Chapter LIII: Appendix: To the Transcendental Dialectic

THE REGULATIVE EMPLOYMENT OF THE IDEAS OF PURE REASON[1638]

Before we proceed to deal with this _Appendix_ it will be of advantage to consider the section in the _Methodology_ on _the Discipline of Pure Reason in regard to Hypotheses_.[1639] That section affords a very illuminating introduction to the problems here discussed, and is extremely important for understanding Kant’s view of metaphysical science as yielding either complete certainty or else nothing at all. This is a doctrine which he from time to time suggests, to the considerable bewilderment of the modern reader.[1640] In discussing it he starts from the obvious objection, that though nothing can be known through Reason in its pure _a priori_ employment, metaphysics may yet be possible in an empirical form, as consisting of hypotheses, constructed in conjectural explanation of the facts of experience. Kant replies by defining the conditions under which alone hypotheses can be entertained as such. There must always be something completely certain, and not only invented or merely “opined,” namely, the _possibility_ of the object to which the hypothesis appeals. Once that is proved, it is allowable, on the basis of experience, to form opinions regarding its reality. Then, and only then, can such opinions be entitled hypotheses. Otherwise we are not employing the understanding to explain; we are simply indulging the imagination in its tendency to dream. Now since the categories of the pure understanding do not enable us to invent _a priori_ the concept of a dynamical connection, but only to apprehend it when presented in experience, we cannot by means of these categories invent a single object endowed with a new quality not empirically given; and cannot, therefore, base an hypothesis upon any such conception.

“Thus it is not permissible to invent any new original powers, as,
for instance, an understanding capable of intuiting its objects
without the aid of senses; or a force of attraction without any
contact; or a new kind of substance existing in space and yet not
impenetrable. Nor is it legitimate to postulate any other form of
communion of substances than that revealed in experience, any
presence that is not spatial, any duration that is not temporal. In
a word our Reason can employ as conditions of the possibility of
things only the conditions of possible experience; it can never, as
it were, _create_ concepts of things, independently of those
conditions. Such concepts, though not self-contradictory, would be
without an object.”[1641]

This does not, however, mean that the concepts of pure Reason can have no valid employment. They are, it is true, Ideas merely, with no object corresponding to them in any experience; but then it is also true that they are not hypotheses, referring to imagined objects, supposed to be possibly real. They are purely problematic. They are heuristic fictions (_heuristische Fiktionen_), the sole function of which is to serve as principles regulative of the understanding in its systematic employment. Used in any other manner they reduce to the level of merely mental entities (_Gedankendinge_) whose very possibility is indemonstrable, and which cannot therefore be employed as hypotheses for the explanation of appearances. Given appearances can be accounted for only in terms of laws known to hold among appearances. To explain natural phenomena by a transcendental hypothesis--mental processes by the assumption of the soul as a substantial, simple, spiritual being, or order and design in nature by the assumption of a Divine Author--is never admissible.

“...that would be to explain something, which in terms of known
empirical principles we do not understand sufficiently, by
something which we do not understand at all.”[1642]

And Kant adds that the wildest hypotheses, if only they are physical, are more tolerable than a hyperphysical one. They at least conform to the conditions under which alone hypothetical explanation as such is allowable. “Outside this field, to form opinions, is merely to play with thoughts....”[1643]

A further condition, required to render an hypothesis acceptable, is its adequacy for determining _a priori_ all the consequences which are actually given. If for that purpose supplementary hypotheses have to be called in, the force of the main assumption is proportionately weakened. Thus we can easily explain natural order and design, if we are allowed to postulate a Divine Author who is absolutely perfect and all-powerful. But that hypothesis lies open to all the objections suggested by defects and evils in nature, and can only be preserved through new hypotheses which modify the main assumption. Similarly the hypothesis of the human soul as an abiding and purely spiritual being, existing in independence of the body, has to be modified to meet the difficulties which arise from the phenomena of growth and decay. But the new hypotheses, then constructed, derive their whole authority from the main hypothesis which they are themselves defending.

Such is Kant’s criticism of metaphysics when its teaching is based on the facts of experience hypothetically interpreted. In regard to transcendent metaphysics, there are, in Kant’s view, only two alternatives.[1644] Either its propositions must be established independently of all experience in purely _a priori_ fashion, and therefore as absolutely certain; or they must consist in hypotheses empirically grounded. The first alternative has in the _Analytic_ and _Dialectic_ been shown to be impossible; the second alternative he rejects for the above reasons.

