No More Learning

21, 1772.
5 This frequently repeated definition makes the fundamental conception of of the critical doctrine of knowledge appear in closest proximity to the funda mental metaphysical conception of the Monadology. Cf. § 31, 11.
8 Which is introduced in the Transcendental Analytic in connection with the doctrine of the categories. Sections 10 and 15 (of the first edition of the Critique).
4 Hence the conception of synthesis in the present form of the Critique of Pure Season comes in collision with the psychological presuppositions which passed over to the Critique out of the German working-over of the Inaugural Dissertation, which forms the Transcendental ^Esthetic and the beginning of the Transcendental Logic (this was originally to have appeared immediately after 1770 under the title Limits of the Sensibility and of the Understanding). In
the Prolegomena these psychological presuppositions became obliterated. Earlier, sensibility and understanding were set over against each other as receptivity and spontaneity ; but space and time, the pure Forms of the sensi
Chap. 1, $ 38. ] Object of Knowledge : Synthesis. 539 ■
reason completes itself in three stages : the combination of sensa tions into perceptions takes place in the Forms of space and time ; the combination of the perceptions into experience of the natural world of reality takes place by means of concepts of the understand ing; the combination of judgments of experience into metaphysical knowledge takes place by means of general principles, which Kant calls Ideas. These three stages of the knowing activity develop, therefore, as different Forms of synthesis, of which each higher stage has the lower for its content. The critique of reason has to investigate what the especial Forms of this synthesis are in each stage, and in what their universal and necessary validity consists.
2. As regards mathematics, the conception of the Inaugural Dis- ■ sertation fits aptly, in the main, into the critique of reason. Mathe matical propositions are synthetic ; they rest in the last resort upon construction in pure perception, not upon the development of con ceptions. Their necessity and universal validity, which cannot be established by any experience, is, therefore, to be explained only if an a priori priurjjilp of perception lies at their basis. Kant, there
fore, shows that the general ideas of space and time, to which all insights of geometry and arithmetic relate, are " pure Forms of per ception " or " perceptions a priori. " The ideas of the one infinite space and of the one infinite time do not rest upon th4 combination of empirical perceptions of finite spaces and times; (but with the very attributes of limit in the " beside-of-one-anotheit" and " after- one-another" (co-existence and succession), the whole of space and the whole of time respectively are already involved in the empirical perception of particular space and time magnitudes, which can accord ingly be presented to the mind only as parts of space in general and of time in general. Space and time cannot be "concepts," since they relate to an object which is only a single, unique object, and which is not thought as complete, but is involved in an infinite synthesis ; and further, they are related to the ideas of finite magni tudes, not as class-concepts are to their particular examples, but as the whole to the part. If they are, accordingly, pure perceptions
(Anscliauungen), i. e. perceptions not founded upon empirical percep tions ( Wahrnehrnungen), but lying at the basis of all empirical per ceptions,1 then they are, as such, necessary ; for we can indeed think
bility, were Indeed the principles of the synthetical ordering of the sensations, and thus belonged under the general conception of synthesis, i. e. spontaneous unity of the manifold. Thus the conception of synthesis burst the psychological schema of the Inaugural Dutertatinn.
1 Here once more it must be recalled that it is but a perverted and completely erroneous conception of Kant to conceive of this " lying at the basis of" or - preceding," as referring to time. The natMtrn, which holds space and time
540 German Philosophy : Kant' i Critique. [Part VL
everything away from them, but cannot think them away. They are the given Forms of pure perception from which we cannot escape, the laws of relations, in which alone we can mentally represent with synthetic unity the manifold of sensations. And further, space is the form of the outer sense, time that of the inner sense ; all objects of the particular senses are perceived as spatial, all objects of self- perception as in time. "
If, then, space and time are the
ous receptivity," cognitions determined by these two kinds of per ception without any regard to the particular empirical content, possess universal and necessary validity for the entire compass of all that we can perceive and experience. In the realm of the sensi bility, — so the " Transcendental ^Esthetic " teaches, — the only object of a priori knowledge is the Form of the synthesis of the man ifold given through sensation, — the law of arrangement in space and time. But the universality and necessity of this knowledge is intel ligible only if space and time are nothing but the necessary Forms oj man's sensuous perception. If they possessed a reality independent of the functions of perception, the a priori character of mathematical knowledge would be impossible. Were space and time themselves things or real properties and relations of things, then we could know of them only through experience, and, therefore, never in a univer sal and necessary way. This last mode of knowledge is possible only if they are nothing but the Form under which all things in our perception must appear. 1 According to this principle the a priori and the phenomenal become for Kant interchangeable conceptions.
The only universal and necessary element in man's knowledge is the Form under which things appear in it. Rationalism limits itself to the Form, and holds good even for this only at the price of the " subjectivity " of the same.
3. While Kant would thus have the spatial and chronological re lations of objects of perception regarded as wholly a mode of mental representation, which does not coincide with the reality of things themselves, he distinguished this conception of their ideality very exactly from that " subjectivity of the qualities of sense " which was held by him, as by all philosophy after Descartes and Locke, to be self-evident. * And the point at issue here again is solely the ground of the phenomenality. As regards colour, taste, etc. , the phenome- nality had been based, since the time of Protagoras and Democritus,
to be inborn ideas, is un-Kantian throughout, and stands in contradiction tc express declarations of the philosopher (cf. , e. g. , above, p. 465 f. ).
