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

by Norman Kemp Smith

Note 1.[741]—On this distinction between mathematical and dynamical categories cf. below, pp. 345-7, 510-11.

Note 2.[742]—This remark is inserted to meet a criticism which had been made by Johann Schulze,[743] and to which Kant in February 1784 had replied in terms almost identical with those of the present passage.

“The third category certainly springs from the connection of the first and second, not, indeed, from their mere combination, but from a connection the possibility of which constitutes a concept that is a special category. For this reason the third category may not be applicable in instances in which the other two apply: e.g. one year, many years of future time, are real concepts, but the totality of future years, that is, the collective unity of a future eternity, conceived as entire (so to say, as completed), is something that cannot be thought. But even in those cases in which the third category is applicable, it always contains something more than the first and the second taken separately and together, namely the derivation of the second from the first, a process which is not always practicable. Necessity, for example, is nothing else than existence, in so far as it can be inferred from possibility. Community is the reciprocal causality of substances in respect of their determinations. But that determinations of one substance can be produced by another substance, is something that we may not simply assume; it is one of those connections without which there could be no reciprocal relation of things in space, and therefore no outer experience. In a word, I find that just as the conclusion of a syllogism indicates, in addition to the operations of understanding and judgment in the premisses, a special operation peculiar to reason ..., so also the third category is a special, and in part original, concept. For instance, the concepts, quantum, compositum, totum, come under the categories unity, plurality, totality, but a quantum thought as compositum would not yield the concept of totality unless the concept of the quantum is thought as determinable through the composition, and in certain quanta, such as infinite space, that cannot be done.”[744]

Kant’s assertion that in certain cases the third category is not applicable is misleading. His proof of the validity of the category of reciprocity in the third Analogy really consists in showing that it is necessary to the apprehension of spatial co-existence;[745] and if, as Kant maintains, consciousness of space is necessary to consciousness of time, it is thereby proved to be involved in each and every act of consciousness. It is presupposed in the apprehension even of substantial existence and of causal sequence. His proof that it is a unique category, distinct from the mere combination of the categories of substance and causality, does not, therefore, assume what his words in the above letter would seem to imply, that it is only occasionally employed. The same remark holds in regard to totality; it is presupposed even in the apprehension of a single year. Kant’s references, both here and in other parts of the Critique,[746] to totality in its bearing upon the conception of infinitude, reveal considerable lack of clearness as to the relation in which it stands to the Idea of the unconditioned. Sometimes, as in this letter, he would seem to be identifying them; elsewhere this confusion is avoided. In B 111 totality is defined as multiplicity regarded as unity, and in A 142-3 = B 182 its schema is defined as number. (The identification of totality with number has led Kant to say in B 111 that number is not applicable in the representation of the infinite, a much more questionable assertion than that of the letter above quoted.) The statement that necessity is existence in so far as it can be inferred from possibility, or that it is existence given through possibility, is similarly misleading. Kant’s true position is that all three are necessary to the conception of any one of the three.

Thus Kant’s reply to Schulze, alike in his letter and in Note 2, fails to indicate with any real adequacy the true bearing of Critical teaching in this matter; and consequently fails to reveal the full force of his position. Only in terms of totality can unity and plurality be apprehended; only through the reciprocal relations which determine co-existence can we acquire consciousness of either permanence or sequence; only in terms of necessity can either existence or possibility be defined. The third category is not derived from a prior knowledge of the subordinate categories. It represents in each case a higher complex within which alone the simpler relations defined by the simpler concepts can exist or have meaning.

B 113-16, § 12.—This section, of no intrinsic importance, is an example of Kant’s loving devotion to this “architectonic.” His reasoning is extremely artificial, especially in its attempt to connect “unity, truth, and perfection” with the three categories of quantity. The Reflexionen show how greatly Kant was preoccupied with these three concepts, seeking either to base a table of categories upon them (B. Erdmann’s interpretation), or to reduce them to categories (Adickes’ interpretation). For some time Kant himself ranked with those who[747] “incautiously made these criteria of thought to be properties of the things in themselves.” In Reflexionen, ii. 903,[748] we find the following statement: “Unity (connection, agreement), truth (quality), completeness (quantity).” In ii. 916[749] Kant makes trial to connect them, as conceptions of possibility, with the categories of relation. In ii. 911 and 912 the later view, that they are logical in character and function, appears, but leads to their being set in relation to the three faculties of understanding, judgment, and reason. This is conjectured by B. Erdmann to have been Kant’s view at the time of the first edition. ii. 915, 919, 920 present the view expounded in the section before us.[750] Erdmann[751] remarks that in this section Kant “is settling accounts with certain thoughts which in the ’seventies had yielded suggestions for the transformation of ontology into the transcendental analytic.”

CHAPTER II
DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING

First edition Subjective and Objective Deductions.—In dealing with the transcendental deduction, as given in the first edition, we can make use of the masterly and convincing analysis which Vaihinger[752] (building upon Adickes’ previous results, but developing an independent and quite original interpretation) has given of its inconsecutive and strangely bewildering argumentation. Vaihinger’s analysis is an excellent example of detective genius in the field of scholarship. From internal evidence, circumstantially supported by the Reflexionen and Lose Blätter, he is able to prove that the deduction is composed of manuscripts, externally pieced together, and representing no less than four distinct stages in the slow and gradual development of Kant’s views. Like geological deposits, they remain to record the processes by which the final result has come to be. Though they do not in their present setting represent the correct chronological order, that may be determined once the proper clues to their disentanglement have been duly discovered. That discovery is itself, however, no easy task; for the unexpected, while lending colour and incident to the commentator’s enterprise, baffles his natural expectations at every turn. The first stage is one in which Kant dispenses with the categories, and in which, when they are referred to, they are taken as applying to things in themselves. The last stage, worked out, as there is ground for believing, in the haste and excitement of the final revision, is not represented in the Prolegomena or in the second edition of the Critique, the author retracing his steps and resuming the standpoint of the stage which preceded it. The fortunate accident of Kant’s having jotted down upon the back of a dated paper the record of his passing thought (one of the few Lose Blätter that are thus datable) is the culminating incident in this philosophical drama. It felicitously serves as a keystone in the body of evidence supported by general reasoning.

Before becoming acquainted with Vaihinger’s analysis I had observed Kant’s ascription to empirical concepts of the functions elsewhere allotted to the categories, but had been hopelessly puzzled as to how such teaching could be fitted into his general system. Vaihinger’s view of it as a pre-Critical survival would seem to be the only possible satisfactory solution. For the view which I have taken of Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object as also pre-Critical, and for its employment as a clue to the dating of passages, I am myself alone responsible.

The order of my exposition will be as follows:[753]