Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics — Kant — John Shaqi
Kant's Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Kant · en
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{19} Heat and light are in a small space just as large as to degree as
in a large one; in like manner the internal representations, pain,
consciousness in general, whether they last a short or a long time,
need not vary as to the degree. Hence the quantity is here in a point
and in a moment just as great as in any space or time however great.
Degrees are therefore capable of increase, but not in intuition,
rather in mere sensation (or the quantity of the degree of an
intuition). Hence they can only be estimated quantitatively by the
relation of 1 to 0, viz., by their capability of decreasing by
infinite intermediate degrees to disappearance, or of increasing from
naught through infinite gradations to a determinate sensation in a
certain time. Quantitas qualitatis est gradus [i.e., the degrees of
quality must be measured by equality].
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Above all, the reader must pay attention to the mode of proof of the
principles which occur under the title of Analogies of experience. For
these do not refer to the genesis of intuitions, as do the principles
of applied mathematics, but to the connexion of their existence in
experience; and this can be nothing but the determination of their
existence in time according to necessary laws, under which alone the
connexion is objectively valid, and thus becomes experience. The proof
therefore does not turn on the synthetical unity in the connexion of
things in themselves, but merely of perceptions, and of these not in
regard to their matter, but to the determination of time and of the
relation of their existence in it, according to universal laws. If the
empirical determination in relative time is indeed objectively valid
(i.e., experience), these universal laws contain the necessary
determination of existence in time generally (viz., according to a
rule of the understanding a priori).
In these Prolegomena I cannot further descant on the subject, but my
reader (who has probably been long accustomed to consider experience a
mere empirical synthesis of perceptions, and hence not considered that
it goes much beyond them, as it imparts to empirical judgments
universal validity, and for that purpose requires a pure and a priori
unity of the understanding) is recommended to pay special attention to
this distinction of experience from a mere aggregate of perceptions,
and to judge the mode of proof from this point of view.