We are not at present engaged with a logical dialectic, which makes
complete abstraction of the content of cognition and aims only at
unveiling the illusory appearance in the form of syllogisms. Our
subject is transcendental dialectic, which must contain, completely à
priori, the origin of certain cognitions drawn from pure reason, and
the origin of certain deduced conceptions, the object of which cannot
be given empirically and which therefore lie beyond the sphere of the
faculty of understanding. We have observed, from the natural relation
which the transcendental use of our cognition, in syllogisms as well as
in judgements, must have to the logical, that there are three kinds of
dialectical arguments, corresponding to the three modes of conclusion,
by which reason attains to cognitions on principles; and that in all it
is the business of reason to ascend from the conditioned synthesis,
beyond which the understanding never proceeds, to the unconditioned
which the understanding never can reach.
Now the most general relations which can exist in our representations
are: 1st, the relation to the subject; 2nd, the relation to objects,
either as phenomena, or as objects of thought in general. If we connect
this subdivision with the main division, all the relations of our
representations, of which we can form either a conception or an idea,
are threefold: 1. The relation to the subject; 2. The relation to the
manifold of the object as a phenomenon; 3. The relation to all things
in general.
Now all pure conceptions have to do in general with the synthetical
unity of representations; conceptions of pure reason (transcendental
ideas), on the other hand, with the unconditional synthetical unity of
all conditions. It follows that all transcendental ideas arrange
themselves in three classes, the first of which contains the absolute
(unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject, the second the absolute
unity of the series of the conditions of a phenomenon, the third the
absolute unity of the condition of all objects of thought in general.
The thinking subject is the object-matter of Psychology; the sum total
of all phenomena (the world) is the object-matter of Cosmology; and the
thing which contains the highest condition of the possibility of all
that is cogitable (the being of all beings) is the object-matter of all
Theology. Thus pure reason presents us with the idea of a
transcendental doctrine of the soul (psychologia rationalis), of a
transcendental science of the world (cosmologia rationalis), and
finally of a transcendental doctrine of God (theologia
transcendentalis). Understanding cannot originate even the outline of
any of these sciences, even when connected with the highest logical use
of reason, that is, all cogitable syllogisms—for the purpose of
proceeding from one object (phenomenon) to all others, even to the
utmost limits of the empirical synthesis. They are, on the contrary,
pure and genuine products, or problems, of pure reason.