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

by Norman Kemp Smith

“These three functions of modality are so many momenta of thought in general.”

This statement has been eulogised by Caird,[708] as being an anticipation of the Hegelian dialectic. As a matter of fact, Kant’s remark is irrelevant and misleading. The advance from consciousness of the problematic, through determination of it as actual to its explanation as necessary, represents only a psychological order in the mind of the individual. Logically, knowledge of the possible rests on and implies prior knowledge of the actual and of the necessities that constitute the actual.[709]

Section III.[710] The Categories or Pure Concepts of the Understanding.—The first three pages of this section, beginning “General logic abstracts,” and concluding with the word “rest on the understanding,” would seem to be a later interpolation. Embodying, as they do, some of the fundamental ideas of the transcendental deduction, they express Kant’s final method of distinguishing between general and transcendental logic. But they are none the less out of harmony with the other sections of the metaphysical deduction. They are of the nature of an after-thought, even though that afterthought represents a more mature and adequate standpoint. In A 55-7, where Kant defines the distinction between general and transcendental logic, the latter is formulated in entire independence of all reference to pure intuition.[711] Kant, indeed, argues[712] that just as there are both pure and empirical intuitions, so there are both pure and empirical concepts. But there is no indication that he has yet realised the close interdependence of the two types of a priori elements. Even when he proceeds in A 62 to remark that the empirical employment of pure concepts is conditioned by the fact that objects are given in intuition, no special reference is made to “the manifold of pure a priori intuition.” Now, however, Kant emphasises, as the fundamental characteristic of transcendental logic, its possession of a pure manifold through reference to which its pure concepts gain meaning. Thus not only does transcendental logic not abstract from the pure a priori concepts, it likewise possesses an a priori material.[713] It is in this twofold manner that it is now regarded as differing from formal logic.

The accounts given of the metaphysical deduction by Cohen,[714] Caird,[715] Riehl,[716] and Watson[717] are vitiated by failure to remark that this latter standpoint is a late development, and is out of keeping with the rest of the deduction. Riehl’s exposition has, however, the merit of comparative consistency. He explicitly recognises the important consequence which at once follows from acceptance of this later view, namely, that it is by their implying space and time that the categories differ from the notions which determine the forms of judgment; in other words, that the categories are actualised only as schemata. The category of substance, for instance, differs from the merely logical notion of a propositional subject, in being the concept of that which is always a subject, and never a predicate; and such a conception has specific meaning for us only as the permanent in time. Logical subjects and predicates, quantitative relations apart, are interchangeable. The relation between them is the analytic relation of identity. The concept of subject, on the other hand, transcendentally viewed, that is, as a category, is the apprehension of what is permanent, in synthetic distinction from, and relation to, its changing attributes. In other words, the transcendental distinction between substance and accidents is substituted for that of subject and predicate. Similarly the logical relation of ground and consequence, conceived as expressive of logical identity, gives way to the synthetic temporal relation of cause and effect. And so with all the other pure forms. As categories, they are schemata. Kant has virtually recognised this by the names which he gives to the categories of relation. But the proper recognition of the necessary interdependence of the intuitional and conceptual forms came too late to prevent him from distinguishing between categories and schemata, and so from creating for himself the artificial difficulties of the section on schematism.

In A 82 Kant states that he intentionally omits definitions of the categories. He had good reason for so doing. The attempt would have landed him in manifold difficulties, since his views were not yet sufficiently ripe to allow of his perceiving the way of escape. In A 241 (omitted in second edition) Kant makes, however, the directly counter statement that definition of the categories is not possible, giving as his reason that, in isolation from the conditions of sensibility, they are merely logical functions, “without the slightest indication as to how they can possess meaning and objective validity.”[718]

It cannot be too often repeated that the Critique is not a unitary work, but the patchwork record of twelve years of continuous development. Certain portions of the transcendental deduction, of which A 76-9 is one, represent the latest of all the many stages; and their teaching, when accepted, calls for a radical recasting of the metaphysical deduction. The bringing of the entire Critique into line with its maturest parts would have been an Herculean task; and it was one to which Kant, then fifty-seven years of age, was very rightly unwilling to sacrifice the time urgently needed for the writing of his other Critiques. The passage before us is one of the many interpolations by which Kant endeavoured to give an external unity to what, on close study, is found to be the plain record of successive and conflicting views. Meantime, in dealing with this passage, we are concerned only to note that if this later mode of defining transcendental logic be accepted, far-reaching modifications in Kant’s Critical teaching have to be made. The other points developed in A 76-9 we discuss below[719] in their proper connection.

The same Function, etc.[720]—This passage has already been sufficiently commented upon.[721] Kant here expresses in quite inadequate fashion the standpoint of the transcendental deduction. The implication is that analytic and synthetic thinking are co-ordinate, one and the same faculty exercising, on these two levels, the same operations. The true Critical teaching is that synthetic thinking is alone fundamental, and that only by a regress upon it can judgments be adequately accounted for. This passage, like the preceding, may be of later origin than the main sections of the metaphysical deduction.

Term “Categories”[722] borrowed from Aristotle.—Cf. below, p. 198.

Table of Categories. Quantity.—Kant derives the category of unity from the universal,[723] and that of totality (Allheit)[724] from the singular. These derivations are extremely artificial. In Reflexionen, ii. 563, Kant takes the more natural line of identifying totality with the universal, and unity with the singular. Probably[725] the reason of Kant’s change of view is the necessity of obtaining totality by combining unity with multiplicity. That can only be done if universality is thus equated with unity. Watson’s explanation,[726] that Kant has reversed the order of the categories, seems to be erroneous.