In common with Empiricism the Critical Philosophy
assumes that experience affords the
one sole
foundation for cognitions; which however
it does not allow to rank as truths,
but
only as knowledge of phenomena.
The Critical theory starts originally
from
the distinction of elements presented
in
the analysis of experience, viz. the
matter
of sense, and its universal relations.
Taking
into account Humes's criticism on this
distinction
as given in the preceding section,
viz. that
sensation does not explicitly apprehend
more
than an individual or more than a mere
event,
it insists at the same time on the
fact that
universality and necessity are seen
to perform
a function equally essential in constituting
what is called experience. This element,
not being derived from the empirical
facts
as such, must belong to the spontaneity
of
thought; in other words, it is a priori.
The Categories or Notions of the Understanding
constitute the objectivity of experiential
cognitions. In every case they involve
a
connective reference, and hence through
their
means are formed synthetic judgements
a priori,
that is, primary and underivative connections
of opposites.
Even Hume's scepticism does not deny
that
the characteristics of universality
and necessity
are found in cognition. And even in
Kant
this fact remains a presupposition
after
all; it may be said, to use the ordinary
phraseology of the sciences, that Kant
did
no more than offer another explanation
of
the fact.
§ 41
The Critical Philosophy proceeds to
test
the value of the categories employed
in physic,
as well as in other sciences and in
ordinary
conception. This scrutiny however is
not
directed to the content of these categories,
nor does it inquire into the exact
relation
they bear to one another: but simply
considers
them as affected by the contrast between
subjective and objective. The contrast,
as
we are to understand it here, bears
upon
the distinction (see preceding §) of
the
two elements in experience. The name
of objectivity
is here given to the element of universality
and necessity, i. e. to the categories
themselves,
or what is called the a priori constituent.
The Critical Philosophy however widened
the
contrast in such a way, that the subjectivity
comes to embrace the ensemble of experience,
including both of the aforesaid elements;
and nothing remains on the other side
but
the 'thing-in-itself'.
The special forms of the a priori element,
in other words, of thought, which in
spite
of its objectivity is looked upon as
a purely
subjective act, present themselves
as follows
in a systematic order which, it may
be remarked,
is solely based upon psychological
and historical
grounds.
§ 42
(a) The Theoretical Faculty. Cognition
qua
cognition. The specific ground of the
categories
is declared by the Critical system
to lie
in the primary identity of the 'I'
in thought
what Kant calls the 'transcendental
unity
of self-consciousness'. The impressions
from
feeling and perception are, if we look
to
their contents, a multiplicity or miscellany
of elements: and the multiplicity is
equally
conspicuous in their form. For sense
is marked
by a mutual exclusion of members; and
that
under two aspects, namely space and
time,
which, being the forms, that is to
say, the
universal type of perception, are themselves
a priori. This congeries, afforded
by sensation
and perception, must however be reduced
to
an identity or primary synthesis. To
accomplish
this the 'I' brings it in relation
to itself
and unites it there in one consciousness
which Kant calls 'pure apperception'.
The
specific modes in which the Ego refers
to
itself the multiplicity of sense are
the
pure concepts of the understanding,
the Categories.
Kant, it is well known, did not put
himself
to much trouble in discovering the
categories.
'I', the unity of selfconsciousness,
being
quite abstract and completely indeterminate,
the question arises, how are we to
get at
the specialised forms of the 'I', the
categories?
Fortunately, the common logic offers
to our
hand an empirical classification of
the kinds
of judgement. Now, to judge is the
same as
to think of a determinate object. Hence
the
various modes of judgement, as enumerated
to our hand, provide us with the several
categories of thought. To the philosophy
of Fichte belongs the great merit of
having
called attention to the need of exhibiting
the necessity of these categories and
giving
a genuine deduction of them. Fichte
ought
to have produced at least one effect
on the
method of logic. One might have expected
that the general laws of thought, the
usual
stock-in-trade of logicians, or the
classification
of notions, judgements, and syllogisms,
would
be no longer taken merely from observation
and so only empirically treated, but
be deduced
from thought itself. If thought is
to be
capable of proving anything at all,
if logic
must insist upon the necessity of proofs,
and if it proposes to teach the theory
of
demonstration, its first care should
be to
give a reason for its own subject.
