Chapter VI: Introduction: I. Textual (2)

There are thus, from the Kantian standpoint, two all-sufficient reasons why the diaphanous view of consciousness, _i.e._ any view which treats consciousness merely as a medium whereby the existent gets itself reported, must be regarded as untenable. In the first place, as already remarked, it is based on the false assumption that consciousness is an ultimate, and that we are therefore dispensed from all further investigation of its nature. Kant claims to have distinguished successfully the many components which go to constitute it; and he also professes to have shown that until such analysis has been made, there can be no sufficient basis for a philosophical treatment either of the problems of sense-perception or of the logical problems of judgment and inference. The diaphanous view, with its mirror-like mode of representation, might allow of the side-by-sideness of associated contents; it can never account for the processes whereby the associated contents come to be apprehended.

Secondly, the diaphanous view ignores the fundamental distinction between meaning and existence. Existences rest, so to speak, on their own bottom; they are self-centred even at the very moment of their reaction to external influences. Meaning, on the other hand, always involves the interpretation of what is given in the light of wider considerations that lend it significance. In the awareness of meaning the given, the actually presented, is in some way transcended, and this transcendence is what has chiefly to be reckoned with in any attempt to explain the conscious process. Kant is giving expression to this thesis when he contends that all awareness, no matter how rudimentary or apparently simple, is an act of judgment, and therefore involves the relational categories. _Not passive contemplation but active judgment, not mere conception but inferential interpretation, is the fundamental form, and the only form, in which our consciousness exists._ This, of course, commits Kant to the assertion that there is no mode of cognition that can be described as immediate or unreflective. There is an immediate _element_ in all knowledge, but our consciousness of it is always conditioned and accompanied by interpretative processes, and in their absence there can be no awareness of any kind.

By way of this primary distinction between existence and meaning Kant advances to all those other distinctions which characterise our human experience, between appearance and reality, between the real and the Ideal, between that which is judged and the criteria which control and direct the judging process. Just because all awareness is awareness of meaning, our human experience becomes intelligible as a purposive activity that directs itself according to Ideal standards.

The contrast between the Kantian and the Cartesian views of consciousness can be defined in reference to another important issue. The diaphanous view commits its adherents to a very definite interpretation of the nature of relations. Since they regard consciousness as passive and receptive, they have to maintain that relations can be known only in so far as they are apprehended in a manner analogous to the contents themselves. I do not, of course, wish to imply that this view of relational knowledge is in all cases and in all respects illegitimate. Kant, as we shall find, has carried the opposite view to an impossible extreme, assuming without further argument that what has been shown to be true of certain types of relation (for instance, of the causal and substance-attribute relations) must be true of all relations, even of those that constitute space and time. It cannot be denied that, as William James and others have very rightly insisted, such relations as the space-relations are _in some degree or manner_ presentational. This does not, however, justify James in concluding, as he at times seems inclined to do, that all relations are directly experienced. Such procedure lays him open to the same charge of illegitimate reasoning. But even if we could grant James’s thesis in its widest form, the all-important Critical question would still remain: in what does awareness, whether of presented contents or of presented relations, consist, and how is it possible? In answering this question Kant is led to the conclusion that consciousness must be regarded as an activity, and as supplying certain of the conditions of its own possibility. Its contribution is of a uniform and constant nature; it consists, as already noted, of certain relational factors whose presence can be detected in each and every act of awareness.

There is one other respect in which Kant’s view of consciousness differs from that of his Cartesian predecessors.[32] Consciousness, he maintains, does not reveal itself, but only its objects. In other words, there is no awareness of awareness. So far as our mental states and processes can be known at all, they are known in the same objective manner in which we apprehend existences in space.[33] Now if that be so, a very important consequence follows. If there is no awareness of awareness, but only of meanings all of which are objective, there can be no consciousness of the generative, synthetic processes that constitute consciousness _on its subjective side_. For consciousness, being an _act_ of awareness in which _meaning_ is apprehended, has a twofold nature, and must be very differently described according to the aspect which at any one time we may have in view. When we regard it on its _objective_ side as awareness of _meaning_, we are chiefly concerned with the various factors that are necessary to meaning and that enter into its constitution. That is to say, our analysis is essentially logical. When, on the other hand, we consider consciousness as an _act_ of awareness, our problem is ontological or as it may be entitled (though the term is in this reference somewhat misleading, since the enquiry as defined by Kant is essentially metaphysical) psychological in character. Between these two aspects there is this very important difference. The logical factors constitutive of meaning can be exhaustively known; they are elements in the meanings which consciousness reveals; whereas the synthetic processes are postulated solely in view of these constituent factors, and in order to account for them. The processes, that is to say, are known only through that which they condition, and on Kant’s teaching we are entirely ruled out from attempting to comprehend even their possibility.[34] They must be thought as occurring, but they cannot be known, _i.e._ their nature cannot be definitely specified. The postulating of them marks a gap in our knowledge, and extends our insight only in the degree that it discloses our ignorance. As consciousness rests upon, and is made possible by, these processes, it can never be explained in terms of the objective world to which our sense-experience, and therefore, as Kant argues, our specific knowledge, is exclusively limited. The mind can unfold its contents in the sunshine of consciousness, only because its roots strike deep into a soil that the light does not penetrate. These processes, thus postulated, Kant regards as the source of the _a priori_ elements, and as the agency through which the synthetic connections necessary to all consciousness are brought about.

