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History of Philosophy
German Philosophy: Kant
by Turner, William (S.T.D.)
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Although the greater part of Kant's life lies within the eighteenth
century, his philosophy belongs to the nineteenth. It is from the
fundamental principles of his system of thought that the great
speculative and practical tendencies of this third period spring. With
Kant, therefore, begins the last period in the history of modern
philosophy.
KANT
Life. Immanuel Kant was born at Königsberg in the year
1724. His parents were, according to family tradition, of Scotch
descent. At the age of sixteen he entered the University of
Königsberg, and there, for six years studied Wolff's philosophy
and Newton's physics, having for teacher Martin Knutzen. On leaving the
university he spent nine years as tutor in several distinguished
families. He returned to Königsberg in 1755 to qualify himself for
the position of licensed but unsalaried teacher (Privatdocent)
at the university, a career in which he lingered for fifteen years. His
first book, which was published in 1747, under the title Gedanken
von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte, "Thoughts
on the True Estimation of Living Forces," was followed by several
others which treated of physical and metaphysical problems. Meantime he
continued to lecture on Wolffian philosophy, employing the text-books
then commonly in use, although it is evident from his written works and
from the programme of his lectures that he had at this time begun to
criticise both Wolff and Newton. The first outline of a definite
independent system appears in the dissertation De Mundi Sensibilis
atque Intelligibilis Formis et Principiis, which was published in
1770. In the same year Kant was appointed to the chair of philosophy at
Königsberg, which he held until 1797. His epoch-making work, the
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, appeared in 1781. This was followed
by the Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), the
Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), the Kritik der
Urtheilskraft (1790), and the Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der
blossen Vernunft (1794). The last of these works provoked the
hostility of the orthodox, and was the occasion of a reprimand from the
government of East Prussia.
Kant spent the greater part of his life as professor at
Königsberg. He never traveled, and had no appreciation of art; he
was, however, thoroughly in sympathy with Nature in all her moods,
professing unbounded admiration for "the starry sky above him and the
moral law within him." He died in 1804.
Sources. The three Critiques -- the Critique of Pure
Reason (the argument of which is presented in shorter and more
readable form in the Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysic), the
Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of the Faculty
of Judgment -- form a trilogy of Kantian literature. Kant's
complete works were published at various times, the best editions being
Hartenstein's second edition, in eight volumes (Leipzig, 1867-1869),
and Rosenkranz and Schubert's edition, in twelve volumes (Leipzig,
1838-1842). A new edition is being published by the Berlin Academy of
Sciences. The Critique of Pure Reason was translated into
English by Meiklejohn (London, 1854) and by Max Müller (London,
1881); the Prolegomena, by Mahaffy and Bernard (London, 1889);
the Critique of Practical Reason, by Abbott (London, 1889); and
the Critique of Judgment, by Bernard (London, 1892). To the list
of secondary sources [2] must be added M. Ruyssen's Kant
(Grands Philosophes series, Paris, 1900) and Paulsen's
Kant (trans. by Creighton and Lefevre, New York, 1902).
Wallace's Kant (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics,
Edinburgh and Philadelphia, 1892) and E. Caird's Critical Philosophy
of Kant (London, 1889) are the best English presentations of Kant's
system. [3]
[2] Cf. Falckenberg's list, op. cit., p. 269 (English
trans., p. 330). The works of Adickes, B. Erdmann, and Vaihinger are of
specral importance.
[3] Consult also T. H. Green, Lectures on the Philosophy of Kant
(in Works, Vol. II); Adamson, The Philosophy of Kant
(Edinburgh, 1879); Watson, Kant and his English Critics (London,
1888); article on Kant in Encyc. Brit., etc.