§ 43
The Categories may be viewed in two
aspects.
On the one hand it is by their instrumentality
that the mere perception of sense rises
to
objectivity and experience. On the
other
hand these notions are unities in our
consciousness
merely: they are consequently conditioned
by the material given to them, and
having
nothing of their own they can be applied
to use only within the range of experience.
But the other constituent of experience,
the impressions of feeling and perception,
is not one whit less subjective than
the
categories.
§ 44
It follows that the categories are
no fit
terms to express the Absolute the Absolute
not being given in perception and Understanding,
or knowledge by means of the categories,
is consequently incapable of knowing
the
Things-in-themselves.
The Thing-in-itself (and under 'thing'
is
embraced even Mind and God) expresses
the
object when we leave out of sight all
that
consciousness makes of it, all its
emotional
aspects, and all specific thoughts
of it.
It is easy to see what is left utter
abstraction,
total emptiness, only described still
as
an 'other-world' the negative of every
image,
feeling, and definite thought. Nor
does it
require much penetration to see that
this
caput mortuum is still only a product
of
thought, such as accrues when thought
is
carried on to abstraction unalloyed:
that
it is the work of the empty 'Ego',
which
makes an object out of this empty self-identity
of its own. The negative characteristic
which
this abstract identity receives as
an object
is also enumerated among the categories
of
Kant, and is no less familiar than
the empty
identity aforesaid. Hence one can only
read
with surprise the perpetual remark
that we
do not know the Thing-in-itself. On
the contrary
there is nothing we can know so easily.
§ 45
It is Reason, the faculty of the Unconditioned,
which discovers the conditioned nature
of
the knowledge comprised in experience.
What
is thus called the object of Reason,
the
Infinite or Unconditioned, is nothing
but
self-sameness, or the primary identity
of
the 'Ego' in thought (mentioned in
§ 42).
Reason itself is the name given to
the abstract
'Ego' or thought, which makes this
pure identity
its aim or object (cf. note to the
preceding
§). Now this identity, having no definite
attribute at all, can receive no illumination
from the truths of experience, for
the reason
that these refer always to definite
facts.
Such is the sort of Unconditioned that
is
supposed to be the absolute truth of
Reason
what is termed the Idea; while the
cognitions
of experience are reduced to the level
of
untruth and declared to be appearances.
§ 46
But it is not enough simply to indicate
the existence of the object of Reason.
Curiosity
impels us to seek for knowledge of
this identity,
this empty thing-in-itself. Now knowledge
means such an acquaintance with the
object
as apprehends its distinct and special
subject-matter.
But such subject-matter involves a
complex
interconnection in the object itself,
and
supplies a ground of connection with
many
other objects. In the present case,
to express
the nature of the features of the Infinite
or Thing-in-itself, Reason would have
nothing
except the categories: and in any endeavour
so to employ them Reason becomes over-soaring
or 'transcendent'.
Here begins the second stage of the
Criticism
of Reason which, as an independent
piece
of work, is more valuable than the
first.
The first part, as has been explained
above,
teaches that the categories originate
in
the unity of self-consciousness; that
any
knowledge which is gained by their
means
has nothing objective in it, and that
the
very objectivity claimed for them is
only
subjective. So far as this goes, the
Kantian
Criticism presents that 'common' type
of
idealism known as Subjective Idealism.
