KANT'S CRITICAL THEORY If this result is the divorce of mind from reality, then the underlying conception of the critical theory of Kant (1724-1804) is that knowledge or experience is only explicable in terms involving equally mind and real fact, thought and things. It may be that, in the end, the Kantian view tends again to a severance which reproduces the old difficulties, but the leading idea is undoubtedly that of a synthesis which shall give to both mind and its objects their due place in the constitution of experience.
In describing his method as "critical" Kant intended to empha sise the change in the point of view from which he was regarding the problem of knowledge from that adopted by what he called the "dogmatic" method—the method of dealing with facts enter ing into knowledge without having first of all inquired into the meaning and legitimacy of the notions by which an attempt is made to interpret or explain those facts. All the difficulties in which the dogmatic method became involved seemed to him to result from neglect of that prior investigation into the nature of knowledge or experience itself, whereby alone can be determined what worth is to be assigned to the notions through which objects of knowledge are interpreted. It was this prior investigation that constituted the essence of the critical method.
As the central problem of a theory of knowledge Kant singled out the characteristic of objectivity. Why was it that what was known stood over against the knowing subject as other than and distinct from his act of knowing? By inspecting concrete instances of the knowledge or experience of objects, he became convinced that there is always involved therein a synthesising process which sensibility, regarded as a way in which mind is affected by things, is incapable of performing. It was only in so far as the receptivity of sense is conceived as being merely one ingredient in the process of knowing, the other being the combining activity of thought, that we can understand how there comes about the result,—the synthetical combination in the judgment whereby the conscious subject refers to a real object as known by him. The object cognised is essentially a complex of heterogeneous ele ments, and in and through the act of cognising a synthesis of these elements is brought about.
The process involves (a) a multiplicity of sensuous material, of sense-presentations,—mere impressions, not per se even cog nisabliz, and devoid of any power to arrange themselves. These elements are a posteriori, particular and given. The process
involves also (b) two general forms into which the manifold of sense-data is received. As universal conditions of sense-appre hension, these forms of Space and Time, although sensuous in character, do not belong to any special sense, nor are they, although general, notions or concepts. They are pure a priori intuitions,—ways in which any intelligence which like ours is sensuously affected must receive the data of sense. And, once more, the process involves (c) the principles according to which the given elements of sense are combined and cognised. The mani fold of sense is in itself a merely indefinite mass of disjointed particulars; it can become content of knowledge only through being brought into relation with the unity of the self, and as referred to this unity the data of sense have imposed upon them systematic connectedness. The categories, the ultimate univer.
sals of thought,—such notions as those of unity and plurality, substance and attribute, cause and effect—are the ways in which the unity of consciousness expresses itself in relation to tht empirical data, the modes in which the unity of consciousness plants itself out, so to speak, in the given material. And the gist of Kant's contention is that it is precisely the function of this act of synthesis to supply that centre of reference which is what we mean by objectivity.
All knowledge or experience is only for self-consciousness,— such was Kant's central position. But the unity of consciousness which finds expression in the categories was not to be identified with the individual subject. Rather was it to be conceived as the unity which is implied as a prior condition in making even the inner life an object of contemplation. It was the common factor in all individual subjects—consciousness in general, as Kant him self described it, which while characterising each individual centre of consciousness yet transcends the latter in the aspect of a "super-individual function." In every act of knowing, the indi vidual must, therefore, conform to the conditions imposed by consciousness as such ; it is precisely in virtue of being conditions due to the nature of consciousness in general that the categories are universal and necessary. The object is apprehended by the individual knower as something distinct from himself because the categories by which he apprehends it are not his private prop erty, but the common property of all knowing minds.