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

by Norman Kemp Smith

We may now proceed to consider the evidence in support of the early origin of the central portions of the Dialectic—the sections on the antinomies. As Benno Erdmann[1341] has very conclusively shown, preoccupation with the problem of antinomy was the chief cause of the revolution which took place in Kant’s views in 1769, and which found expression in his Dissertation of 1770. It was the existence of antinomy which led Kant to recognise the subjectivity of space and time. That is to say, it led him to develop that doctrine of transcendental idealism which reappears in the concluding sections of the Aesthetic, and which was recast and developed in the Analytic. Already in the Dissertation it supplies the key for the solution of the problems concerning infinity. The impossibility of completing the space, time, and causal series, and the consequent impossibility of satisfying the demands of the mind for totality, simplicity and unconditionedness, do not, it is there maintained, discredit reason, but only serve to establish the subjectivity of the sensuous forms to which the element of infinitude is in all cases due.

Kant’s thinking was, of course, diverted into an entirely new channel (as his letter to Herz of February 21, 1772,[1342] shows), when he came to realise that the metaphysical validity or invalidity of thought must be decided prior to any attempt to discover a positive solution of such problems as are presented by the antinomies. And when, owing to the renewed influence of Hume, at some time subsequent to the date of the letter to Herz, this new problem was recognised as being the problem of a priori synthesis, all questions regarding the nature of the absolutely real were made to take secondary rank, yielding precedence to those of logical theory. When the antinomy problems re-emerge, their discussion assumes Critical form.

In three fundamental respects Kant’s treatment of the antinomies in the Dissertation differs from that of the Critique. In the first place, the demand for totality or absoluteness is not in the Dissertation ascribed to a separate faculty. Indeed Kant’s words would seem to show that at times he had inclined to ascribe it merely to the free-ranging fancy or imagination.[1343] Secondly, as the various antinomies were traced exclusively to the influence of space and time upon pure thought, they were treated together, and no classification of them was attempted. And lastly, though Kant’s utterances are somewhat ambiguous,[1344] the illusory character of the antinomies was in the main viewed as being of a more or less logical nature. That is to say, it was regarded as entirely preventable and as “vanishing like smoke”[1345] upon adoption of a true philosophical standpoint.

A number of the Reflexionen reveal the various tentative schemes, by trial of which Kant worked his way toward a more genuinely Critical treatment of the problems of infinity. The intellectual factors receive fuller recognition, and as a consequence a definite classification results. At some time prior to the discovery of the table of categories, Kant adopted a threefold division of what he names first principles or presuppositions—principles of substance-accident, of ground-consequence, and of whole-part. Reflexion ii. 578 is typical.

“Three principia: (1) in the field of the actual there is the relation of substance to accident (inhaerentia): (2) of ground to consequence (dependentia): (3) of parts and of composition (compositio). There are three presuppositions: of the subject, of the ground, and of the parts; of insition [Kant’s own term], of subordination, and of composition; therefore also three first principia: (1) subject, which is never a predicate; (2) ground, which is never a consequence; (3) unity, which is not itself composite.”

There are numerous other Reflexionen to the same effect.[1346] The resulting conceptions are defined both as limits[1347] and as absolute totalities, and in Reflexion ii. 1252 are enumerated as follows:

“The first subject; the first ground; the first part. The subject which holds everything in itself; the ground which takes everything under itself; the whole which comprehends everything. The totalitas absoluta of reality, of series, of co-ordination.”

The introduction of the terms ‘absolute’ and ‘totality’ indicate that Kant has also come to recognise the presence of a unique notion (equivalent to the “unconditioned” of the Critique), distinct in content from any of the three enumerated principia, but common to them all. From the very first Kant would seem to have appropriated for it the title Idea. Reflexionen ii. 1243, 1244, and 124 may be quoted:

“The Idea is single (individuum), self-sufficient, and eternal. The divinity of our soul is its capacity to form the Idea. The senses give only copies or rather apparentia.” “Idea is the representation of the whole in so far as it necessarily precedes the determination of the parts. It can never be empirically represented, for the reason that in experience we proceed from the parts through successive syntheses to the whole. It is the archetype (Urbild) of things, for certain objects are only possible through an Idea. Transcendental Ideas are those in which the absolute whole determines the parts in an aggregate or as series.” “Metaphysics proper is the application of transcendental philosophy to concepts supplied by Reason and necessary to it, to which, however, no corresponding objects can be given in experience. The concepts must therefore refer to the supersensible. That, however, can be nothing but the unconditioned, for that is the sole theoretical Idea of reason. [Not italicised in the original.] Metaphysics thus relates: (1) to that of which only the whole can be represented as absolutely unconditioned: (2) to things so far as they are in themselves sensuously unconditioned. The first part is cosmology, the second rational doctrine of the soul, pneumatology and theology.”

At this stage, therefore, Kant would seem to have held that there is but one Idea strictly so called, and that the above three principia are merely specifications of it in terms of the concepts of substance-accident, ground-consequence, and whole-part. The classification thus obtained is in certain respects more satisfactory than that which is adopted in the Critique. It locates the cosmological argument with the causal category, and so would enable the conceptions of freedom or causa sui, and of Divine Existence, to be dealt with in their natural connection with one another. It also supplies, in the category of whole and part, a more fitting heading for those antinomy problems which deal with the unlimited and the limited, the divisible and the indivisible, the complex and the simple. The classification would, however, in separating the problem of the simple from that of substance, remain open to the same criticism as that of the Critique.[1348]