TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM AS THE KEY TO THE SOLUTION OF THE COSMOLOGICAL
DIALECTIC[1547]
In this section subjectivism is dominant. The type of transcendental
idealism expounded is that earlier and less developed form which
connects with the doctrine of the transcendental object.[1548] It shows
no trace of Kant’s maturer teaching. No distinction is drawn between
representation and the objects represented. To the transcendental
object, the “purely intelligible cause” of appearances in general, and
to it alone, Kant ascribes “the whole extent and connection of our
possible perceptions.”[1549] Appearances exist only in the degree to
which they are constructed in experience. As they are mere
representations, they cannot exist outside the mind. Independently of
such construction, they may indeed be said to be given in the
transcendental object, but they only become objects to us on the
supposition that they can be reached through extension of the series of
our actual perceptions. It is in this form alone, as conceived in a
regressive series of possible perceptions, and not as having existed in
itself, that even the immemorial past course of the world can be
represented as real;
“...so that all events which have taken place in the immense
periods that have preceded my own existence mean really nothing but
the possibility of extending the chain of experience from the
present perception back to the conditions which determine it in
time.”[1550]
A similar interpretation has to be given to all propositions which
assert the present reality of that which has never been actually
experienced.
“In outcome it is a matter of indifference whether I say that in
the empirical progress in space I can meet with stars a hundred
times farther removed than the outermost now perceptible to me, or
whether I say that they are perhaps to be met with in cosmical
space even though no human being has ever perceived or ever will
perceive them. For even if they were given as things in themselves,
without relation to possible experience,[1551] they are still
nothing for me, and therefore are not objects, save in so far as
they are contained in the series of the empirical regress.”[1552]
The distinction between appearances and things in themselves must
always, Kant observes, be borne in mind when we are interpreting the
meaning of our empirical concepts; and this is especially necessary when
those concepts are brought into connection with the cosmological Idea of
an unconditioned. The antinomies are due to a failure to appreciate this
fundamental distinction, and the key to their solution lies in its
recognition.
“It would be an injustice to ascribe to us that long-decried
empirical idealism which, while it admits the genuine actuality of
space, denies the existence of the extended beings in it....”[1553]
This is in line with the passages from the _Prolegomena_ commented upon
above.[1554]