DOCTRINES
General Standpoint and Aim. In the introduction to the
Prolegomena, Kant informs us of the origin and aim of his
philosophical investigations. "It was," he observes, "the suggestion of
David Hume which first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my
investigations in the field of speculative philosophy quite a new
direction. I first tried whether Hume's objection could not be put into
a general form, and soon found that the
concept of the connexion of cause and effect was by no means the only
one by which the understanding thinks the connexion of things a
priori. I sought to make certain of the number of such connexions,
and when I had succeeded in this, by starting from a single principle,
I proceeded to the deduction of these concepts which I was now certain
were not deduced from experience, as Hume had apprehended, but sprang
from the pure understanding." [4] If, therefore, we divide systems of
philosophy into rational and empirical, according as they
lay stress on the a priori concepts and principles of the pure
understanding, or on the a posteriori impressions and
associations of the empirical faculties, we may describe Kant as
dissatisfied with the rational philosophy because it exaggerated the
a priori, and with the empirical philosophy because it
exaggerated the a posteriori elements of knowledge. Consequently
he sets himself the task of examining or criticising all knowledge for
the purpose of determining or, as he says, "deducing," the a
priori concepts or forms of thought. And if it is the task of
philosophy to answer the questions, What can I know? What ought I to
do? What may I hope for? Kant considers that the answers to the second
and third questions depend on the answer given to the first. His
philosophy is, therefore, a transcendental criticism, [5] that
is, an examination of knowledge for the purpose of determining the a
priori elements, which are the conditions of knowledge, and which
we cannot know by mere experience.
[4] Mahaffy's translation, p. 7.
[5] Falckenberg, op. cit., p. 277 (English trans., p. 340),
explains that, although Kant at different times attaches different
meanings to the word transcendental, he always uses it as opposed to
empirical. cf. Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology
(ed. Baldwin), article, "Kant's Terminology," Nos. 12 and 13.
Division of Philosophy. Kant, as is well known, first devoted
his attention to the transcendental criticism of pure reason,
and afterwards took up the transcendental criticism of practical
reason. In the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason he
distinguishes the transcendental aesthetic and the
transcendental logic, and subdivides the latter into transcendental
analytic and transcendental dialectic.
Transcendental AEsthetic is defined as the "science of all the
principles of sensibility a priori," [6] or the inquiry into
the a priori conditions of sensation. Now, our external
senses represent their objects as extended in space, and our
internal senses represent our conscious states as succeeding each other
in time. Space and time are the a priori conditions of
external and internal sensation, -- conditions or forms which make
sensation possible. They are, therefore, anterior to all experience.
Space and time are not, as is commonly supposed, empirical concepts
derived from experience; their a priori character appears from
the very fact that knowledge based on the nature of space and time
(mathematical knowledge) is necessary and universal; for it is a
primary postulate of all Kant's transcendental inquiry that nothing
which is necessary and universal can come from experience. Space
and time are not properties of things; they belong to the subject,
inhere in the subject, and are, so to speak, part of the subjective
world. Tbeir rôle is to reduce the multiplicity of the object to
that unity which is an essential condition of being perceived by the
subject, which is one. They are the conditions of sensitive
intuition, and have no objective reality, except in so far as they are
applied to real things in the act of perception. "Space and time are
the pure forms of our intuition, while sensation forms its matter." [7]
[6] Critigue of Pure Reason, p. 17. References are to Max
Müller's translation.
[7] Op. cit., p. 34.
Transcendental Logic. General logic treats either of the pure
forms of thought, or of these forms in their relation to concrete
experience (applied logic). Transcendental logic treats of the origin,
extent, and validity of concepts, which are neither of empirical nor of
aesthetic origin, but are a priori. It is divided into
transcendental analytic and transcendental dialectic: the
first treats of the forms of the pure understanding (judgment),
while the second treats of the elements of that knowledge which is
pure understanding applied to objects given in intuition; and as this
application is made by the reason, we may describe transcendental
dialectic as the criticism of reason in the stricter sense of the
word. [8]
[8] Cf. op. cit., pp. 42-50.
A. Transcendental Analytic. The a priori forms of the
pure understanding are the categories, which stand to intellectual
knowledge in the relation in which space and time stand to
sense-knowledge. It will be well to consider: (a) the existence of the
categories; (b) the construction of the table of categories; (c) the
nature of the categories; and (d) the objective value of the
categories.
a. The existence of the categories. All intuitions being
sensuous, and the understanding being a supersensible faculty, it is
evident that the concepts which belong to the understanding are not
immediately referred to an object, but to some other representation,
that is, to an intuition or to another concept. All the acts of the
understanding may therefore be reduced to judgments. [9] Now there are
judgments which are merely contingent and particular, as, "This table
is square"; and there are judgments which are necessary and universal,
as, "The sides of a square are equal to one another." But (and this is
the fundamental assumption in Kant's Critique) wkat is necessary
and universal in our knowledge is a priori. "Therefore, there is
in our knowledge of necessary and universal propositions an a
priori element, and this is the form, or category.