According to Kant’s Critical teaching, therefore, consciousness, though analysable, is not such as can ever be rendered completely comprehensible. When all is said, it remains for us a merely _de facto_ form of existence, and has to be taken just for what it presents itself as being. It is actually such as to make possible the logical processes of judgment and inference. It is actually such as to render possible a satisfactory proof of the scientific validity, within the field of sense-experience, of the principle of causality, and of such other principles as are required in the development of the positive sciences. It is also such as to render comprehensible the controlling influence of Ideal standards. But when we come to the question, how is consciousness of this type and form possible, that is, to the question of its metaphysical significance and of the generative conditions upon which it rests, we find, Kant maintains, that we have no data sufficient to justify any decisive answer.

The ontological, creative, or dynamical aspect of consciousness, I may further insist, must be constantly borne in mind if the Critical standpoint is to be properly viewed. The logical analysis is, indeed, for the purposes of the central portions of the _Critique_ much the more important, and alone allows of detailed, exhaustive development; but the other is no less essential for an appreciation of Kant’s attitude towards the more strictly metaphysical problems of the _Dialectic_.

Hegel and his disciples have been the chief culprits in subordinating, or rather in entirely eliminating, this aspect of Kant’s teaching. Many of the inconsistencies of which they accuse Kant exist only if Kant’s teaching be first reduced to a part of itself. To eliminate the ontological implications of his theory of consciousness is, by anticipation, to render many of his main conclusions entirely untenable, and in particular to destroy the force of his fundamental distinction between appearance and reality. If consciousness knows itself in its ultimate nature--and such is Hegel’s contention--one half of reality is taken out of the obscurity in which, on Kant’s reading of the situation, it is condemned to lie hidden. Man is more knowable than nature, and is the key to nature; such is Hegel’s position, crudely stated. Contrast therewith the teaching of Kant. We can know nature more completely (though still very incompletely) than we can ever hope to comprehend the conditions that make possible and actual man’s spiritual life. The moral consciousness is an autonomously acting source of independent values, and though a standing miracle, must be taken for all that on independent and separate enquiry it is found to be. Hegel, in his endeavour to establish an intellectual monism, does violence to some of the highest interests which he professes to be safeguarding. Kant, while outlining in Idea a Kingdom of Ends, remains satisfied with a pluralistic distinction between the intellectual and the moral categories. The antithesis of the two philosophies is in some degree the ancient opposition between Aristotle and Plato, restated in modern terms.

4. PHENOMENALISM, KANT’S SUBSTITUTE FOR SUBJECTIVISM

The revolutionary character of the above conclusions is shown by the difficulty which Kant himself found in breaking away from many of the presuppositions that underlie the views which he was renouncing; and this is nowhere more evident than in his constant alternation throughout the _Critique_ between a _subjectivism_[35] that is thoroughly Cartesian--we might almost, allowing for his rationalism, say Berkeleian--in character, and a radically different position which may be entitled _phenomenalism_. The latter is alone genuinely Critical, and presents Kant’s teaching in its maturest form. For though first formulated only in those portions of the _Analytic_ that are late in date of writing, and in those passages of the second edition which supplement them, it would seem to be the only logical outcome of Kant’s other main doctrines.

I have especially in mind Kant’s fundamental distinction between appearance and reality; it has an all-important bearing upon the Cartesian opposition between the mental and the material, and especially upon the question as to what view ought to be taken of our so-called _subjective_ experiences. The objective is for the Cartesians the independently real; the subjective is asserted to have an altogether different kind of existence in what is named the field of consciousness. Kant’s phenomenalist restatement of this distinction is too complex and subtle to be made intelligible in the brief space available in this _Introduction_--it is expounded in the body of the _Commentary_[36]--but its general character I may indicate in a few sentences. All subjectivist modes of stating the problem of knowledge, such as we find in Hume and in Leibniz no less than in Descartes, Locke, and Berkeley, are, Kant finally concluded, illegitimate and question-begging. Our so-called subjective states, whether they be sensations, feelings, or desires, are _objective_ in the sense that they are _objects_ for consciousness.[37] Our mental states do not run parallel with the system of natural existences; nor are they additional to it. They do not constitute our consciousness of nature; they are themselves part of the natural order which consciousness reveals. They compose the empirical self which is an objective existence, integrally connected with the material environment in terms of which alone it can be understood. The subjective is not opposite in nature to the objective, but a sub-species within it. While, however, the psychical is thus to be regarded as a class of known appearances, and as forming together with the physical a single system of nature, this entire order is, in Kant’s view, conditioned by an underlying realm of noumenal existence; and when the question of the possibility of the _knowing_, that is, of the _experiencing_ of such a comprehensive natural system, is raised, it is to this noumenal sphere that we are referred. Everything experienced, even a sensation or feeling, is an event, but the experiencing of it is an act of awareness, and calls for an explanation of an altogether different kind.

Thus the problem of knowledge, stated in adequate Critical terms, is not how we can advance from the merely subjective to knowledge of the independently real,[38] but how, if everything known forms part of a comprehensive natural system, consciousness and the complex factors which contribute to its possibility are to be interpreted. On this latter question, as already indicated, Kant, though debarring both subjectivism and materialism, otherwise adopts a non-committal attitude. So long as we continue within the purely theoretical domain, there are a number of alternatives between which there are no sufficient data for deciding. To debar subjectivism is not to maintain the illusory or phenomenal character of the individual self; and to rule out materialism is not to assert that the unconscious may not generate and account for the conscious. In other words, they are ruled out not for any ulterior reasons derived from their supposed metaphysical consequences, but solely because they are based on palpable misinterpretations of the cognitive situation that generates those very problems to which they profess to be an answer.

5. THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN HUMAN AND ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

The inwardness of Kant’s Critical standpoint may perhaps be made clearer by a brief consideration of his view of animal intelligence. We are accustomed nowadays to test a psychology of human consciousness by its capacity to render conceivable an evolution from lower forms. How does Kant’s teaching emerge from such a test?

It may at once be admitted that Kant has made no special study of animal behaviour, and was by no means competent to speak with authority in regard to its conditions. Indeed it is evident that anything which he may have to say upon this question is entirely of the nature of a deduction from results obtained in the human sphere. But when this has been admitted, and we are therefore prepared to find the problems approached from the point of view of the difference rather than of the kinship between man and the animals, we can recognise that, so far as the independent study of human consciousness is concerned, there is a certain compensating advantage in Kant’s pre-Darwinian standpoint. For it leaves him free from that desire which exercises so constant, and frequently so deleterious an influence, upon many workers in the field of psychology, namely, to maintain at all costs, in anticipation of conclusions not yet by any means established, the fundamental identity of animal and human intelligence. This besetting desire all too easily tends to the minimising of differences that may perhaps with fuller insight be found to involve no breach of continuity, but which in the present state of our knowledge cannot profitably be interpreted save in terms of their differentiating peculiarities.

The current controversy between mechanism and vitalism enforces the point which I desire to make. Biological problems, as many biologists are now urging, can be most profitably discussed in comparative independence of ultimate issues, entirely in view of their own domestic circumstances. For only when the actual constitution of organic compounds has been more completely determined than has hitherto been possible can the broader questions be adequately dealt with. In other words, the differences must be known before the exact nature and degree of the continuity can be defined. They cannot be anticipated by any mere deduction from general principles.

The value of Kant’s analysis of human consciousness is thus closely bound up with his frank recognition of its inherent complexity. Not simplification, but specification, down to the bedrock of an irreducible minimum of correlated factors, is the governing motive of his Critical enquiries. His results have therefore the great advantage of being inspired by no considerations save such as are prescribed by the actual subject-matter under investigation. As already noted, Kant maintains that human consciousness is always an awareness of meaning, and that consequently it can find expression only in judgments which involve together with their other factors the element of recognition or self-consciousness.

This decides for Kant the character of the distinction to be drawn between animal and human intelligence. As animals, in his view, cannot be regarded as possessing a capacity of self-consciousness, they must also be denied all awareness of meaning. However complicated the associative organisation of their ideas may be, it never rises to the higher level of logical judgment. For the same reason, though their ideas may be schematic in outline, and in their bearing on behaviour may therefore have the same efficiency as general concepts, they cannot become universal in the logical sense. “Animals have apprehensions, but not apperceptions, and cannot, therefore, make their representations universal.”[39] In support of this position Kant might have pointed to the significant fact that animals are so teachable up to a certain point, and so unteachable beyond it. They can be carried as far as associative suggestion will allow, but not a step further. To this day it remains true--at least I venture the assertion--that no animal has ever been conclusively shown to be capable of apprehending a sign as a sign. Animals may seem to do so owing to the influence of associated ideas, but are, as it would appear, debarred from crossing the boundary line which so sharply distinguishes associative suggestion from reflective knowledge.

But Kant is committed to a further assertion. If animals are devoid of all awareness of meaning, they must also be denied anything analogous to what we must signify by the term consciousness. Their experience must fall apart into events, that may, perhaps, be described as mental, but cannot be taken as equivalent to an act of awareness. “_Apprehensio bruta_ without consciousness,”[40] such is Kant’s view of the animal mind. Its mental states, like all other natural existences, are events in time, explicable in the same naturalistic fashion as the bodily processes by which they are conditioned; they can not be equated with that human consciousness which enables us to reflect upon them, and to determine the conditions of their temporal happening.

The distinction which Kant desires to draw is ultimately that between events and consciousness of events. Even if events are psychical in character, consisting of sensations and feelings, there will still remain as fundamental the distinction between what is simply a member of the causal series of natural events and the consciousness through which the series is apprehended. Kant’s most explicit statements occur in a letter to Herz.[41] He is referring to data of the senses which cannot be self-consciously apprehended:

“I should not be able to know that I have them, and they would
therefore be for me, as a cognitive being, absolutely nothing.
They might still (if I conceive myself as an animal) exist in me (a
being unconscious of my own existence) as representations ...,
connected according to an empirical law of association, exercising
influence upon feeling and desire, and so always disporting
themselves with regularity, without my thereby acquiring the least
cognition of anything, not even of these my own states.”[42]

As to whether Kant is justified in maintaining that the distinction between animal and human consciousness coincides with the distinction between associative and logical or reflective thinking, I am not concerned to maintain. This digression has been introduced solely for the purpose of defining more precisely the central tenets of Kant’s Critical teaching.

6. THE NATURE AND CONDITIONS OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

We have still to consider what is perhaps the most serious of all the misunderstandings to which Kant has laid himself open, and which is in large part responsible for the widespread belief that his Critical principles, when consistently developed, must finally eventuate in some such metaphysics as that of Fichte and Hegel. I refer to the view that Kant in postulating synthetic processes as conditioning consciousness is postulating a noumenal self as exercising these activities, and is therefore propounding a _metaphysical explanation_ of the synthetic, _a priori_ factors in human experience.[43]

Kant’s language is frequently ambiguous. The Leibnizian spiritualism, to which in his pre-Critical period he had unquestioningly held, continued to influence his terminology, and so to prevent his Critical principles from obtaining consistent expression. This much can be said in support of the above interpretation of Kant’s position. But in all other respects such a reading of his philosophy is little better than a parody of his actual teaching. For Kant is very well aware that the problem of knowledge is not to be solved in any such easy and high-handed fashion. In the _Critique_ he teaches quite explicitly that to profess to explain the presence of _a priori_ factors in human experience by means of a self assumed for that very purpose would be a flagrant violation, not only of Critical principles, but even of the elementary maxims of scientific reasoning. In the first place, explanation by reference to the activities of such a self would be explanation by faculties, by the unknown; it is a cause that will explain anything and everything equally well or badly.[44] Self-consciousness has, indeed, to be admitted as a fact;[45] and from its occurrence Kant draws important conclusions in regard to the conditions which make experience possible. But, in so doing, Kant never intends to maintain that we are justified in postulating as part of those conditions, or as condition of those conditions, a noumenal self. The conditions which make experience possible, whatever they may be, are also the conditions which make self-consciousness possible. Since the self is known only as appearance, it cannot be asserted to be the conditioning ground of appearance.

This first objection is not explicitly stated by Kant, but it is implied in a second argument which finds expression both in the _Deduction of the Categories_ and in the chapter on the _Paralogisms_. The only self that we know to exist is the _conscious_ self. Now, as Kant claims to have proved, the self can be thus conscious, even of itself, only in so far as it is conscious of objects. Consequently we have no right to assume that the self can precede such consciousness as its generating cause. That would be to regard the self as existing prior to its own conditions, working in darkness to create itself as a source of light.

But there is also a third reason why Kant’s Critical solution of the problem of knowledge must not be stated in spiritualist terms. Self-consciousness, as he shows, is itself _relational_ in character. It is a fundamental factor in human experience, not because the self can be shown to be the agency to which relations are due, but solely because, itself a case of recognition, it is at the same time a necessary condition of recognition, and recognition is indispensably presupposed in all consciousness of meaning.[46] Awareness of meaning is the fundamental mystery, and retains its profoundly mysterious character even when self-consciousness has been thus detected as an essential constituent. For self-consciousness does not explain the possibility of meaning; it is itself, as I have just remarked, only one case of recognition, and so is itself only an instance, though indeed the supreme and most important instance, of what we must intend by the term meaning. All awareness, not excepting that of the knowing self, rests upon noumenal conditions whose specific nature it does not itself reveal. Only on moral grounds, never through any purely theoretical analysis of cognitive experience, can it be proved that the self is an abiding personality, and that in conscious, personal form it belongs to the order of noumenal reality.

7. KANT’S THREEFOLD DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSIBILITY, UNDERSTANDING, AND REASON

Even so summary a statement of Critical teaching as I am attempting in this _Introduction_ would be very incomplete without some reference to Kant’s threefold distinction between the forms of sensibility, the categories of the understanding, and the Ideas of Reason.

On investigating space and time Kant discovers that they cannot be classed either with the data of the bodily senses or with the concepts of the understanding. They are sensuous (_i.e._ are not abstract but concrete, not ways of thinking but modes of existence), yet at the same time are _a priori_. They thus stand apart by themselves. Each is unique in its kind, is single, and is an infinite existence. To describe them is to combine predicates seemingly contradictory. In Kant’s own phrase, they are monstrosities (_Undinge_), none the less incomprehensible that they are undeniably actual. To them, primarily, are due those problems which have been a standing challenge to philosophy since the time of Zeno the Eleatic, and which Kant has entitled “antinomies of Reason.”

In contrast of sensibility Kant sets the intellectual faculties, understanding and Reason. In the understanding originate certain pure concepts, or as he more usually names them, categories. The chief of these are the categories of “relation”--substance, causality and reciprocity. They combine with the forms of sensibility and the manifold of sense to yield the consciousness of an empirical order, interpretable in accordance with universal laws.

To the faculty of Reason Kant ascribes what he entitles Ideas. The Ideas differ from space, time, and the categories in being not “constitutive” but “regulative.” They demand an _unconditionedness_ of existence and a _completeness_ of explanation which can never be found in actual experience. Their function is threefold. In the first place, they render the mind dissatisfied with the haphazard collocations of ordinary experience, and define the goal for its scientific endeavours. Secondly, they determine for us the criteria that distinguish between truth and falsity.[47] And thirdly, in so doing, they likewise make possible the distinction between appearance and reality, revealing to us an irreconcilable conflict between the ultimate aims of science and the human conditions, especially the spatial and temporal conditions under which these aims are realised. The Ideas of Reason are the second main factor in the “antinomies.”

