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KANT'S METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE.

hausted; but the latter, because it offers an endless multiplicity of intuitions (pure or empirical), and therefore of objects of thought, can never attain to absolute completeness, but can be extended to infinity, as in pure mathematics and empirical natural knowledge. This metaphysical corporeal doctrine I believe myself to have, as far as it reaches, completely exhausted, but do not affect thereby to have achieved any great work.

The scheme for the completeness of a metaphysical system, whether of nature in general, or of corporeal nature in particular, is the table of the categories.^[1] For

↑ I find doubts expressed in the criticism of Professor Ulrich’s Institutiones Logicae et Metaphysicae, in the ‘Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung’ (1785), No. 295, not indeed respecting this table of the pure conceptions of the understanding, but the conclusions drawn therefrom as to the limitation of the whole faculty of the pure Reason, and therefore of all metaphysics, in which the learned critic expresses himself at one with his no less accurate author; doubts which, because they are supposed to touch the foundation-stone of my system, as put forward in the Critique, should be reasons for thinking that the latter did not by far carry that apodictic necessity with it, in respect of its main object, which is indispensable in compelling an unqualified acceptance. This foundation-stone is said to be a deduction expounded partly there, and partly in the Prolegomena, of the pure conceptions of the understanding, which in that part of the Critique, that should have been the clearest, is said to be the most obscure, or indeed, to move in a circle, etc. I direct my answer to these objections, only to their chief point, namely, that without a completely clear and adequate deduction of the categories, the system of the Critique of pure Reason would totter to its foundations. I maintain, on the contrary, that for those who subscribe to my propositions as to the sensibility of all our intuition, and the sufficiency of the table of the categories, as determinations of our consciousness borrowed from the logical functions of judgment in general (as the Reviewer does) the system of the Critique must carry with it apodictic certainty because it is built on the proposition, that the whole speculative use of our Reason never reaches beyond objects of possible experience. For if it can be proved that the categories, of which the Reason must make use in all its cognition, can have no other employment whatever, except merely with reference to objects of experience (in such a way that only in them [viz. the categories] is the form of thought possible), the answer to the question, how they make such possible is indeed important enough, in order, as far as may be to complete this deduction, but in respect of the main object of the system, namely the determination of the boundary of the pure Reason in nowise necessary, but merely desirable. For in this respect, the deduction is already carried far enough, when it shows that the conceived categories are nothing but mere forms of the judgments, in so far as they are applied to intuitions (which are with us always sensuous), by which they first of all become objects and cognitions; because this already suffices to found the whole system of the Critique proper with complete certainty. Thus Newton’s system of universal gravitation is established, although it carries with it the inexplicable difficulty of how attraction at a distance is possible; but difficulties are not doubts. That the foundation remains even without the complete deduction of the categories being established, I can prove, from what is conceded, thus:

Conceded: that the table of the categories contains all the pure conceptions of the understanding complete, as well as all the formal operations of the understanding in judgments, from which they are deduced and differ in nothing, beyond that in the conception of the understanding an object is regarded as defined in respect of one or the other function of judgment (e.g., in the categorical judgment the stone is hard; the stone is employed as subject, and hard as predicate, so that it remains permissible to the understanding to turn the logical function of these conceptions round, and say, something hard is a stone: on the contrary, when I represent it to myself in the object as determined, that the stone (in every possible determination of an object, not of the mere conception) must be conceived only as subject, and the hardness only as predicate, the same logical functions become pure conceptions of the understanding of objects, namely, as substance and accident;)

2, Conceded: that the understanding, by its nature, carries with it synthetic principles à priori, by which it subordinates to the foregoing categories all objects that may be given it; and therefore that there must be also intuitions à priori, containing the requisite conditions for the application of the above pure conceptions of the understanding, because, without intuition there is no object in respect of which the logical function can be determined as category, and hence no cognition of any object; and that without pure intuition, no axiom defining it à priori in this respect can obtain;

3, Conceded: that these pure intuitions can never be anything but mere forms of the phenomena of the external or internal sense (space and time), and consequently only of the objects of possible experience:

It follows, that no employment of the pure Reason can ever refer to anything but objects of experience, and, as in axioms à priori, nothing empirical can be the condition, they can be nothing more than principles of the possibility of experience generally. This alone is the true and adequate foundation of the determination of the boundary of the pure Reason, but not the solution of the problem: how experience is possible by means of these categories and only by means of them. The last problem, although even without it the structure would be firm, has meanwhile great importance, and, as I now see, equally great facility, since it can be solved well-nigh by a single conclusion from the precisely determined definition of a judgment in general (an act by which the given presentations first become cognitions of an object). The obscurity which, in this portion of the deduction attaches to my previous operations, and which I do not disclaim, is attributable to the usual fortune of the understanding in research, the shortest way being commonly not the first it is aware of. I shall, therefore, take the earliest opportunity of supplying this defect (which more concerns the style of exposition than the ground of explanation, which is given correctly enough, even there) without placing my acute critic in the, doubtless, to himself, unpleasant necessity of taking refuge in a pre-established harmony, by reason of the unaccountable agreement of the phenomena with the laws of the understanding notwithstanding that the latter have sources quite distinct from the former—a remedy, by the way, far worse than the evil it is intended to cure, and against which it can really avail nothing at all. For the objective necessity in question, characterising the pure conceptions of the understanding (and the principles of their application to phenomena) cannot come out of this. For instance, in the conception of cause in connection with effect, everything remains merely subjectively necessary, but objectively simply chance combination, just as Hume has it, when he terms it mere illusion through custom. No system in the world can derive this necessity otherwise than from the pure à priori principles lying at the foundation of the possibility of thought itself, whereby alone the cognition of objects whose phenomenon is given us, that is, experience, is possible; and even supposing that the mode, how experience is thereby possible, were never adequately explained, it would remain indisputably certain that it is merely possible through these conceptions, and conversely that these conceptions are capable of no meaning or employment in any other reference than to objects of possible experience.

