History of Modern Philosophy / From Nicolas of Cusa to the Present Time

by Richard Falckenberg

In regard to quantity, every judgment is universal, particular, or singular; in regard to quality, affirmative, negative, or infinite; in regard to relation, categorical, hypothetical, or disjunctive; and in regard to modality, problematical, assertory, or apodictic. To these twelve forms of judgment correspond as many categories, viz., I., Unity, Plurality, Totality; II., Reality, Negation, Limitation; III., Subsistence and Inherence (Substance and Accident), Causality and Dependence (Cause and Effect), Community (Reciprocity between the Active and the Passive); IV., Possibility—Impossibility, Existence—Non-existence, Necessity—Contingency.

The first six of these fundamental concepts, which have no correlatives, constitute the mathematical, the second six, which appear in pairs, the dynamical categories. The former relate to objects of (pure or of empirical) intuition, the latter to the existence of these objects (in relation to one another or to the understanding). Although all other a priori division though concepts must be dichotomous, each of the four heads includes three categories, the third of which in each case arises from the combination of the second and first,[1] but, nevertheless, is an original (not a derivative) concept, since this combination requires a special actus of the understanding. Universality or totality is plurality regarded as unity, limitation is reality combined with negation, community is the reciprocal causality of substances, and necessity is the actuality given by possibility itself. Kant omits, as unnecessary here, the useful, easy, and not unpleasant task of noting the great number of derivative concepts a priori (predicables) which spring from the combination of these twelve original concepts (predicaments = categories) with one another, or with the modes of pure sensibility,—the concepts force, action, passion, would belong as subsumptions under causality, presence and resistance under community, origin, extinction, and change under modality,—since his object is not a system, but only the principles of one. His liking or even love for this division according to quantity, quality, relation, and modality, which he always has ready as though it were a universal key for philosophical problems, reveals a very strong architectonic impulse, against which even his ever active skeptical tendency is not able to keep up the battle.

[Footnote 1: Concerning this "neat observation," Kant remarked that it might "perhaps have important consequences in regard to the scientific form of all knowledge of reason." This prophecy was fulfilled, although in a different sense from that which floated before his mind. Fichte and Hegel composed their "thought-symphonies" in the three-four time given by Kant.]

In view of the derivation of the forms of thought from the forms of judgment Kant does not stop to give a detailed proof that the categories are concepts, and that they are pure. Their discursive (not intuitive) character is evident from the fact that their reference to the object is mediate only (and not, as in the case of intuition, immediate), and their a priori origin, from the necessity which they carry with them, and which would be impossible if their origin were empirical. Here Kant starts from Hume's criticism of the idea of cause. The Scottish skeptic had said that the necessary bond between cause and effect can neither be perceived nor logically demonstrated; that, therefore, the relation of causality is an idea which we—with what right?—add to perceived succession in time. This doubt (without the hasty conclusions), says Kant, must be generalized, must be extended to the category of substance (which had been already done by Hume, pp. 226-7, though the author of the Critique of Reason was not aware of the fact), and to all other pure concepts of the understanding. Then we may hope to kindle a torch at the spark which Hume struck out. The problem "It is impossible to see why, because something exists, something else must necessarily exist," is the starting point alike of Hume's skepticism and Kant's criticism. The former recognized that the principle of causality is neither empirical nor analytic, and therefore concluded that it is an invention of reason, which confuses subjective with objective necessity. The latter shows that in spite of its subjective origin it has an objective value; that it is a truth which is independent of all experience, and yet valid for all who have experience, and for all that can be experienced.

Of the two questions, "How can the concepts which spring from our understanding possess objective validity?" and, "How (through what means or media) does their application to objects of experience take place?" the first is answered in the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, and the second in the chapter on their Schematism.

