Chapter III

ON THE GROUND OF THE DISTINCTION OF ALL OBJECTS WHATEVER INTO PHENOMENA AND NOUMENA

This chapter, as Kant himself states,[1282] can yield no new results. It will serve merely to summarise those already established in the _Analytic_, showing how they one and all converge upon a conclusion of supreme importance for understanding the nature and scope of human experience--the conclusion, that though the objective employment of the categories can be justified only within the realm of sense-experiences, they have a wider significance whereby they define a distinction between appearances and things in themselves. This is the conclusion which Kant now sets himself to illustrate and enforce in somewhat greater detail. It may be observed that the title of the chapter makes mention only of grounds for _distinguishing_ between phenomena and noumena. That things in themselves really exist, Kant, as we shall find, never seriously thought of questioning.

Kant begins by recalling a main point in the preceding argument. The categories apart from the manifold of sensibility are merely logical functions without content.[1283] Though _a priori_, they require to be supplemented through empirical intuition.

“Apart from this relation to possible experience they have no
objective validity of any sort, but are a mere play of the
imagination or the understanding with their respective
representations.”[1284]

As evidence of the truth of this conclusion Kant now adds a further argument, namely, the impossibility of defining the categories except in terms that involve reference to the conditions of sensibility.[1285] When these conditions are omitted, the categories are without relation to any object and consequently without meaning. They are no longer concepts of possible empirical employment, but only of “things in general.” When, for instance, the permanence of existence in time, which is the condition of the empirical application of the concept of substance, is omitted, the category reduces merely to the notion of something that is always a subject and never a predicate.

“But not only am I ignorant of all conditions under which this
logical pre-eminence may belong to anything, I can neither put such
a concept to any use nor draw the least inference from it. For
under these conditions no object is determined for its employment,
and consequently we do not at all know whether it signifies
anything whatsoever.”[1286]

In abstraction from sense-data, the categories still remain as concepts or _thoughts_, logically possible; but that is not to be taken as signifying that they still continue to possess meaning, _i.e._ reference to an object.[1287] And in the absence of ascertainable meaning they cannot, of course, be defined.

In A 244[1288] Kant states his position in somewhat different fashion. In abstraction from sense the categories have meaning, but not determinate meaning; they relate not to any specific object, but only to things in general. In this latter reference, however, they possess no objective validity, since in the absence of intuition there is no means of deciding whether or not any real existence actually corresponds to them.

But whichever mode of statement be adopted, the same conclusion follows.

“Accordingly, the transcendental _Analytic_ has this important
result, that the most the understanding can achieve _a priori_ is
to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general. And
since that which is not appearance cannot be an object of
experience, the understanding can never transcend those limits of
sensibility within which alone objects are given to us. Its
principles are merely rules for the exposition of appearances; and
the proud title of an Ontology, which presumptuously claims to
supply, in systematic doctrinal form, synthetic _a priori_
knowledge of things in general (_e.g._ the principle of causality),
must therefore give place to the modest claims of a mere Analytic
of pure understanding.”[1289]

A 248-9[1290] opens a new line of argument which starts from the results obtained in the _Aesthetic_. The proof that space and time are subjective forms establishes the merely phenomenal character of everything which can be apprehended in and through them, and is meaningless except on the assumption that things in themselves exist. This assumption, Kant argues, is already involved in the very word ‘appearance,’ and unless it be granted, our thinking will revolve in a perpetual circle.[1291] But, he proceeds, this conclusion may easily be misinterpreted. It might be taken as proving the objective reality of noumena, and as justifying us in maintaining a distinction between the sensible and the intelligible worlds, and therefore in asserting that whereas the former is the object of intuition, the latter is apprehended by the understanding in pure thought. We should then be arguing that though in experience things are known only as they appear, through pure understanding a nobler world than that of sense, “_eine Welt im Geiste gedacht_,” is opened to our view.

But any such interpretation, Kant insists, runs directly counter to the teaching of the _Analytic_, and is ruled out by the conclusions to which it has led. Categories yield only “rules for the exposition of appearances,” and cannot be extended beyond the field of possible experience. It is true that all our sense-representations are related by the understanding to an object that is “transcendental.” But that object, in its transcendental aspect, signifies only a something = _x_. It cannot be thought apart from the sense-data which are referred to it. When we attempt to isolate it, and so to conceive it in its independent nature, nothing remains through which it can be thought.

“It is not in itself an object of knowledge, but only the
representation of appearances under the concept of an object in
general, viewed as determinable through the manifold of those
appearances.”

