This judgment is to be found in the Göttingischen gelehrten Anzeigen,
in the supplement to the third division, of January 19, 1782,
pages 40 et seq.
When an author who is familiar with the subject of his work and
endeavors to present his independent reflexions in its elaboration,
falls into the hands of a reviewer who, in his turn, is keen enough to
discern the points on which the worth or worthlessness of the book
rests, who does not cling to words, but goes to the heart of the
subject, sifting and testing more than the mere principles which the
author takes as his point of departure, the severity of the judgment
may indeed displease the latter, but the public does not care, as it
gains thereby; and the author himself may be contented, as an
opportunity of correcting or explaining his positions is afforded to
him at an early date by the examination of a competent judge, in such
a manner, that if he believes himself fundamentally right, he can
remove in time any stone of offence that might hurt the success of his
work.
I find myself, with my reviewer, in quite another position. He seems
not to see at all the real matter of the investigation with which
(successfully or unsuccessfully) I have been occupied. It is either
impatience at thinking out a lengthy work, or vexation at a threatened
reform of a science in which he believed he had brought everything to
perfection long ago, or, what I am unwilling to imagine, real
narrowmindedness, that prevents him from ever carrying his thoughts
beyond his school-metaphysics. In short, he passes impatiently in
review a long series of propositions, by which, without knowing their
premises, we can think nothing, intersperses here and there his
censure, the reason of which the reader understands just as little as
the propositions against which it is directed; and hence [his report]
can neither serve the public nor damage me, in the judgment of
experts. I should, for these reasons, have passed over this judgment
altogether, were it not that it may afford me occasion for some
explanations which may in some cases save the readers of these
Prolegomena from a misconception.
In order to take a position from which my reviewer could most easily
set the whole work in a most unfavorable light, without venturing to
trouble himself with any special investigation, he begins and ends by
saying:
"This work is a system of transcendent (or, as he translates it, of
higher) Idealism."{45}
===================================
{45} By no means "higher." High towers, and metaphysically-great men
resembling them, round both of which there is commonly much wind, are
not for me. My place is the fruitful bathos, the bottom-land, of
experience; and the word transcendental, the meaning of which is so
often explained by me, but not once grasped by my reviewer (so
carelessly has he regarded everything), does not signify something
passing beyond all experience, but something that indeed precedes it a
priori, but that is intended simply to make cognition of experience
possible. If these conceptions overstep experience, their employment
is termed transcendent, a word which must be distinguished from
transcendental, the latter being limited to the immanent use, that is,
to experience. All misunderstandings of this kind have been
sufficiently guarded against in the work itself, but my reviewer found
his advantage in misunderstanding me.
===================================
A glance at this line soon showed me the sort of criticism that I had
to expect, much as though the reviewer were one who had never seen or
heard of geometry, having found a Euclid, and coming upon various
figures in turning over its leaves, were to say, on being asked his
opinion of it: "The work is a text-book of drawing; the author
introduces a peculiar terminology, in order to give dark,
incomprehensible directions, which in the end teach nothing more than
what every one can effect by a fair natural accuracy of eye, etc."
Let us see, in the meantime, what sort of an idealism it is that goes
through my whole work, although it does not by a long way constitute
the soul of the system.
The dictum of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic school to Bishop
Berkeley, is contained in this formula: "All cognition through the
senses and experience is nothing but sheer illusion, and only, in the
ideas of the pure understanding and reason there is truth."
The principle that throughout dominates and determines my Idealism, is
on the contrary: "All cognition of things merely from pure
understanding or pure reason is nothing but sheer illusion, and only
in experience is there truth."
But this is directly contrary to idealism proper. How came I then to
use this expression for quite an opposite purpose, and how came my
reviewer to see it everywhere?