[9] Op. cit., p. 56.
b. Construction of the table of categories. Kant considers that
Aristotle failed to draw up a complete and scientific table of the
highest genera because that "acute thinker" did not realize that the
right method to be pursued is not the analysis of being, but the analysis
of thought. Now, according to Kant, to think is to judge, and to judge
is to synthesize, or unite, two representations, namely subject and
predicate. But since we
are inquiring into the a priori elements of thought we must
empty the subject and predicate of all their empirical and intuitional
content, and consider merely their relations to each other. On the
different kinds of relation which exist between subject and predicate
we shall base our construction of the table of categories. These
relations Kant reduces to twelve, to which, therefore, correspond the
twelve categories:
| Kinds of Judgment | Categories |
| I. Quantity: |
| Universal | Unity |
| Particular | Plurality |
| Singular | Totality |
| II. Quality: |
| Affirmative | Reality |
| Negative | Negation |
| Infinite | Limitation |
| III. Relation: |
| Categorical | Subsistence and Inherence |
| Hypothetical | Causality and Dependence |
| Disjunctive | Reciprocity (Active and Passive) |
| IV. Modality: |
| Problematical | Possibility -- Impossibility |
| Assertory | Existence -- Non-Existence |
| Apodeictic | Necessity -- Contingency |
It may be observed, in criticism of this system of categories,
that an analysis of judgment is not a complete analysis of thought; for
the ideas of which the judgment is composed are themselves capable of
analysis. Indeed, while the analysis of judgment may be made the basis
of a system of predicables, it is on an analysis of ideas that a system
of categories must be based. Moreover, it is evident that in the
Kantian table of categories, correctness of analysis is sacrificed. to
symmetry of arrangement.
c. The nature of the categories. Kant's a priori forms,
or categories, are not mere subjective dispositions, mere tendencies
such as Leibniz attributed to the psychic monad, -- capabilities to
be evolved into actuality in the process of ideation. Nor are they
full-fledged ideas such as Plato attributed to the soul in its prenatal
existence. they are the empty forms of intellectual knowledge, all the
contents of intellectual knowledge being derived from experience.
The nature of the categories is best understood by a study of their
function. All knowledge, whether sensuous or intellectual, is
conditioned by unity, and is effected by a synthesis of the manifold of
representations (sense impressions, etc.). Now, "How," Kant asks,
"should we, a priori, have arrived at such a synthetical unity
if the subjective grounds of such unity were not contained a
priori in the original sources of all our knowledge ? " [10] We have
seen that the a priori forms which effect the requisite unity in
the case of sense-knowledge are space and time. The function of the
categories is entirely similar: to effect the requisite unity in the
case of intellectual knowledge, -- to synthesize the manifold of
experience. But how is the application of the form to the contents
brought about? The a priori forms must be brought down to the
empirical contents anteriorly to experience; for they render
empirical knowledge possible. Kant is therefore obliged to have
recourse to the doctrine of schematism. The schemata are
the work of the synthetic imagination, and mediate between the a
priori form and the manifold of experience. Thus "the
transcendental determination of time (which is the principal
schema) is so far homogeneous with the category that it is
general and founded on a rule a priori; and it is, on the other
hand, so far homogeneous with the phenomenon that time must be
contained in every empirical representation of the manifold." [11] From
the fundamental schema, which is time, are derived as many schemata as
there are categories.
[10] Op. cit., p. 102.
[11] Op. cit., p. 113.
The mental field thickens with the multitude of media through which and
by means of which the process of intellectual knowledge takes place. We
have, first, the manifold representations of sense-impression; then the
application of the forms of space and time resulting in
sense-intuition; next, we have the schema, and last of all the a
priori form. And yet all this multiplicity is introduced in order
to effect the synthetic unity without which knowledge is impossible.
The representations are unified by the application of the a
priori forms of space and time; the intuitions resulting from this
application are in turn unified by the determining schema, which gives
reality to the highest unifying form, namely the category. Finally,
above all these is the unity of consciousness.
