Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
And here I shall make a remark, which the reader must bear well in mind
in the course of the following considerations, to wit, that not every
cognition à priori, but only those through which we cognize that and
how certain representations (intuitions or conceptions) are applied or
are possible only à priori; that is to say, the à priori possibility of
cognition and the à priori use of it are transcendental. Therefore
neither is space, nor any à priori geometrical determination of space,
a transcendental Representation, but only the knowledge that such a
representation is not of empirical origin, and the possibility of its
relating to objects of experience, although itself à priori, can be
called transcendental. So also, the application of space to objects in
general would be transcendental; but if it be limited to objects of
sense it is empirical. Thus, the distinction of the transcendental and
empirical belongs only to the critique of cognitions, and does not
concern the relation of these to their object.
Accordingly, in the expectation that there may perhaps be conceptions
which relate à priori to objects, not as pure or sensuous intuitions,
but merely as acts of pure thought (which are therefore conceptions,
but neither of empirical nor æsthetical origin)—in this expectation, I
say, we form to ourselves, by anticipation, the idea of a science of
pure understanding and rational cognition, by means of which we may
cogitate objects entirely à priori. A science of this kind, which
should determine the origin, the extent, and the objective validity of
such cognitions, must be called transcendental logic, because it has
not, like general logic, to do with the laws of understanding and
reason in relation to empirical as well as pure rational cognitions
without distinction, but concerns itself with these only in an à priori
relation to objects.
III. Of the Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic.
The old question with which people sought to push logicians into a
corner, so that they must either have recourse to pitiful sophisms or
confess their ignorance, and consequently the vanity of their whole
art, is this: “What is truth?” The definition of the word truth, to
wit, “the accordance of the cognition with its object,” is presupposed
in the question; but we desire to be told, in the answer to it, what is
the universal and secure criterion of the truth of every cognition.
To know what questions we may reasonably propose is in itself a strong
evidence of sagacity and intelligence. For if a question be in itself
absurd and unsusceptible of a rational answer, it is attended with the
danger—not to mention the shame that falls upon the person who proposes
it—of seducing the unguarded listener into making absurd answers, and
we are presented with the ridiculous spectacle of one (as the ancients
said) “milking the he-goat, and the other holding a sieve.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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