=III. (Second Part) B 70.=--Kant urges that his doctrine of the ideality
of space and time, so far from reducing objects to mere illusion, is the
sole means of defending their genuine reality. If space and time had an
independent existence, they would have to be regarded as more real than
the bodies which occupy them. For on this view space and time would
continue to exist even if all their contents were removed; they would be
antecedent necessary conditions of all other existences. But space and
time thus interpreted are impossible conceptions.[598] The reality of
bodies is thereby made to depend upon _Undinge_. If this were the sole
alternative, “the good Bishop Berkeley [could] not be blamed for
degrading bodies to mere illusion.” We should, Kant maintains, have to
proceed still further, denying even our own existence. For had Berkeley
taken account of time as well as of space, a similar argument,
consistently developed in regard to time, would have constrained him to
reduce the self to the level of mere illusion. Belief in the reality of
things in themselves, whether spiritual or material, is defensible only
if space and time be viewed as subjective. In other words, Berkeley’s
idealism is an inevitable consequence of a realist view of space. But it
is also its _reductio ad absurdum_.
[“Berkeley in his dogmatic idealism] maintains that space, with all
the things of which it is the inseparable condition, is something
impossible in itself, and he therefore regards the things in space
as merely imaginary entities (_Einbildungen_). Dogmatic idealism is
inevitable if space be interpreted as a property which belongs to
things in themselves. For, when so regarded, space, and everything
to which it serves as condition, is a non-entity (_Unding_). The
ground upon which this idealism rests we have removed in the
_Transcendental Aesthetic_.”[599]
The term _Schein_ is not employed throughout this passage in either of
the two meanings of the appended note, but in that of the main text. It
signifies a representation, to which no existence corresponds.
KANT’S RELATION TO BERKELEY