It
asks no questions about the meaning
or scope
of the categories, but simply considers
the
abstract form of subjectivity and objectivity,
and that even in such a partial way
that
the former aspect, that of subjectivity,
is retained as a final and purely affirmative
term of thought. In the second part,
however,
when Kant examines the application,
as it
is called, which Reason makes of the
categories
in order to know its objects, the content
of the categories, at least in some
points
of view, comes in for discussion: or,
at
any rate, an opportunity presented
itself
for a discussion of the question. It
is worth
while to see what decision Kant arrives
at
on the subject of physic, as this application
of the categories to the unconditioned
is
called. His method of procedure we
shall
here briefly state and criticise.
§47
[a] The first of the unconditioned
entities
which Kant examines is the Soul (see
above,
§ 34). 'In my consciousness', he says,
'I
always find that I (1) am the determining
subject; (2) am singular or abstractly
simple;
(3) am identical, or one and the same,
in
all the variety of what I am conscious
of;
(4) distinguish myself as thinking
from all
the things outside me.'
Now the method of the old physic, as
Kant
correctly states it, consisted in substituting
for these statements of experience
the corresponding
categories or physical terms. Thus
arise
these four new propositions: (a) the
Soul
is a substance; (b) it is a simple
substance;
(c) it is numerically identical at
the various
periods of existence; (d) it stands
in relation
to space
Kant discusses this translation, and
draws
attention to the Paralogism or mistake
of
confounding one kind of truth with
another.
He points out that empirical attributes
have
here been replaced by categories; and
shows
that we are not entitled to argue from
the
former to the latter, or to put the
latter
in place of the former.
This criticism obviously but repeats
the
observation of Hume (§ 39) that the
categories
as a whole ideas of universality and
necessity
are entirely absent from sensation;
and that
the empirical fact both in form and
contents
differs from its intellectual formulation.
If the purely empirical fact were held
to
constitute the credentials of the thought,
then no doubt it would be indispensable
to
be able precisely to identify the 'idea'
in the 'impression'.
And in order to make out, in his criticism
of the physical psychology, that the
soul
cannot be described as substantial,
simple,
self-same, and as maintaining its independence
in intercourse with the material world,
Kant
argues from the single ground that
the several
attributes of the soul, which consciousness
lets us feel in experience, are not
exactly
the same attributes as result from
the action
of thought thereon. But we have seen
above
that according to Kant all knowledge,
even
experience, consists in thinking our
impressions
in other words, in transforming into
intellectual
categories the attributes primarily
belonging
to sensation.
Unquestionably one good result of the
Kantian
criticism was that it emancipated mental
philosophy from the 'soul-thing', from
the
categories, and, consequently, from
questions
about the simplicity, complexity, materiality,
etc., of the soul. But even for the
common
sense of ordinary men, the true point
of
view, from which the inadmissibility
of these
forms best appears, will be not that
they
are thoughts, but that thoughts of
such a
stamp neither can nor do retain truth.
§47
If thought and phenomenon do not perfectly
correspond to one another, we are free
at
least to choose which of the two shall
be
held the defaulter. The Kantian idealism,
where it touches on the world of Reason,
throws the blame on the thoughts; saying
that the thoughts are defective, as
not being
exactly fitted to the sensations and
to a
mode of mind wholly restricted within
the
range of sensation, in which as such
there
are no traces of the presence of these
thoughts.
But as to the actual content of the
thought,
no question is raised.
§ 48
[b] The second unconditioned object
is the
World (§ 35). In the attempt which
reason
makes to comprehend the unconditioned
nature
of the World, it falls into what are
called
Antinomies. In other words it maintains
two
opposite propositions about the same
object,
and in such a way that each of them
has to
be maintained with equal necessity.
From
this it follows that the body of cosmical
fact, the specific statements descriptive
of which run into contradiction, cannot
be
a self-subsistent reality, but only
an appearance.
The explanation offered by Kant alleges
that
the contradiction does not affect the
object
in its own proper essence, but attaches
only
to the Reason which seeks to comprehend
it.
