Here
under follows the transcription of the chapter Kant of Houston
Stewart Chamberlain's Immanuel Kant, published by John Lane,
The
Bodley Head, 1914.
|
167
KANT
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
WITH AN EXCURSUS ON THE “THING IN ITSELF“
The value which life possesses for
us
reckoned only by what we
enjoy, is easily decided: it falls
below zero.
Nothing remains but
the value which we ourselves give
to our life by
means
of that which
we not only do, but do to an end
so independent of nature
that the
very existence of nature can only
be thought of upon this
condition.
Immanuel Kant.
168
(Blank
page)
169
KANT
IN this last discourse there is no
need
to waste time over any preamble; for the previous lectures should have
placed us in such a position as should enable us to take a final and
conclusive
survey of the workshop of Kantian thought, without any risk of carrying
away with us half-understood utterances and anaemic conceptions in the
place
of clear perceptions.
Our plan from the
outset has been
to keep in view the proposition that all human recognition consists of
combinations. Our first lecture pointed to the specially complicated
relation
between Idea and Experience: in the second we saw how conception and
perception
came to an almost inextricable conflict in consequence of the one-sided
methods of our modern science: the third addressed itself to
constructive
criticism and to the fundamental distinction which it draws between
understanding
and sensibility in all experience of nature, the one being impotent to
effect anything without the help of the other; and here we first began
clearly to recognise the combination of duality as an essential
condition
of all thinking: this view was
theoretically carried further in the
fourth
lecture, when we saw those two dissimilar elements, differently
developed
and differently proclaimed
by the various
thinkers,
and in which we pursued the error of all monism to its very roots;
but was only under the leadership
of a truly critical thinker like Plato that the matter could be cleared
up. Here we found a grandiose and perfectly
plastic union
170 KANT
of
these combinations, which
constitute
the woof and warp of all our thinking, in the manifestation of a life
which,
looked at from the visible or sensible side, is consistent organism,
that
is to say, form, while if taken from the conceptual or intellectual
side,
it reveals itself as organic unity, and that means Teleology, — and
that
in such a way that neither of these two notions would have any
thinkable
meaning without the other.
We shall shortly have
to return
to these relations, which Kant teaches us to designate as
“transcendental.“
But let me say at once, for I think that I am here bringing forward
something
which, thanks to what has gone before, will no longer be an empty
phrase,
that this combination, or in other words, this apprehension, according
to which experience, thought, recognition, truth, always arise out of
the
conjunction of duality, is not only characteristic of Kant's
theoretical
thinking, and of his philosophy in the narrower and more professional
sense
of the word, but, as a general proposition, of his whole intellectual
personality, — of
that which he was, and of that which he desired. In a comparatively
early
work, Von dem ersten Grunde des
Unterschiedes der Gegenden im Raume (on
the first principle of the difference of regions in space), he gives us
the deepest reflections on the essence of “right“ and
“left,“ — reflections
which when examined critically contain the germ of all criticism. The
clearness
of his intellect, his persistent pains to draw boundary lines, to
distinguish
with the utmost care between words, conceptions, thoughts, sciences,
intellectual
powers, ideas, and systems, — so that there should be no interchange of
powers,
no encroachments with their consequent confusion, — are facts that in the last resort must
be attributed to the fundamental, innate, peremptory, and gradually
ripened
sense of duality in every intellectual activity. What Plato taught us
in his Theaitetos (182 B),
that nothing is thinkable which can be
described
straight
171 KANT
away
as unity, inasmuch as every “something“ and every thought consists of
the uniting (συνγιγνομαι) of
two things
(see p. 507), that with Kant is the beginning and the end; it is not
only
the fundamental instinct which gradually developed him into the
keenest
analyst of all times, but it is also the fundamental perception which
becomes
more and more firm and powerful in proportion as his philosophic views
become riper and more perfect, so that the mighty synthesis which is
worked
up in ever-growing degree in his three critiques — Reine Vernunft, 1781,
Praktische Vernunft, 1788, Urteilskraft, 1790, consists not in
a
fusion,
but in a combination.
This is a fact which
repeats
itself
everywhere in Kant, no matter what stage of his thought and of his life
we are considering. But if we seek for its commonest and most
comprehensive
expression, we find it in the sharp distinction between the theoretical
and the practical. If I had said between theory and practice you might
easily misunderstand me, for we are apt to give a rather frivolous
meaning
to those words: theory tells us how we ought to act, practice shows how
we act in reality: that is not Kant's meaning. By “theory“ Kant
understands
theoretical philosophy, and therein the critical analysis of human
recognition:
what is recognised here is nature, about which we do not possess mere
inconsistent
rhapsodies, but an exact, objectively certain, recognition, — that is
shown
by the existence of an exact science of nature; Kant does not ask with
the hair-splitters, is there any
such thing as positive
science? Can such a thing be?
and so forth; — but he says,
“that such a thing exists is
evident since the days of
Galilei
and Newton“; and then he asks
himself what inference
is to be drawn from this fact in relation to our human intellectual organisation; ultimately then “the
theoretical,“ as Kant conceives it, rests upon the fact of natural
science, but aims at
establishing the value, the
exact importance
172 KANT
and
the boundaries of a scientific
doctrine
of recognition. By practical philosophy Kant does not understand “the
technical,“
nor the rules of executive skill, but rather an enquiry into the
dealings
of mankind, of man considered as an autonomous personality, that is to
say, as independent of that nature, the immutable laws of which science
investigates, and as subject to peculiar laws of its own; just as in
the
one place the fact of science serves as foundation, so here the given,
undeniable fact of moral personality serves in the same way: here too
there must be the element of law: if none such existed the conception
of
a personality would be void: it could not be grasped, it would be a
mere
rhapsody: the person would not be the experience which it is: but this
subjection to law must manifestly be different from that of nature: we
call it Freedom; its laws are commandments, ethical commandments; and
if
we look into these commandments of freedom as methodically and clearly
as we do elsewhere into the subjection of nature to laws, then we
arrive
at an exact understanding of what Kant calls, “Religion within the
boundaries
of pure reason.“ Within the experience, or whatever you choose to call
it, of man, there exist nature and freedom as the two fundamental facts
facing one another; “ the theoretical“ asks for an answer to the
question,
What is recognition of nature? “the practical“ for an answer to the
question,
What is freedom? Just as little as the searching and, as far as
possible,
unbroken criticism of the theoretical is in itself a science of nature,
only establishing the essence and the functions of recognition by an
exact
analysis, so too the thorough criticism of the practical is not itself
religion, though in a similar way it fixes the domain and the
boundaries
of all religion, thus showing once for all where superstition and
delusion
begin.
Out of this survey we
have
arrived
at four fundamental contrasts: laws and commandments as the given
173 KANT
facts;
nature and freedom as ideas
under
which we comprise the facts homogeneously; theoretical and poetical
reason,
as methods or intellectual implements, by means of which we may
investigate
these facts by thought; science and religion as systems in which the
sum
of our knowledge and opinions upon the subject of each of the two
series
of facts is dissected and represented. There is, however, certainly one
difference to which attention must be called in passing. We may say of
the two methods — that is to say, the theoretical reason and the
practical
reason — that they branch out into two opposite directions from a
demonstrably
single stem. As Kant writes, “It is always one and the same reason
which
pronounces judgment, whether it be in a theoretical or a practical
sense“
(pr. V. 2 B, 2 H, III); on the other hand, the permanent facts of
experience
(the laws of nature and the moral commandments) and consequently also
the
changing collective conceptions (science and religion) are and remain
absolute
contrasts, between which, as Kant says, “there is fixed an illimitable
cleft, so that there is no possible crossing over from the one to the
other,
just as if they were so many different worlds“ (Kr. d. U., Introduction
II, p. xix and p. liii). 1
Yet in spite of this “illimitable cleft“
nature
and freedom are inseparably united, — united indeed in the personality
of
every human being: it is just this combination which makes a man to be
a man; it possesses for the essence of personality exactly the same
significance
as the combination of form and teleology possesses for the essence of
life;
it is a transcendental union by means of which “the Thing“ first
arises:
neither of these two contrasts has any existence without the other:
there
can be no nature without freedom, no freedom without nature: and so it
is that this duality forms a unity. It is a gross error, as we saw in
the
previous lecture, if we believe ourselves to be able to see organic
form,
unless, consciously or
174 KANT
unconsciously,
the thought of purpose
or teleology realises itself in this form: and this is true of the
converse;
in the same way it is the mistake of an intellect not yet cleared by
criticism,
if we think that we can represent freedom to ourselves unless nature
should,
as it were, form the background from which it raises itself, or that
nature
with its fundamental law of cause and effect possesses a meaning,
unless
the personal experience of freedom teaches us to think this thought of
causality. This unity of duality, however, is not a logical unity: it
is
not the reduction of nature and freedom, of science and religion, to
one
and the same thought; in other words, it is not the factitious and
subtilised
unity of the Monists, but it is organic unity, that is to say, as we
know,
a unity of which the essence is that it should be plurality. Well does
Kant more than once insist that this whole system of faster and looser
combinations, out of which our intellectual activity proceeds, might
possibly
spring from a common but to us unknown root (see pp. 145-6); as a
genuine
critic he cannot exclude this possibility; yet the consideration of the
matter has no theoretical or practical value in his eyes, for, except
by
fiction, by enthusiasm, or dogmatisation, there is nothing to be made
out
of this idea.
It will be
intelligible to you
that a philosophy of this nature should be called “critical
philosophy“: the Greek root-word means to distinguish, to part, to
sift. You need
only open your eyes and look around you. Everywhere you will become
aware
of a lack of clear distinction of conceptions and domains. On all sides
the fight between religion and science is surging; none, neither men of
learning, nor the ignorant, neither the investigators of nature nor the
theologists know the boundaries; only a few suspect that they exist.
The
Pope of Rome maintains that true science, Vera Scientia, is a property
of the Church: 2
while at the same moment
175 KANT
the
ultra-modern psychologists and
ethical
societies are labouring to bring into being an empirically logical
“substitute
for religion.“ The most complete and unhappily still active example of
the irretrievable confusion of domains was furnished by Spinoza with
his
famous formula Deus sive Natura;
here religion and science are 3
so
confused
that there is no longer any possible distinction of their respective
domains,
and so we come to the experience of a “geometrical doctrine of morals“
and a nature which must be “conceived out of God“ 4 (Ethica, I, prop.
15
and 18), hence a scientific religion and a religious science. In all
this
unintelligible jumble the “herd of subtilisers,“ as Kant
disrespectfully
calls them, finds an unfailing joy, and the “immanent monism“ as this
hocus-pocus dubs itself still flourishes luxuriantly amongst a
generation
who
are Kant's grandchildren. In this philosophy we have the direct
opposite
to that of Kant. Kant refuses to take one step outside of the field of
possible experience: whatever pretends to come from beyond that field
he
dismisses as “fairy tales out of Utopia“ (Tr. II, 1), but experience, —
that is to say, the exact observation of that which has been
experienced, — shows
us that in our intellect every apparent unity arises out of the meeting
(συνγιγνομαι) of duality.
Once we make
ourselves clear as
to the results of this method, which cannot but be of service to us in
our purpose, we see that Kant's most comprehensive division is that
into
nature and freedom. 5
There is a nature, that is to say, a world in
which
freedom never and nowhere comes to the front, a world which would be
annihilated
by the mere thought of freedom, and in which as a consequence no
morality,
no responsibility, no sympathy has
place or meaning, since everything
in it proceeds mechanically according to laws without a flaw, in the
eternally
immutable sequence of necessary reciprocal
176 KANT
action;
and there is a freedom, that
is to say, a world in which not that which is, but that which ought to
be, is the law, — a conception which in nature would be utterly
unmeaning,
out of which a totally different order arises, in which the conceptions
duty, merit, kindness, dignity, holiness, etc., gain importance, and in
which the commandments and moral ideas correspond to the laws and
nature-ideas
of the first-mentioned world.
Let me make a diagram
of the
result
of what we have been anticipating, — this series of the great,
universal,
accurately corresponding contrasts, carried only so far as is
absolutely
indispensable. We start of necessity from the Ego, and however widely
the
series of thoughts flying from one another may strive to diverge, the
Ego
in its knowledge and opinion still gathers together all that exists for
us. So it is immaterial whether we begin methodically from the
distinction
between theoretical and practical reason, and thence rise upwards, to
that
which is more and more complicated, until on the one side we come to
science
and on the other to religion; or whether, on the other hand, we take
the
great synthesis science and religion as the given starting-point and
then
keep widening out the series of conditions, until we find the ultimate
most elementary branchlets in the various practical proofs of reason.
As
a matter of fact it was the latter way that Kant pursued; he is just a
scientifically empirical observer, not a speculator: but in his method
of representation he followed the contrary way, the one which he called
“scholastic.“
This table, as I
think, speaks
for itself; whoever is a stranger to the world of this critically
analytical
thinking, will in it find matter enough for thought. Only a few words
more
by way of explanation, in order to guard against any possible
misunderstanding.
Every single
expression exactly
corresponds to the one standing opposite to it on the same level: the
divergence,
177 KANT
however, increases by degrees
from
below
to above. Practical reason is nearly related to theoretical reason; it
is not possible to discuss either of the two without the other:
commandments
and laws too are in appearance near enough to one another to be
occasionally
interchanged by the inexperienced, — we say moral law just as readily
as
moral commandment; the distinction between personality and recognition
is perhaps the clearest for mankind in general. That freedom and nature
stand still further apart from one another is assuredly a fact which
anybody
can see as soon as he has learnt to open his eyes, — were this not so
it
might occur to him that the earth attracts the moon out of a feeling of
duty, and that the fact of an honest man not betraying his trust is due
to the operation of the obliquity of the ecliptic; in general, however,
the confusion of domains is here inextricable, simply because we have
not
sufficient command of criticism to disentangle the very diverse
operations
of our reason in dealing with the subject-matter afforded by
experience.
This distinction between Science and Religion, if we examine both
intently,
is so complete that they can in truth only be placed in relation to
each
other in so far as they present
themselves
as united in the consciousness of a single being; and yet for lack of
the
178 KANT
critical
power alluded to we do not
possess
a clear perception of the cleft which separates them: besides which
there
stands here every intellectual narrowness, every superstition, every
moral
vulgarity, together with the immeasurable community of interests of the
speculators in religion of all the confessions of the world, as a
closed
phalanx against any attempt once for all to arrive at something clear.
So much for the contrasts. But as regards the serial sequence of
conceptions
from below to above, where on both sides of my diagram the one seems as
it were to grow out of the other, we must not attempt to show a logical
progression: it is no case of foundation and consequence, of cause and
effect; we might more appropriately think of concentrically widening
circles.
Yet this comparison only leads us approximately on the right track; for
the rungs of this ladder differ from one another not only in extent but
in value: religion and science are systems, artificial and artistic
constructions,
in which our knowledge and our opinions are ordered into a perspicuous
whole; freedom and nature are ideas in which and through which our
reason
visibly represents to itself facts; personality and recognition are
conceptions,
the former symbolical, the latter schematic, in which, to express
myself
allegorically, the transition between within and without, between
reason
and empiricism is effected (see I, 285 seq.). Commandments and laws are
the given facts 6
as ordering reason first grasps them, — they are its
material;
theoretical reason and practical reason are methods of consciousness. 7
We are dealing, therefore, in an ascending series, on the right hand as
on the left, with methods, facts, conceptions, ideas, systems: every
stage
corresponds with a different function of our intellect. My scheme is
only
intended, as you see, to exhibit certain relations of reciprocal forms
in the space of thought. Such schemes should be looked upon as
comparison;
we require of a comparison that it
179 KANT
should
illuminate a course of
thought,
not that it should serve as a substitute for thought: what we expect is
a suggestive operation, not a portrayal in the shape of an exposition,
and that holds good here.
Here we may pause for
a moment.
It has been my aim at the very beginning of this lecture to place you
in
sight of the very simple ideas of this philosophy, of this method of
surveying
the world: the very simple is always at the same time the very great;
it
is also that which is universally intelligible. That at any rate is
what
Kant has in his mind when he utters the memorable words, “True wisdom
is
the companion of simplicity,“ and adds, “it enables us for the most
part
to dispense with the great equipments of scholasticism, and its aims
need
no such means as can never more be accessible to all mankind“ (Tr. II,
3). It is impossible that Kant's critical work can ever in its
technical
details become common property, — Kant knew that full well and wrote,
“my
method is not very well fitted to attract the reader and to please him
... only the human understanding fails here by reason of subtleties
and
must be refuted“ (Ref. II, 6). Kant then only becomes subtle because he
wishes once for all to sweep away the subtleties of the sophists, and
the
fine points of his contentions serve him rather as an indispensable
protection
against false arguments than as foundations for his own
thought-building.
We also must ask ourselves the question — What do we mean when we
affirm
that Kant must become a factor in culture? In the main we can only deal
with that wisdom “which enables us to dispense with the great
equipments
of scholarship.“ Influence over wide circles can only be won by simple
conceptions. The Kant who reveals the transcendental properties of the
human intellect remains accessible only to a very small minority: the
Kant,
on the other hand, who might succeed in setting free all the leading
intellects
of the
180 KANT
world
from the night of the
superstitions
of decades of centuries, and in bringing them over to the bright
daylight
of the belief that religion and science are two entirely separate
domains,
each of them autonomous and autocratic within its own boundaries, —
that
Kant must be the founder of a new epoch in the history of mankind; it
must
be his to break the tyranny of the churches for ever, and once for all
to brush away the fantasies of the “natural philosophers.“ Then at last
the human intellect would be free. “The salvation of freedom“ is indeed
Kant's highest aim. 8
But if we turn our gaze from political freedom,
and
look only to the freedom of our human reason, we become aware that this
freedom is continually being robbed from two sides at the same time,
namely
from the side of theoretical reason, and from the side of practical
reason: the priest of science, says Kant laughing in his witty way,
leaves
mankind
nothing but “the freedom of a wound-up turnspit“ (pr. V. 1, end); the
sort of freedom which the priest of religion leaves us is a matter of
common
knowledge. And here there is a still more important consideration:
Kant
points out that the unsophisticated investigator of nature, who in his
innocence ventures upon dabbling in the domain of practical reason and
of the moral commandments, who retails miraculous fables about the
souls
of animals, about Darwinist morality, etc., is not only guilty of
working
mischief in the domain of freedom, but is actually from the very outset
hindering the observation of empirical nature; whilst his counterpart,
the theologian, who is so accurately informed upon the subject of the
making
of the world, the object of creation, etc., is not only bringing dire
confusion
into the science of nature, but is, at the same time, undermining the
true
foundations of genuine religion. The science, on the contrary, for
which
Kant strives, is a pure science, flawlessly mechanical; whereas our
anti-metaphysical
empiricists, such as Mach,
181 KANT
Haeckel,
Ostwald, and others, are
ever
and again crossing over into a domain outside of mechanics, into what
Kant pointedly calls an “imaginary science“; and the religion which
Kant
desires
is a pure religion, that is a religion purged of all history and of all
dogma. It is out of the confusion of domains that dogma, scientific as
well as religious, arises. If theoretical reason only, or practical
reason
only, oversteps the mark, that constitutes no irremediable evil; it is
in this way that ideas, in the narrower Kantian sense of the word,
arise,
and these are indispensable for the systematic moulding of science as
well
as of religion. Precisely because no web of dualism arises in these
genuine
ideas, — or at any rate because the slightest test serves to dissipate
its
appearance, — they become fused like cloud-pictures as soon as they are
closely examined; they render good service and do little harm:
as examples only think of the aether,
and of the conception of grace. But when the intellect breaks out in
both domains at once, whilst under such covering words as “soul,“
“plan,“
“unconscious,“ etc., it tries to smuggle a little freedom into
science,
or, with all theologians and theosophists, tries to draw nature into
the authority of religion, then there arises a sham web hard to
destroy,
and that is the birthplace of dogma. That is what, in order to express
it allegorically, if you please, but rightly and powerfully, I should
like
to call the Sin of Thought:
it is the sin against our own being,
against the intellect which should be sacred to us: it is at the same
time
the hereditary sin in the Thinking of our race. Kant then wishes to
redeem
us from this sin, from the night of dogmatism: that is the function of
the “pure“ distinction of domains. It in no way destroys the unity
of our being, it is rather a question of the true, conscious culture
of
human individuality. Kant defines culture as “the bringing to the front of the
aptitude of a reasonable being for all and any object, consequently in
its freedom“
182 KANT
(Ur.
§ 83). But in order to be
able
to build up this freedom of ours, and to make full use of it, we must
be
instructed in two particulars, first, as to the limits of our
abilities,
secondly, about the directions which are open to us without limitation.
We must, on the one hand, learn “to confine all our speculative claims
only to the field of possible experience“ (R.V. 1, 395), and, on the
other
hand, we must learn to perceive that, as Kant expresses himself,
“freedom
is man's work,“ — that here everything depends upon ourselves, i.e.
upon
our perceptions and intentions, and that it is accordingly incumbent
upon
us men to raise ourselves out of the condition of an animal race into a
moral genus, inasmuch as it is our duty now consciously and
systematically
to take in hand that culture which has hitherto proceeded as it were
without
any plan. (Cf. Kant, Mutmasslicher
Anfang der Menschengeschichte).
Man
must be a creator where he can, that is in the realm of freedom. Here
the
“know thyself“ of the Hellenes surges up again in a new and more exact
form. For man can only become a conscious systematic creator in respect
of himself, if he grasps the same method which has proved so successful
in the case of nature: the exact analysis of his complicated being, the
exact distinction between the practical and the theoretical, between
freedom
and nature, precision in the recognition of his own self, must form the
foundation. This would not only bring about a far-reaching
transformation
of his scientific and religious ideas, but would also in the end work a
change in all human relations. Kant, for all his modesty, enunciates it
with precision: his philosophy makes for a revolution, against which
all
previous merely political revolutions shrink into insignificant
episodes:
he wishes to realise ideas, but not
by fanaticism and philosophical phantasies, but by the dispassionate
and
conscious change in the direction of human thought and will, a change
worked
out slowly but surely in the humble
183 KANT
study
of the quiet thinker. He
comforts
himself with no illusions; “I much doubt whether I shall be the man to
bring about this change; the human mind is such that besides the
grounds
that should enlighten it, time is also necessary in order to give it
strength
and impetus“ (Ref. II, 18). Yet, however that may be, in this way,
sooner
or later, that “Kingdom, which does not exist, but which may be
realised
by what we do and by what we neglect to do, will be brought into being“
(Gr. II, 1). All this means a complete change in all those conceptions
and habits in science, religion, morals, law, society, which show us to
be in intimate brotherhood with the Babylonians of six thousand years
ago:
it means an upsetting of all values such as the devotees of Nietzsche
and
his school have never dreamt of, a growth of mankind, an accretion of
strength
over all that it has hitherto been, not by the idea of a will to
possess
power, but, on the contrary, by the finer moulding of man's
consciousness,
by the clearer apprehension of his intellectual organisation, and so
(which
is the same thing) of the organisation of the world of his
experience, — in
other words, by the still more tightly fettering of the dumb-beasts'
instincts
of his will in the service of a reason perfectly self-controlled and
consciously
creative.
This thought I take
to be Kant's
great cultural accomplishment; it is what concerns us all; it is what
we
can all assimilate sufficiently to be taught by it: it unquestionably
forms
the living centre of Kant's way of looking upon the world: it was his
starting-point,
to which the toilsome path of nearly half a century of critical work
brought
him back. And it is precisely upon this that you will find little or no
instruction in the writings of the professional philosophers. How many
of them have really grasped Kant's practical view of life? How many of
them see on the scale on which he saw? How many know what he means
when
he, the grim enemy of all the metaphysics
184 KANT
of
the schools, talks of “the leaking
vessel of the Danaids,“ as he sarcastically calls metaphysics in one of
his latest writings, — and when he says, in spite of that, “I am
convinced
that the true and lasting weal of the human race depends upon
metaphysics“
(R.V. 8, 4, 1766). If you now know, or at any rate if you suspect, the
services which are rendered by metaphysics towards the freeing of the
human
race, towards the freeing of freedom, and towards nothing else, then
you
have gained an advantage which may comfort you if you fail to follow
Kant
in many a subtle scholastic question.
It is good every now
and then
to allow the impression of a mighty whole to work as a unity upon
oneself
without stopping to consider any one detail. Even if there should be
much
in this introduction which remains hazy to you, do not let that trouble
you. Kant himself, the painfully conscientious man, says, “it often
happens
that the analysis of a thought weakens the effect which it brought out,
dark and undeveloped as it might be, whilst it was yet entire and
unbroken.“ 9
It is therefore important not to be in too great a hurry, but rather to
dwell upon the general thought which we conceive upon a large scale
though
darkly; that is one of the laws of our ψύχη: we must gather strength
as a machine gathers heat; even Goethe, the master of us all, teaches
that the great problems must in the first place “be treated with a
sense
of lofty passion“; it is questionable whether a new view can as a
general
proposition be grasped without some such driving or attracting power.
To
follow Kant in detail would be the work of a lifetime: I should be
loath
to say anything which should weaken this proposition: far be it from me
to rock you in the belief that Kant is easy to understand; what I do
wish
is to inspire you with a lasting ambition to understand him. Let each
man
follow as best he may, according to his pleasure and power. We
Englishmen
have a way of
185 KANT
saying
about such great,
half-understood
thoughts that “they grow upon one,“ they grow of themselves high above
our heads, and lock us in their embrace; it is like Parsifal's approach
to the temple of the Holy Grail: the fool takes only a few steps
towards
it, “I hardly step, yet meseems I am already far,“ and the holy
sanctuary
is all round him. In like manner I have tried to take you at once into
the heart of Kant's world: the atmosphere of this world must exercise a
certain spell, and under its influence the otherwise almost
unattainable
thoughts will no longer seem so alien to us.
The aim of these
lectures will
not suffer me to dally here as I fain would do. It is not Kant's work
that
I have promised to set before you, but something quite different, — an
introduction
to his work by familiarising you with his special way of thinking.
Once
more then we must dive into the depths of his personality.
In the highest degree
characteristic
is an admission of Kant's uttered at the time when critical thought
began
daily more and more to exercise his speculations. “Often Alps rise up
before my eyes, when others see a level and comfortable path along
which
they wander or think that they are wandering“ (Tr. I, 1). Kant will
never
be understood unless the same difficulties be felt which he felt. He
sees
mountains where others wander over the plain; and that leads us to the
conclusion that his thinking struck upon a new and hitherto untrodden
direction.
Yet if we study and judge Kant without having made ourselves clear as
to
the direction of his thought, then we not only misunderstand him, but
the
misunderstanding grows with mathematical necessity like the distance
between
two diverging lines: then the more we think about him the greater the
misunderstanding becomes: that is the story of ninety-nine out of every
hundred commentators on Kant. The first point then is that you should
strike
the right line, the
186 KANT
unaccustomed
line, the one which is
opposed
to all our inherited and inbred habits of thought. So soon as you
achieve
that, those Alps of which Kant speaks will arise before your eyes, and
then you must climb those rugged walls, for on the summit is Kant's
standpoint.
The man who without more ado thinks that Kant's philosophy is manifest
to him, — whether he be friend or foe to it, — he surely does not
understand
it: whereas to the man who sees the obstacles that Kant saw, travels
along
the path which leads to the new recognitions which he discovered,
sooner
or later that revolution of which we spoke just now will take place in
his intellect. As you see, the question is simple enough, and yet for
that
very reason almost impossible. The Kritik
der Reinen Vernunft was
written
by Kant in five months: but he had wrestled for twenty-five years
before
he, in his dissertation of 1770, distinctly admitted the true line of
thought,
and twelve years more of unbroken thinking did it cost him before he
had
finally won his standpoint. 10
That must account for the obstinacy with
which I over and over again bring you back to the same or very similar
reflections; for in the first instance my duty is confined to giving
your
intellect a single impetus: you have to learn like our mountaineer in
the
Bruno lecture to turn round,
— to give your Thinking the new
direction;
when you have done that you will see the problems of our Thinking and
Being
in a new connection: then you will be ripe for Kant's work, and have no
further need of me.
Let us have recourse
to Plato:
in that way we shall surely gain possession of plastic elements.
In our predilection
for simple
formula we found the following in our last lecture. Plato proceeds
positively
and affirmatively, Kant negatively and contradictorily. That must
strike
every man who observes with even slight attention. But we know from the
Goethe lecture, and have often found it confirmed since, that a simple
187 KANT
observation
of that nature only has
any
value for the recognition of personality, because and in so far as it
leads
into the depths. A fact only gains a value from the use which we make
of
it. Here we must make ourselves clear: why is it that we clutch at the
great simple relations and apply them to the investigation of
personality?
The consideration of the question leads to the following result. The
analyses
of persons built up of thousands of indications, such as men of letters
and novelists are so fond of giving us, are an illusory labour, a game;
for the mystery of life is the singularity of the individual. The man
who
sets out before me the multiplicity of thousands of conditioned
manifestations,
is a mere reporter, at the most a soul-photographer: what he gives is
history:
it is knowledge, not science. “Knowledge,“ says Goethe, “rests upon the
appreciation of that which is distinctive, science upon the recognition
of that which cannot be distinguished.“ 11 In other words, knowledge
brought
into form arises out of the fact that, as Plato taught us, we see the
one
in the many. We are therefore surely in the right way if we search for
simple recognitions, and leave subtleties out of the question. We saw
in
the former lecture that in life unity means form. Every form of life,
even
the meanest, is a symbol of the eternal: for the relations which are
here
before us are unthinkably manifold, and have neither beginning nor end:
but form itself is limited and unconditionally unified, for that is its
essence: it is unity, κατ εξόχην;
it alone can therefore really be
grasped;
besides, our sensibility shows itself as more congenial to nature than
our understanding. But if, considered visibly, the essence of life is
form,
then of necessity the deepest depth of thought must also be form,
since
thinking is a phenomenon of life. And just as in the visible world
life-form
gives birth to life-form, — indeed under such sure if incomprehensible
laws
of ever-reciprocal con-
188 KANT
ditions,
that a single bone is
sufficient
to enable the expert to reproduce the whole form, — even so must the
form
of thought bring forth thoughts, and the true investigator of the inner
man will aim at grasping the simplest features, because from them alone
can he hope to establish the fundamental lines of this physical
form, — by
which then all that is possible for the knowledge of the personality is
attained. These simple recognitions, however, are only of use when by
their
help “form“ is really built up. No single line suffices for building up
figures in space, it needs a system of co-ordinate intersecting lines;
in the same way too there is necessary here a methodically chosen
system
of certain simple and true recognitions reciprocally supplementing one
another. Otherwise the only result is a flat picture. So, for example,
the observation, otherwise correct, “Goethe all eye, Kant no eye at
all,“
would have appeared quite erroneous, had it not been supplemented by a
series of other observations, which, as it were, came to the assistance
of the one which had been originally made. Simple recognitions of this
nature furnish one another reciprocally with meaning:
taken by itself no truth is other than
empty; the man who confines himself to the simple truth is an
incontestable
phrase-monger; but if we have correctly selected our recognitions in
consonance
with truth and then carefully observe the points where they intersect
one
another, then we obtain by degrees the outline of the form for which we
are seeking. So we will complete the saying about the affirmative Plato
and the negative Kant by two others which directly intersect it.
The man who in the
domain of
critical
thought is affirmative must of necessity speak in parables: Plato is a
case in point, and we have seen what an imperishable living value lies
hidden in such fictions, but at the same time to what endless
misunderstandings
they lead both in enemies and in friends: the man who, on the contrary
189 KANT
is
negative as a matter of
consequence
defines, and in defining obtains strictly circumscribed forms: you
will,
I hope, understand in what a conditioned and yet entirely and
positively
real sense Kant, — the so-called man of negation, barren of all
imagination, — is
nevertheless of the two men the one who deserves the title of
constructor.
Thinking is for Kant a process of building up. He says, “the human
intellect
is by nature architectonic.“ That intellect which in himself was
developed
in such extraordinary measure, was also therefore that of a great
architect.
That is one observation to which we will at once add another as
supplement.
Since Plato is in so high a degree a Seer, who aims at grasping
everything
by the help of his eyes, Logic for that very reason, wherever he makes
use of it, appears hard and arbitrary, like something foreign and
artificial — think
only of the many dialectic discussions, of the logical proofs for the
immortality
of the soul, and all manner of similar subjects, in which at last
everything
seems to be in suspense without any firm outline, and remember how the
born poet and Dionysus-like intoxicated seer of forms scourges himself
with the asceticism of a tyrannically self-imposed scorn of art, and in
his state of the future hands over poetry and music to the pedagogue
and
pedant: Kant, on the other hand, the thinker and logician, into whose
colourless
life art never penetrated, was nevertheless above all men the
discoverer
of the essence of beauty and of the essence of creative art, the
possessor
of a special gift, peculiar to himself, of giving a schematic
visibility
to the most abstract thinking, — the only form of visibility possible
in
the
circumstances. Kant is therefore not only a constructor by right of
negative
definitions, but he is also an artistic constructor of schemes.
I take the
significance of form
in Kant's philosophy to be one of the most important observations that
can be made as affording an introduction to his work. For since
190 KANT
we
have in what has preceded
recognised
“direction“ as a first requisite for all understanding of this
philosophy, 12
I must here add by way of supplement, that we generally lose the
direction
in Kant, even before we have set out on the special journey. When,
shortly
before his death, Kant surveyed his life's work, he called his
transcendental
philosophy “the science of forms“; 13 (Ug. III, 393). On the
other
hand,
amongst the Kantians it has become the current custom to give up form
in
Kant in favour of what it contains, and indeed generally of only part
of
the contents, of a few so-called fundamental thoughts, just as they
suit
this or that person.
You will find the
proofs of this
everywhere. I open one of those books on Kant which are the most read
by
all students and cultured persons, and find Kant's system reproached
with
being “stiff and formalistic“: most of his arguments are “casual and
failures“; 14 but
his “great fundamental thoughts have a lasting
value.“ And one
of the most famous professional Kantians, in his memorial lecture, on
the
centenary of the philosopher's death, assured us that “the form of the
Kantian system might perish, — what does form signify?“ It is,
therefore,
assumed to be plain without further discussion that it is possible to
set
Kant's thoughts free from the form which is peculiar to them; people
seem
not even to ask themselves whether the so-called fundamental thoughts
which
remain over can really be Kant's thoughts. This way of looking at form
and contents as two separate entities with which we may deal singly as
we please, — this conception of form as something which can ever and
anywhere
be treated as a matter of secondary consideration, is a legacy of the
most
barren scholastic epochs of the Middle Ages. It is time to take a
lesson
from Gustave Flaubert; l'idée
n'existe qu'en vertu de sa forme
(Lettres, I, 157). 15 Yet here, where we are
dealing with the most
masterful
and at the same time most patient constructor
191 KANT
of
form in the domain of thought that
ever lived, we ought very earnestly to reflect whether it was not in
this
same scouted “system,“ in the organisation which was thought out down
to its minutest detail, that the greatest power of his life's work lay.
In addition to this the careful observer cannot fail to be struck by
the
fact that even in the case of his enthusiastic adherents, the moment
they
renounce Kant's form its contents also by degrees fall to pieces. That
was the case with all, from Fichte downwards: Kant was admired, but men
thought that they might look upon the “form,“ the “system,“ the
“schemes“
of his manner of thought as matters of secondary consideration: yet it
soon became evident that those much-belauded “fundamental thoughts“ had
been understood in a spirit as unlike Kant's as possible, and every day
removed men further and further from him. Only take Schopenhauer to wit!
Schopenhauer in his
principal
work speaks with reverence of “the great Kant,“ and at the end he
professes
himself to have “done no more than carry into effect Kant's work,“ and
thus the impression is created that he identifies himself completely
with
Kant. But there is one thing which he rejects at once, and that is
Kant's
form. On almost every page of his criticism of the Kantian philosophy
(Kritik
der Kantischen Philosophie), of his exegeses (Erläuterungen), and
also in other places, he scoffs at “Kant's love of architectonic
symmetry,“
he compares it contemptuously to Gothic church buildings, calls it
“child's
play“ (Spielerei), and
maintains that it “leads to farce,“ and so
forth.
In regard to the distinction between theoretical and practical reason,
at the meaning of which we have arrived at the outset of our sketch to-day, and which constitutes
the conditioning
fundamental thought of Kant's whole
system, Schopenhauer grows witty: “in obedience to the love of
architectural
symmetry, theoretical reason must also have a
192 KANT
pendant“; he does not see any
deeper
connection. And like the general outline of the building, so by degrees
every feature of the form which Kant had given to his view of the
world,
is first derided and then rejected:
nothing is spared, neither the
distinction
between reason and understanding in Kant's sense, nor his conception of
the relation between understanding and sensibility (which Schopenhauer
calls a non-entity, as indeed it is when its meaning is so utterly
missed),
nor the importance which he defends in the “Idea,“ nor the antinomy of
reason in the sense which you have learnt, nor the fundamental laws of
our judgment which are the foundation of the architecture of the Kritik
der Reinen Vernunft, nor the categories, nor the distinctive
part
played
by temporal schematism, nor the difference between Thing and
Phenomenon,
nor the analysis of the Ego, nor the categorical imperative — nothing,
absolutely
nothing: in the whole structure no stone is left standing upon another.
And in spite of all, Schopenhauer in his later days expressly confesses
himself to be a Kantian, 16
and, as I have said before, considers
himself
to be the direct sequel of Kant. But it is easy to prove
incontrovertibly
that Schopenhauer has never grasped a single one of Kant's fundamental
thoughts in Kant's sense: 17
that is no matter of wonder since he never
understood the critical standpoint, but took Kant's critique from a
purely
psychological point of view, and as an analysis of the function of the
brain (in both volumes of his chief work and repeatedly in the
Parerga); it would be very
desirable that some one should expose the
whole
matter
consistently, briefly and systematically. 18 Indirectly even here I
can
bring forward the mathematically certain proof that Kant remained
absolutely
misunderstood by Schopenhauer. The intellectual personality of Kant is
by now pretty well familiar to you; so far then you possess a reliable
touchstone; now listen to Schopen-
193 KANT
hauer's
judgment. It would be possible to
compile
out of his writings the most acrimonious pamphlet against Kant that
ever
was written. Of Kant's thought he says that it is unclear, uncertain,
wrong,
illogical, shameless, unanswerably careless, pedantic, sophistic,
inconsistent,
queer, simple, grotesque, full of contradictions, etc., and of single
thoughts
he affirms that they are “brought forward in defiance of all truth,“
surreptitiously
obtained, mere plays upon words, monstrous mongrels, and so forth ad
infinitum.
To all of which Schopenhauer adds the assurance that it is “all the
respect
which is otherwise due to Kant“ which restrains him “from expressing
himself in hard terms“! The reproach which he oftenest brings against
Kant,
the thinker, is that of a “lack of adequate consideration,“ — once he
goes
so far as to talk of “an incredible lack of consideration.“ 19 To talk of
Immanuel Kant and a lack of consideration in the same breath is too
amusing!
and that is the reproach of a man who before he was thirty years old
had
fixed and made an end of his own philosophy, and never advanced a step
further, addressed to another man who was nearly sixty before he looked
upon his system of thought as sufficiently ripe for him to hand over
for
publication the first of his fundamental writings. “It is marvellous,“
Schopenhauer writes, “how Kant without further consideration, follows
his
own way, striving after his symmetry, ordering everything according to
it, without ever taking any one of the subjects in itself into
consideration.“
We may judge Kant's philosophy as we will, we may reject it as a
failure,
but every man who has any knowledge of his writings and his life will
nevertheless
admit that this assertion of Schopenhauer's is simply grotesque: the
only
thing that is marvellous here is the infatuation, almost amounting to
blindness,
and the superficiality of Schopenhauer. But he outdoes himself when, in
a rising scale of calumny, he accuses Kant of moral cowardice, of
194 KANT
lying,
of deserting his colours. You
yourselves, though you have not yet gone into the theoretical teaching
of Kant, are in a position to pronounce judgment with absolute
certainty,
and maintain that Schopenhauer's conception of Kant must be false from
its very foundations: for a man who can, after studying his works,
arrive
at such a ridiculous caricature of his personality, can certainly not
have
rightly understood those works. As a matter of fact all the
inconsistencies,
the contradictions, the absurdities, and, indeed, the dishonesties into
which in Schopenhauer's opinion Kant involves himself, are nothing but
the inevitable consequences of his own stiff-necked misunderstanding.
