Dialectic is a Logic of Illusion.[1367]—The meaning which Kant attaches to the term dialectic has already been considered. The passage above quoted[1368] from his Logic shows the meaning which he supposed the term historically to possess, namely, as being a sophistical art of disputation, presenting false principles in the guise of truth by means of a seeming fulfilment of the demands of strict logical proof. The incorrectness of this historical derivation hardly needs to be pointed out. Kant professes[1369] to be following his contemporaries in thus using the term as a title for the treatment of false reasoning. But even this statement must be challenged. Adickes, after examination of a large number of eighteenth-century text-books, reports[1370] that in the six passages in which alone he has found it to occur it is never so employed. In Meier it is used as a title for the theory of probable reasoning,[1371] and in Baumgarten it occurs only in adjectival form as equivalent to sophistical. This last is the nearest approach to Kant’s definition. All historical considerations may therefore be swept aside. We are concerned only with the specific meaning which Kant thought good to attach to the term. He adapts it in the freest manner to the needs of his system. In A 61 = B 85, as in his Logic, he has defined it in merely negative fashion. He is now careful to specify the more positive aspects of the problems with which it deals. Though definable as the logic of illusion, the deceptive inferences with which it concerns itself are of a quite unique and supremely significant character. They must, as above noted,[1372] be distinguished alike from logical and from empirical illusion. They have their roots in the fundamental needs of the human mind, and the recognition of their illusory character does not render unnecessary either a positive explanation of their occurrence or a Critical valuation of their practical function as regulative ideals.
A 293 = B 349.—Regarding the connection between illusion and error cf. B 69, and above, pp. 148-53.
A 295 = B 352.—Logical, empirical, and transcendental illusion. Cf. above, pp. 13, 427-9, 437.
A 296 = B 352.—Kant here defines the terms transcendental and transcendent in a very unusual manner. The two terms are not, he states, synonymous. The principles of pure understanding are of merely empirical validity, and consequently are not of transcendental employment beyond the limits of experience. A principle is transcendent when it not only removes these limits, but prescribes the overstepping of them.
II. Pure Reason as the Seat of Transcendental Illusion[1373]
(a) Reason in General
Reason, like understanding, is employed in two ways, formal or logical and real. The logical use of Reason consists in mediate inference, the real in the generation of concepts and principles. Reason is thus both a logical and a transcendental faculty, and we may therefore expect that its logical functions will serve as a clue to those that are transcendental. The argument which follows is extremely obscure. It is a foreshadowing in logical terms of a distinction which, as Kant himself indicates, cannot at this stage be adequately stated. The distinction may be extended and paraphrased as follows. Reason, generically taken as including both activities, is the faculty of principles, in distinction from understanding which is the faculty of rules.[1374] Principles, properly so-called, are absolutely a priori. Universals which imply the element of intuition must not, therefore, be ranked as principles in the strict sense. They are more properly to be entitled rules. A true principle is one that affords knowledge of the particulars which come under it, and which does so from its own internal resources, that is to say, through pure concepts. In other words, it yields a priori synthetic knowledge, and yet does so independently of all given experience. Now, as the Analytic has proved, knowledge obtained through understanding, whether in mathematical or in physical science, is never of this character. Its principles, even though originating in pure intuition or in the pure understanding, are valid only as conditions of possible experience, and are applicable only to such objects as can occur in the context of a sense-perception. That is to say, the understanding can never obtain synthetic knowledge through pure concepts. Though, for instance, it prescribes the principle that everything which happens must have a cause, that principle does not establish itself by means of the concepts which it contains, but only as being a presupposition necessary to the possibility of sense-experience. If, then, principles in the strict sense actually exist, they must be due to a faculty distinct from understanding, and will call for a deduction of a different character from that of the categories.
In the last paragraph but one of the section Kant indicates the doctrine which he is foreshadowing. The rules of understanding apply to appearances, prescribing the conditions under which the unity necessary to any and every experience can alone be attained. The principles of Reason do not apply directly to appearances, but only to the understanding, defining the standards to which its activities must conform, if a completely unified experience is to be achieved. Whereas the rules of understanding are the conditions of objective existence in space and time, principles in the strict sense are criteria for the attainment of such absoluteness and totality as will harmonise Reason with itself. Reason, determined by principles which issue from its own inherent nature, prescribes what the actual ought to be; understanding, proceeding from rules which express the conditions of possible experience, can yield knowledge only of what is found to exist in the course of sense-experience. The unity of Reason is Ideal; the unity of understanding is empirical. Principles are due to the self-determination of reason; the rules of understanding express the necessitated determinations of sense. The former demand a more perfect and complete unity than is ever attainable by means of the latter. Two passages from the Lose Blätter will help to define the distinction.
“There is a synthesis prototypon and a synthesis ectypon. The one ... simpliciter, a termino a priori, ... the other secundum quid, a termino a posteriori.... Reason advances from the universal to the particular, the understanding from the particular to the universal.... The first is absolute and belongs to the free or metaphysical, and also to the moral, employment of Reason.”[1375] “The principles of the synthesis of pure Reason are all metaphysical.... [They] are principles of the subjective unity of knowledge through Reason, i.e. of the agreement of Reason with itself.”[1376]
The chief interest of this section lies in its clear indication of the dual standpoint to which Kant is committing himself by the manner in which he formulates this distinction between rules and principles. The indispensableness of the latter, upon which Kant is prepared to insist, points to the Idealist interpretation of their grounds and validity; their derivation from mere concepts, without reference to or basis in experience, must, on the other hand, in view of the teaching of the Analytic, commit Kant to a sceptical treatment of their objective validity. In the above account, suggestions of the Idealist point of view are not entirely absent; but, on the whole, it is the sceptical view that is dominant. The Ideas of Reason can be justified as necessary only for the perfecting of experience, not as conditions of experience as such. They express a subjective interest in the attainment of unity, not conditions of the possibility of objective existence.
”[Civil Laws] are only limitations imposed upon our freedom in order that such freedom may completely harmonise with itself; hence they are directed to something which is entirely our own work, and of which we ourselves, through these concepts, can be the cause. But that objects in themselves, the very nature of things, should stand under principles, and should be determined according to mere concepts, is a demand which, if not impossible, is at least quite contrary to common sense [Widersinnisches].”[1377]