A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'

by Norman Kemp Smith

But the problem of the deduction proper is not yet raised. On the one hand, Kant has defined what the concept of the objective must be taken as involving, and on the other, has pointed out that since the given as given is an unconnected manifold, any categories through which it may be interpreted must be of independent origin; but it still remains to be proved that the above is a valid as well as a possible mode of construing the given appearances. The categories, as a priori concepts, originate from within. By what right may we assert that they not only relate to an object, but even constitute the very concept of it? Are appearances legitimately interpretable in any such manner? It was, we may believe, in the process of answering this question that Kant came to realise that the objects of our representations must no longer be regarded as things in themselves. For, as he finds, a solution is possible only on the further assumption that the mind is legislating merely for the world of sense-experience, and is making no assertion in regard to the absolutely and independently real. Kant’s method of proof is the transcendental, i.e. he seeks to demonstrate that this interpretation of the given is indispensably necessary as being a sine qua non of its possible apprehension. This is achieved by means of the conclusion already established through the preliminary steps of the subjective deduction, namely, that all consciousness involves self-consciousness. Kant’s proof of the objective validity of the categories consists in showing that only by means of the interpretation of appearances as empirically objective is self-consciousness possible at all.

The self-consciousness of the subjective deduction, in the preliminary form above stated, is, however, itself empirical. Kant, developing on more strictly Critical lines the argument which had accompanied his earlier doctrine of the transcendental object, now proceeds to maintain in what is at once the most fruitful and the most misleading of his tenets, that the ultimate ground of the possibility of consciousness and therefore also of empirical self-consciousness is the transcendental unity of apperception. Such apperception, to use Kant’s ambiguous phraseology, precedes experience as its a priori condition. The interpretation of given appearances through a priori categories is a necessity of consciousness because it is a condition of self-consciousness; and it is a condition of self-consciousness because it alone will account for the transcendental apperception upon which all empirical self-consciousness ultimately depends.

One chief reason why Kant’s deduction is found so baffling and illusive is that it rests upon an interpretation of the unity of apperception which is very definitely drawn, but to which Kant himself gives only the briefest and most condensed expression. I shall therefore take the liberty of restating it in more explicit terms. The true or transcendental self has no content of its own through which it can gain knowledge of itself. It is mere identity, I am I. In other words, self-consciousness is a mere form through which contents that never themselves constitute the self are yet apprehended as being objects to the self. Thus though the self in being conscious of time or duration must be conscious of itself as identical throughout the succession of its experiences, that identity can never be discovered in those experiences; it can only be thought as a condition of them. The continuity of memory, for instance, is not a possible substitute for transcendental apperception. As the subjective deduction demonstrates, self-consciousness conditions memory, and cannot therefore be reduced to or be generated by it.[892] When, however, such considerations are allowed their due weight, the necessity of postulating a transcendental unity becomes only the more evident. Though it can never itself be found among appearances, it is an interpretation which we are none the less compelled to give to appearances.

To summarise before proceeding. We have obtained two important conclusions: first, that all consciousness involves self-consciousness; and secondly, that self-consciousness is a mere form, in terms of which contents that do not constitute the self are apprehended as existing for the self. The first leads up to the second, and the second is equivalent to the assertion that there can be no such thing as a pure self-consciousness, i.e. a consciousness in which the self is aware of itself and of nothing but itself. Self-consciousness, to be possible at all, must at the same time be a consciousness of something that is not-self. Only one further step is now required for the completion of the deduction, namely, proof that this not-self, consciousness of which is necessary to the possibility of self-consciousness, must consist in empirical objects apprehended in terms of the categories. For proof Kant again appeals to the indispensableness of apperception. As no intuitions can enter consciousness which are not capable of being related to the self, they must be so related to one another that, notwithstanding their variety and diversity, the self can still be conscious of itself as identical throughout them all. In other words, no intuition can be related to the self that is incapable of being combined together with all the other intuitions to form a unitary consciousness. I may here quote from the text of the second edition:[893]

“...only in so far as I can grasp the manifold of the representations in one consciousness, do I call them one and all mine. For otherwise I should have as many-coloured and diverse a self as I have representations of which I am conscious to myself.”

Or as it is stated in the first edition:[894]

“We are a priori aware of the complete identity of the self in respect of all representations which belong to our knowledge ... as a necessary condition of the possibility of all representations.”

These are the considerations which lead Kant to entitle the unity of apperception transcendental. He so names it for the reason that, though it is not itself a priori in the manner of the categories, we are yet enabled by its means to demonstrate that the unity which is necessary for possible experience can be securely counted upon in the manifold of all possible representations, and because (as he believed) it also enables us to prove that the forms of such unity are the categories of the understanding.

To the argument supporting this last conclusion Kant does not give the attention which its importance would seem to deserve. He points out that as the given is an unconnected manifold, its unity can be obtained only by synthesis, and that such synthesis must conform to the conditions prescribed by the unity of apperception. That these conditions coincide with the categories he does not, however, attempt to prove. He apparently believes that this has been already established in the metaphysical deduction.[895] The forms of unity demanded by apperception, he feels justified in assuming, are the categories. They may be regarded as expressing the minimum of unity necessary to the possibility of self-consciousness. If sensations cannot be interpreted as the diverse attributes of unitary substances, if events cannot be viewed as arising out of one another, if the entire world in space cannot be conceived as a system of existences reciprocally interdependent, all unity must vanish from experience, and apperception will be utterly impossible.[896]

The successive steps of the total argument of the deduction, as given in the first edition, are therefore as follows: Consciousness of time involves empirical self-consciousness; empirical self-consciousness is conditioned by a transcendental self-consciousness; and such transcendental self-consciousness is itself, in turn, conditioned by consciousness of objects. The argument thus completed becomes the proof of mutual interdependence. Self-consciousness and consciousness of objects, as polar opposites, mutually condition one another. Only through consciousness of both simultaneously can consciousness of either be attained. Only in and through reference to an object can an idea be related to a self, and so be accompanied by that self-consciousness which conditions recognition, and through recognition all the varying forms in which our consciousness can occur. From the point of view, however, of a Critical enquiry apperception is the more important of the two forms of consciousness. For though each is the causa existendi of the other, self-consciousness has the unique distinction of being the causa cognoscendi of the objective and a priori validity of the forms of understanding.