Kantian Philosophy

Logical and Real Ground.

The particular problem which gave the occasion to the first of the precritical writings is the question to which the Kritik is an answer. What is the nature of the distinction between knowledge gained by analysis of notions and knowledge of matters of fact? Kant seems never to have been satisfied with the Wolffian identification of logical axioms and of the principle of sufficient reason. The tract on the False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures, in which the view of thought as analytic is clearly expressed, closes with the significant division of judgments into those which rest upon the logical axioms of identity and contradiction and those for which no logical ground can be shown. Such immediate judgments, it is said, abound in our experience. They are the foundations for all judgments re garding real existence. It was impossible that the question re garding their nature and legitimacy and their distinction from analytic judgments should not present itself to him. The three tracts belonging to the years 1763-64 bring forward the essential opposition between the two classes of judgments. In the Essay on Negative Quantities, the fundamental thought is the total dis tinction in kind between logical opposition and real opposition. For the one adequate explanation is found in the logical axiom of analytical thinking; for the other no such explanation is to be had. Logical ground and real ground are distinct. "I can under stand perfectly well," says Kant, "how a consequence follows from its reason according to the law of identity, since it is discoverable by mere analysis of the notion contained in it. . . . But how something follows from another thing and not according to the law of identity, this I should gladly have made clear to me. . . . How shall I comprehend that, since something is, something else should be?" Real things, in short, are distinct existences and not necessarily connected in thought.

The prize essay On the Principles of Natural Theology and Morals brings forward the same fundamental opposition. Here, for the first time, appears definitely the distinction between synthesis and analysis, and in the distinction is found the reason for the superior certainty and clearness of mathematics as op posed to philosophy. Mathematics proceeds synthetically, for in it the notions are constructed. Metaphysics is analytical in method in it the notions are given, and by analysis they are cleared up. Kant does not, in this place, raise the question as to the reason for assuming that the arbitrary synthesis of mathe matical construction has any reference to reality. The deeper significance of synthesis has not yet become apparent.

In the Only Possible Ground of Proof for the Existence of God, the argument, though largely Leibnizian, advances one step farther towards the ultimate inquiry. For there Kant states precisely his fundamental doctrine that real existence is not a predicate to be added in thought to the conception of a possible subject. So far as thought is concerned, possibility, not real existence, is con tained in judgment.

The year 1765 was marked by the publication of Leibniz's post humous Nouveaux Essais, in which his theory of knowledge is more fully stated than in any of his previous tracts. Kant gave some attention to this work, though no reference to it occurs in his writings, and it may have assisted to give additional precision to his doctrine. In the essay, Dreams of a Clairvoyant, published 1766, he emphasizes his previous conclusion that connections of real fact are mediated in our thought by ultimate notions, but adds that the warrant for such notions can be furnished only by experience. He is inclined, therefore, to regard as the function of metaphysics the complete statement of these ultimate, indemon strable notions, and theref ore the determination of the limits to knowledge by their means. Even at this point, the difficulty raised by Hume does not occur to him. He still appears to think that experience does warrant the employment of such notions, and when there is taken into account his correspondence with Lambert during the next few years, one would be inclined to say that the Architektonik of the latter represents most completely Kant's idea of philosophy.

On another side Kant had been shaking himself free from the principles of the Leibnizian philosophy. According to Leibniz, space resulted from the relations of monads to one another. But Kant began to see that such a conception did not accord with the manner in which we determine directions or positions in space.

In the essay, On the Ground of distinguishing Particular Divisions in Space, he pointed out that the idea of space as a whole is not deducible from the experience of particular spaces, or particular relations of objects in space, that we only cognize relations in space by reference to space as a whole, and finally that definite positions involve reference to space as a given whole.

Sense and Understanding.

The whole development of Kant's thought up to this point is intelligible when regarded from the Leibnizian point of view, with which he started. Even in the Dissertation of 177o the really critical question is not involved. Sense and understanding, according to the Dissertation, are the two sources of knowledge. The objects of the one are things of sense or phenomena; the objects of the other are noumena. These are absolutely distinct, and are not to be regarded as differing only in degree. In phenomena we distinguish matter, which is given by sense, and form, which is the law of the order of sensations.

Such form is twofol.

the order of space and time. Sensations formed by space and time compose the world of appearance, and this when treated by the understanding, according to logical rules, is experience. But the logical use of the understanding is not its only use. Much more important is the real use, by which are pro duced the pure notions whereby we think things as they are. These pure notions are the laws of the operation of the intellect; they are leges intellectus.