The Online Library of Liberty

A project of Liberty Fund, Inc.

• Dedication
• Preface 1
• Translator’s Preface
• Translator’s Preface to Second Edition
• Introduction [p. 1]
• I: The Idea of Transcendental Philosophy
• II: Division of Transcendental Philosophy
• I: The Elements of Transcendentalism
• Part I: Transcendental Æsthetic [p. 19]
• Section I: Of Space
• Section II: Of Time
• Part II: Transcendental Logic [p. 50]
• Introduction the Idea of a Transcendental Logic
• I: Of Logic In General
• II: Of Transcendental Logic
• III: Of the Division of General Logic Into Analytic and Dialectic
• IV: Of the Division of Transcendental Logic Into Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic
• Division I: Transcendental Analytic In Two Books, With Their Chapters and Sections
• Book I: Analytic of Concepts
• Chapter I: Method of Discovering All Pure Concepts of the Understanding
• Section I: Of the Logical Use of the Understanding In General
• Section II: Of the Logical Function of the Understanding In Judgments [p. 70]
• Section III: Of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding, Or of the Categories
• Chapter II: Of the Deduction of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding [p. 84]
• Section I: Of the Principles of a Transcendental Deduction In General
• Section II: Of the a Priori Grounds For the Possibility of Experience
• I: Of the Synthesis of Apprehension In Intuition
• II: Of the Synthesis of Reproduction In Imagination
• III: Of the Synthesis of Recognition In Concepts [p. 103]
• IV: Preliminary Explanation of the Possibility of the Categories As Knowledge a Priori
• Section III: Of the Relation of the Understanding to Objects In General, and the Possibility of Knowing Them a Priori [p. 115]
• Book II: Analytic of Principles
• Introduction of the Transcendental Faculty of Judgment In General
• Chapter I: Of the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding [p. 137]
• Chapter II: System of All Principles of the Pure Understanding [p. 148]
• Section I: Of the Highest Principle of All Analytical Judgments
• Section II: Of the Highest Principle of All Synthetical Judgments [p. 154]
• Section III: Systematical Representation of All Synthetical Principles of the Understanding
• I: [of the Axioms of Intuition 1 Principle of the Pure Understanding
• II: [ Anticipations of Perception
• III: [ the Analogies of Experience
• IV: The Postulates of Empirical Thought In General
• Chapter III: On the Ground of Distinction of All Subjects Into Phenomena and Noumena
• I.: Identity and Difference
• II.: Agreement and Opposition
• III.: The Internal and the External
• IV.: Matter and Form
• Note On the Amphiboly of Reflective Concepts
• Division II: Transcendental Dialectic In Two Books, With Their Chapters and Sections [p. 293]
• Introduction: 1.
• Book I: Of the Concepts of Pure Reason [p. 310]
• First Section of Ideas In General
• Second Section of Transcendental Ideas [p. 321]
• Third Section System of Transcendental Ideas [p. 333]
• Book II: Of the Dialectical Conclusions of Pure Reason
• Chapter I: Of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason [p. 341]
• Chapter II: The Antinomy of Pure Reason
• Section I: System of Cosmological Ideas
• Section II: Antithetic of Pure Reason
• Section III: Of the Interest of Reason In These Conflicts [p. 462]
• Section IV: Of the Transcendental Problems of Pure Reason, and the Absolute Necessity of Their Solution
• Section V: Sceptical Representation of the Cosmological Questions In the Four Transcendental Ideas [p. 485]
• Section VI: Transcendental Idealism As the Key to the Solution of Cosmological Dialectic
• Section VII: Critical Decision of the Cosmological Conflict of Reason With Itself
• Section VIII: The Regulative Principle of Pure Reason With Regard to the Cosmological Ideas [p. 508]
• Section IX: Of the Empirical Use of the Regulative Principle of Reason With Regard to All Cosmological Ideas
• Chapter III: The Ideal of Pure Reason
• Section I: Of the Ideal In General
• Section II: Of the Transcendental Ideal ( Prototypon Transcendentale )
• Section III: Of the Arguments of Speculative Reason In Proof of the Existence of a Supreme Being
• Section IV: Of the Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God [p. 592]
• Section V: Of the Impossibility of a Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God [p. 603]
• Section VI: Of the Impossibility of the Physico-theological Proof
• Section VII: Criticism of All Theology Based On Speculative Principles of Reason [p. 631]
• Chapter I: The Discipline of Pure Reason
• Section I: The Discipline of Pure Reason In Its Dogmatical Use
• Section II: The Discipline of Pure Reason In Its Polemical Use
• Section III: The Discipline of Pure Reason With Regard to Hypotheses
• Section IV: The Discipline of Pure Reason With Regard to Its Proofs
• Chapter II: The Canon of Pure Reason [p. 795]
• First Section: of the Ultimate Aim of the Pure Use of Our Reason
• Section II: Of the Ideal of the Summum Bonum As Determining the Ultimate Aim of Pure Reason
• Section III: Of Trowing, Knowing, and Believing [p. 820]
• Chapter III: The Architectonic of Pure Reason [p. 832]
• Chapter IV: The History of Pure Reason [p. 852]
• Supplement I: Motto to Second Edition
• Supplement II: Preface to the Second Edition. 1787. [p. Vii]
• Supplement III: Supplement Iv
• Supplement V
• Supplement Vi
• Supplement V
• Supplement Vi
• Supplement Vii
• Supplement Viii
• Supplement Ix
• Supplement X
• Supplement Xi
• Supplement Xii
• Supplement Xiii
• Supplement Xiv
• Supplement Xv
• Supplement Xvi a
• Supplement Xvi B
• Supplement Xvii
• Supplement Xviii
• Supplement Xix
• Supplement Xx
• Supplement Xxi
• Supplement Xxii
• Supplement Xxiii
• Supplement Xxiv
• Supplement Xxv
• Supplement Xxvi
• Supplement Xxvii
• Supplement Xxviii

