The comparative simplicity of Kant’s intuitional theory of mathematical
science, supported as it is by the seemingly fundamental distinction
between abstract concepts of reflective thinking and the construction of
concepts[173] in geometry and arithmetic, has made it intelligible even
to those to whom the very complicated argument of the _Analytic_ makes
no appeal. It would also seem to be inseparably bound up with what from
the popular point of view is the most striking of all Kant’s theoretical
doctrines, namely, his view that space and time are given subjective
forms, and that the assertion of their independent reality must result
in those contradictions to which Kant has given the title antinomy. For
these reasons his intuitional theory of mathematical science has
received attention out of all proportion to its importance. Its
pre-Critical character has been more or less overlooked, and instead of
being interpreted in the light of Critical principles, it has been
allowed to obscure the sounder teaching of the _Analytic_. In this
matter Schopenhauer is a chief culprit. He not only takes the views of
mathematical science expounded in the _Introduction_ and _Aesthetic_ as
being in line with Kant’s main teaching, but expounds them in an even
more unqualified fashion than does Kant himself.
There are thus four main defects in the argument of this _Introduction_,
regarded as representative of Critical teaching. (1) Its problems are
formulated exclusively in terms of the attributive judgment; the other
forms of relational judgment are ignored. (2) It maintains that
judgments are either merely analytic or completely synthetic. (3) It
proceeds in terms of a further division of judgments into those that are
purely empirical and those that are _a priori_. (4) It seems to assert
that the justification for mathematical judgments is intuitional. All
these four positions are in some degree retained throughout the
_Critique_, but not in the unqualified manner of this _Introduction_. In
the _Analytic_, judgment in all its possible forms is shown to be a
synthetic combination of a given manifold in terms of relational
categories. This leads to a fourfold conclusion. In the first place,
judgment must be regarded as essentially relational. Secondly, the _a
priori_ and the empirical must not be taken as two separate kinds of
knowledge, but as two elements involved in all knowledge. Thirdly,
analysis and synthesis must not be viewed as co-ordinate processes;
synthesis is the more fundamental; it conditions all analysis. And
lastly, it must be recognised that nothing is merely given; intuitional
experience, whether sensuous or _a priori_, is conditioned by processes
of conceptual interpretation. Though the consequences which follow from
these conclusions, if fully developed, would carry us far beyond any
point which Kant himself reached in the progressive maturing of his
views, the next immediate steps would still be on the strict lines of