Kant is here again expounding his early doctrine of the transcendental object.[1292] Evidently, at the time at which this passage was written, he had not yet come to realise that such teaching is not in harmony with his Critical principles. It is, as we have seen above, a combination of subjectivism and of dogmatic rationalism.[1293] The very point which he here chiefly stresses was bound, however, when consistently followed out, to reveal the untenableness of the doctrine of the transcendental object; and in the second edition Kant so recast this chapter on phenomena and noumena as to eliminate all passages in which the transcendental object is referred to.[1294]

But to return to Kant’s own argument: the reason why the mind is “not satisfied with this substrate of sensibility,”[1295] and therefore proceeds to duplicate the phenomenal world by a second world of noumena, lies in the character of the agency whereby sensibility is limited. Sensibility is limited by the understanding; and the understanding, overestimating its powers and prerogatives, proceeds to transform the notion of the transcendental object = _x_ into the concept of a noumenon, viewed in a manner conformable to its etymological significance, as something apprehended by reason or pure intuition, _i.e._ as intuited in some non-sensuous fashion. For only by postulating the possibility of a non-sensuous species of intuition, can the notion of a noumenon, thus positively conceived, be saved from self-contradiction. Otherwise we should be asserting the apprehension of an object independently of appearances, and yet at the same time denying the only means through which such apprehension is possible. Statement of the postulate suffices, however, to reveal its unsupported character. We have no such power of non-sensuous, intuitive apprehension;[1296] nor can we in any way prove that such a power is possible even in a Divine Being. Though, therefore, the concept of noumena is not self-contradictory, it involves more than we have the right to assert; the process whereby the empty notion of a transcendental object = _x_ is transformed into the positive concept of a noumenon is easily comprehensible,[1297] but it is none the less illegitimate. We must, Kant insists, keep strict hold of the central doctrine of Critical teaching, namely, that the categories are applicable only to the data of sense. We can still employ them as pure logical functions, yielding the notion of objects in general (of the transcendental object = _x_). But this does not widen the sphere of _known_ existences. It only enables us to comprehend the limited and merely phenomenal character of the world experienced.

At this point[1298] Kant’s argument takes a strange and misleading turn. The concept of object in general (the transcendental object = _x_) has been proved to be involved in the apprehension of appearances as appearances, and in this capacity to be a limiting concept (_Grenzbegriff_), which, though negative in function, is indispensably involved in the constitution of human experience. Now, however, Kant proceeds to ascribe this function to _the concept of the noumenon_. That concept is, he repeats, purely problematic. Even the mere possibility of its object, presupposing as it does the possibility of an understanding capable through non-sensuous intuition of apprehending it, we have no right to assert. That the concept is not self-contradictory is the most that we can say of it. None the less, it is to this concept that Kant here ascribes the indispensable limiting function.

“The concept of a noumenon is a merely limiting concept, the
function of which is to curb the pretensions of sensibility; and it
is therefore only of negative employment. At the same time it is
no arbitrary invention, and it is bound up with the limitation of
sensibility, though it cannot affirm anything positive beyond the
field of sensibility.”[1299]

This confusion, between the concept of a noumenon and the less definite concept of object in general, which is probably due to the combining of manuscripts of different dates, is corrected in the second edition by means of a new distinction which Kant introduces, evidently for this very purpose. The term noumenon may, he there says,[1300] be used either positively or negatively. Taken positively, it signifies “an object of a non-sensuous intuition”; regarded negatively, it means only “a thing so far as it is not an object of our sensuous intuition.” Only in its negative employment, he states, is it required as a limiting concept; and it is then, as he recognises, indistinguishable from the notion of the unknown thing in itself.

But despite this variation in mode of expression, in the main Kant holds consistently to his fundamental teaching.

“...understanding is not limited through sensibility; on the
contrary, it itself limits sensibility by applying the term noumena
to things in themselves (things not regarded as appearances). But
in so doing it at the same time sets limits to itself, recognising
that it cannot know these noumena through any of the categories,
and that it must therefore think them only under the title of an
unknown something.”[1301]

Or as Kant adds in the concluding sentence of this chapter:

“...the problematic thought which leaves open a place for
[intelligible objects], serves only, like an empty space, for the
limitation of empirical principles, without itself containing or
revealing any other object of knowledge beyond their sphere.”

A sentence in A 258 = B 314 deserves special notice.

“...we can never know whether such a transcendental or exceptional
knowledge is possible under any conditions, least of all if it is
to be regarded as of the sort that stands under our ordinary
categories.”

