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

Thirdly, when we come to the categories of the real relation between phenomena, we find that the [p. 414] category of substance with its accidents does not lend itself to a transcendental idea ; that is, reason has here no inducement to proceed regressively to conditions. We know that accidents, so far as they inhere in one and the same substance, are co-ordinated with each other, and do not constitute a series ; and with reference to the substance, they are not properly subordinate to it, but are the mode of existence of the substance itself. The concept of the sicbstantial might seem to be here an idea of tranTranscendental Dialectic 335 cendental reason. This, however, signifies nothing but the concept of the object in general, which subsists, so far as we think in it the transcendental subject only, without any predicates ; and, as we are here speaking only of the unconditioned in the series of phenomena, it is clear that the substantial cannot be a part of it. The same applies to substances in community, which are aggregates only, without having an exponent of a series, since they are not subordinate to each other, as conditions of their possibility, in the same way as spaces were, the limits of which can never be determined by itself, but always through another space. There remains therefore only the category of causality, which offers a series of causes to a given effect, enabling us to ascend from the latter, as the conditioned, to the former as the conditions, and thus to answer the question of reason. [p. 415]

Fourthly, the concepts of the possible, the real, and the necessary do not lead to any series, except so far as the accidental in existence must always be considered as conditioned, and point, according to a rule of the understanding, to a condition which makes it necessary to ascend to a higher condition, till reason finds at last, only, in the totality of that series, the unconditioned necessity which it requires.

If therefore we select those categories which necessarily imply a series in the synthesis of the manifold, we shall have no more than four cosmological ideas, accordto the four titles of the categories.

Absolute completeness

of the composition of the given whole of all phenomena.

336 Transcendental Dialectic

II III

Absolute completeness Absolute completeness

of the division of the origination of a given whole of a phenomenon in phenomenal appearance. in general.

IV

Absolute completeness

of the dependence of the existence of the changeable in phenomenal appearance.

[p. 416]

It should be remarked, firsts that the idea of absolute totality refers to nothing else but the exhibition of phenomena, and not therefore to the pure concept, formed by the understanding, of a totality of things in general. Phenomena, therefore, are considered here as given, and reason postulates the absolute completeness of the conditions of their possibility, so far as these conditions constitute a series, that is, an absolutely (in every respect) complete synthesis, whereby phenomena could be exhibited according to the laws of the understanding.

Secondly^ it is in reality the unconditioned alone which reason is looking for in the synthesis of conditions, continued regressively and serially, as it were a completeness in the series of premisses, which taken together require no further premisses. This imconditioned is always contained in the absolute totality of a series^ as represented in imagination.

But this absolutely complete synthesis is again an idea only, for it is impossible to know beforehand, whether such a synthesis be possible in phenomena. If we represent everything by means of pure concepts of the understanding only, and without the conditions of sensuous intuition, we might really say that of everything given as conditioned the whole series also of conditions, subTranscendental Dialectic 337