SUPPLEMENT XI

[See page 39]

II. As a confirmation of this theory of the ideality both of the external and of the internal sense, and therefore of all objects of the senses as mere phenomena, we may particularly remark, that everything in our knowledge which belongs to intuition (excluding therefore the feelings of pain and pleasure, and the will, which are no knowledge at all) contains nothing but mere relations, namely, of the places in an intuition (extension), change of places (motion), and laws, according to which that change is determined (moving forces). Nothing is told us thereby as to what is present in the place, or what, besides the change of place, is active in the things. A thing by itself, however, cannot be known by mere relations, and we may, therefore, fairly conclude that, as the external sense gives us nothing but representations of relations, that sense can contain in its representation only the relation of an object to the subject, and not what is inside the object by itself. The same applies to internal intuition. Not only do the representations of the external senses constitute its proper material with which we fill our mind, but time, in which these representations are placed, and which precedes even our consciousness of them in experience, nay, forms the formal condition of the manner in which we place them in the mind, contains itself relations of succession, coexistence, and that which must be coexistent with succession, namely, the permanent. Now that which, as a representation, can precede every act of thinking something, is the intuition: and, if it contains nothing but relations, then the form of intuition. As this represents nothing except what is being placed in the mind, it can itself be the manner only in which the mind, through its own activity, that is, by this placing of its representation, is affected by itself, in other words, an internal sense with respect to its form. Whatever is represented by a sense is so far always phenomenal, and we should therefore have either to admit no internal sense at all, or the subject, which is its object, could be represented by it as phenomenal only, and not, as it might judge of itself, if its intuition were spontaneous only, that is, if it were intellectual. The difficulty here lies wholly in this, how a subject can have an internal intuition of itself: but this difficulty is common to every theory. The consciousness of self (apperception) is the simple representation of the ego, and if by it alone all the manifold (representations) in the subject were given spontaneously, the inner intuition would be intellectual. In man this consciousness requires internal perception of the manifold, which is previously given in the subject, and the manner in which this is given in the mind without spontaneity, must, on account of this difference, be called sensibility. If the faculty of self-consciousness is to seek for, that is, to apprehend, what lies in the mind, it must affect the mind, and can thus only produce an intuition of itself. The form of this, which lay antecedently in the mind, determines the manner in which the manifold exists together in the mind, namely, in the representation of time. The intuition of self, therefore, is not, as if it could represent itself immediately and as spontaneously and independently active, but according to the manner in which it is internally affected, consequently as it appears to itself, not as it is.

III. If I say that the intuition of external objects and the self-intuition of the mind, represent both (viz. the objects and the mind) in space and time, as they affect our senses, that is, as they appear, I do not mean, that these objects are mere illusion. For the objects, as phenomena, nay, even the properties which we ascribe to them, are always looked upon as something really given: and all we do is, that, as their quality depends only on the manner of intuition on the part of the subject in relation to a given object, we distinguish the object, as phenomenon, from itself, as an object by itself. Thus, if I assert that the quality of space and time, according to which, as a condition of their existence, I accept both external objects and my own soul, lies in my manner of intuition and not in these objects by themselves, I do not mean to say that bodies seem only to exist outside me, or that my soul seems only to be given in my self-consciousness. It would be my own fault, if I changed that, which I ought to count as phenomenal, into mere illusion.1

This cannot happen, however, according to our principle of the ideality of all sensuous intuitions; on the contrary, it is only when we attribute objective reality to those forms of intuition that everything is changed inevitably into mere illusion. For if we take space and time as properties that ought to exist as possible in things by themselves, and then survey the absurdities in which we should be involved in having to admit that two infinite things, which are not substances, nor something inherent in substances, but nevertheless must be something existing, nay, the necessary condition of the existence of all things, would remain, even if all existing things were removed, we really cannot blame the good Bishop Berkeley for degrading bodies to mere illusion. Nay, it would follow that even our own existence, which would thus be made dependent on the independent reality of such a non-entity as time, must become a mere illusion, an absurdity which hitherto no one has been guilty of.

IV. In natural theology, where we think of an object which not only can never be an object of intuition to us, but which even to itself can never be an object of sensuous intuition, great care is taken to remove all conditions of space and time from its intuition (for all its knowledge must be intuitive, and not thought, which always involves limitation). But how are we justified in doing this, when we have first made space and time forms of things by themselves, such as would remain as conditions of the existence of things a priori, even if the things themselves had been removed? If conditions of all existence, they would also be conditions of the existence of God. If we do not wish to change space and time into objective forms of all things, nothing remains but to accept them as subjective forms of our external as well as internal intuition, which is called sensuous, for the very reason that it is not originally spontaneous, that is such, that it could itself give us the existence of the objects of intuition (such an intuition, so far as we can understand, can belong to the First Being only), but dependent on the existence of objects, and therefore possible only, if the faculty of representation in the subject is affected by them.

It is not necessary, moreover, that we should limit this intuition in space and time to the sensibility of man; it is quite possible that all finite thinking beings must necessarily agree with us on this point (though we cannot decide this). On account of this universal character, however, it does not cease to be sensibility, for it always is, and remains derivative (intuitus derivativus), not original (intuitus originarius), and therefore not intellectual intuition. For the reason mentioned before, the latter intuition seems only to belong to the First Being, and never to one which is dependent, both in its existence and its intuition (which intuition determines its existence with reference to given objects). This latter remark, however, must only be taken as an illustration of our æsthetic theory, and not as a proof.

Conclusion of the Transcendental Æsthetic

Here, then, we have one of the requisites for the solution of the general problem of transcendental philosophy, How are synthetical propositions a priori possible? namely, pure intuitions a priori, space and time. In them we find, if in a judgment a priori we want to go beyond a given concept, that which can be discovered a priori, not in the concept, but in the intuition corresponding to it, and can be connected with it synthetically. For this very reason, however, such judgments can never go beyond the objects of the senses, but are valid only for objects of possible experience.

[1 ]Phenomenal predicates can be attributed to the object in its relation to our sense: as for instance to the rose its red colour, and its scent. But what is merely illusion can never be attributed to an object as a predicate, for the simple reason that the illusion attributes to the object by itself something which belongs to it only in its relation to the senses, or to a subject in general: as for instance the two handles, which were formerly attributed to Saturn. That which is never to be found in the object itself, but always in its relation to a subject, and is inseparable from its representation by a subject, is phenomenal, and the predicates of space and time are therefore rightly attributed to objects of the senses, as such. In this there is no illusion. If, on the contrary, I were to attribute to the rose by itself redness, handles to Saturn, and extension to all external objects, without restricting my judgment to the relation of these objects to a subject, we should have illusion.