But this does not close Kant’s treatment of metaphysical hypotheses. He proceeds to develop a doctrine which, in its fearless confidence in the truth of Critical teaching, is the worthy outcome of his abiding belief in the value of a “sceptical method.”[1645] As Reason is by its very nature dialectical, outside opponents are not those from whom we have most to fear. Their objections are really derived from a source which lies in ourselves, and until these have been traced to their origin, and destroyed from the root upwards, we can expect no lasting peace. Our duty, therefore, is to encourage our doubts, until by the very luxuriance of their growth they enable us to discover the hidden roots from which they derive their perennial vitality.

“External tranquillity is a mere illusion. The germ of these
objections, which lies in the nature of human Reason, must be
rooted out. But how can we uproot it, unless we give it freedom,
nay, nourishment, to send out shoots so that it may discover itself
to our eyes, and that we may then destroy it together with its
root? Therefore think out objections which have never yet occurred
to any opponent; lend him, indeed, your weapons, or grant him the
most favourable position which he could possibly desire. You have
nothing to fear in all this, but much to hope for; you may gain for
yourselves a possession which can never again be contested.”[1646]

In this campaign to eradicate doubt by following it out to its furthermost limits, the hypotheses of pure Reason, “leaden weapons though they be, since they are not steeled by any law of experience,” are an indispensable part of our equipment. For though hypotheses are useless for the establishment of metaphysical propositions, they are, Kant teaches, both admirable and valuable for their defence. That is to say, their true metaphysical function is not dogmatic, but polemical. They are weapons of war to which we may legitimately resort for the maintenance of beliefs otherwise established. If, for instance, we have been led to postulate the immaterial, self-subsistent nature of the soul, and are met by the difficulty that experience would seem to prove that both the growth and the decay of our mental powers are due to the body, we can weaken this objection by formulating the hypothesis that the body is not the cause of our thinking, but only a restrictive condition of it, peculiar to our present state, and that, though it furthers our sensuous and animal faculties, it acts as an impediment to our spiritual life. Similarly, to meet the many objections against belief in the eternal existence of a finite being whose birth depends upon contingencies of all kinds, such as the food supply, the whims of government, or even vice, we can adduce the transcendental hypothesis that life has neither beginning in birth nor ending in death, the entire world of sense being but an image due to our present mode of knowledge, an image which like a dream has in itself no objective reality. Such hypotheses are not, indeed, even Ideas of Reason, but simply concepts _invented_ to show that the objections which are raised depend upon the false assumption that the possibilities have been exhausted, and that the mere laws of nature comprehend the whole field of possible existences. These hypotheses at least suffice to reveal the uncertain character of the doubts which assail us in our practical beliefs.

”[Transcendental hypotheses] are nothing but private opinions.
Nevertheless, we cannot properly dispense with them as weapons
against the misgivings which are apt to occur; they are necessary
even to secure our inner tranquillity. We must preserve to them
this character, carefully guarding against the assumption of their
independent authority or absolute validity, since otherwise they
would drown Reason in fictions and delusions.”[1647]

We may now return to A 642-68 = B 670-96. The teaching of this section is extremely self-contradictory, wavering between a subjective and an objective interpretation of the Ideas of Reason. The probable explanation is that Kant is here recasting older material, and leaves standing more of his earlier solutions than is consistent with his final conclusions. We can best approach the discussion by considering Kant’s statements in A 645 = B 673 and in A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. They expound, though unfortunately in the briefest terms, a point of view which Idealism has since adopted as fundamental. Kant himself, very strangely, never develops its consequences at any great length.[1648] The Idea, which Reason follows in the exercise of its sole true function, the systematising of the knowledge supplied by the understanding, is that of a unity in which the thought of the whole precedes the knowledge of its parts, and contains the conditions according to which the place of every part and its relation to the other parts are determined _a priori_. This Idea specialises itself in various forms, and in all of them directs the understanding to a knowledge that will be that of no mere aggregate but of a genuine system. Such concepts are not derived from nature; we interrogate nature _according to them_, and consider our knowledge defective so long as it fails to embody them. In A 650 = B 678 Kant further points out that this Idea of Reason does not merely direct the understanding to search for such unity, but also claims for itself objective reality. And he adds,

“...it is difficult to understand how there can be a logical
principle by which Reason prescribes the unity of rules, unless we
also presuppose a transcendental principle whereby such systematic
unity is _a priori_ assumed to be necessarily inherent in the
objects.”

