The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)Schopenhauer, Arthur
Philosophy
The World as Will and Idea (Vol. 2 of 3)
Schopenhauer, Arthur
Idea (Philosophy); Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy; Will
The language in which the doctrine of the categories is expressed affords
an evidence of its baselessness. What a difference in this respect between
the Transcendental Æsthetic and the Transcendental Analytic! In the
former, what clearness, definiteness, certainty, firm conviction which is
freely expressed and infallibly communicates itself! All is full of light,
no dark lurking-places are left: Kant knows what he wants and knows that
he is right. In the latter, on the other hand, all is obscure, confused,
indefinite, wavering, uncertain, the language anxious, full of excuses and
appeals to what is coming, or indeed of suppression. Moreover, the whole
second and third sections of the Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the
Understanding are completely changed in the second edition, because they
did not satisfy Kant himself, and they have become quite different from
the first edition, though not clearer. We actually see Kant in conflict
with the truth in order to carry out his hypothesis which he has once
fixed upon. In the Transcendental Æsthetic all his propositions are really
proved from undeniable facts of consciousness, in the Transcendental
Analytic, on the contrary, we find, if we consider it closely, mere
assertions that thus it is and must be. Here, then, as everywhere, the
language bears the stamp of the thought from which it has proceeded, for
style is the physiognomy of the mind. We have still to remark, that
whenever Kant wishes to give an example for the purpose of fuller
explanation, he almost always takes for this end the category of
causality, and then what he has said turns out correct; for the law of
causality is indeed the real form of the understanding, but it is also its
only form, and the remaining eleven categories are merely blind windows.
The deduction of the categories is simpler and less involved in the first
edition than in the second. He labours to explain how, according to the
perception given by sensibility, the understanding produces experience by
means of thinking the categories. In doing so, the words recognition,
reproduction, association, apprehension, transcendental unity of
apperception, are repeated to weariness, and yet no distinctness is
attained. It is well worth noticing, however, that in this explanation he
does not once touch upon what must nevertheless first occur to every
one—the relation of the sensation to its external cause. If he did not
intend this relation to hold good, he ought to have expressly denied it;
but neither does he do this. Thus in this way he evades the point, and all
the Kantians have in like manner evaded it. The secret motive of this is,
that he reserves the causal nexus, under the name “ground of the
phenomenon,” for his false deduction of the thing in itself; and also that
perception would become intellectual through the relation to the cause,
which he dare not admit. Besides this, he seems to have been afraid that
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