Critique of Pure Reason (Meiklejohn)/Volume 1/Part 2/Division 1/Book 2
TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC.
BOOK II.
Analytic of Principles.
General logic is constructed upon a plan which coincides exactly with the division of the higher faculties of cognition. These are, Understanding, Judgment, and Reason. This science, accordingly, treats in its analytic of Conceptions, Judgments, and Conclusions in exact correspondence with the functions and order of those mental powers which we include generally under the generic denomination of understanding.
As this merely formal logic makes abstraction of all content of cognition, whether pure or empirical, and occupies itself with the mere form of thought (discursive cognition), it must contain in its analytic a canon for reason. For the form of reason has its law, which, without taking into consideration the particular nature of the cognition about which it is employed, can be discovered à priori, by the simple analysis of the action of reason into its momenta.
Transcendental logic, limited as it is to a determinate content, that of pure à priori cognitions, to wit, cannot imitate general logic in this division. For it is evident that the transcendental employment of reason is not objectively valid, and therefore does not belong to the logic of truth (that is, to analytic), but as a logic of illusion, occupies a particular department in the scholastic system under the name of transcendental Dialectic.
Understanding and judgment accordingly possess in tran- scendental logic a canon of objectively valid, and therefore true exercise, and are comprehended in the analytical department of that logic. But reason, in her endeavours to arrive by à priori means at some true statement concerning objects, and to extend cognition beyond the bounds of possible experience, is altogether dialectic, and her illusory assertions cannot be constructed into a canon such as an analytic ought to contain.
Accordingly, the analytic of principles will be merely a canon for the faculty of judgment, for the instruction of this faculty in its application to phænomena of the pure conceptions of the understanding, which contain the necessary condition for the establishment of à priori laws. On this account, although the subject of the following chapters is the especial principles of understanding, I shall make use of the term “Doctrine of the faculty of judgment,” in order to define more particularly my present purpose.
INTRODUCTION.
Of the Transcendental Faculty of judgement in General.
If understanding in general be defined as the faculty of laws or rules, the faculty of judgment may be termed the faculty of subsumption under these rules; that is, of distinguishing whether this or that does or does not stand under a given rule (casus data legis). General logic contains no directions or precepts for the faculty of judgment, nor can it contain any such. For as it makes abstraction of all content of cognition, no duty is left for it, except that of exposing analytically the mere form of cognition in conceptions, judgments and conclusions, and of thereby establishing formal rules for all exercise of the understanding. Now if this logic wished to give some general direction how we should subsume under these rules, that is, how we should distinguish whether this or that did or did not stand under them, this again, could not be done otherwise than by means of a rule. But this rule, precisely because it is a rule, requires for itself direction from the faculty of judgment. Thus, it is evident, that the understanding is capable of being instructed by rules, but that the judgment is a peculiar talent, which does not, and cannot require tuition, but only exercise. This faculty is therefore the specific quality of the so-called mother-wit, the want of which no scholastic discipline can compensate. For although education may furnish, and, as it were, ingraft upon a limited understanding rules borrowed from other minds, yet the power of employing these rules correctly must belong to the pupil himself; and no rule which we can prescribe to him with this purpose, is, in the absence or deficiency of this gift of nature, secure from misuse.[1] A physician therefore, a judge or a statesman, may have in his head many admirable pathological, juridical, or political rules, in a degree that may enable him to be a profound teacher in his particular science, and yet in the application of these rules, he may very possibly blunder,-either because he is wanting in natural judgment (though not in understanding), and whilst he can comprehend the general in abstracto, cannot distinguish whether a particular case in concreto ought to rank under the former; or because his faculty of judgment has not been sufficiently exercised by examples and real practice. Indeed, the grand and only use of examples, is to sharpen the judgment. For as regards the correctness and precision of the insight of the understanding, examples are commonly injurious rather than otherwise, because, as casus in terminis, they seldom adequately fulfil the conditions of the rule. Besides, they often weaken the power of our understanding to apprehend rules or laws in their universality, independently of particular circumstances of experience; and hence, accustom us to employ them more as formulæ than as principles. Examples are thus the go-cart of the judgment, which he who is naturally deficient in that faculty, cannot afford to dispense with.
But although general logic cannot give directions to the faculty of judgment, the case is very different as regards transcendental logic, insomuch that it appears to be the especial duty of the latter to secure and direct, by means of determinate rules, the faculty of judgment in the employment of the pure understanding. For, as a doctrine, that is, as an endeavour to enlarge the sphere of the understanding in regard to pure à priori cognitions, philosophy is worse than useless, since from all the attempts hitherto made, little or no ground has been gained. But, as a critique, in order to guard against the mistakes of the faculty of judgment (lapsus judicii) in the employment of the few pure conceptions of the understanding which we possess, although its use is in this case purely negative, philosophy is called upon to apply all its acuteness and penetration.
But transcendental philosophy has this peculiarity, that besides indicating the rule, or rather the general condition for rules, which is given in the pure conception of the understanding, it can, at the same time, indicate à priori the case to which the rule must be applied. The cause of the superiority which, in this respect, transcendental philosophy possesses above all other sciences except mathematics, lies in this:—it treats of conceptions which must relate à priori to their objects, whose objective validity consequently cannot be demonstrated à posteriori, and is, at the same time, under the obligation of presenting in general but sufficient tests, the conditions under which objects can be given in harmony with those conceptions; otherwise they would be mere logical forms, without content, and not pure conceptions of the understanding.
Our transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgment will contain two chapters. The first will treat of the sensuous condition under which alone pure conceptions of the understanding can be employed,—that is, of the schematism of the pure understanding. The second will treat of those synthetical judgments which are derived à priori from pure conceptions of the understanding under those conditions, and which lie à priori at the foundation of all other cognitions, that is to say, it will treat of the principles of the pure understanding.
- ↑ Deficiency in judgment is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labour under a deficiency in the faculty of judgment, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned, who in the application of their science betray to a lamentable degree this irremediable want.