INTRODUCTION (continued 2)

Natural science (physica) contains synthetic a priori judgments.[280]—There is here a complication to which Vaihinger[281] has been the first to draw attention. In the Prolegomena[282] Kant emphasises the distinction between physics and pure or universal science of nature.[283] The latter treats only the a priori form of nature (i.e. its necessary conformity to law), and is therefore a propaedeutic to physics which involves further empirical factors. For two reasons, however, this universal natural science falls short of its ideal. First, it contains empirical elements, such as the concepts of motion, impenetrability, inertia, etc. Secondly, it refers only to the objects of external sense, and not, as we should expect in a universal science, to natural existences without exception, i.e. to the objects of psychology as well as of physics.[284] But among its principles there are, Kant adds, a few which are purely a priori and possess the universality required: e.g. such propositions as that substance is permanent, and that every event has a cause. Now these are the examples which ought to have been cited in the passage before us. Those actually given fall entirely outside the scope of the Critique. They are treated only in the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe. They belong to the relatively, not to the absolutely, pure science of nature. The source of the confusion Vaihinger again traces to Kant’s failure to hold fast to the important distinction between immanent and transcendent metaphysics.[285] His so-called pure or universal natural science (nature, as above noted, signifying for Kant “all that is”) is really immanent metaphysics, and the propositions in regard to substance and causality ought therefore to be classed as metaphysical. This, indeed, is how they are viewed in the earlier sections of the Prolegomena. The distinction later drawn in § 15 is ignored. Pure natural science is identified with mathematical physics, and the propositions which in § 15 are spoken of as belonging to pure universal natural science are now regarded as metaphysical. “Genuinely metaphysical judgments are one and all synthetic.... For instance, the proposition—everything which in things is substance is permanent—is a synthetic, and properly metaphysical judgment.”[286] In § 5 the principle of causality is also cited as an example of a synthetic a priori judgment in metaphysics. But Kant still omits to draw a distinction between immanent and transcendent metaphysics; and as a consequence his classification of synthetic a priori judgments remains thoroughly confused. They are taken as belonging to three spheres, mathematics, physics (in the relative sense), and metaphysics. The implication is that this threefold distinction corresponds to the threefold division of the Doctrine of Elements into Aesthetic, Analytic, and Dialectic. Yet, as a matter of fact, the propositions of mathematical physics, in so far as they are examples of applied mathematics, are dealt with in the Aesthetic, and in so far as they involve concepts of motion and the like fall entirely outside the scope of the Critique, while the Analytic deals with those metaphysical judgments (such as the principle of causality) which are of immanent employment.[287]

As the new paragraphs in the Introduction to the second edition are transferred without essential modification from the Prolegomena, they are open to the same criticism. To harmonise B 17 with the real teaching of the Critique, it must be entirely recast. Instead of “natural science” (physica) we must read “pure universal natural science [= immanent metaphysics],” and for the examples given we must substitute those principles of substance and causality which are dealt with in the Analytic. The next paragraph deals with metaphysics in its transcendent form, and accordingly states the problem peculiar to the Dialectic.

Metaphysics.[288]—This paragraph deals explicitly only with transcendent judgments, but as the terms used are ambiguous, it is possible that those of immanent metaphysics are also referred to. The paragraph is not taken from the Prolegomena. The corresponding passage[289] in the Prolegomena deals only with the judgments of immanent metaphysics.

The real problem of pure reason is contained in the question: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?[290]—Cf. above, pp. 26 ff., 33 ff., 43 ff.

David Hume.[291]—Cf. above, pp. 61 ff.

A theoretical knowledge.[292]—i.e. Kant explicitly leaves aside the further problem, whether such judgments may not also be possible in the practical (moral) and other spheres.

How is pure natural science possible?[293]—The note which Kant appends shows that he is here taking natural science in the relative sense.[294] The same irrelevant instances are again cited.

As these sciences really exist.[295]—Cf. below, p. 44 ff.

The poor progress which metaphysics has hitherto made.[296]—Cf. Preface to the second edition; Prolegomena, § 4, and A 175 ff.

How is metaphysics as a science possible?[297]—We may now consider how this and the three preceding questions are related to one another and to the various divisions of the Critique.[298] The four subordinate questions within the main problem—How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?—are here stated by Kant as:

1. How is pure mathematics possible?

2. How is pure natural science possible?

3. How is metaphysics as natural disposition possible?

4. How is metaphysics as science possible?

There is little difficulty as regards 1 and 2. The first is dealt with in the Aesthetic, and the second[299] in the Analytic, though, owing to the complexity of the problems, the Aesthetic and Analytic are wider than either query, and cannot be completely separated. Applied mathematics is dealt with in the Analytic as well as in the Aesthetic, and in both the determination of the limits of scientific knowledge is equally important with that of accounting for its positive acquisitions. The third and fourth questions raise all manner of difficulties. Notwithstanding the identical mode of formulation, they do not run on all fours with the two preceding. The first two are taken as referring to actually existing and valid sciences. It is the ground of their objective validity that is sought. But what is investigated in the third question falsely lays claim to the title of science; we can enquire only as to the ground of its subjective possibility. In the fourth question, the problem takes still another form. Kant now seeks to determine whether a new, not yet existing, science of metaphysics is possible, and in what manner it can be validly constructed. The manifoldness of the problems is thus concealed by the fixity of the common formula.[300] Now with what divisions of the Critique are the two last questions connected? It has been suggested[301] that the third question is dealt with in the Dialectic and the fourth in the Methodology, the four questions thus corresponding to the four main divisions of the Critique. But this view is untenable, especially in its view of the fourth question. The division of the Critique is by dichotomy into doctrine of elements and doctrine of methods, the former including the Aesthetic and Logic, and the Logic being again divided into Analytic and Dialectic. Its problems stand in an equally complex subordination; they cannot be isolated from one another, and set merely side by side. Secondly, it has been maintained[302] that the third question is dealt with in the introduction to the Dialectic (in its doctrine of Ideas), and the fourth in the Dialectic proper. This view is fairly satisfactory as regards the third question, but would involve the conclusion that the fourth question refers only to transcendent metaphysics, and that it therefore receives a negative answer. But that is not Kant’s view of metaphysics as a science. The Critique is intended to issue in a new and genuine body of metaphysical teaching.

The key to the whole problem of the four questions is not to be found in the Critique. This section is transcribed from §§ 4-5 of the Prolegomena, and is consequently influenced by the general arrangement of the latter work. This fourfold division was indeed devised for the purposes of the argument of the Prolegomena, which is developed on the analytic method, and for that reason it cannot be reconciled with the very different structure of the Critique. Yet even the Prolegomena suffers from confusion, due[303] to Kant’s failure to distinguish between universal and relative natural science on the one hand, and between immanent and transcendent metaphysics on the other. The four questions do not coincide with those of the Critique. Instead of the third—how is metaphysics as natural disposition possible?—we find: how is metaphysics in general possible? In §§ 4, 5, Kant’s argument is clear and straightforward. Pure mathematical science and mathematical physics are actually existing sciences. The synthetic a priori judgments which they contain must be recognised as valid. Metaphysics makes similar claims. But, as is sufficiently proved by the absence of agreement among philosophers, its professions are without ground. It transgresses the limits of possible experience, and contains only pretended knowledge. This false transcendent metaphysics is refuted in the Dialectic. Kant was, however, equally convinced that an immanent metaphysics is possible, and that its grounds and justification had been successfully given in the Analytic. His problem as formulated in the Prolegomena is accordingly threefold: (1) how are the existing rational sciences, mathematical and physical, possible? (2) in the light of the insight acquired by this investigation, what is the origin and explanation of the existing pretended sciences of transcendent metaphysics? and (3) in what manner can we establish a positive metaphysics that will harmonise with reason’s true vocation? So far all is clear and definite. But the unresolved difficulty, as to the relation in which natural science and immanent metaphysics stand to one another, brings confusion in its train. As already noted,[304] in § 15 natural science is displaced by immanent metaphysics (though not under that name); and as a result the fourth question reduces to the second, and the above threefold problem has to be completely restated. The Prolegomena has, however, already been divided into four parts; and in the last division Kant still continues to treat the fourth question as distinct from that which has been dealt with in the second division, though, as his answer shows, they are essentially the same. The answer given is that metaphysics as a science is possible only in and through the Critique, and that though the whole Critique is required for this purpose, the content of the new science is embodied in the Analytic.

In the second edition of the Critique the confusion between natural science and immanent metaphysics still persists, and a new source of ambiguity is added through the reformulation of the third question. It is now limited to the problem of the subjective origin of metaphysics as a natural disposition. The fourth question has therefore to be widened, so as to include transcendent as well as immanent, the old as well as the new, metaphysics. But save for this one alteration the entire section is inspired by considerations foreign to the Critique; this section, like B 17, must be recast before it will harmonise with the subsequent argument.

