Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/780

 760 KANT "Pedagogics" (1803). After his death Pulitz published his lectures on the philosophy of re- ligion (1817) and on metaphysics (1831), and Starke those on the human race (1831). He was disturbed in his later years by the symptoms of a new phase of speculation in the writings of Fichte (whom he had at first warmly welcomed, and whose work on revelation had been at- tributed to him), and sent forth an ineffectual protest in 1799 ; this showed a defect which he himself acknowledged in his power of ap- preciating other systems. An essay on which, in the decline of his faculties, he was for a long time employed, was found to be unintelligible, or only a repetition of what he had previously said upon the relation of physics to metaphys- ics. Speculation was already sweeping past the monuments ho had reared. To appreciate the character and position of the critical or transcendental philosophy of Kant, we must start with his own view of what philosophy had previously accomplished, and what he ex- pected from his new method. In his own in- terpretation of the matter, it was the critical method which he instituted that formed the primary peculiarity of his scheme. All previous systems had led to dogmatism (Leibnitz and Wolf), or to skepticism (Hume). Dogmatism asserts the equal objective and subjective valid- ity of its principles ; metaphysical truths, like mathematical, hold both in reason and in fact. Skepticism, on the other hand, denies the ob- jective validity of a priori truths; thus, for example, Hume could not find in experience anything corresponding to the principle of causality, for sense gives only succession of phenomena ; and this truth of causality, says Kant, is only one of a class, to all of which Hume's criticism is equally applicable. Both the dogmatist and the skeptic examine ideas or truths directly, and can never agree. Is there no other way of approaching the matter? Yes, says Kant, there is also the critical method ; instead of assuming that our knowledge is de- termined by the objects, let us see how far the objects are determined by our knowledge. He compared this method, with a proud conscious- ness, to that of Copernicus, who, finding that he could not explain the motion of the heav- enly bodies by supposing that they revolved around himself, tried whether he could not do better by supposing that he moved and the stars stood still. The true way, then, is to start with a criticism of man's power of knowing. And since man has three prime faculties, reason, will (or impulse to action), and feeling, this criticism must be divided into three main parts : the criticism of the pure reason, the criticism of the practical reason (desire and will), and the criticism of judgment (having respect to feel- ing, or pleasure and pain). The first of these, however, contains the regulating principles for both the others, and gives the key to the system. The " Criticism of the Pure Reason" was not originally intended to be a system of metaphysics, but rather an inquiry into the possibility of metaphysics ; that is, it was criti- cal. As against the skeptic, it was designed to show that there are in the human mind a priori or transcendental elements of knowl- edge, and that these are found even in the per- ceptions of sense and the laws of the under- standing. As against the dogmatist, it was also intended to prove that even this transcen- dental knowledge does not attain with absolute certainty to the nature of things ; it can neither demonstrate nor disprove the reality of objects corresponding to the ideas of reason. (" Trans- cendental " is used by Kant, not in respect to the objects of knowledge, but to the nature of the knowledge, as a priori.) Another, and the strictest mode of stating the question and prob- lem, is this : Are a priori synthetical judgments possible ? An analytical judgment is one which simply explicates, in respect to any subject, what is contained in its very notion ; it reposes on the principle of identity. But such judg- ments give us no new knowledge. In a syn- thetical judgment, on the other hand, some- thing is contained or asserted in the predicate, which is not necessarily implied in the subject ; and such judgments extend the bounds of our knowledge. All a posteriori knowledge is of this character ; and the metaphysical question is : Are such synthetical judgments also possi- ble a priori f If they are, in any sphere (e. g., mathematics), sensualism is refuted ; if they are not in the highest sphere (metaphysics), dogmatism is refuted. In conducting this in- quiry Kant divides the human mind into the three functions of sense, understanding, and reason, and subjects each to a careful criticism. The general scheme, as carried out, is : I. Doctrine of the transcendental elements of knowledge. A. Transcendental aesthetics (i. e. t perceptions of sense). B. Transcendental logic. a. Transcendental analytics (the understanding). &. Transcendental dialectics (reason, metaphysics). II. The transcendental method. 1. The Transcendental Esthetics, or the trans- cendental knowledge involved in the percep- tions of sense. In all knowledge there are two elements, the matter and the form. The one is given by experience, the other by the mind. Sensations without ideas are blind ; ideas with- out sensations are empty. The dogmatist ig- nores the former, the materialist the latter. What is given ns in sensation is ordered or arranged by the mind under the two ideas of space and time, which ideas are not the product but the regulators of the sensations. That is, even in respect to the objects of sense, we find the a priori ideas of space and time controlling them ; and this knowledge too gives us the pos- sibility of a science, viz., mathematics. But yet this space and time are not forms of the objects of sensation, but the subjective framework in which we put and must put all our sensations. We cannot, then, attain objectively to the knowledge of things as they are in themselves (Dinge an sich), because those forms by which we know them are subjective. This denial