And
then the question arises, how was it possible that such a brilliantly
gifted
thinker as Schopenhauer, who delighted in being called “the keenest of
the keen,“ could fall into such unholy error? 20 Truly one-sidedness
and
a passionate nature played many another trick upon this man, worthy as
he was of admiration, but they afford no adequate explanation here.
Kant
was the subject of his study during his whole life, and yet he so
utterly
misunderstood both his work and his personality: how was that possible?
I answer only because he held himself to be justified in everywhere
separating
the form of Kant's thinking from the thought itself, because he held
Kant's
system of architectonics to be an idle adjunct, an old crone, a mere
seducer
and destroyer.
Judgments like those
of
Schopenhauer,
more politely and less cleverly expressed, will meet your ears from the
most different philosophical camps. Almost every professor will tell
you
that “Kant's form, Kant's system are secondary considerations; do not
grow grey over the distinction between pure reason and practical
reason,
with the power of judgment as the 'third,' — over the table of
categories,
and schematism and the Thing in itself, and the transcendental ideas
and
the autonomy of
195 KANT
the
moral personality, and the rest
of
it; all this is mere pedantry which may be explained historically: they
are no longer of any value in these days, we men of the twentieth century have gone far beyond
all that: keep to the great, new world-moving thoughts; the rest is
scrap
iron.“ As against this I tell you that unless you are prepared lovingly
to grasp the architectonics of Kant's thinking you will never know what
Kant thought. To talk of growing above Kant is like talking of growing
superior to Homer, Leonardo, Plato; we may thank God if by honest work
we gain the power of merely understanding such men, and of enriching
our
poverty-stricken public-school and high-school wisdom with the glorious
thought-life of the heroes. Right is on the side of the man with the
strong
fist: with improved lyddite bombs and such weapons we may rise superior
to him: but the man with the strong head is a cosmic phenomenon just
like
the Sun or the Dogstar; he is HE; taken as a personality he is neither
right nor wrong: if we wish to understand him, we look upon him face to
face as something that is, not as something which is yet to be; he is
eternal:
whether he will be of service to us or not, time will show: but the
historic
plague of our days snatches him away, and we have hardly had leisure
even
to have a glimpse of him as he really was.
In what I am telling
you and in
what I wish to impress upon you I am swimming against the stream,
almost
alone: but that does not matter: you can trust me, I know that I am
right;
stronger men than myself will sooner or later assure the victory to
truth.
It is true that I am no professional philosopher, but I possess instead
of that the great advantage of having busied myself with Kant all my
life,
without making any other call upon him than that he should help me to
build
up my own personal view of the world. I neither chose, like our private
tutors, as a half-fledged boy of twenty-
196 KANT
five,
to lecture as best I might upon
the ripe teaching of the man of sixty, in that way blocking my
understanding
for ever, nor would I meet him with a system of my own, the
justification
of which I should have had to make good by attacks upon his: there was
no need for me to bind myself to any party: I did not require to
inveigh
against what I did not understand, nor to make myself the
representative
of what my own thought was unable to receive. There are in Kant things
that to this day I do not understand; but since I am still removed by
ten
years from the age at which Kant wrote the Reine Vernunft, and twenty
from
that at which he wrote the Urteilskraft;
and since ever and again the
oftener
I read those wonderful books, and the more I reflect upon this
philosophy,
new lights suddenly blaze up before me, I hope, if I live, gradually to
arrive nearer to an understanding of them. For entire success I must
not
hope: I know it; I am not
sufficiently gifted
in the matter of abstraction, and besides that I am so different from
the
great Kant by aesthetic tendencies and impulses of will that inevitably
much must remain unattainable by me. On the basis then of the
experience
which I have gained I can affirm as my slowly won and ever more
strongly
fixed conviction, that neither the one thought, nor the many thoughts
of
Kant can be understood if we disintegrate them from the architectonic
scheme
in which he set them, — if we
try to tear them from the scheme
in which he gave them form and many-sided relations. The schematism of
the Kantian philosophy is as it were an expanded language; it is the
visible
and at the same time precise interpretation of thoughts, which in no
other
way could attain expression: and that is why we may maintain, with only
unimportant limitations, that in Kant form is thought.
This also I pledge
myself to
confirm
without impinging upon technicalities which have no right to any place
in these lectures.
197 KANT
One
thing in the first place: I
attach more value to Kant's own testimony than the professors do. For
in
such matters there is no question of learning, and still less of the
vote
of the majority; it is only a matter of insight and judgment: in both
respects
Kant soared above all the men who since his time have taken up their
parable
upon philosophy. Since Kant, moreover, in contradistinction to
Schopenhauer,
was a pattern of modesty and reflection and prudent reserve, it is
unquestionably
significant when he repeats again and again that he has much to add to
his exposition and excuses himself if in order “to bring the whole into
existence“ some parts “have been left in a certain unfinished state“
— if, however, in spite of that, in
speaking
of his system as a whole, he is convinced that it will be maintained
unchanged
later on. 21 In
1787 he writes to Reinhold, “I may well assure you,
without
laying myself open to the charge of self-sufficiency, that the longer I
pursue my course the less anxious I am lest any contradiction, or even
any coalition, such as we commonly see nowadays, should do any
important
damage to my system. This is an inmost conviction, which grows in me
from
the fact that when I proceed to other undertakings, I not only find my
system always consistent with itself, but, moreover, when from time to
time I am puzzled as to the method of investigating a subject, I only
have
to look back upon that general description of the elements of
recognition
and of the incident powers of the mind, in order to arrive at lights of
which I was not aware“ (Br. I, 488). When Kant wrote those words he was
standing on the highest pinnacle of his powers: the Prolegomena had
been
in circulation for several years, the second and partly altered edition
of the Reine Vernunft had
appeared at the beginning of the year, the
Kritik
der Praktischen Vernunft had been finished in manuscript six
months
earlier,
and as he announces in this letter he had begun to work at the
198 KANT
Kritik der Urteilskraft. 22 And this
is
the moment at which the thinker himself gives us his testimony as to
the
exact reciprocity which his whole thinking bears to the architectonic
form
of his philosophy! And yet even this surely weighty judgment must not
be
taken as authoritative; Kant might have been in this relation the
victim
of a mistake, of an auto-suggestion: we should not expect it of him,
but
it might be. For this reason I will now bring forward the positive
arguments
which must determine us to accept Kant's judgment. To the two
recognitions
which we already possess of Kant as constructor and as artist in
schemes,
the opportunity will now occur for adding more than one supplementary
recognition.
In the first place,
we must
mention
certain strongly marked characteristics of the individual with which we
are already partially acquainted.
It was purely visible
problems
for which logically there is no corresponding expression that, in the
first
instance, led Kant, the mathematician and physicist, to investigations
in the criticism of recognitions. I have already mentioned the fact
that
one of his earliest writings which touch upon the domain of the
criticism
of recognition is devoted to the question of the first principle of the
difference of regions in space. That is highly characteristic; you see
how the visible, the element of all construction, takes the lead. What
are the relations between right and left? In this question is rooted
the
life-work of Kant. The question would never even occur to the pure
logician:
to him right and left are identical; only the man who starts from pure
perception, and from that point searches for the connection with pure
understanding,
discovers that here there is indeed a problem, and one which cannot be
solved by empirical methods. That is how this apparently very simple
question
leads a Kant into the depths of the criticism of recognition, and
199 KANT
here
he immediately shows up the
empirical
acceptation that the conception space arises out of the experience of
matter
as being once for all impossible and senseless. Five years earlier we
already
see Kant following similar ways: the work of the year 1763 entitled,
“an
attempt to introduce the conception of Negative Magnitudes into the
science
of the world,“ is one of the most instructive which we possess for the
study of the intellectual personality of Kant. Here the thinker still
lives
wholly in the conceptions of mathematics and physics; in this very work
there are remarkable hints as to the essence of electricity as a motive
form of the aether, and here for the first time Kant defines the
impenetrability
of bodies as “negative attraction.“ But he has another aim in view, and
this other aim is the introduction into the consideration of philosophy
of those problems which arise out of the nature of our perception by
the
senses, whereas they remain hidden to abstract logic, and indeed remain
so hidden without the logician's being conscious of it, because he is
lacking in the organ necessary for the purpose. “Right and Left“ was
one
example, the conception of negative magnitudes is another. The formula
+a and -a, directly set over against one
another, looked upon from a
purely
logical point of view mean that of the same thing I say at the same
time,
yes and no. The result is a contradiction, — a non-sense. I might as
well
have said nothing. For the physicist and the mathematician the matter
is
quite different. Plus and minus are for him the one as
positive as the
other: the principle of this is the perception of space: plus is motion
in one direction, minus is
motion in the opposite direction; if,
however,
we are dealing with mere numbers, that is to say, with space-lacking
mathematics,
motion ceases to exist in practice, though it continues to exist
figuratively,
that is to say, in my thought, 23
and in calculation all minus
signs
are
added up just like the plus
signs, because
200 KANT
they
belong to the same direction of
motion, and it is a simple matter of convention which of the two
complexes
of magnitude I choose to indicate with plus and which with minus. If a
body remains entirely without movement because four horses are pulling
it to the right and four equally powerful horses are pulling it to the
left, then, from a purely logical point of view there is nothing more
to
be said about its motional condition than that the body is at rest;
physically,
on the other hand, its motion is equally null, but the ○
does not here
signify the nothing of contradiction, but rest as a consequence, a
result,
the practical sum of two opposite movements. This trivial example will
suffice to show you what is the question at issue. Here is no question
of rendering an abstract recognition familiar by demonstration, but the
reverse: The perception and that which is annexed to it,
— as the interplay between scheme and
symbol, which the third lecture exhibited as the essence of
mathematics, — must first reveal the problems and guide reason on the
road to
thinking.
So in Kant it is everywhere that the constructor leads the way: it is
out
of perception that the problems of the criticism of recognition arise.
And just as elsewhere in the case of right and left, so here he is led
by the distinction of directions, that is to say, of real in
contradistinction
to logical contrasts, to the most profound ethical and critical
thoughts:
it is in this essay on “negative magnitudes“ that, so far as I know, a
hint of the categorical imperative crops up for the first time; in this
essay the system of the pure conceptions of the understanding
(categories)
is clearly proclaimed. Both are shown as the direct result of thinking
stimulated by the scheme of directions, or to speak mathematically, the
contrast between positive and negative. For example, “un-virtue“
according
to Kant cannot be a mere negation, else it would be a nonentity; rather
is it something positive and real, namely a negative virtue, a virtue
201 KANT
turned
in an opposite direction, “not
merely a lack.“ And here it becomes clear that virtue itself is
nothing,
unless it be positive and real, — a motion with a fixed direction. If,
for
example, a man does not carry out a good deed which it was his duty to
carry out, then this neglect is not a mere zero = nothing, but it is
the
result of a struggle between two powers with opposite directions; the
categorical
command of reason was “do it“! against which the impulse of pleasure,
of
selfishness, etc., said, “do it not“! The direction or inaction is the
result of the adding together of the various plus and minus quantities.
In the same way there arises here for Kant the question of the
importance
of causality in our recognition. For the perfectly clear distinction
between
a purely logical foundation, and a real foundation, that is to say, a
true
cause, corresponds to the aforesaid distinction between a merely
logical
contrast and a real contrast shown according to the scheme of
direction.
If I deduce B from A that is only the more accurate displaying of the
greater
circle of conception A considered as already granted: this
disintegration
of that which is granted is the function of logic, as against which in
the real original cause I deduce from the existence of A that X must
also
exist, although the two are not the same but different. If I say this
body
is at rest and therefore does not move, that is a logical deduction; in
the expression a body at rest is included the notion that the body in
question is not moving. But if I say this body remains motionless in
suspense
between
the Earth and the Moon, because it is at that point where the powers of
attraction of the two luminaries are exactly balanced, that is no
logical
deduction, but I exhibit two real and opposite motive tendencies as
working causes in order by that means to account for the condition of
rest.
And here arises the fundamental question of the criticism of
recognition
which Kant raises — “How am I to understand that because some-
202 KANT
thing
exists therefore something else
exists?“ And at once, though only two or three pages of printed matter
are devoted to these reflections, he soars into the heights and enters
upon the subject of God. From Anaxagoras and his Nous (see p. 330) to
Descartes
and Leibniz, thinkers had imagined that they could come to a logical
conclusion
about the existence of God; whereas Kant from the simple consideration
in question deduces that this is a case where a logical conclusion can
only be arrived at if God and the world are identical: but if God is to
be thought of as the cause of the world, then the divine will is one
thing
and the existing world another, and we see that the acceptation of a
divine
Creator explains absolutely nothing; for we are once more faced by the
question: what is the meaning of the proposition that because A exists
therefore X must exist? “That is something that I should wish to have
clearly explained to me,“ says Kant. 24 And now he tells us in a
few
words
that he has pondered over these relations which lie outside of logic,
and
which are therefore not capable of explanation in the ordinary sense of
this conception, and announces his intention of giving the result of
these
reflections in detail: for the present he only communicates the one
result,
namely that we must force our way to something which lies beyond our
judgment,
and that can only be a question of conceptions, and then we shall find
that all our recognition “ends in simple and insoluble conceptions of
the
variegated groundwork of reality.“ These insoluble conceptions are what
Kant later named “pure conceptions of the understanding, or
categories.“ 25
Once more I must ask
you not to
be discouraged if in the course of these studies you should now and
then
come upon points of which you cannot at once fathom the meaning: our
aim for the present is no more than to arrive at a certain general
recognition
of the personality.
203 KANT
Whoever
will compare these two little
treatises on Right and Left and Negative Magnitudes, and will consider
them attentively, will see in them the programme of the Kantian
critique
of recognition sketched out in tolerably clear outlines: but above all
he will see laid out before him the way which Kant, the thinker,
followed. 26
It is the way of a man who starts from perception, — from reality
afforded
empirically; it is the way of a man whose intellect is penetrated
through
and through by the strict necessity of combination, of the ever
perspicuous
schematisation of all mathematics and mathematical physics; it is the
way
of a man who with rare keenness of sense grasped the essence of space.
But in the relations of space it is form that is the important matter;
the man who here perceives form possesses, if not the whole recognition
which it includes, for it is inexhaustible, — at any rate all the
elements
requisite for recognition. This standpoint was in Kant the result of
instinct
and of schooling: it was the characteristic of genius magnified by
method.
And you must not fail to observe that this way is peculiar to Kant
alone
among all the philosophers. Descartes and Leibniz alone show any
analogy
to it. But Descartes does not dwell for long upon the investigation of
recognition; he is more inclined to arrive at a hasty and arbitrary
compromise
with it, in order then to devote himself as undividedly as possible to
the cosmic, physical, and physiological problems, whereas Kant starting
from cosmology and physics which in the meantime had both grown into
powerful
systems, soon arrives at the problem of our recognition to which from
that
time forth he dedicates all his strength. And in regard to Leibniz, he
is the abstract mathematician as opposed to the physicist, and that is a mighty
distinction;
Leibniz belongs to those mathematicians who, if I may refer to what I
urged
in the Descartes lecture, view everything from the side of the
understanding,
and at the same
204 KANT
time
attach as little value as
possible
to the perception of the senses as a subordinate element. Thus, for
example,
the “principle of the indistinguishable“ forms a pillar of Leibniz's
philosophy:
two circles which are like to one another in every respect, are, to the
man who takes the world into consideration, logically not two circles
but
a repetition of one and the same circle; the same holds good of all
things
that are equal; hence it is deduced, that it is impossible that two
equal
beings should exist in nature, and this deduction again serves as a
main
pillar of support for the monist doctrine, — a philosophy of which the
imperishable
value consists in the fact that it gives a pure reflection of the
cosmic
picture of the abstract mathematician. But here Kant, plain and always
starting from experience, steps forth and cries, Halt! that is all
abstraction
and could only have any value if mankind were purely beings of
understanding;
but the senses possess the same dignity as the understanding; it is the
senses that give us space; and entities which can be comprehended as
“undistinguishable,“
be they two, or two hundred, or two thousand, are at once fully
distinguished
from one another as soon as they are separated by space.
This remark is very
important
for the appreciation of Kant's intellect. For Kant is often called an
“intellectualist“ or a “rationalist,“ that is to say, a man for whom
understanding
apart
from sensibility is the supreme court of appeal: and here you see how
false
and one-sided such a judgment is, and that Kant might just as fairly be
accused of relying solely upon the evidence of the senses. In truth he
is open to neither objection, but is an entirely objective critic of
recognition.
It is precisely this absolute objectivity which makes him so difficult
of comprehension to all of us: every interpreter of Kant drags him over
to the one side or the other.
So Kant goes forth on
his lonely
road fully conscious
205 KANT
of
his solitude, as he writes in his
treatise on the comprehension of the Negative Magnitudes, “usually I
least
understand that which all men believe that they understaxtd with
ease“;
from the outset all problems present to him a special and unusual
aspect.
Starting from the point of cosmology and physics, it seems to him
organically impossible to leave out of sight the form of perception
which has been
given to us — namely space; rather do all the problems of recognition
arise
for him out of and in perception. Space, related on the one side, as is
sufficiently proved by mathematics, to the subjective understanding, is
yet on the other side, as Plato calls it in the Timaeus (52 D), “the
foster-mother
of all Being,“ the condition, the form of objective things. Here Kant
gains
a foothold for further investigation in both directions. That is why it
is inexplicable that our professional teachers should have called the
writings
in which Kant examines the properties of space “pre-critical,“ because,
as they say, his analysis had not yet made a thorough investigation of
understanding. On the contrary, what we have just said shows that out
of
these writings we obtain a highly important, indeed conclusive, insight
into the accurate judgment of Kant's intellect and of its work: it is
with
the critique of space that his critical work begins: this is the
starting-point,
just as this same criticism later on is the beginning of the perfected
exposition. But another insight, hardly less important, which we gain
here
is the perception that geometrical instinct and mathematical schooling
must make schematic construction not only into an indifferent habit,
but
into a fundamental method of this manner of thinking. And so in Kant we
see, from the very beginning, concrete perception, the geometrically
practised
eye acting as guide to thoughts, so that the architectonics, the scheme
of thoughts, were forced of necessity to grow together organically with
the thoughts themselves, and that no
206 KANT
stripping
of these thoughts out of
the
shell of their scheme is possible in the case of Kant.
But there is yet more
to be said
of the significance of form in Kant. The matter is far too important in
regard to the exact understanding of the intellectual personality, for
me to omit any of the arguments.
We have already seen
why and how
far we are entitled to describe Kant as a constructor as against Plato;
for if Kant is from the very outset pre-eminently a constructor of
thoughts,
then it is impossible for this construction to be of slight value. I
will
not repeat myself; but I wish to impress upon your attention still more
earnestly the architectonic side of Kant.
You remember the
anecdote about
Westminster Bridge in our first lecture (I, p. 38); since then we have
often observed how characteristic of Kant's thought is all that has to
deal with the architectonic art. In the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft he
expressly
makes architectonics the equal of science. It is not unity of itself,
but
systematic unity which “turns ordinary recognition into science,“ and
therefore in general “architectonics are the doctrine of science in our
recognition“ (R.V. 860). Those of us who are only capable of seeing
what
is artificial in such a construction, do not recognise the resultant
importance
that in such architectonics refined to their utmost capability
everything
stands in relations of the closest interdependence to everything else;
no matter what we take into consideration in such a structure, every
single
detail is so closely conditioned, and has at the same time such exact
conditioning
power in return, that it is hopeless here and there to break up greater
or smaller portions, and judge them by themselves. There may well be
much
that is artificial in all this: I readily believe it: but this
artificiality
is art, the art of Genius: here we see what Goethe calls “highest art:
the magic of the sages.“ Wherever such operations come to the front
they
depend
207 KANT
upon
incomprehensible, undefinable
relations,
upon things which are imponderable; one single clumsy touch and the
strength
of the fabric, the “magic of the sages,“ is gone. We may dissect, break
up, cut to pieces, pick to bits products of nature in order better to
understand
them: — not a work of art, for that is either a unity or it is nothing.
In very truth, like iconoclastic monks, have our philosophers and
professors
attacked the masterpiece of the fabric of Kantian thought!
In relation to this
painfully
exact architectonic quality of Kant's work it is now important to be
able
to watch him at work, especially in the bundles of sketches for his
last
planned works which remained unwritten. Every single pithy thought here
occurs over and over again, the sentence is turned and tested in every
conceivable, sometimes hardly observable, variation, — so laboriously
are
the stones worked up one by one, till they fit into one another and at
the same time into the general plan of the architect. Our historians of
philosophy ascribe this mode of writing to Kant's advanced age and to
the
beginning of the failure of his intellectual powers: but that is an
easy
way of dealing with the analysis of personality; for even if such an
assertion
partly hits the mark, — even if some features should show signs of
decay,
still the manner of working is none the less characteristic. If we
think
of the eleven years which Kant spent upon sketches for the Kritik der
Reinen Vernunft, which he ultimately wrote in five months, and
if on the other
hand
we consider the wondrous depth and productivity of the thoughts in
these
fragmentary relics, which are just beginning to be appreciated by the
professors,
we may readily conclude that these leaves are typical of Kant's method of work. 27
Far from seeing nothing but what
is sickly in these
working manuscripts of Kant's, I find in them a strong family likeness
to the
sketch-books of that other great
architect, Beethoven.
208 KANT
Here
too we find an untidy muddle and
endless repetition; for years the same apparently simple motives recur
over and over again, until they have received the exact shape which
corresponds
to the master's sense and to the whole which hovers before his mind's
eye.
This fact may help to sharpen our understanding for the formal
significance
of Kant's working: had the man not been an artist, he would never have
given himself up to this torturing work like that of Beethoven. There
is
no difficulty in arriving at a merely logical indisputability or a
mathematically
precise organisation; however complicated the matter may be, it can be
solved with the certainty of an arithmetical sum, and constructed
according
to rule. On the other hand, in all artistic work unity is necessary; we
learnt in the previous lecture to regard it as the essence of life;
only
where this unity exists does work deserve the title of creative: here
an
indivisible ideal unity has to arise out of divisions, and since this
unity
consists of parts, it follows that the parts are not parts in the sense
of pieces, but organs, and that in turn means unities; so here you have
circle within circle to all eternity. This is the ideal which hovers
before
the artist, — this is the
necessity which forces
a law upon him. You must not then in appraising the significance of
form
in Kant's thought simply say: here we have a thinker who takes his
departure
from the visible, and his method is that of the mathematically physical
scheme, but you must add: he is an architect, an artistic creator, and
in obedience to that he wills to produce organic and not merely logical
unity.
Out of this
consideration there
arises another which must not be passed over without mention.
I spoke of “organic
not logical
unity,“ and as a matter of fact these are two different things: this
you
already know, and I need not dwell upon the proofs of it: a single
example
may suffice. Logically I neither may nor
209 KANT
can
say, unity is plurality: the
predicate
would destroy subject, and the sentence would be a type of absolute
senselessness. In life, on the contrary,
as was shown in the previous lecture, “a unity is of necessity a
plurality,
and it is plurality which constitutes a unity“ (p. 105). In life, then,
we are subject to another code of laws differing from the logical code:
we must not call it “illogical,“ for that would be unintelligible; but
it embraces an incomparably wider world, a world that is more richly
constituted.
You must have observed this more than once to-day. Now come the purely
logical schoolmen, and discover dozens of “contradictions“ in Kant: if
only one-tenth of the so-called “contradictions“ were really
“contradictions“
in the true and broader sense of the word, that is to say, if one-tenth
of them not only attacked the narrow rules of mere logic, but also the
organic conditions of all life, — then Kant must have been a quite
exceptionally
stupid man, and Schopenhauer's reproach of chronic want of
consideration
would even be flattery! In truth it is baseless misunderstanding upon
which
this is founded, and that indeed not only with reference to Kant. Let
us
try to arrive at some clear notions upon these matters.
We have seen that
Life is Form,
and Form is Unity (p. 98): later on we learnt if the essence of Life
is
Form, it must of necessity follow that the deepest foundation of
thinking
must equally be Form (p. 188). Even the thinking of an individual must
first and foremost be uniform, and it is only by extraneous
circumstances
that it is broken up and turned out of its course so that it seems to
destroy
itself. The childish doctrines of the middle of the nineteenth century,
according to which thought must be looked upon as matter, 28 have long
since
been carried to their grave, amid the jeers of all scientifically
competent
judges; still the fashionable idea of to-day which sees in thought a
motion
and there-
210 KANT
fore
an energy, is patently no more
than
the repetition of the same thesis in a veiled form: it is always the
same
mistake of looking upon life as a result of matter and force: whereas
as
we have seen, life is the aboriginal and only concretely given
phenomenon,
while matter and force, the closer we look into them, are for ever
evaporating
more and more into abstractions. If, on the other hand, Life is Form,
and
thinking a result of form, then what we are wont to call the “Soul“
is,
to speak allegorically, no more than the inner side of the Form of
Life.
How astonished our worthy empiricists were when positive investigation
proved more and more clearly not only that the weight of the brain, as
they premised, but also its relative complexity, the number and the
variety
of its superficial folds, etc., stood in direct relation to the power
of
thought of the individual. And yet even to this fact no more than a
symbolical
value can be attached; but it shows that the conception of thinking as
a direct manifestation of form is not so senseless as it might seem to
be at first sight to many a man who, shrouded in the dust-cloud of
false
anti-metaphysical empiricism, stalks in the great high-road of the
vulgar
herd. And since every phenomenon of life is fixed, and therefore
necessarily
bound up by the form of the essence of life into an organic unity, — in
which
all parts point to one another, condition one another, and together
constitute
a whole, therefore thinking must also form a unity in the place of its
birth, that is in the inmost soul of the personality. But in almost all
men thoughts remain in suspense, and never gain a firm impression; they
are the children of form, but they do not attain form: they fall short,
and do not reach the goal, like bullets missing the white, missing the
black, burying themselves in the earth on the hither side of the
target.
Sometimes men of this sort want to carry their point arbitrarily, and
are
lacking in the indispensable measure
211 KANT
of
formative power. The work of
projecting,
in the sense of the Latin word projicere,
and setting up again that
which
lives within us, is beset by very important difficulties. The one
difficulty
is that of speech: words are never fully adequate to true thoughts.
Cusanus,
a clear thinker, warns us that oportet
supra verborum vim intellectum
efferre,
the reader must lift himself above the narrow meaning of my words to a
higher point of conception: 29
and Goethe says, “For the superior man
the
power of speech which has been vouchsafed to him is insufficient; ...
he falls short almost everywhere“ (G. VIII, 96); that is why the
handling
of speech is an art; it is not every man who knows how to exercise it.
But this is only the difficulty of the lower layers, the caprice of the
building material: then comes the building itself, the question of
architecture:
even the “superior man“ will only master it after many years of devoted
labour, and only within certain bounds laid down by his personality. In
all ordinary cases the much complained of contradictions in thinking
arise
simply from the fact that the personality in question had not grown up
to this work of construction: it is not their thinking which fails in
unity, but the expression of their thinking; it is our business to
build
up unity out of the chaos of matter. On the other hand, what is so
extraordinary
in Kant is that he succeeds in an almost perfect “projection“ from
within
to without. In every projection there is much that is artificial even
though
it be according to rule: it is a combination of convention and law:
besides
that there belongs to it the exercised faculty to express bodily the
picture
which is superficial: lastly, the geometrician may often have been
mistaken:
even admitting that all this is to be found in Kant, there still
remains
the fact that in him every single thought possesses its mathematically
appropriate place, and with that its appropriate function. Thoughts are
not stones:
212 KANT
the
thinker cannot raise up a great
cathedral
before our eyes and say — that is my scheme of philosophy: he can only
give
us the plan, ground-plan and elevation; but these are a far more
delicate
matter than buildings of stone and mortar: a chip hurts these but
little; even out of ruins our thoughts can build up their form: but
whoever
touches
an architectural drawing ever so little, displaces the various
relations,
so that the original form, the thought of the architect, can no longer
be guessed at. It is in this way that Kant is radically spoilt for us:
soon no one will any longer know what he was talking about. Fragments
of
thought of a hundred men pass current under Kant's name to-day, so that
Hägerström, an expert in philosophy, complained that “Kant's
whole philosophy is represented in such a fashion that it might have
had
its origin not in one great thinker, but in many little ones.“ 30
In this connection it
may be
opportune
to insert an observation of general significance: we must in general
and
everywhere distinguish between contradictions and contradictions. There
are contradictions which are of a purely logical nature, they result in
an absurdity, a nullity, an emptiness of thought, — and there are
relations
which logic is apt to point to as contradictions, because they overstep
its powers of conception, but which are in reality the simple
affirmation
of the living fact. These contradictions are necessarily found in all
thinking,
but appear in “monumental“ shape in proportion to the pre-eminence of
the
thinker; for it is precisely in them that organism proves itself as
organism,
and that means as unity. In my work upon Richard Wagner I made use of
the
expression “plastic contradictions“ for this phenomenon. 31 There is in
thinking, as we have already seen, a right side and a left, and just as
it is not possible to draw the left glove on to the right hand, so it
is
impossible to expect to find in a genuine and honest thinker
213 KANT
unity
in anything except in the
organic
interdependence, in the reciprocal correspondence, in the relation of
the parts to one another. Here again is the proof of Plato's saying:
there is
no knowledge unless in the many we see the one. And sure it is that we
have not understood an intellectual personality, that is to say,
personality
as a thinking being, until we recognise it as being just as uniform and
necessarily self-conditioned in its organisation, as it is conscious,
in
the midst of all inmost conflicts, of being a unity. But to reproach
with
contradictions a man gifted as Kant was, a man equipped as perhaps no
other
mortal ever was with all the means for the architectonic and systematic
exposition of a philosophy that was supra-logical, and therefore
contained
all logic in itself, — devoting to this one task almost exclusively a
whole
life of most painfully exact, scientific work, — to bring such a charge
against
such a man wherever we fail to understand him off-hand, and cannot
without
pains see into the organic relations of his thought-work which embraces
all the domains of the intellect, is not only void of understanding and
childish, but above all impertinent.
We have now become
acquainted
with Kant the constructor as a physicist, gifted with exact perception,
as a master geometrically skilled in schemes, as an architectonic
builder,
as a magician in art, as an organic creator. Possibly Kant may have
been
excelled by others in any one particular, but what constitutes his
personality,
and gives it such extraordinary importance, is the fusion of these
various
branches of the creative faculty into one unity: for the gifts which we
have been unravelling are naturally only various manifestations,
aspects
and facets of the one uniform phenomenon. All that we have said up to
the
present is directed at these faculties subjectively as faculties; but
if
we cross over to the objective and ask, what is the relation to the
214 KANT
world
of this intellect thus equipped? then we come to a new experience, and
what we find is of decisive
importance
for the recognition of the peculiarity and value of the formal element
in the Kantian system. Moreover, we here touch the point where the hope
arises of growing into something which may go beyond what Kant
achieved,
for here is revealed the connection with nature.
When we watch Kant
the
systematiser
at work objectively, it becomes necessary to distinguish between
artificial
systematising and natural systematising. There have been many systems
in
philosophy, — indeed we may say that from Thales to Schopenhauer, even
down
to the present day, it has been the ideal of most thinkers to
set
up a “system.“ The Greek word “system“ means originally a uniformly and
arbitrarily accepted number of persons or things, for instance, a
college
of priests or a body of troops; by degrees it came to have a
theoretical
sense, and so betokened the unity of a doctrine composed of more or
less
numerous theses; but the arbitrary and conventional sense which it bore
in the first instance was attached and remains attached to the second
signification.
By “system“ our thoughts in the first instance turn to the autocracy of
an intellect which forces things to assume whatever shape or position
suits
it; it seems to be the opposite to nature. And now as regards
philosophy! If anywhere we see arbitrary will at work it is here; here
assumption
is set against assumption, and nowhere do we see the trace of a
strictly
straight procedure such as, in spite of all conflict of opinions, is
shown
in the other sciences. In the Bruno lecture we spoke in detail of this
philosophical system-mongering. Aristotle, who asks the stars how many
heavenly spheres there are, in order to deduce the number of substances
which exist in the world, the number of the creative intellectual
powers,
the number of aims, is the pattern
215 KANT
of
the systematiser: a second extreme
example is furnished by Spinoza, who builds up a whole philosophical
system “after the manner of geometry“ with definitions, axioms,
corollaries,
etc.,
which naturally has all the appearance of consistency, just as
consistent
as Euclid's Elements, but where there is this one oversight, that all
mathematical
definitions are without exception merely verbal explanations, but that
these words always premise the perception by the senses of the
relations,
and refer to it, whereas all Spinoza's definitions relate to things
which
are incapable of being perceived, and are therefore more geometrico
worthless. 32
What must specially strike us in this connection is the circumstance
that
Plato, the great and true man, left behind him no philosophical system,
not even the rudiments of a system, indeed that he scoffs at all the
systems
together (see p. 494), and further that Kant in the same way never
wearies
of warning us against the “systems of the idle reason,“ as he calls
them:
he who otherwise took but little notice of other philosophers, does
battle
energetically with the systems of Descartes, Spinoza, Berkeley,
Leibniz, Wolff, which were held in esteem in his day. In a certain
sense,
therefore,
critical philosophy must be a radical opponent of all system. This it
is
that Schiller extols as the “intolerance“ of the Kantian philosophy:
“This
does it honour in my eyes, for it proves how little it can tolerate
arbitrariness.“ 33
And, nevertheless, Kant himself tells us in his Kritik der Reinen
Vernunft,
that he is “striving after a complete system of transcendental
philosophy,“
and at the end of his life he energetically repudiates Fichte's
assertion
that he (Kant) had only aimed at giving us “a preparation, not a
system,“
convinced as he was that he had
given “the completed whole,“ and that
“the system of criticism rests upon a fully assured foundation,
established
for all time.“ No system then, and yet a system. What are we to
understand
by that?
216 KANT
One word suffices to explain:
Kant
here understands by system “natural system“ precisely in the sense of
our
modern natural science, and in exact contradiction to all former, and
yet
to be born, artificial systems of the idle reason.
In the sciences of
life we do
not in these days understand by “system“ the attempt to produce an
artificial
order out of practical and convenient considerations, — nor a logical
or
mathematical order such as man in his wisdom thinks would be fitting:
still
less do we think to create order based on arbitrary acceptations: what
we aim at is an attempt to follow up the trail of nature, to fix as
exactly
as possible the relations between its phenomena, secret as these may
be, — in
short, to reveal its true organism, that is to say, the necessary
connection
which dominates it — the unity of its plurality. Upon this subject I
have
expressed myself in detail, based upon a rich empirical stock of
examples,
in my Foundations of the Nineteenth
Century (p. 789 seq. [English
edition: Vol.
II, p. 305]), and I
need
not
repeat myself: laboriously precise, exactly obedient observation of
nature,
united to a bold, creative power of construction, — those are the two
gifts
which we find at work together in our great biological systematists. If
a man is to render services in the domain of natural systematics it is
indispensable that he should be endowed with aptitudes nearly allied to
artistic receptivity, failing which he cannot see form in nature: and
equally
indispensable is it that he should be possessed of a rare creative
power,
without which that which he sees and divines is not projected outwards
as a form such as is humanly recognisable. In all natural systematics,
therefore, we have to deal with something extraordinarily delicate,
with “a hidden art in the depths of the human soul,“ as in all
productive
schematising
(R.V. 180); once it is discovered, system can be made use of even by
average
intellects, and indeed built up in
217 KANT
detail;
nature herself then leads us
further;
but the
founders of systems have always been
brains of the very first rank. That plastic contradiction, of which I
spoke a while ago, must be most powerfully developed in the intellect
of a
systematist,
and must penetrate the whole mind: for the systematist must at the same
time discover and invent, obey and command, receive and generate; to
use
a coarse image he must stand on the dividing line between man and
woman.
You must not overlook the fact that we can never reach further than
symbolism,
even though it should be an exact symbolism. Goethe's saying is
universally
known, “natural system, a contradictory expression; nature has no
system“; 34 yet
system is to us men the tool of the understanding: that constitutes its incomparable
importance.
By means of the telescope we see the boundless distance, with the help
of the microscope we see the infinitely little: thanks to system we
obtain
an insight into certain relations of nature which are incommensurable
to
our brain. For the widening of the physical sense a physical instrument
suffices, — for the widening of the horizon of our thoughts and the
sharpening
of our perception nothing short of the invention of a special method of
seeing and thinking is of any avail: this method is the natural system.
Naturally you must not look upon the word system merely in the sense of
an agglomeration of animals and plants: system rather penetrates every
science of life: a Bichat who reduces the whole network of the body to
a system, 35 — a
Wilson who arranges systematically the innumerable
phenomena
of cell-life, a Mendelejew who establishes the “periodic system“ of the
chemical elements, a Haüy who reduces the forms of crystals to a
system.... All these men render just as great service to science as a
Cuvier, who draws the fundamental lines of a system of animal forms. If
you
observe
carefully you will discover that everywhere at all stages in the
natural
sciences there is
218 KANT
constant
systematisation. In all the
branches of investigation system means law, and that means the
specially
scientific: it is science itself; for science implies “knowledge
shaped
into form,“ and system only signifies a shadowing of this
conception, — that
is to say the form of our shaped knowledge, — form therefore considered
as
apart from its contents, — symbolical form under which as method we
amass
and order our knowledge. Every day we see more clearly in the unorganic
sciences that our human conceptions are mere tokens; taken materially
and
pursued further consistently, they lead to a non-sense; we have dwelt
upon
that more than once in these lectures: in the organic sciences this
fact
is only masked because we are there in a position to push back every
problem
further and further in our thoughts. The modern doctrine of
development,
is, considered morally, the condition of fundamental timidity of
thinking:
a poor-spirited generation is afraid to look eternity in the face. Yet
every system of nature stands apart from time as the symbol of
imperishable
laws.
If Kant then wishes
to replace
speculative philosophy by a philosophy as science, “a quite new
science,“
as he says, “of which no one had previously even grasped the thought,
of
which the very idea was unknown“ (P. preface) — he takes for his axiom
that
all science first arises by construction, and that form, the
architectonic
form, can never be a matter of secondary importance in true science,
since
it is by its means that science becomes science. It is small wonder
then
if he tells us of his own science of reason that “the original idea is
architectonic“ (R.V. 875), and if he declares, as a consequence of this
method, that it revealed “the articulation of reason“ and its organic
unity.
That is evidently the exact and detailed programme of every natural
system
of the exact science of nature: unity under an architectonic idea, —
not
under a humanly accidental, plausible, convenient,
219 KANT
ingenious
idea, but under the idea which
rules in nature, discovered by
means of that creative
imitative
process which reaches the highest possible measure of exactitude.
This distinction
between the two
conceptions of system is a mighty one; it is known to every
investigator
of nature, and consequently also to Kant; but whilst in
the biological sciences we have
abandoned
the scholastic systems for nearly two centuries, recognising them
indeed as useless toys, which lock out every possibility of progress in
knowledge, — so
far as philosophy is concerned we are still under the thraldom of
scholasticism.
Here it is still the artificial instead of the natural systems which
rule.