For how could we treat diversity in nature as only disguised unity, if we were also free to regard that unity as contrary to the actual nature of the real?

“Reason would then run counter to its own vocation, proposing as
its aim an Idea quite inconsistent with the constitution of
nature.”[1649]

Nor is our knowledge of the principle merely empirical, deduced from the unity which we find in contingent experience. On the contrary, there is an inherent and necessary law of Reason compelling us, antecedently to all specific experience, to look for such unity.

“...without it we should have no Reason at all, and without Reason
no coherent employment of the understanding, and in the absence of
this no sufficient criterion of empirical truth. In order,
therefore, to secure an empirical criterion we are absolutely
compelled to presuppose the systematic unity of nature as
objectively valid and necessary.”[1650] “It might be supposed that
this is merely an economical contrivance of Reason, seeking to save
itself all possible trouble, a hypothetical attempt, which, if it
succeeds, will, through the unity thus attained, impart probability
to the presumed principle of explanation. But such a selfish
purpose can very easily be distinguished from the Idea. For in the
latter we presuppose that this unity of Reason is in conformity
with nature itself; and that, although we are indeed unable to
determine the limits of this unity, Reason does not here beg but
command.”[1651]

This last alternative, that Reason is here propounding a tentative hypothesis, in order by trial to discover how far it can be empirically verified--an alternative which Kant in the above passage rejects as unduly subjective, and as consequently failing to recognise the objective claims and _a priori_ authority of the Ideas of Reason,--is yet a view which he himself adopts and indeed develops at considerable length in this same section. This, as already stated, affords evidence of the composite character and varying origins of the material here presented.

The _Dissertation_ of 1770 gives a purely subjectivist interpretation of the regulative principles, among which, from its pre-Critical standpoint, it classes the principle of causality and the principle of the conservation of matter.

”[We adopt principles] which delude the intellect into mistaking
them for arguments derived from the object, whereas they are
commended to us only by the peculiar nature of the intellect, owing
to their convenience for its free and ample employment. They
therefore ... rest on _subjective_ grounds ... namely, on the
conditions under which it seems easy and expeditious for the
intellect to make use of its insight.... These rules of judging, to
which we freely submit and to which we adhere as if they were
axioms, solely for the reason that _were we to depart from them
almost no judgment regarding a given object would be permissible to
our intellect, I entitle principles of convenience_.... [One of
these is] the popularly received canon, _principia non esse
multiplicanda praeter summam necessitatem_, to which we yield our
adhesion, not because we have insight into causal unity in the
world either by reason or by experience, but because we seek it by
an impulse of the intellect, which seems to itself to have advanced
in the explanation of phenomena only in the degree in which it is
granted to it to descend from a single principle to the greatest
number of consequences.”[1652]

This, in essentials, is the view which we find developed in A 646-9 = B 674-8. Reason is the faculty of deducing the particular from the general. When the general is admitted only as _problematical_, as a mere idea, while the particular is certain, we determine the universality of the rule by applying it to the particulars, and then upon confirmation of its validity proceed to draw conclusions regarding cases not actually given. This Kant entitles the _hypothetical_ use of Reason. Reason must never be employed constitutively. It serves only for the introduction, as far as may be found possible, of unity into the particulars of knowledge. It seeks to make the rule _approximate_ to universality.[1653] The unity which it demands

“...is a _projected_ unity, to be regarded not as given in itself,
but as a problem only. This unity aids us in discovering a
principle for the manifold and special employment of the
understanding, drawing its attention to cases which are not given,
and thus rendering it more coherent.”[1654]

The unity is merely logical, or rather methodological.[1655] To postulate, in consequence of its serviceableness, real unity in the objects themselves would be to transform it into a transcendental principle of Reason, and to render

“...the systematic unity necessary, not only subjectively and
logically, as method, but objectively also.”[1656]

The above paragraphs are intercalated between A 645 = B 673 and A 650-63 = B 678-91, in which, as we have already seen, the directly opposite view is propounded, namely, that such principles are _not_ merely hypothetical, _nor_ merely logical. In all cases they claim reality, and rest upon transcendental principles; they condition the very possibility of experience; and may therefore be asserted to be _a priori_ necessary and to be objectively valid. To quote two additional passages:

