI^E ICaNTIAN TRANSCEN- DENTAIy AESTHETIC, AND EVEN METAPHYSIC. It doCS '

not hinge primarily, as some are prone to suggest, on the possibility of knowledge independent of (sensuous) experience.

Therefore, undermine the notion that we perceive only what Kant calls "phenomena," and all that is distinctive and vital of his philosophy is exploded. Or, once prove either that there are no direct effects, effects properly such, of an external world absolute on the mind, still that there should be such world; or that, either as there are, or are \

not, any direct effects of that world on the mind, yet is such world as that which perception is primarily aimed at, perceived, something of it, very itself perceived ; — and at once is the entire Kantian

Preface g

doctrine of knowledge shattered from end to end; it is annihilated.

But now, yet, I am to add that, still that I have said that prove so and so and follows so and so, yet does the burden of proof not, after all, rest with the sceptic to prove the negative to an earlier positive, but with the doctrinaire of the earlier positive doctrine to prove that earlier positive doctrine. And it is Kant's that is the earlier positive doctrine, namely, that, in external perception we perceive only another world than the one absolute as outlying the mind; only another than the one at which the perception is primarily aimed. And hence it is with him rests the burden of proof, and to demonstrate his positive contention.

However, as I have myself something of a metaphysical philosophy of my own that is famishing for amplification and further airing, I propose to take over to myself somewhat of the burden of proof properly resting with Kant, and to direct it to the establishment of my own doctrine as against his, and, in part, in this manner, overthrow his, while in another part, affording the finishing extinguishing touches to him and his as is kept up, at the same time, a running fire more direct on his crucial, fundamental, and stupendous errors.

This may not be making assault on an enemy according to academic formula, but the formula is yet mine; and I shall still expect to make it effective in making plain the imquestionable humbug Inmianuel Kant was as a metaphysical philosopher; effective in bringing into the limelight the bubble and lo Preface

monstroMty of the fundamental fancy or fancies of the whole phantasmagoria of his Critique of Pure Reason ; to say nothing of what is worse even, that of his Critique of the Practical ReascHi.

It will thus be seen that practically the following is a treatise driven to double-harness, as it were, in which is strenuously argued an original metaphysical and otherwise philosophy; and, again, in which a fierce assault is made on Immanue! Kant as a philosopher; Kant who is surely by a future generation ta be shoved from his present pedestal, and his metaphysics suffer little barter than consignment to oblivion.

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Contents

PREFACE 7

CHAPTER I A Foreword on Historic and Current Metaphysic in

General 17

CHAPTER ir Kant No Exception 33

CHAPTER ni

Kant's Scorn of the Possibility oi Knowledge of Objec*

tive Troth. Absolute 39

CHAPTER IV

Kant's Charge of the Consciousness with Being a Monumental Fi^stfier li Not a Downright Liar 45

CHAPTER V

The Vanity and Farce of Academic Explanations of How What is Within ^e Mind is Yet Perceived as Without It 57

CHAPTER VI Primary Demonstration of an External World Absolttti 65

CHAPTER VII

Second and Physical Demoostration of an External

World Absolute .-... ... 75

CHAPTER Vm

Demonstration of the Perception of the External Phys»^ cal World Absolute and Incidental Third One of Its Existence 85

CHAPTER IX

Demonstration of Space smd Tiaae as External and

Absolute lOl

CHAPTER X

The Bewilderment and Error of Kanlf t M Pnori Intuition — His Total BewildemMSit and Error at a Qimax M3

CHAPTER XI

Effects or Impressions of the External World Absolute on the Mind a Fiction — Kant's Phenomena a Fiction—For What Is Mind? 159

CHAPTER XII

Demonstration That What Only in External Perception We Perceive Is the External World Absolute and That All Illusion Springs Only of Not Perceiving It Exhaustively, Mechanically 181

CHAPTER XIII

Persistence of Perception by the Mind vs. Persistence

of Impression on It 193

CHAPTER XIV

The Sensibility No Passive Faculty of the Mind, Neither Any Faculty of the Mind at All as is Neither Memory any Faculty of It 201

