Mr. Spencer’s erroneous statement that Kant conceives space and time as
forms of thought instead of forms of intuition induces me to make a few
explanatory remarks concerning the term _Anschauung_.
Kant means that space and time are immediately given in experience and
not inferences drawn from the data of experience; they are not thoughts,
but objects of direct perception.
Sense-impressions are data, they are prior to ideas, the latter being
constructions made out of sense-impressions. Sense-impressions are
facts, but ideas are of an inferential nature; they are (to use Lloyd
Morgan’s excellent term) constructs. Now Kant claims that space and
time are in the same predicament: they also are immediately given, they
also are _Anschauungen_. Kant did not trouble himself much to prove
that they are forms; he seems to have taken that for granted. But he
was very careful to show that they are not ideas, not thoughts, not
abstractions, not generalisations, but that they are as direct data
as are sense-impressions and he calls the knowledge which man has by
directly facing the object of knowledge “_Anschauung_.”
The conclusion which Kant draws from this may be characterised as follows:
Sensations are not things but appearances; they are subjective, not
objective, they are not the objects themselves but what our sensibility
makes of objects. Space and time being _Anschauungen_, Kant argues that
they are of the same kind as the sense-data of knowledge, that they
are inherent in our nature. Thus Kant maintains: “Sensations are the
products of our sensibility, and space and time are the forms of our
sensibility.”
The word _Anschauung_ has been a _crux interpretum_ since translations
have been made from Kant, and it is quite true that no adequate word to
express it, exists in English. I enjoyed of late a discussion on the
subject with Mr. Francis C. Russell who called my attention to several
notes in _The Journal of Speculative Philosophy_. The following is from
the pen of Dr. W. T. Harris (Vol. II, p. 191):
“Through a singular chance, the present number of the journal
contains two notes from two contributors on the proper
translation of the German word _Anschauung_. Mr. Kroeger holds
that the word _Anschauung_, as used by Fichte and also by Kant,
denotes an act of the Ego which the English word _Intuition_
does not at all express, but for which the English word
‘contemplation’ is an exact equivalent. Mr. Peirce suggests
that no person whose native tongue is English will translate
_Anschauung_ by another word than _Intuition_. Whether there
is a failure to understand English on the one hand or German
on the other, the Editor does not care to inquire. It is
certain that while intuition has been adopted generally as an
equivalent for the word under consideration both by English
and French translators, yet it was a wide departure from the
ordinary English use of the term. Besides this, we have no
English verb _intuite_ (at least in the Dictionaries), and
the reader will find that the verb used by Meiklejohn (in the
translation of Kant’s _Kritik_) for it, is _contemplate_,
and the same rendering is given by Smith in his excellent
translation of Fichte’s Popular Works (London, 1849).”
Mr. Charles S. Peirce says:
“No person whose native tongue is English will need to be
informed that contemplation is essentially (1) protracted (2)
voluntary, and (3) an action, and that it is never used for
that which is set forth to the mind in this act. A foreigner
can convince himself of this by the proper study of English
writers. Thus, Locke (Essay concerning Human Understanding,
Book II., chap. 19, § 1) says, ‘If it [an idea] be held
there [in view] long under attentive consideration, ’tis
_contemplation_”; and again, (_Ibid._, Book II., chap. 10, § 1)
‘Keeping the _Idea_, which is brought into it [the mind] for
some time actually in view, which is called _Contemplation_.’
This term is therefore unfitted to translate _Anschauung_;
for this latter does not imply an act which is necessarily
protracted or voluntary, and denotes most usually a mental
presentation, sometimes a faculty, less often the reception of
an impression in the mind, and seldom, if ever, an action.
“To the translation of _Anschauung_ by intuition, there is,
at least, no such insufferable objection. Etymologically the
two words precisely correspond. The original philosophical
meaning of intuition was a cognition of the present manifold
in that character; and it is now commonly used, as a modern
writer says, ‘to include all the products of the perceptive
(external or internal) and imaginative faculties; every act of
consciousness, in short, of which the immediate object is an
_individual_, thing, act, or state of mind, presented under the
condition of distinct existence in space and time.’ Finally, we
have the authority of Kant’s own example for translating his
_Anschauung_ by _Intuitus_; and, indeed, this is the common
usage of Germans writing Latin. Moreover, _intuitiv_ frequently
replaces _anschauend_ or _anschaulich_. If this constitutes a
misunderstanding of Kant, it is one which is shared by himself
and nearly all his countrymen” (_ibid._ p. 152 et seqq.).
Mr. Peirce adds the following explanation concerning the term intuition
in another note (_ibid._ p. 103):
“The word _intuitus_ first occurs as a technical term in St.
Anselm’s Monologium. He wished to distinguish between our
knowledge of God and our knowledge of finite things (and, in
the next world, of God, also); and thinking of the saying of
St. Paul, _Videmus nunc per speculum in œnigmate: tunc autem
facie ad faciem_, he called the former _speculation_ and the
latter _intuition_. This use of ‘speculation’ did not take
root, because that word already had another exact and widely
different meaning.