“...we can conclude from the universal to the particular, only if
universal qualities are ascribed to things as the foundation upon
which the particular qualities rest.”[1657] “The foundation of
these laws [cf. below, pp. 550-1] is not due to any secret design
of making an experiment by putting them forward as merely tentative
suggestions.... It is easily seen that they contemplate the
parsimony of fundamental causes, the manifoldness of effects, and
the consequent affinity of the parts of nature, as being in
themselves both rational and natural. Hence these principles carry
their recommendation directly in themselves, and not merely as
methodological devices.”[1658]

Thus, in direct opposition to the preceding view of Reason’s function as hypothetical, Kant is now prepared to maintain that the maxims of Reason are without meaning and without application save in so far as they can be grounded in a transcendental principle.[1659]

Let us follow Kant’s detailed exposition of this last thesis. The logical maxim, to seek for systematic unity, rests upon the transcendental principle that the apparently infinite variety of nature does not exclude identity of species, that the various species are varieties of a few genera, and these again of still higher genera. This is the scholastic maxim: _entia praeter necessitatem non esse multiplicanda_. Upon this principle rests the possibility of concepts, and therefore of the understanding itself. It is balanced, however, by a second principle, no less necessary, the transcendental law of specification, namely, that there must be manifoldness and diversity in things, that every genus must specify itself in divergent species, and these again in sub-species. Or as it is expressed in its scholastic form: _entium varietates non temere esse minuendas_. This principle is equally transcendental. It expresses a condition no less necessary for the possibility of the understanding, and therefore of experience. As the understanding knows all that it knows by concepts only, however far it may carry the division of genera, it can never know by means of pure intuition, but always again by lower concepts. If, therefore, there were no lower concepts, there could be no higher concepts;[1660] the gap existing between individuals and genera could never be bridged; or rather, since neither individuals nor universals could then be apprehended, neither would exist for the mind. As the higher concepts acquire all their content from the lower, they presuppose them for their own existence.

“Every concept may be regarded as a point which, in so far as it
represents the standpoint of a spectator, has its own horizon....
This horizon must be capable of containing an infinite number of
points, each of which again has its own narrower horizon; that is,
every species contains sub-species, according to the principle of
specification, and the logical horizon consists exclusively of
smaller horizons (sub-species), never of points which possess no
extent (individuals).”[1661]

Combining these two principles, that of _homogeneity_ and that of _specification_, we obtain a third, that of _continuity_. The logical law of the _continuum formarum logicarum_ presupposes the transcendental law, _lex continui in natura_. It provides that homogeneity be combined with the greatest possible diversity by prescribing a continuous transition from every species to every other, or in other words by requiring that between any two species or sub-species, however closely related, intermediate species be always regarded as possible. (The paragraph at the end of A 661 = B 689, with its proviso that we cannot make any definite empirical use of this law, is probably of later origin; it connects with the concluding parts of the section.) That this third law is also _a priori_ and transcendental, is shown by the fact that it is not derived from the prior discovery of system in nature, but has itself given rise to the systematised character of our knowledge.[1662]

The psychological, chemical, and astronomical examples which Kant employs to illustrate these laws call for no special comment. They were taken from contemporary science, and in the advance of our knowledge have become more confusing than helpful. The citation in A 646 = B 674 of the concepts of “pure earth, pure water, pure air” as being “concepts of Reason” is especially bewildering. They are, even in the use which Kant himself ascribes to them, simply empirical hypotheses, formulated for the purposes of purely physical explanation; they are in no genuine sense universal, regulative principles.

In passing to A 663-8 = B 691-6 we find still another variation in the substance of Kant’s teaching. He returns, though with a greater maturity of statement, and with a very different and much more satisfactory terminology, to the more sceptical view of A 646-9 = B 674-7.[1663] The interest of the above principles, Kant continues to maintain, lies in their transcendentality. Despite the fact that they are mere Ideas for the guidance of understanding, and can only be approached asymptotically, they are synthetic _a priori_ judgments, and would seem to have an objective, though indeterminate, validity. So far his statements are in line with the preceding paragraphs. But he proceeds to add that this objective validity consists exclusively in their heuristic function. They differ fundamentally from the dynamical, no less than from the mathematical, principles of understanding, in that no schema of sensibility can be assigned to them. In other words, their object can never be exhibited _in concreto_; it transcends all possible experience. For this reason they are incapable of a transcendental deduction.[1664] They are among the conditions indispensably necessary to the possibility, not of each and every experience, but only of experience as systematised _in the interest of Reason_. In place of a schema they can possess only what may be called the _analogon_ of a schema, that is, they represent the Idea of a _maximum_, which the understanding in the subjective interest of Reason--or, otherwise expressed,[1665] in the interest of a certain possible perfection of our knowledge of objects--is called upon to realise _as much as possible_. Thus they are at once _subjective_ in the source from which they arise, and also _indeterminate_ as to the conditions under which, and the extent to which, they can obtain empirical embodiment. The fact that in this capacity they represent a _maximum_, does not justify any assertion either as to the degree of unity which experience on detailed investigation will ultimately be found to verify, or as to the noumenal reality by which experience is conditioned.

