Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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/ tinguished from the nihil negativum. But it may nevertheless be an empty concept, unless the objective reality of the synthesis, by which the concept is generated, has been distinctly shown. This, however, as shown above, must always rest on principles of possible experience, and not on the principle of analysis (the principle of contradiction). This is a warning against inferring at once from the possibility of concepts (logical) the possibility of things (real).
p. 21
482 Transcetideiital Dialectic whatever it may be, I grant you as possible) exists^ is an analytical or a synthetical proposition ? If the former, then by its existence you add nothing to your thought of the thing ; but in that case, either the thought within you would be the thing itself, or you have presupposed existence, as belonging to possibility, and have according to your own showing deduced existence from internal possibility, which is nothing but a miserable tautolt^g^ The mere word realityy which in the concept of a thing sounds different from existence in the concept of the predicate, can make no difference. For if you call all accepting or positing (without determining what it is) reality, you have placed a thing, with all its predicates, within the concept of the subject, and accepted it as real, and you do
\ nothing but repeat it in the predicate. If, on the [p. 598]
I contrary, you admit, as every sensible man must do, that every proposition involving existence is synthetical, how can you say that the predicate of existence does not admit of removal without contradiction, a distinguishing property i which is peculiar to analytical propositions only, the very
^ character of which depends on it }
I might have hoped to put an end to this subtle argumentation, without many words, and simply by an accurate definition of the concept of existence, if I had not seen that the illusion, in mistaking a logical predicate for a real one (that is the predicate which determines a thing), resists all correction. Everything can become a logical predicate ^ even the subject itself may be predicated of itself, because logic takes no account of any contents of concepts. Determinatiojt, however, is a predicate, added to the concept of the subject, and enlarging it, and it must not therefore be contained in it.
Transcende7ital Dialectic 483
■<• Being is evidently not a real predicate, or a concept of | something that can be added to the concept of a thing. 1 It is merely the admission of a thing, and of certain determinations in it. Logically, it is merely the copula of a judgment. The proposition, God is almighty ^ contains two concepts, each having its object, namely, God and almightiness. The small word is^ is not an addi- [p. 599] tional predicate, but only serves to put the predicate in relation to the subject. If, then, I take the subject (God) with all its predicates (including that of almightiness), and say, God is, or there is a God, I do not put a new predicate to the concept of God, but I only put the subject by itself, with all its predicates, in relation to my concept, as its object. Both must contain exactly the same kind of thing, and nothing can have been added to the concept, which expresses possibility only, by my thinking its object as simply given and saying, it is. And .thus the^- real— does^ not contain more than the possible. A hundred real dollars do not contam a penny more Than a hundred possible dollars. For as the latter signify the concept, the former the object and its position by itself, it is clear that, in case the former contained more than the latter, my concept would not express the whole object, and would not therefore be its adequate concept. In my financial position no doubt there exists more by one hundred real dollars, than by their concept only (that is their possibility), because in reality the object is not only contained analytically in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is /aTHetermination of my state), synthetically ; but the con- / ceived hundred dollars are not in the least increased / through the existence which is outside my concept.
By whatever and by however many predicates [p. 600]
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