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

by Norman Kemp Smith

The setting in which the passage before us occurs has its own special interest.[779] When Kant, as it would seem, on the very eve of the publication of the Critique, developed the doctrine of a threefold synthesis culminating in a “synthesis of recognition in the concept,” he must have bethought himself of this earlier position, and have completed his subjective deduction by incorporation, probably with occasional alterations of phrasing, of the older manuscript. This procedure has bewildered even the most discerning among Kant’s readers; but now, thanks to Vaihinger’s convincing analysis, it may be welcomed as of illuminating interest in the historical study of Kant’s development.

I may here draw attention to the two important respects in which the positions revealed in this section continued to influence Kant’s later teaching: namely, in the emphasis laid upon the transcendental unity of apperception, and in the view of objectivity as involving the thought of the thing in itself.

The excessive emphasis which in this first stage is laid upon the transcendental unity of apperception persists throughout the later forms of the deduction, and, as I shall try to show, does so to the detriment of the argument. Though its functions are considerably diminished, they are still exaggerated; this is perhaps in part due to its having been in this early stage regarded as in and by itself the sole ultimate ground of unitary experience. There were, however, two other influences at work. Kant continued to employ the terminology of his earlier view, and in his less watchful moments was betrayed thereby into conflict with his considered teaching. But even more important was the influence of his personal convictions. He was irrevocably committed in his own private thinking to a belief in the spiritual and abiding character of the self; and this belief frequently colours, in illegitimate ways, the expression of his views. This is especially evident in some of the alterations[780] of the second edition, written as they were at a time when he was chiefly preoccupied with moral problems.

As regards the other factor, the view adopted in regard to the nature of objectivity, there is ample evidence that even after the empirical concepts had been displaced by the categories Kant still continued for some time (possibly for several years in the earlier and middle ’seventies) to hold to his doctrine of the transcendental object. Passages which expound it in this later form occur in the Note on Amphiboly and throughout the Dialectic.[781] That this may not be taken for his final teaching is equally certain. The entire first layer of the deduction of the first edition, all the relevant passages in the chapter on phenomena and noumena, and some of those in the Dialectic, were omitted in the second edition; and nowhere, either in the other portions of the deduction of the first edition, or in the deduction of the second edition, or in any passages added elsewhere in the second edition, is such teaching to be found.

A brief statement of Kant’s doctrine of the transcendental object in its later form seems advisable at this point; it is required in order to complete and to confirm the interpretation which I have given of the earlier exposition. At the same time I shall endeavour to show that the sections in which the doctrine occurs, though later than the first layer of the deduction of the first edition, are all of comparatively early origin, and that they reveal not the least trace of Kant’s more mature, phenomenalist view of the empirical world in space.

We may begin with the passages in the chapter on phenomena and noumena. The meaning in which the term transcendental is employed is there made sufficiently clear.

“The transcendental employment of a concept in any principle consists in its being referred to things in general and in themselves.”[782]

That is to say, the term transcendental, as used in the phrase transcendental object, is not employed in any sense which would oppose it to the transcendent. In so far as the thought of the thing in itself is a necessary ingredient in the concept of objectivity, it is a condition of apperception, and therefore of possible experience; in other words, the thought of a transcendent object is one of the transcendental conditions of our experience. As Kant is constantly interchanging the terms transcendent and transcendental, such an explanation of the phrase is perhaps superfluous; but if any is called for, the above would seem to suffice. As we shall have occasion to observe,[783] other factors besides the a priori must be reckoned among the conditions of experience; and to both types of conditions Kant applies the epithet transcendental.

In the chapter on phenomena and noumena Kant enquires at considerable length whether the categories (meaning, of course, the pure forms of understanding, not their schematised correlates) allow of transcendental (i.e. transcendent) employment. The passages in which this discussion occurs[784] would seem, however, to be highly composite; many paragraphs, or portions of paragraphs, are of much later date than others. We may therefore limit our attention to those in which the phrase transcendental object is actually employed, i.e. to those which appear only in the first edition.

“All our representations are referred by the understanding to some object; and since appearances are merely representations, the understanding refers them to a something as the object of sensuous intuition. But this something, thus conceived (in so fern), is only the transcendental object; and by that is meant a something = x, of which we know, and with the present constitution of our understanding can know, nothing whatsoever, but which, as a correlate of the unity of apperception, can serve only for the unity of the manifold in sensuous intuition. By means of this unity the understanding combines the manifold into the concept of an object. This transcendental object cannot be separated from the sense data, for nothing then remains over through which it might be thought. Consequently it is not in itself an object of knowledge, but only the representation of appearances under the concept of an object in general which is determinable through the manifold of those appearances. Precisely for this reason also the categories do not represent a special object given to the understanding alone, but only serve to specify the transcendental object (the concept of something in general) through that which is given in sensibility, in order thereby to know appearances empirically under concepts of objects.”[785] “The object to which I relate appearance in general is the transcendental object, i.e. the completely indeterminate thought of something in general. This cannot be entitled the noumenon [i.e. the thing in itself more specifically determined as being the object of a purely intelligible intuition];[786] for I know nothing of what it is in itself, and have no concept of it save as the object of a sensuous intuition in general, and so as being one and the same for all appearances.”[787]