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

itself, not as inherent, but as subsisting.

II

III

The unconditioned unity of quality, that is, not as a real whole, but as simple. 1

The unconditioned unity in the manifoldness of time, that is, not as at different times numerically different, but as one and the same subject.

IV

The unconditioned unity

of existence in space, that is, not as the consciousness of many things outside it, but as the consciousness of the existence of itself only, and of other things, merely as its representations.

1 How the simple can again correspond to the category of reality cannot yet be explained here ; but will be shown in the following chapter, when another use has to be discussed which reason makes of the same concept.

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Reason is the faculty of principles. The state- [p. 405] ments of pure psychology do not contain empirical predicates of the soul, but such as, if they exist, are meant to determine the object by itself, independent of all experience, and therefore by a pure reason only. They ought therefore to rest on principles and on general concepts of thinking beings. Instead of this we find that a single representation, I,^ governs them all, a representation which, for the very reason that it expresses the pure formula of all my experience (indefinitely), claims to be a general proposition, applicable to all thinking beings, and, though single in all respects, has the appearance of an absolute unity of the conditions of thought in general, thus stretching far beyond the limits of possible experience.]

^ Ich bin was a mistake, it can only be meant for Ich denke.

TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC

BOOK II

CHAPTER II

THE ANTINOMY OF PURE REASON

In the Introduction to this part of our work we showed that all the transcendental illusion of pure reason depended on three dialectical syllogisms, the outline of which is supplied to us by logic in the three formal kinds of the ordinary syllogism, in about the same way in which the logical ©utline of the categories was derived from the [p. 406] four functions of all judgments. The first class of these rationalising syllogisms aimed at the unconditioned unity of the subjective conditions of all representations (of the subject or the soul) as corresponding to the categorical syllogisms of reason, the major of which, as the principle, asserts the relation of a predicate to a subject. The second class of the dialectical arguments will, therefore, in analogy with the hypothetical syllogisms, take for its object the unconditioned unity of the objective conditions in phenomenal appearance, while the third class, which has to be treated in the following chapter, will be concerned with the unconditioned unity of the objective conditions of the possibility of objects in general.

p. 328

Transcendental Dialectic 329

It is strange, however, that a transcendental paralogism caused a one-sided illusion only, with regard to our idea of the subject of our thought ; and that it is impossible to find in mere concepts of reason the slightest excuse for maintaining the contrary. All the advantage is on the side of pneumatism, although it cannot hide the hereditary taint by which it evaporates into nought, when subjected to the ordeal of our critique.

The case is totally different when we apply reason to the objective syfithesis of phenomena ; here reason tries at first, with great plausibility, to establish its prin- [p. 407] ciple of unconditioned unity, but becomes soon entangled in so many contradictions, that it must give up its pretensions with regard to cosmology also.

For here we are met by a new phenomenon in human reason, namely, a perfectly natural Antithetic, which is not produced by any artificial efforts, but into which reason falls by itself, and inevitably. Reason is no doubt preserved thereby from the slumber of an imaginary convictiouy which is often produced by a purely one-sided illusion ; but it is tempted at the same time, either to abandon itself to sceptical despair, or to assume a dogmatical obstinacy, taking its stand on certain assertions, without granting a hearing and doing justice to the arguments of the opponent. In both cases, a death-blow is dealt to sound philosophy, although in the former we might speak of the Enthanasia of pure reason.

Before showing the scenes of discord and confusion produced by the conflict of the laws (antinomy) of pure reason, we shall have to make a few remarks in order to explain and justify the method which we mean to follow in the treatment of this subject. I shall call all transcen330 Transcendental Dialectic