In this way the suggestion was broached
that the contradiction is occasioned
by the
subject-matter itself, or by the intrinsic
quality of the categories. And to offer
the
idea that the contradiction introduced
into
the world of Reason by the categories
of
Understanding is inevitable and essential
was to make one of the most important
steps
in the progress of Modern Philosophy.
But
the more important the issue thus raised
the more trivial was the solution.
Its only
motive was an excess of tenderness
for the
things of the world. The blemish of
contradiction,
it seems, could not be allowed to mar
the
essence of the world; but there could
be
no objection to attach it to the thinking
Reason, to the essence of mind. Probably
nobody will feel disposed to deny that
the
phenomenal world presents contradictions
to the observing mind; meaning by 'phenomenal'
the world as it presents itself to
the senses
and understanding, to the subjective
mind.
But if a comparison is instituted between
the essence of the world and the essence
of the mind, it does seem strange to
hear
how calmly and confidently the modest
dogma
has been advanced by one, and repeated
by
others, that thought or Reason, and
not the
World, is the seat of contradiction.
It is
no escape to turn round and explain
that
Reason falls into contradiction only
by applying
the categories. For this application
of the
categories is maintained to be necessary,
and Reason is not supposed to be equipped
with any other forms but the categories
for
the purpose of cognition. But cognition
is
determining and determinate thinking:
so
that, if Reason be mere empty indeterminate
thinking, it thinks nothing. And if
in the
end Reason be reduced to mere identity
without
diversity (see next §), it will in
the end
also win a happy release from contradiction
at the slight sacrifice of all its
facets
and contents.
It may also be noted that his failure
to
make a more thorough study of Antinomy
was
one of the reasons why Kant enumerated
only
four Antinomies. These four attracted
his
notice, because, as may be seen in
his discussion
of the so-called Paralogisms of Reason,
he
assumed the list of the categories
as a basis
of his argument. Employing what has
subsequently
become a favourite fashion, he simply
put
the object under a rubric otherwise
ready
to hand, instead of deducing its characteristics
from its notion. Further deficiencies
in
the treatment of the Antinomies I have
pointed
out, as occasion offered, in my Science
of
Logic. Here it will be sufficient to
say
that the Antinomies are not confined
to the
four special objects taken from Cosmology:
they appear in all objects of every
kind,
in all conceptions, notions, and Ideas.
To
be aware of this and to know objects
in this
property of theirs makes a vital part
in
a philosophical theory. For the property
thus indicated is what we shall afterwards
describe as the Dialectical influence
in
Logic.
§ 49
[c] The third object of the Reason
is God
(§ 36): he also must be known and defined
in terms of thought. But in comparison
with
an unalloyed identity, every defining
term
as such seems to the understanding
to be
only a limit and a negation: every
reality
accordingly must be taken as limitless,
i.
e. undefined. Accordingly God, when
he is
defined to be the sum of all realities,
the
most real of beings, turns into a mere
abstract.
And the only term under which that
most real
of real things can be defined is that
of
Being itself the height of abstraction.
These
are two elements, abstract identity,
on one
hand, which is spoken of in this place
as
the notion; and Being on the other
which
Reason seeks to unify. And their union
is
the Ideal of Reason.
§ 50
... The organic structures, and the
evidence
they afford of mutual adaptation, belong
to a higher province, the province
of animated
nature. But even without taking into
consideration
the possible blemish which the study
of animated
nature and of the other teleological
aspects
of existing things may contract from
the
pettiness of the final causes, and
from puerile
instances of them and their bearings,
merely
animated nature is, at the best, incapable
of supplying the material for a truthful
expression to the idea to God. God
is more
than life: he is Spirit. And therefore
if
the thought of the Absolute takes a
starting-point
for its rise, and desires to take the
nearest,
the most true and adequate starting-point
will be found in the nature of spirit
alone.