We still busy ourselves with Spinoza's “geometrical principles,“
Hegel's
“absolute knowledge,“ Schopenhauer's “immanent dogmatism,“ and we
either
close our ears to Kant's teaching or give it a scholastic turn. Kant
teaches
us that our reason is like every living thing a perfect “organisation“;
it contains “a true structure of component members, in which everything
is organ, namely, the whole existing for the sake of the part, and each
part for the sake of the whole“ — he says “the value and use of every part depends
upon the relation in which it stands with regard to the others in
reason
itself, and as in the structure of the members
of an organised body, the purpose of every member can only be gathered
from the perfect conception of the whole“ (P. xix seq., R.V. 861 seq.);
and he accordingly considers the task of philosophy as existing not in
the more or less brilliant, logically impeccable interpretations of
the
world, but in the pursuit of “a method imitating the investigator of
nature,“
that is to say, in the revelation and creation of a natural system of
reason.
He lived under the conviction that he had discovered this system, that
is to say, that he had built it up architecturally. He expressly
acknowledges
that “in his exegesis there yet remains much to be done,“ for it is
“not
full of light;“ he often blames
220 KANT
himself
in respect of “clearness of
argument,“
“want of elegance,“ and so forth, and in later years, after the
completion
of all his “critiques“ he expresses the longing wish “in the interest
of the communication of his principles,“ that he could meet with a
“poetic
brain dominated by a mode of exposition corresponding to the pure
conceptions
of reason,“ a man “who could combine scholastic precision in the
valuation
of conceptions with the popularity of a glowing imagination“ (Letters,
II, 417). He sets no exaggerated estimate upon himself, knowing full
well
what are the limits of his powers, not imagining that “like Hume he is
master of all the art of beautifying“ (Ref. II, 7). But, on the other
hand,
he is firmly assured that his system is right, and must assert itself
lastingly.
Here, as a true investigator of nature, he leans upon “experiment.“ No
natural system can be shown to be right logically, it must prove itself
by experience; once the combining idea of an organism of nature is
approximately
understood, it shows itself in every place, in every corner: every
investigator
of nature knows what I mean: man becomes as it were the confidant of
the
superhuman. 36 But
philosophy is no more than any other science “given
in
concreto,“ it is rather like all the others “a mere idea of a
possible
science,“ to which “we seek to draw near,“ and this attempt succeeds in
reaching the goal in proportion as “we are able within the
possibilities
of humanity to make the copy like the original“ (R.V. 866).
Experimental
practice alone, not argument, can show whether this agreement takes
place
or not; and it is upon this evidence that Kant relies when he reckons
himself
to be the discoverer of the true natural system of reason. Hear what he
says: “this method copied from the investigator of nature consists in
this: searching for the elements of pure reason in that which may be
confirmed
or disproved by an experiment.“ In what then does experiment
221 KANT
consist
here as in all other systems?
Only in the investigation whether the members prove themselves to be
organic (p. 105), whether every part
stands in the necessary relationship to the whole, and to all other
parts.
That leads Kant to write further, “It is no self-conceit which entitles
me to this belief, but only the evidence furnished by the experiment of
uniformity of result in the process from the smallest elements to the
whole
in pure reason, and conversely from the whole to every part, — which
also
is ultimately shown in practice, — while the attempt to effect any
change
even in the smallest part at once brings up contradictions not only of
the system, but of human reason in general“ (R.V. xxxviii), and a few
lines
further on he writes modestly, “there is no danger of being
contradicted
here, though there may be danger of being misunderstood.“
You now know exactly
what gifts
Kant possessed as constructor, as well as the value which he set upon
the
construction of his system of philosophy. You will never understand
Kant's
life-work unless you have before all recognised, 1stly, that he was a
constructor; 2ndly, that his general aim was the introduction into
philosophy
of genuine natural science in the place of scholasticism; 3rdly, that
to
him science meant architectonic system; 4thly, that his more immediate
aim accordingly consisted in the revelation of the natural organism of
reason; 5thly, that he held the opinion that the organism of nature
could
only be fathomed by a process of copying, that is to say by natural
schematisation;
6thly, that consequently the form, the schematism of his thinking, that
is to say his “system,“ was in his view the most necessary and
difficult
task, and at the same time the greatest and most lasting service that
he
rendered.
One protest I must as
briefly
as possible introduce in conclusion.
222 KANT
We have Kant's own authority
for
saying that he did not look upon his own method of exegesis as the only
one possible. Inasmuch as according to the critical philosophy of Plato
and Kant inter-relations are a fundamental consideration in all
experience,
it follows that the possibility of different points of view is at once
admitted. Even in zoology and botany it would be refreshing if every
presentment
of form did not so quickly freeze into rigidity, but if the symbolism
of
the so-called natural systems were allowed to make experiments in
various
shapes; yet hardly has some creative brain succeeded in giving us a
representation
of nature than it at once becomes a dogma, and no further modification
is permitted; once, however, the dogma is taken historically, as is the
case in the phase of thought by which we are oppressed at present, then
all informing creative power has received its death-blow. Kant was far
removed from this. In the last paragraph but one of his Prolegomena,
he
writes, “it is not my intention to incite any one to a mere following
of
my opinions.“ What in general biology is a misuse of jejune everyday
brains,
would be a real sin in relation to the living centre of our
personality.
To quote the teacher in his earlier years when he was starting upon his
philosophical lectures, 37
“the youngster thinks that he is going to
learn
philosophy, which is impossible, for he must first learn to
philosophise;“
and in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft,
he repeats, “we cannot learn
philosophy,
unless it be historically, but only at most, so far as reason is
concerned,
to philosophise“ (p. 865). Here is the true spirit of toleration, and
we
must not overlook the delightful irony of the words “at most.“ But in
order
to grasp the significance of the expression, “not philosophy but to
philosophise,“
in its exact meaning, we must supplement it by the inversion of the
greatest
genius among all Kant's pupils. Schiller writes, “only philosophy can
make
philosophising harm-
223 KANT
less“
38 (Letter to
Goethe, 9.9.1796). We now know
the meaning of this formula. Critical
philosophy formed upon the pattern of true natural science does not
rob
us of the freedom of personal expression, but it gives the coup de
grâce
to all arbitrary philosophising and to the artificial system-mongering
of the schoolmen, and it alone possesses that power.
Our subjective and
objective
consideration
of the significance of form in Kant's method of thinking, has led us to
clear results. It would be attractive now to investigate this form
itself
more closely; but this would be to speculate upon the work itself, and
that is outside of our purview. And so I set before myself another
goal.
I stand firmly by the importance of form in Kant, as the fundamental
theme
of this lecture. But this appreciation is perhaps the only one,
certainly
by far the most important one with which I, as guide, am able to
furnish
you. What might still remain for us to do would be to dive into the
purely
personal aspect of form, and that is what, in the broadest sense of the
word, deserves to be called “style“: not an examination of the
linguistic
and grammatical peculiarities, but of the style of thought. All that I
have dwelt upon so far has its value in this connection; but there is further
something
inexpressible, the most delicate, the last; it is hardly to be
demonstrated,
and yet it may perhaps be indicated in such a fashion as to make it
visible
to those who have as yet given it no attention. “Style,“ says a master
among critics, Walter Pater, “is that quality in a work in which
no other man or age could have done
it, as it could never, for all our trying, be done again.“ Truly if we
could win our way to an
insight into the
style of Kant's thinking we should have penetrated into the very depths
of his personality.
With this intent we
must in
the first place enter upon the
more general results of our
analysis.
224 KANT
What
Kant wished for was
science
instead of speculation; science is organic architectonics:
architectonics
are a faithful copying of nature within the relations and the
possibilities
of the human intellect; this chain of thought should lead us to the
firm
conviction that what Kant aimed at was a natural system as form-giver
to
his thoughts. Now every natural system possesses fixed peculiarities
which
we may call stylistic: in the born investigator of nature they are
cause
as well as effect; without this faculty he could never arrive at a true
contact with nature; without being intimately and persistently in touch
with nature his intellect would never strike a line so essentially out
of the common. The man who cribs, cabins and confines himself within
that
which is the common lot, has no difficulty in arriving at harmony and
seclusion, — while,
on the other hand, the man who aims at making nature speak, starts by
renouncing
all perfection, which it is impossible ever consistently to attain: it
will be impossible to avoid characteristic deformities; side by side
with
revelations of the superhuman, the obstinacy of human nature which
cannot
altogether be circumvented, behaves in an intolerably hard manner, and
gives occasion to persistent transformations. An artificial system
means
contemplation frozen into immobility; a natural system is motion in the
direction of truth: when Kant, the preacher of natural system, defines
philosophy, he says:
“Philosophy is for man a striving after
that truth which always remains imperfect“ (Ug. III, 313). The one is
possession,
the other is fighting for possession. It is manifest that this
exceptional
character is bound to force the style of its thought into every detail
of the composition of its sentences: it explains much that so entirely
distinguishes Kant from other philosophers. A second observation
attaches
to this first one almost as part and parcel of it. All natural
systematics
are rich in startling sur-
225 KANT
prises;
the calculation never proceeds
smoothly to the end; the symmetry is always stiffer than the man of
taste would have expected: still some
lines of separation become fused, while others are beyond measure
sharp; parts which should rank as
corresponding,
are very often of by no means corresponding value; and besides there
are
never lacking certain doubtful, glittering, ambiguous, vagabond,
elements,
with which we cannot dispense as elements, and which we yet do not know
how to bring into subjection; only think of the systematics of animal
and
vegetable life. Let me cite an example which is of common knowledge:
how
marvellously simple is the division of all flowering plants into
Monocotyledons
and Dicotyledons: but in these the gymnosperms (conifers, etc.), hover
between the two, and every botanist takes a different view of their
relationship.
Another example:
however brilliantly clear the division
into phanerogams (flowering plants) and cryptogams (flowerless plants)
may be, so that we may take it as just as intelligible as that between
poetry and the prose which gave the Bourgeois Gentilhomme such moments
of pride, — the man who goes deeper than that immortal Philistine, will
see
to his amazement that it is precisely in the most highly organised of
the
flowering plants that, looked at from the standpoint of reproduction
and
the alternation of generation, the homologies with the structural
relations
of the cryptogams are so strikingly manifest: precisely those things
which
we imagined to be quite distant, quite different, are especially
approximate.
It is thus that in every natural system the illogical is for ever
breaking
out afresh: if you are looking for unity you will find that clearly
distinct
groups are struggling to break loose from one another: if you desire a
final separation, they obstinately hurry back together into unity.
These
are all things that could never occur in an artificial system: they
overstep
all mere logical thinking, just as
226 KANT
every
perception is impossible of
being
thought out:
on the other hand, you will find much
of the same sort in Kant. Take, for instance, the ambiguous position of
time: looked at from the standpoint of the perception of the senses,
time
is a “second“ conception alongside of space: looked at from the
standpoint
of the understanding it is a “third“ conception, that is to say, a
scheme
for the combination of conception and perception. There are certain
men,
graduates forsooth in all degrees, — men of niggardly brains, who hold
all
these things to be contradictions, thanking Heaven that there is no
possibility
of anything of the sort occurring in them; as a matter of fact it is
simply
a case of natural systematisation; it is an attempt at truth; it is
genius
formed upon the pattern of nature. Of such a nature are the contacts of
distant poles: freedom and nature must be, according to Kant's system
in
contrast, and yet, within the frame of that system, neither can be
understood,
unless the other be presupposed. Kant is a great thinker, but I look
upon
his system as greater than himself: in a genuine natural system that is
always the
case.
One of the countless
wonderful
sayings of Goethe about nature fits much of what we have to bear in
mind
here into a short formula, — “everything is simpler than we can think
it,
and at the same time more complicated than we can have any idea of.“ In
this sentence is portrayed everything that is natural system, and with
it, at the same time, the style of Kant's thinking and constructing. If
in our schools we were made acquainted with nature instead of with all
the fads with which our intellect is deformed and turned away from
nature,
then every man would know to-day what Goethe alone knows and cries to
the
wilderness: our thinking is not simple enough to grasp the great
relations:
these are “simpler than we can think them.“ To be brought up to that
227 KANT
which
is simple; that would be the
worthiest
of all pedagogic programmes that ever were drawn up. To master it, and
as a guiding clue to it, the art of genius needs to be called in: we
can
imitate anything in genius more easily than its simplicity. Beethoven's
art of dissecting themes into fractions, or of building them up out of
fragments, founded a school in music, but the childlike, simple melody
of the Lied an die Freude has
never met with a parallel: every
conductor
is master of Wagner's technique of instrumentation, but the invention
of
motives out of the tones of the simple triad, which now are established
for all eternity, is something which no other man has succeeded in
effecting.
And it is this same simplicity which in the most grandiose form comes
to
light in Kant. We have seen it at the beginning of this lecture;
witness
the scheme tabulated at p. 176; but indeed you must have perceived it
in
each one of our lectures. For in fact the simplicity of the general
disposition,
which at first seems to estrange us, is repeated in the whole body of
the
system. The chief, and for many of us the most unconquerable,
difficulty
of Kant's thinking, lies in the fact that “it is simpler than we can
think“:
we cannot attain to such simplicity
of thought; the incentive to it is utterly beyond us. The work of
almost
all commentators consists in the subtilisation, the complication and
the
refining of what Kant thought quite simply, quite honestly, and quite
directly.
All those fundamental conceptions of Kant's system of which we hear so
much, and which act as so many bugbears — the ideality of space — the
Thing
in itself — the table of categories, — the intelligible freedom — the
categorical
imperative, etc., are certainly the result of a very deep power of
thinking,
and so far not easy to follow in our own thought, but they are not
abstruse,
impenetrable, daedalic, but far rather just as grandly simple as the
nature
by which we are surrounded. Kant looks upon
228 KANT
simplicity
as the mate of true wisdom
(p. 176), but it is no easy matter to possess simplicity; it is far
more
easy to become a mountebank of thought: greatness belongs to
simplicity:
the saying “unless ye be like little children“ does not apply to the
Kingdom
of Heaven alone, but to the kingdom of all that is intellectually great.
This simplicity is
perhaps the
most important peculiarity of the Kantian “style of thinking,“ and at
the same time the most difficult to estimate. Let no one, however, say
that if his thought be simple his language is complicated beyond
comprehension;
that would be petty and full of misunderstanding: for even from a
literary
point of view the first test of style is not so much the detail of the
language as the impression conveyed. Language may in a certain measure
be twisted or influenced by imitation, whereas architectonics cannot be
learnt, least of all the architectonics which embrace a whole life, and
hold it up to exhibition almost as a work of art. Kant's critical
life-work,
looked at as a whole, is of majestic simplicity in its disposition: the
three critiques, the first of Nature, the second of freedom, the third
devoted to the power of judgment, without which there can exist no
unity
(see p. 162), and surrounding them the supplementary elucidations. 39 If
we add to these the works of Kant's youth, we obtain the impression of
a perfect circle, narrow at first, and then gradually broadening
symmetrically.
Again the arrangement of each single book is extraordinarily simple and
perspicuous, — so simple and perspicuous that we are apt to smile at
the
so-called “schematic“ nature of it, without noticing how exactly this
scheme
is foreshadowed in the general disposition of the new science. And so
it
goes on further down to the sub-division of parts. In the last instance
the simplicity reveals itself in the single words. In Kant the word
becomes
altogether form; he gradually strips it of all phrase-mongering:
practical
reason and
229 KANT
theoretical
reason, the thing and the
phenomenon, freedom and nature, 40
science and religion, duty and inclination,
dignity and merit — all these words are endowed by Kant with an
inimaginable
wealth of connection by means of the systematic relation into which he
has brought them, while at the same time they are indissolubly chained
together, each reflecting meaning and elucidation upon all the others.
In that way they operate as symbols; and it is not until this point is
reached, that the words assume an import of their own. Perhaps there is
nothing so difficult for the writer as to give full value of meaning,
life,
and movement to words. There are not a few men who are masters of the
sentence,
and thus of what is called eloquence; yet it seems to me that “the
highest
art, the magic of the sages“ is needed to endow the word with soul, to
transform the common, universally current coin, and so to change it in
such force that like Plato's Idea and Hypothesis it shall henceforth
bear
the stamp of the one man, signifying the thought that up to then had
never
been thought, — the imperishable gift of the one man, living on, even
after
his work has gone under, and his very name is lost in oblivion. If
system,
as Kant conceives it, is a struggle for wisdom, then that struggle must
also affect the words which here
— where we are dealing with
thoughts, — embody
the soul of the system. In Kant, exactly as in Plato, many a word has
in
its conception an expansible circumference while its centre remains
immovable;
it is something like the Iris of our Eye which widens and contracts
under
the influence of light — take, for example, “Nature“ and “Thing“; but
in
other cases the meaning shifts like the tones of a scale in which the
octave
repeats exactly the same note though higher or lower, while in between,
other notes, organically connected with the first and last, strike the
ear,
so that the word denotes rather a whole gamut of notes than any one
single
tone — that is the case
230 KANT
in
“sensibility,“ “experience,“
etc. 41
Here the word lives and searches and feels; it is an organ, not, like
the scholastic conceptions, a tool: for that very reason the danger of
vagueness was all the greater: the genial power of perception, the much
ridiculed artistic architectonics, were needed to give clear form in
spite
of all; it succeeded, and to-day we see Kant's nomenclature forcing
itself
even upon all those who otherwise know nothing, and understand nothing,
about the thinker. A specialist has told us that Kant linguistically
worked
in so revolutionary, and at the same time so definitive a manner, that
“all that had gone before must be held to be out of date“ 42 (Eucken,
see
p. 20); to that we are justified in adding, all that has followed
after.
Over and over again Kant's single expressions have been fought over;
upon
“the Thing in itself“ alone a whole library has been written:
here the giant holds the Liliputians
in the hollow of his hand; the last element of the system, the word
that
supports the whole, the most simple of all proves itself to be
unconquerable.
Goethe's saying,
however, has
a second half. He does not only say everything “is simpler than we can
think,“ but he adds, “is at the same time more complicated than we can
conceive.“ It is necessary to pay close attention to the delicacy of
the
shading in the wording of the expression. “Complicated“ is here the
opposite
of “simple.“ Goethe, however, holds fast to his conception:
he is rather minded to use it for
building
the bridge which leads from the one world to the other, and so he
rightly
makes the discovery that in nature the contrast corresponding to
limited
and unlimited is that of “simple“ and “complicated.“ Simplicity we find
everywhere in nature; 43
at the same time all things are interwoven to
such an extent, and indeed in the wider sense of the “complex,“ that is
to say, of the reciprocal in-reaching of the one into the other, of the
reciprocal
231 KANT
conditioning
and being
conditioned, — that
there arises a web which cannot be disentangled. In Goethe's sentence
we find another contrast: he makes a
distinction between thinking and conception: it is important rightly to
understand what is meant by this. Goethe tells us that it is impossible
for us to think of the simplicity in nature, for it is precisely in
simplicity
that it surpasses all that we poor complex worms are ever able to
conquer
by the intensely tangled convolutions in our narrow brainpans:
on the other hand, that which is
complicated
in nature we are able to think though not to comprehend, that is to
say,
we can never grasp it at once, never infold it in a comprehension; it
is
true that we see the single details, and are able to explain them to
ourselves
in thought, but we are not capable of mastering the “architectonic idea
of the whole“ upon which Kant sets so high a value. That by
“comprehending“
Goethe means what I am here explaining appears from a notable passage
in
the Annalen (1801), where he
says of a visit to the riding-school in
Göttingen,
“the reason why a riding-school exercises such a wholesome effect upon
our understanding, is that it is perhaps the only place in the world
where
we see with our eyes, and learn to comprehend the suitable limitation
of
what we do, the banishment of all arbitrariness, — even of chance.“ We
comprehend
exactly what we are surveying, for then we possess the idea of the
whole:
of nature, on the contrary, he says, that everything is more
complicated
than can be conceived. From this, however, there results an unexpected
deduction: a system which is not complex, a system which is quite
simple
and perspicuous will never be a really natural system. There is a
special
difference which rules between the simplicity which we discover in
nature,
and the artificial simplicity of the man of arbitrary systematisation
and
suitable limitation, as Goethe called it: that natural simplicity is,
as
we learnt from the conception of metamorphosis, an
232 KANT
idea,
which in order to become
plastic
and come into existence needs the amplifying idea of limitation; here
there
is a transcendental relation, whereas the other artificial simplicity
of
the arbitrarily thought out logical systems at once, and with a simple
one-sidedness, grasps facts and transforms them in human fashion. The
horse,
the embodiment of the freedom of stormy motion, forced into the
riding-school — that is surely a glorious symbol of human simplicity in
contrast
to the simplicity of nature. Thus, for example, a clever child will in
a single hour gain a general view of the plant-system of Linnaeus,
whereas
the system set up by John Ray and Jussieu, which has since undergone a
process of incessant perfecting, needs the intimate study of years and
great practice in observation, in order to become really seen and
assimilated.
And the more deeply such a natural system is investigated and grasped,
the more firmly do all the parts entwine themselves into one another:
that
in it which is natural, foreign to the essence of man, and organic,
continuously
comes more and more clearly to light, and in an organism every part is
conditioned by all the others, so that the isolation of simplicity
becomes
less and less attainable. What you learn from Goethe, — from that
Goethe
who never ceases singing the praises of that which is simple, classic,
perspicuous, and limited, — is this: the more natural a system is, that
is to say, the higher the degree in which it is true to nature, the
more
complicated will it be, and hence the more difficult to comprehend.
This remark is of
special
importance
for the understanding of the style of Kantian thinking. For if in all
natural
systematics, which is equivalent to saying in all science, we discover
that by the side of simplicity complication is the second and
never-failing
feature, — that contradiction is perhaps nowhere so directly evident as
in
Kant. This accounts for the much quoted and much misused passage in a
letter
to Beck, where Kant, in the
233 KANT
year
1794, when he was at the
zenith
of his intellectual powers,
winds up a very subtle
elucidation
of some of his fundamental thoughts with the words, “I observe, as I
write this, that I do not even fully
understand myself“ (Letters,
II, 496). Philosophical commentators draw
from this all sorts of malicious
conclusions, — and
yet every creative mathematician and every teacher of natural systems
of
any importance would be justified in saying the same of himself.
Whoever
realises the connection will not be able to help smiling when he hears
men on all sides take this characteristic of complication, which is
worthy
of all admiration, as a reproach against the contradictions in the
thinking
and system of our philosopher. But how comes it that Kant's system is
even
more contradictory than that, for instance, of Zoology? I think that it
is essential to the subject with which he is dealing: what he
understands
by “pure reason“ is, as he says himself, “a sphere so isolated, so
thoroughly
interwoven“ (P. preface), that here more than anywhere else it was
possible,
so far as our symbolism is capable, exhaustively to attain the
architectonics
of nature. Besides that the whole activity of reason consists in
systematising:
whatever it may be that reason takes into consideration, its activity
always
aims at “a system drawn up according to necessary laws“ (R.V. 673);
every
single idea which “sees unity in plurality“ at once creates a system.
It is therefore from the outset probable that an enquiry into pure
reason,
if only it be properly applied, should go further in the discovery of
architectonic
natural System than in any other domain of thought. That in this case
the
result must in a high degree participate in those two opposite
qualities — plastic
contradictions — of simplicity and complexity, becomes for us as
unquestionable
as it is important. And if we look upon that simple man as he lived in
his beloved Königsberg from 1724 till 1804, then these two
predicates,
simple and complicated, appear
234 KANT
to
us not only to describe his
thinking
and creating, but indeed his whole being.
I have still
something to say
about “complication“; that can only be in connection with another
question
but which I must now pass, and which again I purpose to treat as a
question
of style. Our last observations have all rather insisted upon the
question
of Kant's matter. With what is it that Kant is dealing? He postulates a
science: well! what manner of science does he want? a science of what?
Here the question of Form has transformed itself into a question of
Matter.
But if I previously dealt more closely with Form, because that was
tantamount
to an exposition of Kant's philosophy, so I must in the same way say
here
that a satisfying answer to the question of Matter would demand no less
than the complete development of the whole system. And yet I believe
that
in the course of these lectures you will by degrees have come near to
an
understanding of Kant's aim; beginning with the lecture on Leonardo we
have each time gained something towards its more exact definition, but
especially in the Plato lecture we touched it closely. As soon as you
have
grasped the meaning of transcendental relations, the “matter“ of the
new
science can no longer seem altogether strange to you. That such
relations
are at the bottom of all that we call experience is Kant's discovery;
the
investigation of the architectonic connection of these relations leads
to his system; the resultant conclusions as to the essence, sphere,
and
limitation of science and religion, form that which may be described as
his “positive teaching.“ To-day, as I have already said, I would fain
treat this question also as one of style: I would fain attempt out of
the rich store of our knowledge as to the intellectual qualities of
Kant's
personality, to obtain — if not a technical scientific answer to the
question
of matter,
— at any rate an exact presentiment of
the answer, an
235 KANT
appreciation
of the general style of
thinking, which should lead to the definite demarcation of so isolated
a domain. For it is indeed no paradox to affirm that the matter which a
man chooses as the subject with which he is to deal, belongs, at least
as a symptom, to the style of his thinking and working, — matter in
contradistinction
to theories and facts. Very apposite is here Buffon's saying constantly
quoted in a crippled form, Les
connaissances, les faits et les
découvertes
sont hors de l'homme, le style est l'homme même. And how
fine is
what that now undervalued man adds, “all the intellectual beauties of
style,
all the multifarious relations which go to make up style, are in
themselves
useful truths, more valuable perhaps for the human intellect than those
truths which may be discovered in the subject dealt with.“ 44 We throw up
the question of matter, and by so doing seem to go over to the
impersonal,
whereas in truth we are listening to the innermost secrets of the
personality.
We know that Kant
believed himself
to have opened a new sphere to philosophical thinking, and indeed the
first section of the introduction to
the Critique of Pure Reason,
in the first edition, bears the title of
“The
idea of transcendental philosophy“: here then we have the name of the
“new
science, of which no one had up to that time grasped even the thought.“
Later Kant wavered for some time as to the title, because the
expression
transcendental had at once given rise to all sorts of
misunderstandings:
he tried to substitute the descriptions “critical idealism“ and “formal
idealism“: but he soon came back to the old name which, following the
titles of the subdivisions of the Reine
Vernunft, transcendental
aesthetics,
transcendental
dialectics, etc., had already
been adopted into common
parlance
amongst students of philosophy,
and in his
later years was wont to use no other expression than “transcendental
philosophy.“ That the word was
not
happily chosen will be
236 KANT
generally
admitted; still, once the
subject
is assimilated the name does not signify: the syllable trans at any
rate
allows us to think of something that is beyond — over there and over
here — while
scandere, to climb, may serve
to show that the two things which have to
be united are separated from one another by a high wall. The word
“transcendental“
must become so familiar and indispensable to us, that we give no more
thought
to the word as such.
In the first place we
must say
that Kant's transcendental philosophy is a science of boundaries.
We have already seen
how the
limitation
or definition of the meaning of words was one of Kant's favourite
occupations
(p. 22 seq.). The exact
limitation of sciences as against one another
is
in his view one of the most important tasks of all philosophy. Even
fifteen
years before the Critique of Pure
Reason, at a time when he had not yet
found a word for the idea of transcendentalism, he dreams of a science
“of the boundaries of human reason,“ and says, “since a small country
always
has many boundaries, and as a general proposition it is more important
to know thoroughly and affirm its possessions than to rush blindly upon
conquests, so is this need of the science of which I am speaking the
least
known and at the same time the most important“ (Tr. 2 T, 2 Hptst.), and
when he has in this way ended the first of his critiques, he describes
his philosophy as a “Discipline for the fixing of boundaries“ (R.V.
823).
And as a matter of fact the entire web not only of his Critique of Pure
Reason, but also of his other critiques, consists of a system of
delimitations
of boundaries. The boundary is drawn between sensibility and
understanding,
between perception and sentiment, between perception and phenomenon,
between
pure perception and empirical perception, between understanding and
reason,
between practical reason and theoretical reason, between pure under-
237 KANT
standing,
pure reason, and pure
power of judgment, between judgments of elucidation
and of expansion, between decisive and reflective power of judgment,
between constituent and regulative
principles,
or again between transcendental and transcendent, between
transcendental
and empirical, between transcendent and immanent, etc. etc. Nor must
you
set up the plea that this is the same with all philosophers, — that it
is
a question of definitions; for it is precisely a characteristic feature
of Kant's style of thinking, that he seldom defines, and then always
only
tentatively and only with previous verification; the whole remains in a
state of living progress, progress into a state of perfection. Kant
accepts
that which is given as given: e.g. the fact that Physics are an exact
science;
he goes into no abstract reasoning upon it, but at once seeks by
limitation
to separate it sharply from some other given thing. Once that has
succeeded
he searches whether the subject in question does not consist of parts,
and these parts again are defined the one against the other. In this
way
there arises by degrees an ever clearer image. The manner of the work
reminds
one of a cartographer who first draws the general outline of his map,
the
lines of coast which separate land and water, then by degrees the
rivers
and mountains which divide countries from one another, and ultimately
partitions
the individual countries by showing their intimate structure. No one
can
pretend that Kant deals in figurative language, though he can do so
happily
enough when it serves his turn: still, in a deeper sense
his style of thinking rests upon
perception,
since it is always by means of delimitation that he proceeds. In this
way
it is that Kant proves himself as geometrician and architect; a man
with
other qualities could not have achieved
this. But that is not
enough to say. For if we have
previously spoken of the value
which Kant set upon form, here we have to talk of something else, that
is to say,
238 KANT
of
the necessary form of the fixed
matter:
the recognition of the transcendental relations presupposes a permanent
unambiguous distinction, with a sharp limitation of the domains; here
the
law of matter coalesces with the instinct of this individual. But how
are
boundary-lines to be drawn in the realm of thought where the
cartographer
has no pencil? By negations. Hence Kant's remarkable saying, “Negations
are transcendental form“ (Nachlass,
I, 238).
So much for the
present about
the formal in this matter, in other words about the necessary form of
the
matter considered as style; but now we must enquire as to the
“transcendental
composition“ of the matter, as Kant calls it in the same place.
The first and
fundamental point
which we have to establish is that whatever the transcendental may be
otherwise
it is in any case motion. An interesting sentence of Friedrich
Hebbel's,
in which falsehood and truth are interwoven, will perhaps give us a
help
to the more exact conception of what is here indicated.
The poet writes,
“where all
boundaries
intersect each other, where all contradictions touch each other, there
is the point where life arises.“ 45 The word “contradictions“
is, at any
rate so far as our object is concerned, inexact: it is impossible to
affirm
that sensibility and understanding, empirical and pure, form and
finality,
contradict one another, any more than we can affirm that right and
left,
or masculine and feminine are contradictions; they are rather
opposites,
that is to say, conceptions and things which it is impossible ever to
reduce
to a common notion. Now what Kant in his graphic delimiting
investigation
of reason discovered, was the fact that at every stage of recognition,
from the first dawn of consciousness to the most comprehensive
perceptions
and the most subtle thoughts, there are always at work two opposite
elements
such as we have
239 KANT
described,
and it is where their
boundaries
intersect one another, as the poet puts it, that we find the point
where
life arises. These opposites which are the complements of one another
may
be looked upon — as we know from the Plato lecture (p. 64), as
generating
and as generated; it is here that “life arises“; it is impossible to
go further back; to attempt it would be utterly senseless, for time
itself
arises here. If I were to follow the example of others, and adduce the
comparison of the two stones which we strike together in order to call
a spark into life, the image would be doubly false; for in the first
place
the two stones are of equal value, and secondly, in the striking of the
spark we are dealing simply with cause and effect, whereas in the case
of transcendental contact two elements which are incommensurable come
together,
and each only has a meaning and a significance through the other, in
the
other, for the other, and in consequence of the other. It was in his
advanced
age that Kant at last found a concise formula for this relation, when
he
said of the two universally demonstrable transcendental elements
awakening
recognition by combination, “standing reciprocally as foundation and
consequence
in relation to one another they constitute a whole“ 46 (Ug. III, 405).
In order that the image should fit it would therefore be necessary that
each of the two stones should be the foundation of the other. And so
we are drastically shown how
little any example of cause
and effect drawn from empiricism
fits those
transcendental
relations, where the one is only the foundation of the other, in so far
as it is also its sequence, and so they are reciprocally in counter-relation. The thought of
finality
is not the foundation of the
form of life, nor
is the form of life the foundation
of the thought of finality;
and yet there arises in our consciousness a whole — which is life —
insomuch as form is thought as
finality,
and finality is perceived as form. Here the conception of cause out
of
240 KANT
necessity,
as we know it through
empirical
nature, is no more fitting than the conception of cause out of freedom,
as the moral world shows it with the certainty of fact; we are dealing
with another domain, with the domain in which consciousness is first
seen
as created and creator; as Kant says, “transcendental questions only
admit
of transcendental answers“ (R.V. 665). Every image here misses its aim.
Yet even if the image of the two stones striking together does not hit
the mark, there is in it one thing which is none the less correct:
whatever
the transcendental may be otherwise, it is as we have said in every
case
motion. In this relation the verbs in Hebbel's sentence are all three
admirably
apposite: — to touch, to intersect, to arise. You will remember the
passage
in the Theaitetos (156 et seq.) where Plato, with the
intuition of
genius,
teaches us that all perception is motion, and indeed “a motion of two
elements,“ and it is only the conjunction of the two which produces the
man who perceives and the thing perceived. 47 The same thought is
carried
further by Kant, and carried to an exhaustive analysis of the whole
human
intellect; starting from perception he penetrates all depths and
everywhere
finds the “motion of two elements,“ and everywhere contact,
intersection,
bursting into life. So far as I know Kant has never spoken out his mind
upon this subject clearly as I am doing here, but the matter crops up
at
every step: for it is it's one characteristic that in small and in
great
there must ever be separation and limitation, while a second
characteristic
is that the generation into being (the genesis eis ousian, as Plato
calls
it) takes place in the focus of a motion, — a motion which, according
to
the standpoint of observation, appears either as rushing together or
bursting
asunder. Listen to one or two of Kant's sayings. The unity of
consciousness,
that immovable centre of the Kantian manner of thought, is, so to
speak,
continued motion, for in this case there is
241 KANT
incessant
combination; this unity
arises
out of, and consists only in, the uniformity of the “action“ (R.V.
138),
that is to say, it “exists as intelligence which is only conscious of
its
power of combination“ (R.V. 178); even thinking is preferably described
by Kant as “action“ (see e.g.
R.V. 67), thinking “is in
reference to perceptions“ (R.V. § 1), and so moves towards them:
thinking
is “the action by which a given
perception
is referred to a subject“ (R.V.
304). Understanding
is described as “a power to
combine“ (R.V. 135), its
power of synthesis is “nothing
more than the unity of
action“ (R.V. 153); “understanding
is an activity“ (Ref.
II, 147); understanding “is attracted by sensibility,“ sensibility “is
attracted by understanding,“ that
is to say, they are in motion towards one another; sentiment is an
operation
(R.V. 34), and therefore a motion, and
so much of recognition as is not sentiment, “must be action which
precedes
experience and by which experience becomes
possible“ (Ref. II, 147). I quote
whatever
first comes on turning over the leaves; the fact that here we always
find
a duality reciprocally conditioning itself, suffices to show that the
conception
of motion must be found in Kant everywhere and without exception:
either
there is practical combination and conjunction, as is the case in all
the
constructive parts of his works, or that with which he is dealing for
the
moment presupposes a second and opposite element, and we misunderstand,
or do not understand, Kant at all unless we keep this second element in
our minds, and turn ourselves round in order not to lose sight of it:
for example, if we take no heed of
freedom in the critique of nature, which
looked at objectively
constitutes the
opposite of the critique of pure
reason, while subjectively it deals
with the critique of theoretical
reason: or if in the
critique of freedom, which subjectively considered is a critique of
practical
reason, we forget nature and her laws. The exact central
242 KANT
point
between the two, where the
generation
of being takes place, is a punctum
evanescens, which is perpetually
arising
and perpetually disappearing, something as incomprehensible as the
Ego
itself; it was only at the very highest pinnacle of his mastery that
even
Kant was able from time to time to take his stand upon this middle
point,
as it were in suspense, and so there arose perhaps the most remarkable
and richest in stimulus of his works, — “the Critique of the power of judgment.“
What I am indicating
here, — for
these are no more than short indications the building up of which is
left
to your own reflection, — appears to me to be of great importance for
the
understanding of the personality and of its works. What must be evident
is that this philosophy is from the outset “dynamic“: the matter
itself,
the style of which we are investigating, is considered and shown as
motion.
Only a born and technically educated physicist could hit upon
this, — only
a man in whom the methods and, connected with them, the mode of thought
of modern exact science, as opposed to all purely logical speculation,
had shaped themselves into flesh and blood. I have over and over again
in these lectures pointed to the special ruling power in the modern
conceptions
of natural science: Newton we looked upon almost like a colonist in the
far west, hewing out clearances with the axe; the conception that
bodies
attract one another, amplified by the inevitable second conception that
they repel one another, must at first appear to every thinking and
simply
honest man as something monstrous. A whole education is needed before
we
can make such a doctrine part of our life: and even systematic
education
would not suffice unless cosmologists and physicists and chemists were
able to point to the results of these methods of thought: in truth it
is these results alone which compel us to capitulate. But if I speak of
attraction that is only in order to show the thing from its most
243 KANT
perceptible,
allegorical side. Attraction
and repulsion are words, images: one thing alone is decisive; since the days of Galilei and Descartes
the symbolism of motion has been the foundation of all natural science,
and that means dynamics, the
representation of
force; we no longer ask as men did of old, how is rest disturbed? How
does motion arise? What God is it that turns from without or from
within?
But rest is no more than a phase of motion, and, as a general
proposition,
can only be accepted as figurative and with reference to the relation
between
certain equally moved bodies; what is given is motion, absolute rest
would
be the non ens; the perpetuum mobile is in modern times
the fundamental
hypothesis, the perpetuum immobile is
the unthinkable; “everything that is real is force in motion,“ says Kant
to the physicists, “motion alone fills
a space“; matter is now motion, and the so-called impenetrability of
matter
is radiating centrifugal force. Kant's
fundamental acceptation of the essence of recognition is demonstrably
in
union with the acceptations of all exact science.
Here, however, a
further
reflection
peremptorily forces itself upon us. The motion of a single and solitary
body is as unthinkable as it is inexplicable. Motion is relation:
a body can only move itself in relation
to others; the conception of motion comprises that of plurality. All
monism is therefore excluded. A
logician,
like Plotinus or Hegel, or a mathematician like Spinoza may be a
monist; and the joke of the day is that
an eminent zoologist is preaching “scientific monism“ to the
muddy-minded
multitudes as a new religion: no cosmologist or physicist can be a
monist,
and Bruno's unità assoluta,
che non si muove,
is in his conception
the very essence of nonentity; for according to his view unity and rest
are only other words for the non ens;
even the equilibrium of forces is designated by the
physicist as “death.“ 48
In this connection it will not be difficult to
understand
244 KANT
Kant's
meaning when he shortly says,
“the transcendental idealist is a dualist.“ 49
I should like to
compress these
facts, important as they are, for the consideration of Kant's style of
thinking into three short sentences.
1. Kant considers
motion as
essential
to all the phenomena of consciousness.
2. Motion consists of
relations
between things which differ in themselves.
3. Relations are in
Kant's
estimation
an extreme beyond which it would be senseless to attempt to go.
From this it follows
that
everything
which in Kant can in any sense be called explanation or meaning or
theory,
must and will consist in the revelation of relations between
pluralities,
and in nothing else: and in the same way the architectonics of his
general
view of philosophy must of necessity reveal the form of a system,
perfected
as far as possible, of relations reciprocally conditioning one another.
