1798. _Der Streit der Facultaten_, "Contest of the Faculties."

1798. _Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht_.

_The Kantian Philosophy._[1]

Historians are accustomed to divide the general current of speculation

into epochs or periods marked by the dominance of some single

philosophic conception with its systematic evolution. Perhaps in no

case is the character of an epoch more clearly apparent than in that

of the critical philosophy. The great work of Kant absolutely closed

the lines of speculation along which the philosophical literature of

the 18th century had proceeded, and substituted for them a new and

more comprehensive method of regarding the essential problems of

thought, a method which has prescribed the course of philosophic

speculation in the present age. The critical system has thus a twofold

aspect. It takes up into itself what had characterized the previous

efforts of modern thought, shows the imperfect nature of the

fundamental notions therein employed, and offers a new solution of the

problems to which these notions had been applied. It opens up a new

series of questions upon which subsequent philosophic reflection has

been directed, and gives to them the form, under which it is possible

that they should be fruitfully regarded. A work of this kind is

essentially epoch-making.

In any complete account of the Kantian system it is therefore

necessary that there should be constant reference, on the one hand, to

the peculiar character of the preceding 18th-century philosophy, and,

on the other hand, to the problems left for renewed treatment to more

modern thought. Fortunately the development of the Kantian system

itself furnishes such treatment as is necessary of the former

reference. For the critical philosophy was a work of slow growth. In

the early writings of Kant we are able to trace with great

definiteness the successive stages through which he passed from the

notions of the preceding philosophy to the new and comprehensive

method which gives its special character to the critical work.

Scarcely any great mind, it has been said with justice, ever matured

so slowly. In the early essays we find the principles of the current

philosophies, those of Leibnitz and English empiricism, applied in

various directions to those problems which serve as tests of their

truth and completeness; we note the appearance of the difficulties or

contradictions which manifest the one-sidedness or imperfection of the

principle applied; and we can trace the gradual growth of the new

conceptions which were destined, in the completed system, to take the

place of the earlier method. To understand the Kantian work it is

indispensable to trace the history of its growth in the mind of its

author.

Of the two preceding stages of modern philosophy, only the second,

that of Locke and Leibnitz, seems to have influenced practically the

course of Kant's speculation. With the Cartesian movement as a whole

he shows little acquaintance and no sympathy, and his own philosophic

conception is never brought into relation with the systematic

treatment of metaphysical problems characteristic of the Cartesian

method. The fundamental question for philosophic reflection presented

itself to him in the form which it had assumed in the hands of Locke

and his successors in England, of Leibnitz and the Leibnitzian school

in Germany. The transition from the Cartesian movement to this second

stage of modern thought had doubtless been natural and indeed

necessary. Nevertheless the full bearings of the philosophic question

were somewhat obscured by the comparatively limited fashion in which

it was then regarded. The tendency towards what may be technically

called subjectivism, a tendency which differentiates the modern from

the ancient method of speculation, is expressed in Locke and Leibnitz

in a definite and peculiar fashion. However widely the two systems

differ in details, they are at one in a certain fundamental conception

which dominates the whole course of their philosophic construction.

They are throughout individualist, i.e. they accept as given fact the

existence of the concrete, thinking subject, and endeavour to show how

this subject, as an individual conscious being, is related to the

wider universe of which he forms part. In dealing with such a problem,

there are evidently two lines along which investigation may proceed.

It may be asked how the individual mind comes to know himself and the

system of things with which he is connected, how the varied contents

of his experience are to be accounted for, and what certainty attaches

to his subjective consciousness of things. Regarded from the

individualist point of view, this line of inquiry becomes purely

psychological, and the answer may be presented, as it was presented by

Locke, in the fashion of a natural history of the growth of conscious

experience in the mind of the subject. Or, it may be further asked,

how is the individual really connected with the system of things

apparently disclosed to him in conscious experience? what is the

precise significance of the existence which he ascribes both to

himself and to the objects of experience? what is the nature of the

relation between himself as one part of the system, and the system as

a whole? This second inquiry is specifically metaphysical in bearing,

and the kind of answer furnished to it by Leibnitz on the one hand, by

Berkeley on the other, is in fact prescribed or determined beforehand

by the fundamental conception of the individualist method with which

both begin their investigations. So soon as we make clear to ourselves

the essential nature of this method, we are able to discern the

specific difficulties or perplexities arising in the attempt to carry

it out systematically, and thus to note with precision the special

problems presented to Kant at the outset of his philosophic

reflections.

Consider, first, the application of the method on its psychological

side, as it appears in Locke. Starting with the assumption of

conscious experience as the content or filling-in of the individual

mind, Locke proceeds to explain its genesis and nature by reference to

the real universe of things and its mechanical operation upon the

mind. The result of the interaction of mind, i.e. the individual mind,

and the system of things, is conscious experience, consisting of

ideas, which may be variously compounded, divided, compared, or dealt

with by the subjective faculties or powers with which the entity,

Mind, is supposed to be endowed. Matter of fact and matter of

knowledge are thus at a stroke dissevered. The very notion of relation

between mind and things leads at once to the counter notion of the

absolute restriction of mind to its own subjective nature. That Locke

was unable to reconcile these opposed notions is not surprising; that

the difficulties and obscurities of the Essay arise from the

impossibility of reconciling them is evident on the slightest

consideration of the main positions of that work. Of these

difficulties the philosophies of Berkeley and Hume are systematic

treatments. In Berkeley we find the resolute determination to accept

only the one notion, that of mind as restricted to its own conscious

experience, and to attempt by this means to explain the nature of the

external reality to which obscure reference is made. Any success in

the attempt is due only to the fact that Berkeley introduces alongside

of his individualist notion a totally new conception, that of mind

itself as not in the same way one of the matters of conscious

experience, but as capable of reflection upon the whole of experience

and of reference to the supreme mind as the ground of all reality. It

is only in Hume that we have definitely and completely the evolution

of the individualist notion as groundwork of a theory of knowledge;

and it is in his writings, therefore, that we may expect to find the

fundamental difficulty of that notion clearly apparent. It is not a

little remarkable that we should find in Hume, not only the sceptical

dissolution of all fixity of cognition, which is the inevitable result

of the individualist method, but also the clearest consciousness of

the very root of the difficulty. The systematic application of the

doctrine that conscious experience consists only of isolated objects

of knowledge, impressions or ideas, leads Hume to distinguish between

truths reached by analysis and truths which involve real connexion of

the objects of knowledge. The first he is willing to accept without

further inquiry, though it is an error to suppose, as Kant seems to

have supposed, that he regarded mathematical propositions as coming

under this head (see HUME); with respect to the second, he finds

himself, and confesses that he finds himself, hopelessly at fault. No

real connexions between isolated objects of experience are perceived

by us. No single matter of fact necessarily implies the existence of

any other. In short, if the difficulty be put in its ultimate form, no

existence thought as a distinct individual can transcend itself, or

imply relation to any other existence. If the parts of conscious

experience are regarded as so many distinct things, there is no

possibility of connecting them other than contingently, if at all. If

the individual mind be really thought as individual, it is impossible

to explain how it should have knowledge or consciousness at all. "In

short," says Hume, "there are two principles which I cannot render

consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz.

_that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that

the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct

existences_. Did our perceptions either inhere in something simple or

individual, or did the mind perceive some real connexion among them,

there would be no difficulty in the case" (App. to _Treatise of Human

Nature_).

Thus, on the one hand, the individualist conception, when carried out

to its full extent, leads to the total negation of all real cognition.

If the real system of things, to which conscious experience has

reference, be regarded as standing in casual relation to this

experience there is no conceivable ground for the extension to reality

of the notions which somehow are involved in thought. The same result

is apparent, on the other hand, when we consider the theory of

knowledge implied in the Leibnitzian individualism. The metaphysical

conception of the monads, each of which is the universe _in nuce_,

presents insuperable difficulties when the connexion or

interdependence of the monads is in question, and these difficulties

obtrude themselves when the attempt is made to work out a consistent

doctrine of cognition. For the whole mass of cognisable fact, the

_mundus intelligibilis_, is contained _impliciter_ in each monad, and

the several modes of apprehension can only be regarded as so many

stages in the developing consciousness of the monad. Sense and

understanding, real connexion of facts and analysis of notions, are

not, therefore, distinct in kind, but differ only in degree. The same

fundamental axioms, the logical principles of identity and sufficient

reason, are applicable in explanation of all given propositions. It is

true that Leibnitz himself did not work out any complete doctrine of

knowledge, but in the hands of his successors the theory took definite

shape in the principle that the whole work of cognition is in essence

analytical. The process of analysis might be complete or incomplete.

