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

by Norman Kemp Smith

But to press such criticisms is to ignore the spirit for the sake of the letter. Kant here breaks free from all his habitual modes of expression for the very good and sufficient reason that he is striving to develop a position more catholic and comprehensive than any previously adopted. He is seeking to formulate a position which, without in any way justifying or encouraging the transcendent employment of the categories, will yet retain for thought the capacity of self-limitation, that is, of forming concepts which will reveal the existence of things in themselves and so will enable the mind to apprehend the radical distinction between things in themselves and things experienced. But he has not yet discovered that in so doing he is committing himself to the thesis that the distinction is mediated, not by the understanding, but by Reason, not by categories, but by Ideas.[1097] As I have already indicated, this tendency is crossed by another derived from his preoccupation with moral problems, namely, the desire to defend, in a manner which his Critical teaching does not justify, the noumenal existence of the self as a thinking being.

THE TRANSCENDENTAL ANALYTIC

Book II
THE ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES

The distinction which Kant here introduces for the first time between understanding (now viewed as the faculty only of concepts) and the faculty of judgment (Urtheilskraft) is artificial and extremely arbitrary.[1098] As we have seen,[1099] his own real position involves a complete departure from the traditional distinction between conceiving, judging, and reasoning, as separate processes. All thinking without exception finds expression in judgment. Judgment is the fundamental activity of the understanding. It is “an act which contains all its other acts.” Kant is bent, however, upon forcing the contents of the Critique into the external framework supplied by the traditional logic, viewed as an architectonic; and we have therefore no option save to take account of his exposition in the actual form which he has chosen to give to it. Since general logic develops its teaching under three separate headings, as the logic of conception, the logic of judgment, and the logic of reasoning, the Critique has to be made to conform to this tripartite division. The preceding book is accordingly described as dealing with concepts, and this second book as dealing with judgments or principles; while understanding and the faculty of judgment, now viewed as independent, are redefined to meet the exigencies of this new arrangement, the former as being “the faculty of rules,” and the latter as being “the faculty of subsuming under rules, i.e. of distinguishing whether something does or does not stand under a given rule (casus datae legis).”

The reader need not strive to discover any deep-lying ground or justification for these definitions.[1100] Architectonic, that ‘open sesame’ for so many of the secrets of the Critique, is the all-sufficient spell to resolve the mystery. As a matter of fact, Kant is here taking advantage of the popular meaning of the term judgment in the sense in which we speak of a man of good judgment; and in order that judgment and understanding may be distinguished he then imposes an artificial limitation upon the meaning in which the latter term is to be employed.

As formal logic abstracts from all content, it cannot, Kant maintains, supply rules for the exercise of “judgment.” It is otherwise with transcendental logic, which in the pure forms of sensibility possesses a content enabling it to define in an a priori manner the specific cases to which concepts must be applicable. The Analytic of Principles is thus able to supply “a canon for the faculty of judgment, instructing it how to apply to appearances the concepts of understanding which contain the condition of a priori rules.”[1101] This will involve (1) the defining of the sensuous conditions under which the a priori rules may be applied—the problem of the chapter on schematism; and (2) the formulating of the rules in their sensuous, though a priori, concreteness—the problem of the chapter on “the system of all principles of pure understanding.”

Such is Kant’s own very misleading account of the purposes of these two chapters. There are other and sounder reasons why they should be introduced. In the Analytic of Concepts, as we have seen,[1102] the transcendental deduction only succeeds in proving that a priori forms of unity are required for the possibility of experience. No proof is given that the various categories are just the particular forms required, and that they are one and all indispensable. This omission can be made good only by a series of proofs, directed to showing, in reference to each separate category, its validity within experience and its indispensableness for the possibility of experience. These proofs are given in the second of the two chapters. The chapter on schematism is preparatory in character; it draws attention to the importance of the temporal aspect of human experience, and defines the categories in the form in which they present themselves in an experience thus conditioned by a priori intuition.

CHAPTER I
THE SCHEMATISM OF PURE CONCEPTS OF UNDERSTANDING[1103]

The more artificial aspect of Kant’s argument again appears in the reason which he assigns for the existence of a problem of schematism, namely, that pure concepts, and the sensuous intuitions which have to be subsumed under them, are completely opposite in nature. No such explanation can be accepted. For if category and sensuous intuition are really heterogeneous, no subsumption is possible; and if they are not really heterogeneous, no such problem as Kant here refers to will exist. The heterogeneity which Kant here asserts is merely that difference of nature which follows from the diversity of their functions. The category is formal and determines structure; intuition yields the content which is thereby organised. Accordingly, the “third thing,” which Kant postulates as required to bring category and intuition together, is not properly so describable; it is simply the two co-operating in the manner required for the possibility of experience. Kant’s method of stating the problem of schematism is, however, so completely misleading, that before we can profitably proceed, the various strands in his highly artificial argument must be further disentangled. This is an ungrateful task, but has at least the compensating interest of admirably illustrating the kind of influence which Kant’s logical architectonic is constantly exercising upon his statement of Critical principles.

The architectonic has in this connection two very unfortunate consequences. It leads Kant to describe schematism as a process of subsumption, and to speak of the transcendental schema as “a third thing.” Neither assertion is legitimate. Schematism, properly understood, is not a process of subsumption, but, as Kant has already recognised in A 124, of synthetic interpretation. Creative synthesis, whereby contents are apprehended in terms of functional relations, not subsumption of particulars under universals that are homogeneous with them, is what Kant must ultimately mean by the schematism of the pure forms of understanding. A category, that is to say, may not be viewed as a predicate of a possible judgment, and as being applied to a subject independently apprehended; its function is to articulate the judgment as a whole. The category of substance and attribute, for instance, is the form of the categorical judgment, and may not be equated with any one of its single parts.