The solution of this difficulty rests on something that could have
been very easily understood from the general bearing of the work, if
the reader had only desired to do so. Space and time, together with
all that they contain, are not things nor qualities in themselves, but
belong merely to the appearances of the latter: up to this point I am
one in confession with the above idealists. But these, and amongst
them more particularly Berkeley, regarded space as a mere empirical
presentation that, like the phenomenon it contains, is only known to
us by means of experience or perception, together with its
determinations. I, on the contrary, prove in the first place, that
space (and also time, which Berkeley did not consider) and all its
determinations a priori, can be cognised by us, because, no less than
time, it inheres in our sensibility as a pure form before all
perception or experience and makes all intuition of the same, and
therefore all its phenomena, possible. It follows from this, that as
truth rests on universal and necessary laws as its criteria,
experience, according to Berkeley, can have no criteria of truth,
because its phenomena (according to him) have nothing a priori at
their foundation; whence it follows, that they are nothing but sheer
illusion; whereas with us, space and time (in conjunction with the
pure conceptions of the understanding) prescribe their law to all
possible experience a priori, and at the same time afford the certain
criterion for distinguishing truth from illusion therein.{46}
===================================
{46} Idealism proper always has a mystical tendency, and can have no
other, but mine is solely designed for the purpose of comprehending
the possibility of our cognition a priori as to objects of experience,
which is a problem never hitherto solved or even suggested. In this
way all mystical idealism falls to the ground, for (as may be seen
already in Plato) it inferred from our cognitions a priori (even from
those of geometry) another intuition different from that of the senses
(namely, an intellectual intuition), because it never occurred to any
one that the senses themselves might intuite a priori.
===================================
My so-called (properly critical) Idealism is of quite a special
character, in that it subverts the ordinary idealism, and that through
it all cognition a priori, even that of geometry, first receives
objective reality, which, without my demonstrated ideality of space
and time, could not be maintained by the most zealous realists. This
being the state of the case, I could have wished, in order to avoid
all misunderstanding, to have named this conception of mine otherwise,
but to alter it altogether was impossible. It may be permitted me
however, in future, as has been above intimated, to term it the
formal, or better still, the critical Idealism, to distinguish it from
the dogmatic Idealism of Berkeley, and from the sceptical Idealism of
Descartes.
Beyond this, I find nothing further remarkable in the judgment of my
book. The reviewer criticises here and there, makes sweeping
criticisms, a mode prudently chosen, since it does not betray one's
own knowledge or ignorance; a single thorough criticism in detail, had
it touched the main question, as is only fair, would have exposed, it
may be my error, or it may be my reviewer's measure of insight into
this species of research. It was, moreover, not a badly conceived
plan, in order at once to take from readers (who are accustomed to
form their conceptions of books from newspaper reports) the desire to
read the book itself, to pour out in one breath a number of passages
in succession, torn from their connexion, and their grounds of proof
and explanations, and which must necessarily sound senseless,
especially considering how antipathetic they are to all
school-metaphysics; to exhaust the reader's patience ad nauseam, and
then, after having made me acquainted with the sensible proposition
that persistent illusion is truth, to conclude with the crude paternal
moralisation: to what end, then, the quarrel with accepted language,
to what end, and whence, the idealistic distinction? A judgment which
seeks all that is characteristic of my book, first supposed to be
metaphysically heterodox, in a mere innovation of the nomenclature,
proves clearly that my would-be judge has understood nothing of the
subject, and in addition, has not understood himself.{47}
===================================
{47} The reviewer often fights with his own shadow. When I oppose the
truth of experience to dream, he never thinks that I am here speaking
simply of the well-known somnio objective sumto of the Wolffian
philosophy, which is merely formal, and with which the distinction
between sleeping and waking is in no way concerned, and in a
transcendental philosophy indeed can have no place. For the rest, he
calls my deduction of the categories and table of the principles of
the understanding, "common well-known axioms of logic and ontology,
expressed in an idealistic manner." The reader need only consult these
Prolegomena upon this point, to convince himself that a more miserable
and historically incorrect, judgment, could hardly be made.