In A 644-5 = B 672-3 Kant employs certain optical analogies to illustrate the illusion which the Ideas, in the absence of Critical teaching, inevitably generate. When the understanding is regulated by the Idea of a _maximum_, and seeks to view all the lines of experience as converging upon and pointing to it, it necessarily regards it, _focus imaginarius_ though it be, as actually existing. The illusion, by which objects are seen behind the surface of a mirror, is indispensably necessary if we are to be able to see what lies behind our backs. The transcendental illusion, which confers reality upon the Ideas of Reason, is similarly incidental to the attempt to view experience in its greatest possible extension.

ON THE FINAL PURPOSE OF THE NATURAL DIALECTIC OF HUMAN REASON[1666]

This section is thoroughly unified and consistent in its teaching. Its repetitious character is doubtless due to Kant’s personal difficulty either in definitively accepting or in altogether rejecting the constructive, Idealist interpretation of the function of Reason. He at least succeeds in formulating a view which, while not asserting anything more than is required in the scientific extension of experience, indicates the many possibilities which such experience fails to exclude. As the Ideas of Reason are not merely empty thought-entities (_entia rationis ratiocinantis_[1667]), but have a certain kind of objective validity (_i.e._ are _entia rationis ratiocinatae_[1668]), they demand a transcendental deduction.[1669] What this deduction is, and how it differs from that of the categories, we must now determine. Its discovery will, Kant claims, crown and complete our Critical labours.

Kant begins by drawing a distinction between representing _an object absolutely_, and representing _an object in the Idea_.

“In the former case our concepts are employed to determine the
object, in the latter case there is in truth only a schema for
which no object, not even a hypothetical one, is directly given,
and which only enables us to represent to ourselves indirectly
other objects in their systematic unity, by means of their relation
to this Idea.”[1670]

An Idea is only a schema (Kant in terms of A 655 = B 693 ought rather to have said _analogon_ of a schema) whereby we represent to ourselves, as for instance in the concept of a Highest Intelligence, not an objective reality but only such perfection of Reason as will tend to the greatest possible unity in the empirical employment of understanding.

With this introduction, Kant ushers in his famous “_als ob_” doctrine. We must view the things of the world _as if_ they derived their existence from a Highest Intelligence. That Idea is heuristic only, not expository. Its purpose is not to enable us to comprehend such a Being, or even to think its existence, but only to show us how we should seek to determine the constitution and connection of the objects of experience. The three transcendental Ideas do not determine an object corresponding to them, but, _under the presupposition of such an object in the Idea_, lead us to systematic unity of _empirical_ knowledge. When they are thus strictly interpreted as merely regulative of empirical enquiry, they will always endorse experience and never run counter to it. Reason, which seeks completeness of explanation, must therefore always act in accordance with them. Only thereby can experience acquire its fullest possible extension. This is the transcendental deduction of which we are in search. It establishes the indispensableness of the Ideas of Reason for the completion of experience, and their legitimacy as regulative principles.

We may here interrupt Kant’s exposition so far as to point out that this argument does not do justice to the full force of his position. The true Critical contention--and only if we interpret the passage in the light of this contention can the proof be regarded as transcendental in the strict sense--is that the Ideas are necessary to the possibility of each and every experience, involved together with the categories as conditions of the very existence of consciousness. They are not merely regulative, but are regulative of an experience which they also help to make possible.[1671] They express the standards in whose light we condemn all knowledge which does not fulfil them; and we have consequently no option save to endeavour to conform to their demands. In other words, they are not derivative concepts obtained by merely omitting the restrictions essential to our empirical consciousness, but represent a presupposition necessarily involved in all consciousness. Some such restatement of the argument is demanded by the position which Kant has himself outlined in A 645 = B 673 and in A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. Unfortunately he does not return to it. The more sceptical view which he has meantime been developing remains dominant. The deduction is left in this semi-Critical form.

