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

by Norman Kemp Smith

As Vaihinger,[1052] Caird,[1053] and Adamson[1054] have shown, such an interpretation is at complete variance with the actual text. This is, indeed, so obvious upon unbiassed examination that the only point which repays discussion is the question, why Benno Erdmann and those who follow him should have felt constrained to place so unnatural an interpretation upon Kant’s words. The explanation seems to lie in Erdmann’s convinced belief, plainly shown in all his writings upon Kant, that the Critique expounds a single consistent and uniform standpoint.[1055] If such belief be justified, there is no alternative save to interpret Kant’s refutation of idealism in the manner which Erdmann adopts. For as the subjectivism of much of Kant’s teaching is beyond question, consistency can be obtained only by sacrifice of all that conflicts with it. Thus, and thus alone, can Erdmann’s rendering of the refutation of the second edition be sustained; the actual wording, taken in and by itself, does not support it. Kant here departs from his own repeated assertion, in the second hardly less than in the first edition of the Critique, of the subjectivity of outer appearances. But, as Vaihinger justly contends, Kant was never greater than in this violation of self-consistency, “never more consistent than in this inconsistency.” Tendencies, previously active but hitherto inarticulate, are at last liberated. If the chrysalis stage of the intense brooding of the twelve years of Critical thinking was completed in the writing of the first edition of the Critique, the philosophy which then emerged only attains to mature stature in those extensions of the Critique, scattered through it from Preface to Paralogisms, which embody this realistic theory of the independent existence of material nature. For this theory is no mere external accretion, and no mere reversal of subordinate tenets, but a ripening of germinal ideas to which, even in their more embryonic form, the earlier Critical teaching owed much of its inspiration, and which, when consciously adopted and maturely formulated, constitute such a deepening of its teaching as almost amounts to transformation. The individual self is no longer viewed as being the bearer of nature, but as its offspring and expression, and as being, like nature, interpretable in its twofold aspect, as appearance and as noumenally grounded. The bearer of appearance is not the individual subject, but those transcendental creative agencies upon which man and nature alike depend. Both man and nature transcend the forms in which they are apprehended; and nothing in experience justifies the giving of such priority to the individual mind as must be involved in any acceptance of subjectivist theory. Though man is cognisant of space and time, comprehending them within the limits of his consciousness, and though in all experience unities are involved which cannot originate within or be explained by experience, it is no less true that man is himself subject to the conditions of space and time, and that the synthetic unities which point beyond experience do not carry us to a merely individual subject. If man is not a part or product of nature, neither is nature the product of man. Kant’s transcendentalism, in its maturest form, is genuinely phenomenalist in character. That is the view which has already been developed above, in the discussion of Kant’s transcendental deduction. I shall strive to confirm it by comparison of the teaching of the two editions of the Critique in regard to the reality of outer appearances.

Schopenhauer, to whom this new development of the Critical teaching was altogether anathema, the cloven hoof of the Hegelian heresies, denounced it as a temporary and ill-judged distortion of the true Critical position, maintaining that it is incapable of combination with Kant’s central teaching, and that it finds no support in the tenets, pure and unperverted, of the first edition. Kant, he holds, is here untrue to himself, and temporarily, under the stress of polemical discussion, lapses from the heights to which he had successfully made his way, and upon which he had securely established, in agreement with Plato and in extension of Berkeley, the doctrine of all genuine philosophical thinking, the doctrine of the Welt als Vorstellung.

We may agree with Schopenhauer in regarding those sections of the first edition of the Critique which were omitted in the second edition as being a permanently valuable expression of Kantian thought, and as containing much that finds no equally adequate expression in the passages which were substituted for them; and yet may challenge his interpretation of both editions alike. If, as we have already been arguing, we must regard Kant’s thinking as in large degree tentative, that is, as progressing by the experimental following out of divergent tendencies, we may justly maintain that among the most characteristic features of his teaching are the readiness with which he makes changes to meet deeper insight, and the persistency with which he strives to attain a position in which there will be least sacrifice or blurring of any helpful distinction, and fullest acknowledgment of the manifold and diverse considerations that are really essential. Recognising these features, we shall be prepared to question the legitimacy of Schopenhauer’s opposition between the teaching of the two editions. We shall rather expect to find that the two editions agree in the alternating statement and retraction of conflicting positions, and that the later edition, however defective in this or that aspect as compared with the first edition, none the less expresses the maturer insight, and represents a further stage in the development of ideas that have been present from the start. It may perhaps for this very reason be more contradictory in its teaching; it will at least yield clearer and more adequate formulation of the diverse consequences and conflicting implications of the earlier tenets. It will be richer in content, more open-eyed in its adoption of mutually contradictory positions, freer therefore from unconscious assumptions, and better fitted to supply the data necessary for judgment upon its own defects. Only those critics who are blind to the stupendous difficulties of the tasks which Kant here sets himself, and credulous of their speedy and final completion, can complain of the result. Philosophical thinkers of the most diverse schools in Germany, France, and England, have throughout the nineteenth century received from the Critique much of their inspiration. The profound influence which Kant has thus exercised upon succeeding thought must surely be reckoned a greater achievement than any that could have resulted from the constructing of a system so consistent and unified, that the alternative would lie only between its acceptance and its rejection. Ultimately the value of a philosophy consists more in the richness of its content and the comprehensiveness of its dialectic, than in the logical perfection of its formal structure. The latter quality is especially unfitted to a philosophy which inaugurated a new era, and formulated the older problems in an altogether novel manner. Under such conditions fertility of suggestion and readiness to modify or even recast adopted positions, openness to fuller insight acquired through the very solutions that may at first have seemed to satisfy and close the issues, are more to be valued than the power to remove contradictions and attain consistency. This is the point of view which I shall endeavour to justify in reference to the matters now before us. In particular there are two points to be settled: first, whether and how far the argument of the second edition is prefigured in the first edition; and secondly, whether and to what extent it harmonises with, and gives expression to, all that is most central and genuinely Critical in both editions.

