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

by Norman Kemp Smith

The analysis given in A 402-3 of the fallacy involved in the Paralogisms is, as Adickes has pointed out,[1457] confused and misleading. Kant here declares that in the major premiss of each syllogism the assertion is intended in the merely logical sense, and therefore as applicable only to the subject in representation, but in the minor premiss and conclusion is asserted of the subject as bearer of consciousness, i.e. in itself. But were that so, the minor premiss would be a false assertion, and the false conclusion would not be traceable to logical fallacy. Kant gives the correct statement of his position in B 410-11.[1458] The attempted justification of the fourfold arrangement of the Paralogisms with which the section concludes suffers from the artificiality of Kant’s logical architectonic.

SECOND EDITION STATEMENT OF THE PARALOGISMS[1459]

Except for the introductory paragraphs, which remain unaltered, the chapter is completely recast in the second edition. The treatment of the four Paralogisms which in the first edition occupied thirty-three pages is reduced to five. The problems of the mutual interaction of mind and body, of its prenatal character and of its immortality, the discussion of which in the first edition required some ten pages, are now disposed of in a single paragraph (B 426-7). The remaining twenty-two pages of the new chapter are almost entirely devoted to more or less polemical discussion of criticisms which had been passed upon the first edition. These had been in great part directed against Kant’s doctrine of apperception and of inner sense, and so could fittingly be dealt with in connection with the problems of rational psychology. As Benno Erdmann has suggested,[1460] B 409-14 and 419-21 would seem to be directed against Ulrichs’[1461] Leibnizian position and especially against his metaphysical interpretation of apperception. B 428-30 treats of the difficulties raised by Pistorius[1462] in regard to the existence of the self. B 414-15 is similarly polemical, but in this case Kant cites his opponent, Mendelssohn, by name. Throughout, as in the alterations made in the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, Kant insists more strongly than in the first edition upon the unknowableness of the self, and on the difference between thought and knowledge. The pure forms of thought are not, Kant now declares, concepts of objects, that is, are not categories,[1463] but “merely logical functions.” Though this involves no essential doctrinal change, it indicates the altered standpoint from which Kant now regards his problem. Its significance has already been dwelt upon.[1464]

In formulating the several arguments of the four Paralogisms, Kant develops and places in the forefront a statement which receives only passing mention in A 352-3, 362, 366-7, 381-2, namely, that the truths contained in the judgments of rational psychology find expression in merely identical (i.e. analytic) propositions. This enables Kant to formulate both the Paralogisms and his criticisms thereof in much briefer and more pointed fashion. In each case the Paralogism, as he shows, substitutes a synthetic a priori judgment, involving an extension of our knowledge and a reference to the noumenal self, for the given judgment which, in so far as it is valid, is always a merely analytic restatement of the purely formal “I think.” From the very start also, Kant introduces the distinctions of his own Critical teaching, especially that between thinking and intuiting, and that between the determining and the determinable self.

First Paralogism.—That the I which thinks must always in thought be viewed as subject and not as mere predicate, is an identical proposition. It must not be taken as meaning that the subject which underlies thought is an abiding substance. This latter proposition is of much wider scope, and would involve such data (in this case entirely lacking) as are required for the establishment of a synthetic a priori judgment.

Second Paralogism.—That the I of apperception and so of all thought is single and cannot be resolved into a multiplicity of subjects, is involved in the very conception of thought, and is therefore an analytic proposition. It must not be interpreted as signifying that the self is a simple substance. For the latter assertion is again a synthetic proposition, and presupposes for its possibility an intuition by the self of its own essential nature. As all our intuitions are merely sensuous, that cannot be looked for in the “I think.”

“It would, indeed, be surprising if what in other cases requires so much labour to discover—namely, what it is, of all that is presented by intuition, that is substance, and further, whether this substance is simple (e.g. in the parts of matter)—should be thus directly given me, as if by revelation, in the poorest of all representations.”[1465]

We may here observe how the practice, adopted by Caird, of translating Anschauung by ‘perception’ has misled him into serious misunderstanding of Kant’s teaching. It has caused him[1466] to interpret Kant as arguing that we have no knowledge of the self because we can have no sensuous perception of it. Kant’s argument rather is that as all human “intuition” is sensuous, we are cut off from all possibility of determining our noumenal nature. We are thrown back upon mere concepts which, as yielding only analytic propositions, cannot extend our insight beyond the limits of sense-experience. The term ‘intuition’ is much broader in meaning than the term ‘perception’; it can also be employed as equivalent to the phrase ‘immediate apprehension.’[1467] The grounds for Kant’s contention that we have no intuition or immediate knowledge of the self are embodied in, and inspire, his doctrine of inner sense.[1468] It may also be noted that in B 412 Kant, speaking of the necessity of intuition for knowledge of the self, uses the unusual phrase ‘a permanent intuition’—a phrase which, so far as I have observed, he nowhere employs in dealing with the intuition that conditions the sense perception of material bodies.[1469] Its employment here may perhaps be due to the fact that its implied reference is not to a given sensuous manifold but to some form of immediate apprehension, capable of revealing the permanent nature of the noumenal self.

Third Paralogism.—That I am identical with myself throughout the consciousness of my manifold experiences, is likewise an analytic proposition obtainable by mere analysis of the “I think.” And since that form of consciousness, as stated in the criticism of the preceding Paralogism, is purely conceptual, containing no element of intuition, no judgment based solely upon it can ever be taken as equivalent to the synthetic proposition that the self, as thinking being, is an identical substance.

Fourth Paralogism.—This Paralogism is somewhat altered. As noted above,[1470] the problem dealt with in the first edition concerns the outer world, and only quite indirectly the nature of the self. In the second edition that argument is restated,[1471] and is more properly located within the Analytic. The argument which now takes its place runs parallel with that of the three preceding Paralogisms. The assertion that I distinguish my own existence as a thinking being from other things outside me, including thereunder my own body, is an analytic proposition, since by other things is meant things which I think as different from myself.