The World as Will and Idea Volume II Part 2

Thus that it is the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the necessary which occasion the problematic, a.s.sertatory, and apodictic forms of judgment, is perfectly true; but that those conceptions are special, original forms of knowledge of the understanding which cannot be further deduced is not true. On the contrary, they spring from the single original form of all knowledge, which is, therefore, known to us _a priori_, the principle of sufficient reason; and indeed out of this the knowledge of _necessity_ springs directly. On the other hand, it is only because reflection is applied to this that the conceptions of contingency, possibility, impossibility, and actuality arise. Therefore all these do not by any means spring from _one_ faculty of the mind, the understanding, but arise through the conflict of abstract and intuitive knowledge, as will be seen directly.

I hold that to be necessary and to be the consequent of a given reason are absolutely interchangeable notions, and completely identical. We can never know, nor even think, anything as necessary, except so far as we regard it as the consequent of a given reason; and the conception of necessity contains absolutely nothing more than this dependence, this being established through something else, and this inevitable following from it.

Thus it arises and exists simply and solely through the application of the principle of sufficient reason. Therefore, there is, according to the different forms of this principle, a physical necessity (the effect from the cause), a logical (through the ground of knowing, in a.n.a.lytical judgments, syllogisms, &c.), a mathematical (according to the ground of being in time and s.p.a.ce), and finally a practical necessity, by which we intend to signify not determination through a pretended categorical imperative, but the necessary occurrence of an action according to the motives presented, in the case of a given empirical character. But everything necessary is only so relatively, that is, under the presupposition of the reason from which it follows; therefore absolute necessity is a contradiction. With regard to the rest, I refer to -- 49 of the essay on the principle of sufficient reason.

The contradictory opposite, _i.e._, the denial of necessity, is _contingency_. The content of this conception is, therefore, negative-nothing more than this: absence of the connection expressed by the principle of sufficient reason. Consequently the contingent is also always merely relative. It is contingent in relation to something which is not its reason. Every object, of whatever kind it may be-for example, every event in the actual world-is always at once necessary and contingent, _necessary_ in relation to the _one_ condition which is its cause: _contingent_ in relation to everything else. For its contact in time and s.p.a.ce with everything else is a mere coincidence without necessary connection: hence also the words chance, s?pt?a, _contingens_.

Therefore an absolute contingency is just as inconceivable as an absolute necessity. For the former would be simply an object which stood to no other in the relation of consequent to its reason. But the inconceivability of such a thing is just the content of the principle of sufficient reason negatively expressed, and therefore this principle must first be upset before we can think an absolute contingency; and even then it itself would have lost all significance, for the conception of contingency has meaning only in relation to that principle, and signifies that two objects do not stand to each other in the relation of reason and consequent.

In nature, which consists of ideas of perception, everything that happens is necessary; for it proceeds from its cause. If, however, we consider this individual with reference to everything else which is not its cause, we know it as contingent; but this is already an abstract reflection. Now, further, let us abstract entirely from a natural object its causal relation to everything else, thus its necessity and its contingency; then this kind of knowledge comprehends the conception of the _actual_, in which one only considers the _effect_, without looking for the cause, in relation to which one would otherwise have to call it _necessary_, and in relation to everything else _contingent_. All this rests ultimately upon the fact that the _modality_ of the judgment does not indicate so much the objective nature of things as the relation of our knowledge to them.

Since, however, in nature everything proceeds from a cause, everything _actual_ is also _necessary_, yet only so far as it is _at this time, in this place;_ for only so far does determination by the law of causality extend. Let us leave, however, concrete nature and pa.s.s over to abstract thinking; then we can present to ourselves in reflection all the natural laws which are known to us partly _a priori_, partly only _a posteriori_, and this abstract idea contains all that is in nature at _any_ time, in _any_ place, but with abstraction from every definite time and place; and just in this way, through such reflection, we have entered the wide kingdom of _the possible_. But what finds no place even here is the _impossible_. It is clear that possibility and impossibility exist only for reflection, for abstract knowledge of the reason, not for knowledge of perception; although it is the pure forms of perception which supply the reason with the determination of the possible and impossible. According as the laws of nature, from which we start in the thought of the possible and impossible, are known _a priori_ or _a posteriori_, is the possibility or impossibility metaphysical or physical.

From this exposition, which requires no proof because it rests directly upon the knowledge of the principle of sufficient reason and upon the development of the conceptions of the necessary, the actual, and the possible, it is sufficiently evident how entirely groundless is Kant's a.s.sumption of three special functions of the understanding for these three conceptions, and that here again he has allowed himself to be disturbed by no reflection in the carrying out of his architectonic symmetry.

To this, however, we have to add the other great mistake, that, certainly according to the procedure of earlier philosophy, he has confounded the conceptions of necessity and contingency with each other. That earlier philosophy has applied abstraction to the following mistaken use. It was clear that that of which the reason is given inevitably follows, _i.e._, cannot not be, and thus necessarily is. But that philosophy held to this last determination alone, and said that is necessary which cannot be otherwise, or the opposite of which is impossible. It left, however, the ground and root of such necessity out of account, overlooked the relativity of all necessity which follows from it, and thereby made the quite unthinkable fiction of an _absolute necessity_, _i.e._, of something the existence of which would be as inevitable as the consequent of a reason, but which yet was not the consequent of a reason, and therefore depended upon nothing; an addition which is an absurd _pet.i.tio_, for it conflicts with the principle of sufficient reason. Now, starting from this fiction, it explained, in diametrical opposition to the truth, all that is established by a reason as contingent, because it looked at the relative nature of its necessity and compared this with that entirely imaginary _absolute_ necessity, which is self-contradictory in its conception.(5) Now Kant adheres to this fundamentally perverse definition of the contingent and gives it as explanation. (Critique of Pure Reason, V. p.

289-291, 243. V. 301, 419. V. 447, 486, 488.) He falls indeed into the most evident contradiction with himself upon this point, for on p. 301 he says: "Everything contingent has a cause," and adds, "That is contingent which might possibly not be." But whatever has a cause cannot possibly not be: thus it is necessary. For the rest, the source of the whole of this false explanation of the necessary and the contingent is to be found in Aristotle in "_De Generatione et Corruptione_," lib. ii. c. 9 et 11, where the necessary is explained as that which cannot possibly not be: there stands in opposition to it that which cannot possibly be, and between these two lies that which can both be and not be,-thus that which comes into being and pa.s.ses away, and this would then be the contingent. In accordance with what has been said above, it is clear that this explanation, like so many of Aristotle's, has resulted from sticking to abstract conceptions without going back to the concrete and perceptible, in which, however, the source of all abstract conceptions lies, and by which therefore they must always be controlled. "Something which cannot possibly not be" can certainly be thought in the abstract, but if we go with it to the concrete, the real, the perceptible, we find nothing to support the thought, even as possible,-as even merely the a.s.serted consequent of a given reason, whose necessity is yet relative and conditioned.

I take this opportunity of adding a few further remarks on these conceptions of modality. Since all necessity rests upon the principle of sufficient reason, and is on this account relative, all _apodictic_ judgments are originally, and according to their ultimate significance, _hypothetical_. They become _categorical_ only through the addition of an _a.s.sertatory_ minor, thus in the conclusion. If this minor is still undecided, and this indecision is expressed, this gives the problematical judgment.

What in general (as a rule) is apodictic (a law of nature), is in reference to a particular case only problematical, because the condition must actually appear which brings the case under the rule. And conversely, what in the particular as such is necessary (apodictic) (every particular change necessary through the cause), is again in general, and predicated universally, only problematical; because the causes which appear only concern the particular case, and the apodictic, always hypothetical judgment, always expresses merely the general law, not the particular case directly. All this has its ground in the fact that possibility exists only in the province of reflection and for the reason; the actual, in the province of perception and for the understanding; the necessary, for both.

Indeed, the distinction between necessary, actual, and possible really exists only in the abstract and according to the conception; in the real world, on the other hand, all three fall into one. For all that happens, happens _necessarily_, because it happens from causes; but these themselves have again causes, so that the whole of the events of the world, great and small, are a strict concatenation of necessary occurrences. Accordingly everything actual is also necessary, and in the real world there is no difference between actuality and necessity, and in the same way no difference between actuality and possibility; for what has not happened, _i.e._, has not become actual, was also not possible, because the causes without which it could never appear have not themselves appeared, nor could appear, in the great concatenation of causes; thus it was an impossibility. Every event is therefore either necessary or impossible. All this holds good only of the empirically real world, _i.e._, the complex of individual things, thus of the whole particular as such. If, on the other hand, we consider things generally, comprehending them _in abstracto_, necessity, actuality, and possibility are again separated; we then know everything which is in accordance with the _a priori_ laws which belong to our intellect as possible in general; that which corresponds to the empirical laws of nature as possible in this world, even if it has never become actual; thus we distinguish clearly the possible from the actual. The actual is in itself always also necessary, but is only comprehended as such by him who knows its cause; regarded apart from this, it is and is called contingent. This consideration also gives us the key to that _contentio_ pe?? d??at?? between the Megaric Diodorus and Chrysippus the Stoic which Cicero refers to in his book _De Fato_. Diodorus says: "Only what becomes actual was possible, and all that is actual is also necessary." Chrysippus on the other hand says: "Much that is possible never becomes actual; for only the necessary becomes actual." We may explain this thus: Actuality is the conclusion of a syllogism to which possibility gives the premises. But for this is required not only the major but also the minor; only the two give complete possibility. The major gives a merely theoretical, general possibility _in abstracto_, but this of itself does not make anything possible, _i.e._, capable of becoming actual. For this the minor also is needed, which gives the possibility for the particular case, because it brings it under the rule, and thereby it becomes at once actual. For example:

_Maj._ All houses (consequently also my house) can be destroyed by fire.

_Min._ My house is on fire.

_Concl._ My house is being destroyed by fire.

For every general proposition, thus every major, always determines things with reference to actuality only under a presupposition, therefore hypothetically; for example, the capability of being burnt down has as a presupposition the catching fire. This presupposition is produced in the minor. The major always loads the cannon, but only if the minor brings the match does the shot, _i.e._, the conclusion, follow. This holds good throughout of the relation of possibility to actuality. Since now the conclusion, which is the a.s.sertion of actuality, always follows _necessarily_, it is evident from this that all that is actual is also necessary, which can also be seen from the fact that necessity only means being the consequent of a given reason: this is in the case of the actual a cause: thus everything actual is necessary. Accordingly, we see here the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the necessary unite, and not merely the last presuppose the first, but also the converse. What keeps them apart is the limitation of our intellect through the form of time; for time is the mediator between possibility and actuality. The necessity of the particular event may be fully seen from the knowledge of all its causes; but the concurrence of the whole of these different and independent causes seems to us _contingent_; indeed their independence of each other is just the conception of contingency. Since, however, each of them was the necessary effect of _its_ causes, the chain of which has no beginning, it is evident that contingency is merely a subjective phenomenon, arising from the limitation of the horizon of our understanding, and just as subjective as the optical horizon at which the heavens touch the earth.

Since necessity is the same thing as following from given grounds, it must appear in a special way in the case of every form of the principle of sufficient reason, and also have its opposite in the possibility and impossibility which always arises only through the application of the abstract reflection of the reason to the object. Therefore the four kinds of necessity mentioned above stand opposed to as many kinds of impossibility, physical, logical, mathematical and practical. It may further be remarked that if one remains entirely within the province of abstract concepts, possibility is always connected with the more general, and necessity with the more limited concept; for example, "An animal _may_ be a bird, a fish, an amphibious creature, &c." "A nightingale _must_ be a bird, a bird _must_ be an animal, an animal _must_ be an organism, an organism _must_ be a body." This is because logical necessity, the expression of which is the syllogism, proceeds from the general to the particular, and never conversely. In the concrete world of nature (ideas of the first cla.s.s), on the contrary, everything is really necessary through the law of causality; only added reflection can conceive it as also contingent, comparing it with that which is not its cause, and also as merely and purely actual, by disregarding all causal connection. Only in this cla.s.s of ideas does the conception of the _actual_ properly occur, as is also shown by the derivation of the word from the conception of causality. In the third cla.s.s of ideas, that of pure mathematical perception or intuition, if we confine ourselves strictly to it, there is only necessity. Possibility occurs here also only through relation to the concepts of reflection: for example, "A triangle _may_ be right-angled, obtuse-angled, or equiangular; its three angles _must_ be equal to two right-angles." Thus here we only arrive at the possible through the transition from the perceptible to the abstract.

After this exposition, which presupposes the recollection of what was said both in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason and in the first book of the present work, there will, it is hoped, be no further doubt as to the true and very heterogeneous source of those forms which the table of judgments lays before us, nor as to the inadmissibility and utter groundlessness of the a.s.sumption of twelve special functions of the understanding for the explanation of them. The latter point is also supported by a number of special circ.u.mstances very easily noted. Thus, for example, it requires great love of symmetry and much trust in a clue derived from it, to lead one to a.s.sume that an affirmative, a categorical, and an a.s.sertatory judgment are three such different things that they justify the a.s.sumption of an entirely special function of the understanding for each of them.

Kant himself betrays his consciousness of the untenable nature of his doctrine of the categories by the fact that in the third chapter of the a.n.a.lytic of Principles (_phaenomena et noumena_) several long pa.s.sages of the first edition (p. 241, 242, 244-246, 248-253) are omitted in the second-pa.s.sages which displayed the weakness of that doctrine too openly.

So, for example, he says there (p. 241) that he has not defined the individual categories, because he could not define them even if he had wished to do so, inasmuch as they were susceptible of no definition. In saying this he forgot that at p. 82 of the same first edition he had said: "I purposely dispense with the definition of the categories although I may be in possession of it." This then was, _sit venia verbo_, wind. But this last pa.s.sage he has allowed to stand. And so all those pa.s.sages wisely omitted afterwards betray the fact that nothing distinct can be thought in connection with the categories, and this whole doctrine stands upon a weak foundation.

This table of the categories is now made the guiding clue according to which every metaphysical, and indeed every scientific inquiry is to be conducted (Prolegomena, -- 39). And, in fact, it is not only the foundation of the whole Kantian philosophy and the type according to which its symmetry is everywhere carried out, as I have already shown above, but it has also really become the procrustean bed into which Kant forces every possible inquiry, by means of a violence which I shall now consider somewhat more closely. But with such an opportunity what must not the _imitatores servum pecus_ have done! We have seen. That violence then is applied in this way. The meaning of the expressions denoted by the t.i.tles, forms of judgment and categories, is entirely set aside and forgotten, and the expressions alone are retained. These have their source partly in Aristotle's _a.n.a.lyt. priora_, i. 23 (pe?? p???t?t?? ?a? p?s?t?t?? t?? t??

s??????s?? ????: _de qualitate et quant.i.tate terminorum syllogismi_), but are arbitrarily chosen; for the extent of the concepts might certainly have been otherwise expressed than through the word _quant.i.ty_, though this word is more suited to its object than the rest of the t.i.tles of the categories. Even the word _quality_ has obviously been chosen on account of the custom of opposing quality to quant.i.ty; for the name quality is certainly taken arbitrarily enough for affirmation and negation. But now in every inquiry inst.i.tuted by Kant, every quant.i.ty in time and s.p.a.ce, and every possible quality of things, physical, moral, &c., is brought by him under those category t.i.tles, although between these things and those t.i.tles of the forms of judgment and of thought there is absolutely nothing in common except the accidental and arbitrary nomenclature. It is needful to keep in mind all the respect which in other regards is due to Kant to enable one to refrain from expressing in hard terms one's repugnance to this procedure. The nearest example is afforded us at once by the pure physiological table of the general principles of natural science. What in all the world has the quant.i.ty of judgments to do with the fact that every perception has an extensive magnitude? What has the quality of judgments to do with the fact that every sensation has a degree? The former rests rather on the fact that s.p.a.ce is the form of our external perception, and the latter is nothing more than an empirical, and, moreover, entirely subjective feeling, drawn merely from the consideration of the nature of our organs of sense. Further, in the table which gives the basis of rational psychology (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 344; V. 402), the _simplicity_ of the soul is cited under quality; but this is just a quant.i.tative property, and has absolutely no relation to the affirmation or negation in the judgment. But quant.i.ty had to be completed by the _unity_ of the soul, which is, however, already included in its simplicity. Then modality is forced in in an absurd way; the soul stands in connection with _possible_ objects; but connection belongs to relation, only this is already taken possession of by substance. Then the four cosmological Ideas, which are the material of the antinomies, are referred to the t.i.tles of the categories; but of this we shall speak more fully further on, when we come to the examination of these antinomies. Several, if possible, still more glaring examples are to be found in the table of the _Categories of Freedom!_ in the "Critique of Practical Reason;" also in the first book of the "Critique of Judgment," which goes through the judgment of taste according to the four t.i.tles of the categories; and, finally, in the "Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science," which are entirely adapted to the table of the categories, whereby the false that is mingled here and there with what is true and excellent in this important work is for the most part introduced. See, for example, at the end of the first chapter how the unity, the multiplicity, and the totality of the directions of lines are supposed to correspond to the categories, which are so named according to the quant.i.ty of judgments.

The principle of the _Permanence of Substance_ is deduced from the category of subsistence and inherence. This, however, we know only from the form of the categorical judgment, _i.e._, from the connection of two concepts as subject and predicate. With what violence then is that great metaphysical principle made dependent upon this simple, purely logical form! Yet this is only done _pro forma_, and for the sake of symmetry. The proof of this principle, which is given here, sets entirely aside its supposed origin in the understanding and in the category, and is based upon the pure intuition or perception of time. But this proof also is quite incorrect. It is false that in mere time there is _simultaneity_ and _duration_; these ideas only arise from the union of _s.p.a.ce_ with time, as I have already shown in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, -- 18, and worked out more fully in -- 4 of the present work. I must a.s.sume a knowledge of both these expositions for the understanding of what follows.

It is false that time _remains_ the same through all change; on the contrary, it is just time itself that is fleeting; a permanent time is a contradiction. Kant's proof is untenable, strenuously as he has supported it with sophisms; indeed, he falls into the most palpable contradictions.

Thus, after he has falsely set up co-existence as a mode of time (p. 177; V. 219), he says, quite rightly (p. 183; V. 226), "Co-existence is not a mode of time, for in time there are absolutely no parts together, but all in succession." In truth, s.p.a.ce is quite as much implicated in co-existence as time. For if two things are co-existent and yet not one, they are different in respect of s.p.a.ce; if two states of one thing are co-existent (_e.g._, the glow and the heat of iron), then they are two contemporaneous effects of _one_ thing, therefore presuppose matter, and matter presupposes s.p.a.ce. Strictly speaking, co-existence is a negative determination, which merely signifies that two things or states are not different in respect of time; thus their difference is to be sought for elsewhere. But in any case, our knowledge of the permanence of substance, _i.e._, of matter, must be based upon insight _a priori_; for it is raised above all doubt, and therefore cannot be drawn from experience. I deduce it from the fact that the principle of all becoming and pa.s.sing away, the law of causality, of which we are conscious _a priori_, is essentially concerned only with the _changes_, _i.e._, the successive _states_ of matter, is thus limited to the form, and leaves the matter untouched, which therefore exists in our consciousness as the foundation of all things, which is not subject to becoming or pa.s.sing away, which has therefore always been and will always continue to be. A deeper proof of the permanence of substance, drawn from the a.n.a.lysis of our perception of the empirical world in general, is to be found in the first book of this work, -- 4, where it is shown that the nature of matter consists in the absolute _union of s.p.a.ce and time_, a union which is only possible by means of the idea of causality, consequently only for the understanding, which is nothing but the subjective correlative of causality. Hence, also, matter is never known otherwise than as producing effects, _i.e._, as through and through causality; to be and to act are with it one, which is indeed signified by the word _actuality_. Intimate union of s.p.a.ce and time-causality, matter, actuality-are thus one, and the subjective correlative of this one is the understanding. Matter must bear in itself the conflicting properties of both factors from which it proceeds, and it is the idea of causality which abolishes what is contradictory in both, and makes their co-existence conceivable by the understanding, through which and for which alone matter is, and whose whole faculty consists in the knowledge of cause and effect. Thus for the understanding there is united in matter the inconstant flux of time, appearing as change of the accidents, with the rigid immobility of s.p.a.ce, which exhibits itself as the permanence of substance. For if the substance pa.s.sed away like the accidents, the phenomenon would be torn away from s.p.a.ce altogether, and would only belong to time; the world of experience would be destroyed by the abolition of matter, annihilation. Thus from the share which s.p.a.ce has in matter, _i.e._, in all phenomena of the actual-in that it is the opposite and counterpart of time, and therefore in itself and apart from the union with the latter knows absolutely no change-the principle of the permanence of substance, which recognises everything as _a priori_ certain, had to be deduced and explained; but not from mere time, to which for this purpose and quite erroneously Kant has attributed _permanence_.

In the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, -- 23, I have fully explained the incorrectness of the following proof of the _a priori_ nature and of the necessity of the law of causality from the mere succession of events in time; I must, therefore, content myself here by referring to that pa.s.sage.(6) This is precisely the case with the proof of reciprocity also, the concept of which I was obliged to explain above as invalid. What is necessary has also been said of modality, the working out of the principles of which now follows.

There are still a few points in the further course of the transcendental a.n.a.lytic which I should have to refute were it not that I am afraid of trying the patience of the reader; I therefore leave them to his own reflection. But ever anew in the "Critique of Pure Reason" we meet that princ.i.p.al and fundamental error of Kant's, which I have copiously denounced above, the complete failure to distinguish abstract, discursive knowledge from intuitive. It is this that throws a constant obscurity over Kant's whole theory of the faculty of knowledge, and never allows the reader to know what he is really speaking about at any time, so that instead of understanding, he always merely conjectures, for he alternately tries to understand what is said as referring to thought and to perception, and remains always in suspense. In the chapter "On the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena," Kant carries that incredible want of reflection as to the nature of the idea of perception and the abstract idea, as I shall explain more fully immediately, so far as to make the monstrous a.s.sertion that without thought, that is, without abstract conceptions, there is no knowledge of an object; and that perception, because it is not thought, is also not knowledge, and, in general, is nothing but a mere affection of sensibility, mere sensation!

Nay, more, that perception without conception is absolutely void; but conception without perception is yet always something (p. 253; V. 309).

Now this is exactly the opposite of the truth; for concepts obtain all significance, all content, only from their relation to ideas of perception, from which they have been abstracted, derived, that is, constructed through the omission of all that is unessential: therefore if the foundation of perception is taken away from them, they are empty and void. Perceptions, on the contrary, have in themselves immediate and very great significance (in them, indeed, the thing in itself objectifies itself); they represent themselves, express themselves, have no mere borrowed content like concepts. For the principle of sufficient reason governs them only as the law of causality, and determines as such only their position in s.p.a.ce and time; it does not, however, condition their content and their significance, as is the case with concepts, in which it appears as the principle of the ground of knowing. For the rest, it looks as if Kant really wished here to set about distinguis.h.i.+ng the idea of perception and the abstract idea. He objects to Leibnitz and Locke that the former reduced everything to abstract ideas, and the latter everything to ideas of perception. But yet he arrives at no distinction; and although Locke and Leibnitz really committed these errors, Kant himself is burdened with a third error which includes them both-the error of having so mixed up knowledge of perception and abstract knowledge that a monstrous hybrid of the two resulted, a chimera of which no distinct idea is possible, and which therefore necessarily only confused and stupefied students, and set them at variance.

Certainly thought and perception are separated more in the chapter referred to "On the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena"

than anywhere else, but the nature of this distinction is here a fundamentally false one. On p. 253; V. 309, it is said: "If I take away all thought (through the categories) from empirical knowledge, there remains absolutely no knowledge of an object, for through mere perception nothing at all is thought, and that this affection of sensibility is in me establishes really no relation of such ideas to any object." This sentence contains, in some degree, all the errors of Kant in a nutsh.e.l.l; for it brings out clearly that he has falsely conceived the relation between sensation, perception, and thought, and accordingly identifies the perception, whose form he yet supposes to be s.p.a.ce, and indeed s.p.a.ce in all its three dimensions, with the mere subjective sensation in the organs of sense, but only allows the knowledge of an object to be given through thought, which is different from perception. I, on the contrary, say: Objects are first of all objects of perception, not of thought, and all knowledge of _objects_ is originally and in itself perception. Perception, however, is by no means mere sensation, but the understanding is already active in it. The thought, which is added only in the case of men, not in the case of the brutes, is mere abstraction from perception, gives no fundamentally new knowledge, does not itself establish objects which were not before, but merely changes the form of the knowledge already won through perception, makes it abstract knowledge in concepts, whereby its concrete or perceptible character is lost, but, on the other hand, combination of it becomes possible, which immeasurably extends the range of its applicability. The material of our thought is, on the other hand, nothing else than our perceptions themselves, and not something which the perceptions did not contain, and which was added by the thought; therefore the material of everything that appears in our thought must be capable of verification in our perception, for otherwise it would be an empty thought. Although this material is variously manipulated and transformed by thought, it must yet be capable of being reduced to perception, and the thought traced back to this-just as a piece of gold can be reduced from all its solutions, oxides, sublimates, and combinations, and presented pure and undiminished. This could not happen if thought itself had added something, and, indeed, the princ.i.p.al thing, to the object.

The whole of the chapter on the Amphiboly, which follows this, is merely a criticism of the Leibnitzian philosophy, and as such is on the whole correct, though the form or pattern on which it is constructed is chosen merely for the sake of architectonic symmetry, which here also is the guiding clue. Thus, to carry out the a.n.a.logy with the Aristotelian Organon, a transcendental Topic is set up, which consists in this, that every conception is to be considered from four points of view, in order to make out to which faculty of knowledge it belongs. But these four points of view are quite arbitrarily selected, and ten others might be added to them with just as much right; but their fourfold number corresponds to the t.i.tles of the categories, and therefore the chief doctrine of Leibnitz is divided among them as best it may be. By this critique, also, to some extent, certain errors are stamped as natural to the reason, whereas they were merely false abstractions of Leibnitz's, who, rather than learn from his great philosophical contemporaries, Spinoza and Locke, preferred to serve up his own strange inventions. In the chapter on the Amphiboly of Reflection it is finally said that there may possibly be a kind of perception entirely different from ours, to which, however, our categories are applicable; therefore the objects of that supposed perception would be _noumena_, things which can only be _thought_ by us; but since the perception which would give that thought meaning is wanting to us, and indeed is altogether quite problematical, the object of that thought would also merely be a wholly indefinite possibility. I have shown above by quotations that Kant, in utter contradiction with himself, sets up the categories now as the condition of knowledge of perception, now as the function of merely abstract thought. Here they appear exclusively in the latter sense, and it seems quite as if he wished to attribute them merely to discursive thought. But if this is really his opinion, then necessarily at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic, before specifying the different functions of thought at such length, he was necessarily bound to characterise thought in general, and consequently to distinguish it from perception; he ought to have shown what knowledge is given by mere perception, and what that is new is added by thought. Then we would have known what he was really speaking about; or rather, he would then have spoken quite differently, first of perception, and then of thought; instead of which, as it is, he is always dealing with something between the two, which is a mere delusion. There would not then be that great gap between the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental Logic, where, after the exposition of the mere form of perception, he simply dismisses its content, all that is empirically apprehended, with the phrase "It is given," and does not ask how it came about, _whether with or without understanding_; but, with one spring, pa.s.ses over to abstract thought; and not even to thought in general, but at once to certain forms of thought, and does not say a word about what thought is, what the concept is, what is the relation of abstract and discursive to concrete and intuitive, what is the difference between the knowledge of men and that of brutes, and what is reason.

