IMMANUEL KANT: Philosophical Books, Critiques & Essays. Immanuel Kant

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СКАЧАТЬ not have led to so much misconception as it has done, had Kant then brought forward what lies at the root of the distinction, his doctrine of reason and its functions. Understanding, as has been seen, is the faculty of cognition strictly so called; and within its realm, that of space, time and matter, positive knowledge is attainable. But the ultimate conception of understanding, that of the world of objects, quantitatively determined, and standing in relation of mutual reciprocity to one another, is not a final ground of explanation. We are still able and necessitated to reflect upon the whole world of phenomena as thus cognized, and driven to inquire after its significance. In our reflection we necessarily treat the objects, not as phenomena, as matters of positive, scientific knowledge, but as things-in-themselves, as noumena. The distinction between phenomena and noumena is, therefore, nothing but the expression of the distinction between understanding and reason, a distinction which, according to Kant, is merely subjective.

      The specific function of reason is the effort after completed explanation of the experience presented in cognition. But in such effort there are no notions to be employed other than the categories, and these, as has already been seen, have validity only in reference to objects of possible experience. We may expect, then, to find the transcendent employment of the categories leading into various difficulties and inconsistencies. The criticism of reason in its specific aspect throws fresh light on the limits to human knowledge and the significance of experience.

      Experience has presented itself as the complex result of relation between the ego or subject and the world of phenomena. Reason may therefore attempt a completed explanation either of the ego or of the world of phenomena or of the total relation between them. The three inquiries correspond to the subjects of the three ancient metaphysical sciences, rational psychology, rational cosmology, rational theology. It is readily seen, in regard to the first of them, that all attempts to determine the nature of the ego as a simple, perdurable, immaterial substance rest upon a confusion between the ego as pure logical unity and the ego as object of intuition, and involve a transcendent use of the categories of experience. It profits not to apply such categories to the soul, for no intuition corresponding to them is or can be given. The idea of the soul must be regarded as transcendent. So too when we endeavour, with the help of the categories of quantity, quality, relation and modality, to determine the nature and relation of parts of the world, we find that reason is landed in a peculiar difficulty. Any solution that can be given is top narrow for the demands of reason and too wide for the restrictions of understanding. The transcendent employment of the categories leads to antinomy, or equally balanced statements of apparently contradictory results. Due attention to the relation between understanding and reason enables us to solve the antinomies and to discover their precise origin and significance. Finally, the endeavour to find in the conception of God, as the supreme reality, the explanation of experience, is seen to lead to no valid conclusion. There is not any intuition given whereby we might show the reality of our idea of a Supreme Being. So far as knowledge is concerned, God remains a transcendental ideal.

      The criticism of the transcendental ideas, which is also the examination of the claims of metaphysic to rank as a science, yields a definite and intelligible result. These ideas, the expression of the various modes in which unity of reason may be sought, have no objects corresponding to them in the sphere of cognition. They have not, therefore, like the categories, any constitutive value, and all attempts at metaphysical construction with the notions or categories of science must be resigned as of necessity hopeless. But the ideas are not, on that account, destitute of all value. They are supremely significant, as indicating the very essence of the function of reason. The limits of scientific cognition become intelligible, only when the sphere of understanding is subjected to critical reflexion and compared with the possible sphere of reason, that is, the sphere of rationally complete cognition. The ideas, therefore, in relation to knowledge strictly so called, have regulative value, for they furnish the general precepts for extension and completion of knowledge, and, at the same time, since they spring from reason itself, they have a real value in relation to reason as the very inmost nature of intelligence. Self-consciousness cannot be regarded as merely a mechanically determined result. Free reflection upon the whole system of knowledge is sufficient to indicate that the sphere of intuition, with its rational principles, does not exhaust conscious experience. There still remains, over and above the realm of nature, the realm of free, self-conscious spirit; and, within this sphere, it may be anticipated that the ideas will acquire a significance richer and deeper than the merely regulative import which they possess in reference to cognition.

      Where, then, are we to look for this realm of free self-consciousness? Not in the sphere of cognition, where objects are mechanically determined, but in that of will or of reason as practical. That reason is practical or prescribes ends for itself is sufficiently manifest from the mere fact of the existence of the conception of morality or duty, a conception which can have no corresponding object within the sphere of intuition, and which is theoretically, or in accordance with the categories of understanding, incognizable. The presence of this conception is the datum upon which may be founded a special investigation of the conditions of reason as practical, a Kritik of pure practical reason, and the analysis of it yields the statement of the formal prescripts of morality.

      The realization of duty is impossible for any being which is not thought as free, i.e. capable of self-determination. Freedom, it is true, is theoretically not an object of cognition, but its impossibility is not thereby demonstrated. The theoretical proof rather serves as useful aid towards the more exact determination of the nature and province of self-determination, and of its relation to the whole concrete nature of humanity. For in man self-determination and mechanical determination by empirical motives coexist, and only in so far as he belongs and is conscious of belonging both to the sphere of sense and to the sphere of reason does moral obligation become possible for him. The supreme end prescribed by reason in its practical aspect, namely, the complete subordination of the empirical side of nature to the prescripts of morality, demands, as conditions of its possible realization, the permanence of ethical progress in the moral agent, the certainty of freedom in self-determination, and the necessary harmonizing of the spheres of sense and reason through the intelligent author or ground of both. These conditions, the postulates of practical reason, are the concrete expressions of the three transcendental ideas, and in them we have the full significance of the ideas for reason. Immortality of the soul, positive freedom of will, and the existence of an intelligent ground of things are speculative ideas practically warranted, though theoretically neither demonstrable nor comprehensible.

      Thus reason as self-determining supplies notions of freedom; reason as determined supplies categories of understanding. Union between the two spheres, which seem at first sight disparate, is found in the necessary postulate that reason shall be realized, for its realization is only possible in the sphere of sense. But such a union, when regarded in abstracto, rests upon, or involves, a notion of quite a new order, that of the adaptation of nature to reason, or, as it may be expressed, that of end in nature. Understanding and reason thus coalesce in the faculty of judgment, which mediates between, or brings together, the universal and particular elements in conscious experience. Judgment is here merely reflective; that is to say, the particular element is given, so determined as to be possible material of knowledge, while the universal, not necessary for cognition, is supplied by reason itself. The empirical details of nature, which are not determined by the categories of understanding, are judged as being arranged or ordered by intelligence, for in no other fashion could nature, in its particular, contingent aspect, be thought as forming a complete, consistent, intelligible whole.

      The investigation of the conditions under which adaptation of nature to intelligence is conceivable and possible makes up the subject of the third great Kritik, the Kritik of Judgment, a work presenting unusual difficulties to the interpreter of the Kantian system. The general principle of the adaptation of nature to our faculties of cognition has two specific applications, with the second of which it is more closely connected than with the first. In the first place, the adaptation may be merely subjective, when the empirical condition for the exercise of judgment is furnished by the feeling of pleasure or pain; such adaptation is aesthetic. In the second place, the adaptation may be objective or logical, when empirical facts СКАЧАТЬ