§ 51
The other way of unification by which
to
realise the Ideal of Reason is to set
out
from the abstractum of Thought and
seek to
characterise it: for which purpose
Being
is the only available term. This is
the method
of the Ontological proof. The opposition,
here presented from a merely subjective
point
of view, lies between Thought and Being;
whereas in the first way of junction,
being
is common to the two sides of the antithesis,
and the contrast lies only between
its individualisation
and universality. Understanding meets
this
second way with what is implicitly
the same
objection as it made to the first.
It denied
that the empirical involves the universal;
so it denies that the universal involves
the specialisation, which specialisation
in this instance is being. In other
words
it says: Being cannot be deduced from
the
notion by any analysis.
The uniformly favourable reception
and acceptance
which attended Kant's criticism of
the Ontological
proof was undoubtedly due to the illustration
which he made use of. To explain the
difference
between thought and being, he took
the instance
of a hundred sovereigns, which, for
anything
it matters to the notion, are the same
hundred
whether they are real or only possible,
though
the difference of the two cases is
very perceptible
in their effect on a man's purse. Nothing
can be more obvious than that anything
we
only think or conceive is not on that
account
actual; that mental representation,
and even
notional comprehension, always falls
short
of being. Still it may not unfairly
be styled
a barbarism in language, when the name
of
notion is given to things like a hundred
sovereigns. And, putting that mistake
aside,
those who perpetually urge against
the philosophic
Idea the difference between Being and
Thought
might have admitted that philosophers
were
not wholly ignorant of the fact. Can
there
be any proposition more trite than
this ?
But after all, it is well to remember,
when
we speak of God, that we have an object
of
another kind than any hundred sovereigns,
and unlike any one particular notion,
representation,
or however else it may be styled. It
is in
fact this and this alone which marks
everything
finite: its being in time and space
is discrepant
from its notion. God, on the contrary,
expressly
has to be what can only be 'thought
as existing';
his notion involves being. It is this
unity
of the notion and being that constitutes
the notion of God.
If this were all, we should have only
a
formal expression of the divine nature
which
would not really go beyond a statement
of
the nature of the notion itself. And
that
the notion, in its most abstract terms,
involves
being is plain. For the notion, whatever
other determination it may receive,
is at
least reference back on itself, which
results
by abolishing the intermediation, and
thus
is immediate. And what is that reference
to self, but being? Certainly it would
be
strange if the notion, the very inmost
of
mind, if even the 'Ego', or above all
the
concrete totality we call God, were
not rich
enough to include so poor a category
as being,
the very poorest and most abstract
of all.
For, if we look at the thought it holds,
nothing can be more insignificant than
being.
And yet there may be something still
more
insignificant than being that which
at first
sight is perhaps supposed to be, an
external
and sensible existence, like that of
the
paper lying before me. However, in
this matter,
nobody proposes to speak of the sensible
existence of a limited and perishable
thing.
Besides, the petty stricture of the
Kritik
that 'thought and being are different'
can
at most molest the path of the human
mind
from the thought of God to the certainty
that he is: it cannot take it away.
It is
this process of transition, depending
on
the absolute inseparability of the
thought
of God from his being, for which its
proper
authority has been revindicated in
the theory
of faith or immediate knowledge whereof
hereafter.
§ 52
In this way thought, at its highest
pitch,
has to go outside for any determinateness;
and although it is continually termed
Reason,
is out-and-out abstract thinking. And
the
result of all is that Reason supplies
nothing
beyond the formal unity required to
simplify
and systematise experiences; it is
a canon,
not an organon, of truth, and can furnish
only a criticism of knowledge, not
a doctrine
of the infinite. In its final analysis
this
criticism is summed up in the assertion
that
in strictness thought is only the indeterminate
unity and the action of this indeterminate
unity.
§ 53
(b) The Practical Reason is understood
by
Kant to mean a thinking Will, i. e.
a Will
that determines itself on universal
principles.
