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

by Norman Kemp Smith

“Representation of something permanent in existence is not the same as permanent representation. For though the representation [of the permanent] may be very changing and variable like all our other representations, not excepting those of matter, it yet refers to something permanent. This latter must therefore be an external thing distinct from all my representations, and its existence must be included in the determination of my own existence, constituting with it but a single experience such as would not take place even internally if it were not also at the same time, in part, external. How this should be possible we are as little capable of explaining further as we are of accounting for our being able to think the abiding in time, the coexistence of which with the variable generates the conception of change.”

The argument of this note varies from that of B 274 ff. only in its use of an ambiguous expression which is perhaps capable of being taken as referring to things in themselves, but which does not seem to have that meaning. “I am just as certainly conscious that there are things outside me which relate to my sense....”

In B 277-8 Kant refers to the empirical fact that determination of time can be made only by relation to outer happenings in space, such as the motion of the sun. This is a point which is further developed in another passage which Kant added in the second edition.

“...in order to understand the possibility of things in conformity with the categories, and so to demonstrate the objective reality of the latter, we need not merely intuitions, but intuitions that are in all cases outer intuitions. When, for instance, we take the pure concepts of relation, we find firstly that in order to obtain something permanent in intuition corresponding to the concept of substance, and so to demonstrate the objective reality of this concept, we require an intuition in space (of matter). For space alone is determined as permanent, while time, and therefore everything that is in inner sense, is in constant flux. Secondly, in order to exhibit change as the intuition corresponding to the concept of causality, we must take as our example motion, i.e. change in space. Only in this way can we obtain the intuition of changes, the possibility of which can never be comprehended through any pure understanding. For change is combination of contradictorily opposed determinations in the existence of one and the same thing. Now how it is possible that from a given state of a thing an opposite state should follow, not only cannot be conceived by any reason without an example, but is actually incomprehensible to reason without intuition. The intuition required is the intuition of the movement of a point in space. The presence of the point in different spaces (as a sequence of opposite determinations) is what first yields to us an intuition of change. For in order that we may afterwards make inner changes likewise thinkable, we must represent time (the form of inner sense) figuratively as a line, and the inner change through the drawing of this line (motion), and so in this manner by means of outer intuition make comprehensible the successive existence of ourselves in different states. The reason of this is that all change, if it is indeed to be perceived as change, presupposes something permanent in intuition, and that in inner sense no permanent intuition is to be met with. Lastly, the possibility of the category of community cannot be comprehended through mere reason alone. Its objective reality is not to be understood without intuition and indeed outer intuition in space.”[1036]

In this passage Kant is modifying the teaching of the first edition in two very essential respects. In the first place, he is now asserting that consciousness of both space and motion is necessary to consciousness of time;[1037] and in the second place, he is maintaining that the categories can acquire meaning only by reference to outer appearances. Had Kant made all the necessary alterations which these new positions involve, he would, as we shall find,[1038] have had entirely to recast the chapters on Schematism and on the Principles of Understanding. Kant was not, however, prepared to make such extensive alterations, and these chapters are therefore left practically unmodified. This is one of the many important points in which the reader is compelled to reinterpret passages of earlier date in the light of Kant’s later utterances. There is also a further difficulty. Does Kant, in maintaining that the categories can acquire significance only in reference to outer perception, also mean to assert that their subsequent employment is limited to the mechanical world of the material sciences? This is a point in regard to which Kant makes no quite direct statement; but indirectly he would seem to indicate that that was not his intention.[1039] He frequently speaks of the states of inner sense as mechanically conditioned. Sensations,[1040] feelings, and desires,[1041] are, he would seem to assert, integral parts of the unitary system of phenomenal existence. Such a view is not, indeed, easily reconcilable with his equating of the principle of substance with the principle of the conservation of matter.[1042] There are here two conflicting positions which Kant has failed to reconcile: the traditional dualistic attitude of Cartesian physics and the quite opposite implications of his Critical phenomenalism. When the former is being held to, Kant has to maintain that psychology can never become a science;[1043] but his Critical teaching consistently developed seems rather to support the view that psychology, despite special difficulties peculiar to its subject matter, can be developed on lines strictly analogous to those of the material sciences.

We may now return to Kant’s main argument. This new refutation of idealism in the second edition differs from that given in the fourth Paralogism of the first edition, not only in method of argument but also in the nature of the conclusion which it seeks to establish. Indeed it proves the direct opposite of what is asserted in the first edition. The earlier proof sought to show that, as regards immediacy of apprehension and subjectivity of existence, outer appearances stand on the same level as do our inner experiences. The proof of the second edition, on the other hand, argues that though outer appearances are immediately apprehended they must be existences distinct from the subjective states through which the mind represents them. The two arguments agree, indeed, in establishing immediacy, but as that which is taken as immediately known is in the one case a subjective state and in the other is an independent existence, the immediacy calls in the two cases for entirely different methods of proof. The first method consisted in viewing outer experiences as a subdivision within our inner experiences. The new method views their relation as not that of including and included, but of conditioning and conditioned; and it is now to outer experience that the primary position is assigned. So far is outer experience from being possible only as part of inner experience, that on the contrary inner experience, consciousness of the flux of inner states, is only possible in and through experience of independent material bodies in space. A sentence from each proof will show how completely their conclusions are opposed.

“Outer objects (bodies) are mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the objects of which are something only through these representations. Apart from them they are nothing.”[1044] “Perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me, and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me.”[1045]

The one sentence asserts that outer objects are representations; the other argues that they must be existences distinct from their representations. The one inculcates a subjectivism of a very extreme type; the other results in a realism, which though ultimately phenomenalist, is none the less genuinely objective in character. This difference is paralleled by the nature of the idealisms to which the two proofs are opposed and which they profess to refute. The argument of the Paralogism of the first edition is itself Berkeleian, and refutes only the problematic idealism of Descartes. The argument of the second edition, though formally directed only against Descartes, constitutes a no less complete refutation of the position of Berkeley. In its realism it has kinship with the positions of Arnauld and of Reid, while, in attempting to combine this realism with due recognition of the force and validity of Hume’s sceptical philosophy, it breaks through all previous classifications, formulates a profoundly original substitute for the previously existing theories, and inaugurates a new era in the theory of knowledge.

As already pointed out,[1046] Kant restates the distinction between the subjective and the objective in a manner which places the problem of knowledge in an entirely new light. The subjective is not to be regarded as opposite in nature to the objective, but as a subspecies within it. It does not proceed parallel with the sequence of natural existences, but is itself part of the natural system which consciousness reveals. Sensations, in the form in which they are consciously apprehended by us, do not constitute our consciousness of nature, but are themselves events which are possible only under the conditions which the natural world itself supplies.[1047] The Cartesian dualism of the subjective and the objective is thus subordinated to the Critical distinction between appearance and reality. Kant’s phenomenalism is a genuine alternative to the Berkeleian teaching, and not, as Schopenhauer and so many others have sought to maintain, merely a variant upon it.

The striking contradiction between Kant’s various refutations of idealism has led some of Kant’s most competent critics to give a different interpretation of the argument of the second edition from that given above. These critics take the independent and permanent objects which are distinguished from our subjective representations to be things in themselves. That is to say, they interpret this refutation as based upon Kant’s semi-Critical doctrine of the transcendental object (in the form in which it is employed for the solution of the Antinomies), and so as agreeing with the refutation given in the Prolegomena.[1048] Kant is taken as rejecting idealism because of his belief in things in themselves. This is the view adopted by Benno Erdmann,[1049] Sidgwick,[1050] A. J. Balfour.[1051]