The doctrine of the function of the categories is well summed up in the
formula, representations without the categories are blind, the
categories without representative or other empirical content are
empty. With regard to the schematism of our understanding applied
to phenomena and their mere form, it were well, perhaps, to content
ourselves with Kant's saying that such schematism is "an art hidden in
the depth of the human soul, the true sense of which we shall hardly
ever be able to understand." [12]
[12] Op. cit., p. 116.
d. The objective value of the categories. The value of the
categories lies in this, that they render synthetic a priori
judgments possible and thus make intellectual knowledge possible. In
judgments which are merely analytical we remain within the given
concept, while predicating something of it; but in judgments which are
synthetic we go beyond the concept, in order to bring something
together with it which is wholly different from what is contained in
it. [13] It is therefore by means of synthetic a priori judgments
that we make progress in our intellectual knowledge of reality, and
since the categories are the a priori elements of such
judgments, -- the elements which confer necessity and universality on them, thereby making them to be
scientific, -- it is evident that it is the categories that render
intellectual knowledge possible. Without the categories the objects of
intellectual knowledge would be given in experience, but not
known.
[13] Op. cit., p. 126.
Although the categories are a priori, that is, independent of
sensation, they do not extend our knowledge beyond phenomena;
they do not lead us to a noumenal knowledge of that which is
given in sensation. Of themselves they are empty; in order to be
valid they must be filled by experience, and all the content which
experience can put into them is phenomenal. "The understanding a
priori can never do more than anticipate the form of a possible
experience; and, as nothing can be an object of experience except the
phenomenon, it follows that the understanding can never go beyond the
limits of sensibility. As phenomena are nothing but representations,
the understanding refers them to a something as the object of our
sensuous intuition. This means a something equal to x, of which we do
not, nay, with the present constitution of our understanding can not,
know anything." [14] This something is the noumenon, the
transcendental object, the thing-in-itself (Ding an sich).
[14] Op. cit., pp. 201 and 204.
B. Transcendental Dialectic, which is the third portion of the
Critique of Pure Reason, has for its object the examination or
criticism of the ideas. These are forms less general than the
categories, elements of reasoning rather than of judgment, serving to
unify the manifold of intellectual experience, just as the categories
and space and time serve to unify the manifold of sense-representation
and impression. Consequently they do not refer immediately to the
objects of intuition, but only to the understanding and its judgments.
Now, just as the forms of judgment furnished us with a basis for the
system of categories, so the forms of inference serve as a basis for
the enumeration of ideas. To the three forms of syllogistic reasoning,
namely
categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, correspond the three ideas
of the reasoning faculty, namely the idea of the soul, or
thinking subject, the idea of matter, or the totality of
phenomena, and the idea of God, the supreme condition of all
possibility. [15] Reason being immanent, that is, having no direct relation
to objects, these three ideas, the psychological, the cosmological, and
the theological, should remain immanent. The attempt to establish them
as existing outside the mind must necessarily lead to an entanglement
of contradictions, and it is the aim of the transcendental dialectic to
expose these contradictions and so dispel the transcendental illusion,
which has vitiated every system of psychology, cosmology, and theology.
[15] Op. cit., pp. 140 ff.
a. Psychological idea. Kant rejects the rational psychology
which attributes to the soul identity, substantiality, immateriality,
and immortality. The whole Wolffian and Cartesian system of psychology
he considers to be false in its starting point, -- the assumption,
namely, that we have an intuitive knowledge of the understanding. We
have, he contends, no such intuition. Thought is a succession of
unifications, or syntheses: at the apex of the pyramid, the base of
which is the manifold representation, stands the conscious principle;
but as the conscious principle is devoid of empirical content, it is,
like the noumenon, an x, an unknown quantity. Descartes says "I
think," but what, Kant asks, is the I? It is the emptiest of all
forms, a psychological subject of conscious states, which never can
become the logical subject of a predicate referring to these states or
to anything else. Empirical psychology, which alone can extend
our knowledge of mental life, does not aim at telling us anything about
the ego; rational psychology, which does aim at establishing
truths concerning the ego, is wrong in its very starting point and is
full of contradictions in the course of its development.
Kant, of course, does not deny the unity, substantiality, etc., of the
soul; for he contends that reason is as far from being
able to disprove as it is from being able to prove these truths,
which, as the Critique of Practical Reason will demonstrate,
rest ultimately on man's moral consciousness.
b. Cosmological idea. The totality of phenomena, or the world of
which the cosmologists speak, presents, according to Kant, difficulties
similar to those presented by the psychological idea. To every
thesis which is formulated concerning the ultimate nature of
matter, may be opposed an equally plausible antithesis. The
antinomies, however, as these apparent contradictions are
called, do not disprove the formal correctness of the inferential
process employed in rational cosmology; they merely show that the
cosmical concepts -- matter, cause, etc. -- extend beyond the limits
of empirical knowledge and rational experience. The antinomies are
four, corresponding to the four classes of categories:
alpha. Thesis: The world must have a beginning in time and be inclosed
in finite space. Antithesis: The world is eternal and infinite.
beta. Thesis: Matter is ultimately divisible into simple parts (atoms
or monads) incapable of further division. Antithesis. Every material
thing is divisible; there exists nowhere in the world anything simple.
gamma. Thesis: Besides the causality which is according to the laws of
nature and, therefore, necessary, there is causality which is free.