For finite intelligences there was an inevitable incompleteness so far

as knowledge of matters of fact was concerned. In respect to them,

the final result was found in a series of irreducible notions or

categories, the _prima possibilia_, the analysis and elucidation of

which was specifically the business of philosophy or metaphysics.

It will be observed that, in the Leibnitzian as in the empirical

individualism, the fundamental notion is still that of the abstract

separation of the thinking subject from the materials of conscious

experience. From this separation arise all the difficulties in the

effort to develop the notion systematically, and in tracing the

history of Kant's philosophical progress we are able to discern the

gradual perception on his part that here was to be found the ultimate

cause of the perplexities which became apparent in considering the

subordinate doctrines of the system. The successive essays which have

already been enumerated as composing Kant's precritical work are not

to be regarded as so many imperfect sketches of the doctrines of the

_Kritik_, nor are we to look in them for anticipations of the critical

view. They are essentially tentative, and exhibit with unusual

clearness the manner in which the difficulties of a received theory

force on a wider and more comprehensive view. There can be no doubt

that some of the special features of the _Kritik_ are to be found in

these precritical essays, e.g. the doctrine of the _Aesthetik_ is

certainly foreshadowed in the _Dissertation_ of 1770; the _Kritik_,

however, is no patchwork, and what appears in the _Dissertation_ takes

an altogether new form when it is wrought into the more comprehensive

conception of the later treatise.

The particular problem which gave the occasion to the first of the

precritical writings is, in an imperfect or particular fashion, the

fundamental question to which the _Kritik_ is an answer. What is the

nature of the distinction between knowledge gained by analysis of

notions and knowledge of matters of fact? Kant seems never to have

been satisfied with the Wolffian identification of logical axioms and

of the principle of sufficient reason. The tract on the _False

Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures_, in which the view of

thought or reason as analytic is clearly expressed, closes with the

significant division of judgments into those which rest upon the

logical axioms of identity and contradiction and those for which no

logical ground can be shown. Such immediate or indemonstrable

judgments, it is said, abound in our experience. They are, in fact, as

Kant presently perceived, the foundations for all judgments regarding

real existence. It was impossible that the question regarding their

nature and legitimacy and their distinction from analytic judgments

should not present itself to him. The three tracts belonging to the

years 1763-1764 bring forward in the sharpest fashion the essential

opposition between the two classes of judgments. In the _Essay on

Negative Quantities_, the fundamental thought is the total distinction

in kind between logical opposition (the contradictoriness of notions,

which Kant always viewed as formed, definite products of thought) and

real opposition. For the one adequate explanation is found in the

logical axiom of analytical thinking; for the other no such

explanation is to be had. Logical ground and real ground are totally

distinct. "I can understand perfectly well," says Kant, "how a

consequence follows from its reason according to the law of identity,

since it is discoverable by mere analysis of the notion contained in

it.... But how something follows from another thing and not according

to the law of identity, this I should gladly have made clear to me....

How shall I comprehend that, since something is, something else should

be?" Real things, in short, are distinct existences, and, as distinct,

not necessarily or logically connected in thought. "I have," he

proceeds, "reflected on the nature of our knowledge in relation to our

judgment of reason and consequent, and I intend to expound fully the

result of my reflections. It follows from them that the relation of a

real ground to that which is thereby posited or denied cannot be

expressed by a judgment but only by means of a notion, which by

analysis may certainly be reduced to yet simpler notions of real

grounds, but yet in such a way that the final resort of all our

cognition in this regard must be found in simple and irreducible

notions of real grounds, the relation of which to their consequents

cannot be made clear."

The striking similarity between Kant's expressions in this _Essay_ and

the remarks with which Hume introduces his analysis of the notion of

cause has led to the supposition that at this period of his

philosophical career Kant was definitely under the influence of the

earlier empirical thinker. Consideration of the whole passage is quite

sufficient to show the groundlessness of this supposition. The

difficulty with which Kant is presented was one arising inevitably

from reflection upon the Leibnitzian theory of knowledge, and the

solution does not in any way go beyond that theory. It is a solution,

in fact, which must have been impossible had the purport of Hume's

empirical doctrine been present to Kant's mind. He is here at the

point at which he remained for many years, accepting without any

criticism certain fundamental notions as required for real cognition.

His ideal of metaphysic is still that of complete analysis of given

notions. No glimmering of the further question, Whence come these

notions and with what right do we apply them in cognition? is yet

apparent. Any direct influence from Hume must be referred to a later

period in his career.

The prize essay _On the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals_

brings forward the same fundamental opposition--though in a special

form. Here, for the first time, appears definitely the distinction

between synthesis and analysis, and in the distinction is found the

reason for the superior certainty and clearness of mathematics as

opposed to philosophy. Mathematics, Kant thinks, proceeds

synthetically, for in it the notions are constructed. Metaphysics, on

the other hand, is analytical in method; in it the notions are given,

and by analysis they are cleared up. It is to be observed that the

description of mathematics as synthetic is not an anticipation of the

critical doctrine on the same subject. Kant does not, in this place,

raise the question as to the reason for assuming that the arbitrary

syntheses of mathematical construction have any reference to reality.

The deeper significance of synthesis has not yet become apparent.

In the _Only Possible Ground of Proof for the Existence of God_, the

argument, though largely Leibnitzian, advances one step farther

towards the ultimate inquiry. For there Kant states as precisely as in

the critique of speculative theology his fundamental doctrine that

real existence is not a predicate to be added in thought to the

conception of a possible subject. So far as subjective thought is

concerned, possibility, not real existence, is contained in any

judgment.

The year 1765 was marked by the publication of Leibnitz's posthumous

_Nouveaux Essais_, in which his theory of knowledge is more fully

stated than in any of his previous tracts. In all probability Kant

gave some attention to this work, though no special reference to it

occurs in his writings, and it may have assisted to give additional

precision to his doctrine. In the curious essay, _Dreams of a

Clairvoyant_, published 1766, he emphasizes his previously reached

conclusion that connexions of real fact are mediated in our thought by

ultimate notions, but adds that the significance and warrant for such

notions can be furnished only by experience. He is inclined,

therefore, to regard as the function of metaphysics the complete

statement of these ultimate, indemonstrable notions, and therefore the

determination of the limits to knowledge by their means. Even at this

point, where he approximates more closely to Hume than to any other

thinker, the difficulty raised by Hume does not seem to occur to him.

He still appears to think that experience does warrant the employment

of such notions, and when there is taken into account his

correspondence with Lambert during the next few years, one would be

inclined to say that the _Architektonik_ of the latter represents most

completely Kant's idea of philosophy.

On another side Kant had been shaking himself free from the principles

of the Leibnitzian philosophy. According to Leibnitz, space, the order

of coexisting things, resulted from the relations of monads to one

another. But Kant began to see that such a conception did not accord

with the manner in which we determine directions or positions in

space. In the curious little essay, _On the Ground of distinguishing

Particular Divisions in Space_, he pointed out that the idea of space

as a whole is not deducible from the experience of particular spaces,

or particular relations of objects in space, that we only cognize

relations in space by reference to space as a whole, and finally that

definite positions involve reference to space as a given whole.

The whole development of Kant's thought up to this point is

intelligible when regarded from the Leibnitzian point of view, with

which he started. There appears no reason to conclude that Hume at

this time exercised any direct influence. One may go still further,

and add that even in the _Dissertation_ of 1770, generally regarded as

more than foreshadowing the _Kritik_, the really critical question is

not involved. A brief notice of the contents of this tract will

suffice to show how far removed Kant yet was from the methods and

principles of the critical or transcendental philosophy. Sense and

understanding, according to the _Dissertation_, are the two sources of

knowledge. The objects of the one are things of sense or _phenomena_;

the objects of the other are _noumena_. These are absolutely distinct,

and are not to be regarded as differing only in degree. In _phenomena_

we distinguish _matter_, which is given by sense, and _form_, which is

the law of the order of sensations. Such form is twofold--the order of

space and time. Sensations formed by space and time compose the world

of appearance, and this when treated by the understanding, according

to logical rules, is _experience_. But the logical use of the

understanding is not its only use. Much more important is the _real_

use, by which are produced the pure notions whereby we think things as

they are. These pure notions are the laws of the operation of the

intellect; they are _leges intellectus_.

Apart, then, from the expanded treatment of space and time as

subjective forms, we find in the _Dissertation_ little more than the

very precise and definite formulation of the slowly growing opposition

to the Leibnitzian doctrines. That the pure intellectual notions

should be defended as springing from the nature of intellect is not

out of harmony with the statement of the _Traume eines Geistersehers_,

for there the pure notions were allowed to exist, but were not held to

have validity for actual things except on grounds of experience. Here

they are supposed to exist, dissevered from experience, and are

allowed validity as determinations of things in themselves.

The stage which Kant had now reached in his philosophical development

was one of great significance. The doctrine of knowledge expressed in

the _Dissertation_ was the final form which the Wolffian rationalism

could assume for him, and, though many of the elements of the _Kritik_

are contained therein, it was not really in advance of the Wolffian

theory. The doctrine of space and time as forms of sense-perception,

the reference of both space and time and the pure intellectual notions

to the laws of the activity of mind itself, the distinction between

sense and understanding as one of kind, not of degree, with the

correlative distinction between phenomena and noumena,--all of these

reappear, though changed and modified, in the _Kritik_. But, despite

this resemblance, it seems clear that, so far as the _Dissertation_ is

concerned, the way had only been prepared for the true critical

inquiry, and that the real import of Hume's sceptical problem had not

yet dawned upon Kant. From the manner, however, in which the doctrine

of knowledge had been stated in the _Dissertation_, the further

inquiry had been rendered inevitable. It had become quite impossible

for Kant to remain longer satisfied with the ambiguous position

assigned to a fundamental element of his doctrine of knowledge, the

so-called pure intellectual notions. Those notions, according to the

_Dissertation_, had no function save in relation to

things-in-themselves, i.e. to objects which are not directly or

immediately brought into relation to our faculty of cognition. They

did not serve as the connecting links of formed experience; on the

contrary, they were supposed to be absolutely dissevered from all

experience which was possible for intelligence like ours. In his

previous essays, Kant, while likewise maintaining that such pure,

irreducible notions existed, had asserted in general terms that they

applied to experience, and that their applicability or justification

rested on experience itself, but had not raised the question as to the

ground of such justification. Now, from another side, the supreme

difficulty was presented--how could such notions have application to

any objects whatsoever? For some time the correlative difficulty, how

_objects_ of sense-perception were possible, does not seem to have

suggested itself to Kant. In the _Dissertation_ sense-perception had

been taken as receptivity of representations of objects, and

experience as the product of the treatment of such representations by

the logical or analytical processes of understanding. Some traces of

this confused fashion of regarding sense-perceptions are left even in

the _Kritik_, specially perhaps in the _Aesthetik_, and they give rise

to much of the ambiguity which unfortunately attaches to the more

developed theory of cognition. So soon, however, as the critical

question was put, On what rests the reference of representations in us

to the object or thing? in other words, How do we come to have

knowledge of objects at all? it became apparent that the problem was

one of perfect generality, and applied, not only to cognition through

the pure notions, but to sense-perceptions likewise. It is in the

statement of this general problem that we find the new and

characteristic feature of Kant's work.

There is thus no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of Kant's

reference to the particular occasion or cause of the critical inquiry.

Up to the stage indicated by the _Dissertation_ he had been

attempting, in various ways, to unite two radically divergent modes of

explaining cognition--that which would account for the content of

experience by reference to affection from things without us, and that

which viewed the intellect itself as somehow furnished with the means

of pure, rational cognition. He now discovered that Hume's sceptical

analysis of the notion of cause was really the treatment of one

typical or crucial instance of the much more general problem. If

experience, says Hume, consists solely of states of mind somehow given

to us, each of which exists as an effect, and therefore as distinct

from others, with what right do we make the common assumption that

parts of experience are necessarily connected? The only possible

answer, drawn from the premises laid down, must be that there is no

warrant for such an assumption. Necessity for thought, as Kant had

been willing to admit and as Hume also held, involves or implies

something more than is given in experience--for that which is given is

contingent--and rests upon an a priori or pure notion. But a priori

notions, did they exist, could have no claim to regulate experience.

Hume, therefore, for his part, rejected entirely the notion of cause

as being fictitious and delusive, and professed to account for the

habit of regarding experience as necessarily connected by reference to

arbitrarily formed custom of thinking. Experience, as given,

contingent material, had a certain uniformity, and recurring

uniformities generated in us the habit of regarding things as

necessarily connected. That such a resort to experience for

explanation could lead to no valid conclusion has been already noted

as evident to Hume himself.

The dogmatic or individualist conception of experience had thus proved

itself inadequate to the solution of Hume's difficulty regarding the

notion of cause,--a difficulty which Kant, erroneously, had thought to

be the only case contemplated by his predecessor. The perception of

its inadequacy in this respect, and the consequent generalization of

Hume's problem, are the essential features of the new critical method.

For Kant was now prepared to formulate his general inquiry in a

definite fashion. His long-continued reflection on the Wolffian

doctrine of knowledge had made clear to him that synthetic connexion,

the essence of real cognition, was not contained in the products of

thinking as a formal activity of mind operating on material otherwise

supplied. On the other hand, Hume's analysis enabled him to see that

synthetic connexion was not contained in experience regarded as given

material. Thus neither the formal nor the material aspect of conscious

experience, when regarded from the individualist point of view,

supplied any foundation for real knowledge, whether a priori or

empirical. An absolutely new conception of experience was necessary,

if the fact of cognition was to be explained at all, and the various

modes in which Kant expresses the business of his critical philosophy

were merely different fashions of stating the one ultimate problem,

differing according to the particular aspect of knowledge which he

happened to have in view. To inquire how synthetic a priori judgments

are possible, or how far cognition extends, or what worth attaches to

metaphysical propositions, is simply to ask, in a specific form, what

elements are necessarily involved in experience of which the subject

is conscious. How is it possible for the individual thinking subject

to connect together the parts of his experience in the mode we call

cognition?

The problem of the critical philosophy is, therefore, the complete

analysis of experience from the point of view of the conditions under

which such experience is possible for the conscious subject. The

central ideas are thus self-consciousness, as the supreme condition

under which experience is subjectively possible, and the manifold

details of experience as a varied and complex whole. The solution of

the problem demanded the utmost care in keeping the due balance

between these ideas; and it can hardly be said that Kant was perfectly

successful. He is frequently untrue to the more comprehensive

conception which dominates his work as a whole. The influence of his

previous philosophical training, nay, even the unconscious influence

of terminology, frequently induces in his statements a certain laxity

and want of clearness. He selects definitely for his starting point

neither the idea of self-consciousness nor the details of experience,

but in his actual procedure passes from one to the other, rarely, if

ever, taking into full consideration the weighty question of their

relation to one another. Above all, he is continuously under the

influence of the individualist notion which he had done so much to

explode. The conception of conscious experience, which is the net

result of the _Kritik_, is indefinitely profounder and richer than

that which had ruled the 18th century philosophizing, but for Kant

such experience still appears as somehow the arbitrary product of the

relation between the individual conscious subject and the realm of

real facts. When he is actually analysing the conditions of knowledge,

the influence of the individualist conception is not prominent; the

conditions are stated as quite general, as conditions of knowledge.

But so soon as the deeper, metaphysical problems present themselves,

the shadow of the old doctrine reappears. Knowledge is regarded as a

mechanical product, part furnished by the subject, part given to the

subject, and is thus viewed as mechanically divisible into a priori

and a posteriori, into pure and empirical, necessary and contingent.

The individual as an agent, conscious of universal moral law, is yet

regarded as in a measure opposed to experience, and the Kantian

ethical code remains purely formal. The ultimate relation between

intelligence and natural fact, expressed in the notion of end, is

thought as problematic or contingent. The difficulties or obscurities

of the Kantian system, of which the above are merely the more

prominent, may all be traced to the one source, the false or at least

inadequate idea of the individual. The more thorough explanation of

the relation between experience as critically conceived and the

individual subject was the problem left by Kant for his successors.

In any detailed exposition of the critical system it would be

requisite in the first place to state with some fullness the precise

nature of the problems immediately before Kant, and in the second

place to follow with some closeness the successive stages of the

system as presented in the three main works, the _Kritik of Pure

Reason_, the _Kritik of Practical Reason_ and the _Kritik of

Judgment_, with the more important of the minor works, the _Metaphysic

of Nature_ and the _Metaphysic of Ethics_. It would be necessary,

also, in any such expanded treatment, to bring out clearly the Kantian

classification of the philosophical sciences, and to indicate the

relation between the critical or transcendental investigation of the

several faculties and the more developed sciences to which that

investigation serves as introduction. As any detailed statement of the

critical system, however compressed, would be beyond the limits of the

present article, it is proposed here to select only the more salient

doctrines, and to point out in connexion with them what advance had

been effected by Kant, and what remained for subsequent efforts at

complete solution of the problems raised by him. Much that is of

interest and value must necessarily be omitted in any sketch of so

elaborate a system, and for all points of special interpretation

reference must needs be made to the many elaborate dissertations on or

about the Kantian philosophy.

The doctrine from which Kant starts in his critical or transcendental

investigation of knowledge is that to which the slow development of

his thought had led him. The essence of cognition or knowledge was a

synthetic act, an act of combining in thought the detached elements of

experience. Now synthesis was explicable neither by reference to pure

thought, the logical or elaborative faculty, which in Kant's view

remained analytic in function, nor by reference to the effects of

external real things upon our faculties of cognition. For, on the one

hand, analysis or logical treatment applied only to objects of

knowledge as already given in synthetic forms, and, on the other hand,

real things could yield only isolated effects and not the combination

of these effects in the forms of cognitive experience. If experience

is to be matter of knowledge for the conscious subject, it must be

regarded as the conjoint product of given material and synthetic

combination. Form and matter may indeed be regarded separably and

dealt with in isolation for purposes of critical inquiry, but in

experience they are necessarily and inseparably united. The problem of

the _Kritik_ thus becomes for Kant the complete statement of the

elements necessarily involved in synthesis, and of the subjective

processes by which these elements are realized in our individual

consciousness. He is not asking, with Locke, whence the details of

experience arise; he is not attempting a natural history of the growth

of experience in the individual mind; but he is endeavouring to state

exhaustively what conditions are necessarily involved in any fact of

knowledge, i.e. in any synthetic combination of parts of experience by

the conscious subject.

So far as the elements necessarily involved in conscious experience

are concerned, these may be enumerated briefly thus:--given data of

sense, inner or outer; the forms of perception, i.e. space and time;

the forms of thought, i.e. the categories; the ultimate condition of

knowledge, the identity of the pure ego or self. The ego or self is

the central unity in reference to which alone is any part of

experience cognizable. But the consciousness of self is the foundation

of knowledge only when related to given material. The ego has not in

itself the element of difference, and the essence of knowledge is the

consciousness of unity in difference. For knowledge, therefore, it is

necessary that difference should be _given_ to the ego. The modes

under which it is possible for such given difference to become portion

of the conscious experience of the ego, the modes under which the

isolated data can be synthetically combined so as to form a cognizable

whole, make up the form of cognition, and upon this form rests the

possibility of any a priori or rational knowledge.

The notion of the ego as a purely logical unity, containing in itself

no element of difference, and having only analytical identity, is

fundamental in the critical system, and lies at the root of all its

difficulties and perplexities. To say that the ego as an individual

does not _produce_ the world of experience is by no means the same as

to say that the ego is pure unity without element of difference. In

the one case we are treating the ego as one of the objects of

experience and denying of it productive efficacy; in the second case

we are dealing with the unity of the ego as a condition of knowledge,

of any experience whatsoever. In this second sense, it is wholly wrong

to assert that the ego is pure identity, pure unity. The unity and

identity of the ego, so regarded, are taken in abstraction, i.e. as

dissevered from the more complex whole of which they are necessary

elements. When the ego is taken as a condition of knowledge, its unity

is not more important than the difference necessarily correlated with

it. That the ego as a thing should not produce difference is quite

beside the mark. The consequences of the abstract separation which

Kant so draws between the ego and the world of experience are apparent

throughout his whole system. Assuming at the outset an opposition

between the two, self and matter of knowledge, he is driven by the

exigencies of the problem of reconciliation to insert term after term

as means of bringing them together, but never succeeds in attaining a

junction which is more than mechanical. To the end, the ego remains,

partly the pure logical ego, partly the concrete individual spirit,

and no explanation is afforded of the relation between them. It is for

this reason that the system of forms of perception and categories

appears so contingent and haphazard. No attempt is made to show how or

why the difference supplied for the pure logical ego should present

itself necessarily under these forms. They are regarded rather as

portions of the subjective mechanism of the individual consciousness.

The mind or self appears as though it were endowed with a complex

machinery by which alone it could act upon the material supplied to

it. Such a crude conception is far, indeed, from doing justice to

Kant's view, but it undoubtedly represents the underlying assumption

of many of his cardinal doctrines. The philosophy of Fichte is

historically interesting as that in which the deficiencies of Kant's

fundamental position were first discerned and the attempt made to

remedy them.

Unfortunately for the consistency of the _Kritik_, Kant does not

attempt to work out systematically the elements involved in knowledge

before considering the subjective processes by which knowledge is

realized in consciousness. He mixes up the two inquiries, and in the

general division of his work depends rather upon the results of

previous psychology than upon the lines prescribed by his own new

conception of experience. He treats the elements of cognition

separately in connexion with the several subjective processes involved

in knowledge, viz. sense and understanding. Great ambiguity is the

natural result of this procedure. For it was not possible for Kant to

avoid the misleading connotation of the terms employed by him. In

strictness, sense, understanding, imagination and reason ought to have

had their functions defined in close relation to the elements of

knowledge with which they are severally connected, and as these

elements have no existence as separate facts, but only as factors in

the complex organic whole, it might have been possible to avoid the

error of supposing that each subjective process furnished a distinct,

separately cognizable portion of a mechanical whole. But the use of

separate terms, such as sense and understanding, almost unavoidably

led to phraseology only interpretable as signifying that each

furnished a specific kind of knowledge, and all Kant's previous

training contributed to strengthen this erroneous view. Especially

noteworthy is this in the case of the categories. Kant insists upon

treating these as _Begriffe_, notions, and assigns to them certain

characteristics of notions. But it is readily seen, and in the _Logik_

Kant shows himself fully aware of the fact, that these pure connective

links of experience, general aspects of objects of intelligible

experience, do not resemble concepts formed by the so-called logical

or elaborative processes from representations of completed objects.

Nothing but harm can follow from any attempt to identify two products

which differ so entirely. So, again, the _Aesthetik_ is rendered

extremely obscure and difficult by the prevalence of the view, already

noted as obtaining in the _Dissertation_, that sense is a faculty

receiving representations of objects. Kant was anxious to avoid the

error of Leibnitz, who had taken sense and understanding to differ in

degree only, not in kind; but in avoiding the one error he fell into

another of no less importance.

The consideration of the several elements which in combination make up

the fact of cognition, or perception, as it may be called, contains

little or nothing bearing on the origin and nature of the given data

of sense, inner or outer. The manifold of sense, which plays so

important a part in the critical theory of knowledge, is left in an

obscure and perplexed position. So much is clear, however, that

according to Kant sense is not to be regarded as receptive of

representations of objects. The data of sense are mere _stimuli_, not

partial or confused representations. The sense-manifold is not to be

conceived as having, _per se_, any of the qualities of objects as

actually cognized; its parts are not cognizable _per se_, nor can it

with propriety be said to be received successively or simultaneously.

When we apply predicates to the sense-manifold regarded in isolation,

we make that which is only a factor in the experience of objects into

a separate, independent object, and use our predicates transcendently.

