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

by Norman Kemp Smith

[615] Kant’s description of Berkeley’s idealism as visionary and mystical is doubtless partly due to the old-time association of idealism in Kant’s mind with the spiritualistic teaching of Swedenborg (W. ii. p. 372). This association of ideas was further reinforced owing to his having classed Berkeley along with Plato.

[616] Prolegomena, Anhang, W. iv. p. 374; Eng. trans. p. 147.

[617] Cf. above, pp. 140-1.

[618] § 27. In translating Kant’s somewhat difficult Latin I have found helpful the English translation of the Dissertation by W. J. Eckoff (New York, 1894).

[619] Besides the internal evidence of the passage before us, we also have Kant’s own mention of Mendelssohn in this connection in notes (to A 43 and A 66) in his private copy of the first edition of the Critique. Cf. Erdmann’s Nachträge zu Kant’s Kritik, xx. and xxxii.; and above, p. 11.

[620] Cf. Morgenstunden, Bd. ii. of Gesammelte Schriften (1863), pp. 246, 288.

[621] Cf. above, p. 116.

[622] B 72.

[623] Upon this subject cf. Vaihinger’s exhaustive discussion in ii. p. 518 ff.

[624] Gedanken von der wahren Schätzung der lebendigen Kräfte (1747).