Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

We can easily perceive that pure reason has no other aim but the absolute totality of synthesis on the side of conditions (whether of inherence, dependence, or concurrence), and that it has nothing to do with the absolute completeness on the part of the conditioned. It is the former only which is required for presupposing the whole series of conditions, and thus presenting it a priori to the understanding. If once we have a given condition, complete and unconditioned itself, no concept »f reason is required to continue the series, because the understanding takes by itself every step downward from the condition to the conditioned. The transcendental ideas therefore serve only for ascending in the series of conditions till they reach the unconditioned, that is, the principles. With regard to descending to the conditioned, there is no doubt a widely extended logical use which our reason [p. 337] may make of the rules of the understanding, but no transcendental one ; and if we form an idea of the absolute totality of such a synthesis (by progressus), as, for

1 Instead of Anleitung read Ableitung.

274 Transcendental Dialectic instance, of the whole series of all future changes in the world, this is only a thought {ens rationis) that may be thought if we like, but is not presupposed as necessary by reason. For the possibility of the conditioned, the totality of its conditions only, but not of its consequences, is presupposed. Such a concept therefore is not one of the transcendental ideas, with which alone we have to deal.

Finally, we can perceive, that there is among the transcendental ideas themselves a certain connection and unity by which pure reason brings all its knowledge into one system. There is in the progression from our knowledge of ourselves (the soul) to a knowledge of the world, and through it to a knowledge of the Supreme Being, something so natural that it looks like the logical progression of reason from premisses to a conclusion.^ Whether there exists here a real though hidden relationship, such as we saw before between the logical and transcendental use of reason, is also one of the questions the answer to which can only be given in the progress of these investigations. Por the present we have achieved what we wished to achieve, by removing the transcen- [p. 338] dental concepts of reason, which in the systems of other philosophers are generally mixed up with other concepts, without being distinguished even from the concepts of the understanding, out of so equivocal a position ; by being able to determine their origin and thereby at the same time their number, which can never be exceeded, and by thus bringing them into a systematic connection, marking out and enclosing thereby a separate field for pure reason.

1 See Supplement XXVI.

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

BOOK II

OF THE DIALECTICAL CONCLUSIONS OF PURE REASON

One may say that the object of a purely transcendental idea is something of which we have no concept, although the idea is produced with necessity according to the original laws of reason. Nor is it possible indeed to form of an object that should be adequate to the demands of reason, a concept of the understanding, that is, a concept which could be shown in any possible experience, and rendered intuitive. It would be better, however, and less [p. 339] liable to misunderstandings, to say that we can have no knowledge of an object corresponding to an idea, but a problematic concept only.

The transcendental (subjective) reality, at least of pure concepts of reason, depends on our being led to such ideas by a necessary syllogism of reason. There will be syllogisms therefore which have no empirical premisses, and by means of which we conclude from something which we know to something else of which we have no concept, and to which, constrained by an inevitable illusion, we nevertheless attribute objective reality. As regards their result,

p. 275

276 Transcendental Dialectic such syllogisms are rather to be called sophistical than rational, although, as regards their origin, they may claim the latter name, because they are not purely fictitious or accidental, but products of the very nature of reason. They are sophistications, not of men, but of pure reason itself, from which even the wisest of men cannot escape. All he can do is, with great effort, to guard against error, though never able to rid himself completely of an illusion which constantly torments and mocks him.