Kant is not always in his language faithful to his view of the

sense-manifold, but the theory as a whole, together with his own

express definitions, is unmistakable. On the origin of the data of

sense, Kant's remarks are few and little satisfactory. He very

commonly employs the term _affection_ of the faculty of sense as

expressing the mode of origin, but offers no further explanation of a

term which has significance only when interpreted after a somewhat

mechanical fashion. Unquestionably certain of his remarks indicate the

view that the origin is to be sought in things-in-themselves, but

against hasty misinterpretations of such remarks there are certain

cautions to be borne in mind. The relation between phenomena and

noumena in the Kantian system does not in the least resemble that

which plays so important a part in modern psychology--between the

subjective results of sense affection and the character of the

objective conditions of such affection. Kant has pointedly declared

that it would be a gross absurdity to suppose that in his view

separate, distinct things-in-themselves existed corresponding to the

several objects of perception. And, finally, it is not at all

difficult to understand why Kant should say that the affection of

sense originated in the action of things-in-themselves, when we

consider what was the thing-in-itself to which he was referring. The

thing-in-itself to which the empirical order and relations of

sense-experience are referred is the divine order, which is not matter

of knowledge, but involved in our practical or moral beliefs. Critics

who limit their view to the _Kritik of Pure Reason_, and there, in all

probability, to the first or constructive portion of the work, must

necessarily fail to interpret the doctrines of the Kantian system,

which do not become clear or definite till the system has been

developed. Reason was, for Kant, an organic whole; the speculative and

moral aspects are never severed; and the solution of problems which

appear at first sight to belong solely to the region of speculative

thought may be found ultimately to depend upon certain characteristics

of our nature as practical.

Data of sense-affection do not contain in themselves synthetic

combination. The first conditions of such combination are found by

Kant in the universal forms under which alone sense-phenomena manifest

themselves in experience. These universal forms of perception, space

and time, are necessary, a priori, and in characteristic features

resembling intuitions, not notions. They occupy, therefore, a peculiar

position, and one section of the _Kritik_, the _Aesthetik_, is

entirely devoted to the consideration of them. It is important to

observe that it is only through the a priori character of these

perceptive forms that rational science of nature is at all possible.

Kant is here able to resume, with fresh insight, his previous

discussions regarding the synthetic character of mathematical

propositions. In his early essays he had rightly drawn the distinction

between mathematical demonstration and philosophic proof, referring

the certainty of the first to the fact that the constructions were

synthetic in character and entirely determined by the action of

constructive imagination. It had not then occurred to him to ask, With

what right do we assume that the conclusions arrived at from arbitrary

constructions in mathematical matter have applicability to objects of

experience? Might not mathematics be a purely imaginary science? To

this question he is now enabled to return an answer. Space and time,

the two essential conditions of sense-perception, are not data given

by things, but universal forms of intellect into which all data of

sense must be received. Hence, whatever is true of space and time

regarded by imagination as objects, i.e. quantitative constructions,

must be true of the objects making up our sense-experience. The same

forms and the same constructive activity of imagination are involved

in mathematical synthesis and in the constitution of objects of

sense-experience. The foundation for pure or rational mathematics,

there being included under this the pure science of movement, is thus

laid in the critical doctrine of space and time.

The _Aesthetik_ isolates sense-perception, and considers its forms as

though it were an independent, complete faculty. A certain confusion,

arising from this, is noticeable in the _Analytik_ when the necessity

for justifying the position of the categories is under discussion, but

the real difficulty in which Kant was involved by his doctrine of

space and time has its roots even deeper than the erroneous isolation

of sensibility. He has not in any way "deduced" space and time, but,

proceeding from the ordinary current view of sense-experience, has

found these remaining as residuum after analysis. The relation in

which they stand to the categories or pure notions is ambiguous; and,

when Kant has to consider the fashion in which category and data of

sense are to be brought together, he merely places side by side as a

priori elements the pure connective notions and the pure forms of

perception, and finds it, apparently, only a matter of contingent

convenience that they should harmonize with one another and so render

cognition possible. To this point also Fichte was the first to call

attention.

Affection of sense, even when received into the pure forms of

perception, is not matter of knowledge. For cognition there is

requisite synthetic combination, and the intellectual function through

which such combination takes place. The forms of intellectual function

Kant proceeds to enumerate with the aid of the commonly received

logical doctrines. For this reference to logic he has been severely

blamed, but the precise nature of the debt due to the commonly

accepted logical classification is very generally misconceived.

Synthetic combination, Kant points out, is formally expressed in a

judgment, which is the act of uniting representations. At the

foundation of the judgments which express the types of synthetic

combination, through which knowledge is possible, lie the pure general

notions, the abstract aspect of the conditions under which objects are

cognizable in experience. General logic has also to deal with the

union of representations, though its unity is analytic merely, not

synthetic. But the same intellectual function which serves to give

unity in the analytic judgments of formal logic serves to give unity

to the synthetic combinations of real perception. It appeared evident,

then, to Kant that in the forms of judgment, as they are stated in the

common logic, there must be found the analogues of the types of

judgment which are involved in transcendental logic, or in the theory

of real cognition. His view of the ordinary logic was wide and

comprehensive, though in his restriction of the science to pure form

one can trace the influence of his earlier training, and it is no

small part of the value of the critical philosophy that it has revived

the study of logic and prepared the way for a more thorough

consideration of logical doctrines. The position assigned to logic by

Kant is not, in all probability, one which can be defended; indeed, it

is hard to see how Kant himself, in consistency with the critical

doctrine of knowledge, could have retained many of the older logical

theorems, but the precision with which the position was stated, and

the sharpness with which logic was marked off from cognate philosophic

disciplines, prepared the way for the more thoughtful treatment of the

whole question.

Formal logic thus yields to Kant the list of the general notions, pure

intellectual predicates, or categories, through which alone experience

is possible for a conscious subject. It has already been noted how

serious was the error involved in the description of these as notions,

without further attempt to clear up their precise significance. Kant,

indeed, was mainly influenced by his strong opposition to the

Leibnitzian rationalism, and therefore assigns the categories to

understanding, the logical faculty, without consideration of the

question,--which might have been suggested by the previous statements

of the _Dissertation_,--what relation these categories held to the

empirical notions formed by comparison, abstraction and generalization

when directed upon representations of objects. But when the categories

are described as notions, i.e. formed products of thought, there rises

of necessity the problem which had presented itself to Kant at every

stage of his precritical thinking,--with what right can we assume that

these notions apply to objects of experience? The answer which he

proceeds to give altogether explodes the definition of the categories

as formed products of thought, and enables us to see more clearly the

nature of the new conception of experience which lies in the

background of all the critical work.

The unity of the ego, which has been already noted as an element

entering into the synthesis of cognition, is a unity of a quite

distinct and peculiar kind. That the ego to which different parts of

experience are presented must be the same ego, if there is to be

cognition at all, is analytically evident; but the peculiarity is that

the ego must be conscious of its own unity and identity, and this

unity of self-consciousness is only possible in relation to difference

not contained in the ego but given to it. The unity of apperception,

then, as Kant calls it, is only possible in relation to synthetic

unity of experience itself, and the forms of this synthetic unity, the

categories, are, therefore, on the one hand, necessary as forms in

which self-consciousness is realized, and, on the other hand,

restricted in their application and validity to the data of given

sense, or the particular element of experience. Thus experience

presents itself as the organic combination of the particular of sense

with the individual unity of the ego through the universal forms of

the categories. Reference of representations to the unity of the

object, synthetic unity of apperception, and subsumption of data of

sense under the categories, are thus three sides or aspects of the one

fundamental fact.

In this deduction of the categories, as Kant calls it, there appears

for the first time an endeavour to connect together into one organic

whole the several elements entering into experience. It is evident,

however, that much was wanting before this essential task could be

regarded as complete. Kant has certainly brought together

self-consciousness, the system of the categories and data of sense. He

has shown that the conditions of self-consciousness are the conditions

of possible experience. But he has not shown, nor did he attempt to

show, how it was that the conditions of self-consciousness are the

very categories arrived at by consideration of the system of logical

judgments. He does endeavour to show, but with small success, how the

junction of category and data of sense is brought about, for according

to his scheme these stood, to a certain extent at least, apart from

and independent of one another. The failure to effect an organic

combination of the several elements was the natural consequence of the

false start which had been made.

