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

by Norman Kemp Smith

Remain investigations only.[242]—Cf. Prolegomena, § 35.

The analysis of our concepts of objects.[243]—Vaihinger’s interpretation, that the concepts here referred to are those which we “form a priori of things,”[244] seems correct.[245] The rationalists sought to deduce the whole body of rational psychology from the a priori conception of the soul as a simple substance, and of rational theology from the a priori conception of God as the all-perfect Being.

Analytic and synthetic judgments.[246]—“All analytic judgments depend wholly on the law of contradiction, and are in their nature a priori cognitions, whether the concepts that supply them with matter be empirical or not. For the predicate of an affirmative analytic judgment is already contained in the concept of the subject, of which it cannot be denied without contradiction. In the same way its opposite is necessarily denied of the subject in an analytic, but negative, judgment by the same law of contradiction.... For this very reason all analytic judgments are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, gold is a yellow metal; for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal: it is, in fact, the very concept, and I need only analyse it, without looking beyond it elsewhere.... [Synthetic judgments, a posteriori and a priori] agree in this, that they cannot possibly spring solely from the principle of analysis, the law of contradiction. They require a quite different principle. From whatever they may be deduced, the deduction must, it is true, always be in accordance with the principle of contradiction. For that principle must never be violated. But at the same time everything cannot be deduced from it.”[247]

In A 594 = B 622 analytic judgments are also spoken of as identical; but in the Fortschritte[248] this use of terms is criticised:

“Judgments are analytic if their predicate only represents clearly (explicite) what was thought obscurely (implicite) in the concept of the subject, e.g. all bodies are extended. Were we to call such judgments identical only confusion would result. For identical judgments contribute nothing to the clearness of the concept, and that must be the purpose of all judging. Identical judgments are therefore empty, e.g. all bodies are bodily (or to use another term material) beings. Analytic judgments do, indeed, ground themselves upon identity and can be resolved into it; but they are not identical. For they demand analysis and serve for the explanation of the concept. In identical judgments, on the other hand, idem is defined per idem, and nothing at all is explained.”

Vaihinger[249] cites the following contrasted examples of analytic and synthetic judgments:

Analytic.—(a) Substance is that which exists only as subject in which qualities inhere.[250] (b) Every effect has a cause.[5] (c) Everything conditioned presupposes a condition.

Synthetic.—(a) Substance is permanent. (b) Every event has a cause.[251] (c) Everything conditioned presupposes an unconditioned.

B 11-12.—The first half of this paragraph is transcribed practically word for word from the Prolegomena.[252] The second half is a close restatement of an omitted paragraph of the first edition. The chief addition lies in the concluding statement, that “experience is itself a synthetic connection of intuitions.” This is in keeping with statements made in the deduction of the categories in the second edition,[253] and in the paragraph inserted in the proof of the second analogy in the second edition.[254] The x has strangely been omitted in the second edition in reference to empirical judgments, though retained in reference to synthetic a priori judgments.

The proposition: everything which happens has its cause.[255]—As we have already observed,[256] Hume influenced Kant at two distinct periods in his philosophical development—in 1756-1763, and again at some time (not quite definitely datable) after February 1772. The first influence concerned the character of concrete causal judgments; the second related to the causal axiom. Though there are few distinctions which are more important for understanding the Critique than that of the difference between these two questions, it has nowhere been properly emphasised by Kant, and in several of the references to Hume, which occur in the Critique and in the Prolegomena, the two problems are confounded in a most unfortunate manner. The passages in the Introduction[257] are clear and unambiguous; the influence exercised by Hume subsequent to February 1772 is quite adequately stated. The causal axiom claims to be a priori, and is, as Hume asserts, likewise synthetic. Consequently there are only two alternatives, each decisive and far-reaching. Either valid a priori synthesis must, contrary to all previous philosophical belief, be possible, or “everything which we call metaphysics must turn out to be a mere delusion of reason.” The solution of this problem is “a question of life and death to metaphysics.” To this appreciation of Hume, Kant adds criticism. Hume did not sufficiently universalise his problem. Had he done so, he would have recognised that pure mathematics involves a priori synthesis no less necessarily than do the metaphysical disciplines. From denying the possibility of mathematical science “his good sense would probably have saved him.” Hume’s problem, thus viewed, finds its final and complete expression in the formula: How are synthetic a priori judgments possible?