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

by Norman Kemp Smith

“This [objective ground of all association of appearances] can nowhere be found, except in the principle of the unity of apperception in respect of all forms of knowledge which can belong to me. In accordance with this principle all appearances must so enter the mind, or be so apprehended, that they fit together to constitute the unity of apperception. This would be impossible without synthetic unity in their connection, and that unity is therefore also objectively necessary. The objective unity of all empirical consciousness in one consciousness, that of original apperception, is therefore the necessary condition of all (even of all possible) perception; and the affinity of all appearances, near or remote, is a necessary consequence of a synthesis in imagination which is grounded a priori on rules.”[902]

The fundamental characteristic of consciousness is the unified form in which alone it can exist; only when this unity is recognised as indispensably necessary, and therefore as invariably present whenever consciousness exists at all, can the inter-relations of the contents of consciousness be properly defined.

If this main contention of the Critical teaching be accepted, Hume’s associationist standpoint is no longer tenable. Association cannot be taken to be an ultimate and inexplicable property of our mental states. Nor is it a property which can be regarded as belonging to presentations viewed as so many independent existences. It is conditioned by the unity of consciousness, and therefore rests upon the “transcendental” conditions which Critical analysis reveals. Since the unity of consciousness conditions association, it cannot be explained as the outcome and product of the mechanism of association.

In restating the objective deduction in the second edition, Kant has omitted all reference to this doctrine of objective affinity. His reasons for this omission were probably twofold. In the first place, it has been expounded in terms of a transcendental psychology, which, as we shall find, is conjectural in character. And secondly, the phrase “objective affinity” is, as I have already pointed out, decidedly misleading. It seems to imply that Kant is postulating, without independent proof, that noumenal conditions must be such as to supply an orderly manifold of sense data. But though the doctrine of objective affinity is eliminated, its place is to some extent taken[903] by the proof that all apprehension is an act of judgment and therefore involves factors which cannot be reduced to, or explained in terms of, association.

There are a number of points in the deduction of the first edition which call for further explanatory and critical comment. The first of these concerns the somewhat misleading character of the term a priori as applied to the categories. It carries with it rationalistic associations to which the Critical standpoint, properly understood, yields no support. The categories are for Kant of merely de facto nature. They have no intrinsic validity. They are proved only as being the indispensable conditions of what is before the mind as brute fact, namely, conscious experience. By the a priori is meant merely those relational factors which are required to supplement the given manifold in order to constitute our actual consciousness. And, as Kant is careful to point out, the experience, as conditions of which their validity is thus established, is of a highly specific character, resting upon synthesis of a manifold given in space and time. That is to say, their indispensableness is proved only for a consciousness which in these fundamental respects is constituted like our own.[904] And secondly, the validity of the a priori categories, even in our human thinking, is established only in reference to that empirical world which is constructed out of the given manifold in terms of the intuitive forms, space and time. Their validity is a merely phenomenal validity. They are valid of appearances, but not of things in themselves. The a priori is thus doubly de facto: first as a condition of brute fact, namely, the actuality of our human consciousness; and secondly, as conditioning a consciousness whose knowledge is limited to appearances. It is a relative, not an absolute a priori. Acceptance of it does not, therefore, commit us to rationalism in the ordinary meaning of that term. Its credentials are conferred upon it by what is mere fact; it does not represent an order superior to the actual and legislative for it. In other words, it is Critical, not Leibnizian in character. No transcendent metaphysics can be based upon it. In formulating this doctrine of the a priori as yielding objective insight and yet as limited in the sphere of its application, the Critique of Pure Reason marks an epoch in the history of scepticism, no less than in the development of Idealist teaching.

There is one important link in the deduction, as above given, which is hardly calculated to support the conclusions that depend upon it. Kant, as we have already noted,[905] asserts that the categories express the minimum of unity necessary for the possibility of apperception. A contention so essential to the argument calls for the most careful scrutiny and a meticulous exactitude of proof. As a matter of fact, such proof is not to be found in any part of the deductions, whether of the first or of the second editions. It is attempted only in the later sections on the Principles of Understanding, and even there it is developed, in any really satisfactory fashion, only in regard to the categories of causality and reciprocity.[906] This proof, however, as there given, is an argument which in originality, subtlety and force goes far to atone for all shortcomings. It completes the objective deduction by developing in masterly fashion (in spite of the diffuse and ill-arranged character of the text) the central contention for which the deduction stands. But in the transcendental deduction itself, we find only such an argument—if it may be called an argument—as follows from the identification of apperception with understanding.

“The unity of apperception, in relation to the synthesis of imagination, is the understanding.... In understanding there are pure a priori forms of knowledge which contain the necessary unity of pure synthesis of imagination in respect of all possible appearances. But these are the categories, i.e. pure concepts of understanding.”[907]

The point is again merely assumed in A 125-6. So also in A 126:

“Although through experience we learn many laws, these are only special determinations of still higher laws, of which the highest, under which all others stand, originate a priori in the understanding itself....”[908]

Again in A 129 it is argued that as we prescribe a priori rules to which all experience must conform, those rules cannot be derived from experience, but must precede and condition it, and can do so only as originating from ourselves (aus uns selbst).