Yet it was just this distinction between abstract knowledge and knowledge of perception, entirely overlooked by Kant, which the ancients denoted by fa???e?a and ????e?a,(7) and whose opposition and incommensurability occupied them so much in the philosophemes of the Eleatics, in Plato's doctrine of Ideas, in the dialectic of the Megarics, and later the Scholastics in the controversy between Nominalism and Realism, the seed of which, so late in developing, was already contained in the opposite mental tendencies of Plato and Aristotle. But Kant, who, in an inexcusable manner, entirely neglected the thing to denote which the words fa???e?a and ????e?a had already been taken, took possession of the words, as if they were still unappropriated, in order to denote by them his thing in itself and his phenomenon.

Since I have been obliged to reject Kant's doctrine of the categories, just as he rejected that of Aristotle, I wish here to indicate as a suggestion a third way of reaching what is aimed at. What both Kant and Aristotle sought for under the name of the categories were the most general conceptions under which all things, however different, must be subsumed, and through which therefore everything that exists would ultimately be thought. Just on this account Kant conceived them as the _forms_ of all thought.

Grammar is related to logic as clothes to the body. Should not, therefore, these primary conceptions, the ground-ba.s.s of the reason, which is the foundation of all special thought, without whose application, therefore, no thought can take place, ultimately lie in those conceptions which just on account of their exceeding generality (transcendentalism) have their expression not in single words, but in whole cla.s.ses of words, because one of them is thought along with every word whatever it may be, whose designation would therefore have to be looked for, not in the lexicon but in the grammar? In fact, should they not be those distinctions of conceptions on account of which the word which expresses them is either a substantive or an adjective, a verb or an adverb, a p.r.o.noun, a preposition, or some other particle-in short, the parts of speech? For undoubtedly these denote the forms which all thought primarily a.s.sumes, and in which it directly moves; accordingly they are the essential forms of speech, the fundamental const.i.tuent elements of every language, so that we cannot imagine any language which would not consist of at least substantives, adjectives, and verbs. These fundamental forms would then have subordinated to them those forms of thought which are expressed through their inflections, that is, through declension and conjugation, and it is unessential to the chief concern whether in denoting them we call in the a.s.sistance of the article and the p.r.o.noun. We will examine the thing, however, somewhat more closely, and ask the question anew: What are the forms of thought?

(1.) Thought consists throughout of judging; judgments are the threads of its whole web, for without making use of a verb our thought does not move, and as often as we use a verb we judge.

(2.) Every judgment consists in the recognition of the relation between subject and predicate, which it separates or unites with various restrictions. It unites them from the recognition of the actual ident.i.ty of the two, which can only happen in the case of synonyms; then in the recognition that the one is always thought along with the other, though the converse does not hold-in the universal affirmative proposition; up to the recognition that the one is sometimes thought along with the other, in the particular affirmative proposition. The negative propositions take the opposite course. Accordingly in every judgment the subject, the predicate, and the copula, the latter affirmative or negative, must be to be found; even although each of these is not denoted by a word of its own, as is however generally the case. The predicate and the copula are often denoted by _one_ word, as "Caius ages;" sometimes one word denotes all three, as _concurritur_, _i.e._, "the armies engage." From this it is evident that the forms of thought are not to be sought for precisely and directly in words, nor even in the parts of speech, for even in the same language the same judgment may be expressed in different words, and indeed in different parts of speech, yet the thought remains the same, and consequently also its form; for the thought could not be the same if the form of thought itself were different. But with the same thought and the same form of thought the form of words may very well be different, for it is merely the outward clothing of the thought, which, on the other hand, is inseparable from _its_ form. Thus grammar only explains the clothing of the forms of thought. The parts of speech can therefore be deduced from the original forms of thought themselves which are independent of all language; their work is to express these forms of thought in all their modifications. They are the instrument and the clothing of the forms of thought, and must be accurately adapted to the structure of the latter, so that it may be recognised in them.

(3.) These real, unalterable, original forms of thought are certainly _those of Kant's logical table of judgments_; only that in this table are to be found blind windows for the sake of symmetry and the table of the categories; these must all be omitted, and also a false arrangement.

Thus:-

(_a._) _Quality_: affirmation and negation, _i.e._, combination and separation of concepts: two forms. It depends on the copula.

(_b._) _Quant.i.ty_: the subject-concept is taken either in whole or in part: totality or multiplicity. To the first belong also individual subjects: Socrates means "all Socrateses." Thus two forms. It depends on the subject.

(_c._) _Modality_: has really three forms. It determines the quality as necessary, actual, or contingent. It consequently depends also on the copula.

These three forms of thought spring from the laws of thought of contradiction and ident.i.ty. But from the principle of sufficient reason and the law of excluded middle springs-

(_d._) _Relation._ It only appears if we judge concerning completed judgments, and can only consist in this, that it either a.s.serts the dependence of one judgment upon another (also in the plurality of both), and therefore combines them in the _hypothetical_ proposition; or else a.s.serts that judgments exclude each other, and therefore separates them in the _disjunctive_ proposition. It depends on the copula, which here separates or combines the completed judgments.

The _parts of speech_ and grammatical forms are ways of expressing the three const.i.tuent parts of the judgment, the subject, the predicate, and the copula, and also of the possible relations of these; thus of the forms of thought just enumerated, and the fuller determinations and modifications of these. Substantive, adjective, and verb are therefore essential fundamental const.i.tuent elements of language in general; therefore they must be found in all languages. Yet it is possible to conceive a language in which adjective and verb would always be fused together, as is sometimes the case in all languages. Provisionally it may be said, for the expression of the _subject_ are intended the substantive, the article, and the p.r.o.noun; for the expression of the _predicate_, the adjective, the adverb, and the preposition; for the expression of the _copula_, the verb, which, however, with the exception of the verb to be, also contains the predicate. It is the task of the philosophy of grammar to teach the precise mechanism of the expression of the forms of thought, as it is the task of logic to teach the operations with the forms of thought themselves.

_Note._-As a warning against a false path and to ill.u.s.trate the above, I mention S. Stern's "_Vorlaufige Grundlage zur Sprachphilosophie_," 1835, which is an utterly abortive attempt to construct the categories out of the grammatical forms. He has entirely confused thought with perception, and therefore, instead of the categories of thought, he has tried to deduce the supposed categories of perception from the grammatical forms, and consequently has placed the grammatical forms in direct relation to perception. He is involved in the great error that _language_ is immediately related to _perception_, instead of being directly related only to thought as such, thus to the _abstract concepts_, and only by means of these to perception, to which they, however, have a relation which introduces an entire change of the form. What exists in perception, thus also the relations which proceed from time and s.p.a.ce, certainly becomes an object of thought; thus there must also be forms of speech to express it, yet always merely in the abstract, as concepts. Concepts are always the primary material of thought, and the forms of logic are always related to these, never _directly_ to perception. Perception always determines only the material, never the formal truth of the proposition, for the formal truth is determined according to the logical rules alone.

I return to the Kantian philosophy, and come now to the _Transcendental Dialectic_. Kant opens it with the explanation of _reason_, the faculty which is to play the princ.i.p.al part in it, for hitherto only sensibility and understanding were on the scene. When considering his different explanations of reason, I have already spoken above of the explanation he gives here that "it is the faculty of principles." It is now taught here that all the _a priori_ knowledge hitherto considered, which makes pure mathematics and pure natural science possible, affords only _rules_, and no _principles_; because it proceeds from perceptions and forms of knowledge, and not from mere conceptions, which is demanded if it is to be called a principle. Such a principle must accordingly be knowledge _from pure conceptions_ and yet _synthetical_. But this is absolutely impossible. From pure conceptions nothing but _a.n.a.lytical_ propositions can ever proceed. If conceptions are to be synthetically and yet _a priori_ combined, this combination must necessarily be accomplished by some third thing, through a pure perception of the formal possibility of experience, just as synthetic judgments _a posteriori_ are brought about through empirical perception; consequently a synthetic proposition _a priori_ can never proceed from pure conceptions. In general, however, we are _a priori_ conscious of nothing more than the principle of sufficient reason in its different forms, and therefore no other synthetic judgments _a priori_ are possible than those which proceed from that which receives its content from that principle.

However, Kant finally comes forward with a pretended principle of the reason answering to his demand, yet only with this _one_, from which others afterwards follow as corollaries. It is the principle which Chr.

Wolf set up and explained in his "_Cosmologia_," sect. i. c. 2, -- 93, and in his "_Ontologia_," -- 178. As now above, under the t.i.tle of the Amphiboly, mere Leibnitzian philosophemes were taken for natural and necessary aberrations of the reason, and were criticised as such, so here precisely the same thing happens with the philosophemes of Wolf. Kant still presents this principle of the reason in an obscure light, through indistinctness, indefiniteness, and breaking of it up (p. 307; V. 361, and 322; V. 379). Clearly expressed, however, it is as follows: "If the conditioned is given, the totality of its conditions must also be given, and therefore also the _unconditioned_, through which alone that totality becomes complete." We become most vividly aware of the apparent truth of this proposition if we imagine the conditions and the conditioned as the links of a suspended chain, the upper end of which, however, is not visible, so that it might extend _ad infinitum_; since, however, the chain does not fall, but hangs, there must be above _one_ link which is the first, and in some way is fixed. Or, more briefly: the reason desires to have a point of attachment for the causal chain which reaches back to infinity; it would be convenient for it. But we will examine the proposition, not in figures, but in itself. Synthetic it certainly is; for, a.n.a.lytically, nothing more follows from the conception of the conditioned than that of the condition. It has not, however, _a priori_ truth, nor even _a posteriori_, but it surrept.i.tiously obtains its appearance of truth in a very subtle way, which I must now point out.

Immediately, and _a priori_, we have the knowledge which the principle of sufficient reason in its four forms expresses. From this immediate knowledge all abstract expressions of the principle of sufficient reason are derived, and they are thus indirect; still more, however, is this the case with inferences or corollaries from them. I have already explained above how _abstract_ knowledge often unites a variety of _intuitive_ cognitions in _one_ form or _one_ concept in such a way that they can no longer be distinguished; therefore abstract knowledge stands to intuitive knowledge as the shadow to the real objects, the great multiplicity of which it presents through one outline comprehending them all. Now the pretended principle of the reason makes use of this shadow. In order to deduce from the principle of sufficient reason the unconditioned, which directly contradicts it, it prudently abandons the immediate concrete knowledge of the content of the principle of sufficient reason in its particular forms, and only makes use of abstract concepts which are derived from it, and have value and significance only through it, in order to smuggle its unconditioned somehow or other into the wide sphere of those concepts. Its procedure becomes most distinct when clothed in dialectical form; for example, thus: "If the conditioned exists, its condition must also be given, and indeed all given, thus completely, thus the totality of its conditions; consequently, if they const.i.tute a series, the whole series, consequently also its first beginning, thus the unconditioned." Here it is false that the conditions of a conditioned can const.i.tute a _series_. Rather must the totality of the conditions of everything conditioned be contained in its _nearest_ ground or reason from which it directly proceeds, and which is only thus a _sufficient_ ground or reason. For example, the different determinations of the state which is the cause, all of which must be present together before the effect can take place. But the series, for example, the chain of causes, arises merely from the fact that we regard what immediately before was the condition as now a conditioned; but then at once the whole operation begins again from the beginning, and the principle of sufficient reason appears anew with its claim. But there can never be for a conditioned a properly successive _series_ of conditions, which exist merely as such, and on account of that which is at last conditioned; it is always an alternating series of conditioneds and conditions; as each link is laid aside the chain is broken, and the claim of the principle of sufficient reason entirely satisfied, it arises anew because the condition becomes the conditioned. Thus the principle of _sufficient_ reason always demands only the completeness of the _immediate or next condition_, never the completeness of a _series_. But just this conception of the completeness of the condition leaves it undetermined whether this completeness should be simultaneous or successive; and since the latter is chosen, the demand now arises for a complete series of conditions following each other. Only through an arbitrary abstraction is a series of causes and effects regarded as a series of causes alone, which exists merely on account of the last effect, and is therefore demanded as its _sufficient_ reason.

From closer and more intelligent consideration, and by rising from the indefinite generality of abstraction to the particular definite reality, it appears, on the contrary, that the demand for a _sufficient_ reason extends only to the completeness of the determinations of the _immediate_ cause, not to the completeness of a series. The demand of the principle of sufficient reason is completely extinguished in each sufficient reason given. It arises, however, immediately anew, because this reason is again regarded as a consequent; but it never demands directly a series of reasons. If, on the other hand, instead of going to the thing itself, we confine ourselves to the abstract concepts, these distinctions vanish.

Then a chain of alternating causes and effects, or of alternating logical reasons and consequents, is given out as simply a chain of causes of the last effect, or reasons of the last consequent, and the _completeness of the conditions_, through which alone a reason becomes _sufficient_, appears as the completeness of that a.s.sumed _series_ of reasons alone, which only exist on account of the last consequent. There then appears the abstract principle of the reason very boldly with its demand for the unconditioned. But, in order to recognise the invalidity of this claim, there is no need of a critique of reason by means of antinomies and their solution, but only of a critique of reason understood in my sense, an examination of the relation of abstract knowledge to direct intuitive knowledge, by means of ascending from the indefinite generality of the former to the fixed definiteness of the latter. From such a critique, then, it here appears that the nature of the reason by no means consists in the demand for an unconditioned; for, whenever it proceeds with full deliberation, it must itself find that an unconditioned is an absurdity.

The reason as a faculty of knowledge can always have to do only with objects; but every object for the subject is necessarily and irrevocably subordinated to the principle of sufficient reason, both _a parte ante_ and _a parte post_. The validity of the principle of sufficient reason is so involved in the form of consciousness that we absolutely cannot imagine anything objective of which no _why_ could further be demanded; thus we cannot imagine an absolute absolute, like a blind wall in front of us.

That his convenience should lead this or that person to stop at some point, and a.s.sume such an absolute at pleasure, is of no avail against that incontestable certainty _a priori_, even if he should put on an air of great importance in doing so. In fact, the whole talk about the absolute, almost the sole theme of philosophies since Kant, is nothing but the cosmological proof _incognito_. This proof, in consequence of the case brought against it by Kant, deprived of all right and declared outlawed, dare no longer show itself in its true form, and therefore appears in all kinds of disguises-now in distinguished form, concealed under intellectual intuition or pure thought; now as a suspicious vagabond, half begging, half demanding what it wants in more unpretending philosophemes. If an absolute must absolutely be had, then I will give one which is far better fitted to meet all the demands which are made on such a thing than these visionary phantoms; it is matter. It has no beginning, and it is imperishable; thus it is really independent, and _quod per se est et per se concipitur_; from its womb all proceeds, and to it all returns; what more can be desired of an absolute? But to those with whom no critique of reason has succeeded, we should rather say-

"Are not ye like unto women, who ever Return to the point from which they set out, Though reason should have been talked by the hour?"