Antithesis: There is no freedom; everything in the world takes place
entirely according to the laws of nature.
delta. Thesis: There exists an absolutely necessary Being belonging to
the world, either as a part or as a cause of it. Antithesis. There
nowhere exists an absolutely necessary Being, either within or without
the world.
It is only in the case of the first two antinomies that Kant considers
both the thesis and antithesis to be false.
c. Theological idea. The idea of God is, according to Kant, the
ideal of reason, that is, the expression of the need which reason has
of coming to a perfect unity. Kant nowhere denies the objective
validity of this idea; he contends, however, as we shall see, that it
rests on the moral consciousness, not on any speculative basis. The
criticism of the theological idea is,
therefore, confined to an examination of the ontological,
cosmological, and physico-theological proofs which natural
theology brings forward to establish the thesis that God exists.
The ontological proof, which was formulated successively by St.
Anselm, Descartes, and Leibniz, deduces the existence of God from the
concept which we are able to form of Him. Kant points out the
impossibility of arguing from the idea of a thing to the existence of
that thing. Existence, he observes, is not a quality or attribute of
the same nature as goodness or greatness: it adds nothing to the
content of the idea. "A hundred real thalers contain no more, as to
concept, than a hundred possible ones." Besides, all existential
propositions are synthetical, because existence is not a quality of an
idea, but a relation between the idea and experience. Therefore an
existential proposition cannot be demonstrated from a concept without
reference to experience.
The cosmological proof argues from the existence of contingent
being to the existence of necessary Being. Kant criticises the argument
from the view point of his own theory of cognition. Since the axiom of
causality, on which the argument rests, is a synthetic judgment, it
cannot be applied beyond the limits of experience. "The principle of
causality has no meaning and no criterion for its use beyond the world
of sense, while here it is meant to help us beyond the world of
sense." [16]
[16] Op. cit., p. 491.
The physico-theological argument is that which is commonly
called the argument from the purposiveness or design which is evident
in the order of nature. Now, order and design "may prove the
contingency of the form but not of the matter"; they may prove that
there is a designer, but not that there is a creator, of the universe.
Kant wishes to "commend and encourage" the use of such a line of
reasoning, but he maintains that "it cannot by itself alone establish
the existence of a Supreme Being." [17]
[17] Op. cit., p. 503.
The conclusion of the transcendental dialectic is, therefore, that
the ideas do not add to our experience. Speculative philosophy
does not add to our knowledge of the soul, the world, and God.
Nevertheless, these ideas, although they do not constitute experience,
regulate it, so that we cannot better order the faculties of the soul
than by acting as if there were a soul; neither can we better order our
experience of the external world than by representing it as made up of
a multiplicity of created things, each of which stands to the rest of
reality in reciprocal relation necessitated by law, and all of which
spring from a common ground of unity and are ruled by the same guiding
principle. Moreover, the criticism of the ideas shows that, while
speculative philosophy is unable to establish the existence of God, the
immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will, materialism,
fatalism, and atheism are equally unable to overthrow our belief in the
truth of these doctrines. The ideas therefore clear the way for a
rational faith founded on the moral consciousness.
Before we come to the constructive portion of Kant's philosophy as
contained in the Critique of Practical Reason, we may here sum
up the results of his destructive criticism of speculative philosophy
and of theoretical knowledge in general. There is no transcendent
knowledge, -- no knowledge beyond the limits of experience. In our
knowledge of the empirical world there is, however, a transcendental
element, -- the a priori forms of sensation, the categories
and the regulative ideas, which make empirical knowledge possible,
although they do not add to it either in content or in extension. The
moral consciousness alone takes us beyond experience to the immutable,
eternal, and universally valid ground on which all higher truth rests.
