Thursday, September 20, 2012

Transcendental ideas (Summary of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason #2)


2 Transcendental ideas

2.1 Transcendental Illusions (transzendentale Shein)
As is probably evident with the function of an Ideal in our life, Transcendental Ideas directs our cognition in a certain way.  They may orient us to something better and better, or to endless delusions, or Transcendental Illusions.  In order to avoid to use our Reason in a negative way, we need Critique of Dialectical Illusion (Kritik des dialektischen Scheins) (92, B86).

Transcendental Illusions –I make no distinction between Transcendental Illusions and Dialectical Illusions in this article— are hard to remove, though.  They carry concepts of our Understanding beyond the realm of experience to the world of Reason where nothing is conditioned and concepts of Understanding become Ideas of Reason.  Because Concepts from which Ideas derive are based on Intuitions in the empirical world of Sensibility, we often confuse Ideas of Reason are also related to the empirical world just like Concepts of Understanding are.  We mistakenly regard the claims of Ideas of Reason as valid in our empirical world of Appearance. 

Also, the similarity between the function of Understanding with that of Reason is deceptive.  Just as Understanding unites various Intuitions into a Concept, Reason unites various Concepts into an (transcendental) Idea.  The Concept of Understanding is empirically true as long as it is based on the objects in our empirical world.  Likewise, we’re led to believe that the Idea of Reason must be also empirically true as they are derived from Concepts of Understanding.  But by the time Concepts of Understanding become transcendental Ideas of Reason, they are deprived of specific constraints and conditions by which they’re bound to the empirical world.  Ideas of Reason can have no specific claims about their empirical existence in the world.  They only orient us to a certain direction of thought.  We need a critical understanding of how our Reason works.

Transcendental illusion, on the contrary, does not cease even after it has been uncovered and its worthlessness clearly revealed by transcendental criticism (for instance, the illusion inherent in the proposition, The world must have a beginning in time).  The cause of this is that there exists in our reason (considered subjectively as a faculty of human knowledge) fundamental rules and maxims of its use, which have the appearance of objective principles.  And this leads us to regard the subjective necessity of a certain connection of our concepts for the benefit of the understanding as an objective necessity in the determination of things in themselves.  (287)

Der transzendentale Schein dagegen hört gleichwohl nicht auf, ob man ihn schon aufgedeckt und seine Nichtigkeit durch die transzendentale Kritik deutlich eingesehen hat. (Z.B. der Schein in dem Satze: die Welt muß der Zeit nach einen Anfang haben.) Die Ursache hiervon ist diese, daß in unserer Vernunft (subjektiv als ein menschliches Erkenntnisvermögen betrachtet) Grundregeln und Maximen ihres Gebrauchs liegen, welche gänzlich das Ansehen objektiver Grundsätze haben, und wodurch es geschieht, daß die subjektive Notwendigkeit einer gewissen Verknüpfung unserer Begriffe, zugunsten des Verstandes, für eine objektive Notwendigkeit, der Bestimmung der Dinge an sich selbst, gehalten wird.  (B353)


2.2 Task of Transcendental Dialectic

Critique of Transcendental Illusions, called by Kant Transcendental Dialectic (92, B86), must distinguish immanent principles of Understanding and transcendent principles of Reason (Transcendental critique is about what makes something transcendent).  Understanding and Reason are connected, but their functions and territories must be distinguished.

The principles resulting from this supreme principle of pure reason will, however, be transcendent with regard to all appearances; that is to say, it will be impossible ever to make any adequate empirical use of such a principle.  It will thus be completely different from all principles of the understanding, the use of which is entirely immanent, inasmuch as they are directed only to the possibility of experience.

Die aus diesem obersten Prinzip der reinen Vernunft entspringenden Grundsätze werden aber in Ansehung aller Erscheinungen transzendent sein, d.i. es wird kein ihm adäquater empirischer Gebrauch von demselben jemals gemacht werden können. Er wird sich also von allen Grundsätzen des Verstandes (deren Gebrauch völlig immanent ist, indem sie nur die Möglichkeit der Erfahrung zu ihrem Thema haben,) gänzlich unterscheiden.  (B365)

Now we have the task of Transcendental Dialectic.

The task that is now before us in the Transcendental Dialectic is this: to discover the objective correctness, or otherwise the falsehood, of the principle that the series of conditions (in the synthesis of appearances, or in that of the thinking of things in general) extends up to the unconditioned, and what consequences result therefrom the empirical use of the understanding; to find out whether there really is such an objectively valid principle of reason, or merely, in place of it, a logical precept which requires us, by ascending to ever higher conditions, to approach their completeness and thus to bring to our knowledge the highest unity of reason that is possible to us; to find out, I say, whether, by some misconception, a mere tendency of reason has been mistaken for transcendental principle of pure reason, postulating, without sufficient reflection, unlimited completeness in the series of conditions in the objects themselves; and to find out, in that case, what kind of misconceptions and illusions may also have crept into syllogisms, the major premise of which has been taken from pure reason (and is perhaps a petition rather than a postulate) and ascends from experience to its conditions.  This, then, is our task in the transcendental dialectic, and it has to be developed from sources deeply hidden in human reason.  (295-296)

Ob nun jener Grundsatz: daß sich die Reihe der Bedingungen (in der Synthesis der Erscheinungen, oder auch des Denkens der Dinge überhaupt,) bis zum Unbedingten erstrecke, seine objektive Richtigkeit habe, oder nicht; welche Folgerungen daraus auf den empirischen Verstandesgebrauch fließen, oder ob es vielmehr überall keinen dergleichen objektivgültigen Vernunftsatz gebe, sondern eine bloß logische Vorschrift, sich im Aufsteigen zu immer höheren Bedingungen, der Vollständigkeit derselben zu nähern und dadurch die höchste uns mögliche Vernunfteinheit in unsere Erkenntnis zu bringen; ob, sage ich, dieses Bedürfnis der Vernunft durch einen Mißverstand für einen transzendentalen Grundsatz der reinen Vernunft gehalten worden, der eine solche unbeschränkte Vollständigkeit übereilterweise von der Reihe der Bedingungen in den Gegenständen selbst postuliert; was aber auch in diesem Falle für Mißdeutungen und Verblendungen in die Vernunftschlüsse, deren Obersatz aus reiner Vernunft genommen worden, (und der vielleicht mehr Petition als Postulat ist,) und die von der Erfahrung aufwärts zu ihren Bedingungen steigen, einschleichen mögen: das wird unser Geschäft in der transzendentalen Dialektik sein, welche wir jetzt aus ihren Quellen, die tief in der menschlichen Vernunft verborgen sind, entwickeln wollen.  (B365-366)


A Transcendental Illusion is neither confirmed nor refuted by our experience.  It therefore may claim its truth, when its contradiction also claims its own truth at the same time.

If we apply our reason, not merely to objects of experience, in order to make use of the principles of the understanding, but venture to extend it beyond the limits of experience, then there arise sophistical doctrines, which may neither hope to be confirmed nor fear to be refuted in experience.  Every one of them is not only in itself free from contradiction, but can even point to conditions of its necessity in the nature of reason itself - although, unfortunately, the assertion opposing it can produce equally valid and necessary grounds in its support.  (388)

Wenn wir unsere Vernunft nicht bloß, zum Gebrauch der Verstandesgrundsätze, auf Gegenstände der Erfahrung verwenden, sondern jene über die Grenze der letzteren hinaus auszudehnen wagen, so entspringen vernünftelnde Lehrsätze, die in der Erfahrung weder Bestätigung hoffen, noch Widerlegung fürchten dürfen, und deren jeder nicht allein an sich selbst ohne Widerspruch ist, sondern sogar in der Natur der Vernunft Bedingungen seiner Notwendigkeit antrifft, nur daß unglücklicherweise der Gegensatz ebenso gültige und notwendige Gründe der Behauptung auf seiner Seite hat.  (B448-449)


2.3 Thinking Subject (denkenden Subjekt), Conditions of Appearance (Reihe der Bedingungen der Erscheinung), and Conditions of all Objects of Thought (Bedingung aller Gegenstände des Denkens)

Kant presents three classes of transcendental ideas from which transcendental illusions may derive.  They are unities of The thinking subject, Series of Conditions of Appearance, Conditions of all objects of Thought.

All transcendental ideas, therefore, can be arranged in three classes: the first containing the absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject; the second the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearance; the third the absolute unity of the conditions of all objects of thought in general. 

The thinking subject is the object of psychology; the sum total of all appearances (the world) is the object of cosmology; and the thing which contains the supreme condition of the possibility of all that can be thought (the being of all beings) is the object of theology.  (311)

Folglich werden alle transzendentalen Ideen sich unter drei Klassen bringen lassen, davon die erste die absolute (unbedingte) Einheit des denkenden Subjekts, die zweite die absolute Einheit der Reihe der Bedingungen der Erscheinung, die dritte die absolute Einheit der Bedingung aller Gegenstände des Denkens überhaupt enthält.

Das denkende Subjekt ist der Gegenstand der Psychologie, der Inbegriff aller Erscheinungen (die Welt) der Gegenstand der Kosmologie, und das Ding, welches die oberste Bedingung der Möglichkeit von allem, was gedacht werden kann, enthält, (das Wesen aller Wesen) der Gegenstand der Theologie.  (B391)

Of the three classes above, I examine the thinking subject in the next chapter.





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