===================================
My reviewer speaks like a man who is conscious of important and
superior insight which he keeps hidden; for I am aware of nothing
recent with respect to metaphysics that could justify his tone. But he
should not withhold his discoveries from the world, for there are
doubtless many who, like myself, have not been able to find in all the
fine things that have for long past been written in this department,
anything that has advanced the science by so much as a fingerbreadth;
we find indeed the giving a new point to definitions, the supplying of
lame proofs with new crutches, the adding to the crazy-quilt of
metaphysics fresh patches or changing its pattern; but all this is not
what the world requires. The world is tired of metaphysical
assertions; it wants the possibility of the science, the sources from
which certainty therein can be derived, and certain criteria by which
it may distinguish the dialectical illusion of pure reason from truth.
To this the critic seems to possess a key, otherwise he would never
have spoken out in such a high tone.
But I am inclined to suspect that no such requirement of the science
has ever entered his thoughts, for in that case he would have directed
his judgment to this point, and even a mistaken attempt in such an
important matter, would have won his respect. If that be the case, we
are once more good friends. He may penetrate as deeply as he likes
into metaphysics, without any one hindering him; only as concerns that
which lies outside metaphysics, its sources, which are to be found in
reason, he cannot form a judgment. That my suspicion is not without
foundation, is proved by the fact that he does not mention a word
about the possibility of synthetic knowledge a priori, the special
problem upon the solution of which the fate of metaphysics wholly
rests, and upon which my Critique (as well as the present Prolegomena)
entirely hinges. The Idealism he encountered, and which he hung upon,
was only taken up in the doctrine as the sole means of solving the
above problem (although it received its confirmation on other
grounds), and hence he must have shown either that the above problem
does not possess the importance I attribute to it (even in these
Prolegomena), or that by my conception of appearances, it is either
not solved at all, or can be better solved in another way; but I do
not find a word of this in the criticism. The reviewer, then,
understands nothing of my work, and possibly also nothing of the
spirit and essential nature of metaphysics itself; and it is not, what
I would rather assume, the hurry of a man incensed at the labor of
plodding through so many obstacles, that threw an unfavorable shadow
over the work lying before him, and made its fundamental features
unrecognisable.
There is a good deal to be done before a learned journal, it matters
not with what care its writers may be selected, can maintain its
otherwise well-merited reputation, in the field of metaphysics as
elsewhere. Other sciences and branches of knowledge have their
standard. Mathematics has it, in itself; history and theology, in
profane or sacred books; natural science and the art of medicine, in
mathematics and experience; jurisprudence, in law books; and even
matters of taste in the examples of the ancients. But for the judgment
of the thing called metaphysics, the standard has yet to be found. I
have made an attempt to determine it, as well as its use. What is to
be done, then, until it be found, when works of this kind have to be
judged of? If they are of a dogmatic character, one may do what one
likes; no one will play the master over others here for long, before
someone else appears to deal with him in the same manner. If, however,
they are critical in their character, not indeed with reference to
other works, but to reason itself, so that the standard of judgment
cannot be assumed but has first of all to be sought for, then, though
objection and blame may indeed be permitted, yet a certain degree of
leniency is indispensable, since the need is common to us all, and the
lack of the necessary insight makes the high-handed attitude of judge
unwarranted.
In order, however, to connect my defence with the interest of the
philosophical commonwealth, I propose a test, which must be decisive
as to the mode, whereby all metaphysical investigations may be
directed to their common purpose. This is nothing more than what
formerly mathematicians have done, in establishing the advantage of
their methods by competition. I challenge my critic to demonstrate, as
is only just, on a priori grounds, in his way, a single really
metaphysical principle asserted by him. Being metaphysical it must be
synthetic and cognised a priori from conceptions, but it may also be
any one of the most indispensable principles, as for instance, the
principle of the persistence of substance, or of the necessary
determination of events in the world by their causes. If he cannot do
this (silence however is confession), he must admit, that as
metaphysics without apodeictic certainty of propositions of this kind
is nothing at all, its possibility or impossibility must before all
things be established in a critique of the pure reason. Thus he is
bound either to confess that my principles in the Critique are
correct, or he must prove their invalidity. But as I can already
foresee, that, confidently as he has hitherto relied on the certainty
of his principles, when it comes to a strict test he will not find a
single one in the whole range of metaphysics he can bring forward, I
will concede to him an advantageous condition, which can only be
expected in such a competition, and will relieve him of the onus
probandi by laying it on myself.