The problem of the _Critique_, the analysis of our awareness of meaning, is a single problem, and each of the above elements involves all the others. Kant, however, for reasons into which I need not here enter, has assigned part of the problem to what he entitles the _Transcendental Aesthetic_, and another part to the _Transcendental Dialectic_. Only what remains is dealt with in what is really the most important of the three divisions, the _Transcendental Analytic_. But as the problem is one and indivisible, the discussions in all three sections are condemned to incompleteness save in so far as Kant, by happy inconsistency, transgresses the limits imposed by his method of treatment. The _Aesthetic_ really does no more than prepare the ground for the more adequate analysis of space and time given in the _Analytic_ and _Dialectic_, while the problem of the _Analytic_ is itself incompletely stated until the more comprehensive argument of the _Dialectic_ is taken into account.[48] Thus the statement in the _Aesthetic_ that space and time are _given_ to the mind by the sensuous faculty of receptivity is modified in the _Analytic_ through recognition of the part which the syntheses and concepts of the understanding must play in the construction of these forms; and in the _Dialectic_ their apprehension is further found to involve an Idea of Reason. Similarly, in the concluding chapter of the _Analytic_, in discussing the grounds for distinguishing between appearance and reality, Kant omits all reference to certain important considerations which first emerge into view in the course of the _Dialectic_. Yet, though no question is more vital to Critical teaching, the reader is left under the impression that the treatment given in the _Analytic_ is complete and final.

Partly as a consequence of this, partly owing to Kant’s inconsistent retention of earlier modes of thinking, there are traceable throughout the _Critique_ two opposed views of the nature of the distinction between appearance and reality. On the one view, this distinction is mediated by the relational categories of the understanding, especially by that of causality; on the other view, it is grounded in the Ideas of Reason. The former sets appearance in opposition to reality; the latter regards the distinction in a more tenable fashion, as being between realities less and more comprehensively conceived.[49]

A similar defect is caused by Kant’s isolation of immanent from transcendent metaphysics.[50] The former is dealt with only in the _Analytic_, the latter only in the _Dialectic_. The former, Kant asserts, is made possible by the forms of sensibility and the categories of the understanding; the latter he traces to an illegitimate employment of the Ideas of Reason. Such a mode of statement itself reveals the impossibility of any sharp distinction between the immanent and the transcendent. If science is conditioned by Ideals which arouse the mind to further acquisitions, and at the same time reveal the limitations to which our knowledge is for ever condemned to remain subject; if, in other words, everything known, in being correctly known, must be apprehended as appearance (_i.e._ as a subordinate existence within a more comprehensive reality), the distinction between the immanent and the transcendent falls within and not beyond the domain of our total experience. The meaning which our consciousness discloses in each of its judgments is an essentially metaphysical one. It involves the thought, though not the knowledge, of something more than what the experienced can ever itself be found to be. The metaphysical is immanent in our knowledge; the transcendent is merely a name for this immanent factor when it is falsely viewed as capable of isolation and of independent treatment. By Kant’s own showing, the task of the _Dialectic_ is not merely to refute the pretensions of transcendent metaphysics, but to develop the above general thesis, in confirmation of the positive conclusions established in the _Analytic_. The _Critique_ will then supply the remedy for certain evils to which the human mind has hitherto been subject.

“_The Critique of Pure Reason_ is a preservative against a malady
which has its source in our rational nature. This malady is the
opposite of the love of home (the home-sickness) which binds us to
our fatherland. It is a longing to pass out beyond our immediate
confines and to relate ourselves to other worlds.”[51]

8. THE PLACE OF THE _CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON_ IN KANT’S PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM

The positive character of Kant’s conclusions cannot be properly appreciated save in the wider perspectives that open to view in the _Critique of Practical Reason_ and in the _Critique of Judgment_. Though in the _Critique of Pure Reason_ a distinction is drawn between theoretical and moral belief, it is introduced in a somewhat casual manner, and there is no clear indication of the far-reaching consequences that follow in its train. Unfortunately also, even in his later writings, Kant is very unfair to himself in his methods of formulating the distinction. His real intention is to show that scientific knowledge is not coextensive with human insight; but he employs a misleading terminology, contrasting knowledge with faith, scientific demonstration with practical belief.

As already indicated, the term knowledge has, in the Critical philosophy, a much narrower connotation than in current speech. It is limited to _sense_-experience, and to such inferences therefrom as can be obtained by the only methods that Kant is willing to recognise, namely, the mathematico-physical. Aesthetic, moral and religious experience, and even organic phenomena, are excluded from the field of possible knowledge.

In holding to this position, Kant is, of course, the child of his time. The absolute sufficiency of the Newtonian physics is a presupposition of all his utterances on this theme. Newton, he believes, has determined in a quite final manner the principles, methods and limits of scientific investigation. For though Kant himself imposes upon science a further limitation, namely, to appearances, he conceives himself, in so doing, not as weakening Newton’s natural philosophy, but as securing it against all possible objections. And to balance the narrow connotation thus assigned to the term knowledge, he has to give a correspondingly wide meaning to the terms faith, moral belief, subjective principles of interpretation. If this be not kept constantly in mind, the reader is certain to misconstrue the character and tendencies of Kant’s actual teaching.

But though the advances made by the sciences since Kant’s time have rendered this mode of delimiting the field of knowledge altogether untenable, his method of defining the sources of _philosophical insight_ has proved very fruitful, and has many adherents at the present day. What Kant does--stated in broad outline--is to distinguish between the problems of _existence_ and the problems of _value_, assigning the former to science and the latter to philosophy.[52] Theoretical philosophy, represented in his system by the _Critique of Pure Reason_, takes as its province the logical values, that is, the distinction of truth and falsity, and defining their criteria determines the nature and limits of our theoretical insight. Kant finds that these criteria enable us to distinguish between truth and falsity only on the empirical plane. Beyond making possible a distinction between appearance and reality, they have no applicability in the metaphysical sphere.