The mode in which Kant endeavours to show how the several portions of

cognition are subjectively realized brings into the clearest light the

inconsistencies and imperfections of his doctrine. Sense had been

assumed as furnishing the particular of knowledge, understanding as

furnishing the universal; and it had been expressly declared that the

particular was cognizable only in and through the universal. Still,

each was conceived as somehow in itself complete and finished. Sense

and understanding had distinct functions, and there was wanting some

common term, some intermediary which should bring them into

conjunction. Data of sense as purely particular could have nothing in

common with the categories as purely universal. But data of sense had

at least one universal aspect,--their aspect as the particular of the

general forms, space and time. Categories were in themselves abstract

and valueless, serviceable only when restricted to possible objects of

experience. There was thus a common ground on which category and

intuition were united in one, and an intermediate process whereby the

universal of the category might be so far individualized as to

comprehend the particular of sense. This intermediate process--which

is really the junction of understanding and sense--Kant calls

productive imagination, and it is only through productive imagination

that knowledge or experience is actually realized in our subjective

consciousness. The specific forms of productive imagination are called

_schemata_, and upon the nature of the schema Kant gives much that has

proved of extreme value for subsequent thought.

Productive imagination is thus the concrete element of knowledge, and

its general modes are the abstract expression of the a priori laws of

all possible experience. The categories are restricted in their

applicability to the schema, i.e. to the pure forms of conjunction of

the manifold in time, and in the modes of combination of schemata and

categories we have the foundation for the rational sciences of

mathematics and physics. Perception or real cognition is thus

conceived as a complex fact, involving data of sense and pure

perceptive forms, determined by the category and realized through

productive imagination in the schema. The system of principles which

may be deduced from the consideration of the mode in which

understanding and sense are united by productive imagination is the

positive result of the critical theory of knowledge, and some of its

features are remarkable enough to deserve attention. According to his

usual plan, Kant arranges these principles in conformity with the

table of the categories, dividing the four classes, however, into two

main groups, the mathematical and the dynamical. The mathematical

principles are the abstract expression of the necessary mode in which

data of sense are determined by the category in the form of intuitions

or representations of objects; the dynamical are the abstract

expression of the modes in which the existence of objects of intuition

is determined. The mathematical principles are constitutive, i.e.

express determinations of the objects themselves; the dynamical are

regulative, i.e. express the conditions under which objects can form

parts of real experience. Under the mathematical principles come the

general rules which furnish the ground for the application of

quantitative reasoning to real facts of experience. For as data of

sense are only possible objects when received in the forms of space

and time, and as space and time are only cognized when determined in

definite fashion by the understanding through the schema of number

(quantity) or degree (quality), all intuitions are extensive

quantities and contain a real element, that of sense, which has

degree. Under the dynamical principles, the general modes in which the

existence of objects are determined, fall the analogies of experience,

or general rules according to which the existence of objects in

relation to one another can be determined, and the postulates of

experience, the general rules according to which the existence of

objects for us or our own subjective existence can be determined. The

analogies of experience rest upon the order of perceptions in time,

i.e. their permanence, succession or coexistence, and the principles

are respectively those of substance, causality and reciprocity. It is

to be observed that Kant in the expression of these analogies reaches

the final solution of the difficulty which had so long pressed upon

him, the difficulty as to the relation of the pure connective notions

to experience. These notions are not directly applicable to

experience, nor do we find in experience anything corresponding to the

pure intellectual notions of substance, cause and reciprocity. But

experience is for us the combination of data of sense in the forms of

productive imagination, forms determined by the pure intellectual

notions, and accordingly experience is possible for us only as in

modes corresponding to the notions. The permanent in time is substance

in any possible experience, and no experience is possible save through

the determination of all changes as in relation to a permanent in

time. Determined sequence is the causal relation in any possible

experience, and no experience is possible save through the

determination of perceived changes as in relation to a determined

order in time. So with coexistence and reciprocity.

The postulates of experience are general expressions of the

significance of existence in the experience of a conscious subject.

The element of reality in such experience must always be given by

intuition, and, so far as determination of existence is assumed,

external intuition is a necessary condition of inner intuition. The

existence of external things is as certain as the existence of the

concrete subject, and the subject cannot cognise himself as existing

save in relation to the world of facts of external perception. Inner

and outer reality are strictly correlative elements in the experience

of the conscious subject.

Throughout the positive portion of his theory of cognition, Kant has

been beset by the doctrine that the categories, as finished, complete

notions, have an import or significance transcending the bounds of

possible experience. Morever, the manner in which space and time had

been treated made it possible for him to regard these as contingent

forms, necessary for intelligences like ours, but not to be viewed as

absolutely necessary. The real meaning of these peculiarities is

hardly ever expressed by him, though it is clear that the solution of

the matter is to be found in the inadequacy of the positive theory to

meet the demands of reason for completed explanation. But the

conclusion to which he was led was one of the greatest importance for

the after development of his system. Cognition is necessarily limited.

The categories are restricted in their application to elements of

possible experience to that which is presented in intuition, and all

intuition is for the ego contingent. But to assert that cognition is

limited and its matter contingent is to form the idea of an

intelligence for whom cognition would not be limited and for whom the

data of intuition would not be given, contingent facts, but

necessarily produced along with the pure categories. This idea of an

intuitive understanding is the definite expression for the complete

explanation which reason demands, and it involves the conception of a

realm of objects for such an understanding, a realm of objects which,

in opposition to the _phenomena_ of our relative and limited

experience, may be called _noumena_ or things-in-themselves. The

_noumenon_, therefore, is in one way the object of a non-sensuous

intuition, but more correctly is the expression of the limited and

partial character of our knowledge. The idea of a noumenon is thus a

limiting notion.

Assuredly, the difficult section of the _Kritik_, on the ground of the

distinction between phenomena and noumena, would not have led to so

much misconception as it has done, had Kant then brought forward what

lies at the root of the distinction, his doctrine of reason and its

functions. Understanding, as has been seen, is the faculty of

cognition strictly so called; and within its realm, that of space,

time and matter, positive knowledge is attainable. But the ultimate

conception of understanding, that of the world of objects,

quantitatively determined, and standing in relation of mutual

reciprocity to one another, is not a final ground of explanation. We

are still able and necessitated to reflect upon the whole world of

phenomena as thus cognized, and driven to inquire after its

significance. In our reflection we necessarily treat the objects, not

as phenomena, as matters of positive, scientific knowledge, but as

things-in-themselves, as noumena. The distinction between phenomena

and noumena is, therefore, nothing but the expression of the

distinction between understanding and reason, a distinction which,

according to Kant, is merely subjective.

The specific function of reason is the effort after completed

explanation of the experience presented in cognition. But in such

effort there are no notions to be employed other than the categories,

and these, as has already been seen, have validity only in reference

to objects of possible experience. We may expect, then, to find the

transcendent employment of the categories leading into various

difficulties and inconsistencies. The criticism of reason in its

specific aspect throws fresh light on the limits to human knowledge

and the significance of experience.

Experience has presented itself as the complex result of relation

between the ego or subject and the world of phenomena. Reason may

therefore attempt a completed explanation either of the ego or of the

world of phenomena or of the total relation between them. The three

inquiries correspond to the subjects of the three ancient metaphysical

sciences, rational psychology, rational cosmology, rational theology.

It is readily seen, in regard to the first of them, that all attempts

to determine the nature of the ego as a simple, perdurable, immaterial

substance rest upon a confusion between the ego as pure logical unity

and the ego as object of intuition, and involve a transcendent use of

the categories of experience. It profits not to apply such categories

to the soul, for no intuition corresponding to them is or can be

given. The idea of the soul must be regarded as transcendent. So too

when we endeavour, with the help of the categories of quantity,

quality, relation and modality, to determine the nature and relation

of parts of the world, we find that reason is landed in a peculiar

difficulty. Any solution that can be given is too narrow for the

demands of reason and too wide for the restrictions of understanding.

The transcendent employment of the categories leads to antinomy, or

equally balanced statements of apparently contradictory results. Due

attention to the relation between understanding and reason enables us

to solve the antinomies and to discover their precise origin and

significance. Finally, the endeavour to find in the conception of God,

as the supreme reality, the explanation of experience, is seen to lead

to no valid conclusion. There is not any intuition given whereby we

might show the reality of our idea of a Supreme Being. So far as

knowledge is concerned, God remains a transcendental ideal.

