1. TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF THE FACULTY OF
JUDGEMENT,
OR, ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES.
CHAPTER I.
Of the Schematism at of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding.
IN all subsumptions of an object under a conception, the
representation of the object must be homogeneous with the
conception; in other words, the conception must contain that which
is represented in the object to be subsumed under it. For this is
the meaning of the expression: "An object is contained under a
conception." Thus the empirical conception of a plate is homogeneous
with the pure geometrical conception of a circle, inasmuch as the
roundness which is cogitated in the former is intuited in the latter.
But pure conceptions of the understanding, when compared with
empirical intuitions, or even with sensuous intuitions in general, are
quite heterogeneous, and never can be discovered in any intuition. How
then is the subsumption of the latter under the former, and
consequently the application of the categories to phenomena,
possible?— For it is impossible to say, for example: "Causality can be
intuited through the senses and is contained in the phenomenon."— This
natural and important question forms the real cause of the necessity
of a transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgement, with the
purpose, to wit, of showing how pure conceptions of the
understanding can be applied to phenomena. In all other sciences,
where the conceptions by which the object is thought in the general
are not so different and heterogeneous from those which represent
the object in concreto— as it is given, it is quite unnecessary to
institute any special inquiries concerning the application of the
former to the latter.
Now it is quite clear that there must be some third thing, which
on the one side is homogeneous with the category, and with the
phenomenon on the other, and so makes the application of the former to
the latter possible. This mediating representation
must be pure
(without any empirical content), and yet must on the one side be
intellectual, on the other
sensuous. Such a representation is the
transcendental schema.
The conception of the understanding contains pure synthetical
unity of the manifold in general. Time, as the formal condition of the
manifold of the internal sense, consequently of the conjunction of all
representations, contains a priori a manifold in the pure intuition.
Now a transcendental determination of time is so far homogeneous
with the category, which constitutes the unity thereof, that it is
universal and rests upon a rule a priori. On the other hand, it is
so far homogeneous with the phenomenon, inasmuch as time is
contained in every empirical representation of the manifold. Thus an
application of the category to phenomena becomes possible, by means of
the transcendental determination of time, which, as the schema of
the conceptions of the understanding, mediates the subsumption of
the latter under the former.
After what has been proved in our deduction of the categories, no
one, it is to be hoped, can hesitate as to the proper decision of
the question, whether the employment of these pure conceptions of
the understanding ought to be merely empirical or also transcendental;
in other words, whether the categories, as conditions of a possible
experience, relate a priori solely to phenomena, or whether, as
conditions of the possibility of things in general, their
application can be extended to objects as things in themselves. For we
have there seen that conceptions are quite impossible, and utterly
without signification, unless either to them, or at least to the
elements of which they consist, an object be given; and that,
consequently, they cannot possibly apply to objects as things in
themselves without regard to the question whether and how these may be
given to us; and, further, that the only manner in which objects can
be given to us is by means of the modification of our sensibility;
and, finally, that pure a priori conceptions, in addition to the
function of the understanding in the category, must contain a priori
formal conditions of sensibility (of the internal sense, namely),
which again contain the general condition under which alone the
category can be applied to any object. This formal and pure
condition of sensibility, to which the conception of the understanding
is restricted in its employment, we shall name the schema of the
conception of the understanding, and the
procedure of the
understanding with these schemata we shall call the
Schematism of
the pure understanding.
The schema is, in itself, always a mere product of the
imagination. But, as the synthesis of imagination* has for its aim no
single intuition, but merely unity in the determination of
sensibility, the schema is clearly distinguishable from the image.
Thus, if I place five points one after another.... this is an image of
the number five. On the other hand, if I only think a number in
general, which may be either five or a hundred, this thought is rather
the representation of a method of representing in an image a sum
(e.g., a thousand) in conformity with a conception, than the image
itself, an image which I should find some little difficulty in
reviewing, and comparing with the conception. Now this
representation of a general procedure of the imagination to present
its image to a conception, I call the schema of this conception.