A 672-6 = B 700-4 give a fuller statement of the “_als ob_” doctrine. In psychology we must proceed _as if_ the mind were a simple substance endowed with personal identity[1672] (in this life at least), not in order to derive explanation of its changing states from the soul so conceived, but to derive them from each other in accordance with the Idea. In cosmology and theology (we may observe the straits to which Kant is reduced in his attempt to distinguish them) we ought to consider all phenomena both in their series and in their totality _as if_ they were due to a highest and all-sufficient unitary ground. In so doing we shall not derive the order and system in the world from the object of the Idea, but only extract from the Idea the rule whereby the understanding attains the greatest possible satisfaction in the connecting of natural causes and effects.

In A 676-7 = B 704-5 Kant resorts to still another distinction--between _suppositio relativa_ and _suppositio absoluta_. This distinction is suggested by the semi-objectivity of principles that are merely regulative. Though we have to recognise them as necessary, such necessity does not justify the assertion of their independent validity. When we admit a supreme ground as the source of the order and system which the principles demand, we do so only in order to think the universality of the principles with greater definiteness. Such supposition is relative to the needs of Reason in its _empirical_ employment: not absolute, as pointing to the existence of such a being in itself.

“This explains why, in relation to what is given to the senses as
existing, we require the Idea of a primordial Being necessary in
itself, and yet can never form the slightest concept of it or of
its absolute necessity.”[1673]

This last statement leads to the further problem to which Kant here gives his final solution, how if, as has been shown in the _Dialectic_, the concepts of absolute necessity and of unconditionedness are without meaning, the Ideas of Reason can be entertained at all, even mentally. What is their actual content and how is it possible to conceive them? Kant’s reply is developed in terms of the semi-Critical subjectivist point of view which dominates this section. The Ideas are mere Ideas. They yield not the slightest concept either of the internal possibility or of the necessity of any object corresponding to them. They only seem to do so, owing to a transcendental illusion. On examination we find that the concepts which we employ in thinking them as independently real, are one and all derived from experience. That is to say, we judge of them after the analogy of reality, substance, causality, and necessity in the sensible world.[1674]

”[They are consequently] _analoga_ only of real things, not real
things in themselves. We remove from the object of the Idea the
conditions which limit the concept of the understanding, but which
at the same time alone make it possible for us to have a
determinate concept of anything. What we then think is, therefore,
a something of which, as it is in itself, we have no concept
whatsoever, but which we none the less represent to ourselves as
standing in a relation to the sum-total of appearances analogous to
that in which appearances stand to one another.”[1675]

They do not carry our knowledge beyond the objects of possible experience, but only extend the empirical unity of experience. They are the schemata of regulative principles. In them Reason is concerned with nothing but its own inherent demands; and as their unity is the unity of a system which is to be sought only in experience,[1676] qualities derived from the sensible world can quite legitimately be employed in their specific determination. They are not inherently dialectical; their demands have the rationality which we have a right to expect in the Ideals of Reason. When Critically examined, they propound no problem which Reason is not in itself entirely competent to solve.[1677] It is to their misemployment that transcendental illusion is due. In the form in which they arise from the natural disposition of our Reason they are good and serviceable.[1678]

To the question what is the most adequate form in which the regulative schema can be represented,[1679] Kant gives an answer which shows how very far he is from regarding the Leibnizian _Ens realissimum_ as the true expression of the Ideal of Reason. It is through the employment of teleological concepts that we can best attain the highest possible form of systematic unity.

“The highest formal unity ... is the _purposive_ unity of things.
The _speculative_ [_i.e._ theoretical] interest of Reason makes it
necessary to regard all order in the world _as if_ it had
originated in the purpose of a Supreme Reason. Such a principle
opens out to our Reason, as applied in the field of experience,
altogether new views as to how the things of the world may be
connected according to teleological laws, and so enables it to
arrive at their greatest systematic unity. The assumption of a
Supreme Intelligence, as the one and only cause of the universe,
though in the Idea alone, can therefore always benefit Reason and
can never injure it.”[1680]

For so long as this assumption is employed only as a regulative principle, even error cannot be really harmful. The worst that can happen is that where we expected a teleological connection, a merely mechanical or physical one is met with. If, on the other hand, we leave the solid ground of experience, and use the assumption to explain what we are unable to account for in empirical terms, we sacrifice all real insight, and confound Reason by transforming a concept, which is anthropomorphically determined for the purposes of empirical orientation, into a means of explaining order as non-natural and as imposed from without on the material basis of things.

