2) Sense and understanding would, in an infinite understanding, be one and the same force; for us, sense is only an imperfect understanding. It must not be defined as passivity, because the assumption of affecting things-in-themselves is senseless. The expression: Sense gives us objects, only says: There is something given within our faculty of knowledge, the mode of origin of which is unknown to us, which cannot be derived, in accordance with the laws of the faculty of knowledge, from this faculty, but which nevertheless does not come from without; the noumenon is, therefore, only an idea, a concept of limitation, to which we are constantly approximating, in becoming conscious of the rules by which we produce, and therewith pass from intuition to concept, from sense to understanding. The given is given to us either a posteriori, as the sensations, or a priori, as time and space.
3) These latter are the definite modes in which the multiplicity of consciousness is comprehended to its unity. They are, it is true, as sensible ideas of difference, subjective forms; but they possess an objective basis, namely, the difference between objects, which must be thought similarly, although of course not in space, by all thinking beings.
4) Maimon rejects the absolute distinction which Kant had drawn between pure logic, which treats of pure thought, or of the conditions of a thing in general, and transcendental logic, which deals with real thought and knowledge, the thought of the actually existent, with its laws. The principles of pure logic, such as the law of contradiction, of excluded middle, etc., must rather first receive their foundation in the transcendental philosophy. Their highest principle is the principle of Determinability (Bestimmbarkeit). On this rest, in the last resort, all logical principles, determinations, and operations; on it, too, the difference explained by Maimon in a different manner from that of Kant—between analytic and synthetic judgments; from it are easily to be derived the table of categories, and with that the table of judgments.
5) As regards the transcendental deduction of the categories, Maimon denies, with Hume, the existence of that experience, consisting of universally valid, necessary judgments, on which Kant's deduction is based. The knowledge of experience is only subjectively valid, probable; objective certainty, necessity, could only be attributed to it on the ground of a complete experience,—which, however, always remains only an unattainable idea. Kant's deduction is, therefore, very artistic; it is even irrefutable, in case there is such an experience: only as an actual matter of fact it is not applicable. The categories are unconditionally valid for all the objects of real thought; but such objects are only to be found in mathematics. Real thought does not extend to empirical objects, because the properties found united in these are only coordinated with one another, and do not stand to one another in the relation of determinability,—that is, do not come under the principle of determinability. It is true that the categories can be mediately applied to empirical objects, i.e., first of all to the forms of their
