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

by Norman Kemp Smith

THE statements of the first section cannot profitably be commented upon at this stage; they are of a merely general character.[1602] I pass at once to Section II., which, as above stated, is quite the most archaic piece of rationalistic argument in the entire Critique. It is not merely Leibnizian, but Wolffian in character. For Kant the Wolffian logic had an old-time flavour and familiarity that rendered it by no means distasteful; and he is here, as it were, recalling, not altogether without sympathy, the lessons of his student years. They enable him to render definite, by way of contrast, the outcome of his own Critical teaching.

As Kant here restates the Wolffian notion of the Ens realissimum in such fashion as is required to make it conform to his deduction of the theological Idea from the disjunctive syllogism, a preliminary statement of the more orthodox formulation will help to set Wolff’s doctrine in a clearer light. In so doing, I shall follow Baumgarten, whose Metaphysica Kant used as a class text-book. Briefly summarised Baumgarten’s statement is as follows.[1603] The Ens perfectissimum is that Being which possesses as many predicates, i.e. perfections, as can possibly exist together in a single thing, and in which every one of its perfections is as great as is anywhere possible. This most perfect Being must be a real Being, and its reality must be the greatest possible. It is that in which the most and the greatest realities are. But all realities are affirmative determinations, and no denial is a reality. Accordingly no reality can contradict another reality, and all realities can exist together in the same thing. The Ens perfectissimum, in possessing all the realities that can exist together, must therefore possess all realities without exception, and every one of them in the highest degree. The notion of an individual existence that is at once perfectissimum and also realissimum is thus determinable by pure Reason from its internal resources. It is the ground and condition of all other existences; all of them arise through limitation of its purely positive nature.

Kant seeks to justify his metaphysical deduction of the Ideal from the disjunctive syllogism, by recasting the above argument in the following manner. Since everything which exists is completely determined, it is subject to the principle of complete determination, according to which one of each of the possible pairs of contradictory predicates must be applicable to it. To be completely determined the thing must be compared with the sum total of all possible predicates. Although this idea of the sum total of all possible predicates, through reference to which alone any concept can be completely determined, seems itself indeterminate, we find nevertheless on closer examination that it individualises itself a priori, transforming itself into the concept of an individual existence that is completely determined by the mere Idea, and which may therefore be called an Ideal of pure Reason. That is proved as follows. No one can definitely think a negation unless he founds it on the opposite affirmation. A man completely blind cannot frame the smallest conception of darkness, because he has none of light. All negations are therefore derivative; it is the realities which contain the material by which a complete determination of anything becomes possible. The source, from which all possible predicates may be derived, can be nothing but the sum total of reality. And this concept of the omnitudo realitatis is the Idea of a Being that is single and individual. As all finite beings derive the material of their possibility from it, they presuppose it, and cannot, therefore, constitute it. They are imperfect copies (ectypa), of which it is the sole Ideal. The Idea is also individual. Out of each possible pair of contradictory predicates, that one which expresses reality belongs to it. By these infinitely numerous positive predicates it is determined to absolute concreteness; and as it therefore possesses all that has reality, not only in nature but in man, it must be conceived as a personal and intelligent Primordial Being. The logical Ideal, thus determining itself completely by its own concept, appears not only as ideal but also as real, not only as logical but also as divine.

Kant so far anticipates his criticism of the ontological argument as to give, in the remaining paragraphs of this second section, a preliminary criticism of this procedure. For the purpose for which the Ideal is postulated, namely, the determination of all finite and therefore limited existences, Reason does not require to presuppose an existence corresponding to it. Its mere Idea will suffice.

“All manifoldness of things is only a correspondingly varied mode of limiting the concept of the highest reality which forms their common substratum, just as all figures are only possible as so many different modes of limiting infinite space.”[1604]

This relation is not, however, that of a real existence to other things but of an Idea to concepts. The Idea is a mere fiction, necessary for comprehending the limited, not a reality that can be asserted, even hypothetically,[1605] as given along with the limited. None the less, owing to a natural transcendental illusion, the mind inevitably tends to hypostatise it, and so generates the object of rational theology.

Comment.—The explanation of this illusion, which Kant proceeds to give in the two concluding paragraphs, is peculiarly confusing. Though the concept of an all-comprehensive reality may, he argues, be required for the definition of sensible objects, such a concept must not for that reason be taken as representing a real existence. The teaching of the section on Amphiboly is here entirely ignored; and the reader is bewildered by the assumption, which Kant apparently makes, that something analogous to the Leibnizian Ideal is a prerequisite of possible experience.

These last remarks indicate the kind of criticism to which the argument of this section lays itself open. In expounding the teaching of the Leibnizian science of rational theology, Kant strives to represent its Ideal as being an inevitable Idea of human Reason; and in order to make this argument at all convincing he is constrained to treat as valid the presupposed ontology, though that has already been shown in the discussion of Amphiboly to be altogether untenable.[1606] Limitation is not merely negative; genuine realities may negate one another. Though the objects of sense presuppose the entire system to which they belong, the form of this presupposition is in no respect analogous to that which Wolff would represent as holding between finite existences and the Ens realissimum. The passage in the Analytic[1607] in which Kant directly controverts the above teaching is as follows:

“The principle, that realities (as pure assertions) never logically contradict each other ... has not the least meaning either in regard to nature or in regard to any thing-in-itself.... Although Herr von Leibniz did not, indeed, announce this proposition with all the pomp of a new principle, he yet made use of it for new assertions, and his followers expressly incorporated it in their Leibnizian-Wolffian system. According to this principle all evils, for instance, are merely consequences of the limitations of created beings, i.e. negations, because negations alone conflict with reality.... Similarly his disciples consider it not only possible, but even natural, to combine all reality, without fear of any conflict, in one being, because the only conflict which they recognise is that of contradiction, whereby the concept of a thing is itself removed. They do not admit the conflict of reciprocal injury in which each of two real grounds destroys the effect of the other—a process which we can represent to ourselves only in terms of conditions presented to us in sensibility.”

Thus the Ideal which Kant here declares to be a necessary Idea of Reason is denounced in the Analytic as based on false principles peculiar to the Leibnizian philosophy, and as “without the least meaning in regard either to nature or to any thing in itself.” The teaching of the Analytic will no more combine with this scholastic rationalism than oil with water. The reader may safely absolve himself from the thankless task of attempting to render Kant’s argumentation in these paragraphs consistent with itself. Fortunately, in the next section, Kant returns to the standpoint proper to the doctrine he is expounding, and lays bare, with remarkable subtlety and in a very convincing manner, the concealed dialectic by which the conclusions of this metaphysical science are really determined.[1608]