Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future MetaphysicsKant, Immanuel
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Kant, Immanuel
Knowledge, Theory of -- Early works to 1800; Metaphysics -- Early works to 1800
§ 34. Two important, and even indispensable, though very dry,
investigations had therefore become indispensable in the Critique of
Pure Reason,—viz., the two chapters "Vom Schematismus der reinen
Verstandsbegriffe," and "Vom Grunde der Unterscheidung aller
Verstandesbegriffe überhaupt in Phänomena und Noumena." In the
former it is shown, that the senses furnish not the pure concepts of
the understanding in concreto, but only the schedule for their use,
and that the object conformable to it occurs only in experience (as
the product of the understanding from materials of the sensibility).
In the latter it is shown, that, although our pure concepts of the
understanding and our principles are independent of experience, and
despite of the apparently greater sphere of their use, still nothing
whatever can be thought by them beyond the field of experience,
because they can do nothing but merely determine the logical form of
the judgment relatively to given intuitions. But as there is no
intuition at all beyond the field of the sensibility, these pure
concepts, as they cannot possibly be exhibited in concreto, are void
of all meaning; consequently all these noumena, together with their
complex, the intelligible world,{20} are nothing but representation of a
problem, of which the object in itself is possible, but the solution,
from the nature of our understanding, totally impossible. For our
understanding is not a faculty of intuition, but of the connexion of
given intuitions in experience. Experience must therefore contain all
the objects for our concepts; but beyond it no concepts have any
significance, as there is no intuition that might offer them a
foundation.
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{20} We speak of the "intelligible world," not (as the usual expression
is) "intellectual world." For cognitions are intellectual through the
understanding, and refer to our world of sense also; but objects, so
far as they can be represented merely by the understanding, and to
which none of our sensible intuitions can refer, are termed
"intelligible." But as some possible intuition must correspond to
every object, we would have to assume an understanding that intuites
things immediately; but of such we have not the least notion, nor have
we of the things of the understanding [Verstandeswesen], to which it
should be applied.
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§ 35. The imagination may perhaps be forgiven for occasional
vagaries, and for not keeping carefully within the limits of
experience, since it gains life and vigor by such flights, and since
it is always easier to moderate its boldness, than to stimulate its
languor. But the understanding which ought to think can never be
forgiven for indulging in vagaries; for we depend upon it alone for
assistance to set bounds, when necessary, to the vagaries of the
imagination.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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