This is a point of sufficient importance to call for more detailed statement. Hume in his _Dialogues_ points out that the main defect in the teleological proof of God’s existence is its assumption that order and design are foreign to the inherent constitution of things, and must be of non-natural origin. The argument is therefore weakened by every advance in the natural sciences. It also runs directly counter to the very phenomena, those of animal life, upon which it is chiefly based, since the main characteristic of the organic in its distinction from the inorganic is its inner wealth of productive and reproductive powers. With these criticisms Kant is in entire agreement. From them, in the passage before us, he derives an argument in support of a strictly regulative interpretation of his “_als ob_” doctrine. The avowed intention of the teleological argument is to prove _from nature_ the existence of an intelligent supreme cause. If therefore its standpoint be held to with more consistency than its own defenders have hitherto shown, it will be found to rest upon the regulative principle, that we must study nature as if an _inherent_ order were _native_ to it, and so seek to approach by degrees, in proportion as such _natural unity_ is empirically discovered, the absolute perfection which inspires our researches. But if we transform our Ideal into an instrument of explanation, beginning with what ought properly to be only our goal, we delude ourselves with the belief that what can only be acquired through the slow and tentative labours of empirical enquiry is already in our possession.

“If I begin with a supreme purposive Being as the ground of all
things, the unity of nature is really surrendered, as being quite
foreign and accidental to the nature of things, and as not to be
known from its own general laws. There thus arises a vicious
circle: we are assuming just that very point which is mainly in
dispute.”[1681]

Such a method of argument is self-destructive, since if we do not find order and perfection in the nature of things, and _therefore in their general and necessary laws_, we are not in a position to infer such a Being as the source of all causality.

To the question whether we may not interpret natural order, once it has been discovered by empirical investigation, as due to the divine will, Kant replies that such procedure is allowable only on the condition that it is the same to us whether we say that God has wisely willed it or that nature has wisely arranged it. We may admit the Idea of a Supreme Being only in so far as it is required by Reason as the regulative principle of all investigation of _nature_;

“...and we cannot, therefore, without contradicting ourselves,
ignore the general laws of nature in view of which the Idea was
adopted, and look upon the purposiveness of nature as contingent
and hyper-physical in its origin. For we were not justified in
assuming above nature a Being of those qualities, but only in
adopting the Idea of it in order to be able to view the
appearances, according to the analogy of a causal determination, as
systematically connected with one another.”[1682] “Thus pure
Reason, which at first seemed to promise nothing less than the
extension of knowledge beyond all limits of experience, contains,
if properly understood, nothing but regulative
principles....”[1683]

CONCLUDING COMMENT ON THE DIALECTIC

I may now summarise Kant’s answer to the three main questions of the _Dialectic_: (1) Whether, or in what degree, the so-called Ideas of Reason are concepts due to a faculty altogether distinct from the understanding, and how far, as thus originating in pure Reason, they allow of definition; (2) how far they are capable of a transcendental deduction; (3) what kind of objective validity this deduction proves them to possess.

These questions are closely interconnected; the solution of any one determines the kind of solution to be given to all three. Kant, as we have found, develops his final position through a series of very subtle distinctions by which he contrives to justify and retain, though in a highly modified form, the more crudely stated divisions between Ideas and categories, between Reason and understanding, upon which the initial argument of the _Dialectic_ is based.

The answer amounts in essentials to the conclusion that understanding, in directing itself by means of Ideals, exercises a function so distinct from that whereby it conditions concrete and specific experience, that it may well receive a separate title; that the Ideas in terms of which it constructs these Ideals, though schematic (_i.e._ sensuous and empirical in content), are not themselves empirical, and so far from being merely extended concepts of understanding, express transcendental conditions upon which all use of the understanding rests.

Now if this position is to be justified, Kant ought to show that the fundamental Idea of Reason, that of the unconditioned, is altogether distinct from any concept of the understanding, and in particular that it must not be identified with the category of totality, nor be viewed as being merely the concept of conditioned existence with its various empirical limitations thought away. Needless to say, Kant does not fulfil these requirements in any consistent manner. The _Critique_ contains the material for a variety of different solutions; it does not definitively commit itself to any one of them.

