Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/781

KANT 761 of the objective validity of space and time is the starting point in the negative results of the " Criticism of the Pure Reason." In the first edition Kant threw out an intimation, with- drawn in the second, that the subject (ego) and things-in-themselves are possibly one and the same substance ; this led to the subjective idealism of Fichte. 2. Transcendental Ana- lytics. We pass here from the sense to the understanding, or the power of forming general notions. It is by such notions that we com- bine and connect what is given in experience. So that the fundamental question here is this : Is a pure science of nature possible ? In order to show the possibility of experience, so far as it rests upon pure conceptions of the under- standing a priori, we must first represent what belongs to judging generally, and the various states of understanding in the act of judging, in a complete table. For the pure conceptions of the understanding must necessarily run par- allel to these states ; because such conceptions are nothing more than pure conceptions of in- tuitions in general, so far as intuitions are de- termined by one or other of these ways of judg- ing (states of understanding) in themselves (that is, necessarily and universally). Hereby also the a priori principles of the possibility of all experience, as of an objectively valid empirical cognition, will be precisely deter- mined. These a priori principles Kant called categories of the understanding (applying Aris- totle's term in a different sense). These cate- gories, which he brought into connection with (or rather transferred and transformed from) the purely logical categories, are as follows : Logical. TrftnicendeBtfcl. ( Universal. I. Quantity.-^ Particular. ( Singular. Unity. Plurality. Totality. ( Affirmative. Reality. II. Quality, -j Negative. Negation. | Indefinite. Limitation. ( Categorical. Substance. III. Relation. J. Hypothetical. Cause. | Disjunctive. Reciprocity. ( Problematical. Possibility. IV. Modality x Assertory. ( Apodictic. Necessity. Existence. Under these 12 categories, or a priori notions of the understanding, we are compelled to bring all our sensible experience. Empty in them- selves, they are filled up by phenomena ; and they reduce the " rhapsody " of phenomena into order. But what warrants us in pursuing this process in bringing together such differ- ent things as the obscure experience of sensible phenomena and the clear dicta of the under- standing? We derive this warrant, says Kant, from the pure intuitions of space and time, in which there is an element common to both. All objective phenomena, and all subjective notions, equally fall under the dominion of these two intuitions, which thus become the schemata by and through which the mind in- terprets nature. Thus, the world does not give laws to the mind, but the mind rules the world. We cannot even know the external world excepting by and through these a priori conceptions (e. g., substance and time). But at the same time Kant holds with equal tena- city to the position that these judgments of the understanding do not, and cannot, disclose to us the supersensible world ; we cannot through them come to the knowledge of things as they are in themselves. He does not deny their real objective being, but says that all we can know about them is through our subjective notions. He even attributes to them activity and efficiency ; they force the mind to distin- guish and divine; but still, these objects and what the mind says about them are totally diverse. (This is one of the chief points in which subsequent criticism and speculation have modified the position of the Kantian the- ory of knowledge, making a more close and vital correspondence between the laws of thought and being in order to avoid the irresistible negative results of this theory.) The general result then of the analytics, as of the resthet- ics, is, that what is not in time and space can- not be known by or through the categories; that is, it leads to that form of transcendental idealism which maintains that things-in-them- selves cannot be known, that only phenomena are known (i. ., known through and by the categories). At the same time Kant is careful to assert that those things-in-themselves have a real existence; and he distinguishes clearly between his system and the idealism of Berke- ley on the one hand and that of Leibnitz on the other. Berkeley asserted that we have a knowledge merely of "ideas;" Kant asserts that we have not merely ideas, but ideas of something which is real and independent. Berkeley said that ideas were connected em- pirically; Kant says, by a necessity, by law (and hence there can be a science of nature). Kant made, as Berkeley did not, a thorough distinction between the noumena and the phe- nomena. 3. Transcendental Dialectics. Here we enter upon the proper criticism of the pure or theoretical reason; and here come up the real metaphysical questions. The understand- ing gives us general notions ; the reason, ideas. The three grand ideas with which metaphysics has to do are those of the soul, of the world, and of God, which respectively form the basis of the three sciences, rational psychology, ra- tional cosmology, and theology. By an unnat- ural method, Kant makes these three ideas correspond respectively with the categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive syllogisms. He takes a similar course, as we have seen, with the categories of the understanding. The question of the identity of logic and meta- physics is inevitably suggested. The general conclusion of this part of the system is, that these sciences, in the sense of the older dog- matism, are impracticable to reason ; but there is still for man a supersensible sphere to be reached and explored in other ways. In re- spect to rational psychology, it is the aim of