[*]
See note at p. 34. — Tr.
In truth, it is not images of objects, but schemata, which lie at
the foundation of our pure sensuous conceptions. No image could ever
be adequate to our conception of a triangle in general. For the
generalness of the conception it never could attain to, as this
includes under itself all triangles, whether right—angled,
acute—angled, &c., whilst the image would always be limited to a
single part of this sphere. The schema of the triangle can exist
nowhere else than in thought, and it indicates a rule of the synthesis
of the imagination in regard to pure figures in space. Still less is
an object of experience, or an image of the object, ever to the
empirical conception. On the contrary, the conception always relates
immediately to the schema of the imagination, as a rule for the
determination of our intuition, in conformity with a certain general
conception. The conception of a dog indicates a rule, according to
which my imagination can delineate the figure of a four—footed
animal in general, without being limited to any particular
individual form which experience presents to me, or indeed to any
possible image that I can represent to myself in concreto. This
schematism of our understanding in regard to phenomena and their
mere form, is an art, hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose
true modes of action we shall only with difficulty discover and
unveil. Thus much only can
we say: "The
image is a product of the
empirical faculty of the productive imagination— the
schema of
sensuous conceptions (of figures in space, for example) is a
product, and, as it were, a monogram of the pure imagination
a priori,
whereby and according to which images first become possible, which,
however, can be connected with the conception only mediately by
means of the schema which they indicate, and are in themselves never
fully adequate to it." On the other hand, the schema of a pure
conception of the understanding is something that cannot be reduced
into any image— it is nothing else than the pure synthesis expressed
by the category, conformably, to a rule of unity according to
conceptions. It is a transcendental product of the imagination, a
product which concerns the determination of the internal sense,
according to conditions of its form (time) in respect to all
representations, in so far as these representations must be
conjoined
a priori in one conception, conformably to the unity of
apperception.
Without entering upon a dry and tedious analysis of the essential
requisites of transcendental schemata of the pure conceptions of the
understanding, we shall rather proceed at once to give an
explanation of them according to the order of the categories, and in
connection therewith.
For the external sense the pure image of all quantities
(quantorum) is space; the pure image of all objects of sense in
general, is time. But the pure schema of quantity (quantitatis) as a
conception of the understanding, is number, a representation which
comprehends the successive addition of one to one (homogeneous
quantities). Thus, number is nothing else than the unity of the
synthesis of the manifold in a homogeneous intuition, by means of my
generating time* itself in my apprehension of the intuition.
[*]
I generate time because I generate succession, namely, in the successive addition of one to one. — Tr.
Reality, in the pure conception of the understanding, is that
which corresponds to a sensation in general; that, consequently, the
conception of which indicates a being (in time). Negation is that
the conception of which represents a not—being (in time). The
opposition of these two consists therefore in the difference of one
and the same time, as a time filled or a time empty. Now as time is
only the form of intuition,
consequently of objects as phenomena, that
which in objects corresponds to sensation is the transcendental matter
of all objects as things in themselves (
Sachheit, reality). Now
every sensation has a degree or quantity by which it can fill time,
that is to say, the internal sense in respect of the representation of
an object, more or less, until it vanishes into nothing (= 0 =
negatio). Thus there is a relation and connection between reality
and negation, or rather a transition from the former to the latter,
which makes every reality representable to us as a quantum; and the
schema of a reality as the quantity of something in so far as it fills
time, is exactly this continuous and uniform generation of the reality
in time, as we descend in time from the sensation which has a
certain degree, down to the vanishing thereof, or gradually ascend
from negation to the quantity thereof.
The schema of substance is the permanence of the real in time;
that is, the representation of it as a substratum of the empirical
determination of time; a substratum which therefore remains, whilst
all else changes. (Time passes not, but in it passes the existence
of the changeable. To time, therefore, which is itself unchangeable
and permanent, corresponds that which in the phenomenon is
unchangeable in existence, that is, substance, and it is only by it
that the succession and coexistence of phenomena can be determined
in regard to time.)