Its office is to give objective, imperative
laws of freedom laws, that is, which
state
what ought to happen. The warrant for
thus
assuming thought to be an activity
which
makes itself felt objectively, that
is, to
be really a Reason, is the alleged
possibility
of proving practical freedom by experience,
that is, of showing it in the phenomenon
of selfconsciousness. This experience
in
consciousness is at once met by all
that
the Necessitarian produces from contrary
experience, particularly by the sceptical
induction (employed among others by
Hume)
from the endless diversity of what
men regard
as right and duty i. e. from the diversity
apparent in those professedly objective
laws
of freedom.
§ 54
What, then, is to serve as the law
which
the Practical Reason embraces and obeys,
and as the criterion in its act of
selfdetermination?
There is no rule at hand but the same
abstract
identity of understanding as before:
there
must be no contradiction in the act
of self-determination.
Hence the Practical Reason never shakes
off
the formalism which is represented
as the
climax of the Theoretical Reason.
But this Practical Reason does not
confine
the universal principle of the Good
to its
own inward regulation: it first becomes
practical,
in the true sense of the word, when
it insists
on the Good being manifested in the
world
with an outward objectivity, and requires
that the thought shall be objective
throughout,
and not merely subjective. We shall
speak
of this postulate of the Practical
Reason
afterwards.
§ 55
(c) The Reflective Power of Judgment
is
invested by Kant with the function
of an
Intuitive Understanding. That is to
say,
whereas the particulars had hitherto
appeared,
so far as the universal or abstract
identity
was concerned, adventitious and incapable
of being deduced from it, the Intuitive
Understanding
apprehends the particulars as moulded
and
formed by the universal itself. Experience
presents such universalised particulars
in
the products of Art and of organic
nature.
The capital feature in Kant's Criticism
of the Judgement is, that in it he
gave a
representation and a name, if not even
an
intellectual expression, to the Idea.
Such
a representation, as an Intuitive Understanding,
or an inner adaptation, suggests a
universal
which is at the same time apprehended
as
essentially a concrete unity. It is
in these
apercus alone that the Kantian philosophy
rises to the speculative height. Schiller,
and others, have found in the idea
of artistic
beauty, where thought and sensuous
conception
have grown together into one, a way
of escape
from the abstract and separatist understanding.
Others have found the same relief in
the
perception and consciousness of life
and
of living things, whether that life
be natural
or intellectual. The work of Art, as
well
as the living individual, is, it must
be
owned, of limited content. But in the
postulated
harmony of nature (or necessity) and
free
purpose in the final purpose of the
world
conceived as realised, Kant has put
before
us the Idea, comprehensive even in
its content.
Yet what may be called the laziness
of thought,
when dealing with the supreme Idea,
finds
a too easy mode of evasion in the 'ought
to be': instead of the actual realisation
of the ultimate end, it clings hard
to the
disjunction of the notion from reality.
Yet
if thought will not think the ideal
realised,
the senses and the intuition can at
any rate
see it in the present reality of living
organisms
and of the beautiful in Art. And consequently
Kant's remarks on these objects were
well
adapted to lead the mind on to grasp
and
think the concrete Idea.
§ 56
We are thus led to conceive a different
relation between the universal of understanding
and the particular of perception, than
that
on which the theory-of the Theoretical
and
Practical Reason is founded. But while
this
is so, it is not supplemented by a
recognition
that the former is the genuine relation
and
the very truth. Instead of that, the
unity
(of universal with particular) is accepted
only as it exists in finite phenomena,
and
is adduced only as a fact of experience.
Such experience, at first only personal,
may come from two sources. It may spring
from Genius, the faculty which produces
'aesthetic
ideas'; meaning by aesthetic ideas,
the picture-thoughts
of the free imagination which subserve
an
idea and suggest thoughts, although
their
content is not expressed in a notional
form,
and even admits of no such expression.
It
may also be due to Taste, the feeling
of
congruity between the free play of
intuition
or imagination and the uniformity of
understanding.