Here it is that, in
my opinion,
Kant is differentiated from all the philosophers of the world (so far
as
they are known to me). Plato alone stands upon the same basis, but has
left behind him no system. For, either men abjure all philosophy, or
else
philosophy means for them the search for one final principle, that is
to
say, a last or first foundation in which all the rest is as it were
wrapped
up. I open two admirable modern manuals, the one German, the other
French:
the German says, “Philosophy is the recognition of the absolute
foundation
of being.“ The Frenchman writes, La
philosophie est l'effort ... pour
expliquer le monde par une cause des causes, ou cause première.
Again listen to Deussen, who perhaps is more familiar than any other
man
with the thinking of all the people of culture of the world — “the
striking
quality common to all elaborated philosophical systems is that they
find
it necessary to establish one
245 KANT
fundamental
principle from which they
then in manifold ways busy themselves to comprehend the existence of
the
world and of its phenomena.“ 50
(Allgemeine Geschichte der Philosophie,
I¹, 3.) Apart from those thinkers who, like Hume, start by
renouncing
philosophy, — from those true sceptics whose philosophy consists in
having none, — the
definitions
of philosophy from the most ancient times down to the present day, are
in accord, and include our most modern empiricists and materialists as
well as the spiritualists and metaphysicians. However much a
philosopher
and investigator of nature, like Wilhelm Wundt, may differ from a man
like
Schopenhauer in his starting-point, his method, and his aim, the
doctrine
of will which he sets out in his “system“ of philosophy, is no whit
less
absolute, less “finite principle,“ less dogma, than that set out in
the “Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.“
51 And so it is
throughout. The order
of
thought of physics is still utterly foreign even to our professional
investigators
of nature — and how much more so to our professional philosophers — at
any
rate as soon as they begin to philosophise. Kant, on the contrary, not
only goes hand in hand outwardly with the cosmological physicists, but
is also inwardly in complete harmony with them; he searches for no
“absolute
foundation“ or “finite principle,“ but is content to reveal the last
discoverable
relations, and to expound them intelligibly in their connection with
one
another. That is why he stands
amongst us as a stranger, an
object of wonder, but not understood.
Here then, since
we
have arrived at these general views, it is time that we should go a
step
further and attempt a nearer estimate of the matter to which Kant
devotes
his thinking. In this, however, we are faced by a difficulty to which I
must very briefly call your attention: I shall soon return to it again,
and in greater detail. In the papers which he left behind him, Kant,
246 KANT
upon
one occasion, makes use of an
astonishing
image, when he says that transcendental philosophy is a system based
upon
the principle of eccentricity (Ug. III, 405). You probably know, for
these
are things which every man ought to know, that the so-called eccentric
disc is a mechanism by means of which rotary motion is converted into
vertical
motion and vice versa — in every workshop in the world you may become
acquainted
with the principle of eccentricity by ocular demonstration. Now the
more
you reflect upon the transcendental method, and the deeper you, in
consequence,
penetrate into its essence, the more you will admire the
appropriateness
of this image. In the transcendental the conversion is continuous and
unbroken.
It is not therefore only, as we have seen before, always plurality,
always
relation, always motion which is to be recorded in this matter, but
also
always the process of conversion out of one form of motion into the
other:
it is only this moment of conversion upon which transcendental
philosophy
fixes its gaze. For example, it only considers the object at the moment
where reason takes it up, — therefore subjectively — while, on the
other
hand,
it analyses the subject by means of the object which it has
created — therefore
objectively: sensibility is regarded by it as a function of the
understanding,
and understanding is regarded as a function of sensibility; the idea
makes
experience possible, it is only in experience that the idea takes root,
etc. It will be easily conceived that where such an eccentricity as
this
constitutes the principle, a definition susceptible of only one
meaning,
to do justice to the thought is impossible. “It is difficult,“ says
Kant,
“to come to an understanding even of principles of this sort, because
they
hit upon the method of thought before arriving at any settled
conclusion
as to the object, and conflicting claims of reason render ambiguous the
point of view from which the subject has to be considered.“ We must
therefore
approach the
247 KANT
question
from different sides
in
turn, and must attempt a one-sided subjective, as well as a
one-sided
objective, definition of the
transcendental
matter: the one will be equally
as justifiable as the other.
But even so we shall not have accomplished enough, since it is open to
us
to comprehend the objective-subjective
theoretically as well as practically.
In order to proceed
surely we
will first take the matter into consideration from the most
comprehensive
standpoint, and ask ourselves once more the question, what, after all,
is Kant's aim in philosophy? Upon this subject we have a terse answer
from
his own mouth.
Kant says,
“Philosophy is the
science of the relation in which all recognition stands to the
essential
aims of human reason, and the philosopher is no dealer in reason as a
fine
art, but is the lawgiver of human reason“ (R.V. 867). We must dwell
upon
these words for a moment in order that we may exactly grasp their
meaning.
The “essential aims“!
Here we
have the same leap out of the speculative into the practical which was
taken by our natural science in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Greeks, all honour to them for it, had regarded the Cosmos as a
work
of art: as a consequence, every explanation must be human, harmonious,
logical, illuminating, reasonable: the Teuton awoke to consciousness:
on this road we can travel no
further,
we confine nature within the
boundaries of our
humanity and end by only finding
ourselves once more;
let us propose to ourselves another aim — the mastery over nature.
The man who wishes to dominate,
restricts
himself, in all modesty, but so
he soars above those whom
he rules. Mephistopheles says
rightly, “he who can
afford six stallions, gallops off as if he had twenty-four legs.“ That
is the allegory for the present meaning. I renounce walking, and go
forward
all the faster. Nothing carries us so far, so incalculably far over
ourselves
as a method-
248 KANT
ically
and rightly grasped conception
of what we are aiming at and of how to reach it. The man who was the
first
to mount a horse was no doubt looked upon as a fool: but no human being
could foresee the immeasurable consequences of this thought to mankind.
The founders of our exact science proceeded in the same way. Indeed
they
again had to be formers. Science is the reducing of knowledge to form,
but instead of setting a pattern to nature as the Greeks did, these
scientists
copy her. The important mathematician Carnot says of the so-called
higher
mathematics which were discovered with that object, that they are full
of enigmas which the mathematician himself does not rightly understand,
and it is precisely to these enigmas that they owe their high
achievements, 52
while Berkeley the philosopher for that reason stamps the whole of
these
mathematics as “shocking to good sense.“ I have more than once in the
course
of these lectures alluded to the modern conception of the aether as an
enigma
and as “shocking to good sense.“ What was the guiding star in such
unheard-of
achievements? Men kept in view the “essential aims“; to these, that is
to say, to the attainment of these aims, everything was sacrificed,
even
if necessary the so-called healthy common sense — the supercilious, the
Philistine,
the Pharisee — the penetration and always the perfection, without which
no
Greek would have found any pleasure in mental work. Kant now takes the
same decisive step:
“Philosophy is the science of the
relation
in which all recognition stands to the essential aims of human reason.“
Now that we have
clearly grasped
the main point to which it refers we will analyse the whole sentence.
“Philosophy is science ...“ — Aristotle considered philosophy as the
“doctrine of the divine“ (θεολογικη),
inasmuch as its aim consists
in the discovery of finite principles, and the finite principle — the
first
creator of motion — is God; more or less modified in
249 KANT
expression,
but identical in its
aim
down to modern times, down to Spencer, Mach, Haeckel, Hartmann, etc.,
is
the definition of that which men strive after as philosophy:
even Descartes, the solitary, wrote
Principia, and imagined
himself to have explained the world
objectively.
Kant, on the other hand, says,
Philosophy
is Science, that is to say, it is not explanation by principles, nor
a question
of “building castles in the air“
(Tr. I T., 3 Hptst.) with that which is unknown or unsuspected, but a
systematic
construction of that which is given, of that which is known. 53 It is
the
“science of the relation,“ and therefore far from steering in the
direction
of that which is without relations, primary and unconditioned, it is
from
its very foundation an investigation into the correlation of things
differing
from one another. “Of the relation of all recognition.“ ... Remember
therefore that there is no question of an essence of recognition, any
more
than in Newton there is a question of the essence of motion in space:
the
recognition is there, it is a fact, and if we investigate it, it is
not,
as our school-philosophers have it, as a matter of speculation, in
order
to set everything out plausibly, with logical elegance, but in order to
set fast the relation of this recognition scientifically upon something
else. And upon what? “Upon the essential aims of human reason.“ Humanly
rich in recognitions, to what use do I apply them? How is it that I do
not rant and rave as a dilettante, and either
vacillate hither and thither,
or remain stubbornly pinned to one single spot? My aims point in all
directions
above
me into the eternal; history shows me
a chaos full of dark endeavours. Kant answers, “let there be an end
of these fables of the Utopian
Paradise
of Metaphysics“ (Tr. 2 T., 1 Hptst.); let there be an end of this
dogmatising
of the Theologians and Materialists;
let there be an end of all this childish chatter about physiology and
psychology
which has no business here; do as has been
250 KANT
done
in Physics and Cosmology; let
the
aim, not the result, be the dictator; as soon as recognition is looked
upon as a means, it becomes pliable, just as mathematics have become
pliable,
and climbs up aloft to tasks with which, of its own power, it has no
aptitude
to deal. Nature and freedom both lead to the eternally unfathomable:
let your work be so informed that the relation in which all recognition
stands to the aims of reason — mastery of nature, and conscious,
dominant
cultivation of the personality — may be brought into a systematic,
uniform,
architectonic combination, that is to say, make it into a science.
And now for the
second part of
the precious article of faith. “Not a dealer in reason as a fine art,
but
a lawgiver of reason.“ These words fix with even greater exactitude,
and
insure against misapprehension, the conception of the task which we
have
just set out, the conception of the matter which has to be dealt with.
By the words “not a dealer in reason,“ Kant means that there should be
no seeking after an “absolute foundation,“ after a causa causans, after
a principle; all that is superfluous, loss of time, sophistry picking
at mere conceptions, whether it is undertaken, as Kant expressly adds,
by logicians, or mathematicians, or professors of natural history: for
even the investigator of nature becomes a dealer in reason as a fine
art
as soon as he travels on this road (id.,
ut supr.). And in spite of all
that is man to be “a lawgiver of reason“? This saying can only be
understood
by those who know to what degree the human intellect has appeared as
lawgiver
in mathematics and physics, in order to found and build up the only
entirely
exact sciences, — for that is Kant's meaning. Here the thinker is
pointing
to the deepest secrets of human recognition, and of its relation to
nature
and freedom. Goethe, who never willingly probed first causes, spoke as
you may remember of an “exact
251 KANT
phantasy
of the senses“ which he saw at
work in the progress of our natural sciences; Kant, the dissector of
our reason discovered as it were as
its central point, a function which he called the “productive power of
the imagination“ (R.V. I, 118 et seq.) 54
Whilst Goethe only looked at a last result, Kant had in this way
revealed
a past, without which we may say no recognition can take place. In order not to cross the
boundaries
which have
been here laid for me, I will only make
one remark: this power of the
imagination must be
“productive,“
that is to say, generating,
creative, because
there is no experience, no recognition where there is no unity; but
this
unity
must be “produced“ by the person
who recognises; whence otherwise is he to obtain it? it is not given to
him from without. Here again it
is clear that we grasp the strong hand of the Dionysus-Plato: to
recognise unity in plurality, —
that is more
than the Promethean gift of the gods to the human race; — thanks to this
gift we are men, that is to say,
we have reason.
To “discover“, to
“invent,“ says Plato
the Poet: “productive power of
the
imagination,“
says Kant the analytical. All recognition, therefore all knowledge,
even the very simplest,
presupposes
an act of creation. And what is
science then, if it
be not a knowledge of knowledge? a knowledge on a higher plane? the art,
therefore, of bringing into
uniformity a still greater degree of the manifold? One of the first
of
living mathematicians,
Poincaré,
says of exact science, “its true, its only aim is unity“: and he
describes
the methods of thought of the
physicists as “a
bending
and distorting of nature until she yields to the claims of the human
intellect,“
that is to these claims for unity 55 (La Science et L'Hypothèse,
1902,
pp. 207 and 197). That is what Kant understands by “Lawgiver.“ The
Philosopher,
which in Kant means the thinking man, or rather thinking mankind in
general,
is to be the lawgiver of reason,
252 KANT
instead
of being as heretofore the
dealer
in reason as a fine art. Up to the present reason has lain idle in the
laziness of autocracy: now reason has to serve, to serve essential
aims,
the aims of my personality: I, the man, so will it. And as I, conscious
and determined, taking no heed of the mockery and the superior
knowledge
of the schoolmen, have discovered a system of mathematics for
myself, — actuated
by no selfish aim, but in order to arrive as near to the unimaginable
phenomena
of nature as might be possible, — so I am determined now in the same
way
to turn to account “all recognition“ freely and in consciousness of the
aim to be attained; for I am the lawgiver, and instead of allowing my
aims
to be directed according to my recognition, I will that my recognition
shall henceforth be directed towards my aims. To that end, in greater
no
less than in lesser undertakings, a science is a necessity: that
science
I call philosophy, and by it I understand the “systematic unity of the
manifold, and by its means the possibility of the highest attainable
use
of reason“ 56
(R.V. in many places).
Here then we have
Kant's general
conception of the matter which has to be treated. The dominant
difference
between the unity upon which Kant insists here, the systematic,
scientific
unity directed towards human aims, — the practical, utmost possible
application
of the unity which strives for reason — and the unity of all the
reason-mongers
in their so-called philosophical systems, must now be sufficiently
clear
to you. It is no exaggeration if we say, we are dealing with a wholly
different
thing, — the matter is not the same. To have chosen the one matter and
rejected
the other, is what I mean by style of thought; it reveals all that is
most personal in this personality. But you must see at once how
imperatively
this new matter claimed its new form, just as imperatively as the new
Cosmology
required a new
253 KANT
system
of mathematics and physics
for the purposes of its
necessary hypothesis. Here we
may really affirm in a certain sense that matter is form. For what is
our
whole
modern system of physics but form? — if
it is not a creation by which the manifold is made one, and thus
revealed, even should it be at
the expense of
much bending and distortion? And
it is only through
this legislatively introduced form that the horizon has gradually
widened,
since new facts, which without the new
form would never have been
attainable
by our recognition, are thanks
to it, discovered for us. It
is precisely the same meaning which Kant attaches to his form; it is the
indispensable machinery for the matter
which he wishes to open out to us: it is through it that philosophy
becomes
science; and true science, not speculation, is alone capable of
assuming
the position of lawgiver, and of furthering the essential aims of man.
So much for the
general
proposition.
But as soon as we look into Kant's matter more closely and, so to
speak,
technically, it becomes more difficult to arrive at the definition of
the
conception of which we are in search. We must go forward carefully,
step
by step, otherwise our conceptions must be indistinct, and instead of
really
understanding we must wade about in a quagmire of
words.
Considered subjectively Kant's
matter
is reason, — considered objectively it is nature.
This statement
might suffice of
itself;
but you must learn to understand
that Kant reveals,
and systematically investigates,
reason in
nature and nature in reason. With
this it is proved that the
transcendental method really
lies entirely beyond
this current distinction into
subjective and objective, indeed so
utterly beyond it that every continuous one-sided insistence, on one or
the other standpoint, falsifies
the
peculiar
fashion of this philosophy so as to make it unrecognisable. This
usually
254 KANT
occurs
in one direction: Kant's
philosophy
is understood by most people as rationalism, and therefore as a pure
doctrine of reason, and it is only this view which explains how it is
that
people are still bold enough to give out Fichte, Schelling, Hegel —
(the
whole development in the direction of Panlogism, of the doctrine of
reason
as the only truth) — as a direct continuation and amplification of
Kant.
This is false from top to bottom. For the conception of the
transcendental
lays it down firmly as a first principle, that everywhere at all stages
of consciousness, two things of any sort do and must unite, as well as
that every attempt to show a unity behind the duality is in vain,
inasmuch
as it is without foundation. An isolated reason is accordingly from
Kant's
point of view a monstrous thought, and the principle, shared by Fichte
and his followers, that “logical truth is the real truth,“ is no more
than
a sneer at Kant's critique. Kant teaches us that logic is a purely
formal
and entirely empty discipline, which can at best “give a title to
possible
methods“ (R.V. 736); for that reason its use outside of what is given
physically is “sophistical blinding,“ and “unjustifiable presumption“
(R.V. 88). How differently does he himself set to work! When he is
minded
critically to investigate the organisation of reason, he turns to
nature: this is at once in itself the simplest and most beautiful
example of
the transcendental method. He turns his eyes towards nature, and asks
himself,
“what principles is man following in his judgment, where he has
attained
an exact knowledge of the processes of nature?“ This is obviously the
experimental method of all empirical investigation. Exact natural
science
is there, — it is a fact, — it has proved itself to be so for several
centuries; what method of thinking does it presuppose? That is to say,
how did
understanding
behave itself in carrying into effect this so far-reaching accord with
the phenomena of nature?
255 KANT
If
in order to investigate reason I
were
to interrogate reason alone, I should possess no objective criterium,
indeed
I should rather find myself in the same position as that of the
schoolmen
is and has been from all time. I should be a reason-monger, not the
lawgiver
of reason; in exact natural science, on the other hand, my reason is
for
ever led by the bridle, it can move aside neither to the right nor to
the
left: here the law rules: that is why I consult exact science. In this
question, so simple and put with such conscientious empiricism, Kant
discovered
a primary transcendental fact, for which he introduced a very simple
name.
“Understanding is the power of rules,“ 57 which is as much as to
say, —
if
it wishes to attain an exact science of nature, reason cannot move as
it
pleases, but there are certain rules according to which we combine
experiences,
and reflect upon what we have experienced, — rules which are the
foundation
of all knowledge of nature on a higher plane of culture, and of all
scientific
comprehension of nature: these are the transcendental judgments of the
understanding: it is only by means of this single, determined system, a
combination of parts exactly fitting into one another, that plurality
is
converted into unity. 58
There must be a system, otherwise no unity
would
be possible. That is why the understanding is also called the “power of
the unity of phenomena by means
of rules“ (R.V. 359). It was
following
this road of empirical investigation of nature that Kant discovered
the importance of the afore-mentioned
scheme of formal logic: this scheme of formal logic is indeed a result
of the unconsciously followed
natural
system of the transcendental judgments of the understanding. As soon as Kant had made this discovery
he was able himself also schematically to build up and amplify this
logical
scheme handed down by Aristotle; and so at last from the fundamental
judgments
or “rules“ he arrived at the discovery
256 KANT
and
enumeration of the fundamental
conceptions,
that is to say, to his table of the pure conceptions of the
understanding,
also called categories. 59
And so that which is apparently quite
abstract,
quite subjective in Kant's system, his most far-reaching analysis of
the
mechanism of reason, rests in reality upon an analysis of nature, in
the
shape in which exact science shows it to us. At the same time, however,
we detect a fixed organisation of reason as laying the foundation
for
the scientific recognition of nature.
It is impossible for
me here to
go into details; what we have to observe in our examination of the
personality is no more than this: when Kant wished critically to
analyse
reason,
he interrogated nature: when he wished to understand systematised
nature,
that is to say, science, he dissected reason: that is the
transcendental
method: anyone who proceeds differently, knows nothing of the matter
which
is to be investigated here. Where there is no duality there can be no
thinking: all thinking is relation, and all understanding is a relation
which allows for a counter-relation. Those transcendental judgments of
the understanding, and the fundamental conceptions which are discovered
by their means, are, of course, in nature no more cause than they are
effect.
Well does Kant say, “the understanding is legislation for nature, that
is to say, without understanding there would be no such thing as
nature,
that is the synthetical unity of the plurality of phenomena according
to
rules“ (R.V. 126): but the stress is here laid upon “legislation“ and
“rules“: whatever lives must organise (see p. 94 seq.), and what we
call
the laws of Nature are forms which thinking forces upon Nature in order
to understand her. But the converse holds equally good: an incidental
objection
of Kant's is, who can prove that it is not nature “which first makes
reason
possible“? (R.V. 654), and he is very severe upon the natural
philosophers
who
257 KANT
“dabble
in nature with a priori
conceptions,“
and says that time will not preserve “the slightest trace of their
footsteps“
(R.V. 753, etc.). So far then from leading to panlogism, to a
glorification
of unfettered reason, to the autocracy of intellect, to the crazy
assertion
that “that which is reasonable is true,“ — Kant's standpoint from the
outset
shuts the door against all such follies. “The true teacher who is set
up
for us,“ says Kant, is empirical experience; no matter how high the
speculations
of reason “may hold their heads under the title and pomp of science,“
they
possess no value where the “substratum of perception“ is wanting (R.V.
498, etc.). These indicated rules for the understanding are no less and
no more than an expression for transcendental relations: it is true
that
they give the law to nature, but they at the same time receive it from
her in another sense: subject and object reciprocally condition one
another:
the subject contributes the objective, namely the law; but the object
gives
the subjective, namely feeling. This is the view of which we have
already
brought forward the happy formula, “standing reciprocally as foundation
and consequence in counter-relation, they make up a whole“ (see p. 239).
From all these
considerations
we gather that we form a very imperfect and misleading estimate of
Kant's
matter if we see in it nothing more than what is rational and
subjective,
and place it in the same category with the conception of the
philosophical
matter of Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, Spinoza, and Bruno. We should
rather
say that Kant's transcendental method, his conception of the domain of
scientific philosophy, is neither subjective nor objective, neither
reason
nor nature; it is on the hither side of both; it sees the object only
in
the subject and the subject only in the object. But it is essentially
impossible
for us men to remain permanently upon the same point in the balance: in
order to come to
258 KANT
an
understanding we must hold either
to a subjective or to an objective mode of expression, and that is why
Kant's system may be understood objectively (empirically) as well as
subjectively
(rationalistically). The schematic table which I drew at the beginning
of this lecture, gives you as it were a plan or outline of worldly
wisdom
sketched from the subjective standpoint. But this plan, from the
standpoint
of Kant's thinking, as you now understand, needs to be amplified by an
objective counterpart, which it should not be difficult to sketch. Here
naturally it is the World not the Ego which must furnish the
all-comprehensive
notion. I think that the plan would work out in something like the
following
way:
I see here the same
disposition
as in the first table: at the very bottom of all, the methods, then the
facts which may be grasped by these methods, then the comprehensions,
next
the ideas, and last of all the most universal conceptions, — but this
time
starting from the standpoint of the object. What is interesting here is
that we at once recognise “Thing“ and “Ego“ as what considered
objectively
they really are, namely methods. If we look upon the world as something
previous which “first makes reason possible,“ — and transcendentally
this
is just as reliable and just as unreliable as the opposite acceptation,
and means no more than a figurative expres-
259 KANT
sion,
— then the Ego is the method
which
the world
follows in order to attain reason.
Here,
in contradistinction to the other table, science and religion are
excluded,
because reason alone is the uniting power:
but in order that reason may be able
to achieve this it must in the first instance, at any rate in a certain
sense, hold the world in its grasp and impose laws upon it, instead of
being as here a mere fragment of the world. Consistent materialism, as
is plain, excludes not only all religion, but all science also; for the
world (nature in the most comprehensive sense) is of its essence
plurality,
and can only lead on the one side to the description of Nature, — an undertaking which knows no
limits, — on
the other side to history — into that which can never end: the
description
of nature, however, is no more science than is history. Reason must
here
be taken to be a plurality of monads, — nature not in the sense of our
first
table as “simple,“ as Newton had to regard it in order to call science
into existence (Principia,
Book III, rule 1), but as an eternity of
things
out of the motions of which the formal conception of mechanics may
indeed
result, but never a recognition according to law: Law, even what we are
in the habit of calling the law of nature, has no meaning outside of
the
mind of man; understanding gives the law just as reason gives the idea;
Plato knew this, and Kant proves it.
Let us leave all this
alone — it
is mere hair-splitting; I have had no wish to do more with this second
table than I did with the first, merely to stir your thoughts out of
the
hard and fast numbness, the result of the habits of thousands of years.
You must now see the objective-subjective in Kant's conception clearly
enough
to enable you to understand a subjective and an objective definition of
the transcendental matter without being led astray by its inevitable
one-sidedness.
There is no reason
for me to dwell
at length on the
260 KANT
subjective
definition: you are already
familiar with it, and its tersest formula runs as follows: the
transcendental touches “the possibility of recognition“ (R.V. 80), and
therefore
also the possibility of reason in general. “Possibility“ here means not
an explanation in the sense of cause and effect, but a “comprehension“
by means of a systematic insight into the organic interconnection. It
may
perhaps serve our end to give a somewhat more detailed expression to
this
terse definition in a purposely formalistic and pedantic sentence:
transcendental
philosophy has for its aim the architectonic building into a uniform
system
of all those transcendental relations which critical analysis has
discovered,
the combination of which has been effected by human reason (as the
summary
of all recognition). That system must be clearly arranged, true to
nature,
and law-imposing.
And now for the
objective
definition
of transcendental matter. This again we find in Kant, and indeed in the
same simple mode of expression which is peculiar to him. In the
Prolegomena,
§ 36, he writes: the highest point which transcendental philosophy
can ever touch is the question, how is nature itself possible? And in a
short but inspiring paper, seldom read by any but professional men,
written
in 1788, “on the use of teleological principles in philosophy,“ we
find
the same thought condensed into a quite terse formula, “the
possibility
of a nature on general principles, that is transcendental philosophy.“
Briefly then, transcendental philosophy is the doctrine of the
conditions
of the possibility of a nature as a general proposition. This is, as
you
see, the literally exact inversion, and therefore amplification, of the
subjective definition according to which “transcendental“ indicates
“the
possibility of recognition.“ The application is bold, but it hits the
nail
on the head. 60
Transcendental philosophy makes no causal enquiry as to
the possibility of a nature, it does not search for a cause, still less
for an
261 KANT
absolute
foundation, — for a causa
causans;
on the contrary, it admits that in the first place it knows nothing of
what should be understood in general by the conception of a “cause“
(see
above, p. 201); but as Kant says with bewildering simplicity, the
possibility
of nature is transcendental philosophy. In other words, that nature is
possible is a thing as to which there can be no question; if science
has
been accepted by us as an incontrovertible fact, then no man who is in
his right mind will doubt the existence of nature; how then does it
fare
with this possibility? That it does not afford mere sentiments with
their
reactions, but a nature uniformly thought and asserting itself as
uniform,
that is and remains the fundamental riddle side by side with the riddle
of uniform reason. Naturally it is incapable of explanation; science
only
teaches us to conceive: but how can we make this possibility
conceivable?
how can we shape this recognition into an exact science? This question
is the transcendental question objectively taken into consideration.
Only
to give one example: Hume had shown that it was impossible for the Ego
to borrow the conception of cause (and effect) from nature, and he
thence
drew the conclusion that this conception as such could not hold its
own:
here, evidently, experience is presupposed as a certain something, and
the Ego as a certain other something
which reflects upon experience,
and
comes to right and false conclusions about it. Kant sets to work
differently.
He says, “In transcendental recognition possible experience is the
clue.
The proof does not show that the given conception (of what occurs, for
example) leads at once to another conception (that of a cause), for
such
a transition would be a leap which could in no way be justified.“ So
far,
as you see, Kant agrees with Hume; however he goes on, “but it, —
namely
the transcendental proof, — shows that experience itself, and
consequently
the object of experience, would be impossible
262 KANT
without
such a combination“ (R.V.
811).
Certainly the conception of cause and effect (causality) is not the
result
of experience, but it belongs to the existence of those rules of the
understanding
alluded to above, without which no experience could come into being,
and
therefore no possibility of nature could be given: but it so happens
that
experience does exist, and nature is there, consequently the conception
“cause“ holds its own. Plato had expressed it in his allegorical
fashion
“cause is related to reason“ (Philebos,
31 A); Kant compresses it into
a practically available formula:
“transcendental truth precedes all
empirical
truth and makes it possible“ (R.V. 185), “the possibility of experience
in general is at the same time the universal law of nature“ (P. §
36). It is in this that “the possibility of a nature“ consists. That is
the Copernican inversion which is wrought by the conception of the
transcendental
in thought.
All philosophers,
says Kant, have
been wrecked in the attempt to prove the causa sufficiens. It is
impossible
to go beyond what a condition of the possibility of experience
stipulates,
at any rate not in a philosophy as science. If “the object of
experience
be impossible“ without a fixed combination, then it is mere
word-chopping
to represent this combination as unnecessary or questionable; the
object
of experience is there, consequently the combination must be there
also.
That, however, must and can be sufficient for us; “what of necessity
determines
the existence of things belongs to transcendental philosophy“ (Ug. III,
314). Its domain extends no further.
We have thus selected
out of the
various possible definitions of the matter treated by Kant, two that
are
of special importance: the possibility of reason, and the possibility
of nature: here we will let the question rest:
a third definition, the possibility
of freedom, I shall have
263 KANT
to
take into consideration in another
connection. In conclusion, I must now add one or two negative
definitions:
it is indeed indispensable, in order
to avoid certain absolutely ineradicable misunderstandings, not only to
know
what the transcendental is, but
also what it is not; for you will always misunderstand Kant's “style“
of
thought unless you are aware of the sharply defined boundaries of the
transcendental.
First, let us take
quite briefly
two negations, which perhaps hardly come within the four corners of
these
lectures, since they touch the terminology and therefore the technics
of
the system, but which, in spite of that, I shall discuss in order to
spare
you difficulties in your future studies.
“Transcendental“ is
not
“transcendent.“
The difference between the two can be easily put allegorically. The
“transcendental“
is the domain on the hither side of all experience, the “transcendent“
is the domain on the further side of all experience; the aim of the
transcendental
is to fix the conditions under which experience takes place; experience
is its final goal; the transcendent, on the contrary, wings its flight
from experience as a starting-point in order to reach the domain
beyond,
in which it may open up knowledge as to the essence and significance of
this experience of ours. That is why Kant translates transcendent by
“flying
over“ and “extravagant“ (in its etymological sense of “wandering
beyond“). In the study of Kant's works it is very
important to keep in sight this
distinction
between the two similar expressions, and indeed it is all the more
important inasmuch as Kant
himself
seldom condescends to explanations, and so serious confusion may arise.
For example, all our ideas (in
the
sense in which Kant uses the word) and our conceptions of reason (cf.
p.
72, etc.) are in their origin transcendent, they “overstep the
boundaries
of all experience,“ and Kant says expressly
264 KANT
that
their objective use is “at all
times
transcendent (R.V. 383 seq.);
and yet he himself calls these very
ideas,
which are at all times used transcendently, “transcendental ideas.“ The
connection is as follows: Ideas, and here we can add the whole host of
Plato's ideas, do, it is true, arise outside of experience; they are
born
of the necessity under which reason stands for continually widening
combination:
by this it gathers further experience; — think of the idea of
metamorphosis
to which, if you choose, you may add that of development; — to this
extent,
therefore, the transcendent comes over to the hither side, — to the
transcendental
side; for if it is itself in the first place the offspring of
experience,
it still serves as a support and lever for an experience which has yet
to be won. The contention between Schiller and Goethe as to idea and
experience
suffices to explain the whole state of the case. Thus Plato, for
example,
would say the conception “Dog“ is an idea, a transcendent idea, not an
experience in the true meaning of this conception; and he would be
right;
but if we men were unable to grasp such ideas, if we had no such
faculty,
our experience would in that case be a right miserable affair: the idea
then serves experience: the transcendent is the complement of the
transcendental.
In spite of this, or rather because of this, it is of the utmost
importance
to make a clear distinction here. For our pure conceptions of the
understanding
(categories) and our judgments of the understanding (see p. 255), with
in addition space as form of our perception, time as scheme for the
combination
of understanding and sensibility ... all these are not transcendent,
but purely transcendental conditions of all recognition, of all
experience;
they precede experience as its conditio
sine qua non, and therefore
possess
not only objectivity and necessity, but they are, to put it briefly,
“the
objective“ and “the necessity“; their value is constructive (as Kant
calls it), they, in the first instance,
265 KANT
build
up experience and with it
recognition.
Ideas and the conceptions of reason, on
the
contrary, can never obtain more
than a relative value
(according to Kant), they guide us on a road, they help the
understanding,
they are subjective methods, not objective ways of thought and
necessities
of things. If we do not recognise that fact we are in daily peril of
seeing
the mere idea become objective and claim transcendental value as law
instead
of a purely transcendent value as guide. “For,“ as Kant says, “we have
to deal with a natural and unavoidable illusion, which itself rests
upon
subjective principles and foists them upon us as objective ... which
hangs on to the human intellect like a burr, and even when we have
detected
its blinding operation, still refuses to leave off juggling in front of
it, and incessantly drives it into momentary errors which have
continually
to be removed“ (R.V. 354). That is exactly what we are experiencing
to-day
with the doctrine of development, a beautiful idea, regulative and full
of promise, fitted as few are to bring to the light of day untold
facts,
but which gives itself out as matter of fact, enacts laws, claims a
dogmatic
value, upsets and founds religions, and so enshrouds our understanding
in night that, without even being aware of it, we scoff at all logic
and
at all perception. Kant's transcendental critique alone, with the exact
distinction between transcendent and transcendental, is capable of
delivering
us from this danger, and making men of culture of us, men, that is to
say,
who know themselves, and are not made to appear as fools by their own
conceits.
Now for a second
terminological
distinction: transcendental is not metaphysical, and consequently
transcendental
philosophy is not metaphysics. From the days of Aristotle the science
of
metaphysics has meant the philosophy of theology; Kant himself
so
takes it, and says the special aims of its investigations are only
266 KANT
three
ideas, — God, Freedom, and
Immortality
61 (R.V. 395,
compare also Ur. § 91). Kant then feels, as we have
often remarked in the course of these lectures, a special aversion from
the metaphysics of the schools, and for the reason that they deal with
things which lie outside of experience, disputing and dogmatising
without
ever being able to bring forward a proof of the value of their purely
logical
assertions which are not rooted in any perception. He speaks of them
as “a dark ocean without shores and without beacons.“ 62 Metaphysics are as
it were the counterpart of empirical psychology: it is only by means of
transcendental philosophy that they can become a science;
transcendental
philosophy “must of necessity go before“: instead of this the
metaphysicians
have been going on building at their castles in the air for thousands
of
years, and demolishing one another's work, without ever troubling
themselves
about the distinction between transcendent and transcendental, or about
the counterpart which both form to empirical experience. Inasmuch as
metaphysics
dwell altogether on the further side, altogether in the transcendent
domain,
it is possible for that science to assert whatever it chooses so long
as
there is no previous transcendental critique. “Led on to childish
endeavours,
metaphysics grasp at soap-bubbles“ (P. § 13, note III). But in
spite
of all this Kant was unable till his old age quite to break away from
the
familiar old word, and so he often uses it as a name for the whole
perfectly
thought out system of transcendental philosophy:
that would make the critique into the
negative preparatory part, and metaphysics into the finished,
positively
stated, doctrinal, systematic exposition. Thus a system of metaphysics
as a science might be possible, provided that critique and
transcendental
philosophy should have been at work previously, and that in clear
consciousness
of all boundaries we should make it our business to develop “the whole
philosophical recognition out of
267 KANT
pure
reason in systematic connection“
(R.V. 869). Here it is present to Kant's mind that a final answer to the
above-mentioned questions, — always
looked upon as
metaphysical, — upon the subject of
God,
freedom, and immortality, is only possible with the help of
transcendental
philosophy with its clear systematising: through the distinction into
theoretical
and practical reason, God, freedom, and immortality are once for all
removed
out of the science of nature. That which is transcendent cannot be
proved
empirically, and never possesses more than a relative value: it can
therefore
be shown that God is only the conception of “a necessary and ideal
Being,
incapable of proof.“ So far transcendental philosophy answers the
question
of metaphysics, and therefore can itself be in a certain sense
described
as metaphysics. And yet it is noteworthy that Kant, as time goes on,
uses
the old academic word less and less, and at the close of his life
almost
exclusively employs the words transcendental philosophy, which have by
degrees become familiar to him in the full range of their
significance. 63
Now for a more
important negative
definition. It touches a question which we have already more than once
started to-day, but which I cannot help again finally bringing into
notice:
for here we have to brush away deeply rooted follies out of the
childhood
of human thought.
In order to draw our
boundary
line firmly, once for all I bring forward the following words of Kant:
“the transcendental philosopher in no way pretends to explain the
possibility
of things, but is content to set upon a firm basis that knowledge by
which
the possibility of the possibility of experience is conceived.“ If
Kant's
matter be the possibility, — and not only the possibility of reason,
the
possibility of nature, and the possibility of freedom, but briefly
possibility
in general, or as he here puts it with the simplicity of genius, the
“possibility
of the
268 KANT
possibility,“
— then he is in no way
concerned
with the investigation of so-called first causes and the like, for that
would mean nothing to him, — simply this possibility must be
understood — nothing
more (cf. p. 231). The so-called first cause is always less
intelligible
than that which it has to explain: Jehovah who creates the world out of
nothing, Haeckel's primary cell out of which the whole realm of
organisms
arises by selection, are far greater miracles than the phenomena which
it is their business to explain. What, on the other hand, is meant by
comprehension
we have already learnt from Goethe, and that has shown us that we only
conceive that which consists of parts, and indeed of parts the
relations
of which to one another are clear to us; for conception is of its
essence,
as we have before remarked, a relation and a counter-relation: we must
therefore break up into parts this possibility with which
transcendental
philosophy deals, that is to say, we must analyse. This again can only
occur by means of artificially regulated acceptations; that is by
hypotheses,
because the philosophical questions first arise in final things where
we
possess no more parts; yet we have before us the example of
mathematical
analysis, which, as we have seen just now, proceeds from monstrously
arbitrary
acceptations. “I take it for granted in the first place that what it
sought
for has been found“ — such is the exordium of Descartes as the
discoverer
of that method of mathematical Thinking without which we never could
have
experienced the victorious course of exact science. Copernicus
describes
his own doctrine as “a possible acceptation which should simplify the
deduction
of the motions observed“; he again chooses to “explain“ nothing, but
only
to facilitate “conception,“ nothing more; and however brilliant his
idea
has proved itself to be, the purely hypothetical and pre-eminently
methodical
significance of the whole shows itself in the fact that ever and again
men of exact science
269 KANT
who
have at their disposal intellect
and leisure call in question the heliocentric theory of the world, or
at
least lay down its undemonstrability. As the mathematician
Poincaré
puts it, 64
“whether I say the earth revolves, or whether I say it is
more
convenient to represent the thing to oneself as if the earth revolved,
comes to the same thing.“ 65
Kant then goes to work precisely in this
manner.
He, in the first place, expressly sets out as only hypothetical his
proposed
transformation of the mode of thought analogous to that of Copernicus,
with the argument which you now understand: “the first attempts at such
a transformation are always hypothetical“ (R.V. xxii, note). He does
indeed
affirm that his earliest hypothesis, starting from the notion that all
that we perceive as things are not things in themselves, but the result
of a duality, is Sensibility + Understanding; but then he declares that
the doctrine of all other transcendental combinations out of which
recognition
and with it the world and Ego arise, — is a hypothesis which will in
the
further course of his critical work be “apodictically proved“ as a sure
truth; this “proof,“ however, only holds good in the same sense as in
the
case of the fundamental hypotheses of cosmological physics. Copernicus
had the courage to show the movements of the heavenly bodies against
the
evidence of the senses: as a result, a practical result, Galilei,
Newton,
and the whole development of cosmology down to our time have
brilliantly
justified him; for without his defiance of the senses the fundamental
ideas
of our modern physics and astronomy could never have been imagined.