Critique of Practical Reason. When we pass from the Critique
of Pure Reason to the Critique of Practical Reason, from the
study of what is, or must be, to the study of what ought to be, from
the inquiry into the conditions of possible theoretical experience to
the inquiry into the conditions of actual moral
experience, from the analysis of thought to the analysis of action, we
find ourselves in an altogether new atmosphere. The second
Critique discovers in the obligation of the moral law the
aliquid inconcussibile, which, as the first Critique
taught us, is not to be found in rational speculation; and thus are
restored the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and the
freedom of the will, which in the first Critique were relegated
to the rank of mere regulative formulas.
Kant's emphatic assertion of the supremacy of the moral law is
well known. The starry heaven above us and the moral law within us are,
he was accustomed to say, the only objects worthy of supreme
admiration. But on what is the moral law founded? Consciousness tells
me that I ought to perform certain actions, and a little thought
suffices to convince me that the oughtness is universal and
necessary. If I analyze, for example, the sense of obligation in
the negative principle, Lie not, I find that, apart from the question
of motive or utility, which are contingent determinants, it is a
principle valid throughout all time and space. Now it is these
properties, necessity and universality, that will enable us to answer
the question, On what is the moral law founded?
It is necessary, however, to remark that, according to Kant, the
universality and necessity affect the form, not the contents, of
the moral law, so that in the example just mentioned the universality
of the prohibition, Lie not, is derived from the general formula, into
which all obligation is translatable, -- So act that you can will that
the maxim on which your conduct rests should become a universal
law. [18] More simply, the maxim on which your conduct rests must be fit
to be an element of universal legislation.
[18] Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten, 2. Abschn.,
Werke (ed. Kirchmann), III, 44; also Kritik der Praktiscken
Vernunft, No. 7, Werke, II, 35.
The moral law is not founded on pleasure; for nothing is more
unstable than feeling, which is the determinant of pleasure,
whereas the moral law, because of its universality and necessity, must
rest on an unchangeable foundation. It is not founded on
happiness; for the essential characteristic of the moral law is its
obligatoriness, and no one is obliged to be happy. It is not founded
on a moral sense; for mere sense cannot represent obligation as
necessary and universal. Finally, it is not founded on perfection of
self; for perfection is, in final analysis, reducible to pleasure
or happiness.
The moral law is its own foundation; it is autonomous, being
neither imposed by any external motive, nor deduced by the purely
speculative reason from theoretical principles, but being impressed on
the will by the practical reason [19] and revealed to us by immediate
consciousness. Thus it stands on a basis firmer than that which
theoretical knowledge can furnish, and it remains unaffected by the
contention and clamor of metaphysical discussion.
[19] Falckenberg, op. cit., p. 316 (English trans., p. 388),
calls attention to Kant's identification of will with practical
reason.
The moral law is imperative: consciousness reveals it to us as
commanding, not merely as persuading or advising. Its command may be
categorical, as, Thou shalt not lie! or hypothetical, as,
If you wish to become a clergyman you must study theology. The
categorical imperative is, however, the characteristic expression of
the moral law, and it is only in the authoritative though "hollow"
voice of the universal categorical imperative, So act, etc., that the
moral law speaks with all the authority of a universal and necessary
moral determinant.
The moral law is the form which imparts to the contents of an action
its goodness. The contents may be good relatively; the will, which is
the form, is an absolute good. "Nothing," Kant observes, "can be called
good without qualification except a good will." Effects and
circumstances are not, therefore, of themselves, determinants of moral
value: the sense of duty is alone praiseworthy. The only moral motive
is respect for
the moral law. Thus does Kant carry his reverence for the moral law to
the extreme of purism, -- the exclusion of all egotistic motive as
derogatory to the moral worth of actions.
The moral law is unconditional; in the form of the categorical
imperative, its voice is unconditionally authoritative and its command
is unconditionally a law of human conduct. It speaks to us immediately,
for we are conscious of its commands. Here, then, we have found
something which metaphysicians have sought in vain, -- an
incontrovertible truth on which the freedom of the will, the existence
of God, and the immortality of the soul may be made to rest.
First, the will is free; for the moral law, in saying Thou
oughtest, implies that Thou canst. We have no immediate consciousness
of freedom, but we have immediate consciousness of the moral law which
implies freedom. I can because I ought, and I know that I can because I
know that I ought. Freedom is, therefore, the ratio essendi of the
moral law, and the moral law is the ratio cognoscendi of
freedom. [20]
[20] Cf. Kritik d. Prakt. Vernunft, Werke, II, 132 ff.
Secondly, the moral law postulates the existence of God; for the
imperative nature of the moral law implies that there exists somewhere
a good which is not only supreme but complete (consummatum), an
embodiment, so to speak, of that perfect holiness which is the sum of
all the conditions implied in the moral order. Thus, while theonomic
ethics supposes the existence of God, autonomic morality proves
His existence. [21]
[21] Op. cit., II, 249 ff.
Thirdly, the moral law postulates the immortality of the soul.
Theoretical reason, as we have seen, fails to determine in any manner
the noumenal reality of the subject of our conscious states; but surely
the practical reason, which imposes its law so imperiously, is a
noumenal reality, of which its every action is a determination. Thus,
the soul is immortal because immortal duration is alone sufficient for
the complete fulfillment of the moral law. The highest perfection that
we can attain in this
life is virtue, and virtue is essentially incomplete: it is a
striving towards holiness, with a residual inclination towards
unholiness. Since the moral law will always continue with the same
unrelenting imperativeness to urge the soul towards holiness, and since
the inclination towards unholiness will never be completely overcome,
the struggle between the desire to obey and the impulse to transgress
the law must continue forever. [22]
[22] Op. cit., II, 146 ff.
The three postulates of the moral law restore, therefore, freedom,
immortality, and theistic belief, which find no justifiable basis in
the speculative reason. But which are we to believe, the theoretical or
the practical reason? Kant does not hesitate to reply: we are to
believe the practical reason, for it is supreme. Faith is a rational
conviction based on the sense of duty, and is not less but rather more
valid than the conviction based on theoretical knowledge.
This is not the place to take up Kant's theory of natural religion. It
is sufficient to note that, as the principle enunciated at the end of
the preceding paragraph implies, religion, according to Kant, is based
on ethics. We come, then, to the third of Kant's philosophical
critiques.
Critique of the Faculty of Judgment. The understanding (pure
reason) is the faculty of a priori forms and principles of
knowledge. Practical reason is the faculty of a priori
principles of action. Mediating, as it were, between these is judgment
(in the stricter sense of the word), which is the faculty of the a
priori forms and principles of aesthetic feeling. In other words,
the beautiful, or purposive, which is the object of
judgment, is intermediate between the true and the good, which are the
objects of pure reason and practical reason respectively.
Judgment may be defined as the faculty by which we subsume the
particular under the universal (law), or find the universal under which
the particular is to be arranged. It refers the manifold to the one,
the sensible order to the supersensible
principle of design, and since all actualization of design
produces in us the sentiment of the beautiful, the faculty of
judgment is also concerned with the aesthetic aspect of nature and art.
We have, then, as divisions of the critique of judgment, (I) critique
of the teleological judgment, and (2) critique of the aesthetic
judgment.
A. Critique of the Teleological Judgment. The analytic of
the teleological judgment has for its scope to determine the different
kinds of adaptation. These, Kant observes, are two,
external and internal. External adaptation, such as that
of the pine to the soil on which it grows, may be explained by
mechanical causes; but internal adaptation, which is found in organic
structure and function, cannot be explained by mechanical causes alone.
There is in the organism a relation of part to part and of part to the
whole, but no causal relation to anything outside the organism; so that
the organism is at once cause and effect. We cannot explain organic
activity in terms of mechanical causality; we can understand it only on
the supposition that organisms act as though they were produced
by a cause which had a purpose in view. The teleological concept is,
therefore, regulative of our experience.
That the teleological concept is merely regulative, not constitutive,
of experience appears from the antinomy, of which Kant treats in
the dialectic of the teleological judgment. The antinomy is as
follows: Thesis: All productions of material things and their
forms may be explained by mechanical causes. Antithesis: Some
products of material nature cannot be judged possible unless we suppose
a final cause. Now, as doctrines, mechanism (as opposed to teleology)
and teleology are irreconcilable; but as rules or maxims regulative
of our experience, one is supplementary of the other. [23]
[23] Op. cit., II, 262.
B. Critique of the Aesthetic Judgment. The name judgment applied
to the aesthetic faculty is evidence of the purpose of this
portion of Kant's philosophy, the purpose, namely, to mediate between
the sensationalists, who reduced beauty to mere feeling, and the
rationalists, who removed all feeling from the faculty of aesthetic
appreciation.
a. In his analytic of the aesthetic judgment, Kant determines
that, as to quality, the beautiful is the object of
disinterested satisfaction (wherein it differs from the agreeable and
the good); with regard to quantity, it pleases universally
(wherein it differs from the agreeable) ; with regard to
relation, it is not based on concepts (wherein it differs from
the good, that being beautiful in which we find the form or design
without representing to ourselves any particular design); finally, with
regard to modality, its pleases necessarily (wherein again it
differs from the agreeable). That, then, is beautiful, which
universally and necessarily gives disinterested pleasure without the
concept of definite design. The satisfaction which we find in what
is perfect is intellectual or conceptual; the satisfaction which the
beautiful affords is emotional or aesthetic. [24]
[24] Kritik der Urtheilshraft, Werke, II, 41 ff.
The sublime is that which is great beyond all comparison;
it gives satisfaction by its boundless and formless greatness, as the
beautiful does by its definiteness of form. This greatness is either
extensive in space or time or intensive in force or power. The great
produces, it is true, a "humiliating" impression; but it is the
sensitive nature that is humiliated, while at the same time the
spiritual nature is exalted and carried out towards the idea of the
Infinite, which the sublime always suggests. [25]
[25] Op. cit., II, 92ff.
b. In the dialectic of the aesthetic faculty, Kant insists that
the highest use of the sublime and beautiful is their use as a
symbol of moral good. For the aesthetic feeling is akin to the
moral faculty, as indeed the teleological judgment also is. The
question of the objective value of one or other of these faculties
leads ultimately to the assertion that there is hidden in nature
a principle of beauty and purpose and goodness which the speculative
reason cannot formulate. [26]
[26] Cf. B. Erdmann, Die Stellung des Dinges an sich in Kant's
AEsthetik und Analytik (Berlin, 2873).
Historical Position. Kant's influence on the development of
thought in the nineteenth century can hardly be overestimated. His
philosophy is, as it were, the watershed from which streams of thought
flow down in various courses into modern idealism, agnosticism, and
even materialism. To this source may also be traced some of the most
noteworthy currents of contemporary religious thought, especially the
movement towards nondogmatic Christianity; for it is not difficult to
see in Kant's assertion of the supremacy of the moral law the origin of
the tendency to regard Christianity more as a system of ethics and less
as a system of dogmatic truth. Kant influenced not only the literature
of his own country, to an extent unequaled perhaps in the history of
that literature, but also, through his English exponents, of whom
Coleridge was the chief, the literature of the English-speaking world.
Philosophy owes to Kant the energetic assertion of the grandeur of the
moral law as the foundation of ethics, and the scarcely less energetic
assertion of the essential unity of consciousness, as a point of view
for the critical analysis of mental processes. Whether or not we admit
with McCosh that "Kant was distinguished more as a logical thinker and
systematizer than as a careful observer of what actually takes place in
the mind," [27] or with Huxley that "his baggage train is bigger than his
army, and the student who attacks him is too often led to suspect that
he has won a position when he has only captured a mob of useless
camp-followers," [28] we cannot deny that Kant revolutionized the world
of speculative and practical thought by introducing a new point of view
for the study of mental phenomena, and that, to this extent at least,
he is, as he himself claimed to he, the Copernicus of mental science.
[27] Realistic Philosophy, II, 297.
[28] Hume, p. 80.
Kant inaugurated transcendental criticism. Now, criticism in the sense
of a critical examination of experience, or the analysis of common
consciousness, is undoubtedly the beginning of philosophical inquiry,
and the critical investigation of knowledge is a starting point which
philosophic method approves. But philosophic method cannot approve the
attempt to criticise all knowledge without the aid of principles or
standards of criticism, and such principles or standards Kant does not
pretend to adopt. We cannot regard as a canon of criticism the
assumption that what is necessary and universal in our knowledge must
be a priori, -- an assumption which is untrue as to content. Yet
it is to this assumption that Kant constantly recurs in his doctrine of
categories, in his classification of certain judgments as synthetic and
a priori, etc. It is only in the practical order, in the realm
of moral consciousness, that Kant finds refuge from the
pan-phenomenalism which he wishes to avoid; for the thing-in-itself,
the subject, and God, though existing, are unknown and unknowable, as
far as the speculative reason is concerned. Kant, whose express purpose
was to deliver philosophy from scepticism, might well look back at
Hume, the sceptic, and exclaim, "There, but for the categorical
imperative, goes Immanuel Kant!"
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