Kantian Philosophy

Apart, then, from the expanded treatment of space and time as subjective forms, we find in the Dissertation little more than the very precise and definite formulation of the slowly growing oppo sition to the Leibnizian doctrines. That the pure intellectual notions should be defended as springing from the nature of in tellect is not out of harmony with the statement of the Treiume eines Geistersehers, for there the pure notions were allowed to exist, but were not held to have validity for actual things except on grounds of experience. Here they are supposed to exist, dis severed from experience, and are allowed validity as determina tions of things in themselves.

The stage which Kant had now reached in his philosophical development was one of great significance. The doctrine of knowl edge expressed in the Dissertation was the final form which the Wolffian rationalism could assume for him, and, though many of the elements of the Kritik are contained therein, it was not really in advance of the Wolffian theory. The doctrine of space and time as forms of sense-perception, the reference of both space and time and the pure intellectual notions to the laws of the activity of mind itself, the distinction between sense and understanding as one of kind, not of degree, with the correlative distinction be tween phenomena and noumena,—all of these reappear, though changed and modified, in the Kritik. But the real import of Hume's sceptical problem had not yet dawned upon Kant.

Up to the stage indicated by the

Dissertation he had been at tempting, in various ways, to unite two radically divergent modes of explaining cognition—that which would account for the content of experience by reference to affection from things without us, and that which viewed the intellect itself as somehow furnished with the means of pure, rational cognition. He now discovered that Hume's sceptical analysis of the notion of cause was really the treatment of one typical instance of the much more general problem. If experience, says Hume, consists solely of states of mind somehow given to us, each of which exists as an effect, and therefore as distinct from others, with what right do we make the common assumption that parts of experience are necessarily con nected? The only possible answer, drawn from the premises laid down, must be that there is no warrant for such an assumption. Necessity for thought implies something more than is given in experience—for that which is given is contingent—and rests upon an a priori or pure notion. But a priori notions, did they exist,

could have no claim to regulate experience. Hume, therefore, for his part, rejected entirely the notion of cause as being fictitious and delusive, and professed to account for the habit of regarding experience as necessarily connected by reference to arbitrarily formed custom of thinking. Experience, as given contingent material, had a certain uniformity, and recurring uniformities generated in us the habit of regarding things as necessarily con nected.

The Critique of Pure Reason.—The dogmatic or individualist conception of experience had thus proved itself inadequate to the solution of Hume's difficulty regarding the notion of cause. The perception of its inadequacy in this respect, and the consequent generalization of Hume's problem, are the essential features of the new critical method. For Kant was now prepared to formulate his general inquiry in a definite fashion. His reflection on the Wolffian doctrine of knowledge had made clear to him that synthetic con nection, the essence of real cognition, was not contained in the products of thinking as a formal activity of mind operating on material otherwise supplied. On the other hand, Hume's analysis enabled him to see that synthetic connection was not contained in experience regarded as given material. Thus neither the formal nor the material aspect of experience, supplied any foundation for real knowledge, whether a priori or empirical. An absolutely new conception of experience was necessary, if the fact of cogni tion was to be explained at all, and the various modes in which Kant expresses the business of his critical philosophy were merely different fashions of stating the one ultimate problem. How is it possible for the individual thinking subject to connect together the parts of his experience in the mode we call cognition? The problem of the critical philosophy is, therefore, the com plete analysis of experience from the point of view of the condi tions under which such experience is possible for the conscious subject. The central ideas are thus self-consciousness, as the supreme condition under which experience is subjectively pos sible, and the manifold details of experience as a varied and com plex whole. The solution of the problem demanded the utmost care in keeping the due balance between these ideas; and it can hardly be said that Kant was perfectly successful.