The Deduction, the most difficult portion of the Critique, shows that the objective validity of the categories, as concepts of objects in general, depends on the fact that through them alone experience as far as regards the form of thought _is possible, i.e., it is only through them that any object whatever can be thought. All knowledge consists in judgments; all judgments contain a connection of representations; all connection—whether it be conscious or not, whether it relates to concepts or to pure or empirical intuitions—is an act of the understanding; it cannot be given by objects, but only spontaneously performed by the subject itself. We cannot represent anything as connected in the object unless we have ourselves first connected it. The connection includes three conceptions: that of the manifold to be connected (which is given by intuition), that of the act of synthesis, and that of the unity; this last is two-fold, an objective unity (the conception of an object in general in which the manifold is united), and a subjective unity (the unity of consciousness under which or, rather, through which the connection is effected). The categories represent the different kinds of combination, each one of these, again, being completed in three stages, which are termed the Synthesis of Apprehension in Intuition, the Synthesis of Reproduction in Imagination, and the Synthesis of Recognition in Concepts. If I wish to think the time from one noon to the next, I must (1) grasp (apprehend) the manifold representations (portions of time) in succession; (2) retain or renew (reproduce) in thought those which have preceded in passing to those which follow; (3) be conscious that that which is now thought is the same with that thought before, or know again (recognize) the reproduced representation as the one previously experienced. If the mind did not exercise such synthetic activity the manifold of representation would not constitute a whole, would lack the unity which consciousness alone can impart to it. Without this one consciousness, concepts and knowledge of objects would be wholly impossible. The unity of pure self-consciousness or of "transcendental apperception" is the postulate of all use of the understanding. In the flux of internal phenomena there is no constant or abiding self, but the unchangeable consciousness here demanded is a precedent condition of all experience, and gives to phenomena a connection according to laws which determine an object for intuition, i.e., the conception of something in which they are necessarily connected.[1] Reference to an object is nothing other than the necessary unity of consciousness. The connective activity of the understanding, and with it experience, is possible only through "the synthetic unity of pure apperception," the "I think," which must be able to accompany all my representations, and through which they first become mine.

[Footnote 1: Object is "that which opposes the random or arbitrary determination of our cognitions," and which causes "them to be determined in a certain way a priori.">[

Experience (in the strict sense) is distinguished from perception (experience in the wide sense) by its objectivity or universal validity. A judgment of perception (the sun shines upon the stone and the stone becomes warm) is only subjectively valid; while, on the other hand, a judgment of experience (the sun warms the stone) aims to be valid not only for me and my present condition, but always, for me and for everyone else. If the former is to become the latter, an a priori concept must be added to the perception (in the above case, the concept of cause), under which the perception is subsumed. The category determines the perceptions in view of the form of the judgment, gives to the judgment its reference to an object, and thus gives to the percepts, or rather, concepts (sunshine and warmth), necessary and universally valid connection. The "reason why the judgments of others" must "agree with mine" is "the unity of the object to which they all relate, with which they agree, and hence must also all agree with one another."

Though the categories take their origin in the nature of the subject, they are objective and valid for objects of experience, because experience is possible alone through them. They are not the product, but the ground of experience. The second difficulty concerns their applicability to phenomena, which are wholly disparate. By what means is the gulf between the categories, which are concepts and a priori, and perceptions, which are intuitous and empirical, bridged over? The connecting link is supplied by the imagination, as the faculty which mediates between sensibility and understanding to provide a concept with its image, and consists in the intuition of time, which, in common with the categories, has an a priori character, and, in common with perceptions, an intuitive character, so that it is at once pure and sensuous. The subsumption of phenomena or empirical intuitions under the category is effected through the Schemata[1] of the concepts of the understanding, i.e., through a priori determinations of time according to rules, which relate to time-series, time-content, time-order, and time-comprehension, and indicate whether I have to apply this or that category to a given object.

[Footnote 1: The schema is not an empirical image, but stands midway between this (the particular intuition of a definite triangle or dog) and the unintuitable concept, as a general intuition (of a triangle or a dog in general, which holds alike for right- and oblique-angled triangles, for poodles and pugs), or as a rule for determining our intuition in accordance with a concept.]