§ 57
The principle by which the Reflective
faculty
of Judgement regulates and arranges
the products
of animated nature is described as
the End
or final cause the notion in action,
the
universal at once determining and determinate
in itself. At the same time Kant is
careful
to discard the conception of external
or
finite adaptation, in which the End
is only
an adventitious form for the means
and material
in which it is realised. In the living
organism,
on the contrary, the final cause is
a moulding
principle and an energy immanent in
the matter,
and every member is in its turn a means
as
well as an end.
§ 58
Such an Idea evidently radically transforms
the relation which the understanding
institutes
between means and ends, between subjectivity
and objectivity. And yet in the face
of this
unification, the End or design is subsequently
explained to be a cause which exists
and
acts subjectively, i. e. as our idea
only:
and teleology is accordingly explained
to
be only a principle of criticism, purely
personal to our understanding.
After the Critical philosophy had settled
that Reason can know phenomena only,
there
would still have been an option for
animated
nature between two equally subjective
modes
of thought. Even according to Kant's
own
exposition, there would have been an
obligation
to admit, in the case of natural productions,
a knowledge not confined to the categories
of quality, cause and effect, composition,
constituents, and so on. The principle
of
inward adaptation or design, had it
been
kept to and carried out in scientific
application,
would have led to a different and a
higher
method of observing nature.
§ 59
If we adopt this principle, the Idea,
when
all limitations were removed from it,
would
appear as follows. The universality
moulded
by Reason, and described as the absolute
and final end or the Good, would be
realised
in the world, and realised moreover
by means
of a third thing, the power which proposes
this End as well as realises it that
is,
God. Thus in him, who is the absolute
truth,
those oppositions of universal and
individual,
subjective and objective, are solved
and
explained to be neither self-subsistent
nor
true.
§ 60
But Good which is thus put forward
as the
final cause of the world has been already
described as only our good, the moral
law
of our Practical Reason. This being
so, the
unity in question goes no further than
make
the state of the world and the course
of
its events harmonise with our moral
standards.
Besides, even with this limitation,
the final
cause, or Good, is a vague abstraction,
and
the same vagueness attaches to what
is to
be Duty. But, further, this harmony
is met
by the revival and reassertion of the
antithesis,
which it by its own principle had nullified.
The harmony is then described as merely
subjective,
something which merely ought to be,
and which
at the same time is not real a mere
article
of faith, possessing a subjective certainty,
but without truth, or that objectivity
which
is proper to the Idea. This contradiction
may seem to be disguised by adjourning
the
realisation of the Idea to a future,
to a
time when the Idea will also be. But
a sensuous
condition like time is the reverse
of a reconciliation
of the discrepancy; and an infinite
progression
which is the corresponding image adopted
by the understanding on the very face
of
it only repeats and re-enacts the contradiction.
A general remark may still be offered
on
the result to which the Critical philosophy
led as to the nature of knowledge;
a result
which has grown one of the current
'idols'
or axiomatic beliefs of the day. In
every
dualistic system, and especially in
that
of Kant, the fundamental defect makes
itself
visible in the inconsistency of unifying
at one moment what a moment before
had been
explained to be independent and therefore
incapable of unification. And then,
at the
very moment after unification has been
alleged
to be the truth, we suddenly come upon
the
doctrine that the two elements, which,
in
their true status of unification, had
been
refused all independent subsistence,
are
only true and actual in their state
of separation.
