Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Logic again can be taken in hand for two objects, either as logic of the general or of a particular use of the understanding. The former contains all necessary rules of thought without which the understanding cannot be used at all. It treats of the understanding without any regard to the different objects to which it may be directed. Logic of the particular use of the understanding contains rules how to think correctly on certain classes of objects. The former may be called Elementary Logic, the latter the Organum of this or that science. The latter is generally taught in the schools as a preparation for certain sciences, though, according to the real progress of the human understanding, it is the latest achievement, which does not become possible till the science itself is really made, and requires only a few touches for its correction and completion. For it is clear that the objects themselves must be very well known before it is possible to give rules according to which a science of them may be established.
General logic is either pure or applied. In the [p. 53] former no account is taken of any empirical conditions under which our understanding acts, i.e. of the influence of the senses, the play of imagination, the laws of memory, the force of habit, the inclinations, and therefore the sources of prejudice also, nor of anything which supplies or seems to supply particular kinds of knowledge ; for all this applies to the understanding under certain circumstances of its application only, and requires experience as a condition of knowledge. General but pure logic has to deal with principles a priori only, and is a canon of the tmderstajiding and of reason, though with reference to its
Transcendental Logic 43
formal application only, irrespective of any contents, whether empirical or transcendental. General logic is called applied, if it refers to the rules of the use of our understanding under the subjective empirical conditions laid down in psychology. It therefore contains empirical principles, yet it is general, because referring to the use of the understanding, whatever its objects may be. It is neither a canon of the understanding in general nor an organum of any particular science, but simply a catharticon of the ordinary understanding.
In general logic, therefore, that part which is to constitute the science of pure reason must be entirely separated from that which forms applied, but for all [p. 54] that still general logic. The former alone is a real science, though short and dry, as a practical exposition of an elementary science of the understanding ought to be. In this logicians should never lose sight of two rules : —
1. As general logic it takes no account of the contents of the knowledge of the understanding nor of the difference of its objects. It treats of nothing but the mere form of thought.
2. As pure logic it has nothing to do with empirical principles, and borrows nothing from psychology (as some have imagined) ; psychology, therefore, has no influence whatever on the canon of the understanding. It proceeds by way of demonstration, and everything in it must be completely a pinori.
What I call applied logic (contrary to common usage according to which it contains certain exercises on the rules of pure logic) is a representation of the understanding and of the rules according to which it is necessarily
44 Traiiscendejital Logic applied ifi concreto, i.e. under the accidental conditions of the subject, which may hinder or help its application, and are all given empirically only. It treats of attention, its impediments and their consequences, the sources of error, the states of doubt, hesitation, and conviction, etc., and general and pure logic stands to it in [p. 55] the same relation as pure ethics, which treat only of the necessary moral laws of a free will, to applied ethics, which consider these laws as under the influence of sentiments, inclinations, and passions to which all human beings are more or less subject. This can never constitute a true and demonstrated science, because, like applied logic, it depends on empirical and psychological principles.
II
Of Transcendental Logic
General logic, as we saw, takes no account of the contents of knowledge, i.e. of any relation between it and its objects, and considers the logical form only in the relation of cognitions to each other, that is, it treats of the form of thought in general. But as we found, when treating of Transcendental ^Esthetic, that there are pure as well as empirical intuitions, it is possible that a similar distinction might appear between pure and empirical thinking. In this case we should have a logic in which the contents of knowledge are not entirely ignored, for such a logic which should contain the rules of pure thought only, would exclude only all knowledge of a merely empirical character. It would also treat of the origin of our knowledge of objects, so far as that origin cannot be attributed
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