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
We have above (§§ 33, 34) indicated the limits of reason with regard
to all cognition of mere creations of thought. Now, since the
transcendental ideas have urged us to approach them, and thus have led
us, as it were, to the spot where the occupied space (viz.,
experience) touches the void (that of which we can know nothing, viz.,
noumena), we can determine the bounds of pure reason. For in all
bounds there is something positive (e.g., a surface is the boundary of
corporeal space, and is therefore itself a space, a line is a space,
which is the boundary of the surface, a point the boundary of the
line, but yet always a place in space), whereas limits contain mere
negations. The limits pointed out in those paragraphs are not enough
after we have discovered that beyond them there still lies something
(though we can never cognise what it is in itself). For the question
now is, What is the attitude of our reason in this connexion of what
we know with what we do not, and never shall, know? This is an actual
connexion of a known thing with one quite unknown (and which will
always remain so), and though what is unknown should not become the
least more known—which we cannot even hope—yet the notion of this
connexion must be definite, and capable of being rendered distinct.
We must therefore accept an immaterial being, a world of
understanding, and a Supreme Being (all mere noumena), because in them
only, as things in themselves, reason finds that completion and
satisfaction, which it can never hope for in the derivation of
appearances from their homogeneous grounds, and because these actually
have reference to something distinct from them (and totally
heterogeneous), as appearances always presuppose an object in itself,
and therefore suggest its existence whether we can know more of it or
not.
But as we can never cognise these beings of understanding as they are
in themselves, that is, definitely, yet must assume them as regards
the sensible world, and connect them with it by reason, we are at
least able to think this connexion by means of such concepts as
express their relation to the world of sense. Yet if we represent to
ourselves a being of the understanding by nothing but pure concepts of
the understanding, we then indeed represent nothing definite to
ourselves, consequently our concept has no significance; but if we
think it by properties borrowed from the sensuous world, it is no
longer a being of understanding, but is conceived as an appearance,
and belongs to the sensible world. Let us take an instance from the
notion of the Supreme Being.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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