1 This thought is developed with especial clearness in the Prolegomena, 1 8. * Cf. Critique, § 3, b. W. , II. 68.
unchangeable Form of our sensu
Chap. 1, J 38. ] Object of Knowledge : Space and Time. 541
upon the difference and relativity of impressions ; for the Forms of space and time, Kant deduces their phenomenality precisely from ) their invariability. For him, therefore, the qualities of sense offered only an individual and contingent mode of representation ; while the Forms of space and time, on the other hand, present
a universal and necessary mode in which things appear. All that
contains, is, indeed, not the true essence of things, but an appearance or phenomenon ; but the contents of sensation are " phenomena" in quite another sense than that in which the Forms of space and time are such; the former have worth only as the states of the individual subject, the latter as " objective " Forms of perception for all. Even on this ground, therefore, Kant, too, sees the task of natural science to lie in the reduction of the qualitative to the quantitative, in which alone necessity and universal validity can be found upon a mathematical basis, agreeing in this with
Democritus and Galileo; but he differed from his predecessors in holding that, philosophically considered, even the mathematical mode of representing Nature can be regarded only as an appearance and phenomenon, though in the deeper sense of the word. Sensation gives an individual idea, mathematical theory gives a necessary, universally valid perception of the actual world; but both are merely different stages of the phenomenal appearance, behind which the true thing-in-itself remains unknown. Space and time hold without exception for all objects of perception, but for nothing beyond ; they have " empirical reality " and " transcendental ideality,"
4. The main advance of the Critique of Reason beyond the Inau gural Dissertation consists in the fact that these same principles are extended in a completely parallel investigation to the question as to the epistemological value which belongs to the synthetic Forms of the activity of the understanding. 1
Natural science needs besides its mathematical basis a number of general principles as to the connection of things. These principles, such as that every change must have its cause, are of a synthetic nature, but, at the same time, are not caj>able of being established by experience, though they come to consciousness through experi ence, are applied to experience, and find there their confirmation. Of such principles a few have indeed been incidentally propounded and treated hitherto, and it remains for the Critique itself to dis cover the "system of principles," but it is clear that without this basis the knowledge of Nature would be deprived of its necessary
1 ThU parallelism is seen most plainly by comparing ff 0 and 14 of (he Prolegomena.
perception
542 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Pakt VL
and univerSal validity. For " Nature " is not merely an aggregate of spatial and temporal Forms, of corporeal shapes and motions, but a connected system, which we perceive through our senses, but thinh at the same time through conceptions. Kant calls the faculty of thinking the manifold of perception in synthetic unity, the Understanding; and the categories or pure conceptions of Understand ing are the Forms of the synthesis of the Understanding, just as space and time are the Forms of the synthesis of perception.
If now Nature, as object of our knowledge, were a real connected system of things, independent of the functions of our reason, we could know of it only through experience and never o priori; a uni versal and necessary knowledge of Nature is possible only if our conceptional Forms of synthesis determine Nature itself. If Nature prescribed laws to our understanding, we should have only an empirical, inadequate knowledge ; an a priori knowledge of Nature is therefore possible only ifthe case be reversed and our understanding prescnbes laws to Nature. But our understanding cannot determine Nature in so far as it exists as a thing-iu-itself, or as a system of things-in-themselves, but only in so far as it appears in our thought A priori knowledge of Nature is therefore possible only ifthe con nection ichich we think between perceptions is also nothing but our mode of ideation; the conceptional relations " also, in which Nature is an object of our knowledge, must be only phenomenon. "
5. In order to attain this result, the Critique of Reason proceeds first to assure itself of these synthetic Forms of the understanding in systematic completeness. Here it is clear from the outset that we have not to do with those analytic relations which are treated in formal logic, and grounded upon the principle of contradiction. For
ese contain only the rules for establishing relations between con ceptions according to the contents already given within them. But such modes of combination as are present when we affirm the rela tion of cause and effect, or of substance and accident, are not con tained in those analytical Forms — just this had been shown by Hume. Kant discovers here the completely new task of transcendental logic} Side by side with the (analytic) Forms of the understanding, in accordance with which the relations of conceptions which are given as to their contents are established, appear the synthetic Forms of understanding, through which perceptions are made objects of conceptional knowledge. Images of sensation, co-ordinate in space and changing in time, become "objective" only by being thought as
' Cf. M. Steckelmacher, Die formate Logik Kant's in ihren Beziehungen zva transscendentalen (Breslau, 1878).
Chap. 1, | 38. ] Object of Knowledge : Categories 648
things with abiding qualities and changing states ; but this relation expressed by means of the category inheres analytically neither in the perceptions nor in their perceptional relations as such. In the ana lytic relations of formal logic thinking is dependent upon its objects, and appears ultimately with right as only a reckoning with given magnitudes. The synthetic Forms of transcendental logic, on the contrary, let us recognise the understanding in its creative function of producing out of perceptions the objects of thought itself.
