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

by Norman Kemp Smith

But, so far, I have simplified Kant’s argument by leaving out of account a third and entirely different view of illusion which is likewise formulated in the appended note. In the middle of the second sentence, and in the last sentence, illusion is defined as the attribution to the thing in itself of what belongs to it only in its relation to the senses. Illusion lies not in the object apprehended, but only in the judgment which we pass upon it. It is due, not to sense, but to understanding.[592] Viewing illusion in this way, Kant is enabled to maintain that his critics are guilty of “an unpardonable and almost intentional misconception,”[593] since this is the very fallacy which he himself has been most concerned to attack. As he has constantly insisted, appearance is appearance just because it can never be a revelation of the thing in itself.

Now the introduction of this third view reduces the argument of the appended note to complete confusion. Its first occurrence as a parenthesis in a sentence which is stating an opposed view would seem to indicate that the note has been carelessly recast. Originally containing only a statement of the second view, Kant has connected therewith the view which he had already formulated in the first edition and in the Prolegomena. But the two views cannot be combined. By the former definition, illusion is necessitated but abnormal perception; according to the latter, it is a preventable error of our conscious judgment. The opposite of illusion is in the one case appearance, in the other truth. The retention of the reference to Saturn, in the statement of the third view at the end of the note, is further evidence of hasty recasting. While the rose and the extended objects are there treated as also things in themselves, Saturn is taken only in its phenomenal existence. In view of the general confusion, it is a minor inconsistency that Kant should here maintain, in direct opposition to A 28-9, that secondary qualities can be attributed to the empirical object.

This passage from the second edition is a development of Prolegomena, § 13, iii. Kant there employs the term appearance in a quite indefinite manner. For the most part he seems to mean by it any and every sense-experience, whether normal or abnormal, and even to include under it dream images. But it is also employed in the second of the above meanings, as signifying those sense-perceptions which harmonise with general experience. Illusion is throughout employed in the third of the above meanings. Kant’s illustration, that of the apparently retrograde movements of the planets, necessitates a distinction between apparent and real motion in space, and consequently leads to the fruitful distinction noted above. Kant gives, however, no sign that he is conscious of the complicated problems involved.

In the interval between the Prolegomena (1783) and the second edition of the Critique (1787) Mendelssohn had published (1785) his Morgenstunden. In its introduction, entitled Vorerkenntniss von Wahrheit, Schein und Irrthum,[594] he very carefully distinguishes between illusion (Sinnenschein) and error of judgment (Irrthum). This introduction Kant had read. In a letter to Schütz[595] he cites it by title, and praises it as “acute, original, and of exemplary clearness.” It is therefore the more inexcusable that he should again in the second edition of the Critique have confused these two so radically different meanings of the term Schein. Mendelssohn, however, drew no distinction between Schein and Erscheinung. They were then used as practically synonymous,[596] though of course Schein was the stronger term. Kant seems to have been the first to distinguish them sharply and to attempt to define the one in opposition to the other. But the very fact that Erscheinung and Schein were currently employed as equivalent terms, and that the distinction, though one of his own drawing, had been mentioned only in the most cursory manner in the first edition of the Critique,[597] removes all justification for his retort upon his critics of “unpardonable misconception.” His anger was really due, not to the objection in itself, but to the implied comparison of his position to that of Berkeley. Such comparison never failed to arouse Kant’s wrath. For however much this accusation might be justified by his own frequent lapses into subjectivism of the most extreme type, even its partial truth was more than he was willing to admit. Berkeley represents in his eyes, not merely a subjectivist interpretation of the outer world, but the almost diametrical opposite of everything for which he himself stood. Discussion of Kant’s relation to Berkeley had best, however, be introduced through consideration of the passage immediately following in which Kant refers to Berkeley by name.

III. (Second Part) B 70.—Kant urges that his doctrine of the ideality of space and time, so far from reducing objects to mere illusion, is the sole means of defending their genuine reality. If space and time had an independent existence, they would have to be regarded as more real than the bodies which occupy them. For on this view space and time would continue to exist even if all their contents were removed; they would be antecedent necessary conditions of all other existences. But space and time thus interpreted are impossible conceptions.[598] The reality of bodies is thereby made to depend upon Undinge. If this were the sole alternative, “the good Bishop Berkeley [could] not be blamed for degrading bodies to mere illusion.” We should, Kant maintains, have to proceed still further, denying even our own existence. For had Berkeley taken account of time as well as of space, a similar argument, consistently developed in regard to time, would have constrained him to reduce the self to the level of mere illusion. Belief in the reality of things in themselves, whether spiritual or material, is defensible only if space and time be viewed as subjective. In other words, Berkeley’s idealism is an inevitable consequence of a realist view of space. But it is also its reductio ad absurdum.

[“Berkeley in his dogmatic idealism] maintains that space, with all the things of which it is the inseparable condition, is something impossible in itself, and he therefore regards the things in space as merely imaginary entities (Einbildungen). Dogmatic idealism is inevitable if space be interpreted as a property which belongs to things in themselves. For, when so regarded, space, and everything to which it serves as condition, is a non-entity (Unding). The ground upon which this idealism rests we have removed in the Transcendental Aesthetic.”[599]

The term Schein is not employed throughout this passage in either of the two meanings of the appended note, but in that of the main text. It signifies a representation, to which no existence corresponds.

KANT’S RELATION TO BERKELEY

By idealism[600] Kant means any and every system which maintains that the sensible world does not exist in the form in which it presents itself to us. The position is typified in Kant’s mind by the Eleatics, by Plato, and by Descartes, all of whom are rationalists. With the denial of reality to sense-appearances they combine a belief in the possibility of rationally comprehending its supersensible basis. Failing to appreciate the true nature of the sensible, they misunderstand the character of geometrical science, and falsely ascribe to pure understanding a power of intellectual intuition. Kant’s criticisms of Berkeley show very clearly that it is this more general position which he has chiefly in view. To Berkeley Kant objects that only in sense-experience is there truth, that it is sensibility, not understanding, which possesses the power of a priori intuition, and that through pure understanding, acting in independence of sensibility, no knowledge of any kind can be acquired. In other words, Kant classes Berkeley with the rationalists. And, as we have already seen, he even goes the length of regarding Berkeley’s position as the reductio ad absurdum of the realist view of space. Kant does, indeed, recognise[601] that Berkeley differs from the other idealists, in holding an empirical view of space, and consequently of geometry, but this does not prevent Kant from maintaining that Berkeley’s thinking is influenced by certain fundamental implications of the realist position. Berkeley’s insight—such would seem to be Kant’s line of argument—is perverted by the very view which he is attacking. Berkeley appreciates only what is false in the Cartesian view of space; he is blind to the important element of truth which it contains. Empiricist though he be, he has no wider conception of the function and powers of sensibility than have the realists from whom he separates himself off; and in order to comprehend those existences to which alone he is willing to allow true reality, he has therefore, like the rationalists, to fall back upon pure reason.[602]