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

by Norman Kemp Smith

(2) In the Reflexionen zur Kritik der reinen Vernunft there is a very large and valuable body of relevant passages. No. 925 must be of the same date as the letter of 1772 to Herz; it formulates its problem in practically identical terms.[845] Nos. 946-52 and 955 may belong to the period of the first stage. For though the doctrine of the transcendental object as the opposite counterpart of the transcendental subject is not mentioned, the spiritualist view of the self is prominent. In No. 946 it is asserted that the representation of an object is “made by us through freedom.”

“Free actions are already given a priori, namely our own.”[846] “To pass universal objective judgments, and to do so apodictically, reason must be free from subjective grounds of determination. For were it so determined the judgment would be merely accidental, namely in accordance with its subjective cause. Thus reason is conscious a priori of its freedom in objectively necessary judgments in so far as it apprehends them as exclusively grounded through their relation to the object.”[847] “Transcendental freedom is the necessary hypothesis of all rules, and therefore of all employment of the understanding.”[848] “Appearances are representations whereby we are affected. The representation of our free self-activity does not involve affection, and accordingly is not appearance, but apperception.”[849]

It is significant that the categories receive no mention.

Almost all the other Reflexionen would seem to have originated in the period of the second stage of the deduction; but they still betray a strong spiritualist bias.

“Impressions are not yet representations, for they must be related to something else which is an action. Now the reaction of the mind is an action which relates to the impression, and which if taken alone[850] may in its special forms receive the title categories.”[851] “We can know the connection of things in the world only if we produce it through a universal action, and so out of a principle of inner power (aus einem Prinzip der inneren Potestas): substance, ground, combination.”[852]

These Reflexionen recognise only the categories of relation,[853] and must therefore be prior to the twelvefold classification. There is not the least trace of the characteristic doctrines of the third and fourth stages of the deduction, viz. of the transcendental function of the imagination or of a threefold transcendental synthesis. The nature of apprehension is also most obscure. It is frequently equated with apperception.

(3) The Lose Blätter aus Kants Nachlass (Heft I.) contains fragments which also belong to the second stage of the deduction, but which would seem to be of somewhat earlier date than the above Reflexionen.[854] They have interesting points of contact with the first stage. Thus though the phrase transcendental object does not occur in them, the object of knowledge is equated with x, and is regarded in the manner of the first stage as the opposite counterpart of the unity of the self.[855] These fragments belong, however, to the second stage in virtue of their recognition of the a priori categories of relation. There is also here, as is in the Reflexionen, great lack of clearness regarding the nature of apprehension; and there is still no mention of the transcendental faculty of imagination. Fragment 8 is definitely datable. It covers the free spaces of a letter of invitation dated May 20, 1775.[856] Fragment B 12[857] belongs to a different period from the above. This is sufficiently evident from its contents; but fortunately the paper upon which it is written—an official document in the handwriting of the Rector of the Philosophical Faculty of Königsberg—enables us to decide the exact year of its origin. It is dated January 20, 1780. The fragment must therefore be subsequent to that date. Now in it transcendental imagination appears as a third faculty alongside sensibility and understanding, and a distinction is definitely drawn between its empirical and its transcendental employment. The former conditions the synthesis of apprehension; the latter conditions the synthetic unity of apperception. It further distinguishes between reproductive and productive imagination, and ascribes the former exclusively to the empirical imagination. In all these respects it stands in complete agreement with the teaching of the third stage of the deduction. The fact that this fragment is subsequent to January 1780 would seem to prove that even at that late date Kant was struggling with his deduction.[858] But the most interesting of all Vaihinger’s conclusions has still to be mentioned. He points out that at the time when this fragment was composed Kant had not yet developed the doctrine characteristic of the fourth stage, namely, of a threefold transcendental synthesis. Moreover, as he observes, the statement which it explicitly contains, that reproductive imagination is always empirical, is inconsistent with any such doctrine. The teaching of the fourth stage must consequently be ascribed to an even later date.[859]

(4) The Lose Blätter (Heft II.), though almost exclusively devoted to moral and legal questions, contain in E 67[860] a relevant passage which Reicke regards as belonging to the ‘eighties, but which Adickes and Vaihinger agree in dating “shortly before 1781.” On Vaihinger’s view it is a preliminary study for the passages of the fourth stage of the deduction. But such exact dating is not essential to Vaihinger’s argument. It is undoubtedly quite late, and contains the following sentence:

“All representations, whatever their origin, are yet ultimately as representations modifications of inner sense, and their unity must be viewed from this point of view. A spontaneity of synthesis corresponds to their receptivity: either of apprehension as sensations or of reproduction as images (Einbildungen) or of recognition as concepts.”