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

by Norman Kemp Smith

Kant[1399] appends the following ‘Stufenleiter’ (ladder-like) arrangement of titles for the various kinds of representation. Representation (Vorstellung) is the term which he substitutes for the Cartesian and Lockian employment of the term idea, now reserved for use in its true Platonic meaning. To entitle such a representation as that of red colour an idea is, in Kant’s view, an intolerable and barbaric procedure; that representation is not even a concept of the understanding.

SECTION II
THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAS[1400]

This section completes the metaphysical deduction of the Ideas. In the preceding sections on the logical and on the pure use of Reason, Kant has pointed out that Reason proceeds in accordance with the principle, that for the conditioned knowledge of understanding the unconditioned, in which it finds completion, must be discovered. This principle is synthetic, involving a concept which transcends the understanding; and as Reason in its logical use is merely formal, that concept must be due to Reason in its creative or transcendental activity. In the section before us Kant deduces from the three kinds of syllogism the three possible forms in which such an Idea of Reason can present itself. The deduction is, as already noted, wholly artificial, and masks Kant’s real method of obtaining the Ideas, namely, through combination of the unique concept of the unconditioned with the three categories of relation. The deduction is based upon an extremely ingenious analogy between the logical function of Reason in deductive inference and its transcendental procedure in prescribing the Ideal of unconditioned totality. In the syllogism the predicate of the conclusion is shown to be connected with its subject in accordance with a condition which is stated in its universality in the major premiss. Thus if the conclusion be: Caius is mortal, in constructing the syllogism, required to establish it, we seek for a conception which contains the condition under which the predicate is given—in this case the conception “man”—and we state that condition in its universality: All men are mortal. Under this major premiss is then subsumed Caius, the object dealt with: Caius is a man. And so indirectly, by reference to the universal condition, we obtain the knowledge that Caius is mortal. Universality, antecedently stated, is restricted in the conclusion to a specific object. Now what corresponds in the synthesis of intuition to the universality (universalitas) of a logical premiss is allness (universitas) or totality of conditions. The transcendental concept of Reason, to which the logical procedure is to serve as clue, can therefore be no other than that of the totality of conditions for any given conditioned. And as totality of conditions is equivalent to the unconditioned, this latter must be taken as the fundamental concept of Reason; the unconditioned is conceived as being the ground of the synthesis of everything conditioned. But there are three species of relation, and consequently there are three forms in which the concept of Reason seeks to realise its demand for the unconditioned: (1) through categorical synthesis in one subject, (2) through hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series, and (3) through disjunctive synthesis of the parts in one system. To these three correspond the three species of syllogism, categorical, hypothetical, and disjunctive, in each of which thought passes through a regressive series of prosyllogisms back to an unconditioned: the first to a concept which stands for what is always a subject and never a predicate; the second to a presupposition which itself presupposes nothing further; and the third to such an aggregate of the members of the division as will make that division complete. It may be observed that in this proof the threefold specification of the concept of the unconditioned is really obtained directly from the categories of relation, or at least from the judgments of relation, and not from the corresponding species of syllogism.

Totality and unconditionedness, when taken as equivalent, become synonymous with the absolute.[1401] This last term, however, especially when taken as defining possibility and necessity, is ambiguous. The absolutely possible may signify either that which in itself, i.e. so far as regards its internal content, is possible; or else that which is in every respect and in all relations possible. The two meanings have come to be connected largely owing to the fact that the internally impossible is impossible in every respect. Otherwise, however, the two meanings fall completely apart. Absolute necessity and inner necessity are quite diverse in character. We must not, for instance, argue that the opposite of what is absolutely necessary must be inwardly impossible, nor consequently that absolute necessity must in the end reduce to an inner necessity. Examination will show that, in certain types of cases, not the slightest meaning can be attached to the phrase ‘inner necessity.’ As we possess the terms inner and logical to denote the first form of necessity, there is no excuse for employing the term absolute in any but the wider sense. That, Kant holds, is its original and proper meaning. The absolute totality to which the concept of Reason refers is that form of completeness which is in every respect unconditioned.

In A 326 = B 383 Kant’s mode of statement emphasises the connection of the Ideas with the categories of relation. Reason, he claims, “seeks to extend the synthetic unity, which is thought in the category, to the absolutely unconditioned.” Such positive content as the Ideas can possess lies in the experience which they profess to unify; in so far as they transcend experience and point to an Ideal completion that is not empirically attainable, they refer to things of which the understanding can have no concept. It is necessary, however, that they should present themselves in this absolute and transcendent form, since otherwise the understanding would be without stimulus and without guidance. Though mere Ideas, they are neither arbitrary nor superfluous. They regulate the understanding in its empirical pursuit of that systematic unity which it requires for its own satisfaction.

In A 327-8 = B 383-4 one and the same ground is assigned for entitling the Ideas transcendental and also transcendent, namely, that, as they surpass experience, no object capable of being given through the senses corresponds to them. But a difference would none the less seem to be implied in the connotation of the two terms. In being prescribed by the very nature of Reason, they are transcendental; as overstepping the limits of experience, they are transcendent. Kant’s use of the terms subject and object in this passage is also somewhat puzzling. ‘Object’ is employed in the metaphysical sense proper only from the pre-Critical standpoint of the Dissertation, as meaning an existence apprehended through pure thought. The term ‘subject’ receives a correspondingly un-Critical connotation. The further phrase “the merely speculative use of Reason” is somewhat misleading, even though we recognise that for Kant speculative and theoretical are synonymous terms; we should rather expect “Reason in its legitimate or Critical or directive function.” Kant’s intended meaning, however, is sufficiently clear. When we say that a concept of Reason is an Idea merely, we have in mind the degree to which it can be empirically verified. We are asserting that it prescribes an Ideal to which experience may be made to approach, but which it can never attain. It defines “a problem to which there is no solution.” In the practical sphere of morals, on the other hand, the Ideal of Reason must never be so described. Though only partially realisable, it is genuinely actual. Even those actions which imperfectly embody it none the less presuppose it as their indispensable condition. In two respects, therefore, as Kant points out, the statement that the transcendental concepts of Reason are merely Ideas calls for qualification. In the first place they are by no means “superfluous and void.” They supply a canon for the fruitful employment of understanding. And secondly, they may perhaps be found to make possible a transition from natural to moral concepts, and so to bring the Ideas of practical Reason into connection with the principles of speculative thought. The reader may again note the genuinely Platonic character of Kant’s use of the term Idea.