A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'

Kant · en
=A 84-92=B 116-24, I. § 13.=--Just as in II. § 3 Kant deals solely with
the first of the two questions formulated in the letter of 1772 to
Herz--the reference of _sense_-representations to an object,--so in I. §
13 he raises only the second--that of the objective validity of
_intellectual_ representations (now spoken of as pure concepts of
understanding, or pure _a priori_ concepts, and only in one sentence as
categories). And just as in the former section he carries the problem a
step further, yet without attaining to the true Critical position, so in
this latter he still assumes that it is the application of these pure
concepts to real independent objects, _i.e._ to _things in themselves_,
which calls for justification. We must again consider the exact terms in
which this problem is formulated in the letter to Herz.[807]

     “Similarly, if that in us which is called a representation, were
     active in relation to the object, that is to say, if the object
     itself were produced by the representation (as on the view that the
     ideas in the Divine Mind are the archetypes of things), the
     conformity of representations with objects might be understood. We
     can thus render comprehensible at least the possibility of two
     kinds of intelligence--of an _intellectus archetypus_, on whose
     intuition the things themselves are grounded, and of an
     _intellectus ectypus_ which derives the data of its logical
     procedure from the sensuous intuition of things. But our
     understanding (leaving moral ends out of account) is not the cause
     of the object through its representations, nor is the object the
     cause of its intellectual representations (_in sensu reali_).
     Hence, the pure concepts of the understanding cannot be abstracted
     from the data of the senses, nor do they express our capacity for
     receiving representations through the senses. But, whilst they have
     their sources in the nature of the soul, they originate there
     neither as the result of the action of the object upon it, nor as
     themselves producing the object. In the _Dissertation_ I was
     content to explain the nature of these intellectual representations
     in a merely negative manner, viz. as not being modifications of the
     soul produced by the object. But I silently passed over the further
     question, how such representations, which refer to an object and
     yet are not the result of an affection due to that object, can be
     possible. I had maintained that the sense representations represent
     things as they appear, the intellectual representations things as
     they are. But how then are these things given to us, if not by the
     manner in which they affect us? And if such intellectual
     representations are due to our own inner activity, whence comes the
     agreement which they are supposed to have with objects, which yet
     are not their products? How comes it that the axioms of pure reason