This sentence clearly shows that Kant was willing to recognise that the categories may be inapplicable, not merely owing to lack of data for their specification, but because of their inherent character. They may be intrinsically inapplicable, expressing only the _modi_ of our self-consciousness. They may be merely the instruments of our human thinking, not forms necessary to knowledge as such.

RELEVANT PASSAGES IN THE SECTION ON AMPHIBOLY

Before passing to consideration of the extensive alterations made in this chapter in the second edition, it is advisable to take account of the two passages dealing with this problem in the first edition section on _Amphiboly_: namely, A 277-280 = B 333-6, and A 285-9 = B 342-6. The first of these passages is of great interest in other connections;[1302] its chief importance in reference to the present problem lies in its concluding paragraph. Kant there declares that the representation of an object “as thing in general” is not only, in the absence of specific data, insufficient for the determination of an object, but is self-contradictory. For we must either abstract from all reference to an object, and so be left with a merely logical representation; or, in assuming an object, we must postulate a special form of intuition which we do not ourselves possess, and which therefore we cannot employ in forming our concept of the object. _Here again Kant is substituting the concept of a noumenon for the less definite concept of the thing in itself._ This is still more explicitly done in the second passage. The pure categories are, Kant there declares, incapable of yielding the concept of an object. Apart from the data of sense they have no relation to any object. As purely logical functions, they are altogether lacking in content or meaning. By objects as things in themselves we must therefore mean objects of a non-sensuous intuition.[1303] Kant still, indeed, continues to maintain that to them the categories do not apply, and that we cannot, therefore, have any knowledge of them, either intuitional or conceptual.

“Even if we assume a non-sensuous form of intuition, our functions
of thought would still have no meaning in reference to it.”[1304]

But Kant now insists that the notion of noumena, viewed in the above manner, differs from the notion of “objects in general” (transcendental = _x_) in being a legitimate non-contradictory conception; and he also insists that though more positive in content, it is for that very reason less open to misunderstanding. Its function is not to extend our knowledge, but merely to limit it.

“For it merely says that our species of intuition does not extend
to all things, but only to objects of our senses; that its
objective validity is consequently limited; and that a place
therefore remains open for some other species of intuition, and so
for things as its objects.”[1305]

The concept of a noumenon, as thus employed to signify the objects of a non-sensuous intuition, is, Kant proceeds, merely problematic. As we have neither intuition nor (it may be) categories fitted for its apprehension, it represents something upon the possibility or impossibility of which we are quite unable to pronounce.

“...as the problematic concept of an object for a quite different
intuition and a quite different understanding than ours, it is
itself a problem.”

We may not therefore assert the existence of noumena, but we must none the less form to ourselves the concept of them. This concept is indispensably involved in the constitution of our empirical knowledge, and is demanded for its proper interpretation. Only when viewed as a self-sufficient representation of an absolute existence does it become dogmatic and therefore illegitimate. In its Critical aspects it stands for a problem which human reason is constrained by its very nature to propound.

“The concept of the noumenon is, therefore, not the concept of an
object, but is a problem unavoidably bound up with the limitation
of our sensibility--the problem, namely, as to whether there may
not be objects entirely disengaged from our sensuous species of
intuition. This is a question which can only be answered in an
indeterminate manner, by saying that, as sense intuition does not
extend to all things without distinction, a place remains open for
other different objects; and consequently that these latter must
not be absolutely denied, though--since we are without a
determinate concept of them (inasmuch as no category can serve that
purpose)--neither can they be asserted as objects for our
understanding.”[1306]

The fact that these fundamental concepts have not yet been quite definitely and precisely formulated in Kant’s own mind, appears very clearly from the immediately following paragraph. For he there again introduces the concept of the transcendental object, and adds that if “we are pleased to name it noumenon for the reason that its representation is not sensuous, we are free so to do.”[1307] The characterisation given in this paragraph of the transcendental object deserves special notice, for in it Kant goes further in the sceptical expression of his position, though not indeed in the modification of it, than in any other passage.

”[The understanding in limiting sensibility] thinks for itself an
object in itself, but only as transcendental object which is the
cause of appearance and therefore not itself appearance, and which
can be thought neither as quantity nor as reality nor as substance,
etc.... We are completely ignorant whether it is to be met with in
us or outside us, whether it would be at once removed with the
cessation of sensibility, or whether in the absence of sensibility
it would still remain.”[1308]

This sentence reveals Kant as at once holding unquestioningly to the existence of things in themselves, and yet at the same time as teaching that they must not be conceived in terms of the categories, not even of the categories of reality and existence.