The criticism of the transcendental ideas, which is also the

examination of the claims of metaphysic to rank as a science, yields a

definite and intelligible result. These ideas, the expression of the

various modes in which unity of reason may be sought, have no objects

corresponding to them in the sphere of cognition. They have not,

therefore, like the categories, any _constitutive_ value, and all

attempts at metaphysical construction with the notions or categories

of science must be resigned as of necessity hopeless. But the ideas

are not, on that account, destitute of all value. They are supremely

significant, as indicating the very essence of the function of reason.

The limits of scientific cognition become intelligible, only when the

sphere of understanding is subjected to critical reflexion and

compared with the possible sphere of reason, that is, the sphere of

rationally complete cognition. The ideas, therefore, in relation to

knowledge strictly so called, have _regulative_ value, for they

furnish the general precepts for extension and completion of

knowledge, and, at the same time, since they spring from reason

itself, they have a real value in relation to reason as the very

inmost nature of intelligence. Self-consciousness cannot be regarded

as merely a mechanically determined result. Free reflection upon the

whole system of knowledge is sufficient to indicate that the sphere of

intuition, with its rational principles, does not exhaust conscious

experience. There still remains, over and above the realm of nature,

the realm of free, self-conscious spirit; and, within this sphere, it

may be anticipated that the ideas will acquire a significance richer

and deeper than the merely regulative import which they possess in

reference to cognition.

Where, then, are we to look for this realm of free self-consciousness?

Not in the sphere of cognition, where objects are mechanically

determined, but in that of will or of reason as practical. That reason

is practical or prescribes ends for itself is sufficiently manifest

from the mere fact of the existence of the conception of morality or

duty, a conception which can have no corresponding object within the

sphere of intuition, and which is theoretically, or in accordance with

the categories of understanding, incognizable. The presence of this

conception is the datum upon which may be founded a special

investigation of the conditions of reason as practical, a _Kritik_ of

pure practical reason, and the analysis of it yields the statement of

the formal prescripts of morality.

The realization of duty is impossible for any being which is not

thought as free, i.e. capable of self-determination. Freedom, it is

true, is theoretically not an object of cognition, but its

impossibility is not thereby demonstrated. The theoretical proof

rather serves as useful aid towards the more exact determination of

the nature and province of self-determination, and of its relation to

the whole concrete nature of humanity. For in man self-determination

and mechanical determination by empirical motives coexist, and only in

so far as he belongs and is conscious of belonging both to the sphere

of sense and to the sphere of reason does moral obligation become

possible for him. The supreme end prescribed by reason in its

practical aspect, namely, the complete subordination of the empirical

side of nature to the prescripts of morality, demands, as conditions

of its possible realization, the permanence of ethical progress in the

moral agent, the certainty of freedom in self-determination, and the

necessary harmonizing of the spheres of sense and reason through the

intelligent author or ground of both. These conditions, the postulates

of practical reason, are the concrete expressions of the three

transcendental ideas, and in them we have the full significance of the

ideas for reason. Immortality of the soul, positive freedom of will,

and the existence of an intelligent ground of things are speculative

ideas practically warranted, though theoretically neither demonstrable

nor comprehensible.

Thus reason as self-determining supplies notions of freedom; reason as

determined supplies categories of understanding. Union between the two

spheres, which seem at first sight disparate, is found in the

necessary postulate that reason shall be realized, for its realization

is only possible in the sphere of sense. But such a union, when

regarded _in abstracto_, rests upon, or involves, a notion of quite a

new order, that of the adaptation of nature to reason, or, as it may

be expressed, that of end in nature. Understanding and reason thus

coalesce in the faculty of _judgment_, which mediates between, or

brings together, the universal and particular elements in conscious

experience. Judgment is here merely _reflective_; that is to say, the

particular element is given, so determined as to be possible material

of knowledge, while the universal, not necessary for cognition, is

supplied by reason itself. The empirical details of nature, which are

not determined by the categories of understanding, are judged as being

arranged or ordered by intelligence, for in no other fashion could

nature, in its particular, contingent aspect, be thought as forming a

complete, consistent, intelligible whole.

The investigation of the conditions under which adaptation of nature

to intelligence is conceivable and possible makes up the subject of

the third great _Kritik_, the _Kritik of Judgment_, a work presenting

unusual difficulties to the interpreter of the Kantian system. The

general principle of the adaptation of nature to our faculties of

cognition has two specific applications, with the second of which it

is more closely connected than with the first. In the first place, the

adaptation may be merely _subjective_, when the empirical condition

for the exercise of judgment is furnished by the feeling of pleasure

or pain; such adaptation is aesthetic. In the second place, the

adaptation may be objective or logical, when empirical facts are given

of such a kind that their possibility can be conceived only through

the notion of the end realized in them; such adaptation is

teleological, and the empirical facts in question are organisms.

Aesthetics, or the scientific consideration of the judgments resting

on the feelings of pleasure and pain arising from the harmony or want

of harmony between the particular of experience and the laws of

understanding, is the special subject of the _Kritik of Judgment_, but

the doctrine of teleology there unfolded is the more important for the

complete view of the critical system. For the analysis of the

teleological judgment and of the consequences flowing from it leads to

the final statement of the nature of experience as conceived by Kant.

The phenomena of organic production furnish data for a special kind of

judgment, which, however, involves or rests upon a quite general

principle, that of the contingency of the particular element in nature

and its subjectively necessary adaptation to our faculty of cognition.

The notion of contingency arises, according to Kant, from the fact

that understanding and sense are distinct, that understanding does not

determine the particular of sense, and, consequently, that the

principle of the adaptation of the particular to our understanding is

merely supplied by reason on account of the peculiarity or limited

character of understanding. End in nature, therefore, is a subjective

or problematic conception, implying the limits of understanding, and

consequently resting upon the idea of an understanding constituted

unlike ours--of an intuitive understanding in which particular and

universal should be given together. The idea of such an understanding

is, for cognition, transcendent, for no corresponding fact of

intuition is furnished, but it is realized with practical certainty in

relation to reason as practical. For we are, from practical grounds,

compelled with at least practical necessity to ascribe a certain aim

or end to this supreme understanding. The moral law, or reason as

practical, prescribes the realization of the highest good, and such

realization implies a higher order than that of nature. We must,

therefore, regard the supreme cause as a moral cause, and nature as so

ordered that realization of the moral end is in it possible. The final

conception of the Kantian philosophy is, therefore, that of ethical

teleology. As Kant expresses it in a remarkable passage of the

_Kritik_, "The systematic unity of ends in this world of

intelligences, which, although as mere nature it is to be called only

the world of sense, can yet as a system of freedom be called an

intelligible, i.e. moral world (_regnum gratiae_), leads inevitably to

the teleological unity of all things which constitute this great whole

according to universal natural laws, just as the unity of the former

is according to universal and necessary moral laws, and unites the

practical with the speculative reason. The world must be represented

as having originated from an idea, if it is to harmonize with that use

of reason without which we should hold ourselves unworthy of

reason--viz. the moral use, which rests entirely on the idea of the

supreme good. Hence all natural research tends towards the form of a

system of ends, and in its highest development would be a

physico-theology. But this, since it arises from the moral order as a

unity grounded in the very essence of freedom and not accidentally

instituted by external commands, establishes the teleology of nature

on grounds which a priori must be inseparably connected with the inner

possibility of things. The teleology of nature is thus made to rest on

a transcendental theology, which takes the ideal of supreme

ontological perfection as a principle of systematic unity, a principle

which connects all things according to universal and necessary natural

laws, since they all have their origin in the absolute necessity of a

single primal being" (p. 538).

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Editions and works of reference are exceedingly

numerous. Since 1896 an indispensable guide is the periodical review

_Kantstudien_ (Hamburg and Berlin, thrice yearly), edited by Hans

Vaihinger and Bruno Bauch, which contains admirable original articles

and notices of all important books on Kant and Kantianism. It has

reproduced a number of striking portraits of Kant. For books up to

1887 see Erich Adickes in _Philosophical Review_ (Boston, 1892 foll.);

for 1890-1894 R. Reicke's _Kant Bibliographie_ (1895). See also in

general the latest edition of Ueberweg's _Grundriss der Geschichte der

Philosophie_.

