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

by Norman Kemp Smith

The problem of the Critique, the analysis of our awareness of meaning, is a single problem, and each of the above elements involves all the others. Kant, however, for reasons into which I need not here enter, has assigned part of the problem to what he entitles the Transcendental Aesthetic, and another part to the Transcendental Dialectic. Only what remains is dealt with in what is really the most important of the three divisions, the Transcendental Analytic. But as the problem is one and indivisible, the discussions in all three sections are condemned to incompleteness save in so far as Kant, by happy inconsistency, transgresses the limits imposed by his method of treatment. The Aesthetic really does no more than prepare the ground for the more adequate analysis of space and time given in the Analytic and Dialectic, while the problem of the Analytic is itself incompletely stated until the more comprehensive argument of the Dialectic is taken into account.[48] Thus the statement in the Aesthetic that space and time are given to the mind by the sensuous faculty of receptivity is modified in the Analytic through recognition of the part which the syntheses and concepts of the understanding must play in the construction of these forms; and in the Dialectic their apprehension is further found to involve an Idea of Reason. Similarly, in the concluding chapter of the Analytic, in discussing the grounds for distinguishing between appearance and reality, Kant omits all reference to certain important considerations which first emerge into view in the course of the Dialectic. Yet, though no question is more vital to Critical teaching, the reader is left under the impression that the treatment given in the Analytic is complete and final.

Partly as a consequence of this, partly owing to Kant’s inconsistent retention of earlier modes of thinking, there are traceable throughout the Critique two opposed views of the nature of the distinction between appearance and reality. On the one view, this distinction is mediated by the relational categories of the understanding, especially by that of causality; on the other view, it is grounded in the Ideas of Reason. The former sets appearance in opposition to reality; the latter regards the distinction in a more tenable fashion, as being between realities less and more comprehensively conceived.[49]

A similar defect is caused by Kant’s isolation of immanent from transcendent metaphysics.[50] The former is dealt with only in the Analytic, the latter only in the Dialectic. The former, Kant asserts, is made possible by the forms of sensibility and the categories of the understanding; the latter he traces to an illegitimate employment of the Ideas of Reason. Such a mode of statement itself reveals the impossibility of any sharp distinction between the immanent and the transcendent. If science is conditioned by Ideals which arouse the mind to further acquisitions, and at the same time reveal the limitations to which our knowledge is for ever condemned to remain subject; if, in other words, everything known, in being correctly known, must be apprehended as appearance (i.e. as a subordinate existence within a more comprehensive reality), the distinction between the immanent and the transcendent falls within and not beyond the domain of our total experience. The meaning which our consciousness discloses in each of its judgments is an essentially metaphysical one. It involves the thought, though not the knowledge, of something more than what the experienced can ever itself be found to be. The metaphysical is immanent in our knowledge; the transcendent is merely a name for this immanent factor when it is falsely viewed as capable of isolation and of independent treatment. By Kant’s own showing, the task of the Dialectic is not merely to refute the pretensions of transcendent metaphysics, but to develop the above general thesis, in confirmation of the positive conclusions established in the Analytic. The Critique will then supply the remedy for certain evils to which the human mind has hitherto been subject.

“The Critique of Pure Reason is a preservative against a malady which has its source in our rational nature. This malady is the opposite of the love of home (the home-sickness) which binds us to our fatherland. It is a longing to pass out beyond our immediate confines and to relate ourselves to other worlds.”[51]

8. THE PLACE OF THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON IN KANT’S PHILOSOPHICAL SYSTEM

The positive character of Kant’s conclusions cannot be properly appreciated save in the wider perspectives that open to view in the Critique of Practical Reason and in the Critique of Judgment. Though in the Critique of Pure Reason a distinction is drawn between theoretical and moral belief, it is introduced in a somewhat casual manner, and there is no clear indication of the far-reaching consequences that follow in its train. Unfortunately also, even in his later writings, Kant is very unfair to himself in his methods of formulating the distinction. His real intention is to show that scientific knowledge is not coextensive with human insight; but he employs a misleading terminology, contrasting knowledge with faith, scientific demonstration with practical belief.

As already indicated, the term knowledge has, in the Critical philosophy, a much narrower connotation than in current speech. It is limited to sense-experience, and to such inferences therefrom as can be obtained by the only methods that Kant is willing to recognise, namely, the mathematico-physical. Aesthetic, moral and religious experience, and even organic phenomena, are excluded from the field of possible knowledge.

In holding to this position, Kant is, of course, the child of his time. The absolute sufficiency of the Newtonian physics is a presupposition of all his utterances on this theme. Newton, he believes, has determined in a quite final manner the principles, methods and limits of scientific investigation. For though Kant himself imposes upon science a further limitation, namely, to appearances, he conceives himself, in so doing, not as weakening Newton’s natural philosophy, but as securing it against all possible objections. And to balance the narrow connotation thus assigned to the term knowledge, he has to give a correspondingly wide meaning to the terms faith, moral belief, subjective principles of interpretation. If this be not kept constantly in mind, the reader is certain to misconstrue the character and tendencies of Kant’s actual teaching.

But though the advances made by the sciences since Kant’s time have rendered this mode of delimiting the field of knowledge altogether untenable, his method of defining the sources of philosophical insight has proved very fruitful, and has many adherents at the present day. What Kant does—stated in broad outline—is to distinguish between the problems of existence and the problems of value, assigning the former to science and the latter to philosophy.[52] Theoretical philosophy, represented in his system by the Critique of Pure Reason, takes as its province the logical values, that is, the distinction of truth and falsity, and defining their criteria determines the nature and limits of our theoretical insight. Kant finds that these criteria enable us to distinguish between truth and falsity only on the empirical plane. Beyond making possible a distinction between appearance and reality, they have no applicability in the metaphysical sphere.

The Critique of Practical Reason deals with values of a very different character. The faculty of Reason, which, as already noted,[53] renders our consciousness a purposive agency controlled by Ideal standards, is also, Kant maintains, the source of the moral sanctions. But whereas in the theoretical field it subdues our minds to the discipline of experience, and restrains our intellectual ambitions within the limits of the empirical order, it here summons us to sacrifice every natural impulse and every secular advantage to the furtherance of an end that has absolute value. In imposing duties, it raises our life from the “pragmatic”[54] level of a calculating expediency to the higher plane of a categorical imperative.