[1] I find doubts expressed in the criticism of Professor Ulrich’s Institutiones Logicae et Metaphysicae, in the ‘Allgemeine Litteratur Zeitung’ (1785), No. 295, not indeed respecting this table of the pure conceptions of the understanding, but the conclusions drawn therefrom as to the limitation of the whole faculty of the pure Reason, and therefore of all metaphysics, in which the learned critic expresses himself at one with his no less accurate author; doubts which, because they are supposed to touch the foundation-stone of my system, as put forward in the Critique, should be reasons for thinking that the latter did not by far carry that apodictic necessity with it, in respect of its main object, which is indispensable in compelling an unqualified acceptance. This foundation-stone is said to be a deduction expounded partly there, and partly in the Prolegomena, of the pure conceptions of the understanding, which in that part of the Critique, that should have been the clearest, is said to be the most obscure, or indeed, to move in a circle, etc. I direct my answer to these objections, only to their chief point, namely, that without a completely clear and adequate deduction of the categories, the system of the Critique of pure Reason would totter to its foundations. I maintain, on the contrary, that for those who subscribe to my propositions as to the sensibility of all our intuition, and the sufficiency of the table of the categories, as determinations of our consciousness borrowed from the logical functions of judgment in general (as the Reviewer does) the system of the Critique must carry with it apodictic certainty because it is built on the proposition, that the whole speculative use of our Reason never reaches beyond objects of possible experience. For if it can be proved that the categories, of which the Reason must make use in all its cognition, can have no other employment whatever, except merely with reference to objects of experience (in such a way that only in them [viz. the categories] is the form of thought possible), the answer to the question, how they make such possible is indeed important enough, in order, as far as may be to complete this deduction, but in respect of the main object of the system, namely the determination of the boundary of the pure Reason in nowise necessary, but merely desirable. For in this respect, the deduction is already carried far enough, when it shows that the conceived categories are nothing but mere forms of the judgments, in so far as they are applied to intuitions (which are with us always sensuous), by which they first of all become objects and cognitions; because this already suffices to found the whole system of the Critique proper with complete certainty. Thus Newton’s system of universal gravitation is established, although it carries with it the inexplicable difficulty of how attraction at a distance is possible; but difficulties are not doubts. That the foundation remains even without the complete deduction of the categories being established, I can prove, from what is conceded, thus:

Conceded: that the table of the categories contains all the pure conceptions of the understanding complete, as well as all the formal operations of the understanding in judgments, from which they are deduced and differ in nothing, beyond that in the conception of the understanding an object is regarded as defined in respect of one or the other function of judgment (e.g., in the categorical judgment the stone is hard; the stone is employed as subject, and hard as predicate, so that it remains permissible to the understanding to turn the logical function of these conceptions round, and say, something hard is a stone: on the contrary, when I represent it to myself in the object as determined, that the stone (in every possible determination of an object, not of the mere conception) must be conceived only as subject, and the hardness only as predicate, the same logical functions become pure conceptions of the understanding of objects, namely, as substance and accident;)

2, Conceded: that the understanding, by its nature, carries with it synthetic principles à priori, by which it subordinates to the foregoing categories all objects that may be given it; and therefore that there must be also intuitions à priori, containing the requisite conditions for the application of the above pure conceptions of the understanding, because, without intuition there is no object in respect of which the logical function can be determined as category, and hence no cognition of any object; and that without pure intuition, no axiom defining it à priori in this respect can obtain;

3, Conceded: that these pure intuitions can never be anything but mere forms of the phenomena of the external or internal sense (space and time), and consequently only of the objects of possible experience:

It follows, that no employment of the pure Reason can ever refer to anything but objects of experience, and, as in axioms à priori, nothing empirical can be the condition, they can be nothing more than principles of the possibility of experience generally. This alone is the true and adequate foundation of the determination of the boundary of the pure Reason, but not the solution of the problem: how experience is possible by means of these categories and only by means of them. The last problem, although even without it the structure would be firm, has meanwhile great importance, and, as I now see, equally great facility, since it can be solved well-nigh by a single conclusion from the precisely determined definition of a judgment in general (an act by which the given presentations first become cognitions of an object). The obscurity which, in this portion of the deduction attaches to my previous operations, and which I do not disclaim, is attributable to the usual fortune of the understanding in research, the shortest way being commonly not the first it is aware of. I shall, therefore, take the earliest opportunity of supplying this defect (which more concerns the style of exposition than the ground of explanation, which is given correctly enough, even there) without placing my acute critic in the, doubtless, to himself, unpleasant necessity of taking refuge in a pre-established harmony, by reason of the unaccountable agreement of the phenomena with the laws of the understanding notwithstanding that the latter have sources quite distinct from the former—a remedy, by the way, far worse than the evil it is intended to cure, and against which it can really avail nothing at all. For the objective necessity in question, characterising the pure conceptions of the understanding (and the principles of their application to phenomena) cannot come out of this. For instance, in the conception of cause in connection with effect, everything remains merely subjectively necessary, but objectively simply chance combination, just as Hume has it, when he terms it mere illusion through custom. No system in the world can derive this necessity otherwise than from the pure à priori principles lying at the foundation of the possibility of thought itself, whereby alone the cognition of objects whose phenomenon is given us, that is, experience, is possible; and even supposing that the mode, how experience is thereby possible, were never adequately explained, it would remain indisputably certain that it is merely possible through these conceptions, and conversely that these conceptions are capable of no meaning or employment in any other reference than to objects of possible experience.

[1]

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