Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
But we can very easily conceive the possibility
of community (of substances as phenomena) if we represent them to
ourselves as in space, consequently in external intuition. For external
intuition contains in itself à priori formal external relations, as the
conditions of the possibility of the real relations of action and
reaction, and therefore of the possibility of community. With the same
ease can it be demonstrated, that the possibility of things as
quantities, and consequently the objective reality of the category of
quantity, can be grounded only in external intuition, and that by its
means alone is the notion of quantity appropriated by the internal
sense. But I must avoid prolixity, and leave the task of illustrating
this by examples to the reader’s own reflection.
The above remarks are of the greatest importance, not only for the
confirmation of our previous confutation of idealism, but still more
when the subject of self-cognition by mere internal consciousness and
the determination of our own nature without the aid of external
empirical intuitions is under discussion, for the indication of the
grounds of the possibility of such a cognition.
The result of the whole of this part of the analytic of principles is,
therefore: “All principles of the pure understanding are nothing more
than à priori principles of the possibility of experience, and to
experience alone do all à priori synthetical propositions apply and
relate”; indeed, their possibility itself rests entirely on this
relation.
Chapter III Of the Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena
and Noumena
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