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

share which it possesses in that whole possibility. ^ This principle of complete determination relates therefore to the content, and not only to the logical form.

It is the principle of the synthesis of all predicates which are meant to form the complete concept of a thing, and not the principle of analytical representation only, by means of one of two contradictory predicates ; and it contains a transcendental presupposition, namely, that of the material for all possibility which is supposed to contain [p. 573] a priori the data for the particular possibility of everything.

The proposition, that everytJmig wJiich exists is completely determined^ does not signify only that one of every pair of given contradictory predicates, but that one of all possible predicates must always belong to a thing, so that by this proposition predicates are not only compared with each other logically, but the thing itself is compared transcendentally with the sum total of all possible predicates.

The proposition really means that, in order to know a thing completely, we must know everything that is possible, and thereby determine it either affirmatively or negatively. This complete determination is therefore a concept which in concreto can never be represented in its totality, and is founded therefore on an idea which belongs to reason only, reason prescribing to the understanding the rule of its complete application.

1 According to this principle, therefore, everything is referred to a common correlate, that is, the whole possibility, which, if it (that is, the matter for all possible predicates) could be found in the idea of any single thing, would prove an affinity of all possible things, through the identity of the ground of their complete determination. The determinability of any concept is subordinate to the universality {tmiversalitas) of the principle of the excluded middle, while the determination of a thing is subordinate to the totality {universitas)^ or the sum total of all possible predicates.

464 Transcendental Dialectic

Now although this idea of the snm total of all possibility y so far as it forms the condition of the complete determination of everything, is itself still undetermined with regard to its predicates, and is conceived by us merely as a sum total of all possible predicates, we find nevertheless on closer examination that this idea, as a fundamental concept, excludes a number of predicates which, being derivative, are given by others, or cannot stand one [p. 574] by the side of the other, and that it is raised to a completely a priori determined concept, thus becoming the concept of an individual object which is completely determined by the mere idea, and must therefore be called an ideal of pure reason.

If we consider all possible predicates not only logically, but transcendentally, that is, according to their content, which may be thought in them a priori^ we find that through some we represent being, through others a mere not-being. The logical negation, which is merely indicated through the small word not^ does in reality never apply to a concept, but only to its relation to another in a judgment, and is very far therefore from being sufficient to determine a concept with regard to its content. The expression, not-mortaly can in no wise indicate that mere notbeing if thereby represented in an object, but leaves the content entirely untouched. A transcendental negation, on the contrary, signifies not-being by itself, and is opposed to transcendental affirmation, or a something the concept of which in itself expresses being. It is called, therefore, reality (from res, a thing), because through it alone, and so far only as it reaches, are objects something, while the opposite negation indicates a mere want, and, if [p. 575] it stands by itself, represents the absence of everything.

Transcendental Dialectic 465

No one can definitely think a negation, unless he founds it on the opposite affirmation. A man born blind cannot frame the smallest conception of darkness, because he has none of light. The savage knows nothing of poverty, because he does not know ease, and the ignorant has no conception of his ignorance,^ because he has none of knowledge, etc. All negative concepts are therefore derivative, and it is the realities which contain the data and, so to speak, the material, or the transcendental content, by which a complete determination of all things becomes possible.