In the first place we must observe that the fourth Paralogism occurs in a section which bears all the signs of having been independently written and incorporated later into the main text. It is certainly of earlier origin than those sections which represent the third and fourth layers of the deduction of the first edition, and very possibly was composed in the middle ’seventies. Indeed, apart from single paragraphs which may have been added in the process of adapting it to the main text, it could quite well, so far as its refutation of idealism is concerned, be of even earlier date. The question as to the consistency of the refutation of the second edition with the teaching of the first edition must therefore chiefly concern those parts of the Analytic which connect with the later forms of the transcendental deduction, that is to say, with the transcendental deduction itself, with the Analogies and Postulates, and with particular paragraphs that have been added in other sections. We have already noted how Kant from the very first uses terms which involve the drawing of a distinction between representations and their objects. Passages in which this distinction occurs can be cited from both the Aesthetic and the Analytic, and two such occur in the fourth Paralogism itself.[1056] Objects, he says, “correspond” to their representations. A variation in expression is found in such passages as the following:

“...the objects of outer perception also actually exist (auch wirklich sind) in that very form in which they are intuited in space....”[1057]

Such language is meaningless, and could never have been chosen, if Kant had not, even in the earlier stages of his thinking, postulated a difference between the existence of an object and the existence of its representation. He must at least have distinguished between the representations and their content. That, however, he could have done without advancing to the further assertion of their independent existence. Probably he was not at all clear in his own mind, and was too preoccupied with the other complexities of his problem, to have thought out his position to a definite decision. When, however, as in the fourth Paralogism, he made any attempt so to do, he would seem to have felt constrained to adopt the extreme subjectivist position. Expressions to that effect are certainly very much more common than those above mentioned. This is what affords Schopenhauer such justification, certainly very strong, as he can cite for regarding subjectivism as the undoubted teaching of the first edition.

When, however, we also take account of the very different teaching which is contained in the important section on the Postulates of Empirical Thought, the balance of evidence is decisively altered. The counter-teaching, which is suggested by certain of the conflicting factors of the transcendental deduction and of the Analogies, here again receives clear and detailed expression. This is the more significant, as it is in this section that Kant sets himself formally to define what is to be understood by empirical reality. It thus contains his, so to speak, official declaration as to the mode of existence possessed by outer appearances. The passage chiefly relevant is as follows:

“If the existence of the thing is bound up with some perceptions according to the principles of their empirical connection (the Analogies), we can determine its existence antecedently to the perception of it, and consequently, to that extent, in an a priori manner. For as the existence of the thing is bound up with our perceptions in a possible experience, we are able in the series of possible perceptions, and under the guidance of the Analogies, to make the transition from our actual perception to the thing in question. Thus we discover the existence of a magnetic matter pervading all bodies from the perception of the attracted iron filings, although the constitution of our organs cuts us off from all immediate perception of that matter. For in accordance with the laws of sensibility and the connection of our perceptions in a single experience, we should, were our senses more refined, actually experience it in an immediate empirical intuition. The grossness of our senses does not in any way decide the form of possible experience in general.”[1058]

Now it cannot, of course, be argued that the above passage is altogether unambiguous. We can, if we feel sufficiently constrained thereto, place upon it an interpretation which would harmonise it with Kant’s more usual subjectivist teaching, namely as meaning that in the progressive construction of experience, or in the ideal completion which follows upon assumption of more refined sense-organs, possible empirical realities are made to become, or are assumed to become, real, but that until the possible experiences are thus realised in fact or in ideal hypothesis, they exist outwardly only in the form of their noumenal conditions. And as a matter of fact, this is how Kant himself interprets the teaching of this section in the process of applying it in solution of the antinomies.

“Accordingly, if I represent to myself the aggregate of all objects of the senses existing in all time and all places, I do not set them, antecedently to experience, in space and time. The representation is nothing but the thought of a possible experience in its absolute completeness. Since the objects are mere representations, only in such a possible experience are they given. To say that they exist prior to all my experience, can only be taken as meaning that they will be met with, if, starting from actual perception, I advance to that part of experience to which they belong. The cause of the empirical conditions of this advance (that which determines what members I shall meet with, or how far I can meet with any such in my regress) is transcendental, and is therefore necessarily unknown to me. We are not, however, concerned with this transcendental cause, but only with the rule of progression in that experience in which objects, that is to say, appearances, are given. Moreover, in outcome it is a matter of indifference whether I say that in the empirical progress in space I can meet with stars a hundred times farther removed than the outermost now perceptible to me, or whether I say that they are perhaps to be met with in cosmical space even though no human being has ever perceived or ever will perceive them. For though they might be given as things in themselves, without relation to possible experience, they are still nothing to me, and therefore are not objects, save in so far as they are contained in the series of the empirical regress.”[1059]