Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/362

 340 KANT. ciscs the transcendental* use of it, which explains an experiential object, knowledge, from its conditions, which are not empirically given. There is, apparently, a contradiction between the empi- ristic result of the Critique of Reason (the limitation of knowledge to objects of experience) and its rational- istic proofs (which proceed metaphysically, not empirically), and, in fact, a considerable degree of opposition really jj exists. Kant argues in a metaphysical way that there can ^be no metaphysics. This contradiction is solved by the distinction which has been mentioned between that which is beyond, and that which lies within, the boundary of, experience. That metaphysic is forbidden which on the I objective side soars beyond experience, but that pure rational knowledge is permissible and necessary which develops from principles the grounds of experiential knowledge existing in the subject. In the Kantian school, however, these complementary elements, — empirical result, transcendental or metaphysical, properly speaking, pro- physical method, — were divorced, and the one emphasized, favored, and further developed at the expense of the other. The empiricists hold to the result, while they either weaken or completely misunderstand the rationalism of the method : the a priori factor, says Fries, was not reached by a priori, but by a posteriori, means, and there is no other way by which it could have been reached. The construct- ive thinkers, Fichte and his successors, adopt and con- tinue the metaphysical method, but reject the empirical result. Fichte's aim is directed to a system of necessary, unconscious processes of reason, among which, rejecting the thing in itself, he includes sensation. According to Schelling nature itself is a priori, a condition of con- sciousness. This discrepancy between foundation and t proof) of the a priori isLctor and its relation to objects of experience. Unfor- tunately he often uses the same word not only to designate the a priori ele- ment itself, but also as a synonym for transcendent. In all three cases its oppo- site is empirical, namely, empirico-psychological investigation by observation in distinction from noetical investigation from principles ; empirical origin in distinction from an origin in pure reason, and empirical use in distinction froat application beyond the limits of experience. t
 * Kant applies the term transcendental to the knowledge (the discovery, the