That,
and nothing else, is exactly what Kant means: the sort of truth which
he
claims for his system of reason is no other than that which must be
acknowledged
in the Copernican system of the heavens: the aim is not to explain but
to comprehend, and comprehension implies the setting up of hypotheses
which
prove themselves, which hold good
270 KANT
objectively
as well as subjectively,
hypotheses from which fruitful ideas proceed, and which lead to an
architectonic system of relations on all sides. So far we may say of
transcendental
philosophy what may be said of all theoretical science, — it is above
all
a method. 66 In
those last thoughts of Kant's, from which I have drawn
so many golden sayings, we find also the following: “Transcendental
philosophy
is not a manner of recognition of any object of philosophy, but only a
certain method or formal principle of philosophising.“ It is clear from
the immediately following sentence how consciously inventive Kant
recognised
this method to be, where he gives precise expression to its aim, “that
man should fashion for himself the conceptions in which he seizes (or
imagines)
the object world of reason“ (Ug. III, 374). If man understands, it is
because
he himself creates those conceptions which render understanding
possible.
It is impossible that
this should
not call up a vision of Plato, for it is the very pith of his
philosophy,
in which we have no confused mysticism of figurative ideas, enthroned
in
Heaven knows what wonderland, but the comprehension of man as creator,
that he himself creates the object out of materials furnished to him,
that
from the first glimmering dawn of consciousness he has been an active
discoverer
and lawgiver: that is Plato's philosophy, that is precisely idea as
“hypothesis,“
idea as “method,“ and idea as “Law.“ And if we ask, has this hypothesis
proved itself? has it shown itself to be as fruitful as, say, that of
Copernicus? — we may answer that it has been the source from which all
science has
sprung:
that Copernicus himself is the most
brilliant proof of its value. Philosophy alone remained locked out from
this most fruitful thought that ever was conceived by man until Kant
came
and built it up systematically. Yet, barring these two — Plato and Kant
— I
fail to see anyone who, up to the present in questions of reason, has
broken
271 KANT
the
spell of the lust of explanation
and gone over to the exact scientific method of comprehension.
This is the most
important of
all negations. Kant does not explain, he never even makes an attempt at
it, but he contents himself with setting up a hypothetic system by
means
of which recognition and duty, — together with nature and freedom, —
become
intelligible as a whole according to fixed law.
As a matter of fact
all remaining
negations are included in this one, and I might spare myself any
further
trouble in this connection; yet there is a misunderstanding so widely
spread
and so destructive to every right conception of the Kantian order of
thought,
that I cannot help attacking it energetically and with all necessary
detail.
Kant's transcendental
philosophy
is never and nowhere psychology.
It is precisely in
this relation
that the greatest sins are committed; for not only are nine-tenths of
all
modern philosophy nothing but psychology in disguise, but almost all
professional
philosophers conceive Kant's teaching either as crassly psychological
or
as psychology more or less cleverly veiled. And this happens in spite
of
the fact that Kant in all his critical works has repudiated the
psychological
method, that is to say, the delusion that any so-called “doctrine of
the
soul“ could count as fundamental in scientific philosophy. Even in
anthropology, — the
science of man — Kant looks upon the phenomenon of human nature in
itself
and by itself as far more interesting than the attempts to explain it:
“The subtle investigation of the manner in which the bodily organs are
bound up with our thoughts is for ever in vain“ — so says Kant
(Letters,
I, 138).
A Greek word
sometimes hits the
mark exactly. Psyche, the sweet wife of Eros, is the only figure of the
ancient mythology that is still alive amongst us: but I much doubt
whether
the state would pay countless
272 KANT
professors,
and bear the cost of
annual
congresses with banquets, if the talk were of “doctrine of the soul,“
whereas
“psychology“ with its many promises makes a noble show. Imagine in the
twentieth century a flourishing science of the soul! Schopenhauer is
right when he lays it down that now that the world has come into
possession
of Kant's critique, it should be forbidden “to speak of the soul as a
given
reality, as a well-known and accredited personality“: 67 in spite of
which
our modern philosophy hardly speaks of anything else, and so gains the
advantage of having an inexhaustible field for never-ending barren
discussions.
In the place of the logical scholasticism of the Middle Ages an equally
fat milch-cow of sham science has come to the front in the shape of
psychological
scholasticism. For, as Kant says, “we must admit that psychological
explanations
play a piteous part when compared with those of physics, that they are
endlessly hypothetical, while it is very easy in addition to three
different
grounds of explanation to imagine a fourth that shall be equally
plausible,
and that thence a mass of pretended psychologists of this kind arise,
who
know how to assign the causes of every affection or motion of the mind,
and dub this farce of theirs philosophy, not only without having any
knowledge
which should enable them to explain scientifically the commonest
natural
occurrence in the corporeal world, but perhaps not even the aptitude
for
it.“ 68 Every word
is as appropriate to-day as it was in Kant's time. It
is
characteristic of everything which has ever been called “Doctrine of
the
Soul“ that it never and in no relation can be science, even though
ulteriorly,
as Kant says in the same place, it may serve for mere “collection of
matter“ in the ambiguous domain between various genuine sciences. The
Psyche
is
an allegory, and it is impossible to make a science out of an allegory.
There has always been
ambiguity
in the conception of soul. Originally this word meant the breath, the
breath
273 KANT
of
life, thence the vital force; and
what an unlucky conception this is we saw in the previous lecture (p.
85).
Later on it came to carry the thought of immortality, and to this day
renders
good service in this capacity. But where the soul — and that too with
the
arrogant claim to a scientific discipline peculiar to itself, thrusts
itself
between the physiology of the nervous system and the science of
recognition,
there it creates a really mischievous confusion, and in the end leads
to
the chaos in which we find ourselves to-day, where Physicists write
books
about “the soul of plants,“ and brain-anatomists write manuals of the
science
of the soul, 69
whilst the professional “psychologists“ enquire of newly
hatched chicks whether the idea of space is innate or acquired, and
according
as the chick pecks or refuses to peck at grain, declare themselves for
or against Kant's teaching, and so proclaim either that it has been
“superseded
by modern science,“ or else that it is “to a certain extent founded
upon
truth, even though it is imperfectly and unscientifically set out.“
Then
the chick is traced back into the mesozoic ages, and thence still
further
back phylogenetically into an imaginary primary proto-proto-palaeozoic
epoch,
in order that the “origin“ and the “heredity“ of the idea of space may
be as clearly conceived as the preparation of an apple-dumpling. Such
are
the foundations upon which logic and the doctrine of recognition, and
where
it is possible even morality, are built up! We talk of going to the
dogs.
Modern philosophy has gone still further. Nearly two hundred years ago,
the rogue who had more intellect in his little finger than a whole
congress
of philosophers, Father Shandy, dared to ask whether we were born with
the conceptions of Time and Space? “or how we came by those ideas, of
what
stuff they were made, or whether they were born with us, or we picked
them
up afterwards as we went along, or whether we did it in frocks, or not
274 KANT
till
we got into breeches?“ To-day he
would have had no courage to joke: I think he would rather have
applauded
the saying of Ferdinand Jakob Schmidt, who wrote in these modern times,
“We might shed tears of most painful bitterness when we see that the
dominant
direction of modern philosophy, in spite of that classical exaltation
of
German methods of thought, has sunk back into an empiricism of the
shallowest
kind, which threatens the destruction of our whole intellectual
harvest.
It would be a matter of ridicule if anyone were to attempt to deduce
the
differential and integral calculus from the observation and the
inductive
generalisation of empirical natural phenomena, but all the same it is
accounted
the perfection of wisdom that the pure laws of thought, which are even
of more universal application than those of mathematics, should be
arrived
at by induction out of psychological processes of perception by the
senses.
This psychological empiricism is in truth the grave-digger of all
intellectual
cultural attainments“ 70
(Preussische Jahrbücher,
Feb., 1904, p.
354). Kant knew and told us to what it is that Psychology truly
belongs: — to empirical anthropology, that is to say, to the
description
of Man
(Ur. 443), and so far also in a wider sense to empirical, descriptive
natural
history in general (R.V. 876), but not and never to exact science in
the
true, legislative, systematic meaning of the word. We may, at a pinch,
speak of a “natural description of the soul,“ but not of a science of
the
soul (M.N. preface).
The famous vexed
question as to
whether certain conceptions or forms of the understanding are inborn in
us, or whether they are all only acquired in the course of life, — a
question
by the way which seems to remind us of the well-known dilemma whether
the
chicken came before the egg or the egg before the chicken — in no way
touches
transcendental philosophy: the latter rather investigates reason much
in
the same way as physics
275 KANT
investigate
the fall of bodies. How
it
has happened that there are bodies and why they fall against one
another
is a matter of indifference to physics: the question of whence reason,
and its correlative the world, proceed is equally irrelevant to
transcendental
philosophy: true science touches upon being, upon the eternal, upon the
universal:
every enquiry into primary causes is
unscientific and barbarous. In spite of this it is certainly noteworthy
that Kant, whenever sensible or foolish questions compelled him for a
time
to leave the sphere of his own exact science, expressed himself frankly
upon this question as upon others. “Critique,“ he says, “will have
nothing
to do with implanted or inborn conceptions; it considers the whole of
them,
whether they belong to perception or to the conceptions of the
understanding,
as being acquired.“ 71
Even of the conception of space, which Kant is
supposed
to have taught as being inborn, causing thereby so many headaches in
all
our psychologists and most of our philosophers — even in a
Helmholtz,
— Kant
says point-blank, “the conception of space may not and cannot be
presupposed,
for conceptions are not inborn but only acquired“ (1789, Letters, II,
79),
and in another place — “unless extensions had been observed no space
could
be imagined“ (R.V. 349). Already in the dissertation of 1770 (end of
§
15) Kant shows that the question of whether the conceptions of space
and
time are inborn (connati) or acquired after birth (acquisiti) possesses
no interest for critique; and yet he speaks up in favour of
“acquisition,“
giving as his reason the fascinatingly simple consideration that the
idea
that conceptions could be inborn “paves the way for the philosophy of
the
slothful“ (quia viam sternit
philosophiae pigrorum). We could expect
nothing
else from the simple, sound mind of the great thinker, practised in the
investigation of nature, laughing in ironical superiority at all the
hair-splittings
of the philosophers.
276 KANT
So
much for the first general
orientation.
This psychological confusion, however, is such a stone of offence over
which the majority of men come to grief, that I cannot leave the matter
so. We must put Kant's personal relation and the relation of his
transcendental
philosophy to psychology on a still firmer basis. There are here two
things
which are above all significant: the one is concerned with the
objective,
the other with the subjective consideration of psychology. I. Whenever
the so-called psychological questions impinge upon the domain of true
empiricism,
Kant, in contrast to all other doctrines of the soul, lays stress upon
mechanical physiology alone. II. Whenever Psychology comes into
relation
with reason, he unmistakably holds on to the position that science is a
systematic comprehension, not an explanation by the discovering of
so-called
causes.
How consistently
Kant, to the
very end, thought mechanistically may be gathered from his two letters
to Sömmerring of the 10th of August and the 17th of September,
1795,
with the supplement “on the seat of the soul.“ Kant here shows that
this
enquiry about the seat of a soul is “not only incapable of solution,
but
also contradictory in itself,“ inasmuch as it presupposes space; he
warns
us not “to mix up the physiological task with metaphysics,“ but rather
“to concern ourselves only with matter,“ and develops in a few short
strokes
of the pen an empirical hypothesis about the manner in which the
impressions
communicated by the various senses are bound together into one unity
(law
of association), a purely materialistically physical hypothesis which
goes
back to the last atomistic component parts of the material, — brings
the
play of the sensations into combination with the dispersal and building
up again of chemical matter, and thus seeks to make “the unity of the
aggregate
intelligible by the structure of the brain.“ I shall set no more value
upon the hypothesis than Kant
277 KANT
himself
did, even though so important
an anatomist as Sömmerring describes it as “masterly,“ — it is the
direction
of the order of thought which interests us here. Empirically the brain
cannot be considered as the organ of a so-called soul, but only as a
transmitter
of incentives of motion inwards
and outwards, and
above all as the “means of uniting all the conceptions of the senses,“
of those which are receptive as well as of those which are creative; if
we understand this mechanism systematically, then we possess all the
knowledge
in respect to it which we are capable of possessing; all the rest are
old
wives' tales, or superstition masquerading as science. Physiology looks
upon man as a bit of nature; organic unity does not here create
personality,
for that is purely ethical; it is freedom or nothing, and so void of
all
significance for nature: we may rather say that brain activity only
makes
In-Dividuality, that is to say, that which cannot be divided into
parts,
and this only relatively and comparatively, from the single cell to the
complicated organism. In this organism there are all manner of systems
which create unity, which may be more or less developed; as, for
example,
in many cases an inner or outer bone-structure, one or more systems of
circulation, a more or less uniform system for the reception and
conversion
of nourishment, etc. But that which has the most penetrating power of
unification
is the nervous system; here it is that the animal kingdom in the most
marked
fashion distinguishes itself from the vegetable kingdom, although even
here remote analogies have been discovered, 72 and that is why the great
Cuvier was able to affirm that Le
système nerveux est, au fond,
tout l'animal. 73
The more this unifying system par
excellence again
centralises
itself, the more importance does the organ of this higher unification,
which we then designate as brain, acquire: not as though this
mechanically
organic centralisation and
278 KANT
individualisation
were anywhere
carried
out uninterruptedly, — even in man the so-called sympathetic nervous
system
preserves its independence, and a perfect knowledge of the brain
functions
would not exhaust the knowledge of the movements of the body; still, we
can constantly find Cuvier's tout
l'animal justified broadly: the brain
is as it were the quintessence of the whole body. But observe this: the
further the unifying nervous system is developed, the more richly does
it differentiate itself: the new complication gains strength in
relation
to the growing unification: the more complete the individual the more
manifold
do his relations to the world outside of himself become.
“Alas!
that there should be so many
senses!
They bring confusion into happiness,“
is Goethe's plaint. So soon as
specifically
different impressions of the senses, such as hearing, seeing, touching,
are fused into one uniform experience, a function of the brain is
presupposed,
which must be considered an analogy of thinking. If, therefore, the one
task of an empirical study of the brain consists in setting out the
unifying
functions of the nervous system in relation to the other tissues, a new
task arises for it out of the necessity of showing a mechanical means
for
bringing about the uniformity “of the endless multiplicity of all the
conceptions
of the senses,“ that is to say, for the new unification of the personal
multiplicity. That is how Kant treats the abiding problem of
explanation
by means of empirical investigation, — the physiological task, as he
calls
it: there is no word of soul, no word of reason, for neither of these
is
a “matter“ which could be examined with scalpel and lens, and so be
applicable
to a scientific exposition of the facts.
What victories would
be achieved
in natural science if all investigators were such consistent
materialists
and
279 KANT
mechanists
as Kant! But for this a
philosophically
critical schooling is essential. And so, in spite of the great advance
of our knowledge of anatomy in consequence of improved methods of
investigation,
we are suffering from a Babel-like confusion in the domain of brain
study.
The problem of association once more stands in the foreground of the
interest.
Since Kant's demonstration that thinking is uniting, it cannot be
otherwise:
but your anatomist knows nothing of Kant, and therefore does not
suspect
to what an absolutely limited degree this problem comes under his
competence:
he is rather apt to search in the brain
for things of which the so highly extolled “science of the soul“ has
prated
to him, literally in the same way as Descartes butchered calves two
hundred
and fifty years ago, hoping to discover the organ of memory. Whilst
every
manual jeers at the great Frenchman because, quite incidentally and as
an hypothesis, he called the pineal gland an important organ as bond of
union between the brain and the soul, 74 we hear a continual
buzzing
about
“ideogenous centres,“ about “tissues of association,“ about “sites of
memory,“ and a thousand other meaningless words, which make us blush
for
shame to be the contemporaries of such crass folly! The empirical
investigator
should rather lay to heart Kant's golden saying, “we have only to deal
with matter.“ Indeed, all biology is infected with this disease, and
staggers
under it; books on the soul of animals spring up like mushrooms out of
the earth, and Ernst Haeckel has furnished his new church with a whole
soul-nomenclature of so-called “psychogeny,“ from the cytopsyche of the
archezoa to the coinopsyche
of the association of cells, the
histopsyche
of the tissues, the reuropsyche
which already possesses its own special
“soul-apparatus,“ etc. In the midst of all this come learned
dissertations
as to whether the infusoria already possess the conception of the Ego,
and more such deep
280 KANT
thoughts.
Professor Verworn goes
still
further and lectures us not only upon the “development of psychic life
in the realm of the Protists,“ but even upon “molecular psychology“ 75
(Psychophysiologische
Protisten Studien, 1889). And this, forsooth, is empirical
science.
There
is more wholesome understanding, more sense, more judgment, more
feeling
for the seriousness of life, in the silliest book of a pious monk in
the
so-called dark Middle Ages. A science of the soul of the Infusoria! A
science
of the soul of lifeless, purely hypothetical molecules! Is not that
enough
to show that such men, however cleverly they may set to work with their
scalpel, and microtome, and microscope, and however much they may
deserve
our gratitude for their purely zoological work, can in no case have any
suspicion of the true meaning of “science.“ That is the vengeance
exacted
by the lack of philosophical schooling. And so a short time ago one of
the few zoologists who are familiar with Kant warned us that we can
expect
no full development of biology, so long as the investigators refuse to
recognise these psychological errors as “worthless and untenable
speculation,“
and “limit their experiments upon the subjects of experience, deaf to
the
seductions of the sirens' song of the doctrine of the soul“ 76 But what
is experience? An investigator of Haeckel's eminence believes in all
seriousness
that he possesses “experience“ of the soul of the foraminiferae in the
Silurian system, whereas in truth his own soul is on the one side idea
and on the other allegory. Without Kant no man knows what is experience
and what is not, no man knows how far empiricism reaches, and where, on
the other hand, thinking becomes transcendent. To put that upon a firm
basis was the life's work of the great man; the man who passes that by
with indifference is a barbarian, even if he should be a member of all
the academies on earth.
That is the one
point: if we
are talking of biology,
281 KANT
then
mechanical physiology is the
only
matter which Kant takes into consideration; I may not even ask whether
there is such a thing as a soul of “intellectual nature,“ for “such a
question would be senseless“ (R.V. 712). But now for the second
standpoint.
The former dealt with nature, its motions, and its laws; this one
touches
reason and the systematic connection of its component parts.
Under the scalpel I
could not
detect reason; but it was reason which made me take hold of the scalpel:
reason led the way, as it does
everywhere,
it is the Primary thing, that which is first given. Here our “science
of
the soul“ sets itself a very proud task: it undertakes to “explain“
reason, — it
undertakes to represent recognition as arising out of that which is
recognised;
that is its “explanation.“ We are to see with our eyes the gradual
tottering
of logical thinking and recognition and the moral law, in convolutions
of the brain, tissues of association, ideogenous centres, sites of
memory
and the rest; and we are to follow them up by means of psychological
observations
of individuals and nations. That it must in the first instance take
reason
for granted is manifest; indeed, it must take for granted all the
necessary
judgments and conceptions without which there could be no experience
and
no nature: how else could it carry on its investigations? With the
infectious
simplicity of children and savages it presupposes an object (the brain)
and a subject (the Psyche), it presupposes the subject and the
perception
of the subject, the world and the Ego as concretely given — even
where
in
the further course of its investigations it sometimes arrives at
throwing
the one or the other overboard. Whether in this way anything of
importance
for philosophy, beyond the many inestimable observations which belong
to
descriptive anthropology, can arise, is a question that may be left on
one side; certain it is that
282 KANT
Kant
follows a diametrically contrary
road. The road of psychology is, and is necessarily, quite subjective:
the very name testifies to that: Kant's road, on the contrary, is
strictly
objective and therefore more difficult to follow here where the Ego
chimes
in so loudly. All our instincts are opposed to this direction on which
he wishes to lead us, all of them drive us into the arms of the
so-called
science of soul. Here is repeated the battle which constructive science
has at all times had to wage against common sense, that is to say,
against
the impotence of mankind to see the practical value of theoretical
ideas.
I should like to go
into closer
details upon this point; we may be grateful to the groundless
misunderstanding
of the Psychologists if it can show us the way to a perfect
comprehension
of the transcendental standpoint.
For the comprehension
of Kant's
transcendental method in its specific nature a comparison with Newton
may
render good service. It will be remembered with what a stroke of genius
Newton understood how to extract from a phenomenon what made it capable
of being grasped and elaborated by means of theoretical science 77 (p. 160
seq.). For example, colour
remains eternally out of the reach of
geometrical
and arithmetical measurement and calculation: colour and calculation,
colour
and the measurement of space are incommensurable. But when Newton broke
up the sunlight in the prism, he held the various colours in a fixed
relation
of space to one another; there was then a place for circles and
ciphers,
and it was not long before the unserviceable conception of colour fell
out and was replaced by that of motion — no matter whether that motion
were
conceived as that of particles of matter slung into space, or more
abstractly,
and therefore more practically for science, as the oscillations of a
hypothetic aether not to be grasped by thought: for the only matter of
importance
is
that the conceptions of time, space and motion come into play,
283 KANT
while
everything which cannot
associate
itself with them is laid aside, no matter whether that which is so laid
aside should constitute the special
essence of the thing. It was the same instinct of genius that
influenced
Kant:
only his thoughts belonged to another
sphere. It annoyed him to see our knowledge of our own reason drifting
in such perplexity, whether its boundaries were clearly laid down
outwardly,
or whether they were perspicuously organised inwardly, and therefore
given
up to every phantastic notion, every individual assumption, every
interested dogma, every psychological
blundering. And why did this come about? Because there was no objective
criterium; because the one party based themselves on
logic, the sphere of competence of which
they had never settled, and set up the most venturesome
thought-structures,
taking no heed of the necessity for unity, since logic is mere method,
neither object, nor matter, nor boundary, — and so with equal justice
affirmed
and denied through all the centuries: while the other party devoted
themselves
to psychology, hoping to establish the essence of the presupposed
“soul“
by means of observations as to the coming into being of sensations,
impulses,
recognitions, and so forth. The logician was generally the keener
thinker, — the
psychologist, so far as he was guided by the senses, the better
observer;
each of them had in a certain sense the best of it over the other;
neither
could, nor ever will, attain any result that could in any way compare
or
even approach natural science in exactness, indisputability and
fruitfulness.
Kant set to work in the same way as Newton. Just as the latter pushed
aside
colours, and only retained so much of them as might serve his
systematic
purpose, by which means he succeeded in gaining out of a purely
subjective impression a purely objective expression, so did Kant push
aside the
whole
so-called “empirical psychology,“ all the observations about the
“properties
of souls,“
284 KANT
about
development of the senses,
about
the gradual coming into being and growth of the intellectual powers,
about
inborn and acquired faculties, and all the rest of it: for he
understood
(and this it is that constitutes the genius of a man), that in this
way,
however obvious and however seductive it may be, we can never fight our
way out of boundless subjectivity, out of descriptive anthropology. And
so he chose out another matter, in other words, just as Newton had
done,
he prepared for himself out of the same complex of facts another
problem,
a problem fitted to admit of an objective scientific, and that means a
systematic, solution. If anything be “style of thought,“ that is: that
is why it finds a place here:
as Buffon taught us (p. 235) to gain
an insight into such stylistic methods as these, is of higher value for
the formation of intellect than the knowledge of the facts which are
dealt
with.
There is a passage in
which Kant
puts the peculiarity of his “matter“ into a short formula. “Here there
is no question of how experience arises, but of what it contains“ (P.
§
21 a). This is a saying which should never be lost sight of; it is the
most important saying for the exact description of the aim of Kant's
critical
work that he ever uttered, and it served as a defence against the
apparently
unconquerable misunderstanding with which he was at once met and which
is still flourishing luxuriantly. Out of ten professors of philosophy
who
lecture upon Kant, nine represent him as having proposed to “explain“
how experience “arises,“ whereas his object is only to make
intelligible
what it is that experience “contains“ — intelligible, that is, in the
same
sense as the cosmologists render intelligible the movements of the
stars
without being crazy enough to attempt to explain them. The How is
subjective,
the What is object: and if you ask what it is that experience contains,
Kant will answer you that it is reason. Whatever else
285 KANT
may
be contained in experience,
reason
must in every case be there in addition. But in what concerns the
“World,“
in so far as it is to be taken as a counterpart to reason, Kant says,
“we
must imagine the matter of the world in such a shape as it ought to
possess,
if we wish to learn a lesson from it through experience“ (R.V. 500,
note).
If I look into a mirror it is impossible that I should not at the same
time be looking out of the mirror; without a mirror I can only see
fragments
of myself, and the part which is of the greatest importance, the face,
the eyes, not at all; in the mirror I see them distinctly and need only
pay heed to the reversal of the sides, and a certain measure of
distortion
owing to the perhaps imperfectly even surface. In the world then we see
reason (among other things), and that under an objective light. In
order
to ascertain that which, in the human reason, is necessary, according
to
law, ever and always present, we must not interrogate the so-called
soul,
but, on the contrary, we must interrogate nature, the science of
nature:
it is here and not in the psyche of the individual that the objective
of
the subject must be discoverable:
otherwise there would be no Things for
us, we could not come to any understanding with one another. That which
makes our judgment concerning material things common to me and to you
and
to us all is that which must be of necessity common to the reason of us
all; that is the thing which we call necessary and according to law, it
is, in short, reason, and not the reason of this man or that, and that
alone is the reason out of which a science can be fashioned. You see
what
I mean when I affirm that as Newton pushed aside colours so Kant pushes
aside all that is subjectively psychological. He does not deny its
existence,
he does not deny that it may even offer some interest: but it does not
concern him, it does not concern the whole objective theory of
recognition,
or all transcendental philosophy. It is of far greater importance
286 KANT
to
arrive at a discovery of, and
accurately
to paraphrase, that property in our recognition which possesses a value
“without distinction of the condition of the subject“ (R.V. 142); this
constitutes the pith of all scientific critique of reason; in this way
alone can an objective investigation of reason succeed, whereas
muddling
with experiments on single subjects, and the hunger to explain out of
first
causes, is vulgar, unscientific anthropomorphism.
The transcendental
philosopher
then takes as his starting-point the great objectively furnished
facts, — on
the one side the fact of freedom, which pays no sort of attention to
the
condition of the subject, but rather leads to categorical laws for
all, — on
the other side the fact of exact natural science, which equally
possesses
certainty capable of proof. These two affirmations, that freedom is a
fact
and exact science is a fact, are of course hypothetical: they
constitute
the primary acceptations of the Kantian system, and in this system they
have the same importance as the so-called laws of motion in Newton's
cosmology.
If anyone refuses to admit these facts, if anyone maintains that exact
science is a mere matter of individual appreciation, and that man is
without
freedom, and consequently without a moral code, that is a man with whom
Kant will not permit himself to enter into discussion.
What do we mean then
when we say,
the results of exact science necessarily hold good for all, without any
“distinction of the condition of the subject“? Our meaning is that
these
results are an expression of objective truth. And what is objective
truth?
According to Kant it is the “accordance of recognition with the object“
(R.V. 236). But how are we to find any criterion of this accordance? We
should never find it in individual reason, or even in all the facts
which
psychology brings to light; there it is boundless empiricism which is
287 KANT
dominant,
and therefore, when the
critique
of recognition is the aim in view, it is a mere question of “idle
experiments
with which only that man can busy himself who has failed to understand
the quite peculiar nature of these (transcendental) recognitions“ (R.V.
119). On the other hand, the fact of exact science, that is to say, the
fact that there is such a thing as exact science, affords a guarantee:
here we have found a criterion: the individual is apt to take a false
view
of many things, his senses perpetually lead him astray, and his
judgment
is often crooked; in spite of that nature daily affords the proof that
in exact science recognition is in harmony with the object, at any rate
in those relations which science can take into consideration. For the
present
we may leave unanswered the question of the nature of the agreement
which
takes place in science between recognition and object, — the agreement
may
be literal or it may be symbolical; it might also occur that
recognition
and object should be in some sense interwoven: yet it remains
undeniable
that science can only succeed by deliberately leaving out of
consideration
a great part of the matter in general. Neither must we forget that the
acceptations which were our starting-point, in many ways affront the
ordinary
intellect of man — it is not the heliocentric system alone, but all
science
which is Copernican — and if on the one hand nature has been observed
with
painful exactitude, on the other hand this observation has always been
dominantly one-sided: the result has nevertheless, as I said before,
shown
that here recognition at any rate in certain relations comes mightily
near
the object, as we see from the glorious and apparently limitless course
of discoveries which revealed itself from the moment when this method
was
invented by Descartes and Galilei, as well as from the fact that things
hitherto unknown and never experienced are now often predicted with
absolute
certainty. Whilst logic since the days of
288 KANT
Aristotle
has always dolefully
renounced
any dealings with nature, — abstract, one-sided, mathematical science
has
succeeded in approaching her, following her into relations which are
full
of mystery, but undeniably organic. These lectures have taught you that
to approach close, objectively close, to nature has, from the very
beginning,
been the passionate endeavour of our modern European science; it has
ever
been ready to make every sacrifice to this end: it is by this means
that
the much sought after harmony as criterion of objective truth was
discovered
by Kant.
In another connection
(p. 253
seq.) I have shown briefly in
what manner Kant interrogated nature by
means
of the analysis of reason, and how by taking this road he arrived at
establishing
firmly the system of fundamental judgments and primary conceptions
which
is essential to all exact science. What Plato had discovered from the
Ego
subjectively and affirmatively, namely, that combination in unity
constitutes
the essence of all reason, was now discovered objectively by Kant,
starting
from the object, and that moreover by the widest possible separation
and
negation. If we think of ourselves, and then become conscious of
ourselves
as an individual, a unity, a person, that is the subjective unity of
self-consciousness:
it is very convincing it is true, and yet none the less in a certain
sense
questionable and disputable, because it is only empirical and
consequently
“accidental.“ This empirical unity, dogmatically certain though it
appears
to us, will in practice often be represented by science as merely
relative.
Duplications of personality are not rare, and there are many other
phenomena
of our being which appear outside of all conscious unity; Kant never
attacked
this; on the contrary, he writes, “the unity of consciousness as an
empirical
fact deducted from experience, is not necessarily and generally
admitted“
(R.V. 140). But now there is another unity,
289 KANT
an
objective unity of
self-consciousness
which is rendered patent: that is the unity by which not the Ego but
the
object is conceived as a unity. There would be no recognition unless
the
matter of experience were bound up with separate unities, that is
objects:
the more conscious and the more perfectly accomplished the process of
thinking,
the more strictly these unities are circumscribed: for instance, cosmic
physics unite the whole mass of a celestial body into one mathematical
point. But if I look around there is nothing that is less evident to me
than sharply separated points; I only see endless, unlimited multitude
inextricably entangled. How then do I manage so that my thinking in
spite
of this combines the chaos of perceptions into unities, until at last a
Nature as the summary of all these objects stands in inviolable unity
before
my thoughts, since the unity of Nature is the foundation of all exact
science?
Plato answers — the first step which reason takes on behalf of
recognition
is theoretical and autocratic; reason creates unities, and unities are
ideas. Kant does not contradict him, but he shows that there is another
way of considering this quite as justifiable, and he supplements
Plato's
teaching in a most important manner; looked at objectively it is the
object
which “makes unity necessary,“ and this unity which the object demands
“can only be the formal unity of consciousness“ (R.V. I, 105). If I
chose
to content myself with the formula, that it is reason that gives the
law,
discovers, invents, I should run the risk of falling into unfathomable
subjectivism: that is why Kant finds his guarantee and the inexorable
law
not only internally within the Ego, but also externally in the object,
that is to say, the conceptions of reason have no more objective value
for him than is required by the object in order that it may be
recognised
as object. It is also true that Kant claims discovery and hypothesis as
starting-point; we have seen this several times, and
290 KANT
just
lately (p. 269). How could he do
otherwise when he had before him the example of exact science, and knew
full well that science is systematic, system is architectonic, and
architectonics
are creative formation? (p. 221). But in the same way as cosmological
physics
find the safe criterion for their architectonics in the facts of
nature,
and constantly make them a test as to whether they are on the right way
or not, so Kant, the systematic critic of recognition, has his
lawgiver,
and this lawgiver is the object, that which is objectively right in
contradistinction
to what is right according to the Ego. That property of reason which
makes
the experience of the object possible as object, — that property
therefore,
thanks to which things in general are seen and thought, things which
stand
in relation to one another, and therefore give us a nature and not a
chaos — that
possesses objective and necessary value for reason, “without
distinction
as to the condition of the subject.“ The individual may possess a
uniform
soul, or may only imagine that he possesses it: but reason of which
Kant
furnishes the critique is not the reason of this or that man, but
reason
as an eternal fact, or rather a fact outside of all time. If in exact
science
there occurs an important process of sifting out and simplifying what
experience
had given us, a process by which nature as well as reason is affected,
we now see that what science rejects is a subjective element belonging
to the Ego; what on the other hand the object, that is to say, nature
requires,
in order to be recognised with exactitude,
— that possesses an objective value for
reason. “Objective“ and “subjective,“ words otherwise of a doubtful
and
allegorical sense, by these means acquire a scientifically fixed sense,
and so the line of demarcation no longer runs between a so-called
subject
and a so-called object, but the distinction is made at a point where it
is of use to us, that is to say, on the one side within the
291 KANT
boundary
of recognition, on the other
side within the object itself: reason and nature both possess objective
and subjective component parts.
We may call
transcendental this
perception that the object conditions reason just as reason conditions
the object: in other words, it is the perception that recognition and
entity
arise into being at the same point, and are inseparably connected, so
that
each receives its functions from the other. If I say all thinking is
relation,
then I have in the same breath said, all entity is relation, and vice
versa.
At the same time thinking and entity are in no sense identical: indeed,
from this point of view such an idea is utterly senseless, since it
first
requires the combination of a duality. Goethe, the eminent disciple of
Kant, gave utterance to this in a saying as simple as it was deep:
“Everything
that is in the subject is in the object, and more besides. Everything
which
is in the object is in the subject, and more besides“ 78 (W.A. 2nd
part,
II, 162). The words object and subject might give rise to psychological
misunderstandings: but if we replace them by world and reason, and say,
everything which is in reason is in the world and more besides;
everything
which is in the world is in reason and more besides, — then you will
have
in Goethe's saying a philosophically objective expression for the
transcendental
relation with which we are dealing. The world mirrors itself in reason,
and is fashioned into a nature, but there remains over and above
unfashioned
matter enough, which in order to attain exact science we have been
compelled
to exclude: reason mirrors itself in the world and becomes conscious of
itself as Ego: but Kant's analysis has shown what an important part of
our world-image is contributed by reason, without the possibility of
any
corroboration beyond the necessity for this same reason. To this again
is added freedom. These views are transcendental.
292 KANT
I have had to spend time and
trouble
in the attempt as fully as possible to explain this negation — Kant's
philosophy
is not psychology: for it touches the starting-point of his whole order
of thought, and has been none the less left almost universally ignored
or misunderstood: but whoever misinterprets him on this point must of
necessity
misunderstand him from Alpha to Omega. 79
One last
comprehensive definition.
Transcendental
philosophy is the
general conception by critical observation in conjunction with
hypothetical
architectonics of the complicated system of the combinations which
reciprocally
condition one another. It does not touch special men and special
things;
it is not biological: it is not historical: it differs entirely from
logic
(cf. R.V. 61); neither is it speculative and dogmatic; least of all is
it psychological. It only establishes scientifically and firmly those
objective
conditions without which there could be no world and no reason, and
consequently
also no recognition. And in doing this it erects everywhere the true
defining
landmarks and tears down those that are false and conventional.
* * * *
*
I undertook to investigate
Kant's
matter as a question of style; so far as theoretical reason is
concerned
I think that this purpose has been adequately fulfilled: by means of
positive
analyses of its contents, supplemented by negative delimitations, we
have
arrived at a more and more precise characterisation of the domain of
transcendental
philosophy. The domain of transcendental philosophy has characterised
itself
more and more precisely. For this we have to thank Kant's personality.
One last task remains before us; the endeavour to extend the
investigation
to practical reason, that is to say, to seek for an answer to the
question:
how does Kant fashion
293 KANT
his
matter so as to arrive at final
scientific
results as to freedom, moral law, God and religion?
That it was practice
and not
theory
which from the outset formed Kant's aim just as it had been Plato's,
you
already know: that by itself suffices to distinguish him from almost
all
philosophers: but you also know that it was precisely this passionate
impulse
to render practical service to humanity, which compelled him to devote
the greater part of his life to the theoretical and systematic critique
of recognition. This law which compelled Kant, equally binds me in
these
lectures. Kant desired to be a teacher for the people: in his peaceful
self-controlled nature there lay unnoticed, I dare not say hidden, —
for
all dissimulation lay far from him — a bold revolutionary spirit; when
he
attacked his critical work, he summed up his philosophical aims into
these
words: “The special intention is the abolition of all pedantry in
things
which touch the nature of the soul, the future, and the origin of all
things“
(Ref. II, 6). The abolition of pedantry, the striking off of the
fetters
from consciously free, reasonable, practical thought! that is what he
desired.
And now precisely in the interests of this release he had to plunge
into
this deep critique of human reason, he had to watch with such
“pedantic“
exactitude that no loophole should be left open for the evil spirit of
our race, ever in ambush insidiously whispering dogmas into our ears,
and
in that way he himself fell a victim to the Pedants and
hair-splitters — the
whole guild of them — and that means to misunderstanding, to
distortion,
to caricature, whilst the living men whom he had in view throughout his
life's work only gathered that he was the most difficult, the most
inaccessible,
the most inconsistent of all thinkers, whom no two professional men
explained
alike. These are things which begin to give a higher meaning to the
word
fate. To be wrecked not upon the rock of insufficiency, but on the best
that can
294 KANT
be
achieved by man: that is the
secret
of the tragedy of this noble life. For the feeble echo which reached
the
ears of us laymen — the formula of the categorical imperative, and in
some
measure also the dark idea that Kant had in his latter days undertaken
an official vindication of God, freedom, and immortality, is partly
mere
phrase, partly the disgusting endeavour to cast contempt upon great
life-thoughts.
It is and must remain to all eternity impossible to understand a single
word of Kant's moral teaching, of his critique of practical reason,
unless
we have assimilated the fundamental thoughts of his transcendental
philosophy,
and that can only be attained by the study of the critique of
theoretical
reason. We may confidently assert that the majority of mankind see
nothing
more in Kant's categorical imperative than a sort of drill sergeant's
lesson, — obey
without budging. That was what made the popularity of Schopenhauer's
shallow
joke, so full of misunderstanding, about “wooden iron,“ “wooden leg,“
and
the like. Thus it is that we are cut off, separated from Kant. We hold
centenaries in his honour, but of his personality, of his philosophy we
know little or nothing. It was in order to break this ban that I have
felt
myself bound to lay all stress upon his theory and the critique of
nature;
for it is here that the key to understanding lies: had I only kept the
personality in view I should have followed another and an easier road:
but the knowledge of the personality should serve as introduction to
the
work. If the Copernican transformation has taken place, if you have
really
grasped the thought of the transcendental, then it will be child's play
for you to understand Kant's doctrine of freedom, morals, religion, and
God, and he himself will be a better guide than any one else could be.
What I propose now to bring forward, therefore, as the final conclusion
of our labours, will be a mere bird's-eye view. Speaking for myself
personally,
Kant's school has meant the greatest
295 KANT
influence
in my life. Renunciation,
which
is no lack of courage; religion finally purified from superstition;
science,
the prerogatives of which are indestructibly established, but which is
modestly conscious of its own limits: that is the high school of inmost
freedom: here the scales of omnipresent superstition fall from our
eyes, —
the superstition of history, of the churches, of the philosophies, of
the
puffed-up vulgar natural history: here we have room to breathe and rest
for thought; we learn to be our own masters, we learn not to fear: at
last
a philosopher is born to us who does not impose upon us with some non
ens,
who wishes to prove nothing that is incapable of proof, and does not
hold
the marsh of empiricism to be the free open sea; here is natural
system,
conscious art of comprehension, and therewith a philosophy rounded off
and perfected on all sides: it is good to live here! “Everything, even
that which is the loftiest,“ says Kant (Rel. xii), “grows smaller under
the hands of men“: but he has achieved that which is most rare, he has
made nothing smaller, neither science, nor religion, nor art, neither
law
nor commandment, neither nature nor freedom. If he everywhere set up
boundaries,
he at the same time everywhere pulled down barriers; a boundary guards
us against the night of confusion:
the removal of barriers opens up a free
view into what lies beyond: in this way everything grew and was
fashioned
under his hand. But these are matters which cannot be communicated,
they
must be worked up, conquered, experienced; only so far, only so far as
the outer threshold, can the helping hand give support.
And now, before
starting upon
any discussion of practical reason and freedom, we must give some
attention
to a critical buffer-land. As you saw by our last scheme (p. 258),
looked
at from the objective standpoint, which is the standpoint which every
simple
person first adopts,
296 KANT
the
Thing and the Ego are opposed to
one another. It is true that we have seen in detail that each of these
stands in correlation to the other, that is to say, that they are
interchangeable.
But transcendental philosophy teaches us that we never can take in
everything
at one glance; we must be one-sided, otherwise we are at a standstill;
exact science is the most glorious example of successful one-sidedness;
but the man who is worldly-wise must, in distinction to all others, be
conscious
of his one-sidedness, he must be lord over himself. To this end it will
be indispensable that we should ask ourselves how Kant looked upon the
Thing and the Ego. Here again it is not my purpose to attempt any
technical
exposition, but only to indicate the style of this order of thought;
whoever
stands face to face with style without understanding it, no matter how
learned and clever he may be, will never succeed in grasping Kant's
thoughts
at this critical juncture, whereas the man who is familiar with the
style,
will find everything in Kant comprehensible in itself.
This excursus forms
an
indispensable
link between the two parts of the lecture. It certainly touches an
abstract
consideration, because we have Kant alone in view, still, it must be my
endeavour to force as clear an expression as possible out of the
remotest
and most unfamiliar thought of the great philosopher, and I hope that
it
may be a perspicuous, easily grasped scheme, worthy of being remembered
and of further consideration. Here too we at the same time obtain as a
contribution to our study of the personality the valuable addition of a
deep insight into its workshop.
Among Kant's
technical terms it
is unquestionably the Ding an sich,
the Thing in itself, that has
achieved
the greatest popularity — it is not rare to find it in the comic
papers:
at the same time we hardly ever find any understanding of what Kant
means
by it; indeed, it is
297 KANT
impossible
to understand it without
having
previously mastered the conception of the transcendental.
In the first place
here again,
as is always the case with Kant, it is needful to arrive at as simple a
conception as possible. He says, “The idea of doubting the existence of
things never entered my mind“ (P. § 13 A, III). What countless
miles
of space lie between this and the usual subtleties of the schools! All
the well-known vexed questions of the sensualists, the idealists, the
sophists, — how
we arrive at conclusions about things by the impressions of the senses,
and even how we try to recognise these things — all this interests Kant
not
one whit; the things are there, to doubt them is an occupation for men
with an unpardonable amount of leisure, a game for the philosophical
nursery.
In fact, either they are the business of mere philosophical dunces, or
else they are just wrangling: the “phenomenon“ must be the “thing“ that
we know and which we can alone know; the distinction into phenomena and
“things in themselves cannot be admitted in a positive sense,“ writes
Kant
(R.V. 311); it only occurs in the critique of recognition on behalf of
systematic
organisation. Kant waxes wroth over this, and says that it is “a
scandal
of philosophy and of human reason in general to be obliged to take only
upon trust the existence of things outside of ourselves,
notwithstanding
that we possess the whole material for recognition, even for our inmost
senses, and should it occur to any one to doubt that existence not to
be
able to meet him with any satisfactory proof“ (R.V. xxxix); then he
says
forcibly, “the consciousness of my own existence is at the same a
direct
consciousness of the existence of other things outside of myself“ (R.V.
276). If then the thinkers of all schools are agreed that it is
impossible
for man directly to perceive things as they are in themselves, — and in
this
a Condillac agrees with a Shaftesbury, a Locke with a Fichte, — it is
character-
298 KANT
istic
of Kant that he looks upon the
problem set up as idle, — idle at any rate so far as the fundamental
transcendental
consideration is concerned. He says, “in relation to the reality of
outer
objects it is just as little necessary for me to come to conclusions,
as
in the contemplation of the reality of the object of my inner sense (my
thoughts),“ and he “admits a reality in matter as the phenomenon of a
reality, which requires no proof, but is directly perceived“ (R.V., v.
I, 371). That is why Kant is able to affirm of his system, — “in view
of
all imaginable experience everything remains just as if I had never
started
upon this departure from universal opinion“ (P. § 13).
This, I take it, must
now be
plain.
The concrete question whether there are “things,“ and how they are “in
reality,“ as people say, constituted, does not affect us, and we have
nothing
to do with the well-known man who objected, “throw yourself crosswise
over
the rails of a railroad, you will soon notice that there are things,“
since
we have in no way deserted this common opinion, and not only admit the
existence of bodies, but go still further, for if we were unable to
prove
it, we should postulate it. The difficulty lies elsewhere: but
transcendental
philosophy has discovered it.
For transcendental
philosophy
has shown, as you now know, and as later on you will learn from Kant in
all detail, that recognition and the thing recognised are too closely
interwoven
for it to be possible for them ever to be separated from one another.
In
this the qualities of the senses play the smallest part. That colour,
taste,
smell, etc., abandon the thing, and are shown as subjective
physiological
impressions of the Ego, is the less significant as we are here only
dealing
with subjective impressions which apart from that may be different in
different
people. Kant's critique, however, shows the objective in things so
exactly
conditioned by reason, just
299 KANT
as
exactly as the objective in reason
is conditioned by things, that, freed from the law of the Ego, as
little
remains of the Thing as there does of the Ego when it is emancipated
from
the law of the thing. Thing and Ego cannot in reality be separated from
one another; the Ego without any matter for recognitions would be an
utterly
empty conception; the Thing, unless fashioned in the architectonic
unity
of a consciousness, could, as thing, have no existence: what remains is
the blind conception of a nonentity. And here we have every reason to
ask
ourselves, what is meant when a philosopher comes and talks of a thing
“in itself“ which is to possess existence as a thing not correlated to
an
Ego “in itself,“ but independent, emancipated from all recognition?
That
happens quietly and in apparent innocence; but if we once admit it,
then
every dogma has struck roots. For here is the critical point for all
philosophy; here dogmatic materialism and dogmatic spiritualism obtain
a
foothold, — the
sensualistic scepticism of a Hume as well as the logical rationalism of
a Fichte. It is at this precise point that transcendental philosophy
parts
company with every other philosophy: that is why Kant is always on
guard
and ever returns to the thing
“in itself“ and the Ego “in itself,“
for he knows that whoever misunderstands him here can in no direction
really
grasp his philosophy.
The following
observation is
obviously
of primary importance. There never can be a simple problem for Kant:
what
are “Things in themselves“? or — treated in a more abstract manner,
what
is the “Thing in itself“? The transcendentalist can only take the
Thing
into consideration, if he takes the Ego in addition. This is enough out
of their own title to condemn the majority of the learned works upon
Kant's
“Thing in itself,“ together with the famous question as to whether Kant
admits a Thing “in itself,“ or a number of Things “in
300 KANT
themselves“:
manifestly absurd as
this
question is, it down to the present day occupies the attention of men
who
are worthy of respect. As a general proposition it is not only more
practical,
but even philosophically more correct, to speak of Things in the
plural:
but when we are talking of transcendental combination, it is simpler to
describe all nature as a Thing, just as the critique of recognition
speaks
of “Reason“ in the singular, not of a number of single “Reasons.“ So
Kant
uses the singular or the plural according to the connection of
thoughts;
on one occasion he sets at rest a puzzled questioner with the answer,
whether
singular or plural “is not determined“ (N. I, 209). What significance
can
number have outside of space, time, and the categories of dimension?
The
only essential, as we have said, is this: the Thing cannot be dealt
with
apart from the Ego. A Thing “in itself“ parted from Reason, or more
intelligibly
expressed, a Thing impenetrable to Reason, is a No-thought even more
than
it is a No-thing; not because it is impossible that there should be
anything
outside of Reason, but because Reason alone possesses the power of
fashioning.
Even the anti-metaphysical scientific Clifford — certainly one of the
most
intellectual men of the past century, is compelled to admit, “the
universe
consists entirely of mind-stuff.“ “Object“ is a conception, not a
perception:
“The object upon which perceptions are directed, exists only in the
understanding“
(N. I, 133). Conversely the same holds good of the Ego. In the same
section of the Prolegomena in
which Kant affirms “the
reality of bodies“ and “the existence of my soul (= the Ego),“ he says,
“the question whether bodies exist as bodies outside of my thoughts can
without hesitation be contradicted in nature,“ and adds the same in
respect
of the Ego, “as soul in the sense of empirical psychology,“ the
existence
of which in time must equally be denied 80 (§ 49). It is
immaterial
whether we here talk
301 KANT
of
a Thing or of Nature, of an Ego or
a Reason (as collective): Thing-Nature cannot exist without Ego-Reason,
and
vice versa. That is why Kant rejects in every key of the gamut this
question
about Things in themselves, when it bears an empirical meaning. “What
Things in themselves may be is something that I do not know and do not
want to
know“ (R.V. 332); “the transcendental object (= Thing in itself) is a
mere
something, of which we should not so much as understand the nature even
if some one could explain it to us“ (R.V. 333). “We will not even allow
it to occur to ourselves to institute an enquiry as to what the objects
of our senses are in respect of what they may be in themselves, that is
to say, without any reference to our senses“ (R.V. I, 380), and so
forth
ad infinitum.
How simply Kant's
treatment of
this knotty question works itself out! from an empirical point of view
there are Things and there are Egos: but as soon as we think more
profoundly
about the matter we observe that it is impossible to separate Thing and
Ego: the Things only exist for me, not in themselves; Egos only exist
in
relation to Things, not in themselves.
The first thing that
strikes us
is that the question as to Thing and Ego is in Kant regarded not as a
subtlety,
but as something simple and universally intelligible. Remember Goethe's
saying, — in nature everything is simpler than we can think, but at the
same
time more intricate than can be understood: that holds good also of
every
master-intellect and its thoughts, for they are intimately related to
nature.
It follows that if in respect of this problem of the Thing-Ego we were
to content ourselves with this grandly simple fundamental perception,
we
should have achieved but little: now comes the intricacy, the system
which
is just as indispensable in the case of human recognition as it is in
the
study of nature. It is only in these days that the fortifica-
302 KANT
tions
against sophistry and dogma are
being erected: as we know — against subtlety only subtlety can prevail
(p. 179).
If we were to leave
it at this,
that Thing and Ego are inseparably interwoven, up would jump the
monist,
the annihilator of all forms, the apostle of chaos. That was what
wrecked
Plato's glorious but misunderstood world of thought, and Kant was still
alive when the most zealous of his pupils, Fichte, was teaching that
the
non-ego, as he called the Thing, was simply nothing, until at last the
empirical monists laid hold of the matter by the sillier end, and
affirmed
conversely that only the Thing had any existence. But not only the
monist,
but also the thinkers in other directions would gain a free field for
their
various non-critical and anti-critical structures; for it is manifest
that
all of us, from Sancho Panza to Newton, always do distinguish and must
distinguish in practice between Thing and Ego, and therefore we are
daily
threatened by the danger that, — like Bruno, like Locke, like
Schopenhauer,
like Helmholtz,
like everybody, — we should take as our starting-point
a
false
premiss, and in consequence arrive at a false distinction, unless
transcendental
criticism should have given us a precise, flawless exposition of the
possible
conceptions of the Thing and the Ego, and accurately fixed the
boundaries
of each of them. That is what Kant does.
What I just now
hinted at half
as a joke, he treats in sober earnest. He postulates the Thing “in
itself“
and the Ego “in itself.“ As a matter of fact they cannot be separated;
the Thing is at the same time a thought, and the Ego is at the same
time
an object; 81 but
what does that matter? All exact science is ideal.
What
we need is a method, — a method of thinking, knowing, living, — and
that
means
the fashioning of thought, knowledge, and life. “Transcendental
philosophy,“
says Kant,
303 KANT
“goes
in front of and precedes the
affirmation
of the things thought“ (Üg. III, 314), it has therefore in a
certain
sense
a free hand; and now comes the new — the Copernican — proposition: it
does
not
prove the existence of things, it would regard the attempt to do so as
senseless — but it sets up the things (or to use the common expression
“the“
Thing) as a hypothesis. Kant with the utmost possible distinctness
declares,
“the Thing in itself is not an object given outside of conception, but
only the postulate of an ideal conception“ (Üg. III, 555). This
saying,
“only the postulate of an ideal conception,“ should be graven on our
memory.
It turns the scale against a whole library about the “Thing in itself.“
Exactly as the ordinary man cannot dispense with the conceptions Thing
and Ego, so does the transcendental system stand in need of them: but
Kant
justifies his proceeding to himself, whereas the other adopts it quite
unconsciously; Kant's conception runs exactly parallel to the “common
opinion,“
and is accordingly un-academic and popular, and yet it absolutely
raises
the standard of perfectly refined thought. That is what Kant himself
says
when, in his declaration against Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre (doctrine
of science), he writes that his transcendental philosophy “is only to
be
considered from the standpoint of common sense adequately cultivated
for
purposes of similarly abstract investigations.“ Here you have the
difference:
the ordinary man and not a few professors of philosophy, — if it were
only
in order to father the opinion upon Kant and fasten the blame for it
upon
him — profess the belief that they must accept the Things in themselves
in
order to explain the existence of phenomena as the effect of a cause; 82
Kant, on the contrary, looks upon all explanation as mere chatter; like
exact science he has only one aim, — comprehension, and a thing only
becomes
comprehensible by systematic connection, not by the fiction of a cause.
304 KANT
The
Thing “in itself“ and the Ego “in
itself“ are for Kant's critical system of reason what the aether, the
atom,
and energy are in our physics. All these conceptions are admittedly
unthinkable
and indeed full of contradictions; their acceptation is arbitrary; the
old teachers of religion might have said, the attempt at recognition is
a sin: yet these are the weapons with which we conquered. For example,
that is how thinking physicists laugh at those enthusiastic German
empiricists,
— perhaps the queerest sort of
visionaries
that the world has ever seen, — who have chosen so-called energy for
their
veiled Goddess, and out of the mouth of this hypostatised
personification
of mere relations to other relations receive with adoration a so-called
philosophy:
none the less do these thinking
Physicists
praise the mighty work of Robert
Mayer, and then with all precision
draw
distinctions between kinetic energy and potential energy, etc. In his
system
not even the thinking physicist can dispense with this conception of
energy,
all he desires is that the myth should not become a creed; what should
we say to a mathematician who should wish to erect an altar to the root
of minus one! 83
Kant's doctrine of the Thing in itself and the Ego in
itself must be considered in the strictest analogy to this hypothetical
method of exact science: you have just heard it from his own lips:
“not an object, but the position of
a thing of thought.“
All error about Kant has its roots in the
ignorance
of
this first, initial, fundamental fact.
There it is in black and white in a hundred places; there it stands, if
we have learnt to see with Kant's eyes, in every pronouncement of
Kant's
three critiques. A Schopenhauer, for instance, looks upon Kant's Thing
“in itself,“ as a real actual “Thing,“ as a Thing, an object which he
then
discovers within himself, revealing it and showing it as the material
foundation
of a whole philosophy: while others prove in clumsy books that Kant's
thing
in itself
305 KANT
is
not logically consistent, as if
forsooth
the aether, which, although tough as steel, nevertheless admits bodies
to
pass through it without friction, corresponded better to the
requirements
of a formal logic. Again, others believe that they make a great
discovery,
if they show that Kant's Thing in itself has one meaning in one of his
writings and another in another, although he himself was at pains to
set
forth that the hypothesis of a thing necessarily assumes different
meanings
of the thing, exactly as there is no available conception of energy,
unless
we admit different standpoints from which energy is seen in an
essentially
different, indeed mathematically divergent, significance, except that
one
energy stands in a system of interchangeability with another, so that
this
plurality can once more be conceived as unity.
Now that we have
fundamentally
grasped how far a Thing in itself and an Ego in itself are no more than
methods of thinking, merely acceptations, hypotheses, or, as Plato so
picturesquely
puts it, “springboards for knowledge,“ you must yet be shortly
initiated
into the necessarily intricate systematics of such a hypothetical Thing
and Ego; otherwise you will not be sufficiently armed against the false
prophets. A little attention will suffice to enable me to make my
purpose
clear.
There is such an
actual
interchangeability
between Thing and Ego, that from the outset it is to be expected that
even
in the Thing hypothetically separated from the Ego, and in the Ego
separated
from the Thing, the symmetrical relations will exactly correspond. That
is precisely the case. Only it is always easier to speak of the Thing,
and that for the reason that in the previous lecture I tried to explain
by the allegory of “this side and the other“ (p. 518). This Thing
thought
of as separated from the Ego stands more in the background of mental
perspective
than the Ego, in which on account
306 KANT
of
its closer proximity, all the
lines
run almost parallel to one another, that is to say, point to infinity,
and therefore afford no picture. In a similar way it is much easier to
make oneself clear as to the almost perceptible fiction “atom,“ than as
to the almost entirely imaginary fiction “aether.“ That is the true
reason
why all the world talks of the Thing in itself, but rarely of its
indispensable
correlative, the Ego in itself. With this premiss we will first speak
of
the Thing, and for the present pay no attention to the Ego.
Once more let me take
an important
saying from Kant's last notes: “transcendental philosophy is, or rather
makes, a system at the same time objective and subjective“ (Üg.
III,
370).
You now know exactly what is meant by this objective-subjective and
subjective-objective,
since we have discussed the matter thoroughly (at p. 253 seq., and p.
288
seq).; but it applies not only
to the transcendental system as a whole,
but repeats itself everywhere, at every stage: whatever you may take
into
consideration transcendentally will split up into an objective and a
subjective.
If we separate the Thing from the Ego, and in the first place look upon
the Thing in itself as the objective of both, this same antithesis will
nevertheless once more come to the front, and now of course inside of
the
Thing. With mathematical precision, as if we were dealing with an
optical
phenomenon of reflection, there now arise two Things in themselves, the
one with objective colouring, the other with subjective colouring. The
objectively coloured one is the special, real Thing in itself; that
which
is subjectively coloured is the so-called “Thing of thought“ (in Greek
noumenon). But if we look
firmly at each one of these two, omitting
the
other altogether, it again resolves itself into two halves, of which
the
one is objective in relation to the other, while the second is
subjective
in relation to the first, and so we now have four different Things in
themselves.
307 KANT
I will repeat myself in order
to
be certain that you see the matter clearly: as soon as we have supposed
a Thing in itself, we find that we must afford space for two distinctly
different conceptions, and if we now consider the matter more deeply
and
at the same time follow the clue which the transcendental system gives
us, we find ourselves compelled for the sake of perfect clearness once
again carefully to separate from one another two constituent parts in
each
single half.
The halving into real
Thing and
Thing of thought is of far greater importance than the extremely subtle
division into four; in the first place we will consider it by itself.
It
results without more ado out of the fundamental hypothesis of
transcendental
philosophy, according to which two branches of human recognition have
to
be accepted, — sensibility and understanding — without the
collaboration of
which as a general proposition we arrive at no recognition. In every
recognition
sensibility and understanding both find a place. Now if I wish to
arrive
at a simple unambiguous Thing “in itself,“ at a Thing lying outside of my
recognition,
I have the choice between two roads, the road of sensibility and the
road of understanding: unless I
should
choose one or the other I should remain caught in the net of
conditioned
human recognition.
Here, however, is the
place to
say a few words in more exact explanation of the fundamental hypothesis
of Kant's criticism of recognition, otherwise his analysis of
the Thing in itself would remain
indistinct.
Kant affirms — as our
first lecture
showed
(I, p. 42) — that the essence of reason cannot be understood unless
we accept two branches of recognition,
whereas, if only we set up this hypothesis, everything becomes
systematically
explicable and intelligible. But Kant further on spares no pains in
proving
that understanding without sensibility can effect nothing, indeed that
it is unthink-
308 KANT
able,
an empty conception, and that
equally
sensibility without understanding remains a blind nonentity; — and so
the
hypothetical, methodical character of the division into halves is
manifest.
Not indeed as though we were dealing with a pure invention, with a mere
arbitrary house of cards; that is no more the case here than in the
acceptation
of matter and aether, even less so. Kant's distinction justifies itself
step by step, and is simply the philosophical expression for what every
man instinctively thinks for himself: but what is ingenious and
masterful
in it, is the clear separation, the stroke of a blade, by which that
which
is organically one is made to appear as two: that is architectonic,
that
is fashioning by knowledge, method of investigation; clearness is the
work
of Man, and it is not for nothing that we talk of making ourselves
clear.
Out of the transcendental combination of understanding and sensibility
recognition arises: that is Kant's hypothesis.
But we must also know
exactly
what Kant means by these words “sensibility“ and “understanding.“ Under
the expression “sensibility“ we must not conceive that he means the
activities
of our senses, feeling, seeing, smelling, hearing. In Kant the word
never
points in that direction: for he, as we know, never deals with
physiology
and psychology, but searches after objective reason there where
consciousness
arises, before there is any question of the affirmation of Things: we
must
first establish what is phenomenon, what is thinking, what is
recognition,
what is idea, and so forth: transcendental philosophy is the attempt to
find an answer to these questions according to the method of exact
science;
it is impossible therefore that the functions of an empirically present
body should come into consideration. Far rather is space, to which with
certain limitations time is superadded, the one and only form of
sensibility
in the field of transcendentalism. Whether a reason
309 KANT
receives
its impressions through one
sense, or five senses, or fifty different senses, is here absolutely
immaterial;
for this is a subjective matter. In the word “sensibility“ as Kant uses
it there is something of allegory; the allegory is more delicate, more
refined than Plato's corresponding allegory of the “Domain of the
Visible,“
but an allegory it is: where Kant aims at precision of expression he
uses
the word “receptivity,“ not “sensibility.“ Receptivity with him implies
that in every recognition there is an element of reception which has to
be proved; it is the object which first arouses the subject: in order
to
be understood Kant calls this sensibility; which implies that we must
imagine
this transcendental reception of impressions according to the analogy
of
impressions by means of the bodily senses. And I must make the same
reservation
in the case of the expression “understanding.“ In Kant's system
understanding
is conceived as “pure,“ that is to say, as unmixed with sensibility.
That
is naturally an abstraction, the “position of a thing of thought,“ and
yet not more abstract than the position of an aether to be regarded as
separated from matter, and a corresponding matter separated from
aether.
This is how we have to proceed
in exact science: this is the essence
of scientific method. We must not for a moment think of our
understanding,
in the ordinary acceptation of the word, as penetrated by sensibility;
far rather is the word “understanding“ a mere sign-post: where Kant
wishes
to speak exactly he uses the word “spontaneity.“ In all recognition
there
is not only a “receiving,“ but also a creating; it is at the contact of
the subject that the object arises. That is therefore the exact meaning
of the pronouncement that it is out of the transcendental combination
of
understanding and sensibility that recognition arises.
I am almost ashamed
of myself
for laying, at the very last stage of our study, such strong emphasis
on
some-
310 KANT
thing
so self-evident. Still, a look
round will perhaps fill you with astonishment to find understanding and
sensibility treated almost everywhere, even by the most boasted
exponents
of Kant, not transcendentally but empirically and psychologically: in
that
way Kant's philosophy is turned into an insufferably confused
gibberish:
to sweep it clean is the most that can be done. At the head of these
heretics
stands no less a man than Schopenhauer. Over and over again he says of
Kant's philosophy that it is “a critique of the functions of the brain“
— certainly the most false of all the falsehoods that have been
uttered
about Kant, and at the same time a seductive falsehood, as is
everything
plausible and easily grasped. The transcendental goes “before“ the
affirmation
of things, whereas the phenomenon, known as brain, is just a product, —
a
product out of understanding and sensibility, and therefore cannot
possibly
give us the foundation for a critique of recognition: “Everything
contained
in a phenomenon is itself phenomenon,“ says Kant. The fundamental error
of this conception appears more strikingly when Schopenhauer is
perpetually
repeating that space (the form of sensibility) is only subjective,
“only
depends upon the subject,“ and so forth, so that at last he sets up the
formula, “space exists only in the brain.“ 84 This interpretation which
Schopenhauer adopts from Fichte and wrongfully ascribes to Kant, is the
direct contradiction of all transcendental critique: for the essence of
this philosophy is that it comprehends everything at the same time
objectively
and subjectively. What do we mean when we say that there is in the
first
place a brain, and then, as a consequence of the activity of this
brain,
a space? What conception can we form of a brain that should not be in
space?
We do not carry space in our brain, but we rather conceive to ourselves
brains because the space is the given form of our perception. In his
attack
upon
311 KANT
Eberhard
(1st sect., beginning of
c.),
Kant quotes the latter's words, “space and time have at the same time
subjective and objective foundations,“
with the remark, “here we have precisely my own affirmations ... my
critique
affirms this literally and repeatedly.“ It is true that Kant
occasionally
says of space (and of time), that it is a “subjective condition,“ or a
“subjective quality of sensibility“ — but here it is necessary not to
lose
sight of the qualifying words, “of sensibility“ (e.g. R.V. 42); there
again
inside of sensibility, that is to say, “receptivity,“ the distinction
is
made between the more subjective part of receptivity — the condition of
“being
affected“ — and the more objective part, namely the creation of the
impression: 85
sensibility is just as objective (and just as subjective)
as the
understanding,
and Kant never wearies of bringing forward the objective reality of
space.
This organic breaking up into two component parts, which we distinguish
as objective and subjective, takes place, as we have said, at every
stage,
exactly as we can show negative and positive electricity in reciprocal
action out of the greatest complex of phenomena down to the smallest
attainable
proceeding of nature. What Kant says is not what Schopenhauer makes of
it, namely, that the object is a “phenomenon of the brain,“ 86 but that
the objects “as phenomena can only exist in ourselves“ (R.V. 59). The
words “as phenomena“ must not be overlooked: object and subject are
always
and everywhere hypothetically presumed by Kant in the interests of
systematic
recognition: but he lays stress upon the point (and therein consists
the
justification and value of the word “critique“), that the object must
in reality stand over against the subject merely as phenomenon, and the
subject over against the object only as Law (Plato says idea). 87 If in
common parlance we talk of phenomenon and Thing as antitheses, and if
we
did the same in our Bruno lecture (p. 429 seq.),
312 KANT
you
must now understand that this was
only out of regard for those not yet schooled in critique: they have to
learn that these two conceptions belong to different sorts of
recognition;
the phenomenon is that which we receive empirically, the Thing is a
transcendental
hypothesis (of which men were not conscious before Plato and Kant).
Whoever
has learnt to distinguish sees as antithesis, or rather as counterpart
of the Thing, not phenomenon, but the Ego, and as counterpart of the
phenomenon,
not the Thing, but the Law. Phenomenon, even the phenomenon which we
call
brain, can only exist where combination in harmony with law, that is to
say, objective reason, is presumed. When therefore Schopenhauer talks
of
space in the brain as a sort of epitome of “the great doctrine of the
great
Kant,“ he makes a masterly mistake; as a matter of fact he turns Kant's
teaching topsy-turvy — neither more nor less! The wide popularity
amongst
the unlearned, and the seductive charm of such convenient, because
uncritical,
thinking, made this short digression necessary.
We go back to the
Thing “in
itself“
and know exactly what is meant when criticism maintains that there is
not
one way of reaching this hypothetical Thing, but two different and
equally
justifiable roads, that of the understanding and that of sensibility.
The
phenomenon, that means the thing as I see it, is woven out of
understanding
and sensibility, out of spontaneity and receptivity: both point to one
another and are directed upon one another like light and the eye: any
one
who dreams of escaping out of the meshes of this web, and arriving at a
single unambiguous thing not “as I see it,“ but “in itself,“ must
make
his choice of a road.
The simple-minded man
will always
answer in the first place, “I choose the road of sensibility, that
alone
can lead to the Thing.“ His confidence will not hold out long. For in
the
first place all the impressions of the
313 KANT
senses,
seeing, feeling, etc., have
to
be brushed away as physiologically subjective, and nothing remains but
Ernst Mach's solid lump in space 88 not conceived by any one
sense, but
only conceived as extended in space by the common form of all
sensibility. 89
But now, since we have chosen the road of sensibility, all the
definitions
of the understanding fall away also, — everything, therefore, which
indicates
and fixes a dimension, a degree, an interchange, a value; for these are
all conceptions: the definition of a Thing is not a mere impression
received,
but is the consequence of comparison and judgment: this is precisely
the
function of spontaneity, allegorically called understanding. So the
Thing
“in itself,“ which we believed ourselves to have reached by this road
is
an utterly confused conception, neither large nor small, neither unity
nor plurality, neither strong nor weak, standing in no relation to
anything
else: — it were better to call it chaos. Here we see that it is
understanding
and not sensibility that we have to thank mainly for the conception
“Thing“;
without understanding we arrive
at a true non ens, that
lies entirely outside of all possible experience. The judgment passed
upon
this
non ens
has been rendered familiar to
you by the lecture on Descartes: “Perceptions without conceptions are
blind.“ And yet as a mere conception of boundary we may turn this same
non ens to good account.
If we should set out
upon the
other way, it certainly would at first seem as though we should have
made
appreciable progress. The Thing of thought (Noumenon) is at any rate a
logical consistent thought; in consequence of that it is something
determined,
not chaotic:
it is capable of discussion, whereas
of the other thing there remained nothing left but a dumb and so to
speak
“abstract“ feeling: that is why almost all thinkers of the most
different
schools, when they wish to arrive at a thing “in itself,“ end by
adopting
this way of the Thing
314 KANT
of
thought: and most of them are
content
to abide by
it. We then speak of intellectual
perception,
and ever since Aristotle's time there have been plenty of fairy-tales
to tell of it: Hegel in especial has had much to say about
“supersensual
perception.“ Here then we become acquainted with the value of Kant's
purely
objective and systematic method. For two-thirds of the Critique of Pure
Reason are devoted to the flawless proof that spontaneity as a
component
part of recognition without the co-operation of receptivity, is just as
entirely meaningless as sensibility without understanding. To go into
this
in greater detail would require on your part an amount of knowledge
upon
which unfortunately I am unable to count: it is here that illusion
sends
down deep roots, and an accurate study of the chief works of the great
thinker is needed in order to extirpate them: I will only bring forward
one proposition which forms the corner stone of the critical structure,
and which will afford you, even if you should only half understand it,
much matter for fruitful thought. In the passage in question, after
having
shown in detail that apart from the application to given (“given“!)
perceptions
of the senses the conceptions of the understanding possess no
importance,
Kant concludes with the words, “sensibility gives reality to
understanding
whilst at the same time it restricts it“ (R.V. 187): in plain
language, — sensibility
makes understanding a reality, while at the same time it shows its
limitation
within that which is given by the senses. Rationalism and Panlogic,
which
were discussed in the Bruno lecture, are by these means shown to be
objectless.
If by persistent attention you succeed in obtaining as pure a
conception
of understanding as you did of sensibility, — that is to say, without
any
recourse to phenomenon, — you will discover that you are left with
nothing
but “a mere empty logical form“ (R.V. 346). If the real Thing revealed
itself as chaos, — the Thing of thought is a mere phantom scheme
315 KANT
and
nothing more. The
characterisation
of this we learnt from the Descartes lecture: “Thoughts without contents are empty.“
We have thus arrived
at a
conception
sufficing our purposes and one that is at any rate as perceptible as is
possible in considering such abstract
questions. Of the two main kinds of the Thing “in itself“ the one is
blind
perception without conception, the other empty thought without
contents:
the first is the real Thing, the second is the “Thing of thought.“
You may possibly be
disappointed
to see so little result from all this. And yet this little is full of
value.
For in the perfectly clear and exhaustive critique of all possible
conceptions
of so-called “Things in themselves“ lies the only safeguard against all
Dogmatism. To take one single but very impressive example, every dogma
of a creation, such as that which has been adopted by Christianity from
Judaism, falls to the ground: it shows itself to be senseless — that is
to
say, if we accept it from a material point of view: for since we
neither
by the road of understanding nor by the road of sensibility arrive at
“Things,“
but on the one side at a no-thought, and on the other at a no-thing, so
all that we call “coming into being“ can never be anything more than
variation
in the phenomenon, never the origin of a Thing:
the so-called “nothing“ out of which
God produced the World, together
with its
correlative
the Thing, loses all positive meaning. Kant holds that if we should be
willing to grant even the possibility of an act of creation, all
experience, that is to say, experience
in the scientific objective sense, would be swept away (cf. R.V. §
251 seq.). But besides this
the Thing in itself is of great importance
within the critical system: for in its various kinds it tends in all
directions
to an almost perceptible delimitation where otherwise all would remain
purely abstract. So, for example, as Kant repeatedly brings forward, the
316 KANT
“Thing
of thought,“ possessing only a
negative use, in this peculiar position has the great value of
“limiting
the encroachment of sensibility.“ You saw a while ago how pitiably this
sensibility with all its confidence and self-consciousness was wrecked
when it trusted its own powers: in the conception of the Thing of
thought
we, as it were, embody all the far-reaching critical considerations
which
set forth the nullity of the common acceptation of a Thing in itself of
the senses, and so even if the Thing of thought should only serve
negatively,
we may yet say with Kant, “it is for all that not an arbitrary
invention,
but is connected with the limitation of sensibility“ (R.V. 311). In the
same way the real Thing is connected with the limitation of the
understanding.
Here we have, as it were, two warning allegories: if we stand in the
shadow
of the one we are faced by the threatening image of the other.
The importance of
this “conception
of boundary“ as Kant calls the Thing “in itself,“ however, reaches
further.
Specially it serves to confine empiricism within bounds. For as Kant
picturesquely
expresses himself, this investigation of the conception of a Thing in
itself
with its negative result creates so to speak “an empty space“ all round
empiricism (R.V. 315). The so widespread delusion that empirical
experience
is potentially unlimited, — that the world of phenomena girdles the
whole
sum of our life and recognition, — combined with the simple assumption
of
the majority of investigators of nature that we should arrive at an
explanation
as to the essence of things if only the enquiries into nature were
pushed
far enough: — all this is by
these means destroyed
for ever. The boundary line of empiricism is drawn with mathematical
accuracy:
whoever steps over it reaches the empty space of the “Thing in itself.“
What we call the progress of science, is no violation of the boundaries
of empiricism, but only a further dissection of phenomenon (nature) by
317 KANT
a
methodically more exact development
of receptivity and spontaneity: what we gain here is necessarily always
at once subjective and objective: there is no way of escape: exact
science
(see the Leonardo lecture) leads in the end to mathematical equations
without
any background, — to motion in empty space: more nearly to the Thing in
itself
can no man approach: every one who has studied criticism recognises
here
the boundary pillar, the empty Thing of thought: conception without
perception.
There is another
conception which
at the same time obtains a decisive systematic importance: the boundary
itself. The Thing in itself may be of no more than negative use; the
boundary,
on the contrary, which it has taught us to draw, possesses a positive
value.
It is the place (if I may so express myself) of that mysterious “Third“
to which attention was so frequently called in the Plato lecture (see
specially p. 162 seq.). Later
on we shall learn from Kant that between
understanding and sensibility (spontaneity and receptivity) there also
exists a “Third,“ the organic central point of recognition, the point
where
combination takes place, where all phenomenon is eternally arising and
eternally vanishing: Kant calls
it “transcendental
imagination,“
and shows how it is at the same time spontaneous and receptive. 90
Easier
of comprehension is the view that all ideas only have their appointed
“place“
on the mathematically exact boundary between phenomenon and the empty
space
of the hypothetical Thing. Here, for example,
the idea of metamorphosis with which
we dealt in the first lecture remains in suspense. Here too, according
to Kant, should the idea “God“ remain in suspense for the
philosophically
educated man, “exactly on the boundary of all permissible employment of
reason.“ So far from being idle, ideas are, on the contrary, as Plato
taught
for the benefit of men who did not understand him,
318 KANT
—
the only living thing in that
recognition
which is the essence of our being; the Thing in itself is empty space,
and even the many-coloured world of phenomenon equally resolves itself
into an empty space for those who are the most accurate in their
empirical
contemplation — that is to say, for the exact physicists: but between
both,
immediately upon the boundary (which is Plato's μεθεξις
elucidated
by Kant), ideas flash up like lightning. And now we need the true
definition
of the boundary to save us from falling either into the dreary, flat,
and
wicked mania of the empiricists, which denies all value, all
importance,
all truth, to ideas which alone bring consistency and meaning into
experience, — or
into the false-witted, impudent and often criminal delusion of the
priests — criminal
because it is the robber of conscience, — which teaches that
certain
ideas
are a revelation from the Beyond, and therefore explain what takes
place
within nature by what takes place outside of her. The systematically
exact
conception of boundary, that is the various warning allegories of the
Thing
“in itself,“ teach us “on the one side not to extend unlimitedly the
recognition
of experience to such a degree that there should be nothing left us for
recognition, but merely World; and on the other, not to overstep the
boundary
of experience and to attempt to judge of things outside of the same as
Things in themselves“ (P. § 57). Kant's matter, the “style“ of
which
I am at pains to define, would be very correctly described if it were
called
a system of the definition of boundaries, and his doctrine, if we were
to name it, a doctrine of the incomparable importance of border lands.
I hope that these
cursory hints
will suffice to explain the distinctive importance of the conception of
a “Thing in itself“ within the Kantian system. Hitherto I have only
spoken
of theoretical reason; soon we shall see that the Thing in itself, in
precisely
the same sense as the mere
319 KANT
position
of a “Thing of thought,“ or
of a problematical conception, as Kant often calls it, also renders
indispensable
services on the boundary between theoretical and practical reason. But
as a conclusion to these observations, and at the same time as a
resting-place
between the last height that we have climbed, and the one which we have
still to conquer, I will commend to your attention a small scheme of
the
Thing in itself which has been of great service to me. I attach no more
value to this scheme than to all the others that I have given for your
benefit in these lectures: it is on one side a question of memoria technica,
and on the other an illustration of abstract relations which should
stimulate
to frequent and ever more profound thinking.
You will perhaps
remember the
scheme which I proposed in our Descartes lecture as illustrative of the
tolerably complicated relations between symbol, hypothesis, scheme and
theory. We found symbol and hypothesis to be very nearly related, both
of them having for their aim the clearing up of the thing thought,
symbol
more in conjunction with the senses,
hypothesis dealing rather with understanding: scheme and theory, on the
other hand, were concerned with bringing thought to bear upon the thing
perceived, the scheme again rather as a perceptive thought, theory as
an
abstract thought. From these considerations there resulted further a
relation
between symbol and scheme on the one hand, both belonging to the
perceptive
side, and hypothesis and theory
on the other
hand, both belonging to the
abstract side — and so the
following
figure arose. A slight, hardly
noticeable variation
in the direction of thought
suffices momentarily to
convert hypothesis into symbol
and vice versa, and scheme
into theory and vice versa. But a transition from scheme to symbol and
vice versa, or from hypothesis to theory and vice versa, is also
possible, and not seldom takes place
so gradually, that it
320 KANT
escapes
the observation of the
intellect;
but on the other hand the pairs placed diagonally to one another,
symbol
and theory, scheme and hypothesis, are not capable of directly going
over
the one to the other. 91
I should like
to propose to you
a similar scheme for the variants of the Thing in itself. These are
conceptions
which ought, like that of the transcendental, to become perfectly
familiar
to us, and so lose all that is strange and startling; they must take
permanent
possession of our brain, so that we may find them again in our daily
thoughts,
and not till then shall we have mastered them; my scheme should give
help
in this direction.
You already know the
difference
between the “Thing of thought“ and the real Thing: each of the two, as
I said before, when examined more narrowly splits in two in obedience
to
the distinction upon which I touched briefly at page 307. In the “real“
Thing in itself we can attempt to gain a sensual expression for the
phenomenon
by endeavouring as far as possible not to think at all and treat the
“dark
lump,“ which then seems to correspond to feeling, as Thing in itself.
In
order to reach the goal by this way our sensibility would have to be
321 KANT
different
from what it is: it would
have
to possess the power of recognition, without conceptions, and so by the
mere force of perception; since every trace of spontaneity of
understanding
would introduce a subjective
unreal element: we will designate this
conception as “the positive Thing in itself,“ since in it sensibility
does
its utmost to assert itself against understanding. 92 More delicately
thought
out is the attempt to gain a sensual expression for the phenomenon by
imagining
what Kant is wont to call “the transcendental object“: here it is assumed that our present
sensibility would suffice to grasp the Thing in itself, if only our
understanding
were otherwise constituted and adapted more harmoniously to
sensibility;
what is here in a sense confusedly imagined is therefore a “something,“
but a something to which no single category of understanding of which
our
thoughts are capable is adapted; consequently, as defined by Kant, “the
entirely indefinite thought of
something in general“:
that is why this conception
deserves the name of a
“negative“ Thing in itself 93 (R.V. 522 seq.). So much
for the halving of the real Thing. Still easier to understand is the
halving
of the Thing of thought (which
Kant calls
Noumenon). We may say to ourselves that the “Thing
in itself“ becomes for that
reason a Thing of thought,
because it is the object of a
perception by senses
different
from ours, in which therefore
not space, but some
other form necessarily
inconceivable to us fashions
things: this conception Kant calls the Thing of thought “in the
negative understanding“; the
word “negative“ gives expression to
the negation of our sensibility
as characterisation. But we may also assert, and that is just what
Hegel
does, that there is a non-sensual form of perception, that is to say, that there is a form of
understanding which is so
constituted that without any
intermediary
of receptivity it perceives things by mere thought, by mere
322 KANT
spontaneity.
This is the sort of
understanding
which Aristotle ascribes to God: this conception Kant calls the Thing
of
thought in “the positive understanding,“ because it proceeds from the
affirmation
of a non-sensuous perception. The positive Thing of thought, then, and
the positive real Thing, are exactly opposed to one another, for in the
one case reason will solve the question through understanding without
sensibility,
and in the other through sensibility without understanding. The one is
the extreme of subjectivity, the other the extreme of objectivity. On
the
other hand, the two negative conceptions stand in a middle domain: the
objective real thing receives here a subjective element, and endeavours
to grasp the Thing intellectually, even should the help of a more
richly
equipped understanding be necessary, while in the subjective Thing of
thought
it is objectivity that prevails, and the goal would seem more
attainable,
if only our sensibility were constituted a little differently from what
it is.
These are the four
directions
in which it is possible for reason to investigate a Thing in itself. To
put all this merely into words will hardly leave any impression on your
minds: if on the other hand I draw a diagram and call attention to the
analogy, for it is nothing more, with symbol, hypothesis, scheme and
theory,
I may hope to make what I have said intelligible, and so obtain a
handle
for further reflection. Here is my scheme of the “Thing in itself.“
Such a figure offers
many
advantages.
You see at a glance that an entirely abstract Thing of thought must
have
a positive colour, whereas one that clings to perception and yet cannot
represent this perception, necessarily receives a negative tinge; the
abstract
here leans towards the perceptible, which, in spite of that, it
contradicts. The converse
naturally holds good of
the real Thing;
for Kant's “transcendental object“ (in
my diagram the
323 KANT
negative
Thing in itself) arises out
of the assumption that out of the same “data of the senses“ an
understanding
differing from that of the present organisation should thoroughly grasp
the true thing (R.V. I, 250). Just as our sensibility was denied above,
so is our understanding denied here, and the negative real Thing is the
exact counterpart of the negative
Thing
of thought. On the other hand, this negative real Thing shows itself to
be so far related to the positive Thing of thought, as both are the
assumption
of a different understanding from ours, whereas the assumption of a
sensibility
differing from ours is common to the positive real Thing and to the
negative
Thing of thought. A single glance will moreover show you that the two
positive
and the two negative conceptions, standing as they do diagonally to one
another are not related, and are without any direct connection. All
that,
and much more besides, is shown by the simple scheme which I will leave
it to you to think out. On the other hand, in Kant, the reader who has
had no previous training easily becomes confused. A chapter like that
about
Phenomena and Noumena has
become a veritable
324 KANT
asses'
bridge. For Kant, who for
years
lived in these conceptions, never considered how strange they would be
to others. For example, when he speaks of the Thing in itself in
general,
he makes no distinction between real Thing and Thing of thought: but
all
of a sudden he looks more closely into the circle of conception, and
then
we read of the Thing in itself that “it cannot be called Noumenon“: or
else he remarks that the Thing in itself is only “of negative use.“
That,
as you have seen, holds good universally: immediately after that,
however,
he speaks of the “negative“ and “positive“ conception of the Thing of
thought,
which refers to the distinction not only inside the Thing in itself,
but
specially inside the Noumenon.
For this reason the question of the
Thing
in itself remains impenetrably obscure to most people. Not even Kant's
important contrast of the transcendental object (the negative Thing in
itself) and the negative Thing of thought, attains the purpose which he
had in view, and which is indispensable for a full understanding, since
these two conceptions are those that rule in theoretical reason,
whereas
the positive fictions only attain real importance in practical reason.
Briefly, I think that this scheme will prove useful.
We should now be ripe
for the
consideration of the “Ego in itself.“ Still, I should be putting your
patience to a severe test if I should wish to repeat all that I have
said
about the “Thing in itself“ in treating of its counterpart the “Ego in
itself“: it must suffice to say that all that I have advanced in the
case of the Thing may be applied, mutatis
mutandis, to the Ego in
itself:
phenomenon considered as Thing stands in “opposite relation“ to
phenomenon
considered as Ego (R.V. 236); the whole difference consists in the fact
that the objective standpoint now turns into the subjective standpoint,
whereby everything becomes more difficult for thought and therefore for
expression in words. That is why
325 KANT
Kant
mostly, but not always, speaks
simply
of “Thing in itself,“ and in this general expression includes also the
“Ego in itself.“ You will easily, without help from me, obtain the clue
which will enable you to arrive at the necessary results about the Ego
in itself, and as they correspond step by step with the results
attained
in the case of the “Thing in itself,“ you will in the end arrive at an
exactly corresponding scheme, in which you need only substitute Ego for
Thing, and “Ego of thought“ for “Thing of thought.“ 94
The so-called
simplicity and
indivisibility
of the empirical Ego out of which its persistency, unsubstantiality,
and
immortality proceed, are shown by Kant to be a fallacy. The question of
“single or plural?“ being senseless, is just as impermissible in the
case
of the Ego in itself as in that of the Thing in itself. “It is only
self-consciousness
which brings it forward in such a way that, inasmuch as the subject
which
thinks, is at the same time its own object, it cannot divide itself
(though
it may the definitions which are
inherent
in it): for as considered in regard to itself every object is absolute
unity. Nevertheless, if this subject
is considered externally as an object of perception, it will of
itself
show combination in the
phenomenon“
(R.V. 471). Neither can the persistency of the Ego be set forth
empirically: “the being that
alone conceives
time, and itself in time, cannot
claim persistency“ (Ref.
II, 379). And yet no man will admit that it is possible seriously to
dispute
the uniformity and persistency of his own self, nor will certain
pathological experiences shake his
conviction.
What is the truth about this uniformity? The answer to this question is
one of the weightiest discoveries for which we have to thank Kant's
critique:
the unity of the Ego is no empirically perceived and demonstrable fact,
but a transcendental fact. It belongs to those relations of combination
which precede experience and make it
326 KANT
possible
(like space and time and the
pure conceptions). The unity of the Ego, considered purely
theoretically,
implies nothing more than the perfected uniformity of the system of
reason,
and this is the demonstrable correlative, or counterpart, of the unity
of the things perceived. The conception of a Thing presupposes an Ego,
and vice versa. These two, the unity of the Ego and the unity of the
Thing — at
every stage from the single Thing to the general conception of all
Things,
i.e. the conception of Nature — compose the first great transcendental
combination
inside theoretical reason, which is the foundation of all possible
wider
recognition; it is incapable of proof, because it is the assumption of
all objective knowledge; that is why it possesses an unconditioned yet
only formal (fashioning) not material value.
I am not able to
treat this in
detail, as I should like to do, and perhaps I may not have been
entirely
convincing: but never mind, we only need here to understand Kant and
his
conception of the matter at issue. And here it is indispensable that
you
should firmly impress upon yourselves what I have said: for that is
the
only way to understand the distinctive fundamental thought of the whole
Kantian doctrine of morals, freedom and religion, that is to say, that
the Ego, as Ego in itself, is not a something that can be grasped in
the
hands, something for which we may hunt and snatch at, but simply and
only
the position of a “thing of thought“ analogous to teleology. Whilst
Fichte
holds that the Thing in itself is not conceived but only felt, 95 and
Schopenhauer
in almost the same words teaches us that every man possesses directly
“a feeling“ of his “being in itself,“ and that this stimulates a
reflection
which “leads us over to the Thing in itself,“ 96 — Kant tells us that
“the
Thing in itself is a mere 'Thing of thought' without reality, — the
Thing
in itself is not an object given.“ 97
327 KANT
In one sentence this reflection
transports us into the middle of Kant's system of practical reason, as
I shall immediately show.
We have seen that the
Thing and
the Ego are not merely a conception forcing itself mechanically upon
every
man, and also, as Kant is wont to say, upon the common understanding, but at the same
time a most important theoretical thought when it is refined to the
hypothetical
Thing in itself embracing both Thing and Ego — to be conceived
something
after the analogy of the irrational numbers in mathematics: it is as
Kant
once pointedly says, “not an object given, but a task“ (R.V. 344); it,
as it were, lends subjectivity to the object, and objectivity to the subject, and
serves as a limit on all sides; moreover we make use of it for the
exact
definition of the “place“ of ideas. At the same time Kant shows you
that
this systematically indispensable thought is a mere “airy nothing,“ the
position of a “Thing of thought,“ and so may never be used by man for
dogmatic
purposes: that leads to the
subtle distinction into
Thing and Noumenon, and to
the further and still more subtle positive
and negative conception. No
matter how we
may set before ourselves this conception of the Thing-Ego, if we follow
it up to the end, we come to a no-thing or a no-thought:
of that you must be convinced. So far
then as theoretical reason is concerned this Thing-Ego may be summed
up as a “Thing of thought
without any
reality.“
But now Kant consummates the great commutation and says, “What may be
without
reality for theoretical reason may be the whole reality for practical
reason.“
And so the two component parts
combine and
compose a whole or unit of reason.
We know that,
considered
transcendentally,
aim and form in combination make up life, or to draw a wider circle, understanding and sensibility
make up experience in general;
according to the analogy
of this fact, but
328 KANT
considered
more comprehensively, you
must think of practical reason and theoretical reason, — freedom and
nature, — as
in combination making up what Kant commonly calls the human soul. The
man
who denies this combination is forced to sacrifice either freedom or
nature;
no other choice is open to him; for not to recognise them as
opposites, — but
to attempt to reconcile them — is, according to Kant, to impose upon
oneself
and upon others. The more common form of this self-deception is that
in
which we see all churches and all negative priests — that is
materialists — caught,
because in none of them is thinking ripe for insight into this division
of our essence: the logical teaching of the Church such, for instance,
as it imposes as a duty upon all believers, annihilates nature, whose
inviolable
laws are at every moment being nullified by so-called “miracles“; it
follows that all empiricism is in that case mere allegory, whereas we
must
hold the allegory of religious faith to be empiricism; the exact
converse
of this simple ecclesiastical conception is the materialismus communis
of the Büchners,
the Haeckels, and the rest of them, who sacrifice
personality and freedom. More refined is the self-deception of the
earnest
thinkers, with Schopenhauer as the classical example, since he, as I
told
you just now, discovers Kant's Thing in itself, that is the perfect
no-thing
and the perfect no-thought, in his own breast, and introduces it as the
essence of nature. Surely is the Ego, the Âtman as the Indian
sage
says,
at once “the dam which separates the two worlds and the bridge that
unites
them.“ The Ego as human soul is just the “Third,“ the tertium quid,
arising
out of the meeting of the two worlds: and yet they are two worlds, and
remain two worlds: to perceive that is the beginning of all wisdom.
“Never
can the two meet, — the self of matter and the self of soul: for the
two
side by side there is no place.“ Clearly an utterance of the highest
metaphysical
wisdom! What the
329 KANT
Indian
understands by “the self of
matter“
is what Kant calls theoretical reason or nature, “the self of soul“ is
what he designates by the name of practical reason or freedom. But the
Indian solution “one of the two must give way,“ means an act of
despairing
renunciation of humanity: whichever you choose it is suicide. To have
seen
this problem clearly, to have acknowledged it and to have attempted its
positive solution is the heroic effort of Kant's philosophy. And since
in the meantime we have been taught in detail that every single element
of our recognition only arises out of combination, or rather is
combination,
it cannot be difficult for us, as I think, to grasp this fundamental
thought
of the Kantian system,
namely the hypothetical acceptation
that practical reason is a counterpart of theoretical reason, and that
consequently the recognitions in the one must stand in exact
contraposition to the corresponding
recognitions in the other.
We have here
obviously come back
to the opening of this lecture: what was said there (pp. 169—177)
should
really be repeated here: we must trust to memory, and I will only call
to mind the fact that it makes no essential difference whether we lay
stress
upon the methods of reason — or upon its ideas, nature and freedom: the
outcome
is the same: yet it is both more impressive and more pregnant with
meaning
if we lay stress upon the ideas rather than upon the methods. The
“system
of recognition“ is divided into the two main branches,
nature and freedom: this is the simplest
and most appropriate expression (Üg. III, 321 H). We now turn
to the consideration of freedom.
Will man ever awaken
to a state of
consciousness
about himself and the world? Will he cease to be contented, like the children, with
answers which are themselves unfounded, if not directly senseless? Will
he, that is to say, follow the road which Plato and Kant show
330 KANT
him,
the way of unprejudiced testing
of the essence of all experience? If he does, he will discover that it
is impossible to refer all questions which arise before him to one safe
and all-embracing problem; he will discover that there are two
heterogeneous
and dissimilar problems, the one theoretical, the other practical,
nature
and freedom (Üg. III, 418) 98
— problems which he will not succeed in
referring
either to one another, or to a third and more remote problem. Admitted
that unity is given to him in a certain, and indeed absolutely true,
sense,
this unity remains the point upon which he takes his stand and which he
cannot leave even for a moment on behalf of investigation without
immediate
destruction to himself and everything else. 99 It is only
possible
by means of dogmatic affirmation to conjure up the phantom of a uniform
single problem — whether it be called Godhead, matter, reason,
experience,
or what not; criticism smashes all dogmas by showing them up as
untenable
delusions (cf. Plato lecture, p. 40 seq.).
That is why Kant says, “by
dividing
authoritative metaphysics into two chambers ... the critique of pure
reason has furnished a remedy for the despotism of empiricism as well
as
for the scandal of boundless silly affectations of reason.“ 100 So
far
as the tyranny of dogmatic empiricism is concerned, we men of to-day
know
what is the meaning of that barbarism murdering intellect, heart and
culture;
its very first step consists in the denial of the one thing which gives
value to life, namely personality; in that it represents the true
complement
of Socialism, whose vulgar unthinking tyranny strangles every impulse
of
the individual in its brutal stupid Fist. The terrible dangers of the
affectations
of reason are known to you from the anarchy, Kant rightly calls it the
“anarchical scandal,“ of the many churches, monopolists of salvation,
warring upon one another: add to this the loss of time, the splitting
up
and leading astray of thought in conse-
331 KANT
quence
of the discord of
contradictory
metaphysical systems, all of them of necessity untenable, — in which
the
professors of philosophy alone find profit, for as Kant scornfully
remarks,
“the savants imagine that everything exists in their behoof.“ 101
You are now in
possession of the
fundamental facts:
there are two separate problems of
existence,
and you know, moreover, that this statement, this undeniably requisite
and regulative “division into two chambers,“ does not possess the mere
value of a learned speculation, but is the war-cry in the battle waged
for the liberation of the human intellect out of the power of its
enemies,
who are not, as it were, here and there gagging and duping it, but are
planted all round it, so that it is almost always falling from one
tyranny
into another, and now at the beginning of our much vaunted twentieth
century
is perhaps more cruelly threatened than ever. Do not let yourselves be
led astray by cheap phrases about progress and the like such as are the
fashion nowadays. Just as the free Roman commonwealth, at the moment
when
it seemed to have reached the zenith of its power and domination of the
world, fell a sacrifice to the contests between its financiers and its
slaves, crushed and annihilated between those despisers of all freedom
and all human dignity, — so does the empire of intellect raised by the
Teuton,
the first systematic attempt to make and educate a really free, inwardly free,
race, stand surrounded by enemies rich in power and far too rich in
slavish disposition. On the one hand
a Church of Rome gaining in strength, which already stretches out its
hand to our schools in order to
inoculate
the pure minds of the children for ever with her poison destructive of
all freedom, supported moreover by Catholics of the second degree, that is to say
protestants,
who no longer protest, but bend and bow, and imitate Rome as well as a
cruelly crippled inconsistency will allow; — and on the
332 KANT
other
side a so-called empirically
scientific
philosophy which has fallen away further back than Thales in the
conception
and apprehension of the problem of existence, a philosophy which is
nominally
empirical but solves everything in abstractions and hollow balderdash,
—
believes firmly in that splendidly bold paradox of mathematical physics
that the world is nothing more than motion in empty space, — robs us of
form
and personality, and of the only redeeming thought of freedom, — and in
us
men, the descendants of Homer, Leonardo, Yadjnavalkya and the prophets,
sees nothing more than “educated turnspits“ in empty space (p. 180).
Such
is the state of things in the life-giving centre of Western Europe. All
round is a swarming population of tartarised Russians, a lovable people
richly gifted though brought up and emasculated in the most
contemptible
superstition, in un-freedom and ignorance, destroying with the sure
instinct
of slaves every racial element that had up to the present given it
strength
and importance: far away across the world the busy soul-less yellow
race:
the dreaming, weakly mongrels of Oceania and South America: finally the
millions of the blacks poverty-stricken in intellect, bestially
inclined,
who are even now arming for the war of races in which there will be no
quarter given. The man who with an open eye looks round the world
to-day,
a century after Kant's death, will shudder to the very marrow of his
bones.
No danger from outside would be invincible if we true men of Northern
Europe,
not contaminated by the slavish blood of Syria and Carthaginia, the
homines
Europaei of Linnaeus (Teutons if we only understand how to
conceive
this
word with sufficient large-heartedness) — no danger from outside need
be
feared if we only had the courage to stand united and strong in the
possession
and in the consciousness of a freedom won, never to be lost. No power
is
so strong as freedom. For in freedom there is
333 KANT
superiority
of intellect and of
morality
added to that of nature. In freedom man lifts himself above nature: he
masters it, he masters it precisely at that point where it is the most
difficult to master it, in himself, and so he becomes Lord of those
powers
which ensure him from the attacks of every enemy from without.
“Nothing,“
says Schiller, “can hurt an intellect but what robs it of freedom.“
But
I repeat, what do we see here on the hearth of the great champions of
the
deliverance of the human intellect out of slavery — here where Abelard,
and
Roger Bacon, and Wycliffe, and Hus, and Leonardo, and Galilei, and
Descartes,
Locke, Hume, and Kant laboured? Dull, crass materialistic superstition,
undermining all human dignity, protected and encouraged by the state,
and
only qualified by systematic, lifelong imposture and lies, raised to
the
dignity of middle-class virtue; — should a man have the courage to turn
his back upon all this, he will, if his intellectual powers are modest, see the utilitarian
Nothing, empty manufacturing life; or if in spite of all he still longs
for something in the shape of philosophy, he may see the choking
Sahara-dust
of an unlimited, formless, aimless, spiritless science, so
beggarly-poor
in real thought, so void of all
creative power, that the honest fellow
either shrinks up and withers intellectually in this dreary emptiness,
or else, robbed of all illusion, disgusted, indifferent to everything, throws himself for comfort
into the arms of the first ecclesiastical sect that is at hand.
Why should I rush so
violently
into our peaceful, for the most part apparently harmless, study of
thought,
with a more than bitter review of our times and of the future with
which
we are threatened? It is because I desire to call attention with all
stress
to a fact that is very near to us, though unfortunately observed by few
people, namely, that thinking can only be set free by thinking. Our
fate,
the fate of so-called men of culture,
334 KANT
will
depend upon whether we pull
ourselves
together for thinking or not. You remember Kant's fine saying, “to
rescue
freedom“ (p. 180); well, then, it is only by thinking that freedom can
be preserved. These lectures were not intended to stimulate
speculation,
but deeds. Kant does not philosophise under the motto, l'art pour
l'art,
but as I briefly pointed out at the outset of to-day's remarks, in
order
that “a Kingdom should be set up which is not in existence, but which
might
become a reality did we only know what to do and what to leave undone.“
That is why this thinker has such a passionate attraction for me: that
is why I am myself passionately urged on to lead you to him. Everything
is at stake, and when I say everything I mean the dignity of man: for
what
value would life have without it? Every so-called progress of
civilisation
puts new weapons into the hands of the suppressors of the dignity of
man.
We have more or less knowledge of the events of some sixty centuries —
none
has furnished such powerful tools for the blunting and oppression of
countless
human beings as the century of the press and of machinery. Everything
tends
to make us less able to see and less able to think. The artisan is, in
spite of all delusive appearances, a poor creature in comparison with
the
peasant: the latter has grown up with living nature which is daily
teaching
him new truths, so that he learns to judge, slowly indeed, but none the
less keenly and wisely and appropriately, that is to say, judges of
those
things which affect his interests:
the artisan, on the other hand, is torn
away from all connection with nature, which teaches men without their
being
conscious of it, and has no time to make up for what is lost in that
direction,
by artificial culture: we must moreover reckon with the intellectually
deadly monotony of his craft and its absolute aimlessness. That is why,
even apart from all the known physical disadvantages which cannot but
affect
the intellect, but
335 KANT
which
it should be possible to
counteract, the workman is altogether barren of judgment: every man who
is bidding for power can do what he chooses with him. There are at the
present day in Germany millions of such craftsmen under the thrall of a
handful of Jews, who find their amusement and their advantage in
undermining
the state which has been built up by the work and pains of centuries:
excommunication
has been long ago introduced within the faction against every man who
dares
to have an opinion of his own. To-morrow the same men will obey Rome,
or
any other tyrant, without a word. “Already these men have made
themselves
semi-slaves to their trade combinations,“ says the free-thinker Herbert
Spencer, in his last essay on the so-called “organised workers,“ “and
with the further progress of imperialism, rebarbarisation and
regimentation,
their semi-slavery will end in complete slavery, a state which they
will
fully deserve.“ 102
These people may become just as fatal an influence
in
our kingdom of intellectual freedom, as the slaves were in the ancient
Roman state of political freedom. A hundred years ago no less a man
than
Goethe foresaw with unfailing judgment what the press must be, and what
it must become. “The good which it can promote,“ he says, “must soon
be
swallowed up by the mediocre and the bad“; that is why he calls the
essence
of journalism “a deadly poison,“ which “brings to the masses a sort of
half-culture“ while it annihilates true culture. What is above all
annihilated
by the press is the faculty of thinking and judging
independently. Certainly ninety per
cent of educated men now read nothing but newspapers, and thus weaken
their
powers of observation and of fixing their thoughts steadily upon a
fixed
aim, to such an extent that they no longer have the power to read a
book
even should they for once try to do so. There are many other factors of
our life which are working in the same sense, for instance,
336 KANT
the
extreme specialisation of every
activity,
and the exhausting claims set up by the chosen profession. We lose the
time for thinking, the joy that there is in thinking, and the capacity
for thinking. How often does one hear, “Oh! pray don't talk of
philosophy:
I have never understood a word of it; it has no object, and only
confuses
one.“ What the satirist Liscov two hundred years ago ironically put in
the mouth of his “elender Skribent“ (miserable Scribe), “thinking
attacks
the head, takes up much time and, if we are to tell the truth, is of no
use,“ is to-day the conviction of many of our best men. That is to say,
they are ready enough to think, but not to think about thought, not to
philosophise. Even gifted brains decline to believe that it is
necessary,
or at any rate useful, to test and scientifically to establish the
credentials,
the range, the importance of our powers of thought, of the powers which
we continuously and everywhere bring into play. What is our whole
science,
if not a process of thinking upon that which has been perceived? What
are
our religions, if not thoughts upon the significance of life and death?
We are men because, and in so far as, we possess reason: but what is
this
same reason? This is a question which is held to be idle! an incredible
blindness! a blindness which will cost us our whole culture, what we
already
possess, which ought to flourish yet incomparably richer, — our
freedom,
our dignity as men. For, I say again, it is only by thinking that
thinking
is set free. Thinking set free is freedom; for freedom is an idea;
freedom
cannot be given, it must be gained, — gained as an inner personal
achievement,
that is to say, brought to us as consciousness. It is on this ground
that
Kant, the bitter opponent of all academical metaphysics, the man who
alone
keeps in view the practical needs of all, says, “Metaphysics are the
perfecting
of all human reason“ — for “upon them depends the true and lasting
weal
of the human race.“ 103
337 KANT
Socrates
held that moral sense is
recognition:
but Plato felt it his duty materially to soften the roughness of this
formula:
still, it nevertheless contains a great truth; for, as Kant will show
you,
without freedom there is no genuine, entirely pure, true moral sense,
and
we only become free by the redeeming work of the highest power that
lies
within us, — by thought. There is a passage (pr. V, preface) where Kant
says
that he considers wisdom and holiness as “fundamentally and objectively
one and the same.“ Our whole human existence is thinking, whether we
will
or no: Whatever else we may choose to distinguish in our
being, — perception,
will, sentiment, feeling, and what not, — one thing remains certain, it
is
only within the four sides of thinking that each of them comes into
perspective,
and that we become conscious of it. It is time, high time, that the
much
abused rationalism, the veneration for reason, should once again come
into
blossom. It must be in a different sense from that in which the Gauls
of
the eighteenth century understood it, and with a different object in
view
from that which the German professor of the nineteenth century ascribed
to it; it must be in the sense and with the object in view of Kant.
“Oh!
friends of the human race and of that which is most sacred to it!“
exclaims
our sage, “accept whatever after careful and honest testing seems to
you
most worthy of belief, whether it be facts or arguments: only do not
rob
reason of what makes it the highest earthly possession, namely, the
privilege
of being the last touchstone of truth. Otherwise, unworthy of this
freedom,
you will surely forfeit
it.“ 104
It is perhaps lucky
that with
few
exceptions Kant has hitherto been so seldom understood as regards his
true
aim and his true achievements: were it otherwise there would have been
great haste to rob us of him for ever. Kant would have been entitled
just
as much as Luther to
338 KANT
utter
the proud saying, “Here I
stand:
I can no otherwise“; for as you must have seen from my sketch,
whoever
accepts this standpoint of Kant's as his creed is surrounded by
enemies.
He has all the mighty ones of the world against him. In the work of
this
man lies the greatest revolutionary power of the world's history. He
created
it in his peaceful, out-of-the-way corner: he housed it as men store
explosives
in the neighbourhood of crowded cities, carefully, inaccessibly, in
some
place difficult to reach, in a well-guarded dark tower: here too he
showed
his wisdom, he was a pattern of pious earnestness. But now the hour has
struck when in our direst need we want this force not merely in the
laboratories
of a dozen learned men, but outside, for battle — for the battle of
redemption.
It is a question, as Kant said above, of “the most sacred possessions,“
not in any ordinary trivial sense of these words, not as they are used
by Princes, Priests, and Philistines, but the reverse: the point is to
achieve that freedom, and with it that sense of morality which we have
not got, and which we never can attain under the domination of our
modern
churches and antichurches: for as Kant has taught us, “Freedom is the
work
of man.“ What we have to do is to introduce into the consciousness of
mankind
in general pure religion and the true conception of God, as these are
possessed
or divined by the best and most important men among us. Manifestly the
masses are incapable of thinking like the few most eminent men who
stand
upon the conquered pinnacles of human thought: yet the gap need not be
so wide that the belief of the best should be regarded by the many as
sin
and folly, whilst the long since discredited historical forgeries are
forced
upon them as divine truth, and ecclesiastical practices, worthy of
naked
savages, as a compendium of morality. Such a disturbance of balance can
only of necessity lead to moral anarchy; the true most sacred
possessions
are withheld
339 KANT
from
us not in the interest of
humanity
in general, but far rather in the interest of aboriginal superstition,
of ineradicable magicians' delusions, — in the interest of the rule of
priestcraft,
as well as in the falsely understood interest of an order of Society,
which
apparently could have no existence outside of lies and systematic
imposture.
It is our business to-day (to-morrow will be too late) to conquer those
possessions against all and several. There is no standing still; Life
is
form, and form can only assert itself in motion: that is why standing
still
is death, the end of all things: our human society must either enter
upon
the most brutal barbarism which ever prevailed, the barbarism of
artificially
civilised superstitious races, hostile to nature, debilitated,
intellectually
poverty-stricken, — as dreamless as so many cattle, or it must, boldly
conscious
of its aims, prepare for a further step and climb a new stage, a
markedly
higher stage, of culture. Kant shows the way.
* * * *
* *
This short digression
was
indispensable,
because we have now reached the point where the cruellest confusion as
to Kant prevails. As experience shows there are two classes amongst
Kant's
readers; each is wont to misinterpret Kant's doctrine of practical
reason
after its own fashion.
A tolerably numerous
and very
influential class of readers — clerics and professors — has neither the
leisure
nor the inclination which would suffice to enable it to assimilate
Kant's
Critique of Pure Reason, these
men rush upon the works on practical
reason, on the foundation of moral metaphysics, etc., works which seem
more nearly bound up with their own interests and calling. In itself
this
tendency is not unsympathetic, and you
now know exactly how far it consciously
or unconsciously militates against Kant's true purpose. But it is and
340 KANT
always
must be impossible to
understand
Kant's conception of morals, freedom, religion and God, unless we know
upon what his whole order of thought is based, — the critical enquiry
into
and conception of the transcendental, and this is unthinkable without a
searching study of the doctrine of theoretical reason. That is why Kant
himself, taught by the experience of numberless misunderstandings,
gives
us this warning in the preface to his Critique
of Practical Reason;
“those
who have been discouraged in view of the first investigation, and so
have
not thought it worth while to acquire this knowledge, cannot attain the
second stage.“
It is to these people
that we
owe the quite grotesque misapprehension as to the so-called
“categorical
imperative,“ which has become so universal that it needs some degree of
simple self-assurance to wish to eradicate
it. We hear from all sides the fable
of the “strict moral law“ preached by the old man in the gloomy north:
some admire him for it, bring out the
categorical imperative at distributions of prizes and on other
patriotic
occasions, praise Kant for it as a true Prussian who has propagated
the
stiffest militarism in the inmost recesses of the heart, and as it were
buckled up the very soul in a soldier's stock, — whilst others — more
sentimentally
strung natures, — declare themselves unable to put up with such
inexorable
doctrines, and refuse to travel on the path of duty unless their hearts
should be softened by a little sympathy, attracted by a little love,
and
all else that makes up the desires of weak mortals. The only pity of it
all is that never did Kant even dream of bequeathing a moral law,
strict
or mild!
By the technical
conception
“categorical
imperative,“ Kant does not indicate a system of morals, but a fact of
reason.
Within the domain of theoretical reason
— namely, in nature — there is no such
thing
as “must,“ — no word of command; in such a connection the conception
341 KANT
is
entirely senseless: but on the other
hand every man knows what is meant by “must“ in the sense of duty, for
it belongs to the essence of reason. That a “must“ exists is precisely
the fundamental conception of practical reason; that is where it distinguishes
itself from theoretical reason,
and it is through
it that the conceptions of
“freedom“ and “personality“ gain
substance
and significance. This “must“ is
occasionally
used by Kant in connection with
the academic
expression “imperative.“ But there are many “imperatives“ which
correspond to the
different
stages of the “must“: for this reason it is necessary to distinguish
between
the various imperatives
by more closely drawn designations.
There is a conditioned “must,“ a “must“ that means just so much as “it
were well and profitable that you should do this,“
or “it would tend to your happiness,“
or “it would be very practical“;
here again
nature
does not offer the slightest analogy: this
description
of “must“ is what Kant, in
connection with that
of certain logical judgments,
calls a “hypothetical“
imperative,
and yet again distinguishes
between a
“problematical“
and an “assertive“ stage within
this
hypothetical
imperative. The one is the
“must“ of fitness, the
other the “must“ of happiness. Here we have at once two different
imperatives:
but that does not complete the dissection of “must.“ For there is also
an unconditioned “must,“ a “must“ which often does not imply action as
a consequence, but of which all reason clearly recognises the
commanding
force: and this “must,“ this fact present in reason, Kant (again in
connection
with the known
appellation of a compelling logical
judgment) calls the categorical “must,“ or the “categorical imperative,“
but sometimes also more simply alludes
to as the “unconditioned practical law.“ Kant proclaims no law, — thou
shalt unconditionally do this and that: he only maintains, “in all
reason I
see
the conception of an uncon-
342 KANT
ditional
'must' side by side with the
conception of a graduated conditional 'must'“: and just as Newton
referred
the discovered facts and laws of the cosmic motions to a formula, — a
fact
of the weightiest range, since it fixes the human intellect upon the
essential
idea which binds together into unity a plurality which would otherwise
be boundless, so Kant seeks to discover the formula which for all
reason
sums up this unconditioned “must,“ apart from those special dealings
which
in one place or in another, in earlier or later times, in these or
those
circumstances of time and space, have deserved the epithet good. It is
therefore a pitiful misunderstanding, if we affirm that Kant wished to
introduce a new system of morals, and to that end set up the principle
of the imperative of duty; there is a passage in which he enters a
protest
against this misapprehension. “Who would wish to introduce a new
principle
of all morality? as if up to his time in matters of duty the world had
been ignorant or universally in error.“ Obviously irritated, he puts
the
question to one of his critics (pr. V, preface). In the first place,
Kant
cares not a jot what the “must“ may be so long as there is a “must.“
Either
“must“ is nothing, a word, an empty sentimentality of old women and
ambitious
priests, or else if it be a fact of reason it must be referable to a
clear
and exact conception of universal value, and if once this conception
has
been rightly established, there will without doubt arise out of it much
that will be valuable for a judgment upon the different doctrines of
morals,
especially for the distinction between what is purely moral therein,
and
that which is only assumed, or even directly immoral. Kant's
categorical
imperative (of course considered in relation to the various
hypothetical
imperatives) is therefore in the first place nothing more and nothing
less
than an attempt to formulate scientifically and precisely a fundamental
fact of all reason, and in the next place, if the task be con-
343 KANT
sidered
as rightly solved,
indirectly
a criterion for the comparative valuation of the different doctrines
and
actions judged by the standard of pure
morality, that is to say, of the unconditioned “must.“
We shall soon have to
return
to the imperative and its significance;
but I was compelled
to warn you against this caricature which, stuffed up with all sorts of
wise historical reflections of
sanctimonious
education about Kant, has done
much to prevent his
thoughts from being understood.
And now for the
second class of
readers, those with a philosophical turn of mind. Instead of these
readers
being led gradually by painstaking cultivation and guidance to the
comprehension
of the most profound and fruitful thoughts that were ever imagined by
the
rarest
of men, they are almost without
exception
in their early youth, at a time
when it is not yet
possible for them to take a
lofty view of the spirit of
humanity, ruined beyond repair
by the teaching in the
high schools and the expositions
of handbooks; they can
never afterwards grow up to that
which is truly great, to
real wisdom: rather have they
fallen irretrievably into the
clutches of that affectation
which was so hated by Kant,
“the chicane of a falsely
instructed reason.“ Of course
even these men are inspired by
Kant with a lively
interest;
how could it be otherwise with
clever brains full
of learning? A boundless Kantian
literature,
thousands and thousands
of books, pamphlets, and essays bear
witness to this interest (pp. 14, 15). It needs a rare, indeed a
monumental
narrow-mindedness, bound up with a touching ignorance, to lay aside
Kant
for ever at the age of twenty years, like Herbert Spencer, after
turning
over the leaves of a few pages of the Pure
Reason, because of feeling
bound
at once and absolutely to reject the
acceptation that the
conception of space contains a deep
problem. Those Germans who suffer from a similar poverty of thought
344 KANT
seldom
busy themselves with
philosophy. 105
But what is the result with the more gifted of those who busy
themselves
with Kant? That is what is so lamentable. “The mischievous side of
science
for mankind is specially this,“ says Kant, “that by far the greater
number
of those who wish to distinguish themselves by it, do nothing towards
the
improvement of the understanding, but only turn it upside down, not to
mention the fact that often science is the mere tool of vanity.“ 106
Truly
has this saying proved itself in the “science“ which has tacked itself
on to his powerful life's-work for the instruction and liberation of
mankind.
We may admit that the intentions were for the most part good, the
services
rendered here and there pre-eminent, and yet as a whole this science
has
wrought evil, and has contributed to the “turning upside down of the
understanding.“ 107
And how did this come about? Why is such a gigantic expenditure of
intellectual
force to be looked upon purely as vain — where indeed it is not
mischievous?
In the first place, because these men with their philosophical
faculties
have either thrown themselves exclusively upon Kant's critique of
theoretical
reason, so that the more important half of his philosophy remained
hidden
to them, — and this has been mostly the case; or else they looked upon,
investigated,
and judged the Critique of Practical
Reason quite one-sidedly from the
theoretical standpoint. How can Kant be rightly understood, when
neither
the motive power which urges him on, nor his immutably fixed
starting-point,
nor his goal, are taken into consideration? — indeed, when as is often
the
case, they remain entirely unknown? 108 And yet Kant spoke out
clearly
enough about it. “If there be a science of which man really stands in
need, it is that which I teach:
— suitably to fill the place which has
been allotted to man in creation, and by which he may learn what we
must
be in order to be men.“ 109
Here we have it in black and
345 KANT
white,
written, it is true, on
mere scraps of paper which were
found after Kant's death,
and yet all the more valuable as
being an unspoken creed:
“I teach what we must be in
order to be men.“ Here
sealed for all time you have the
fact, which I trust has
become more and more clear in
the course of these
lectures. Kant's interest is and
always has been a practical
one; applies to all mankind; all
metaphysical speculation,
all endlessly subtle
investigation of the essence
of reason and of recognition is
not undertaken on
behalf of the rabble of sophists; but, on the contrary, his aim has
been
to free mankind once for all
from the
imposture
which has weighed upon us so
long, and
at the same time from the crippling domination of all those
conceptions
and thoughts about unattainable finalities which have been the burthen
of our race for millenniums, making
us the prey of the most unconscientious and shameless men — indeed,
often and in many cases dragging
us down
below the level of the unreasoning beast.
I hope that I have
sufficiently
impressed upon you the fact that you have here reached the critical
point
in this philosophy. Unless you have felt the compelling power of his
doctrine
of practical reason, you have not really understood Kant's theory of the
relation
between understanding and sensibility, of the transcendental
importance
of space and time, of the antinomies and the boundaries of experience and reason. He says himself
in the preface to his Critique of
Practical Reason (which appeared in
1788,
and therefore at the zenith of his labours, one year after the 2nd edition of the Pure
Reason, two years before the
Critique of the Power of
Judgment),
that now at last “the connection
of the system is
observable,“
“here first of all the riddle of
criticism
reveals itself,“ at last the
idea of freedom as practical
reason shows it, “forms the
keystone of the whole
structure
of a system of pure, even of
speculative reason.“ Most
people can in no way
346 KANT
realise
this; yet I hope for better
things
from you: for you have no doubt clearly apprehended the conception of
the
transcendental: you know that all understanding presumes a duality, and
that it is impossible to understand the entirety of reason, and that
means
seeing it methodically, unless at the very root of the thing we
presuppose
two component parts: why should we not follow Kant in calling them the
theoretical and the practical? The name is of no importance — the
contrast
is everything.
What is it that Kant
requires
of us here? What is the nature of this keystone which most men reject,
and without which the whole building falls to pieces?
In theoretical reason
we start
from plurality and end by arriving at a unity, at the comprehension of
nature; in practical reason the starting-point is a unity, and it is
only
by proceeding from that unity that we are led to an increasing
plurality.
Here at once is the contrast.
The one and only fact
which
underlies
all practical reason, is the fact that there a “must“ exists. What
“must“
be is in the first instance a subordinate question, and whether we obey
it or not which is in reality usually the practice, is a completely
irrelevant
one: in this respect there is room for an endless gradation in the
degree
in which man recognises or fails to recognise the voice of duty,
besides
which it must be assumed that man's inner being, like his outward
being,
must exhibit changes influenced by the surrounding circumstances of
space
and time. But where there is reason — so Kant maintains — there there
is
the
conception of “must“ or duty, or, to adopt the academical expression,
“the imperative.“ 110
This conception does not proceed from nature, but is
rather in direct antagonism to her, and is destructive to her. That is
why every attempt — (I bring this forward at once in order that you
may
see what is the point at issue) —
347 KANT
every
attempt empirically to explain
the “must“ and with it the moral law, — deducing it from the mechanism
of
nature, and explaining it by some kind of evolution, — is stillborn,
just
as stillborn as the thought of a spontaneous generation of life. “Only
shallow heads,“ says Kant, “can refresh themselves with this disgusting
jumble of higgledy-piggledy observations and half-sophistical
principles“
(Gr.). If the conception of nature be scientifically and keenly
grasped,
then there can be no loophole in this flawless web of conditioned,
inevitably
necessary, reciprocal action through which any conception of a “must“
could be smuggled in. This conception is therefore not nature; it
stands
altogether outside of all mechanical laws; it creates and founds a
kingdom
for itself, the kingdom of freedom.
For the existence of
freedom
follows
out of that of “must.“ Without freedom the conception of “must“
would be manifestly senseless. What
significance can a commandment, a “shall be,“ have for me if I am in no
wise free to obey it or not to obey it? If in every relation I am
mechanically
bound on all sides? In that case it would be impossible even to
conceive
the idea. I would have this specially noted: the conception of “must“
without
that of freedom would be empty, and as an altogether empty conception
could
not even be thought. The man who denies freedom denies all duty. And,
so
we may add as disciples of Kant, we should in that case not be men, not
be creatures gifted with reason: for the fact that we can think this
conception
of “must“ is the fundamental fact of our being.
The matter can also
be expressed
in the following way. Unification, and thereby recognition, always
arises
by the tying of a knot which reason explains to itself as being the
outcome
of cause and effect: but it distinguishes a causality arising out of
necessity,
that is to say, out of necessarily reciprocal action between all
things,
from
348 KANT
a
causality arising out of freedom.
So
far from the latter being a deduction, a conception in some way arising
by corruption out of the former, it is manifestly the more original of
the two. Every man is directly conscious of freedom: but it is the
conception
of nature which corresponds to it, and not the necessary combination
with
cause and effect as contrast and counterpart. Of course the conception
of a cause is a category underlying all understanding; but this works
unconsciously
from case to case; on the other hand the conception that there is in
nature
a dominant, inviolable, mechanical causality, is a theoretical thought
which presupposes the idea of nature, and only is realised at a very
high
stage of culture, a thought which indeed has so far not been grasped at
all by a not inconsiderable number of our contemporaries. It is
therefore
far rather the fact of freedom which teaches us to “think“ the idea of
a nature ruled by necessity, than the converse. Freedom is, as Kant in
one passage points out, “unconditioned causality“: out of this we
arrive
at the conception of conditioned causality, that means un-free
combination
(pr. V, I, I, 3 towards the end).
The fact of freedom
then stands
upon a thoroughly sure basis. As Kant writes, “the most subtle
philosophy
is no more able to argue freedom into nonentity than the commonest
human
reason“ (Gr. 3, 6). But what always imperils this indispensable
conception
is the lack of a transcendental philosophy penetrating us as part of
our
most intimate selves, for outside of the philosophy of Plato and Kant
it
is impossible to understand the connection between nature and freedom.
Sooth to say, freedom
is in
reality
just as much a mere
idea as nature, an idea of reason. If
I called it just now
a “fact,“ I meant no more than I should
if I had spoken
of nature as an indubitable fact. Taken
strictly (cf. p. 637) we have no right to call anything
a given fact
349 KANT
except,
on the one side, the laws, in
other words, a connection of phenomena in accordance with law, — and,
on
the other side “duty“ and its commandments; but out of these there arise such fixed,
highly coloured, ineradicable ideas full of relations, — ideas of
nature
and of freedom, — that no Schiller would dare to taunt a Goethe with
the
exclamation, “those are no experiences, they are ideas!“ The mass of
experience
is so rich, embracing as it does one-half of our whole matter of
experience,
that the idea in question acquires an apprehensible reality. That is
why
we may allow ourselves to speak of freedom as a fact, and to assert
that
“its reality is capable of being set forth in experience“ (Ur., 5
91).
Even so it is important to lay stress upon this ideal character of
freedom:
for it is at this very point that difficulties arise which are for ever
being used either to deny the existence of freedom, or to fetter it in
chains; nothing less than a complete apprehension of the relations
which
exist here can suffice to free the dignity of man from these attacks:
my
present task is an attempt to lead up to that.
Like all ideas, that
of freedom
is also in its origin a “transcendent conception,“ that is to say, it
comes
from beyond experience; like many other ideas it has a transcendental
use,
that is to say, reason draws it over to the hither side of experience,
where it serves still further to build up experience (cf. p. 263 seq.).
If you have learnt, especially through Plato, to see ideas at work
everywhere in big and little, so that
we should hardly hesitate to
define reason shortly
as “a power of breeding ideas,“ then you have understood at the same
time,
that the idea is not a matter of the senses, not a thing which can be
grasped
with the hands — not even mentally
— not a thing which can be outlined in
space or bounded in time. That was made plain in our first lecture,
where
the idea of metamorphosis, which at the first blush
350 KANT
seemed
to be all experience, all
empiricism,
as soon as we looked at it more closely slipped through our fingers as
an airy vision. Later on, however, in the Plato lecture, you came to
perceive
that precisely the same thing holds good of such an idea as, let us
say,
Dog (p. 73). At first it seems perfectly concrete, but when we
investigate
the matter more closely, it becomes doubtful how narrowly or how widely
we may draw the defining circle of such an idea: the naturalist for
instance,
draws a distinction between true dogs and other dogs, without ever
being
able to lay down an exact rule as to what constitutes the true or the
false
nature; whereas the systematic zoologist, under this one conception
canis,
comprises all sorts of beasts which men have never understood under the
idea and name of Dog — for example, the jackal, the fox, the wolf, and
others.
It is a question of an idea of reason, — not of direct
experience, — of an
idea which binds plurality into unity, and so lays the foundation of
the
possibility of recognition. These relations then have found an
extraordinarily
clear expression in Kant's system, in which a distinction is drawn
between
understanding and reason. The understanding, as it were, creates the
object;
it does so by gathering up the manifold impressions of the senses into
one single thought; — that is the first step in unification: it is out
of
chaos that phenomena first dawn upon us. In the untold numbers of
conceptions
of things which have thus arisen, Reason, by means of the formation of
ideas, creates syntheses which are ever widening their grasp, thus
giving
birth to recognition. Reason confines its relations absolutely to
understanding,
that is to say, to the objects thought of, not to the direct
impressions:
“it makes for no (isolated) object,“ but only for the unification of
recognitions
of the understanding. How endless are the services which Kant's
architectonics
have rendered for the understanding of our recognition — this method
of
self-understanding — is something which you
351 KANT
will
learn later on from more
searching
study; for the time we must be content with having distinguished
between
these two great stages — understanding and reason. Our whole Plato
lecture
has prepared you for the conception that there must of necessity
be an endless series of ideas: it sufficed to show us that there is a
continuous
swaying backwards and forwards: every idea a genus (eidos) — which
comprises
more narrowly circumscribed ideas as species, and at the same time one
single species (idea) within a still more comprehensive idea (p. 44
seq.).
This belongs to the essence of idea. If in our recognition everything
is
in general motion (p. 238 seq.)
then idea is the most delicate, most
supple,
and so most movable of all the functions of recognition. Here again
Kant's
methodical limiting method has revealed new points of view, and thereby
brought clear order into the host of ideas. Whilst in Plato the “idea
of
the bed“ is mentioned side by side with “the idea of the beautiful“ and
“the idea of dimension,“ Kant teaches us to distinguish. In the first
place
the conceptions of the understanding must not be confused with ideas.
They
differ at the very outset, they differ in the place of their birth,
they
differ in their functions. The pure conceptions of the understanding
are
the categories with which you are acquainted (unity, plurality,
reciprocity,
etc.), and when they are applied to objects, the principles (dimension,
gradation, persistency, etc.): in their origin these are not
transcendent,
but transcendental, they do not arise from the further side, but from
the
hither side of experience, they are neither more nor less than
Understanding
itself viewed in the diversity and the inter-relation of its organs: we
may not therefore call such conceptions as dimension, gradation,
persistency,
necessity, etc., ideas: for these conceptions as transcendental
conditions
of all possible experience lay down the law for nature, that is to say,
352 KANT
for
all phenomena (R.V. 163). Whereas
it is to these phenomena, as products, that ideas first refer. The
conception
of the understanding is absolutely persistent and indisputable: it is
of
equal rank with space as the inevitable form of all perception, and
with
time as the uniting link between conception and perception (v. 3rd
lecture);
whereas idea is eminently movable, and its diameter varies like the
pupil
of the eye under the least change of illumination, and loses or gains
in
size according to the distance of the object under contemplation. The
idea
must be taken as analogous to a symbol, the conception of the
understanding
as analogous to a scheme. This view is, in the domain of theory,
perhaps
the greatest feat in which Kant excelled Plato. Here we have the first
step towards perfect clearness in the doctrine of ideas. For it is no
longer
a mere word if we now say — ideas belong to reason alone, not to the
understanding.
But there is a
further distinction
that must be made: we do not
deal with all this for mere
sophistry's sake, but because out of it there will later on come
appreciations
of practical importance. Kant has in especial shown that inside of
ideas
there are distinctions, not only as to the relative comprehensions, but
essential differences. An idea may be very closely related to empirical
phenomena — as in the example “Dog“ which we brought forward above, and
still
more so in Plato's favourite example “Bed.“ Kant will not hear of these
being called ideas: he calls them “conceptions of reason.“
To be sure such
conceptions are,
as I have just shown, in their genesis perfectly distinct from the
conceptions
of understanding: for the conception of understanding is a law, or if
you
prefer to call it so, an organ of my personal recognition, whereas the
conception of reason, “Dog,“ assumes given objects — phenomena: yet
Kant
prefers, — whether rightly or wrongly is a question of
353 KANT
practice,
— to call these ideas, which
are soaked through
and through with empiricism, and
therefore
in the closest way related to the understanding, 111 conceptions. On
the other hand, he wishes to reserve
the description “idea“
exclusively for a special
class of ideas, a class which is at the extreme opposite end of the
scale,
and for which no empirical proof
is
available,
because it goes beyond all
possible experience
by the senses. 112
For example, he would only allow the description
“idea“ to Goethe's doctrine of
metamorphosis
in so far as it could be shown that no possible experience in
time and space could practically
agree
with it: in spite of that an idea like that of metamorphosis is
rooted
altogether in perception: it is
born of
empirical
experience and again continues
to aim at experience. Kant,
however, shows that there exists a special class of ideas which
this
does not affect, and that these ideas possess properties which belong to them alone, and not to the
rest of ideas; these are according to Kant's terminology the specially
genuine ideas. Reason is forced at some point arbitrarily to fix limits
to the series of its ideas which are endless, inasmuch as every eidos
becomes again the idea
of a still more comprehensive eidos.
Understanding sways to and fro in
every direction; reason proceeds
in fixed
lines of direction; understanding only accepts that which is
conditioned; reason demands that
which is
unconditioned:
understanding always deals with fragments without beginning and without
end: reason insists upon what is flawless and complete in itself. And so it
comes to pass that reason
creates for itself ideas which
are wholly beyond all
experience, all power of thought,
all possibility of perception,
and which yet are to
her more alive than all other
ideas, because they spring out
of the utmost strain of her
strength, and promise rest,
the rest of that which is finite and perfect.
The idea “God“ may
serve us as an
example of such
354 KANT
a
perfectly “ideal idea.“ Among the
different
chains of ideas there is one which (if it is not to stretch out into
the
endless, into the eternally incomplete) leads with compelling force to
the conception of an “absolutely necessary being“ that encompasses all
other beings as cause and as goal, as fundamental condition and as
ideal.
Here we have, as Kant says, “a requirement of reason“ which to all
arguments
that may be brought forward answers, “I choose that there be a God“!
(Pr.
V, I, 2, 2, 8). But we must be perfectly clear as to the fact that
“reason
creates this idea for itself“: 113
the understanding affords no
guarantee
for it. God is not to be found in perception, even though reason often
enough introduces Him as idea into that which is perceived (into
Nature),
and then naturally sees Him everywhere, just as Goethe took his idea of
metamorphosis to be experience, until Schiller taught him better. In
reality
nature is impersonal, unreasoning, cruel, extravagant, hemmed in and
bounded
on all sides, and therefore necessitous. “Nature,“ says Kant, “is
entirely
lacking in what is unconditioned, even in absolute dimension, though
the
commonest reason requires it.“ 114
Just as little is God to be deduced
from
the conceptions and judgments of the understanding. For the fact that
in
the world of phenomenon everything that exists is in its origin
connected
with what has gone before, does not prove that this is also the case
outside
and beyond phenomenon: indeed, the antinomy of reason has shown us (p.
68) that, by accepting this, thought comes into conflict with itself:
besides
which it is a manifestly unpermissible analogical conclusion to argue
from
a matter of the senses to another matter which is beyond the senses
(Ur.
§ 90). If in spite of that I were to imitate the simplicity of old
thinkers, and define God as the “first mover,“ I should “not in the
slightest
degree have recognised what God is“ (Ur., genl. note). I should
355 KANT
rather
have comprised in one
senseless
word a series of unknown causes. Kant has convincingly laid it down
that
it is nothing less than audacity to wish to deduce a leading conclusion
out of the so-called teleology of nature (a conception, by the by,
which
by rights should only exist within life although it has slipped out of
it). God is therefore certainly an indispensable idea of reason, but at
the same time a problematical conception unattainable by human
understanding
(Ur. § 70). I think that this distinction must be quite plain:
God is an idea of reason, not a
conception of the
understanding.
But it is not only
necessary to
distinguish between reason and understanding by themselves, but also
between
theoretical reason and practical reason.
The idea “God,“ in
order to hold
to the same example, is in the one as in the other case an idea and not
a conception: still, in purely practical reason it moves into another
visual
angle: it gains in reality and importance. “God is only an idea of
reason,“
says Kant, “but it is one of the greatest inner and outer practical
reality“
(Üg. III, 410 seq.).
Considered from the point of view of practical
reason
this idea of God, however many shapes it may assume in fancy — is a
postulate,
an inexorable requisite. However possible it might be, Kant says, that
ideas such as that of God “should not exist outside of our ideas, or
perhaps
should be impossible“ — that does not affect him in the least: why,
the
whole world in which we live consists of ideas, and we know nothing of
what lies outside of ideas except that it is made up of phenomena, not
things. But we know full well what the idea of God has practically
meant
for mankind. It has been the comfort, the strengthening and
illuminating
power for countless millions, and even though sometimes it has served
as
a pretext for the cruellest crimes, it has none the less formed the
strength
of all the heroes and of all the heroic peoples of whom we have any
knowledge.
356 KANT
Ideas,
by means of which man finally
attains manhood, have given sufficient proof of their reality.
Reason forms
conclusive,
masterfully
bold ideas, similar to these in numbers, e.g. the idea “World.“ Nature,
however far we may push our investigations into knowledge and science,
is on all sides conditioned: to be conditioned belongs to its essence;
in its case boundaries would be a senseless conception, and yet reason
imperiously demands a whole, a unity, for if neither space nor time are
bounded, it becomes impossible to conceive how that which is
conditioned
can be conditioned. Even a Herbert Spencer at the end of his life
discovered
this metaphysical problem, and felt it to be “overwhelming.“ 115 Reason
then demands an idea “World,“ which is distinguished from Nature by the
fact that the latter (Nature) is the imagined summary of all perceived
phenomena in their lawful connection, where the former (World) leaves
perception
far behind it and attempts by reason to think something unthinkable —
an
absolute totality. Furthermore, in its widest extension this idea
“World“
attempts to embrace in addition all that belongs to practical reason,
therefore
also moral life. Here evidently arises an exact counterpart to the idea
“God“ — as Kant says, “There is a God and there is a World. Each of
the
two (ideas) contains a maximum, and there can only be a single one of
either“
(Üg. III, 325). In reality the idea “God“ proceeds from practical
reason,
and presses over into the theoretical domain, whereas, on the contrary,
the idea “World“ proceeds from theoretical reason, and stretches out
thence
in order also to embrace the domain of the practical. What is essential
is to understand that this idea “World“ is a true idea of reason, and
therefore
just as much outside of experience, just as problematical and incapable
of proof, just as improbable and unattainable by the understanding, as
the idea “God.“ Great is the mistake of the man who believes that he is
achieving
357 KANT
a
magnificent progress, that he is
acting
in a strictly scientific and empirical manner, when in an attempted
explanation
of the All he seeks to base it upon the conception of a uniform
all-embracing
world. Hume, whom our dogmatic empiricists are so fond of quoting,
says
of this idea of an all-embracing world, “it is performed merely by an
arbitrary
act of the mind.“ 116
Moses and Haeckel, both of whom give us stories of
the
creation, say the same thing in slightly different words: Haeckel with
many more facts, because he comes from outside, Moses, far deeper and
more
stimulating by his unimaginable symbolism, because he grasps the same
subject
at the better end — for the value of pure ideas is ever essentially
more
practical than theoretical, and therefore the man who turns them to
account
practically goes further than the man who tries to build upon them
theoretically.“ 117
Before going back to
“Freedom“
we must once more mention the idea of the Ego. In so far as the Ego is
thought of as simple and persistent, and therefore as an indivisible and thence imperishable
unity, it belongs to the same
class of pure ideas as “God“
and “World.“ Such an Ego can neither be proved
nor even be made probable by
means of understanding
and experience. Experience only
recognises plurality,
and sees in the highly complicated brain, consisting of many parts, an
organ of the ostensibly “individual“ life, that is nothing less than
something
simple, persistent, unchangeable, immortal. “And if I wished merely to
ask whether the soul is not in itself of an intellectual nature, the
question
would have no sense; for by such a conception I remove not only bodily
nature, but all nature in general, that is to say, all predicates of
any
possible experience, together with all conditions which make for such a
conception of an object as will by itself suffice for people to say
that
there is sense in it “ (R.V. 712).
Yet here in the Ego
you will
nevertheless
feel that
358 KANT
matters
lie somewhat differently from
what they do in the two other cases. For if, in the sense indicated,
the
Ego is an idea of reason, none the less does it belong as a unity of
consciousness
to understanding: besides which it belongs in the most real sense to
empirical
experience:
in another sense you have met with it
as a correlative of the “Thing in itself.“ In the Ego the whole
machinery
works together.“ 118
I have now reached
the point which
I was anxious to attain in this discussion of ideas, namely Kant's
doctrine
of Freedom. The idea “Freedom“ stands precisely where the idea “God“
stands,
in so far as it is altogether impossible to give any proofs of it drawn
from nature:
it is therefore a genuine idea in the
narrower Kantian sense. Theoretically “it is undeniable that we cannot
even think of understanding it (freedom)“ (Ref. 218). “Freedom is a
mere
idea, of which the objective reality can in no way be set out according
to the laws of nature, or in any possible experience, and which
therefore,
since no example according to any analogy can be supposed for it, can
never
be comprehended or even surmised“ (G. 3 sect.). These words are clear
enough;
I choose them out of many passages of similar import simply as an
example.
If on the one side they suffice to defend Kant against the absurd
reproach
of scholastic-theological narrowmindedness, I may at the same time hope
that they also need no commentary in the other direction. You now are
acquainted
with the special essence of such ideas, and of their place in the
organism
of reason; and so you will understand Kant when at the end of the
sections
about freedom he says that it has neither been his object to prove its
reality nor its possibility (p. 207). Kant waxes hot against the men
who
with the best intentions desire to explain freedom and to make it
plausible
to the understanding, “while if they had previously weighed the
conception
of freedom, they
359 KANT
would
have been forced to recognise
its
indispensability as a problematical conception in the full application
of speculative reason, as well as its utter incomprehensibility“ (Pr.
V,
preface). The man who wears himself out in the endeavour to prove the
reality
of freedom by arguments of the understanding, is undertaking an
impossibility,
and is therefore doing serious mischief:
for it is easy to confute him, and when
he is confuted, the critically uneducated believe that the very idea of
freedom is proved to be untenable, — an absurd logical fallacy, but one
that
takes effect far and wide. On the other hand, the reality is given
directly
so long as we do not limit ourselves to theory, but cross-question
practice.
It would be ridiculous to say that because the understanding fails to
grasp
a thing, therefore that thing does not exist: there we should be taking
up the same standpoint as the senseless beast, and should be unable to
go beyond direct perceptions: even the hypothetical aether can be
imagined
by understanding, fashioned by the understanding into a workable
hypothesis,
but full of contradictory attributes as it is, it can never be really
comprehended,
and so if that view were correct we could not even strive after an
exact
science. It would not only be ridiculous but logically untenable to
say; — since theoretical reason cannot prove the reality of an idea,
therefore
that idea is not true: for it is the essence of all ideas, without
exception,
that they do not tally with experience. The idea of metamorphosis as
soon
as we try to force it to submit to the law of sensibility (space) as
well
as to the pure conceptions of the understanding and time, is ruled out
of court: dare we on that account say that it contains no truth? that
it
is not the symbolical expression for a truth which cannot be formulated
in any other way? and must we forsooth deny the most direct of all
realities,
the fundamental phenomenon of our being, the first distinguishing stamp
of reason, for
360 KANT
nothing
more than these threadbare
self-contradictory considerations? It will never be possible to make
such a
monstrosity credible to the ingenuous, healthy, unsophisticated
man, — whose
simplicity is that which Kant praises as true wisdom. Transcendental
philosophy
has, however, shown you with detailed exactitude why such arguments do
not hold good: psychologically, freedom is of course completely
incomprehensible,
and to designate it as something belonging to the nature of the soul is
a mere phrase; on the other hand, the fact of freedom finds its place
in
transcendental method and architectonics, it finds its connection with
the other phenomena of reason, and so far also its comprehensibility:
it
is neither more nor less sure and comprehensible than the law of
gravitation
in theoretical science.
We begin to see now
what was the
use of so much subtilising. It will not do to sacrifice the one-half of
our whole experience, and that moreover the half that is nearest to us,
of which we are directly conscious, — practical reason with its
comprehensive
idea, that of freedom, — to the other half and its idea of nature. This
materialism
is the cruellest and most backward of all the various forms of human
narrowmindedness.
In the idea of freedom our experiences of every single instant gain
form;
it would be more possible to call into question the reality of nature
than
the reality of freedom.
Perhaps Kant's best
utterance
on this question, because it is quite straight and uncomplicated, is
contained
in the following passage: “Every being that cannot help being conscious
of freedom in all its acts, is for that very reason, with respect to
practice,
really free“ (G. III, 3). And since human reason “can no more give up
the
conception of nature than that of freedom“ it must in defiance of all
appearances “assume that no true contradiction between freedom and the
necessity of
nature is to be met with“ 119
(G.
III, 1). These two utterances would
suffice the
361 KANT
purposes
of practical life. But here
we who are engaged in no study of practical morals, but in that of
Kant's
manner of looking upon the world, must follow up the question a little
further.
And now we must pass
on to a new
view. We must grant that freedom is an idea — and indeed one of those
extreme
conclusive ideas which surpass all possibility of being perceived and
theoretically
grasped: to that extent it stands in the same series as ideas like
“God“
and “World,“ and might at most have the value of a postulate. That,
however,
is only one conception, and indeed the more theoretical or metaphysical
conception. In practice the idea of freedom possesses a quite different
dignity and significance from the ideas “God“ and “World“: it is
throughout
real, throughout experience, if not theoretical at any rate practical
experience.
“The idea of freedom is the only one of all the ideas of pure reason,
of
which the object is a fact and must be reckoned among the scibilia“
(Ur.
§ 91). Freedom possesses more reality than the Ego, the so-called
indivisible, imperishable being;
for of the latter we can
bring forward not the faintest proof in nature, whereas the conception
of Freedom, “its objective reality (by means of the causality which is
supposed in it) is proved in nature by its possible effect therein“
(id.). 120
We see the effects of freedom in every moment of our lives. Freedom is
therefore doubly proven: subjectively in the “must,“ objectively in the
visibility — not of itself but of its effects. But precisely because
the
idea of freedom which is all idea, idea incapable of being grasped, and
at the same time quite concrete, is all the time at work substantially,
therefore this idea plays a decisive part in every scheme of
philosophy.
For here in the place of the dilemma which exercised Goethe and
Schiller,
“is that idea or experience?“ — there arises a dilemma out of the
recognition,
that it is both idea and experience. This view will, I believe,
362 KANT
gain
in clearness if I sum it up, as
after these two lectures I well may, in the strictly academical words,
“Freedom is at the same time transcendent and transcendental.“ We know
from the arguments on p. 263 seq.,
that transcendent ideas are brought
into transcendental use, and we saw it again just now in the idea “God“
which, incapable of being grasped, is quite transcendent, and yet in
spite
of that can be of use even in the empirical investigation of nature, as
Kant
has shown (R.V. 615):
but here in freedom we are met by an
altogether different relation; for freedom, which, if we have a mind to
speculate upon it, we contemplate as a distant, aërial,
transcendent
idea
of reason, is in reality a fundamental, transcendental assumption of
all
experience. The matter stands as follows: the “must be,“ that is to
say,
the conception of commandment, corresponds to natural necessity as a
transcendental
counterpart; but exactly as Kant had taken his categories of the
understanding
(which are in truth incapable of definition because so long as they are
“pure“ they are directed upon no object), from what he calls the
principles
which lead us in all our judgments concerning the phenomena of nature,
and which, when combined as unity, are neither more nor less than the
idea
of nature itself, — so here it is certain that Duty is the fundamental
element
in our conception of freedom, but freedom is at the same time the
incorporation
of duty, — is, so to speak, the given fact of practical nature. With
this
one reservation we are justified to take nature and freedom as the
fundamental
transcendental combination, without which no human soul could come into
being. Hence the absolute contradiction, or rather to express myself
exactly,
the reciprocal exclusiveness in both, upon which Kant says, “the
conception
of freedom fixes nothing with respect to the theoretical recognition of
nature; equally the conception of nature fixes nothing with respect to
the
363 KANT
practical
laws of freedom; and it is
so far impossible to throw a bridge over from the one domain to the
other“
(Ur., introd. ix). It is true that in our thoughts we cannot throw over
such a bridge, but the world itself — the “world“ in its most
comprehensive
sense, — and its correlated recognising Ego, first arise in the
combination
and through the combination of these opposite elements. The relation is
precisely the same as that between form and teleology with which we
dealt
in detail in the Plato lecture. You there learnt how the fact and the
idea
of life arises out of and consists in the conjunction of these two
component
parts, which are not capable of any further relation to one another,
and
are transcendentally exact opposites; here you must learn to understand
that everything which is designated objectively as world, and
subjectively
as recognition, is all of it woven out of nature and freedom. Nature is
here analogous to form, — Freedom to teleology. “Duty“ —
(everything,
therefore,
which conditions fitness, and taste, and morality) — presupposes
as
counterpart
a “being“ in which no “duty“ exists: but “being“ none the less
presupposes
a “duty.“ Herewith you arrive at the understanding which can always
serve
as shield and spear against the Philistines; it is only in, and, as
Kant
said above, by nature that freedom possesses importance and reality,
and
you arrive at the further understanding as a weapon against even still
darker-minded men, that without freedom nature as a general proposition
cannot be recognised, and therefore cannot be imagined. But if this
transcendental
combination be brought parallel to that
which is discovered in life, we cannot
but feel that we are standing here upon a different level. There we
were
dealing with things perceived, and the transcendental combination
accordingly
arose between conception and perception, the two halves of
understanding
in the wider sense of the word (v.
p. 306 seq.),
364 KANT
here,
on the contrary, we are dealing
with the fundamental composition of our whole being, with theoretical
reason
and practical reason; the transcendental combination exists between
these
two; that is why the relation is still more difficult to grasp, and the
analogy is only conditional. A better one will arise later.
In this connection I
should like
to point out another remarkable relation: the critical doctrine of the
transcendental explains it; but of itself it furnishes a specially
clear
view of transcendental relations.
Nature is, in fact,
nothing more
than an idea which embraces the sum total of things, while freedom is
the
super-personal idea of the Ego, and therefore equally entitled to be
called
comprehensive. We might therefore believe that the relation between
Thing
and Ego would in our consciousness take a form similar to that between
nature and freedom. But that is not the case. We feel Thing and Ego as
quite distinct entities, and it needs a painstaking critical schooling
for a man to learn that they are the two sides of a transcendental
combination,
in which each half only gains contents and sense in and through the
other
(p. 304 seq.). But, on the
other hand, outside of Kant no one has the
faculty
of drawing a clean distinction between nature and freedom: in all
religions,
in all the undying systems of cabal and magic we unconcernedly attack
nature
on all sides with freedom, without being terrified by the senselessness
of it: but if an interest in exact science has been aroused sufficing
to reject these trespasses, not on behalf of reason, but in order to
give
freer play to science, — then the contrary begins to take place, what
one
might call pseudo-magic:
the expert in natural science is at
pains to cause freedom to be swallowed up by nature. So entirely do
these
two form a unity for our untaught recognition! The cause of this
striking
divergence in two cases which in fact deal with the same thing, will be
plain from the Plato lecture
365 KANT
(p.
145). Thing and Ego are very near
to one another, — they touch — that accounts for the looseness of
the web
of recognition, and the two differently coloured threads are evident.
Nature
and freedom, on the other hand, do, it is true, touch one another, and
are fused in our own selves; but they embrace an immense deal, — no
less
indeed than all that exists — and so come from the two furthest ends of
the
domain of reason: that is why the threads are drawn more tightly here
than
anywhere, and the web strikes the untrained eye as of one colour.
Here we will leave
the theory
of freedom: we have said enough for our purpose, and must now turn once
more to the practice of freedom. Here we shall have no difficulty in
understanding
Kant when he tells us, “Just as reason in a theoretical survey of
nature
is bound to accept the idea of an unconditional necessity of its
origin,
so too in a practical review of nature it assumes its own peculiar
unconditional
causality, that is freedom, linked with the consciousness of its moral
commandment“ (Ur. § 76). Thus two worlds stand over against one
another.
“The 'must,' or the imperative, which distinguishes the practical law
from
the natural law, puts us in idea quite outside of the chain of nature,
since, apart from the recognition
of our Will as free, 121
it is impossible and meaningless, and then
there
is nothing left for us but to wait and observe what resolves God will
work
in us by means of natural causes, but not what we ourselves are capable
of and forced to as prime movers; from which there must arise the
vulgarest
fanaticism, destroying all influence of healthy reason.“ 122 So the whole
organism of the ideas of practical reason is rooted in the “must.“
But now arises the
question, what
is this “must“ which lies at the bottom of one entire half of the
essence
of human reason? Obviously I can no more give a material answer here
than
to any other final question:
366 KANT
we
can never treat of a What,
but
only
of a How. What is causality
in nature? The question can only be
answered
by calling attention to the fact that one position follows upon
another
with absolute regularity, and that without this obedience to law no
such
idea as nature could arise. In the same way the “must“ itself remains
“an
insoluble problem“ (Pr. V, 1, 1, 3), and we can only point to the
effects
which it brings out. “Man, if only he be convinced of something better,
has in himself a power of acting in opposition to his own inclination“
(Goethe): that is the fact which is incapable of being explained. And
yet
Kant here again, as in the case of the categories, has taken pains to
obtain
for the imperative a formula as comprehensible as possible, a formula
adapted
to systematic application.
The universal
definition of what
an imperative means, is expressed within the four corners of the
Kantian
system by the words “Imperatives are the objective laws of freedom“
(R.V.
830). Within these commandments, for that is how we are wont to
designate
the laws of freedom, we are now in a position to distinguish between a
problematical or conditioned “must,“ and one that is categorical or
unconditioned.
Indeed, it would be appropriate here to insert another chapter mainly
upon
judgment, taste, and art. Even Goethe, little sympathy as he had with
abstraction,
says: “the highest works of art are aesthetic imperatives.“ But that
would
lead us far beyond all the boundaries which have been set for us. It
must
suffice to say — all that is “must,“ no matter of what sort it may be,
is
a guarantee for freedom, for “it expresses a possible proceeding of
which
the motive is no more than a mere conception; whereas the cause of a
proceeding
of mere nature must in every case be a phenomenon.“ We discover here
“necessity
and the law of cause and effect, for which no analogy can be found in
all
nature“ (R.V. 575). Yet every conditional “must,“ that is to
367 KANT
say
all that we are free to accept or
reject, is no more than a sort of intermediate stage — a compromise
between
theory and practice, between pure reason and empirical conditions of
life.
In the field of theoretical reason we proceed from conditions to
conditions,
for ever discovering new conditions, whereas in the domain of practical
reason every element presses forward towards the unconditional. Le
milieu
entre le vice et la vertu n'est rien, says Diderot; and so it is
also
with
freedom; “freedom cannot be divided; man is either free or not free,
for
he can either act upon a practical principle or is dependent upon
conditions“
(Ref. II, 443). That is why the unconditional “must,“ the categorical
imperative,
the commandment which “admits no moral compromises“ (Ref. II, 443), can
alone be the source out of which the idea of freedom flows. It is for
this
imperative, — which must be
present in every
possible form of reason, because without it there could not be even the
possibility
of a theoretical recognition, — that
Kant
now seeks to establish a universally available formula. Not, as I must
repeat (v. pp. 702-3), that he
has in view the founding of a new
moral
law with this formula: as regards good and evil “the philosophers alone
have been able to throw doubt upon the decision of the question: for in
the universal reason of mankind it has long since been settled, not
indeed
by far-fetched universal formulae, but by common use, much like the
difference
between the right hand and the left“ (Pr. V, 2 T); but it is important
to determine what manner of conception underlies this all-present
distinction
between good and evil, or, to put it more exactly, what conceivable,
and
therefore intelligible, expression
approaches most nearly
to the fact of the imperative. Newton is able to calculate a
mathematically
fixed, immutable formula for the movements of bodies in relation to one
another, because in this case the understanding can fashion the laws
schematically
in accordance
368 KANT
with
its own requirements; Kant, on
the
other hand, can only approximately determine the imperative of
practical
reason, because here, indeed, reason is itself the object, but
precisely
on this account the whole outwardly directed understanding only
troubles
the relations at issue, and looks upon them with an uncertain gaze. So
Kant gives not one formula but several, indeed about a dozen. For our
purpose
it will suffice to consider a few of them.
Perhaps the following
formula
is the most succinct:
“So deal that the maxim of your will
may always be able to serve as the principle of a universal code of
laws“
(Pr. V, § 7).
In order to elucidate
this
pronouncement
I must in the first place observe, that “maxim“ with Kant means the
principle
according to which the individual deals, and is therefore subjective,
whereas
the law which is meant in the expression “code of laws“ implies a
principle
for all reason, and therefore the unconditional objective. So far we
may
assert that this formula, and with it many others, proceed in obedience
to the commandment, “Subject! act objectively!“ 123 For the formula
expressly demands that the subjective principle shall be so formed that
it shall possess an objective universal value. And the same commandment
is ever ringing in our ears, “always act according to that maxim the
universality
of which thou canst choose as that of a law“ (Gr.), “act according to a
maxim which can at the same time be reckoned as a universal law“
(Doctrine
of Law), “it is right that we should choose that a maxim upon which we
act should become a universal law“ (Gr.), etc. Finally, the most
universal
of these formulae, which does not express the imperative itself so much
as the idea of the imperative — “the idea of the will of every
reasoning
being as a universally lawgiving will“ (Gr.). Therefore, I repeat, the
im-
369 KANT
perative
of “must,“ — out of which the
idea of freedom, the idea of personality, and the idea of morals
proceed,
in which again God and religion strike their roots if they are to
possess
a morally cultural importance, — calls aloud — “Subject! act
objectively!“
I know that this
formula, in which
I believe that the quintessence of the categorical imperative is
rendered,
may at first sound almost repellent; still, it does express that which
is essential, and so calls our attention to the main principle, a
principle
which Kant by degrees carries on to the construction of formulae with
important
divergences, rich in new views. For we soon hear, “act in such a
fashion
as to make use of humanity as well in your own person as in that of
every
other man, always as aim, never only as means“ (Gr.), and again, “act
according
to maxims of a universally lawgiving member in a merely possible domain
of aims“ (Gr.). Those are the two great maxims of the imperative. You
see
that he has here won his way to the most lofty principles out of those
beginnings in which he seemed so wonderfully entangled and lifeless
that
it was a matter of doubt whether we had before us the chrysalis of
something
yet unborn or a dead mummy. And all that is contained in the formula
“Subject! act objectively!“ Let us try to find out how this occurs.
Practical reason
takes
unity — absolute
unity — as its starting-point; briefly, Being, the Ego as a
mathematical
inapprehensible point is here the first and fundamental phenomenon. By
these means practical reason forms
the counterpart of theoretical
reason. But immediately, like a ray of light penetrating the darkness,
the point widens, until at last there arises a whole realm of objects.
What are commonly called objects, or things, are indeed, as appears
from
the element of all doctrine of the senses, forms subjective to such a
high
degree that it has cost us philosophical reflection to determine what
would
370 KANT
remain
over if they were deprived of
all that is in consonance with the senses and the special property of
the understanding; finally, we were left with the “Thing in itself“ on
our hands, an empty boundary-thought: on the other hand, there is one
single
thing which is fully real and inviolably objective — that is the
special
subject of the Ego together with the other subjects. If I survey the
“world“
(the comprehensive idea of “world“) in a purely scientifically
theoretical
fashion, and without any regard to my practical reason, — then I stand
alone;
all living beings outside of myself, indeed all mankind, are
mechanically
functioning chemically physical images the movements of which are
conditioned,
on the one side by form, peradventure developed by evolution out of
protoplasmal
jelly, — on the other side by assimilation, — so that, either
to-day or
to-morrow,
at furthest the day after to-morrow, I shall be able to explain them
exhaustively;
but I alone am then more than a machine; for I am alive; I possess
consciousness
and thoughts:
the so-called Solipsismus of certain
philosophical schools is thus fully justified, and indeed unavoidably
necessary,
if a theoretical reason alone be admitted. 124 Hence those
questionable
characteristics of our philosophy of natural science which in these
days
is apt to be one-sidedly over