CHAPTER XV

Demonstration of Kanfs Categoricals or the Sort of

Nothing the Origin He Assumed for Them 209

CHAPTER XVI

The Primordial Mental the Intrinsic Nature of the External World Absolute 217

CHAPTER XVII

The Mind of Kant's Exploitation a Sheer Abstraction —

a Phantom of a Riotous Fancy 231

CHAPTER XVIII

The Academic Legend of Mind Knowing Only Mind

Only Academic Nonsense 237

CHAPTER XIX Original Versus A Priori Intuition 249

CHAPTER XX

Summary in Brief and Large Conclusions in Philosophy

and Criticism Arrived At 267

Part II Chapter XXI

The Critique of the Practical Reason or Kant Once Judge on the Bench NOW Down Within the Bar as Prosecuting Attorney 285

Appendix A 291

At the present stage of the s;ame, the stage of our own and all things' existence, it is first and last the egg with the hen sandwiched between; but with the universe in the beginning, it was (is) first the egg, and only afterwards the hen which lays the egg.

"REASON NOT THE ARBITER OF REALITY?"

Well it IS, indeed that arbiter — as distinguishing what is only contingent Reality from Absolute Reality. And Reason's dictum is that anything that obtains at all, though but contingently, that is, but as dependent on other Reality, is Reality; while Absolute Reality is Reality dependent on no otiier Reality and on nothing. Thus, the waves of the sea are Reality as much as is anything — while they last ; but are only as contingent Reality to Absolute Reality, which Itself, relatively, the sea is ; and so, again, what you think, whatever it is, is, as much as is anything, Reality — while you think it ; but is only contingent Reality, contingent as dependent on other Reality which itself you yourself are and on which it is contingent.

Consequently, as will be understood, a snake seen by a man suffering from delirium tremens is just as mudb Reality while he sees it, as a snake seen by the normal mind; just as much Reality, only nothing of Absolute Reality which yet the snake seen by the normal is verily something of, and by the normal mind verily seen, just as much seen as is the abnormal snake by the abnormal mind — Kant and all his following to the contrary notwithstanding.

Part I CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

"Page 123—7111 line "Irdnri)ottom, read— better, in place of "beter."

Page 255— 8th line from bottom, read— sensibility, in place of "sinsibility."

Page 276-ist line from bottom, read— spiritual, in place of "spirtal."

What Illusions and Delusions do men live in in their Theories f What Reality do they live in in their practical, every-day life*

If ever there was in the whole history of Philosophic thought what has been more barren of truth, meanwhile, more rife with dire mischief than anything else, it is Philosophy understood as the contemplation of mind in the abstract, and as "the occupation of the reason," the reason as divorced from the senses, "with itself," and on which it is dogmatically assumed, that the activity of the senses, if not even the senses themselves, is dependent. And yet this describes not only Kantian but also, in good part, academic Philosophy, since the triumvirate of Kant, Hegel, and Schopenhauer.

A Foreword on Historical and Current Metaphysic

In General

Even in Kant's time, as well as in all time before him and his great work — great in bulk — was evolved and written, the general, well-nigh universal cqnviction was that the manifest universe was a snap creation ; but that notion is now as completely obsolete with all intelligent minds as a last year's setting sun. The universe an evolution has come to take its place; the universe an evolution what is as fundamentally a different thing from the universe a snap creation as is a grown rose from a maufactured one. And, necessarily, miust a metaphysic or philosophy that is a fit for the latter be a misfit for the former; and, too, be now antiquated and worthless. And yet, even today, the academic hierarchy at the centres of learning, in their disgusting and deadly Bourbonism, go right on discoursing metaphysics and philosophy in terms of the universe a snap creation, as though the only difference between the one universe and the other was that between tweedledom and tweedledee; go right on discoursing as though nothing had happened in the last hundred years, — no earthquake, as it were, with the earth opening and swallowing up their childish, petty, and petted notions ; no bomb explosion at the very heart of metaphysics and philosophy current since the days of Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer.

And, still, it is very truth that the increase of knowledge during the last century has been greater than during all the thousand centuries or rtiore gone before put together that man has been on the planet.

But what is that to a stupid, stolid, and effete metaphysics ! What is it to an Egyptian mummy I

Then again, the drift of this vast increase of knowledge of which the universe an evolution is one considerable, and perhaps the leading item, is to reduce the extreme or absolute divorce, of iCant's day, of the any manifestation from) that manifesting, divorce of the physical from mind, to well-nigh the vanishing point.

But what, again, is even that, mmnentous as it is, to that same stupid, stolid, effete metaphysics; what to an Egyptian mummy !