Every kind of knowledge is called pure, etc.[305]—These sentences are omitted in the second edition. They have been rendered unnecessary by the further and more adequate definition of “pure” given in B 3 ff.

Reason is the faculty which supplies the principles of knowledge a priori.[306]—This statement should, as Vaihinger points out, be interpreted in the light of A 299 = B 355.

“Reason, like understanding, can be employed in a merely formal, i.e. logical manner, wherein it abstracts from all content of knowledge. But it is also capable of a real use,[307] since it contains within itself the source of certain concepts and principles, which it does not borrow either from the senses or from the understanding.”

Reason is taken in the first of the above meanings. Reason in its real use, when extended so as to include pure sensibility and understanding,[308] is the pure reason referred to in the next sentence of the Critique. A priori is here used to signify the relatively a priori; in the next sentence it denotes the absolutely a priori.

An Organon of pure reason.[309]—What follows, from this point to the middle of the next section, is a good example of Kant’s patchwork method of piecing together old manuscript in the composition of the Critique. There seems to be no way of explaining its bewildering contradictions save by accepting Vaihinger’s[310] conclusion that it consists of three separate accounts, written at different times, and representing different phases in the development of Kant’s views.

I. The first account, beginning with the above words and ending with “already a considerable gain” (schon sehr viel gewonnen ist), is evidently the oldest. It reveals the influence of the Dissertation. It distinguishes:

1. Critique of pure reason ( = Propaedeutic). 2. Organon of pure reason. 3. System of pure reason.

1. Critique is a critical examination (Beurtheilung) of pure reason, its sources and limits. The implication (obscured by the direct relating of Critique to System) is that it prepares the way for the Organon.

2. Organon comprehends all the principles by which pure knowledge can be acquired and actually established.

3. System is the complete application of such an Organon.

This classification is, as Paulsen[311] was the first to remark, an adaptation of the Dissertation standpoint.

II. The second account begins: “I entitle all knowledge transcendental,” but is broken by the third account—from “Such a Critique” to the end of the paragraph—which has been inserted into the middle of it. It is then continued in the next section. It distinguishes:

1. Critique of pure reason.

2. Transcendental philosophy.

1. Critique contains the principles of all a priori synthetical knowledge, tracing an architectonic plan which guarantees the completeness and certainty of all the parts.

2. Transcendental philosophy contains their complete analytic development, and is therefore the system of such knowledge.

III. The third account (“Such a Critique” to end of paragraph) in its main divisions follows the first account: 1. Critique, 2. Organon or Canon, 3. System. But they are now defined in a different manner. Critique is a propaedeutic for the Organon. But Organon, which signifies the totality of the principles through which pure knowledge is attained and extended,[312] may not be possible. In that case the Critique is a preparation only for a Canon, i.e. the totality of the principles of the proper employment of reason.[313] The Organon or Canon, in turn, will render possible a System of the philosophy of pure reason, the former yielding a system in extension of a priori knowledge, the latter a system which defines the limits of a priori knowledge.

It is impossible to reduce these divergencies to a single consistent view. They illustrate the varying sense in which Kant uses the term “metaphysics.” In the first account, even though that account is based on a distinction drawn in the Dissertation, the system of metaphysics is immanent; in the second it is also transcendent; in the third it is neutral.[314]

Propaedeutic.[315]—That the Critique is only propaedeutic to a System of pure reason was later denied by Kant in the following emphatic terms:

“I must here observe that I cannot understand the attempt to ascribe to me the view that I have sought to supply only a Propaedeutic to transcendental philosophy, not the System of this philosophy. Such a view could never have entered my thoughts, for I have myself praised the systematic completeness (das vollendete Ganze) of the pure philosophy in the Critique of Pure Reason as the best mark of its truth.”[316]

Kant thus finally, after much vacillation in his use of the terms, came to the conclusion that Critique, Transcendental Philosophy, and System all coincide. Meantime he has forgotten his own previous and conflicting utterances on this point.

As regards speculation negative only.[317]—“Speculation” here signifies the theoretical, as opposed to the practical.[318] The qualifying phrase is in line with other passages of the second edition, in which it is emphasised that the conclusions of the Critique are positive in their practical (moral) bearing.[319]

Transcendental—transcendent.[320]—Kant was the first to distinguish between these two terms. In the scholastic period, in which they first appear, they were exactly synonymous, the term transcendent being the more usual. The verb, to transcend, appears in Augustine in its widest metaphysical sense. “Transcende et te ipsum.” “Cuncta corpora transcenderunt [Platonici] quaerentes Deum; omnem animam mutabilesque omnes spiritus transcenderunt quaerentes summum Deum.”[321] The first employment of the term in a more specific or technical sense occurs in a treatise, De natura generis, falsely ascribed to Thomas Aquinas. In this treatise ens, res, aliquid, unum, bonum, verum are entitled transcendentia. To understand the meaning in which the word is here used, we have, it would seem,[322] to take account of the influence exercised upon Aquinas by a mystical work of Arabian origin, entitled De causis. It contained reference to the Neo-Platonic distinction between the Aristotelian categories, which the Neo-Platonists regarded as being derivative, and the more universal concepts, ens, unum, verum, bonum. To these latter concepts Aquinas gave a theological application. Ens pertains to essence, unum to the person of the Father, verum to the person of the Son, bonum to the person of the Holy Ghost. In the De natura generis the number of these supreme concepts is increased to six by the addition of res and aliquid, and as just stated the title transcendentia is also now applied for the first time. In this meaning the term transcendent and its synonym transcendental are of frequent occurrence in Scholastic writings. The transcendentia or transcendentalia are those concepts which so transcend the categories as to be themselves predicable of the categories. They are the “termini vel proprietates rebus omnibus cuiusque generis convenientes.” Thus Duns Scotus speaks of ens as the highest of the “transcendental” concepts. The term also occurs in a more or less similar sense in the writings of Campanella, Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon, and Spinoza. The last named gives a psychological explanation of the “termini Transcendentales ... ut Ens, Res, Aliquid” as standing for ideas that are in the highest degree confused owing to the multiplicity of the images which have neutralised one another in the process of their generation.[323] Berkeley also speaks of the “transcendental maxims” which lie outside the field of mathematical enquiry, but which influence all the particular sciences.[324] Evidently the term has become generalised beyond its stricter scholastic meaning. Lambert employs transcendent in an even looser sense to signify concepts which represent what is common to both the corporeal and the intellectual world.[325] We may, indeed, assert that in Kant’s time the terms transcendent and transcendental, while still remaining synonymous, and though used on the lines of their original Scholastic connotation, had lost all definiteness of meaning and all usefulness of application. Kant took advantage of this situation to distinguish sharply between them, and to impose upon each a meaning suitable to his new Critical teaching.

“Transcendental” is primarily employed by Kant as a name for a certain kind of knowledge. Transcendental knowledge is knowledge not of objects, but of the nature and conditions of our a priori cognition of them. In other words, a priori knowledge must not be asserted, simply because it is a priori, to be transcendental; this title applies only to such knowledge as constitutes a theory or science of the a priori.[326] Transcendental knowledge and transcendental philosophy must therefore be taken as coinciding; and as thus coincident, they signify the science of the possibility, nature, and limits of a priori knowledge. The term similarly applies to the subdivisions of the Critique. The Aesthetic is transcendental in that it establishes the a priori character of the forms of sensibility; the Analytic in that it determines the a priori principles of understanding, and the part which they play in the constitution of knowledge; the Dialectic in that it defines and limits the a priori Ideas of Reason, to the perverting power of which all false metaphysics is due. That this is the primary and fundamental meaning common to the various uses of the term is constantly overlooked by Max Müller. Thus in A 15 = B 30 he translates transcendentale Sinnenlehre “doctrine of transcendental sense” instead of as “transcendental doctrine of sense.” In transforming transcendentale Elementarlehre into “elements of transcendentalism” he avoids the above error, but only by inventing a word which has no place in Kant’s own terminology.

But later in the Critique Kant employs the term transcendental in a second sense, namely, to denote the a priori factors in knowledge. All representations which are a priori and yet are applicable to objects are transcendental. The term is then defined through its distinction from the empirical on the one hand, and from the transcendent on the other. An intuition or conception is transcendental when it originates in pure reason, and yet at the same time goes to constitute an a priori knowledge of objects. The contrast between the transcendental and the transcendent, as similarly determined upon by Kant, is equally fundamental, but is of quite different character. That is transcendent which lies entirely beyond experience; whereas the transcendental signifies those a priori elements which underlie experience as its necessary conditions. The transcendent is always unknowable. The transcendental is that which by conditioning experience renders all knowledge, whether a priori or empirical, possible. The direct opposite of the transcendent is the immanent, which as such includes both the transcendental and the empirical. Thus while Kant employs the term transcendental in a very special sense which he has himself arbitrarily determined, he returns to the original etymological meaning of the term transcendent. It gains a specifically Critical meaning only through being used to expound the doctrine that all knowledge is limited to sense-experience. The attempt to find some similar etymological justification for Kant’s use of the term transcendental has led Schopenhauer and Kuno Fischer to assert that Kant entitles his philosophy transcendental because it transcends both the dogmatism and the scepticism of all previous systems![327] Another attempt has been made by Stirling[328] and Watson,[329] who assert, at least by implication, that the transcendental is a species of the transcendent, in that while the latter transcends the scope of experience, the former transcends its sense-content. Kant himself, however, nowhere attempts to justify his use of the term by any such argument.