At this point, in the distinction between formal and transcen dental logic, appears for the first time the fundamental antithesis between Kant and the conceptions of the Greek theory of knowl edge which had prevailed up to his time. The Greek theory assumed " the objects " as " given " independently of thought, and regarded the intellectual processes as entirely dependent upon the objects; at the most it was the mission of the intellectual processes to reproduce these objects by way of copy, or allow themselves to be guided by them. Kant discovered that the objects of thought are none other than the products of thought itself. This spontaneity of reason forms the deepest kernel of his transcendental idealism.
But while he thus with completely clear consciousness set a new epistemological logic of synthesis by the side of the analytical logic of Aristotle, which had as its essential content the relations involved in subsuming ready-made conceptions under each other (cf. § 12), he yet held that both had a common element, viz: the science of
judgment. In the judgment the relation thought between subject and predicate is asserted as holding objectively ; all objective think ing is judging. Hence if the categories or radical concejitions of the understanding are to be regarded as the relating forms of the synthesis by which objects arise, there must be as many categories as there are kinds of judgments, and every category is the mode of connecting subject and predicate which is operative in its own kind of judgment.
Kant accordingly thought that he could deduce the table of the categories from that of the judgments. He distinguished from the four points of view of Quantity, Quality, Relation, and Modality, three kinds of judgments for each: Universal, Particular, Singular, — Affirmative, Negative, Infinite, — Categorical, Hypothetical, Dis junctive, — Problematic, Assertoric, Apodictic; and to these were to correspond the twelve categories: Unity, Plurality, Totality, —
Reality, Negation, Limitation. — Inherence and Subsistence, Caus ality and Dependence, Community or Reciprocity, — Possibility and Impossibility, Existence and Non-existence, Necessity and Con
tingency.
The artificiality of this construction, the looseness of
544 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VL
the relations between Forms of judgment and categories, the un equal value of the categories, — all this is evident, but Kant unfortunately had so much confidence in this system that he treated it as the architectonic frame for a great number of his later investigations.
6. The most difficult part of the task, however, was to demon strate in the "Transcendental Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding" how the categories "make the objects of experience. " The obscurity into which the profound investigation of the philosopher necessarily came here is best brightened
a fortunate idea of the Prolegomena. Kant here distinguishes judg ments ofperception, i. e. those in which only the relation of sensations in space and time for the individual consciousness is expressed, and
judgments of experience, i. e. those in which such a relation is asserted as objectively valid, as given in the object; and he finds . the difference in epistemological value between them to be, that in the judgment of experience the spatial or temporal relation is
regulated and grounded by a category, a conceptional connection, whereas in the mere judgment of perception this is lacking. Thus, for example, the succession of two sensations becomes objective and universally valid when it is thought as having its ground in the fact that one phenomenon is the cause of the other. All particular constructions of the spatial and temporal synthesis of sensations become objects only by being combined accordiug to a rule of the understanding. In contrast with the individual mechanism of
This is especially true in the case of relations in time. For since phenomena of outer sense belong to the inner sense as "determina tions of our mind," all phenomena without exception stand under the Form of the inner sense, i. e. of time. Kant, therefore, sought to show that between the categories and the particular Form of perception in time a " schematism " obtains, which first makes it possible at all to apply the Forms of the understanding to the images of perception, and which consists in the possession by every individual category of a schematic similarity with a particular form of the time relation. In empirical knowledge we use this schematism to interpret the empirically perceived time relation by the correspond ing category [e. g. to apprehend regular succession as causality] ; transcendental philosophy, conversely, has to seek the justification
ideation, in which individual sensations may order
separate and unite in any way whatever, stands objective think ing, which is equally valid for all, and is bound to fixed, co herent, ordered wholes, in which the connections are governed by conceptions.
themselves,
up by
Chap. 1, J 38. ] Object of Knowledge : Experience. 545
of this procedure in the fact that the category, as a rule of the understanding, gives the corresponding time relations a rational basis as object of experience.
In fact, the individual consciousness finds in itself the contiast between a movement of ideas (say of the fancy), for which it claims no validity beyond its own sphere, and, on the other hand, an activ ity of experience, in the case of which it knows itself to be bound in a way that is likewise valid for all others. Only in this depend ence consists the reference of thought to an object. But if it was now recognised that the ground of the objective validity of the time (and space) relation can rest only in its determination by a rule of the understanding, it is on the other hand a fact that the consciousness of the individual knows nothing of this co-opera tion of the categories in experience, and that he rather accepts the
result of this co-operation as the objective necessity of his appre hension of the synthesis of sensations in space and time.
The production of the object, therefore, does not go on in the individual consciousness, but lies already at the basis of this con sciousness ; for this production, a higher common consciousness must therefore be assumed, which comes into the empirical consciousness of the individual, not with its functions, but only with their result. This Kant termed in the Prolegomena, consciousness in general; in the" Critique, transcendental appeixeption, or the "I" [or l'self" or ego"]. *
Experience is accordingly the system of phenomena in which the l spatial and temporal synthesis of sensation is determined by the rules \ of the understanding. Thus " Nature as phenomenon " is the object
of an a priori knowledge ; for the categories hold for all experience, ' / because experience is grounded only through them.
7. The universal and necessary force and validity of the cate gories find expression in the Principles of the Pure Understanding, in which the conceptional Forms unfold themselves through the medium of the schematism. But here it is at once evident that the main weight of the Kantian doctrine of the categories falls upon the third group, and thus upon those problems in which he hoped '•to solve Hume's doubt. " From the categories of Quantity and Quality result only the " Axiom of Perception," that all phenomena are extensive magnitudes, and the " Anticipations of Empirical Perception " according to which the object of sensation is an inten sive magnitude ; in the case of Modality there result only definitions of the possible, actual, and necessary, under the name of the '' Postu lates of Empirical Thought. " On the other hand, the Analogies of Experience prove that in Nature substance is permanent, and that
546 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Past VL
its quantum can be neither increased nor diminished, that all changes take place according to the law of cause and effect, and that all substances are in thorough-going reciprocity or inter-action.
. These, therefore, are the universally and necessarily valid, prin-
/ciples and highest premises of all natural science, which are uni- / versally and necessarily valid without any empirical proof j they / contain what Kant calls the metaphysics of Nature. In order that they may be employed, however, upon the Nature given through
[
1 our senses, they must pass through a mathematical formulation,
I because Nature is the system of sensations perceived in the Forms
of space and time and ordered according to the categories. This transition is effected through the empirical conception of motion, to which all occurrence and change in Nature is theoretically to be reduced. At least, science of Nature, in the proper sense, reaches only so far as we can employ mathematics : hence Kant excluded psychology and chemistry from natural science as being merely descriptive disciplines. The "Metaphysical Elements of Natural Science " contain, accordingly, all that can be inferred universally and necessarily concerning the laws of motion, on the ground of the categories and of mathematics. The most important point in Kant's
philosophy of Nature, as thus built up, is his dynamic theory of mat ter, in which he now deduces from the general principles of the Critique the doctrine already laid down in the " Natural History of the Heavens," that the substance of that which is movable in space is the product of two forces which maintain an equilibrium in a
varying degree, — those of attraction and repulsion.
8. But in accordance with Kant's presuppositions, the above
metaphysics of Nature can be only a metaphysics of phenomena : and no other is possible, for the categories are Forms for relating, and as such are in themselves empty ; they can refer to an object only through the medium of perceptions, which present a manifold
content to be combined. This perception, however, in the case of us men, only the sensuous perception in the forms of space and time, and as content for their synthetic function we have only that given in sensations. Accordingly, the only object of human knowledge is experience, i. e. phenomenal appearance and the divis ion of objects of knowledge into phenomena and noumena, which has been usual since Plato, has no sense. A knowledge of things-in- themselves through " sheer reason," and extending beyond experi ence, nonentity, chimera.
But has, then, the conception of the thing-in-itself any rational meaning at all and not, together with this, the designation all objects of our knowledge as " phenomena," also without meaning?
|
?
a
a is
of
is a
;
is,
Chap. 1, §38. ] Object of Knowledge : Thing-in-Itsclf. 647
This question was the turning-point of Kant's reflections.
all that the naive conception of the world regards as " object " has been resolved partly into sensations, partly into synthetic Forms of perception and of the understanding; nothing seems to remain besides the individual consciousness as truly existing, except the
" consciousness in general," the transcendental apperception. But where, then, are the " things," of which Kant declared that it had never come into his mind to deny their reality ?
i l
The conception of the thing-in-itself can, to be sure, no longer have a positive content in the Critique of Reason, as it had with Leibniz, or in Kant's Inaugural Dissertation ; it can no longer be the object of purely rational knowledge, it can no longer be an "object" at all.
But it is at least no contradiction, merely to think it
purely hypothetically, and as something the reality of which is
neither to be affirmed nor to be denied, — a mere
Human knowledge is limited to objects of experience, because the perception required for the use of the categories is in our case only
< that there is another kind of ]>ercpption, there would be for this / /
other objects, likewise, with the help of the categories. Such objects of a non-human perception, however, remain still only phenomena, though this perception again might be assumed as one which arranges the given contents of sensation in any manner whatever.
Nevertheless, if one should think of a perception of a non-receptive kitid, a perception which synthetically produced not only its Forms, but also its contents, — a truly "productive imagination," — its objects would necessarily be no longer phenomena, but things-in- themselves. Such a faculty would deserve the name of an intellect ual perception (or intuition), or intuitive intellect; it would be the unity of the two knowing faculties of sensibility and understand ing, which in man appear separated, although by their constant reference to each other they indicate a hidden common root. The possibility of such a faculty is as little to be denied as its reality is to be affirmed ; yet Kant here indicates that we should have to think a supreme spiritual Being in this way. Noumena, or things- in-themselves, are therefore thinkable in the. negative tense as objects of a non-sensuous perception, of which, to be sure, our knowledge can predicate absolutely nothing, — they are thinkable as limiting con ceptions of experience.
And ultimately they do not remain so completely problematical| :i* would at first appear. For if we should deny the reality of things-in-themselves, "all would be immediately resolved into phenomena," and we should thus be venturing the assertion that
'
Hitherto
Primarily,
" problem. "
j
the receptive sensuous perception in space and time. If we suppose 1
^\
648 Oerman Philosophy : Kant* Critique. [Part VL
nothing is real except what appears to man, or to other sensuously receptive beings. But this assertion would be a presumption com pletely incapable of proof. Transcendental idealism must, therefore, not deny the reality of noumena; it must only remain conscious that they cannot in any wise become objects' of human knowledge. Things-in-themselves must be thought, but are not knowable. In this way Kant won back the right to designate the objects of human knowledge as "only phenomena. "
9. With this the way was marked out for the third part of the critique of the reason, the Transcendental Dialectic. 1 A metaphysics of that whioh cannot be experienced, or, as Kant prefers to say, of the supersensuous, is impossible. This must be shown by a criticism of the historical attempts which have been made with this in view, and Kant chose, as his actual example for this, the Leibnizo- Wolffian school-metaphysics, with its treatment of rational psychology, cos mology, and theology. But at the same time, it must be shown that that which is incapable of being experienced, which cannot be known, must yet necessarily be thought ; and the transcendental illusion must be discovered, by which even the great thinkers have at all times been seduced into regarding this, which must necessarily be thought, as an object of possible knowledge.
To attain this end Kant proceeds from the antithesis between the activity of the understanding and the sensuous perception by the aid of which alone the former produces objective knowledge. The thinking, which is determined by the categories, puts the data of the sensibility into relation with one another in such a way, that every phenomenon is conditioned by other phenomena : but in this process the understanding, in order to think the individual phenom enon completely, must needs grasp the totality of the conditions by which this particular phenomenon is determined in its connection* with the whole experience. But, in view of the endlessness of the world of phenomena in its relation to space and time, this demand cannot be fulfilled. For the categories are principles of relation between phenomena ; they cognise the eonditionality or conditional character of each phenomenon only by means of other phenomena, and demand for these again insight into their conditional nature as determined by others, and so on to infinity. ' Out of this relation
» As regards the subject matter, the Transcendental Esthetic Analytic, aai Dialetic. as the Introduction shows, form the three main co-ordinate para of the Critin** . ' the formal schematism of the dirision which Kant imitated froai the arrangement of logical text-books usual at that time, is, on the contrary. entirely irrelevant. The •' Doctrine of Method " is in fact only a supplement extremely rich in tine observations.
* Of. the similar thoughts in Xkolaus Cusanus and Spinoxa. though then metaphysically applied : above, pp. $47 and 419.
Ciiah. 1, § 38. ] Object of Knoicledye : Idea*.
649
between understanding and sensibility result for human knowledge necessary and yet insoluble problems; these Kant calls Ideas, and the faculty requisite for this highest synthesis of the cognitions of the understanding he designates as Reason in the narrower sense.
If now the reason will represent to itself as solved, a problem thus set, the sought totality of conditions must be thought as some l thing unconditioned, which, indeed, contains in itself the conditions
for the infinite series of phenomena, but which is itself no longer conditioned. This conclusion of an infinite series, which for the knowledge of the understanding is in itself a contradiction, must nevertheless be thought, if the task of the understanding, which L aims at totality in connection with the infinite material of the data
of the senses, is to be regarded as performed. The Ideas are hence ideas or mental representations of the unconditioned, which must necessarily be thought without ever becoming object of knowledge,
and the transcendental illusion into which metaphysics falls con sists in regarding them as given, whereas they are only imposed or
set as a task (aufgegeben). In truth they are not constitutive prin ciples through which, as through the categories, objects of knowl edge are produced, but only regulative principles, by which the understanding is constrained to seek for farther and farther con necting links in the realm of the conditioned of experience.
Of such Ideas Kant finds three ; the unconditioned for the totality of all phenomena of the inner sense, of all data of the outer sense, of all the conditioned in general, is thought respectively as the soul, the world, and Ood.
10. The criticism of rational psychology in the " Paralogisms of Pure Reason " takes the form of pointing out in the usual proofs for the substantiality of the soul, the quaternio terminorum of a confusion of the logical subject with the real substrate ; it shows that the scientific conception of substance is bound to our perception of that which persists in space, and that it is therefore applicable only in the field of the external sense, and maintains that the Idea of the soul as an unconditioned real uuity of all phenomena of the inner sense, is indeed as little capable of proof as it is of refutation, but is at the same time the heuristic principle for investigating the inter-connections of the psychical life. " "
In a similar way, the section on the Ideal of the Reason
treats the Idea of God. Carrying out with greater precision his earlier
treatise on the same subject, Kant destroys the cogency of the arguments brought forward for the existence of God. He combats the right of the ontological proof to infer existence from the concep-
650 German Philosophy : Kant'* Critique. [Part VL
tion alone ; he shows that the cosmological proof involves a petitio prindpii when it seeks the " first cause " of all that is "contingent " in an " absolutely necessary " being ; he proves that the teleological or physico-tAeological argument at the best — granted the beauty, harmony, and purposiveness or adaptation of the universe —leads to the ancient conception of a wise and good '* Architect of the world. " But he emphasises that the denial of God's existence is a
claim which steps beyond the bounds of our experiential knowledge, and is as incapable of proof as the opposite, and that rather the belief in a living, Real unity of all reality constitutes the only powerful motive for empirical investigation of individual groups of phenomena.
Most characteristic by far, however, is Kant's treatment of the Idea of the world in the Antinomies of Pure Reason. These antinomies express the fundamental thought of the transcendental dialectic in the sharpest manner, by showing that when the universe is treated as the object of knowledge, propositions which are mutually contradictory can be maintained with equal right, in so far as we follow, on the one hand, the demand of the understanding for a completion of the series of phenomena, and on the other, the demand of the sensuous perception for an endless continuance of the same. Kant proves hence, in the "thesis," that the world must have a beginning and end in space and time, that as regards its substance it presents a limit to its divisibility, that events in it must have free, i. e. no longer causally conditioned, beginnings, and that to it must belong an absolutely necessary being, God ; and in the antithesis he proves the contradictory opposite for all four cases. At the same time the complication is increased by the fact that the proofs (with one exception) are indirect, so that the thesis is proved by a refutation of the antithesis, the antithesis by refutation of the thesis ; each assertion is therefore both proved and refuted. The solution of the antinomies in the case of the first two, the " mathe matical," takes the form of showing that the principle of excluded third loses its validity where something is made the object of knowl edge, which can never become such, as is the case with the universe. In the case of the third and fourth antinomies, the " dynamical," which concern freedom and God, Kant seeks to show (what, to be sure, is impossible in a purely theoretical way), that it is perhaps thinkable that the antitheses hold true for phenomena, and the theses, on the other hand, for the unknowable world of things-in- themselves. For this latter world, it is at least not a contradiction to think freedom and God, whereas neither is to be met with, it is certain, in our knowledge of phenomena.
(Jhap. 1, $ 38. ] The Categorical Imperative.
551
$ 39. The Categorical Imperative.
H. Cohen, Kant's Begriindung der Ethik. Berlin, 1877.
E. Arnoldt, Kant's Idee vom hochtten Gut. Konigsberg, 1874. B. PUnjer, Die Keligionsphilosophie Kant's. Jena, 1874.
[N. Porter, Kant's Ethics. Chicago, 1886. ]
[J. G. Schurmann, Kantian Ethics and the Ethics of Evolution.
Lond. 1882. ]
The synthetic function in the theoretical reason is the combina tion of mental presentations into perceptions, judgments, and Ideas. The practical synthesis is the relating of the will to aj>resented con tent, by which this latter becomes an end. This relating Form Kant carefully excluded from the primary" conceptions of the knowing understanding ; it is instead the fundamental category of the practical
use of the reason. It gives no objects of knowledge, but instead, objects of will.
1. For the critique of the reason there rises from this the prob lem, whether there is a practical synthesis a priori, that whether there are necessary and_jtniv£zsally valid objects of Killing or whether anything to be found which the reason makes its end or demands a priori, without any regard to empirical motives. This universal and necessary object of the practical reason we call thejnoxaLZaKL.
For clear forTCalTtrfirrm theOTtset, that the activity of pure reason in proposing ends to itself, there any such activity, must appear as command, in the form of the imperative, as over against the empirical motives of will and action. The will directed toward the particular objects and relations of experience determined by these and dependent upon them the pure rational will, on the con trary, can be determined only through itself. It hence necessarily directed toward something else than the natural impulses, and this something else, which the moral law requires as over against our inclinations, called duty.
Hence the predicates of ethical judgment concern only this kind of determination of the will; they refer to the disposition, not to the act or to its external consequences. Nothing in the world, says Kant,' can be called good without qualification except Good Will and this remains good even though its execution completely restrained by external causes. Morality as a quality of man a disposition conformable to duty.
2. But becomes all the more necessary to investigate as to OrundUouna «nr MttaphysUe der Sitten, (W. , IV. 10 fl. ) Abbott, p.
>
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552 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VJ.
whether there is such an a priori command of duty, and in what consists a law, to which obedience is required by the reason quite independently of all empirical ends. To answer this question Kant proceeds from the teleological connections of the actual volitional life. Experience of natural causal connections brings with it the consequence, that we are forced to will according to the synthetic relation of end and means, one thing for the sake of another. From practical reflection on such relations arise (technical) rules of dex terity and ("practical") counsels of prudence. They all assert, " If you will this or that, then you must proceed thus or so. " They are on this account hypothetical imperatives. They presuppose, a volition as actually present already, and demand on the ground of
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this the further act of will which is required to satisfy the first.
But the moral law cannot be dependent upon any object of will already existing in experience, and moral action must not appear as means in service of other ends. The requirement of the moral command must be propounded and fulfilled solely for its own sake. It does not appeal to what the man already wishes on other grounds, but demands an act of will which has its worth in itself only, and the only truly moral action is one in which such a command is fulfilled without regard to any other consequences. The moral law is a command absolute, a categorical imperative. Tt holds uncondition ally and absolutely, while the hypothetical imperatives are only
relative.
If now it is asked, what is the content of the categorical impera
tive, it is clear that it can contain no empirical element : the demand of the moral law does not stand in relation to the " matter of the act of will. " For this reason happiness is not adapted to be the principle of morals, for the striving after happiness is already present empirically, it is not a demand of reason. Eudsemonistic morals leads, therefore, to merely hypothetical imperatives ; for the ethical laws are only " counsels of prudence or sagacity " advis ing the best method of going to work to satisfy the natural will. But the demand of the moral law just for will other than the natural will the moral law exists for higher purpose than to make us happy. If Nature had wished to place our destiny and vocation in happiness, would have done better to equip us with infallible instincts than with the practical reason of conscience, which " continually in conflict with our impulses. 1 The "happiness morals even, for Kant, the type of false morals, for in this the law always that should do something because desire something
Grundlegung »ur Metaphysik der Sitten, IV. 12 Abbott, p. 11.
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Chai'. l. j -S! ». j Categorical Imperative : Autonomy. 553
else. Every such system of morals is heteronymous ; it makes the practical reason dependent upon some thing given outside of itself, and this reproach applies to all attempts to seek the principle of morality in metaphysical conceptions, such as that of perfection. The theological morals is completely rejected by Kant with the greatest energy, for it combines all kinds of heteronomy when it sees the sanction in the divine will, the criterion in utility, and the motive in the expectation of reward and punishment.
3. The categorical imperative must be the expression of the autonomy of the practical reason, i. e. of the pure self-determination — of the rational will. It concerns, therefore, solely the Form of willing, and requires that this should be a universally valid law.
The will is heteronomous if it follows an empirically given impulse ;
it is autonomous only where it carries out a law given it by itself.
The categorical imperative demands, therefore, that instead of act
ing according to impulses we should rather act according to maxima, and according to such as are adapted for a universal legislation for
all beings who will rationally. " Act a* if the maxim from which J you act were to become through your will a universal law of nature. "
This purely formal principle of conformity to law gains a mate rial import by reflection upon the various kinds of worths. In the kingdom of ends that which is serviceable for some end, and can therefore be replaced by something else, has a price, but that only has worth or dignity, which is absolutely valuable in itself, and is the condition for the sake of which other things, may become valu able. This worth belongs in the highest degree to the moral law itself, and, therefore, the motive which stimulates man to obey this law must be nothing but reverence for the law itself. It would be dishonoured if it were fulfilled for the sake of any external advan tage. The worth or dignity of the moral law, moreover, passes over to the man who is determined by this alone in the whole extent of his experience, and is able to determine himself by the law itself, to be its agent, and to identify himself with it. Hence reverence for the worth of man is for Kant the material principle of moral science. Man should do his duty not for the sake of advantage, but out of reverence for himself, and in his intercourse with his fellow-man he should make it his supreme maxim, never to treat him as a mere means for the attainment of his own ends, but always to honour in him the worth ofpersonality.
From this Kant deduces a proud and strict system of morals ' in < Mtlaphytueh* AnfangtgrutuU der TugtndUhrt, W. , V. 831 ff.
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554 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VI.
which, as set forth in his old age, we cannot fail to discern the features of rigourism and of a certain pedantic stiffness. But the fundamental characteristic of the contrast between duty and inclina tion lies deeply rooted in his system. The principle of autonomy recognises as moral, only acts of will done in conformity to duty, and wholly out of regard for maxims ; it sees in all motivation of moral action by natural impulses a falsification of pure morality. Only that which is done solely from duty is moral. The empirical impulses of human nature are, therefore, in themselves, ethically indifferent ; but they become bad as soon as they oppose the demand
V of the moral law, and the moral life of man consists in realising the command of duty in the warfare against his inclinations.
4. The self-determination of the rational will therefore, the supreme requirement and condition of all morality. But is impos sible in the realm of the experience which thought and known through the categories for this experience knows only the deter mination of each individual phenomenon by others self-determina tion, as the power to begin series of the conditioned, impossible according to the principles of cognition. This power with reference to the will we call freedom, as being an action which not conditioned by others according to the schema of causality, but which is deter mined only through itself, and on its part the cause of an endless series of natural processes. Hence the theoretical reason, whose knowledge limited to experience, had to decide as to the reality of freedom, would necessarily deny but would thereby *ject also the possibility of the moral life. But the Critique of Pure Reason has shown that the theoretical reason cannot assert any thing whatever as to things-in-themselves, and that, accordingly, there no contradiction in thinking the possibility of freedom for the supersensuous. But as evident that freedom must necessa- rily be real morality to be possible, the reality of things-in-them- selves and of the supersensuous, which for the theoretical reason must remain always merely problematical, herewith guaranteed.
This guarantee to be sure, not that of proof, but that of postulate. It rests upon the consciousness; thou canst, for thou oughtest. Just so truly as thou feelest the moral law within thee, so truly as thou believest in the possibility of following so truly must thou also believe in the conditions for this, viz. autonomy and freedom. Freedom not an object of knowledge, but an object of faith, — but of faith which holds as universally and necessarily in the realm of the supersensuous, as the principles of the understand- ing hold in the realm of experience, — an a priori faith.
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Chap. 1, § 39. ] Categorical Imperative : Freedom. 555
theoretical. In previous philosophy " the primacy " of the theoreti cal over the practical reason had prevailed ; knowledge had been assigned the work of determining whether and how there is freedom, and accordingly of deciding as to the reality of morality. Accord ing to Kant, the reality of morality is the fact of the practical reason, and, therefore, we must believe in freedom as the condition of its possibility. From this relation results, for Kant, the primacy of the practical over the theoreticul reason ; for the former is not only capa ble of guaranteeing that which the latter must decline to vouch for, but it appears also that the theoretical reason in those Ideas of the unconditioned in which it points beyond itself (§ 38, 9) is deter
mined by the needs of the practical reason.
Thus there appears with Kant, in a new and completely original
form, the Platonic doctrine of the two worlds of the sensuous and the supersensuous, of phenomena and things-in-themselves. Knowledge controls the former, faith the latter; the former is the realm of necessity, the latter the realm of freedom. The relation of antithesis and yet of mutual reference, which exists between these two worlds, shows itself best in the nature of man, who alone belongs in like measure to both. So far as man is a member of the order of Nature he appears as empirical character — i. e. in his abiding qualities as well as in his individual decisions — as a necessary product in the causal connection of phenomena; but as a member of the supersensuous world he is intelligible character, i. e. a being whose nature is decided by free self-determination within itself. The empirical character is only the manifestation, which for the theoretical consciousness is bound to the rule of causality, of the intelligible character, whose
freedom is the only explanation of the feeling of responsibility as it appears in the conscience.
5. But freedom is not the only postulate of a priori faith. The relations between the sensuous and the moral world demand yet a more general bond of connection, which Kant finds in the concep tion ofthe highest good. 1 The goal of the sensuous will is happiness; the goal of the ethical will is virtue ; these two cannot sustain to each other the relation of means to end. The striving after happi ness does not make an act virtuous ; and virtue is neither permitted to aim at making man happy, nor does it actually do so. Between- the two no causal relation exists empirically, and ethically no teleo- logical connection can be permitted to enter. But since man belongs as well to the sensuous as to the ethical world, the " highest good " must consist for him in the union of virtue and happiness. This
» Critique of Prat. Rtato*. Dialectic, W. , IX. 22* H. ; [Abbott, 202 «. ].
556 German Philosophy : Kant's Critique. [Part VI.
last synthesis of practical conception, however, can be morally- thought only in the form that virtue alone is worthy of happiness.
The demand of the moral consciousness, here expressed, is never theless not satisfied by the causal necessity of experience. Natural law is ethically indifferent, and affords no guarantee that virtue will necessarily lead to happiness; on the contrary, experience teaches rather that virtue requires renunciation of empirical happi ness, and that want of virtue is capable of being united with tem poral happiness. If, therefore, the ethical consciousness requires the reality of the highest good, faith must reach beyond the empirical life of man, and beyond the order of Nature, on into the super- sensuous. It postulates a reality of personality which extends beyond the temporal existence — the immortal life — &aa\ a moral order of the universe, which is grounded in a Supreme Reason — in
, God.
Kant's moral proof for freedom, immortality, and God is, there
fore, not a proof of knowledge, but of faith. Its postulates are the conditions of the moral life, and their reality must be believed in as fully as the reality of the latter. But with all this they remain knowable theoretically, as little as before.
6. The dualism of Nature and morality appears with Kant in its baldest form in his Philosophy of Religion, the principles of which, agreeably to his theory of knowledge, he could seek only in the practical reason ; universality and necessity in relation to the super- sensuous are afforded only by the ethical consciousness. Only that can be a priori in religion, which is based upon morals. Kant's religion of reason is, therefore, not a natural religion, but " moral theology. " Religion rests upon conceiving moral laws as divine commands.
This religious form of morality Kant develops once more from the twofold nature of man. There are in him two systems of im pulses, the sensuous and the moral ; on account of the unity of the willing personality neither can be without relation to the other. Their relation should be, according to the moral demand, that of the subordination of the sensuous impulses to the moral ; but as a matter of fact, according to Kant, the reverse relation naturally obtains with man,1 and since the sensuous impulses are evil as soon as they even merely resist the moral, there is in man a natural bent
1 The pessimistic conception of man's natural essence doubtless has with Kant its occasion in his religious education ; but he guards himself expressly against the identification of his doctrine of the radical evil with the theological conception of hereditary sin; cf. Hel. innerh. d. Grewe d. r. V. , I. 4; W. , VI 201 ff. j [Abbott, p. 347].
Chat. 1, V Categorical Imperative : Religion, Law. 557
to evil. This " radical evil " is not necessary ; for otherwise there would be no responsibility for it It is inexplicable, but it is a fact ; 1 it is a deed of intelligible freedom. The task which follows from
this for man is the reversal of the moving springs, which is to be \ brought about by the warfare between the good and evil principle within him. But in the above-described perverted condition, the brazen majesty of the moral law works upon man with a terror that dashes him down, and he needs, therefore, to support his moral motives, faith in-a-diviae_potcer, which imposes upon him the. moral
law as its command, but also grants him the help of redeeming love to enable him to obey it.
From this standpoint Kant interprets the essential portions of Christian doctrine into a "pure moral religion," viz. the ideal of the moral perfection of man in the Logos, redemption through vicarious love, and the mystery of the new birth. He thus restores to their rightful place, from which they had been displaced by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the truly religious motives which are rooted in the felt need of a redemption, — though he does this in a form which is free from the historical faith of orthodoxy.