“In the middle ages, the term ‘intuitive cognition’ had two
principal senses, 1st, as opposed to abstractive cognition,
it meant the knowledge of the present as present, and this is
its meaning in Anselm; but 2d, as no intuitive cognition was
allowed to be determined by a previous cognition, it came to
be used as the opposite of discursive cognition (see Scotus,
In sentent. lib. 2, dist. 3, qu. 9), and this is nearly the
sense in which I employ it. This is also nearly the sense in
which Kant uses it, the former distinction being expressed
by his _sensuous_ and _non-sensuous_. (See Werke, herausg.
Rosenkrantz, Thl. 2, S. 713, 31, 41, 100, u. s. w.)
“An enumeration of six meanings of intuition may be found in
Hamilton’s Reid p. 759.”
If we have to choose between the two translations “intuition” and
“contemplation,” we should with Mr. Peirce decidedly prefer the
word “intuition.” The word contemplation corresponds to the German
_Betrachtung_ and all that Mr. Peirce says against it holds good. But
we must confess that the term intuition (as Mr. Peirce himself seems to
grant) is not a very good translation either. The term intuition has
other meanings which interfere with the correct meaning of _Anschauung_
and was actually productive of much confusion.
The English term intuition is strongly tinged with the same meaning that
is attached to the German word _Intuition_. It means an inexplicable
kind of direct information from some supernatural sources, which mystics
claim to possess as the means of their revelations. In this sense
Goethe characterises it satirically in Faust (Scene XIV). Mephistopheles
describes the process as follows:
A blessing drawn from supernatural fountain!
In night and dew to lie upon the mountains;
All Heaven and Earth in rapture penetrating;
Thyself to Godhood haughtily inflating;
To grub with yearning force through Earth’s dark marrow,
Compress the six days’ work within thy bosom narrow,—
To taste, I know not what, in haughty power,
Thine own ecstatic life on all things shower,
Thine earthly self behind thee cast,
And then the lofty intuition [with a gesture] at last.
The satire is good on _Intuition_ but it would not apply to _Anschauung_,
for the latter word excludes rigidly any mysticism or supernaturalism
which the former essentially involves. To employ the term “intuition” for
both ideas must necessarily weaken the meaning of _Anschauung_.
Besides we should bear in mind that the German _Anschauung_ is
vernacular and should find a correspondent Saxon word. Such Latin words
as intuition convey in English as much as in German the impression of
being terms denoting something very abstract. Vernacular terms much more
strongly indicate the immediateness and directness which is implied in
_Anschauung_. In my conversation with Mr. Russell, we tried to coin a
new word that should cover the meaning of _Anschauung_ as an act of
“atlooking” and the word “atsight” readily suggested itself.
The word “atsight” is an exact English equivalent of the German
_Anschauung_. It describes the looking at an object in its immediate
presence. At the same time the word is readily understood, while
philologically considered, its formation is fully justified by the
existence of the words “insight and foresight.”
* * * * *
One of the most important of Kant’s doctrines is the proposition that
all thought must ultimately have reference to _Anschauung_, i. e. to
atsight. Through atsight only the objects of experience can be given us.
All speculations not founded upon this bottom rock of knowledge are mere
dreams. This is the maxim of positivism and it is the basis of all sound
philosophy. Says Kant in the “Anhang” to his Prolegomena (in reply to a
critic who had misunderstood his idealism) as a summary statement of his
views:
“_Der Satz aller echten Idealisten, von der eleatischen Schule
an bis zum Bischof Berkley, ist in dieser Formel enthalten:
‘alle Erkenntnis durch Sinne und Erfahrung ist nichts als
lauter Schein, und nur in den Ideen des reinen Verstandes und
Vernunft ist Wahrheit.’_
“_Der Grundsatz, der meinen Idealismus durchgängig regiert
und bestimmt, ist dagegen: ‘Alles Erkenntnis von Dingen, aus
blossem reinen Verstande oder reiner Vernunft, ist nichts als
lauter Schein, und nur in der Erfahrung ist Wahrheit.’_”
“The doctrine of all genuine idealists from the Eleatic School
down to Bishop Berkeley is contained in this formula: All
cognition through the senses and experience is nothing but
illusion; and in the ideas of the pure understanding and reason
alone is truth.
“The principle, however, that rules and determines my idealism
throughout is this: All cognition out of pure understanding
or pure reason is nothing but mere illusion and in experience
alone is truth.”
Kant then proposes in order to avoid equivocation to call his views
“formal or critical idealism,” adding that his idealism made any other
idealism impossible. Criticism truly is the beginning of philosophy as
an objective science. It gives the _coup de grace_ to those worthless
declamations which still pass among many as philosophy. Says Kant:
“_So viel ist gewiss: wer einmal Kritik gekostet hat, den ekelt
auf immer alles dogmatische Gewäsche._”
“That much is certain: He who has once tasted critique will be
forever disgusted with all dogmatic twaddle.”
It is strange that in spite of Kant’s explicit declaration, which leaves
no doubt about the positive spirit that pervades the principles of his
philosophy, he is still misunderstood by his opponents no less than by
those who profess to be his disciples.
* * * * *
There is no occasion now to treat the subject exhaustively, but it may be
permitted to add a few remarks on Kant’s proposition that space and time
are atsights.
We must distinguish three things: