The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)

by Arthur Schopenhauer

After the full exposition of the universal forms of perception given in the Transcendental Æsthetic, one necessarily expects to receive some explanation as to its content, as to the way in which the empirical perception comes into our consciousness, how the knowledge of this whole world, which is for us so real and so important, arises in [pg 034] us. But the whole teaching of Kant contains really nothing more about this than the oft-repeated meaningless expression: “The empirical element in perception is given from without.” Consequently here also from the pure forms of perception Kant arrives with one spring at thinking at the Transcendental Logic. Just at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 50; V. 74), where Kant cannot avoid touching upon the content of the empirical perception, he takes the first false step; he is guilty of the πρωτον ψευδος. “Our knowledge,” he says, “has two sources, receptivity of impressions and spontaneity of conceptions: the first is the capacity for receiving ideas, the second that of knowing an object through these ideas: through the first an object is given us, through the second it is thought.” This is false; for according to it the impression, for which alone we have mere receptivity, which thus comes from without and alone is properly “given,” would be already an idea, and indeed an object. But it is nothing more than a mere sensation in the organ of sense, and only by the application of the understanding (i.e., of the law of causality) and the forms of perception, space and time, does our intellect change this mere sensation into an idea, which now exists as an object in space and time, and cannot be distinguished from the latter (the object) except in so far as we ask after the thing in itself, but apart from this is identical with it. I have explained this point fully in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21. With this, however, the work of the understanding and of the faculty of perception is completed, and no conceptions and no thinking are required in addition; therefore the brute also has these ideas. If conceptions are added, if thinking is added, to which spontaneity may certainly be attributed, then knowledge of perception is entirely abandoned, and a completely different class of ideas comes into consciousness, non-perceptible abstract conceptions. This is the activity of the reason, which yet obtains the whole [pg 035] content of its thinking only from the previous perception, and the comparison of it with other perceptions and conceptions. But thus Kant brings thinking into the perception, and lays the foundation for the inextricable confusion of intuitive and abstract knowledge which I am now engaged in condemning. He allows the perception, taken by itself, to be without understanding, purely sensuous, and thus quite passive, and only through thinking (category of the understanding) does he allow an object to be apprehended: thus he brings thought into the perception. But then, again, the object of thinking is an individual real object; and in this way thinking loses its essential character of universality and abstraction, and instead of general conceptions receives individual things as its object: thus again he brings perception into thinking. From this springs the inextricable confusion referred to, and the consequences of this first false step extend over his whole theory of knowledge. Through the whole of his theory the utter confusion of the idea of perception with the abstract idea tends towards a something between the two which he expounds as the object of knowledge through the understanding and its categories, and calls this knowledge experience. It is hard to believe that Kant really figured to himself something fully determined and really distinct in this object of the understanding; I shall now prove this through the tremendous contradiction which runs through the whole Transcendental Logic, and is the real source of the obscurity in which it is involved.

In the “Critique of Pure Reason,” p. 67-69; V. 92-94; p. 89, 90; V. 122, 123; further, V. 135, 139, 153, he repeats and insists: the understanding is no faculty of perception, its knowledge is not intuitive but discursive; the understanding is the faculty of judging (p. 69; V. 94), and a judgment is indirect knowledge, an idea of an idea (p. 68; V. 93); the understanding is the faculty of thinking, and thinking is knowledge through conceptions (p. 69; V. 94); the categories of the understanding are by no means [pg 036] the conditions under which objects are given in perception (p. 89; V. 122), and perception in no way requires the functions of thinking (p. 91; V. 123); our understanding can only think, not perceive (V. pp. 135, 139). Further, in the “Prolegomena,” § 20, he says that perception, sensation, perceptio, belongs merely to the senses; judgment to the understanding alone; and in § 22, that the work of the senses is to perceive, that of the understanding to think, i.e., to judge. Finally, in the “Critique of Practical Reason,” fourth edition, p. 247; Rosenkranz's edition, p. 281, he says that the understanding is discursive; its ideas are thoughts, not perceptions. All this is in Kant's own words.

From this it follows that this perceptible world would exist for us even if we had no understanding at all; that it comes into our head in a quite inexplicable manner, which he constantly indicates by his strange expression the perception is given, without ever explaining this indefinite and metaphorical expression further.

Now all that has been quoted is contradicted in the most glaring manner by the whole of the rest of his doctrine of the understanding, of its categories, and of the possibility of experience as he explains it in the Transcendental Logic. Thus (Critique of Pure Reason, p. 79; V. 105), the understanding through its categories brings unity into the manifold of perception, and the pure conceptions of the understanding refer a priori to objects of perception. P. 94; V. 126, the “categories are the condition of experience, whether of perception, which is found in it, or of thought.” V. p. 127, the understanding is the originator of experience. V. p. 128, the categories determine the perception of objects. V. p. 130, all that we present to ourselves as connected in the object (which is yet certainly something perceptible and not an abstraction), has been so connected by an act of the understanding. V. p. 135, the understanding is explained anew as the faculty of combining a priori, and of bringing the multiplicity of given [pg 037] ideas under the unity of apperception; but according to all ordinary use of words, apperception is not the thinking of a conception, but is perception. V. p. 136, we find a first principle of the possibility of all perception in connection with the understanding. V. p. 143, it stands as the heading, that all sense perception is conditioned by the categories. At the same place the logical function of the judgment also brings the manifold of given perceptions under an apperception in general, and the manifold of a given perception stands necessarily under the categories. V. p. 144, unity comes into perception, by means of the categories, through the understanding. V. p. 145, the thinking of the understanding is very strangely explained as synthetically combining, connecting, and arranging the manifold of perception. V. p. 161, experience is only possible through the categories, and consists in the connection of sensations, which, however, are just perceptions. V. p. 159, the categories are a priori knowledge of the objects of perception in general. Further, here and at V. p. 163 and 165, a chief doctrine of Kant's is given, this: that the understanding first makes Nature possible, because it prescribes laws for it a priori, and Nature adapts itself to the system of the understanding, and so on. Nature, however, is certainly perceptible and not an abstraction; therefore, the understanding must be a faculty of perception. V. p. 168, it is said, the conceptions of the understanding are the principles of the possibility of experience, and the latter is the condition of phenomena in space and time in general; phenomena which, however, certainly exist in perception. Finally, p. 189-211; V. 232-265, the long proof is given (the incorrectness of which is shown in detail in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23) that the objective succession and also the coexistence of objects of experience are not sensuously apprehended, but are only brought into Nature by the understanding, and that Nature itself first becomes possible in this way. Yet it is certain that Nature, the course of events, and the coexistence [pg 038] of states, is purely perceptible, and no mere abstract thought.

I challenge every one who shares my respect towards Kant to reconcile these contradictions and to show that in his doctrine of the object of experience and the way it is determined by the activity of the understanding and its twelve functions, Kant thought something quite distinct and definite. I am convinced that the contradiction I have pointed out, which extends through the whole Transcendental Logic, is the real reason of the great obscurity of its language. Kant himself, in fact, was dimly conscious of the contradiction, inwardly combated it, but yet either would not or could not bring it to distinct consciousness, and therefore veiled it from himself and others, and avoided it by all kinds of subterfuges. This is perhaps also the reason why he made out of the faculties of knowledge such a strange complicated machine, with so many wheels, as the twelve categories, the transcendental synthesis of imagination, of the inner sense, of the transcendental unity of apperception, also the schematism of the pure conceptions of the understanding, &c., &c. And notwithstanding this great apparatus, not even an attempt is made to explain the perception of the external world, which is after all the principal fact in our knowledge; but this pressing claim is very meanly rejected, always through the same meaningless metaphorical expression: “The empirical perception is given us.” On p. 145 of the fifth edition, we learn further that the perception is given through the object; therefore the object must be something different from the perception.

If, now, we endeavour to investigate Kant's inmost meaning, not clearly expressed by himself, we find that in reality such an object, different from the perception, but which is by no means a conception, is for him the proper object for the understanding; indeed that it must be by means of the strange assumption of such an object, which cannot be presented in perception, that the perception [pg 039] first becomes experience. I believe that an old deeply-rooted prejudice in Kant, dead to all investigation, is the ultimate reason of the assumption of such an absolute object, which is an object in itself, i.e., without a subject. It is certainly not the perceived object, but through the conception it is added to the perception by thought, as something corresponding to it; and now the perception is experience, and has value and truth, which it thus only receives through the relation to a conception (in diametrical opposition to my exposition, according to which the conception only receives value and truth from the perception). It is then the proper function of the categories to add on in thought to the perception this directly non-perceptible object. “The object is given only through perception, and is afterwards thought in accordance with the category” (Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, p. 399). This is made specially clear by a passage on p. 125 of the fifth edition: “Now the question arises whether conceptions a priori do not also come first as conditions under which alone a thing can be, not perceived certainly, but yet thought as an object in general,” which he answers in the affirmative. Here the source of the error and the confusion in which it is involved shows itself distinctly. For the object as such exists always only for perception and in it; it may now be completed through the senses, or, when it is absent, through the imagination. What is thought, on the contrary, is always an universal non-perceptible conception, which certainly can be the conception of an object in general; but only indirectly by means of conceptions does thought relate itself to objects, which always are and remain perceptible. For our thinking is not able to impart reality to perceptions; this they have, so far as they are capable of it (empirical reality) of themselves; but it serves to bring together the common element and the results of perceptions, in order to preserve them, and to be able to use them more easily. But Kant ascribes the objects themselves to thought, in order to make experience [pg 040] and the objective world dependent upon understanding, yet without allowing understanding to be a faculty of perception. In this relation he certainly distinguishes perception from thought, but he makes particular things sometimes the object of perception and sometimes the object of thought. In reality, however, they are only the object of the former; our empirical perception is at once objective, just because it proceeds from the causal nexus. Things, not ideas different from them, are directly its object. Particular things as such are perceived in the understanding and through the senses; the one-sided impression upon the latter is at once completed by the imagination. But, on the contrary, as soon as we pass over to thought, we leave the particular things, and have to do with general conceptions, which cannot be presented in perception, although we afterwards apply the results of our thought to particular things. If we hold firmly to this, the inadmissibleness of the assumption becomes evident that the perception of things only obtains reality and becomes experience through the thought of these very things applying its twelve categories. Rather in perception itself the empirical reality, and consequently experience, is already given; but the perception itself can only come into existence by the application to sensation of the knowledge of the causal nexus, which is the one function of the understanding. Perception is accordingly in reality intellectual, which is just what Kant denies.

Besides in the passages quoted, the assumption of Kant here criticised will be found expressed with admirable clearness in the “Critique of Judgment,” § 36, just at the beginning; also in the “Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science,” in the note to the first explanation of “Phenomenology.” But with a naïveté which Kant ventured upon least of all with reference to this doubtful point, it is to be found most distinctly laid down in the book of a Kantian, Kiesewetter's “Grundriss einer algemeinen Logik,” third edition, part i., p. 434 of the exposition, [pg 041] and part ii., § 52 and 53 of the exposition; similarly in Tieftrunk's “Denklehre in rein Deutschem Gewande” (1825). It there appears so clearly how those disciples who do not themselves think become a magnifying mirror of the errors of every thinker. Once having determined his doctrine of the categories, Kant was always cautious when expounding it, but his disciples on the contrary were quite bold, and thus exposed its falseness.

According to what has been said, the object of the categories is for Kant, not indeed the thing in itself, but yet most closely akin to it. It is the object in itself; it is an object that requires no subject; it is a particular thing, and yet not in space and time, because not perceptible; it is an object of thought, and yet not an abstract conception. Accordingly Kant really makes a triple division: (1.) the idea; (2.) the object of the idea; (3.) the thing in itself. The first belongs to the sensibility, which in its case, as in that of sensation, includes the pure forms of perception, space and time. The second belongs to the understanding, which thinks it through its twelve categories. The third lies beyond the possibility of all knowledge. (In support of this, cf. Critique of Pure Reason, first edition, p. 108 and 109.) The distinction of the idea from the object of the idea is however unfounded; this had already been proved by Berkeley, and it appears from my whole exposition in the first book, especially chap. i. of the supplements; nay, even from Kant's own completely idealistic point of view in the first edition. But if we should not wish to count the object of the idea as belonging to the idea and identify it with the idea, it would be necessary to attribute it to the thing in itself: this ultimately depends on the sense which is attached to the word object. This, however, always remains certain, that, when we think clearly, nothing more can be found than idea and thing in itself. The illicit introduction of that hybrid, the object of the idea, is the source of Kant's errors; yet when it is taken away, the doctrine of the categories as conceptions [pg 042] a priori also falls to the ground; for they bring nothing to the perception, and are not supposed to hold good of the thing in itself, but by means of them we only think those “objects of the ideas,” and thereby change ideas into experience. For every empirical perception is already experience; but every perception which proceeds from sensation is empirical: this sensation is related by the understanding, by means of its sole function (knowledge a priori of the law of causality), to its cause, which just on this account presents itself in space and time (forms of pure perception) as object of experience, material object, enduring in space through all time, yet as such always remains idea, as do space and time themselves. If we desire to go beyond this idea, then we arrive at the question as to the thing in itself, the answer to which is the theme of my whole work, as of all metaphysics in general. Kant's error here explained is connected with his mistake, which we condemned before, that he gives no theory of the origin of empirical perception, but, without saying more, treats it as given, identifying it with the mere sensation, to which he only adds the forms of intuition or perception, space and time, comprehending both under the name sensibility. But from these materials no objective idea arises: this absolutely demands the relation of the idea to its cause, thus the application of the law of causality, and thus understanding; for without this the sensation still remains always subjective, and does not take the form of an object in space, even if space is given with it. But according to Kant, the understanding must not be assigned to perception; it is supposed merely to think, so as to remain within the transcendental logic. With this again is connected another mistake of Kant's: that he left it to me to adduce the only valid proof of the a priori nature of the law of causality which he rightly recognised, the proof from the possibility of objective empirical perception itself, and instead of it gives a palpably false one, as I have already shown in my essay on the principle of [pg 043] sufficient reason, § 23. From the above it is clear that Kant's “object of the idea” (2) is made up of what he has stolen partly from the idea (1), and partly from the thing in itself (3). If, in reality, experience were only brought about by the understanding applying its twelve different functions in order to think through as many conceptions a priori, the objects which were previously merely perceived, then every real thing would necessarily as such have a number of determinations, which, as given a priori, absolutely could not be thought away, just like space and time, but would belong quite essentially to the existence of the thing, and yet could not be deduced from the properties of space and time. But only one such determination is to be found—that of causality. Upon this rests materiality, for the essence of matter consists in action, and it is through and through causality (cf. Bk. II. ch. iv.) But it is materiality alone that distinguishes the real thing from the picture of the imagination, which is then only idea. For matter, as permanent, gives to the thing permanence through all time, in respect of its matter, while the forms change in conformity with causality. Everything else in the thing consists either of determinations of space or of time, or of its empirical properties, which are all referable to its activity, and are thus fuller determinations of causality. But causality enters already as a condition into the empirical perception, and this is accordingly a thing of the understanding, which makes even perception possible, and yet apart from the law of causality contributes nothing to experience and its possibility. What fills the old ontologies is, with the exception of what is given here, nothing more than relations of things to each other, or to our reflection, and a farrago of nonsense.

The language in which the doctrine of the categories is expressed affords an evidence of its baselessness. What a difference in this respect between the Transcendental Æsthetic and the Transcendental Analytic! In the [pg 044] former, what clearness, definiteness, certainty, firm conviction which is freely expressed and infallibly communicates itself! All is full of light, no dark lurking-places are left: Kant knows what he wants and knows that he is right. In the latter, on the other hand, all is obscure, confused, indefinite, wavering, uncertain, the language anxious, full of excuses and appeals to what is coming, or indeed of suppression. Moreover, the whole second and third sections of the Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding are completely changed in the second edition, because they did not satisfy Kant himself, and they have become quite different from the first edition, though not clearer. We actually see Kant in conflict with the truth in order to carry out his hypothesis which he has once fixed upon. In the Transcendental Æsthetic all his propositions are really proved from undeniable facts of consciousness, in the Transcendental Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it closely, mere assertions that thus it is and must be. Here, then, as everywhere, the language bears the stamp of the thought from which it has proceeded, for style is the physiognomy of the mind. We have still to remark, that whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose of fuller explanation, he almost always takes for this end the category of causality, and then what he has said turns out correct; for the law of causality is indeed the real form of the understanding, but it is also its only form, and the remaining eleven categories are merely blind windows. The deduction of the categories is simpler and less involved in the first edition than in the second. He labours to explain how, according to the perception given by sensibility, the understanding produces experience by means of thinking the categories. In doing so, the words recognition, reproduction, association, apprehension, transcendental unity of apperception, are repeated to weariness, and yet no distinctness is attained. It is well worth noticing, however, that in this explanation [pg 045] he does not once touch upon what must nevertheless first occur to every one—the relation of the sensation to its external cause. If he did not intend this relation to hold good, he ought to have expressly denied it; but neither does he do this. Thus in this way he evades the point, and all the Kantians have in like manner evaded it. The secret motive of this is, that he reserves the causal nexus, under the name “ground of the phenomenon,” for his false deduction of the thing in itself; and also that perception would become intellectual through the relation to the cause, which he dare not admit. Besides this, he seems to have been afraid that if the causal nexus were allowed to hold good between sensation and object, the latter would at once become the thing in itself, and introduce the empiricism of Locke. But this difficulty is removed by reflection, which shows us that the law of causality is of subjective origin, as well as the sensation itself; and besides this, our own body also, inasmuch as it appears in space, already belongs to ideas. But Kant was hindered from confessing this by his fear of the Berkeleian idealism.

“The combination of the manifold of perception” is repeatedly given as the essential operation of the understanding, by means of its twelve categories. Yet this is never adequately explained, nor is it shown what this manifold of perception is before it is combined by the understanding. But time and space, the latter in all its three dimensions, are continua, i.e., all their parts are originally not separate but combined. Thus, then, everything that exhibits itself in them (is given) appears originally as a continuum, i.e., its parts appear already combined and require no adventitious combination of a manifold. If, however, some one should seek to interpret that combining of the manifold of perception by saying that I refer the different sense-impressions of one object to this one only—thus, for example, perceiving a bell, I recognise that what affects my eye as yellow, my hand as [pg 046] smooth and hard, my ear as sounding, is yet only one and the same body,—then I reply that this is rather a consequence of the knowledge a priori of the causal nexus (this actual and only function of the understanding), by virtue of which all those different effects upon my different organs of sense yet lead me only to one common cause of them, the nature of the body standing before me, so that my understanding, in spite of the difference and multiplicity of the effects, still apprehends the unity of the cause as a single object, which just on that account exhibits itself in perception. In the beautiful recapitulation of his doctrine which Kant gives at p. 719-726 or V. 747-754 of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” he explains the categories, perhaps more distinctly than anywhere else, as “the mere rule of the synthesis of that which empirical apprehension has given a posteriori.” It seems as if here he had something in his mind, such as that, in the construction of the triangle, the angles give the rule for the composition of the lines; at least by this image one can best explain to oneself what he says of the function of the categories. The preface to the “Metaphysical First Principles of Natural Science” contains a long note which likewise gives an explanation of the categories, and says that they “differ in no respect from the formal acts of the understanding in judging,” except that in the latter subject and predicate can always change places; then the judgment in general is defined in the same passage as “an act through which given ideas first become knowledge of an object.” According to this, the brutes, since they do not judge, must also have no knowledge of objects. In general, according to Kant, there are only conceptions of objects, no perceptions. I, on the contrary, say: Objects exist primarily only for perception, and conceptions are always abstractions from this perception. Therefore abstract thinking must be conducted exactly according to the world present in perception, for it is only their relation to this that gives content to conceptions; and we must [pg 047] assume for the conceptions no other a priori determined form than the faculty of reflection in general, the nature of which is the construction of conceptions, i.e., of abstract non-perceptible ideas, which constitutes the sole function of the reason, as I have shown in the first book. I therefore require that we should reject eleven of the categories, and only retain that of causality, and yet that we should see clearly that its activity is indeed the condition of empirical perception, which accordingly is not merely sensuous but intellectual, and that the object so perceived, the object of experience, is one with the idea, from which there remains nothing to distinguish except the thing in itself.