If spatiality is due to a condition of the observer, the observer
cannot be this bodily self of ours—the body, like the objects around
it, are equally in space.
This conception Kant applied, not only to the intuitions of sense, but
to the concepts of reason—wherever a universal statement is made there
is afforded him an opportunity for the application of his principle.
He constructed a system in which one hardly knows which the most to
admire, the architectonic skill, or the reticence with regard to things
in themselves, and the observer in himself.
His system can be compared to a garden, somewhat formal perhaps, but
with the charm of a quality more than intellectual, a _besonnenheit_,
an exquisite moderation over all. And from the ground he so carefully
prepared with that buried in obscurity, which it is fitting should be
obscure, science blossoms and the tree of real knowledge grows.
The critique is a storehouse of ideas of profound interest. The one
of which I have given a partial statement leads, as we shall see
on studying it in detail, to a theory of mathematics suggestive of
enquiries in many directions.
The justification for my treatment will be found amongst other passages
in that part of the transcendental analytic, in which Kant speaks of
objects of experience subject to the forms of sensibility, not subject
to the concepts of reason.
Kant asserts that whenever we think we think of objects in space and
time, but he denies that the space and time exist as independent
entities. He goes about to explain them, and their universality, not by
assuming them, as most other philosophers do, but by postulating their
absence. How then does it come to pass that the world is in space and
time to us?
Kant takes the same position with regard to what we call nature—a great
system subject to law and order. “How do you explain the law and order
in nature?” we ask the philosophers. All except Kant reply by assuming
law and order somewhere, and then showing how we can recognise it.
In explaining our notions, philosophers from other than the Kantian
standpoint, assume the notions as existing outside us, and then it is
no difficult task to show how they come to us, either by inspiration or
by observation.
We ask “Why do we have an idea of law in nature?” “Because natural
processes go according to law,” we are answered, “and experience
inherited or acquired, gives us this notion.”
But when we speak about the law in nature we are speaking about a
notion of our own. So all that these expositors do is to explain our
notion by an assumption of it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account