The _Critique of Practical Reason_ deals with values of a very different character. The faculty of Reason, which, as already noted,[53] renders our consciousness a purposive agency controlled by Ideal standards, is also, Kant maintains, the source of the moral sanctions. But whereas in the theoretical field it subdues our minds to the discipline of experience, and restrains our intellectual ambitions within the limits of the empirical order, it here summons us to sacrifice every natural impulse and every secular advantage to the furtherance of an end that has absolute value. In imposing duties, it raises our life from the “pragmatic”[54] level of a calculating expediency to the higher plane of a categorical imperative.

The categorical imperative at once humbles and exalts; it discloses our limitations, but does so through the greatness of the vocation to which it calls us.

“This principle of morality, just on account of the universality of
the legislation which makes it the formal supreme determining
principle of our will, without regard to any subjective
differences, is declared by the Reason to be a law for all
rational beings.... It is, therefore, not limited to men only, but
applies to all finite beings that possess Reason and Will; nay, it
even includes the Infinite Being as the Supreme Intelligence.”[55]

Consequently, in employing moral ends in the interpretation of the Universe, we are not picturing the Divine under human limitations, but are discounting these limitations in the light of the one form of value that is known to us as absolute.

“_Duty!_ ... What origin is worthy of thee and where is to be found
the root of thy noble descent ... a root to be derived from which
is the indispensable condition of the only worth that men can give
themselves.”[56]

In his earlier years Kant had accepted the current, Leibnizian view that human excellence consists in intellectual enlightenment, and that it is therefore reserved for an _élite_, privileged with the leisure and endowed with the special abilities required for its enjoyment. From this arid intellectualism he was delivered through the influence of Rousseau.

“I am by disposition an enquirer. I feel the consuming thirst for
knowledge, the eager unrest to advance ever further, and the
delights of discovery. There was a time when I believed that this
is what confers real dignity upon human life, and I despised the
common people who know nothing. Rousseau has set me right. This
imagined advantage vanishes. I learn to honour men, and should
regard myself as of much less use than the common labourer, if I
did not believe that my philosophy will restore to all men the
common rights of humanity.”[57]

These common rights Kant formulates in a purely individualist manner. For here also, in his lack of historic sense and in his distrust alike of priests and of statesmen, he is the child of his time. In the education and discipline of the soul he looks to nothing so artificial and humanly limited--Kant so regards them--as religious tradition and social institutions. Human rights, he believes, do not vary with time and place; and for their enjoyment man requires no initiation and no equipment beyond what is supplied by Nature herself. It is from this standpoint that Kant adduces, as the twofold and sufficient inspiration to the rigours and sublimities of the spiritual life, the starry heavens above us and the moral law within. They are ever-present influences on the life of man. The naked eye reveals the former; of the latter all men are immediately aware. In their universal appeal they are of the very substance of human existence. Philosophy may avail to counteract certain of the hindrances which prevent them from exercising their native influence; it cannot be a substitute for the inspiration which they alone can yield.

Thus the categorical imperative, in endowing the human soul with an intrinsic value, singles it out from all other natural existences, and strengthens it to face, with equanimity, the cold immensities of the cosmic system. For though the heavens arouse in us a painful feeling of our insignificance as animal existences, they intensify our consciousness of a sublime destiny, as bearers of a rival, and indeed a superior, dignity.

In one fundamental respect Kant broke with the teaching of Rousseau, namely, in questioning his doctrine of the natural goodness and indefinite perfectibility of human nature.[58] Nothing, Kant maintains, is good without qualification except the good will; and even that, perhaps, is never completely attained in any single instance. The exercise of duty demands a perpetual vigilance, under the ever-present consciousness of continuing demerit.

“I am willing to admit out of love of humanity that most of our
actions are indeed correct, but if we examine them more closely we
everywhere come upon the dear self which is always
prominent....”[59] “Nothing but moral fanaticism and exaggerated
self-conceit is infused into the mind by exhortation to actions as
noble, sublime and magnanimous. Thereby men are led into the
delusion that it is not duty, that is, respect for the law, whose
yoke ... they must bear, whether they like it or not, that
constitutes the determining principle of their actions, and which
always humbles them while they _obey_ it. They then fancy that
those actions are expected from them, not from duty, but as pure
merit.... In this way they engender a vain high-flying fantastic
way of thinking, flattering themselves with a spontaneous goodness
of heart that needs neither spur nor bridle, nor any
command....”[60]

In asserting the goodness and self-sufficiency of our natural impulses Rousseau is the spokesman of a philosophy which has dominated social and political theory since his day, and which is still prevalent. This philosophy, in Kant’s view, is disastrous in its consequences. As a reading of human nature and of our moral vocation, it is hardly less false than the Epicurean teaching, which finds in the pursuit of pleasure the motive of all our actions. A naturalistic ethics, in either form, is incapacitated, by the very nature of its controlling assumptions, from appreciating the distinguishing features of the moral consciousness. Neither the successes nor the failures of man’s spiritual endeavour can be rightly understood from any such standpoint. The human race, in its endurance and tenacity, in its dauntless courage and in its soaring spirit, reveals the presence of a _prevenient_ influence, _non-natural_ in character; and only if human nature be taken as including this higher, directive power, can it assume to itself the eulogy which Rousseau so mistakenly passes upon the natural and undisciplined tendencies of the human heart. For as history demonstrates, while _men_ are weak, _humanity_ is marvellous.

“There is one thing in our soul which, when we take a right view of
it, we cannot cease to regard with the highest astonishment, and in
regard to which admiration is right and indeed elevating, and that
is our original moral capacity in general.... Even the
incomprehensibility of this capacity,[61] a capacity which
proclaims a Divine origin, must rouse man’s spirit to enthusiasm
and strengthen it for any sacrifices which respect for his duty may
impose on him.”[62]

We are not here concerned with the detail of Kant’s ethical teaching, or with the manner in which he establishes the freedom of the will, and justifies belief in the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. In many respects his argument lies open to criticism. There is an unhappy contrast between the largeness of his fundamental thesis and the formal, doctrinaire manner in which it is developed. Indeed, in the _Critique of Practical Reason_ the individualist, deistic, rationalistic modes of thinking of his time are much more in evidence than in any other of his chief writings; and incidentally he also displays a curious insensibility--again characteristic of his period--to all that is specific in the religious attitude. But when due allowances have been made, we can still maintain that in resting his constructive views upon the supreme value of the moral personality Kant has influenced subsequent philosophy in hardly less degree than by his teaching in the _Critique of Pure Reason_.[63]

The two _Critiques_, in method of exposition and argument, in general outcome, and indeed in the total impression they leave upon the mind, are extraordinarily different. In the _Critique of Pure Reason_ Kant is meticulously scrupulous in testing the validity of each link in his argument. Constantly he retraces his steps; and in many of his chief problems he halts between competing solutions. Kant’s sceptical spirit is awake, and it refuses to cease from its questionings. In the _Critique of Practical Reason_, on the other hand, there is an austere simplicity of argument, which advances, without looking to right or left, from a few simple principles direct to their ultimate consequences. The impressiveness of the first _Critique_ consists in its appreciation of the _complexity_ of the problems, and in the care with which their various, conflicting aspects are separately dealt with. The second _Critique_ derives its force from the fundamental conviction upon which it is based.

Such, then, stated in the most general terms, is the manner in which Kant conceives the _Critique of Pure Reason_ as contributing to the establishment of a humanistic philosophy. It clears the ground for the practical Reason, and secures it in the autonomous control of its own domain. While preserving to the intellect and to science certain definitely prescribed rights, Kant places in the forefront of his system the moral values; and he does so under the conviction that in living up to the opportunities, in whatever rank of life, of our common heritage, we obtain a truer and deeper insight into ultimate issues than can be acquired through the abstruse subtleties of metaphysical speculation.

I may again draw attention to the consequences which follow from Kant’s habitual method of isolating his problems. Truth is a value of universal jurisdiction, and from its criteria the judgments of moral and other values can claim no exemption. Existences and values do not constitute independent orders. They interpenetrate, and neither can be adequately dealt with apart from the considerations appropriate to the other. In failing to co-ordinate his problems, Kant has over-emphasised the negative aspects of his logical enquiries and has formulated his ethical doctrines in a needlessly dogmatic form.

These defects are, however, in some degree remedied in the last of his chief works, the _Critique of Judgment_. In certain respects it is the most interesting of all Kant’s writings. The qualities of both the earlier _Critiques_ here appear in happy combination, while in addition his concrete interests are more in evidence, to the great enrichment of his abstract argument. Many of the doctrines of the _Critique of Pure Reason_, especially those that bear on the problems of teleology, are restated in a less negative manner, and in their connection with the kindred problems of natural beauty and the fine arts. For though the final decision in all metaphysical questions is still reserved to moral considerations, Kant now takes a more catholic view of the field of philosophy. He allows, though with characteristic reservations, that the _empirical_ evidence obtainable through examination of the broader features of our total experience is of genuinely philosophical value, and that it can safely be employed to amplify and confirm the independent convictions of the moral consciousness. The embargo which in the _Critique of Pure Reason_, in matters metaphysical, is placed upon all tentative and probable reasoning is thus tacitly removed; and the term knowledge again acquires the wider meaning very properly ascribed to it in ordinary speech.

A COMMENTARY TO KANT’S “CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON”

TITLE: KRITIK DER REINEN VERNUNFT

The term critique or criticism, as employed by Kant, is of English origin. It appears in seventeenth and eighteenth century English, chiefly in adjectival form, as a literary and artistic term--for instance, in the works of Pope, who was Kant’s favourite English poet. Kant was the first to employ it in German, extending it from the field of aesthetics to that of general philosophy. A reference in Kant’s _Logic_[64] to Home’s _Elements of Criticism_[65] would seem to indicate that it was Home’s use of the term which suggested to him its wider employment. “Critique of pure reason,” in its primary meaning, signifies the passing of critical judgments upon pure reason. In this sense Kant speaks of his time as “the age of criticism (_Zeitalter der Kritik_).” Frequently, however, he takes the term more specifically as meaning a critical investigation leading to positive as well as to negative results. Occasionally, especially in the _Dialectic_, it also signifies a discipline applied to pure reason, limiting it within due bounds. The first appearance of the word in Kant’s writings is in 1765 in the _Nachricht_[66] of his lectures for the winter term 1765-1766. Kant seldom employs the corresponding adjective, critical (_kritisch_). His usual substitute for it is the term transcendental.

_Pure_ (_rein_) has here a very definite meaning. It is the absolutely _a priori_. Negatively it signifies that which is independent of experience. Positively it signifies that which originates from reason itself, and which is characterised by universality and necessity.[67] By “pure reason” Kant therefore means reason in so far as it supplies out of itself, independently of experience, _a priori_ elements that as such are characterised by universality and necessity.

_Reason_ (_Vernunft_) is used in the _Critique_ in three different meanings. In the above title it is employed in its widest sense, as the source of all _a priori_ elements. It includes what is _a priori_ in sensibility as well as in understanding (_Verstand_). In its narrowest sense it is distinct even from understanding, and signifies that faculty which renders the mind dissatisfied with its ordinary and scientific knowledge, and which leads it to demand a completeness and unconditionedness which can never be found in the empirical sphere. Understanding conditions science; reason generates metaphysic. Understanding has categories; reason has its Ideas. Thirdly, Kant frequently employs understanding and reason as synonymous terms, dividing the mind only into the two faculties, sensibility and spontaneity. Thus in A 1-2, understanding and reason are used promiscuously, and in place of _reine Vernunft_ we find _reiner Verstand_. As already stated, the term reason, as employed in Kant’s title, ought properly to be taken in its widest sense. Sensibility falls within reason in virtue of the _a priori_ forms which it contains. Kant does not himself, however, always interpret the title in this strict sense. The triple use of the term is an excellent example of the looseness and carelessness with which he employs even the most important and fundamental of his technical terms. Only the context can reveal the particular meaning to be assigned in each case.

The phrase “_of_ pure reason” (_der reinen Vernunft_) has, as Vaihinger points out,[68] a threefold ambiguity. (1) Sometimes it is a genitive objective. The critical enquiry is directed upon pure reason as its object. This corresponds to the view of the _Critique_ as merely a treatise on method. (2) Sometimes it is a genitive subjective. The critical enquiry is undertaken by and executed through pure reason. This expresses the view of the _Critique_ as itself a system of pure rational knowledge. (3) At other times it has a reflexive meaning. Pure reason is subject and object at once. It is both subject-matter and method or instrument. Through the _Critique_ it attains to self-knowledge. The _Critique_ is the critical examination of pure reason by itself. The first view would seem to be the original and primary meaning of the title. The second view very early took its place alongside it, and appears in many passages. The third view must be taken as representing Kant’s final interpretation of the title; it is on the whole the most adequate to the actual content and scope of the _Critique_. For the _Critique_ is not merely a treatise on method; it is also a system of pure rational knowledge. It professes to establish, in an exhaustive and final manner, the _a priori_ principles which determine the possibility, conditions, and limits of pure rational knowledge.[69]

MOTTO

De nobis ipsis silemus: De re autem, quae agitur, petimus: ut
homines eam non opinionem, sed opus esse cogitent; ac pro certo
habeant, non sectae nos alicuius, aut placiti, sed utilitatis et
amplitudinis humanae fundamenta moliri. Deinde ut suis commodis
aequi ... in commune consulant ... et ipsi in partem veniant.
Praeterea ut bene sperent, neque instaurationem nostram ut quiddam
infinitum et ultra mortale fingant, et animo concipiant; quum
revera sit infiniti erroris finis et terminus legitimus.

This motto, which was added in the second edition, is taken from the preface to Bacon’s _Instauratio Magna_, of which the _Novum Organum_ is the second part. As the first part of the _Instauratio_ is represented only by the later, separately published, _De Augmentis Scientiarum_, this preface originally appeared, and is still usually given, as introductory to the _Novum Organum_.

The complete passage (in which I have indicated Kant’s omissions) is rendered as follows in the translation of Ellis and Spedding:[70]

“Of myself I say nothing; but in behalf of the business which is in
hand I entreat men to believe that it is not an opinion to be held,
but a work to be done; and to be well assured that I am labouring
to lay the foundation, not of any sect or doctrine, but of human
utility and power. Next, I ask them to deal fairly by their own
interests [and laying aside all emulations and prejudices in favour
of this or that opinion], to join in consultation for the common
good; and [being now freed and guarded by the securities and helps
which I offer from the errors and impediments of the way] to come
forward themselves and take part [in that which remains to be
done]. Moreover, to be of good hope, nor to imagine that this
Instauration of mine is a thing infinite and beyond the power of
man, when it is in fact the true end and termination of infinite
error.”

The opening sentence of Bacon’s preface might also have served as a fitting motto to the _Critique_:

“It seems to me that men do not rightly understand either their
store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the
other.”

Or again the following:

“I have not sought nor do I seek either to enforce or to ensnare
men’s judgments, but I lead them to things themselves and the
concordances of things, that they may see for themselves what they
have, what they can dispute, what they can add and contribute to
the common stock.... And by these means I suppose that I have
established for ever a true and lawful marriage between the
empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred
divorce and separation of which has thrown into confusion all the
affairs of the human family.”

DEDICATION

TO

FREIHERR VON ZEDLITZ

Karl Abraham, Freiherr von Zedlitz had been entrusted, as Minister (1771-1788) to Frederick the Great, with the oversight and direction of the Prussian system of education. He held Kant in the highest esteem.[71] In February 1778 we find him writing to thank Kant for the pleasure he had found in perusing notes of his lectures on physical geography, and requesting the favour of a complete copy.[72] A week later he invited Kant to accept a professorship of philosophy in Halle,[73] which was then much the most important university centre in Germany. Upon Kant’s refusal he repeated the offer, with added inducements, including the title of Hofrat.[74] Again, in August of the same year, he writes that he is attending, upon Mendelssohn’s recommendation (and doubtless also in the hope of receiving from this indirect source further light upon Kant’s own teaching in a favourite field), the lectures on anthropology of Kant’s disciple and friend, Marcus Herz. The letter concludes with a passage which may perhaps have suggested to Kant the appropriateness of dedicating his _Critique_ to so wise and discerning a patron of true philosophy.