The schema of cause and of the causality of a thing is the real
which, when posited, is always followed by something else. It
consists, therefore, in the succession of the manifold, in so far as
that succession is subjected to a rule.
The schema of community (reciprocity of action and reaction), or the
reciprocal causality of substances in respect of their accidents, is
the coexistence of the determinations of the one with those of the
other, according to a general rule.
The schema of possibility is the accordance of the synthesis of
different representations with the conditions of time in general
(as, for example, opposites cannot exist together at the same time
in the same thing, but only after each other), and is therefore the
determination of the representation of a thing at any time.
The schema of reality* is existence in a determined time.
[*]
Wirklichkeit. In the table of categories it is called Existence (Daseyn). — Tr.
The schema of necessity is the existence of an object in all time.
It is clear, from all this, that the schema of the category of
quantity contains and represents the generation (synthesis) of time
itself, in the successive apprehension of an object; the schema of
quality the synthesis of sensation with the representation of time, or
the filling up of time; the schema of relation the relation of
perceptions to each other in all time (that is, according to a rule of
the determination of time): and finally, the schema of modality and
its categories, time itself, as the correlative of the determination
of an object— whether it does belong to time, and how. The schemata,
therefore, are nothing but a priori determinations of time according
to rules, and these, in regard to all possible objects, following
the arrangement of the categories, relate to the series in time, the
content in time, the order in time, and finally, to the complex or
totality in time.
Hence it is apparent that the schematism of the understanding, by
means of the transcendental synthesis of the imagination, amounts to
nothing else than the unity of the manifold of intuition in the
internal sense, and thus indirectly to the unity of apperception, as a
function corresponding to the internal sense (a receptivity). Thus,
the schemata of the pure conceptions of the understanding are the true
and only conditions whereby our understanding receives an
application to objects, and consequently significance. Finally,
therefore, the categories are only capable of empirical use,
inasmuch as they serve merely to subject phenomena to the universal
rules of synthesis, by means of an a priori necessary unity (on
account of the necessary union of all consciousness in one original
apperception); and so to render them susceptible of a complete
connection in one experience. But within this whole of possible
experience lie all our cognitions, and in the universal relation to
this experience consists transcendental truth, which antecedes all
empirical truth, and renders the latter possible.
It is, however, evident at first sight, that although the schemata
of sensibility are the sole agents in realizing the categories, they
do, nevertheless, also restrict them, that is, they limit the
categories by conditions which lie beyond the sphere of understanding—
namely, in sensibility. Hence the schema is properly only the
phenomenon, or the sensuous
conception of an object in harmony with
the category. (
Numerus est quantitas phænomenon,
* —
sensatio realitas
phænomenon;
constans et perdurabile rerum substantia phænomenon—
æternitas,
necessitas, phænomena, &c.) Now, if we remove a
restrictive condition, we thereby amplify, it appears, the formerly
limited conception. In this way, the categories in their pure
signification, free from all conditions of sensibility, ought to be
valid of things
as they are, and not, as the schemata represent
them, merely as they appear; and consequently the categories must have
a significance far more extended, and wholly independent of all
schemata. In truth, there does always remain to the pure conceptions
of the understanding, after abstracting every sensuous condition, a
value and significance, which is, however, merely logical. But in this
case, no object is given them, and therefore they have no meaning
sufficient to afford us a conception of an object. The notion of
substance, for example, if we leave out the sensuous determination
of permanence, would mean nothing more than a something which can be
cogitated as subject, without the possibility of becoming a
predicate to anything else. Of this representation I can make nothing,
inasmuch as it does not indicate to me what determinations the thing
possesses which must thus be valid as
premier subject. Consequently,
the categories, without schemata are merely functions of the
understanding for the production of conceptions, but do not
represent any object. This significance they derive from
sensibility, which at the same time realizes the understanding and
restricts it.
[*]
Phænomenon is here an adjective. — Trans.