ALTERATIONS IN SECOND EDITION

In the second edition certain paragraphs of the chapter on _Phenomena and Noumena_ are omitted, and new paragraphs are inserted to take their place. Though these alterations do not give adequate expression to the Critical teaching in its maturest form, there are three important respects in which they indicate departures from the teaching of the first edition. In the first place, those paragraphs in which the doctrine of the transcendental object finds expression are entirely eliminated, and the phrase ‘transcendental object’ is no longer employed. This, as we have already noted, is in harmony with the changes similarly made in the second edition _Transcendental Deduction and Paralogisms_.[1309]

Secondly, Kant is even more emphatic than in the first edition, that the categories must not be employed save in reference to sense intuitions. In the first edition he still allows that their application to things in themselves is logically possible, though without objective validity. In the second edition he goes much further. Save in their empirical employment the categories “mean nothing whatsoever.”[1310]

”[In the absence of sensibility] their whole employment, and indeed
all their meaning entirely ceases; for we have then no means of
determining whether things in harmony with the categories are even
possible....”[1311]

In the third place, Kant, as already noted, distinguishes between a negative and a positive meaning of the term noumenon. Noumenon in its negative sense is defined as being merely that which is not an object of sensuous intuition. By noumenon in the positive sense, on the other hand, is meant an object of non-sensuous intuition. Kant now claims that it is the concept of noumenon in the negative sense, as equivalent therefore simply to the thing in itself, that alone is involved, as a _Grenzbegriff_, in the “doctrine of sensibility.” For its determination the categories cannot be employed; that would demand a faculty of non-sensuous intuition, which we do not possess, and would amount to the illegitimate assertion of noumena in the positive sense. The limiting concept, indispensably presupposed in human experience, is therefore the bare notion of things in themselves. And accordingly, in modification of the conclusion arrived at in the first edition, viz. that “the division of objects into phenomena and noumena ... is not in any way admissible,”[1312] Kant now adds to the term noumena the qualifying phrase “in the positive sense.” In this way the assumption that things in themselves actually exist becomes quite explicit, despite Kant’s greater insistence upon the impossibility of applying any of the categories to them.

But beyond thus placing in still bolder contrast the two counter assertions, on the one hand that the categories must not be taken by us as other than merely subjective thought-functions, and on the other that a limiting concept is indispensably necessary, Kant makes no attempt in these new passages to meet the difficulties involved. With the assertion that the categories as such, and therefore by implication those of reality and existence, are inapplicable to things in themselves,[1313] he combines, without any apparent consciousness of conflict, the contention that things in themselves must none the less be postulated as actually existing.

* * * * *

The teaching of this chapter must be regarded as only semi-Critical. The fact that it is formulated in terms of the doctrine of the transcendental object, itself suffices to determine the date at which it must have been composed as comparatively early; and such changes as Kant could make in the second edition were necessarily of a minor character. More extensive alterations would have involved complete reconstruction of the entire chapter, and indeed anticipation of the central teaching of the _Dialectic_.

Kant is also hampered by the unfortunate location to which he has assigned this chapter. At this point in the development of his argument, namely, within the limits of the _Analytic_, Kant could really do no more than recapitulate the _negative_ consequences which follow from the teaching of the transcendental deduction. For though these might justify him in asserting that it is understanding that limits sensibility, he was not in a position to explain that the term understanding, as thus employed, has a very wide meaning, and that within this faculty he is prepared to distinguish between understanding in the strict sense as the source of the categories, and a higher power to which he gives the title Reason, and which he regards as originating a unique concept, that of the unconditioned. Yet only when these distinctions, and the considerations in view of which they are drawn, have been duly reckoned with, can the problem before us be discussed in its full significance.

This placing of the chapter within the _Analytic_, and therefore prior to the discussions first broached in the _Dialectic_, has indeed the unfortunate consequence of concealing not only from the reader, but also, as it would seem, to some extent from Kant himself, the ultimate grounds upon which, from the genuinely Critical standpoint, the distinction between phenomena and noumena must be based. For neither in this chapter, nor in any other passage in the _Critique_, has Kant sought to indicate, in any quite explicit manner, the bearing which the important conclusions arrived at in the _Dialectic_ may have in regard to it. Like so many of the most important and fruitful of his tenets, these consequences are suggested merely by implication; or rather remain to be discovered by the reader’s own independent efforts, in proportion as he thinks himself into the distinctions upon which, in other connections, Kant has himself insisted. They are never actually formulated in and by themselves.