He finds in these Prolegomena and in my Critique (chapter on the
"Theses and Antitheses of the Four Antinomies") eight propositions, of
which two and two contradict one another, but each of which
necessarily belongs to metaphysics, by which it must either be
accepted or rejected (although there is not one that has not in this
time been held by some philosopher). Now he has the liberty of
selecting any one of these eight propositions at his pleasure, and
accepting it without any proof, of which I shall make him a present,
but only one (for waste of time will be just as little serviceable to
him as to me), and then of attacking my proof of the opposite
proposition. If I can save this one, and at the same time show, that
according to principles which every dogmatic metaphysics must
necessarily recognise, the opposite of the proposition adopted by him
can be just as clearly proved, it is thereby established that
metaphysics has an hereditary failing, not to be explained, much less
set aside, until we ascend to its birth-place, pure reason itself, and
thus my Critique must either be accepted or a better one take its
place; it must at least be studied, which is the only thing I now
require. If, on the other hand, I cannot save my demonstration, then a
synthetic proposition a priori from dogmatic principles is to be
reckoned to the score of my opponent, then also I will deem my
impeachment of ordinary metaphysics as unjust, and pledge myself to
recognise his stricture on my Critique as justified (although this
would not be the consequence by a long way). To this end it would be
necessary, it seems to me, that he should step out of his incognito.
Otherwise I do not see how it could be avoided, that instead of
dealing with one, I should be honored by several problems coming from
anonymous and unqualified opponents.
PROPOSALS AS TO AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CRITIQUE UPON WHICH A JUDGMENT
MAY FOLLOW.
I feel obliged to the honored public even for the silence with which
it for a long time favored my Critique, for this proves at least a
postponement of judgment, and some supposition that in a work, leaving
all beaten tracks and striking out on a new path, in which one cannot
at once perhaps so easily find one's way, something may perchance lie,
from which an important but at present dead branch of human knowledge
may derive new life and productiveness. Hence may have originated a
solicitude for the as yet tender shoot, lest it be destroyed by a
hasty judgment. A test of a judgment, delayed for the above reasons,
is now before my eye in the Gothaischen gelehrten Zeitung, the
thoroughness of which every reader will himself perceive, from the
clear and unperverted presentation of a fragment of one of the first
principles of my work, without taking into consideration my own
suspicious praise.
And now I propose, since an extensive structure cannot be judged of as
a whole from a hurried glance, to test it piece by piece from its
foundations, so thereby the present Prolegomena may fitly be used as a
general outline with which the work itself may occasionally be
compared. This notion, if it were founded on nothing more than my
conceit of importance, such as vanity commonly attributes to one's own
productions, would be immodest and would deserve to be repudiated with
disgust. But now, the interests of speculative philosophy have arrived
at the point of total extinction, while human reason hangs upon them
with inextinguishable affection, and only after having been
ceaselessly deceived does it vainly attempt to change this into
indifference.
In our thinking age it is not to be supposed but that many deserving
men would use any good opportunity of working for the common interest
of the more and more enlightened reason, if there were only some hope
of attaining the goal. Mathematics, natural science, laws, arts, even
morality, etc., do not completely fill the soul; there is always a
space left over, reserved for pure and speculative reason, the vacuity
of which prompts us to seek in vagaries, buffooneries, and myticism
for what seems to be employment and entertainment, but what actually
is mere pastime; in order to deaden the troublesome voice of reason,
which in accordance with its nature requires something that can
satisfy it, and not merely subserve other ends or the interests of our
inclinations. A consideration, therefore, which is concerned only with
reason as it exists for it itself, has as I may reasonably suppose a
great fascination for every one who has attempted thus to extend his
conceptions, and I may even say a greater than any other theoretical
branch of knowledge, for which he would not willingly exchange it,
because here all other cognitions, and even purposes, must meet and
unite themselves in a whole.
