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

But, when we speak of knowledge with reference to its form only, without taking account of its contents, it is equally clear that logic, as it propounds the general and necessary rules of the understanding, must furnish in these rules criteria of truth. For whatever contradicts those rules is false, because the understanding would thus contradict the general rules of thought, that is, itself. These criteria, however, refer only to the form of truth or of thought in general. They are quite correct so far, but they are not sufficient. For although our knowledge may be in accordance with logical rule, that is, may not contradict itself, it is quite possible that it may be in contradiction with its object. Therefore the purely logical criterium of truth, namely, the agreement of knowledge with the general and formal laws of the understanding and reason, is no doubt a cofiditio sine

48 Transcendental Logic qua non, or a negative condition of all truth, [p. 60] But logic can go no further, and it has no test for discovering error with regard to the contents, and not the form, of a proposition.

General logic resolves the whole formal action of the understanding and reason into its elements, and exhibits them as principles for all logical criticism of our knowledge. This part of logic may therefore be called Analytic, and is at least a negative test of truth, because all knowledge must first be examined and estimated, so far as its form is concerned, according to these rules, before it is itself tested according to its contents, in order to see whether it contains positive truth with regard to its object. But as the mere form of knowledge, however much it may be in agreement with logical laws, is far from being sufficient to establish the material or objective truth of our knowledge, no one can venture with logic alone to judge of objects, or to make any assertion, without having first collected, apart from logic, trustworthy information, in order afterwards to attempt its application and connection in a coherent whole according to logical laws, or, still better, merely to test it by them. However, there is something so tempting in this specious art of giving to all our knowledge the form of the understanding, though being utterly ignorant [p. 61] as to the contents thereof, that general logic, which is meant to be a mere canon of criticism, has been employed as if it were an organum, for the real production of at least the semblance of objective assertions, or, more truly, has been misemployed for that purpose. This general logic, which assumes the semblance of an organum, is called Dialectic.

Transcendental Logic 49

Different as are the significations in which the ancients used this name of a science or art, it is easy to gather from its actual employment that with them it was nothing but a logic of semblance. It was a sophistic art of giving to one's ignorance, nay, to one's intentional casuistry, the outward appearance of truth, by imitating the accurate method which logic always requires, and by using its topic as a cloak for every empty assertion. Now it may be taken as a sure and very useful warning that general logic, if treated as an organum, is always an illusive logic, that is, dialectical. For as logic teaches nothing with regard to the contents of knowledge, but lays down the formal conditions only of an agreement with the understanding, which, so far as the objects are concerned, are totally indifferent, any attempt at using it as an organum in order to extend and enlarge our knowledge, at least in appearance, can end in nothing but mere talk, [p. 62] by asserting with a certain plausibility anything one likes, or, if one likes, denying it.

Such instruction is quite beneath the dignity of philosophy. Therefore the title of Dialectic has rather been added to logic, as a critique of dialectical semblance ; and it is in that sense that we also use it.

IV

Of the Division of Transcendental Logic into Transcendental Analytic and Dialectic

In transcendental logic we isolate the understanding, as before in transcendental aesthetic the sensibility, and fix our attention on that part of thought only which has its origin entirely in the understanding. The application of

50 Transcendental Logic