EDITIONS.--Complete editions of Kant's works are as follows: (1) G.

Hartenstein (Leipzig, 1838-1839, 10 vols.); (2) K. Rosenkranz and F.

W. Schubert (Leipzig, 1838-1840, 12 vols., the 12th containing a

history of the Kantian school); (3) G. Hartenstein, "in chronological

order" (Leipzig, 1867-1869, 8 vols.); (4) Kirchmann (in the

"Philosophische Bibliothek," Berlin, 1868-1873, 8 vols, and

supplement); (5) under the auspices of the Koniglich Preussische

Akademie der Wissenschaften, a new collected edition was begun in 1900

(vol. ii., 1906) in charge of a number of editors. It was planned in

four sections: Works, Letters, MSS. Remains and _Vorlesungen_. There

are also useful editions of the three _Kritiks_ by Kehrbach, and

critical editions of the _Prolegomena_ and _Kritik der reinen

Vernunft_ by B. Erdmann (see also his _Beitrage zur Geschichte und

Revision des Textes von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft_ (1900). A

useful selection (in English) is that of John Watson, _The Philosophy

of Kant_ (Glasgow, 1888).

TRANSLATIONS.--There are translations in all the principal languages.

The chief English translators are J. P. Mahaffy, W. Hastie, T. K.

Abbott, J. H. Bernard and Belfort Bax. Their versions have been

mentioned in the section on "Works" above.

BIOGRAPHICAL.--Schubert in the 11th vol. of Rosenkranz's edition;

Borowski, _Darstellung des Lebens und Charakters Kants_ (Konigsberg,

1804); Wasianski, _Kant in seinen letzten Lebensjahren_ (Konigsberg,

1804); Stuckenberg, _The Life of Immanuel Kant_ (1882); Rudolf Reicke,

_Kants Briefwechsel_ (1900). See also several of the critical works

below. On Kant's portraits see D. Minden, _Ueber Portraits und

Abbildungen Imm. Kants_ (1868) and cf. frontispieces of _Kantstudien_

(as above).

CRITICAL (in alphabetical order of authors).--R. Adamson, _Philosophy

of Kant_ (1879; Germ. trans., 1880); Felix Adler, _A Critique of

Kant's Ethics_ (1908); S. Aicher, _Kants Begriff der Erkenntnis

verglichen mit dem des Aristoteles_ (1907); M. Apel, _Immanuel Kant:

Ein Bild seines Lebens und Denkens_ (1904); Arnoldt, _Kritische

Exkurse im Gebiete der Kantforschung_ (1894); C. Bache, "_Kants

Prinzip der Autonomie im Verhaltnis zur Idee des Reichs der Zwecke_"

(_Kantstudien_, 1909); B. Bauch, _Luther und Kant_ (1904); Paul Boehm,

_Die vorkritischen Schriften Kants_ (1906); E. Caird, _Critical

Philosophy of Kant_ (2 vols., 1889); Chalybaus, _Historische

Entwickelung der spekulativen Philosophie von Kant bis Hegel_ (5th

ed., 1860); H. S. Chamberlain, _Immanuel Kant_ (1909); Cousin, _Lecons

sur la philosophie de Kant_ (4th ed., 1864); B. Erdmann, _Immanuel

Kant, Kants Kritizismus in der 1 und 2 Auflage der "Kritik der reinen

Vernunft_" (1877); O. Ewald, _Kants kritischer Idealismus als

Grundlage von Erkenntnistheorie und Ethik_ (1908) and _Kants

Methodologie in ihren Grundzugen_ (1906); Kuno Fischer, _Immanuel

Kant_ (4th ed., 1898-1899), _Die beiden Kantischen Schulen in Jena_

(1862), and _Commentary on Kant's Kritik of Pure Reason_ (1878); F.

Forster, _Der Entwicklungsgang der Kantischen Ethik bis zur Kritik der

reinen Vernunft_ (1893); A. Fouillee, _Le Moralisme de Kant et

l'amoralisme contemporaine_ (1905); C. R. E. von Hartmann, _Kants

Erkenntnistheorie und Metaphysik in den vier Perioden ihrer

Entwickelung_ (1894); A. Hegler, _Die Psychologie in Kants Ethik_

(1891); G. D. Hicks, _Die Begriffe Phanomenon und Noumenon in ihrem

Verhaltniss zu einander bei Kant_ (1897); G. Jacoby, _Herders und

Kants Aesthetik_ (1907); W. Kabitz, _Studien zur

Entwickelungsgeschichte der Fichteschen Wissenschaftslehre aus der

Kantischen Philosophie_ (1902); M. Kelly, _Kant's Philosophy as

rectified by Schopenhauer_ (1909); W. Koppelmann, _I. Kant und die

Grundlagen der christlichen Religion_ (1890); M. Kronenberg, _Kant:

Sein Leben und seine Lehre_ (1897; 3rd ed., 1905); E. Kuhnemann,

_Kants und Schillers Begrundung der Aesthetik_ (1895) and _Die

Kantischen Studien Schillers und die Komposition des Wallenstein_

(1889); H. Levy, _Kants Lehre vom Schematismus der reinen

Verstandesbegriffe_ (1901); Arthur O. Lovejoy, _Kant and the English

Platonists_ (1908); J. P. Mahaffy, _Kant's Critical Philosophy for

English Readers_ (1872-1874); W. Mengel, _Kants Begrundung der

Religion_ (1900); A. Messer, _Kants Ethik_ (1904); H. Meyer-Benfey,

_Herder und Kant_ (1904); Morris, _Kant's Critique of Pure Reason_

(Chicago, 1882); C. Oesterreich, _Kant und die Metaphysik_ (1906); F.

Paulsen, _Kant: Sein Leben und seine Lehre_ (1898; 4th ed., 1904; Eng.

1902); Harold H. Prichard, _Kant's Theory of Knowledge_ (1909); A.

Seth Pringle-Pattison, _The Development from Kant to Hegel_ (1882);

and, on Kant's philosophy of religion, in _The Philosophic Radicals_

(1907); F. Rademaker, _Kants Lehren vom innern Sinn in der Kritik der

reinen Vernunft_ (1908); R. Reininger, _Kants Lehre vom inneren Sinn

und seine Theorie der Erfahrung_ (1900); C. B. Renouvier, _Critique de

la doctrine de Kant_ (1906); H. Romundt, _Kants philosophische

Religionslehre eine Frucht der gesammten Vernunftkritik_ (1902); T.

Ruyssen, _Kant_ (1900); E. Saenger, _Kants Lehre vom Glauben_ (1903);

O. Schapp, _Kants Lehre vom Genie und die Entstehung der "Kritik der

Urteilskraft"_ (1901); Carl Schmidt, _Beitrage zur Entwickelung der

Kant'schen Ethik_ (1900); A. Schweitzer, _Die Religionsphilosophie

Kants_ (1899); H. Sidgwick, _Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant_

(1905); J. H. Stirling, _Text Book to Kant_ (1881); G. Simmel, _Kant

und Goethe_ (1906); L. Staehlin, _Kant, Lotze und Ritschl_ (1889); O.

Thon, _Die Grundprinzipien der Kantischen Moralphilosophie_ (1895); T.

Valentiner, _Kant und die platonische Philosophie_ (1904); C.

Vorlander, _Kant, Schiller, Goethe_ (1907); G. C. Uphues, _Kant und

sein Vorganger_ (1906); W. Wallace, _Kant_ (1905); M. Wartenberg,

_Kants Theorie der Kausalitat_ (1899); John Watson, _Philosophy of

Kant Explained_ (1908), _Kant and his English Critics_ (1881); A.

Weir, _A Student's Introduction to Critical Philosophy_ (1906); G. A.

Wyneken, _Hegel's Kritik Kants_ (1898); W. Windelband, _Kuno Fischer

und sein Kant_ (1897).

On Kant's theory of education, see E. F. Buchner, _The Educational

Theory of Immanuel Kant_ (trans., ed., intro., 1904); trans. of _Ueber

Padagogik_ by Annette Churton (1899); J. Geluk, _Kant_ (1883).

(R. Ad.; X.)