And, yet, if it nothing to be reckoned with, indeed, that it has come to be seen that you can little better wrench the physical from mind and still have anything left at all, left anything at all even of mind, than you can wrench from a plane one of its two surfaces and still have left anything even of the plane at all?

Nevertheless, the Kantian metaphysic, which is identified with this almost absolute divorce, is still the "golden calf" before which to this hour the whole academic world is prostrate as before a very god — prostrate before, I had liked to have said, as before very God !

Men, in truth, are slow enough to move out of the old and into the new even when of the error of the old and of the truth of the new there is physical demonstration to be afforded, as the history of the warfare of science only too abundantly assures us; but when, as in metaphysical philosophy, there is never, or rarely, such physical demonstration within reach, and only a rational one at the most, within the possibilities in suiqx)rt of a proposition, they are infinitely slower still to move out of a rut of their long training and thinking, until it would seem sometimes as though only a million horse-power derrick could lift them out of it. And hence what is only the to be expected is likely to happen; and that metaphysical philosophy, and philosophy in {general in fact, will lag a thousand, perhaps ten thousand years, behind physical science, and the world's progress generally.

Meantime, it has, every now and then its fresh makeshifts for genuine straight philosophy as just now, for example, it has in Pragmatism what itself, metaphorically speaking, is, at best, but as a fugue to a musical theme; still that its sponsors, and particularly its most eminent one, would seem working night and day, straining every nerve to jack it up — to keep up the figure — to the dignity of very a musical theme, pure and simple, itself.

Meantime, I say, metaphysical philosophy inclines to have its makeshifts, as just now in Pragmatism, but not its revolution which is its most pressing need; not revolution, because those responsible for the former have just independence and originality enough to conjure up a freak substitute, but not enough to discover and correct the gross fimdamental errors of what, once these were eliminated, might assimie in very truth the dignity of genuine metaphysical philosophy itself.

But why, why, for centuries, has academic metaphysical philosophy made no material advance? True, system has succeeded system; but mere succession of systems is not progress. There is, to this hour, not only no theory of mind and its relations to its medium, commanding the interest and respect of intelligent and cultivated minds, generally, but there is not such at his moment, having even the indorsement of metaphysicians, in general, themselves; — and wherefore, as I have said. Pragmatism and Humjanism, the latest freak candidates for philosophical recognition.

Meanwhile, for metaphysicians themselves as a class, there is, among men of sense and learning, outside metaphysicians themselves, only a waning regard, only, as just hinted, an ill concealed contempt even, quite the contrary of the growing respect in which men of modern science are being held. But why only stagnation in one case, and all progress in the other? Why only a pitying sufferance for the metaphysician, but a profound regard for the man of science? Why but that, on a last analysis, every philosopher of front rank down to this hour, has set out with a pure assumption instead of only with what is of the most absolute knowledge; has set out with the rank dogmatic assumption of the primacy and transcendency of the consciousness or conscious mind what we can by no possibly positively know and can at best only believe ; a proposition, in fact, the most childish and inane, and of which there is not, high nor low, far nor near, so mjuch as the shadow of evidence or proof ; — has set out with this instead of with the three great primary facts of consciousness of which we have the most absolute knowledge. This on a last analysis.

And then on a proximate one why, again, but that the metaphysician — or philosopher — primarily makes himself utterly ridiculous ; —

(i) generally, when not wobbling as to the validity of the primary consciousness, by repudiating that validity.

(2) often, by expending oceans of mental ammunition in debating whether the external world of our sensuous perception is a world absolute, or not ; and this, too, yet that assuming at the outset without question or quibble, the existence of other human beings than himself, which other human beings are themselves an external world absolute (supposing them to exist), and known to exist only with a knowledge contingent on very that of the existence of the external physical absolute about the existence of which is all this academic fuss and feathers of uncertainty ;

(3) often, again, by wasting many times the sam(e amount of brain force in debating whether we veritably perceive such world, or not, and ending, as a rule, with flatly denying that we do ;

(4) almost invariably, by divorcing such as he recognizes as alone the mental from the physical, and then harrying a fraction of that mental into the endeavor to lift itself by its own bootstraps as it were; the endeavor, that is, to spin unassisted out of its own belly, spider like, the philosophy of its own nature and relations; and even not only that of its own nature and relations but also that of what might be the nature and relations of the whole mental altogether, — an endeavor as senseless and futile as would be an attempt at the explanation of a rectangular plane, blind to one of its surfaces, in the absence of which the plane itself does not even exist to explain ;

(5) by religiously refusing to recognize, for a moment, physics as anything that could in the least afford a clue to the solution of problems in metaphysics ;

(6) by steadily either overlooking, or ignoring one of the three great primary facts of consciousness, one yet well-nigh as conspicuous and unquestioned by the mind as answering to objective reality absolute as either of the two others of awareness of one's own existence, and again of external perception, the fact, namely, of the recognition of the existence of a plurality of minds and their experience; — either by overlooking, or by ignoring this fact, first, as a fact of consciousness simply, and again, as a working factor, in any attempt at the elaboration of a system of philosophy ; and this last.

A Poreword on Metaphysics in General 23

still that, as a working factor, such recognition is a sine qua non datum in any demonstration, the any primary demonstration at least, of the objective truth absolute of the existence of an objective world absolute, even of a two-fold such world.

And let here clearly be understood a most important discrimination to be made. So, mind that I do not say that the metaphysician has not recognized the existence of other minds, other human beings, than himself, as objective realities, for that, of course, he has done, and which it is only vulgar, not philosophical to do. That is not by complaint and his error. But what is, is that he, as a metaphysician or philosopher, has not recognized our recognition of other minds, first, as a primary fact of consciousness simply, and then again as a working factor in the solution of mind-world problems. It is that he has not recognized our recognition of the existence of a plurality of minds, between which, the recognition of our recognition of the existence of a plurality of minds as a simple fact of consciousness, and the recognition of their existence as an obpjective fact absolute, there is an infinite difference.

And I repeat, — and note well the discrimination, — that my criticism is not that he, at such time, has not assumed in the matter, for he has; and assumed the existence of other minds than his own. It is not that at all, since he, as a metaphysician, has no business to assume at the outset the objective existence, the objective existence absolute, of anything. His business at starting is solely with the primary facts of consciousness, and his consciousness, for he, in the beginning, is not supposed to know any other; and with the primary facts of consciousness as such facts of consciousness simply ; and only with the any possible correlated objective facts absolute as such are first argued and demonstrated from those primary facts of consciousness. The latter are, at the otjset, the metaphysician's only asset; his only legitimate capital to set up in business with. Or these, shall we say, are the shell which the chick of subjective knowledge is to peck its way out of into the open of objective knowledge, even of objective knowledge absolute. Only these primarily has he to labor with for returns, which is to say for convictions whether as to other subjective, or as to objective truth, such absolute, or otherwise.

Whether there are actually other minds than each his own to recognize, is no matter. That recognition that such there are is just as much a fact of consciousness as were there none other; just as much such fact as is the perception of stone or tree, or as is one's awareness of his own existence. And to slight the bearing of even one of the three great primary facts of consciousness were bad enough ; but to blink that one of the immeasurable moment of the recognition of other minds than each his own and their experience, borders on a philosophical crime. It is at least a stupendous mistake fraught with nothing less than philosophic calamity; and still a mistake, as I repeat, and repeat made by every philosopher since philosophy began.

The mistake makes simply impossible the demonstration, or at least impossible the most pritnary demonstration, of the one thing of forempst philosophical concern, the thing, namely, of the existence of the two-fold external world absolute, of one part a plurality of minds, and of another, of what we recognize as the idiysical.

In short, it might about as soon be expected to determine the dimensions of a triangle with a knowledge of only two of the three geometrical elements that must be known to do it, as to expect a solution of mind-world problems with a recognition of only two of the three facts of consciousness involved in that solution. It would be nearly as hopeless in the one case as in the other. The two facts of consciousness, facts of awareness of one's own existence, and of external perception, and then the third, one of the recognition of the existence of other minds, as facts of consciousness simply, are the bed-rock foundation of all genuine metaphysics and philosophy — and nothing less is. And particularly, with this last fact scorned, or overlooked, is every metaphysical or philosophical system, however elaborately and ingeniously mortised and girded, but a tumble-down shack from the start. And still, for all this, as I am going to assure the reader even again, it is hardly too much to say that every philosopher born under the sun since the beginning of philosophy, has, in his any attempt to work out a solution of mind-world problems, either scorned, or overlooked it — overlooked it, rather, as would appear. And still, too, have they one and all, these pseudo philosophers, who have scuttled their own ships at the moment of weighing anchor, hoped to reach port and haven of philosophic rest; and have even made pretense of having done so. But, of course, it was only to their own satisfaction that they ever did, not to that of others. Doubt it ? Well, that no one has achieved more is testified to to this very hour, of the time immemorial lack of unanimity of opinion touching philosophic fundamentals among the maritime brethren each on a like voyage of discovery of all the others.

Meanwhile, every voyager has created more problems than he has solved, besides raising no little dust of uncertainty about not a few he has affected to clear up but failed to.

These, then, the forgoing, in part at least, why acadenvc transcendental philosophy has so long remained at a standstill, besides being sneered at; and why metaphysicians themselves command but indifferent regard. But systems of philosophy — system of Kant, system of Hegel, system of Schopenhauer, and that of Fichte and of Schiller and the rest — the crazy-patch philosophy of the conglomerate ensemble of them all ! Yet, why should there be systems of philosophy, more than systems of modem science? Why is there? Why? — Only, that every one extant of them all is rotten at the core in respect at least of sonne one or more, or even all, the fundamental fallacies I have named, and with special emphasis on the one I have particularly called attention ta Or only, again, that the scientific method in metaphysic, if not positively scouted, is at least ignored.

But it is at least astonishing that in the whole history of philosophy, no system has ever set out with the recognition of all the three great primary facts of consciousness, upon which I have laid so much stress, namely, fact of awareness of one's own existence, fact of external perception, and fact of the recognitictti of the existence of other minds than each his own ; astonishing that none has ever started with the recognition of all these as facts of consciousness simply, and again, as working factors, all of them, in the solution of mind-world problems, only as with the recognition of which it started, and as with which labored or wrestled, could the system promise a success and be any way worthy of the august appellation of either metaphysic or philoso[Jiy; only as with which it set out could its conduct be after the manner of science in physics.

But is there never to be escape out of this meta- (diysical wilderness, this idiilosophical delirium, this crazy-patch ensemble of speculations of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and the lesser lights in the metaphysical firmament, ensemble so intellectually sickening for its contradictions and absurdities that even the exponents of it themselves suffer by reflection in the estimate in which their fellowmen hold them?

No, never; or, at least, not until that revolution I have hinted at comes and when then philosophy will start with something better than assumption, and the pure, raw, rank assumption, implicit when not explicit, of the primacy and transcendency of the consciousness or conscious mind. This assumption is its very damnation from the outset from which no enterprise of pursuit of it afterwards ever retrieves it. The philosopher worthy of the name, has at setting out, no business with assumptions — not with one, as I have already insisted on. And I repeat that his business, primarily, is only with the facts, the three great primary facts, of consciousness what are nothing of assumption whatever, but matters of the most absolute knowledge. And a philosophy is worse than worthless, it is a positive calamity as it has any other beginning than with these, and with less than them all. And yet, must I say again, that there is not a metaphysician of any considerable note in the whole history of metaphysical philosophy, not one of the present generation even, who has not set out otherwise — not one; not one who has set out with the three primary facts of consciousness, alone; not one who has not at least overlooked the one of them of foremost moment of the three ; not one who has set out only with what he absolutely knows; not one who has not set out with what simply he can only believe, and with the assumption of the aboriginality and transcendency of consciousness, or the conscious mind which he can by no possibility more than believe.

However, once comes the revolution above hinted, once a philosophy that sets out with only what we absolutely know, and what then ?

Why then, maybe, that even yet, it will turn out that the vulgar view, the view even of the plain-man of the back-woods, of the nature and relation of mind and matter, what the stilted and pedantic academic would hardly deign to consider, will prove at last more nearly the true view after all. Maybe, even yet, that the academic legend that "mind knows only mind," which has well-nigh passed into an axiom, will prove in the end to have no standing in court at all, but, rather, be relegated to the refuse heap of academic old junk.

Well, we are to see what, if might be, some opening and auguries of such coming event.

The mystery of mysteries is how anything came to be, how anything, mind or matter came to be, not how a particular universe and ours found being. The former answered and the latter is. To say it had an author is only to push inquiry further back, for who or what was the author of that author? To affect even to apprehend in regard to it were bad enough; but to affect to comprehend in the matter altogether and to comprehend it as Kant did, and as does every Idealist, — to say nothing of others, — as conscious mind as author of itself and all things, only exercises every rational mind with sickening disgust.