Philosophising of this kind wants the
little
penetration needed to discover, that
this
shuffling only evidences how unsatisfactory
each one of the two terms is. And it
fails
simply because it is incapable of bringing
two thoughts together. (And in point
of form
there are never more than two.) It
argues
an utter want of consistency to say,
on the
one hand, that the understanding only
knows
phenomena, and, on the other, assert
the
absolute character of this knowledge,
by
such statements as 'Cognition can go
no further';
'Here is the natural and absolute limit
of
human knowledge.' But 'natural' is
the wrong
word here. The things of nature are
limited
and are natural things only to such
extent
as they are not aware of their universal
limit, or to such extent as their mode
or
quality is a limit from our point of
view,
and not from their own. No one knows,
or
even feels, that anything is a limit
or defect,
until he is at the same time above
and beyond
it. Living beings, for example, possess
the
privilege of pain which is denied to
the
inanimate: even with living beings,
a single
mode or quality passes into the feeling
of
a negative. For living beings as such
possess
within them a universal vitality, which
overpasses
and includes the single mode; and thus,
as
they maintain themselves in the negative
of themselves, they feel the contradiction
to exist within them. But the contradiction
is within them only in so far as one
and
the same subject includes both the
universality
of their sense of life, and the individual
mode which is in negation with it.
This illustration
will show how a limit or imperfection
in
knowledge comes to be termed a limit
or imperfection,
only when it is compared with the actually
present Idea of the universal, of a
total
and perfect. A very little consideration
might show that to call a thing finite
or
limited proves by implication the very
presence
of the infinite and unlimited, and
that our
knowledge of a limit can only be when
the
unlimited is on this side in consciousness.
The result however of Kant's view of
cognition
suggests a second remark. The philosophy
of Kant could have no influence on
the method
of the sciences. It leaves the categories
and method of ordinary knowledge quite
unmolested.
Occasionally, it may be, in the first
sections
of a scientific work of that period,
we find
propositions borrowed from the Kantian
philosophy;
but the course of the treatise renders
it
apparent that these propositions were
superfluous
decoration, and that the few first
pages
might have been omitted without producing
the least change in the empirical contents.
We may next institute a comparison
of Kant
with the physics of the empirical school.
Natural plain Empiricism, though it
unquestionably
insists most upon sensuous perception,
still
allows a supersensible world or spiritual
reality, whatever may be its structure
and
constitution, and whether derived from
intellect,
or from imagination, etc. So far as
form
goes, the facts of this supersensible
world
rest on the authority of mind, in the
same
way as the other facts embraced in
empirical
knowledge rest on the authority of
external
perception. But when Empiricism becomes
reflective
and logically consistent, it turns
its arms
against this dualism in the ultimate
and
highest species of fact; it denies
the independence
of the thinking principle and of a
spiritual
world which develops itself in thought.
Materialism
or Naturalism, therefore, is the consistent
and thoroughgoing system of Empiricism.
In
direct opposition to such an Empiricism,
Kant asserts the principle of thought
and
freedom, and attaches himself to the
first
mentioned form of empirical doctrine,
the
general principles of which he never
departed
from. There is a dualism in his philosophy
also. On one side stands the world
of sensation,
and of the understanding which reflects
upon
it. This world, it is true, he alleges
to
be a world of appearances. But that
is only
a title or formal description; for
the source,
the facts, and the modes of observation
continue
quite the same as in Empiricism. On
the other
side and independent stands a self-apprehending
thought, the principle of freedom,
which
Kant has in common with ordinary and
bygone
physic, but emptied of all that it
held,
and without his being able to infuse
into
it anything new. For, in the Critical
doctrine,
thought, or, as it is there called,
Reason,
is divested of every specific form,
and thus
bereft of all authority. The main effect
of the Kantian philosophy has been
to revive
the consciousness of Reason, or the
absolute
inwardness of thought. Its abstractness
indeed
prevented that inwardness from developing
into anything, or from originating
any special
forms, whether cognitive principles
or moral
laws; but nevertheless it absolutely
refused
to accept or indulge anything possessing
the character of an externality. Henceforth
the principle of the independence of
Reason,
or of its absolute self-subsistence,
is made
a general principle of philosophy,
as well
as a foregone conclusion of the time.
From “Hegel’s Logic”, translated by
William
Wallace, with Foreword by J N Findlay,
Clarendon
Press 1975. First published 1873. The
additions
by the original editors have been omitted
to bring out the line of argument more
clearly. |
Evans Experientialism 
Lectures on the History of
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