 | Critique of Pure Reason |  |
PART SECOND.
TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC.
INTRODUCTION.
IDEA OF A TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC.
I.
Of Logic in General.
OUR knowledge springs from two main sources in the mind, first of which is the faculty or power of receiving representations (receptivity for impressions); the second is the power of cognizing by means of these representations (spontaneity in the production of conceptions). Through the first an object is given to us; through the second, it is, in relation to the representation (which is a mere determination of the mind), thought. Intuition and conceptions constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither conceptions without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without conceptions, can afford us a cognition. Both are either pure or empirical. They are. empirical, when sensation (which presupposes the actual presence of the object) is contained in them; and pure, when no sensation is mixed with the representation. Sensations we may call the matter of sensuous cognition. Pure intuition consequently contains merely the form under which something is intuited, and pure conception only the form of the thought of an object. Only pure intuitions and pure conceptions are possible a priori; the empirical only a posteriori.
We apply the term sensibility to the receptivity of the mind for impressions, in so far as it is in some way affected; and, on the other hand, we call the faculty of spontaneously producing representations, or the spontaneity of cognition, understanding. Our nature is so constituted that intuition with us never can be other than sensuous, that is, it contains
Now, logic in its turn may be considered as twofold— namely, as logic of the general [universal],* or of the particular
* Logic is nothing but the science of the laws of thought, as thought. It concerns itself only with the form of thought, and takes no cognizance of the matter — that is, of the infinitude of the objects to which thought is applied.
Now Kant was wrong, when he divides logic into logic of the general and of the particular use of the understanding.
He says the logic of the particular use of the understanding contains the laws of right thinking upon any particular set of objects. This sort of logic he calls the organon of this or that science. It is difficult to discover what he means by his logic of the particular use of the understanding. From his description, we are left in doubt whether he means by this logic induction, that is, the organon of science in general, or the laws which regulate the objects, a science of which he seeks to establish. — In either case, the application of the term logic is inadmissible. To regard logic as the organon of science, is absurd, as indeed Kant himself afterwards shows (p.51). It knows nothing of this or that object. That matter employed in syllogisms is used for the sake of example only; all forms of syllogisms might be expressed in signs. Logicians have never been able clearly to see this. They have never been able clearly to define the extent of their science, to know, in fact, what their science really treated of. They have never seen that it has to do only with the formal, and never with the material in thought. The science has broken down its proper barriers to let in contributions from metaphysics, psychology, &c. It is common enough, for example, to say that Bacon's Novum Organum entirely superseded the Organon of Aristotle. But the one states the laws under which a knowledge of objects is possible; the other the subjective laws of thought. The spheres of the two are utterly distinct.
Kant very properly states that pure logic is alone properly science. Strictly speaking, applied logic cannot be a work of general logic. It is more correctly applied psychology; — psychology treating in a practical manner of the conditions under which thought is employed.
It may be noted here, that what Kant calls Transcendental Logic is properly not logic at all, but a work of metaphysics. For his Categories contain matter — as regards thought at least. Take, for example, the category of Existence. These categories, no doubt, are the forms of the matter given to us by experience. They are, according to Kant, not derived from experience, but purely a priori. But logic is concerned exclusively about the form of thought, and has nothing to do with this or that conception, whether a priori or a posteriori.
See Sir William Hamilton's Edition of Reid's Works, passim. It is to Sir William Hamilton, one of the greatest logicians, perhaps the greatest, since Aristotle, and certainly one of the acutest thinkers of any time, that the Translator is indebted for the above view of the subject of logic. — Tr.
General logic is again either pure or applied. In the former, we abstract all the empirical conditions under which the understanding is exercised; for example, the influence of the senses, the play of the fantasy or imagination, the laws of the memory, the force of habit, of inclination, &c., consequently also, the sources of prejudice— in a word, we abstract all causes from which particular cognitions arise, because these causes regard the understanding under certain circumstances
In general logic, therefore, that part which constitutes pure logic must be carefully distinguished from that which constitutes applied (though still general) logic. The former alone is properly science, although short and dry, as the methodical exposition of an elemental doctrine of the understanding ought to be. In this, therefore, logicians must always bear in mind two rules:
1. As general logic, it makes abstraction of all content of the cognition of the understanding, and of the difference of objects, and has to do with nothing but the mere form of thought.
2. As pure logic, it has no empirical principles, and consequently draws nothing (contrary to the common persuasion) from psychology, which therefore has no influence on the canon of the understanding. It is a demonstrated doctrine, and everything in it must be certain completely a priori.
What I called applied logic (contrary to the common acceptation of this term, according to which it should contain certain exercises for the scholar, for which pure logic gives the rules), is a representation of the understanding, and of the rules of its necessary employment in concreto, that is to say, under the accidental conditions of the subject, which may either hinder or promote this employment, and which are all given only empirically. Thus applied logic treats of attention, its impediments and consequences, of the origin of error, of the state of doubt, hesitation, conviction, &c., and to it is related pure general logic in the same way that
II.
Of Transcendental Logic.
General logic, as we have seen, makes abstraction of all content of cognition, that is, of all relation of cognition to its object, and regards only the logical form in the relation of cognitions to each other, that is, the form of thought in general. But as we have both pure and empirical intuitions (as transcendental æsthetic proves), in like manner a distinction might be drawn between pure and empirical thought (of objects). In this case, there would exist a kind of logic, in which we should not make abstraction of all content of cognition; for or logic which should comprise merely the laws of pure thought (of an object), would of course exclude all those cognitions which were of empirical content. This kind of logic would also examine the origin of our cognitions of objects, so far as that origin cannot be ascribed to the objects themselves; while, on the contrary, general logic has nothing to do with the origin of our cognitions, but contemplates our representations, be they given primitively a priori in ourselves, or be they only of empirical origin, solely according to the laws which the understanding observes in employing them in the process of thought, in relation to each other. Consequently, general logic treats of the form of the understanding only, which can be applied to representations, from whatever source they may have arisen.
And here I shall make a remark, which the reader must bear well in mind in the course of the following considerations, to wit, that not every cognition a priori, but only those through which we cognize that and how certain representations (intuitions or conceptions) are applied or are possible only a priori; that is to say, the a priori possibility of cognition and the a priori use of it are transcendental. Therefore neither is space, nor any a priori geometrical
Accordingly, in the expectation that there may perhaps be conceptions which relate a priori to objects, not as pure or sensuous intuitions, but merely as acts of pure thought (which are therefore conceptions, but neither of empirical nor æsthetical origin)— in this expectation, I say, we form to ourselves, by anticipation, the idea of a science of pure understanding and rational* cognition, by means of which we may cogitate objects entirely a priori. A science of this kind, which should determine the origin, the extent, and the objective validity of such cognitions, must be called Transcendental Logic, because it has not, like general logic, to do with the laws of understanding and reason in relation to empirical as well as pure rational cognitions without distinction, but concerns itself with these only in an a priori relation to objects.
Vernunfterkenntnisses. The word reason, rational, will always be confined in this translation to the rendering of Vernunft and its derivatives. — Tr.
III. Of the work of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic.
The old question with which people sought to push logicians into a corner, so that they must either have recourse to pitiful sophisms or confess their ignorance, and consequently the vanity of their whole art, is this: "What is truth?" The definition of the word truth, to wit, "the accordance of the cognition with its object," is presupposed in the question; but we desire to be told, in the answer to it, what is the universal and secure criterion of the truth of every cognition.
To know what questions we may reasonably propose is in itself a strong evidence of sagacity and intelligence. For if a question be in itself absurd and unsusceptible of a rational answer, it is attended with the danger— not to
If truth consists in the accordance of a cognition with its object, this object must be, ipso facto, distinguished from all others; for a cognition is false if it does not accord with the object to which it relates, although it contains something which may be affirmed of other objects. Now an universal criterion of truth would be that which is valid for all cognitions, without distinction of their objects. But it is evident that since, in the case of such a criterion, we make abstraction of all the content of a cognition (that is, of all relation to its object), and truth relates precisely to this content, it must be utterly absurd to ask for a mark of the truth of this content of cognition; and that, accordingly, a sufficient, and at the same time universal, test of truth cannot possibly be found. As we have already termed the content of a cognition its matter, we shall say: "Of the truth of our cognitions in respect of their matter, no universal test can be demanded, because such a demand is self—contradictory."
On the other hand, with regard to our cognition in respect of its mere form (excluding all content), it is equally manifest that logic, in so far as it exhibits the universal and necessary laws of the understanding, must in these very laws present us with criteria of truth. Whatever contradicts these rules is false, because thereby the understanding is made to contradict its own universal laws of thought; that is, to contradict itself. These criteria, however, apply solely to the form of truth, that is, of thought in general, and in so far they are perfectly accurate, yet not sufficient. For although a cognition may be perfectly accurate as to logical form, that is, not self—contradictory, it is notwithstanding quite possible that it may not stand in agreement with its object. Consequently, the merely logical criterion of truth, namely, the accordance of a cognition with the universal and formal laws of understanding and reason, is nothing more than the conditio sine qua non, or negative condition of all truth. Farther than this logic cannot go, and the error which depends not on the form, but on the content of the cognition, it has no test to discover.
General logic, then, resolves the whole formal business of understanding and reason into its elements, and exhibits them as principles of all logical judging of our cognitions. This part of logic may, therefore, be called Analytic, and is at least the negative test of truth, because all cognitions must first of an be estimated and tried according to these laws before we proceed to investigate them in respect of their content, in order to discover whether they contain positive truth in regard to their object. Because, however, the mere form of a cognition, accurately as it may accord with logical laws, is insufficient to supply us with material (objective) truth, no one, by means of logic alone, can venture to predicate anything of or decide concerning objects, unless he has obtained, independently of logic, well—grounded information about them, in order afterwards to examine, according to logical laws, into the use and connection, in a cohering whole, of that information, or, what is still better, merely to test it by them. Notwithstanding, there lies so seductive a charm in the possession of a specious art like this— an art which gives to all our cognitions the form of the understanding, although with respect to the content thereof we may be sadly deficient— that general logic, which is merely a canon of judgement, has been employed as an organon for the actual production, or rather for the semblance of production, of objective assertions, and has thus been grossly misapplied. Now general logic, in its assumed character of organon, is called Dialectic.
Different as are the significations in which the ancients used this term for a science or an art, we may safely infer, from their actual employment of it, that with them it was nothing else than a logic of illusion— a sophistical art for giving ignorance, nay, even intentional sophistries, the colouring of truth, in which the thoroughness of procedure which logic requires was imitated, and their topic* employed to cloak the empty pretensions. Now it may be taken as a safe and useful warning, that general logic, considered as an organon,
The Topic (Topica) of the ancients was a work of the intellectual instruction then prevalent, with the design of setting forth the proper method of reasoning on any given proposition — according to certain distinctions of genus, the species, &c. of the subject and predicate; of words, analogies, and the like. It of course contained also a code of laws for syllogistical disputation. It was not necessarily an aid to sophistry. — Tr.
Such instruction is quite unbecoming the dignity of philosophy. For these reasons we have chosen to denominate this part of logic Dialectic, in the sense of a critique of dialectical illusion, and we wish the term to be so understood in this place.
IV. Of the work of Transcendental Logic into Transcendental
Analytic and Dialectic.
In transcendental logic we isolate the understanding (as in transcendental æsthetic the sensibility) and select from our cognition merely that part of thought which has its origin in the understanding alone. The exercise of this pure cognition, however, depends upon this as its condition, that objects to which it may be applied be given to us in intuition, for without intuition the whole of our cognition is without objects, and is therefore quite void. That part of transcendental logic, then, which treats of the elements of pure cognition of the understanding, and of the principles without which no object at all can be thought, is transcendental analytic, and at the same time a logic of truth. For no cognition can contradict it, without losing at the same time all content, that is, losing all reference to an object, and therefore all truth. But because we are very easily seduced into employing these pure cognitions and principles of the understanding by themselves, and that even beyond the boundaries of experience, which yet is the only source whence we can obtain matter (objects) on which those pure conceptions may be employed— understanding runs the risk of making, by means of empty sophisms, a material and objective use of the mere formal principles of the pure understanding, and of passing judgements on objects without distinction— objects
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