A third meaning of the term transcendental arises through its extension from the a priori intuitions and concepts to the processes and faculties to which they are supposed to be due. Thus Kant speaks of the transcendental syntheses of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition, and of the transcendental faculties of imagination and understanding. In this sense the transcendental becomes a title for the conditions which render experience possible. And inasmuch as processes and faculties can hardly be entitled a priori, Kant has in this third application of the term departed still further from his first definition of it.[330]

The distinction between the transcendental and the transcendent may be illustrated by reference to the Ideas of reason. Regarded as regulative only, i.e. merely as ideals which inspire the understanding in the pursuit of knowledge, they are transcendental. Interpreted as constitutive, i.e. as representing absolute realities, they are transcendent. Yet, despite the fundamental character of this distinction, so careless is Kant in the use of his technical terms that he also employs transcendental as exactly equivalent in meaning to transcendent. This is of constant occurrence, but only two instances need here be cited. In the important phrase “transcendental ideality of space and time” the term transcendental is used in place of the term transcendent. For what Kant is asserting is that judged from a transcendent point of view, i.e. from the point of view of the thing in itself, space is only subjectively real.[331] The phrase is indeed easily capable of the orthodox interpretation, but, as the context clearly shows, that is not the way in which it is actually being used by Kant. Another equally surprising example is to be found in the title “transcendental dialectic.” Though it is defined in A 63-4 = B 88 in correct fashion, in A 297 = B 354 and A 308-9 = B 365-6 it is interpreted as treating of the illusion involved in transcendent judgments, and so virtually as meaning transcendent dialectic.[332]

Not a Critique of books and systems.[333]—Kant here inserts a statement from the omitted Preface to the first edition.[334] He now adds that the Critique will supply a criterion for the valuation of all other systems.

A 13 = B 27.—Kant’s reason for omitting the title of Section II in the second edition was no doubt its inconsistency with the assertion of its opening sentence, viz. that the Critique is not transcendental philosophy, but only a preparation for it. Instead of it, Kant has introduced the more appropriate heading placed over the preceding paragraph.

The highest principles of morals do not belong to transcendental philosophy.[335]—Cf. A 801 = B 829. The alteration made in this passage in the second edition[336] indicates a transition towards the opposite view which Kant developed in the Critique of Practical Reason.[337]

The division of this science.[338]—Kant in this paragraph alternates in the most bewildering fashion between the Critique and Transcendental Philosophy. In this first sentence the Critique seems to be referred to. Later it is Transcendental Philosophy that is spoken of.

Doctrine of Elements and Doctrine of Methods.[339]—Cf. A 707 ff. = B 735 ff., and below, pp. 438, 563.

Two stems, sensibility and understanding, which may perhaps spring from a common root.[340]—Kant sometimes seems to suggest[341] that imagination is this common root. It belongs both to sensibility and to understanding, and is passive as well as spontaneous. But when so viewed, imagination is virtually regarded as an unknown supersensuous power, “concealed in the depths of the soul.”[342] The supersensuous is the point of union of our disparate human faculties, as well as of nature and freedom, mechanism and teleology.

The transcendental doctrine of sense would necessarily constitute the first part of the Science of Elements.[343]—“Necessarily constitute the first part” translates zum ersten Theile gehören müssen. This Vaihinger explains as an archaic mode of expression, equivalent to ausmachen. The point is important because, if translated quite literally, it might seem to conflict with the division actually followed, and to support the alternative division given in the Critique of Practical Reason. The first Critique is divided thus:

I. Doctrine of Elements.

1. Aesthetic.

2. Logic.

(a) Analytic.

(b) Dialectic.

II. Doctrine of Methods.

In the Critique of Practical Reason[344] a much more satisfactory division is suggested:

I. Doctrine of Elements.

1. Analytic.

(a) Aesthetic (Sense).

(b) Logic (Understanding).

2. Dialectic.

II. Doctrine of Methods.

The first division rests on somewhat irrelevant distinctions derived from the traditional logic; the other is more directly inspired by the distinctions which naturally belong to Kant’s own philosophical system.