SS 23.
Result of this Deduction of the Conceptions of the Understanding.
We cannot think any object except by means of the categories; we
cannot cognize any thought except by means of intuitions corresponding
to these conceptions. Now all our intuitions are sensuous, and our
cognition, in so far as the object of it is given, is empirical. But
empirical cognition is experience; consequently no a priori
cognition is possible for us, except of objects of possible
experience.*
[*]
Lest my readers should stumble at this assertion, and the
conclusions that may be too rashly drawn from it, I must remind them
that the categories in the act of thought are by no means limited by
the conditions of our sensuous intuition, but have an unbounded sphere
of action. It is only the cognition of the object of thought, the
determining of the object, which requires intuition. In the absence of
intuition, our thought of an object may still have true and useful
consequences in regard to the exercise of reason by the subject. But
as this exercise of reason is not always directed on the determination
of the object, in other words, on cognition thereof, but also on the
determination of the subject and its volition, I do not intend to
treat of it in this place.
But this cognition, which is limited to objects of experience, is
not for that reason derived entirely, from, experience, but— and
this is asserted of the pure intuitions and the pure conceptions of
the understanding— there are, unquestionably, elements of cognition,
which exist in the mind a priori. Now there are only two ways in which
a necessary harmony of experience with the conceptions of its
objects can be cogitated. Either experience makes these conceptions
possible, or the conceptions make experience possible. The former of
these
statements will not bold good with respect to the categories
(nor in regard to pure sensuous intuition), for they are
a priori
conceptions, and therefore independent of experience. The assertion of
an empirical origin would attribute to them a sort of
generatio
æquivoca. Consequently, nothing remains but to adopt the second
alternative (which presents us with a system, as it were, of the
Epigenesis of pure reason), namely, that on the part of the
understanding the categories do contain the grounds of the possibility
of all experience. But with respect to the questions how they make
experience possible, and what are the principles of the possibility
thereof with which they present us in their application to
phenomena, the following section on the transcendental exercise of the
faculty of judgement will inform the reader.
It is quite possible that someone may propose a species of
præformation—system of pure reason— a middle way between the two— to
wit, that the categories are neither innate and first a priori
principles of cognition, nor derived from experience, but are merely
subjective aptitudes for thought implanted in us contemporaneously
with our existence, which were so ordered and disposed by our Creator,
that their exercise perfectly harmonizes with the laws of nature which
regulate experience. Now, not to mention that with such an
hypothesis it is impossible to say at what point we must stop in the
employment of predetermined aptitudes, the fact that the categories
would in this case entirely lose that character of necessity which
is essentially involved in the very conception of them, is a
conclusive objection to it. The conception of cause, for example,
which expresses the necessity of an effect under a presupposed
condition, would be false, if it rested only upon such an arbitrary
subjective necessity of uniting certain empirical representations
according to such a rule of relation. I could not then say— "The
effect is connected with its cause in the object (that is,
necessarily)," but only, "I am so constituted that I can think this
representation as so connected, and not otherwise." Now this is just
what the sceptic wants. For in this case, all our knowledge, depending
on the supposed objective validity of our judgement, is nothing but
mere illusion; nor would there be wanting people who would deny any
such subjective necessity in respect to themselves, though they must
feel it. At all events,
we could not dispute with any one on that
which merely depends on the manner in which his subject is organized.