I offer, therefore, these Prolegomena as a sketch and text-book for
this investigation, and not the work itself. Although I am even now
perfectly satisfied with the latter as far as contents, order, and
mode of presentation, and the care that I have expended in weighing
and testing every sentence before writing it down, are concerned (for
it has taken me years to satisfy myself fully, not only as regards the
whole, but in some cases even as to the sources of one particular
proposition); yet I am not quite satisfied with my exposition in some
sections of the doctrine of elements, as for instance in the deduction
of the conceptions of the Understanding, or in that on the paralogisms
of pure reason, because a certain diffuseness takes away from their
clearness, and in place of them, what is here said in the Prolegomena
respecting these sections, may be made the basis of the test.
It is the boast of the Germans that where steady and continuous
industry are requisite, they can carry things farther than other
nations. If this opinion be well founded, an opportunity, a business,
presents itself, the successful issue of which we can scarcely doubt,
and in which all thinking men can equally take part, though they have
hitherto been unsuccessful in accomplishing it and in thus confirming
the above good opinion. But this is chiefly because the science in
question is of so peculiar a kind, that it can be at once brought to
completion and to that enduring state that it will never be able to be
brought in the least degree farther or increased by later discoveries,
or even changed (leaving here out of account adornment by greater
clearness in some places, or additional uses), and this is an
advantage no other science has or can have, because there is none so
fully isolated and independent of others, and which is concerned with
the faculty of cognition pure and simple. And the present moment
seems, moreover, not to be unfavorable to my expectation, for just
now, in Germany, no one seems to know wherewith to occupy himself,
apart from the so-called useful sciences, so as to pursue not mere
play, but a business possessing an enduring purpose.
To discover the means how the endeavors of the learned may be united
in such a purpose, I must leave to others. In the meantime, it is my
intention to persuade any one merely to follow my propositions, or
even to flatter me with the hope that he will do so; but attacks,
repetitions, limitations, or confirmation, completion, and extension,
as the case may be, should be appended. If the matter be but
investigated from its foundation, it cannot fail that a system, albeit
not my own, shall be erected, that shall be a possession for future
generations for which they may have reason to be grateful.
It would lead us too far here to show what kind of metaphysics may be
expected, when only the principles of criticism have been perfected,
and how, because the old false feathers have been pulled out, she need
by no means appear poor and reduced to an insignificant figure, but
may be in other respects richly and respectably adorned. But other and
great uses which would result from such a reform, strike one
immediately. The ordinary metaphysics had its uses, in that it sought
out the elementary conceptions of the pure understanding in order to
make them clear through analysis, and definite by explanation. In this
way it was a training for reason, in whatever direction it might be
turned; but this was all the good it did; service was subsequently
effaced when it favored conceit by venturesome assertions, sophistry
by subtle distinctions and adornment, and shallowness by the ease with
which it decided the most difficult problems by means of a little
school-wisdom, which is only the more seductive the more it has the
choice, on the one hand, of taking something from the language of
science, and on the other from that of popular discourse, thus being
everything to everybody, but in reality nothing at all. By criticism,
however, a standard is given to our judgment, whereby knowledge may be
with certainty distinguished from pseudo-science, and firmly founded,
being brought into full operation in metaphysics; a mode of thought
extending by degrees its beneficial influence over every other use of
reason, at once infusing into it the true philosophical spirit. But
the service also that metaphysics performs for theology, by making it
independent of the judgment of dogmatic speculation, thereby assuring
it completely against the attacks of all such opponents, is certainly
not to be valued lightly. For ordinary metaphysics, although it
promised the latter much advantage, could not keep this promise, and
moreover, by summoning speculative dogmatics to its assistance, did
nothing but arm enemies against itself. Mysticism, which can prosper
in a rationalistic age only when it hides itself behind a system of
school-metaphysics, under the protection of which it may venture to
rave with a semblance of rationality, is driven from this, its last
hiding-place, by critical philosophy. Last, but not least, it cannot
be otherwise than important to a teacher of metaphysics, to be able to
say with universal assent, that what he expounds is Science, and that
thereby genuine services will be rendered to the commonweal.