In seeking, therefore, to decide upon what basis the distinction between appearance and reality ought to be regarded as resting, we are attempting to determine how the argument of this chapter would have proceeded had it been located at the close of the _Dialectic_. The task is by no means easy, but the difficulties are hardly as formidable as may at first sight appear. The general outlines of the argument are fairly definitely prescribed by Kant’s treatment of kindred questions, and may perhaps, with reasonable correctness, be hypothetically constructed in view of the following considerations.

Just as Kant started from the natural assumption that reference of representations to objects must be their reference to things in themselves, so he similarly adopted the current Cartesian view that it is by an inference, in terms of the category of causality, that we advance from a representation to its external ground. It was very gradually, in the process of developing his own Critical teaching, and especially his phenomenalist view of the empirical world in space, that he came to realise the very different position to which he stood committed.[1314] When the doctrine of the transcendental object is eliminated from his teaching, and when the categories, including that of causality, are pre-empted for the _empirical_ object, and that object is regarded as directly apprehended, the function of mediating the reference of phenomenal nature to a noumenal basis falls to the Ideas of Reason. For the distinction is no longer between representations and their noumenal causes, but between the limited and relative character of the entire world in space and time, and the unconditioned reality which Reason demands for its own satisfaction. To regard the world in space as merely phenomenal, because failing to satisfy our standards of genuine reality, is to adopt an entirely different attitude from any to be found in Descartes or Locke. The position may be outlined in the following manner, in anticipation of its more adequate statement in connection with the problems of the _Dialectic_.

The concept, whereby Reason limits sensibility, is not properly describable as being that of the thing in itself; it is the unique concept of the unconditioned. Our awareness of the conditioned as being conditioned presupposes, over and above the categories, an antecedent awareness of Ideal[1315] standards; and to that latter more fundamental form of consciousness all our criteria of truth and reality are ultimately due. The criteria by means of which we empirically distinguish sense-appearance from sense-illusion, when rigorously applied, lead us to detect deficiencies in the empirical as such. We have then no alternative save to conceive absolute reality in terms of the rational Ideals, of which the empirical criteria are merely specialised forms.

There are thus two distinct, but none the less interdependent, elements involved in Kant’s more mature teaching, phenomenalism, and what may be called the Idealist, or absolutist, interpretation of the function of Reason. Each demands the other for its own establishment. There must be a genuinely objective world, by reflection upon which we may come to consciousness of the standards which are involved in our judgments upon it; and we must possess a faculty through which our consciousness of these standards may be accounted for. The standards of judgment cannot be acquired by means of judgments which do not already presuppose them; the processes by which they are brought to clear consciousness cannot be the processes in which they originate. They must be part of the _a priori_ conditions of experience and combine with space, time and the categories to render experience of the kind which we possess--self-transcending and self-limiting--actually possible.

From this point of view the distinction between appearance and reality is not a contrast between experience and the non-experienced, but a distinguishing of factors, which are essential to all experience, and through which we come to consciousness of an irresolvable conflict between the Ideals which inspire us in the acquisition of experience, and the limiting conditions under which alone experience is attainable by us. In the higher field of Reason, as in the lower field of understanding, it is not through the given, but only through the given as interpreted by conditioning forms of an Ideal nature, that a meaningful reality can disclose itself to the mind. The ultimate meaning of experience lies in its significance when tested by the standards which are indispensably involved in its own possibility. That meaning is essentially metaphysical; more is implied in experience than the experienced can ever itself be found to be.[1316]

Such is the central thesis of the Critical philosophy, when the teaching of the _Analytic_ is supplemented by that of the _Dialectic_. Though the _Critique_ is, indeed, the record of the manifold ways in which Kant diverged from this position, not a systematic exposition of its implications and consequences, the above thesis represents the goal upon which his various lines of thought tend to converge. It is the guiding motive of his devious and complex argument in the three main divisions of the _Dialectic_. On no other interpretation can the detail of his exposition be satisfactorily explained.

There are two chief reasons why Kant failed to draw the above conclusions in any quite explicit manner. One reason has already been sufficiently emphasised, namely, that the thesis, which I have just formulated, rests upon a phenomenalist view of the natural world, whereas the _Dialectic_ is inspired by the earlier, subjectivist doctrine of the transcendental object. Upon the other main reason I shall have frequent occasion to insist. As we shall find, Kant was unable to arrive at any quite definitive decision as to the nature of the Ideals of Reason. He alternates between the sceptical and the absolutist view of their origin and function, and in the process of seeking a comprehensive mid-way position which would do justice to all that is valid in the opposing arguments, the further question as to the bearing of his conclusions upon the problem of the distinction between appearance and reality was driven into the background. But we are anticipating matters the discussion of which must meantime be deferred.