Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
That our temperament and various talents which like to indulge in free and unchecked exercise (such as imagination and wit) require some kind of discipline, will easily be allowed by everybody. But that reason, whose proper duty it is to prescribe a discipline to all other endeavours, should itself require such discipline, may seem strange indeed. It has in fact escaped that humiliation hitherto, because, considering the solemnity and thorough selfpossession in its behaviour, no one has suspected it of thoughtlessly putting imaginations in the place of concepts, and words in the place of things.
In its empirical use reason does not require such criticism, because its principles are constantly subject to the test of experience. Nor is such criticism [p. 711] required in mathematics, where the concepts of reason
1 I am well aware that in the language of the schools, discipline is used as synonymous with instruction. But there are so many cases in which the former term, in the sense of restraint, is carefully distinguished from the latter in the sense of teachings and the nature of things makes it so desirable to preserve the only suitable expressions for that distinction, that I hope that the former term may never be allowed to be used in any but a negative meaning.
Discipline of Pure Reason 571
must at once be represented in concreto in pure intuition, so that everything unfounded and arbitrary is at once discovered. But when neither empirical nor pure intuition keeps reason in a straight groove, that is, when it is used transcendently and according to mere concepts, the discipline to restrain its inclination to go beyond the narrow limits of possible experience, and to keep it from extravagance and error is so necessary, that the whole philosophy of pure reason is really concerned with that one negative discipline only. Single errors may be corrected by censure^ and their causes removed by criticism. But when, as in pure reason, we are met by a whole system of illusions and fallacies, well connected among themselves and united by common principles, a separate negative code seems requisite, which, under the name of a discipline^ should erect a system of caution and self-examination, founded on the nature of reason and of the objects of its use, before which no false sophistical illusion could stand, but should at once betray itself in spite of all excuses.
It should be well borne in mind, however, [p. 712] that in this second division of the transcendental critique, I mean to direct the discipline of pure reason not to its contents, but only to the method of its knowledge. The former task has been performed in the Elements of Transcendentalism. There is so much similarity in the use of reason, whatever be the subject to which it is applied, and yet, so far as this use is to be transcendental, it is so essentially different from every other, that, without the warning voice of a discipline, especially devised for that purpose, it would be impossible to avoid errors arising necessarily from the improper application of
572 Discipline of Pure Reason methods, which are suitable to reason in other spheres, only not quite here.
METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM Section I
The Discipline of Pure Reason in its Dogmatical Use
The science of mathematics presents the most brilliant example of how pure reason may successfully enlarge its domain without the aid of experience. Such examples are always contagious, particularly when the faculty is the same, which naturally flatters itself that it will meet with the same success in other cases which it has had in one. Thus pure reason hopes to be able to extend its domain as successfully and as thoroughly [p. 713] in its transcendental as in its mathematical employment ; particularly if it there follows the same method which has proved of such decided advantage elsewhere. It is, therefore, of great consequence for us to know whether the method of arriving at apodictic certainty, which in the former science was called mathematical, be identical with that which is to lead us to the same certainty in philosophy, and would have to be called dogmatic.
Philosophical knowledge is that which reason gains from concepts, mathematical, that which it gains from the construction of concepts. By constructing a concept I mean representing a priori the intuition corresponding to it. For the construction of a concept, therefore, a non-empirical intuition is required which, as an intuition, is a sifigle object, but which, nevertheless, as the construction of a
Discipline of Pure Reason 573
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.