If the argument of A 650 ff. = B 678 ff. were developed we should be in possession of what may be called the Idealist solution. It would proceed somewhat as follows. Consciousness as such is always the awareness of a whole which precedes and conditions its parts. Such consciousness cannot be accounted for on the assumption that we are first conscious of the conditioned, and then proceed to remove limitations and to form for ourselves, by means of the more positive factors involved in this antecedent consciousness, an Idea of the totality within which the given falls. The Idea of the unconditioned, distinct from all concepts of understanding, is one of the _a priori_ conditions of possible experience, and is capable of a transcendental deduction of equal validity with, and of the same general nature as, that of the categories. It is presupposed in the possibility of our contingently given experience.

As this Idea conditions all subordinate concepts, it cannot be defined in terms of them. That does not, however, deprive it of all meaning; its significance is of a unique kind; it finds expression in those Ideals which, while guiding the mind in the construction of experience, also serve as the criteria through which experience is condemned as only phenomenal.

But this, as we have found, is not a line of argument which Kant has developed in any detail. The passages which point to it occur chiefly in the introductory portions of the _Dialectic_; in its later sections they are both brief and scanty. When he sets himself, as in the chapter on the _Ideal of Pure Reason_ and in the subsequent _Appendix_, to define his conclusions, it is a much more empirical, and indeed sceptical, line that he almost invariably follows. There are, he then declares, strictly no pure, _a priori_ Ideas. The supposed Ideas of unconditionedness and of absolute necessity are discovered on examination to be without the least significance for the mind. The Ideas, properly defined, are merely schemata of regulative principles, and their whole content reduces without remainder to such categories as totality, substance, causality, necessity, transcendently applied. As _Ideas_, they are then without real meaning; but they can be employed by analogy to define an Ideal which serves an indispensable function in the extension of experience. From this point of view, the transcendental deduction of the Ideas is radically distinct from that of the categories. The proof is not that they are necessary for the possibility of experience, but only that they are required for its perfect, or at least more complete, development. And as Kant is unable to prove that such completion is really possible, the objective validity of the Ideas is left open to question. They should be taken only as heuristic principles; the extent of their truth, even in the empirical realm, cannot be determined by the _a priori_ method that is alone proper to a _Critique of Pure Reason_.

The first view is inspired by the fundamental teaching of the _Analytic_, and is the only view which will justify Kant in retaining his distinction between appearance and things in themselves. All that is positive in the second view can be combined with the first view; but, on the other hand, the negative implications of the second view are at variance with its own positive teaching. For when the Ideas are regarded as empirical in origin no less than in function, their entire authority is derived from experience, and cannot be regarded as being transcendental in any valid sense of that term. In alternating between these two interpretations of the function of Reason, Kant is wavering between the Idealist and the merely sceptical view of the scope and powers of pure thought. On the Idealist interpretation Reason is a metaphysical faculty, revealing to us the phenomenal character of experience, and outlining possibilities such as may perhaps be established on moral grounds. From the sceptical standpoint, on the other hand, Reason gives expression to what may be only our subjective preference for unity and system in the ordering of experience. According to the one, the criteria of truth and reality are bound up with the Ideas; according to the other, sense-experience is the standard by which the validity even of the Ideas must ultimately be judged. From the fact that Kant should have continued sympathetically to develop two such opposite standpoints, we would seem to be justified in concluding that he discerned, or at least desiderated, some more complete reconciliation of their teaching than he has himself thus far been able to achieve, and that no solution which would either subordinate the Ideal demands of thought, or ignore the gifts of experience, could ever have been definitively accepted by him as satisfactorily meeting the issues at stake. The Idealist solution is that to which his teaching as a whole most decisively points; but he is as conscious of the difficulties which lie in its path as he is personally convinced of its ultimate truth. His continuing appreciation of the value of sceptical teaching is a tacit admission that the Idealist doctrines, in the form which he has so far been able to give to them, are not really adequate to the complexity of the problems. As further confirmation of the tentative character of Kant’s conclusions in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, we have his own later writings. In the _Critique of Judgment_, published nine years later, in teaching less sceptical and more constructive, though still delicately balanced between the competing possibilities, and always, therefore, leaving the final decision to moral considerations, Kant ventures upon a restatement of the problems of the _Dialectic_. To this restatement both of the above tendencies contribute valuable elements.

APPENDIX A[1684]

TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHODS