I may again draw attention to the consequences which follow from Kant’s
habitual method of isolating his problems. Truth is a value of universal
jurisdiction, and from its criteria the judgments of moral and other
values can claim no exemption. Existences and values do not constitute
independent orders. They interpenetrate, and neither can be adequately
dealt with apart from the considerations appropriate to the other. In
failing to co-ordinate his problems, Kant has over-emphasised the
negative aspects of his logical enquiries and has formulated his ethical
doctrines in a needlessly dogmatic form.
These defects are, however, in some degree remedied in the last of his
chief works, the _Critique of Judgment_. In certain respects it is the
most interesting of all Kant’s writings. The qualities of both the
earlier _Critiques_ here appear in happy combination, while in addition
his concrete interests are more in evidence, to the great enrichment of
his abstract argument. Many of the doctrines of the _Critique of Pure
Reason_, especially those that bear on the problems of teleology, are
restated in a less negative manner, and in their connection with the
kindred problems of natural beauty and the fine arts. For though the
final decision in all metaphysical questions is still reserved to moral
considerations, Kant now takes a more catholic view of the field of
philosophy. He allows, though with characteristic reservations, that the
_empirical_ evidence obtainable through examination of the broader
features of our total experience is of genuinely philosophical value,
and that it can safely be employed to amplify and confirm the
independent convictions of the moral consciousness. The embargo which in
the _Critique of Pure Reason_, in matters metaphysical, is placed upon
all tentative and probable reasoning is thus tacitly removed; and the
term knowledge again acquires the wider meaning very properly ascribed
to it in ordinary speech.
A COMMENTARY TO KANT’S “CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON”
TITLE: KRITIK DER REINEN VERNUNFT