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.
Although it is true that we do not know anything about what we have here been pleading hypothetically against our opponents, and that we ourselves do not even seriously maintain it, it being simply an idea invented for selfdefence and not even an idea of reason, yet we are acting throughout quite rationally. In answer to our opponent who imagines that he has exhausted all possibilities, and who wrongly represents the absence of empirical conditions as a proof of the total impossibility of our own belief, we are simply showing him that he can no more, by mere laws of experience, comprehend the whole field of possible things by themselves than we are able, outside of experience, to establish anything for our reason on a really secure foundation. Because we bring forward such hypothetical defences against the pretensions of our boldly denying opponent, we must not be supposed to have [p. 781] adopted these opinions as our own. We abandon them so soon as we have disposed of the dogmatical conceit of our opponent. It seems no doubt very modest and moderate to maintain a simple negative position with regard to the assertions of other people ; but to attempt to represent objections as proofs of the opposite opinion is quite as arrogant as to assume the position of the affirming party and its opinions.
Discipline of Pure Reason 62y
It is easy to see, therefore, that in the speculative employment of reason hypotheses are of no value by themselves, but relatively only, as opposed to the transcendental pretensions of the opposite party. For to extend the principles of possible experience to the possibility of things in general is quite as transcendent as to ascribe objective reality to concepts which cannot have an object except outside the limits of all possible experience. The assertory judgments of pure reason must (like everything known by reason) be either necessary or nothing at all. Reason, in fact, knows of no opinions. The hypotheses, however, which we have just been discussing are problematical judgments only, which, at least, cannot be refuted, though they can neither be proved by anything. They are nothing but private ^ opinions, but (for our own satis- [p. 782] faction) we cannot well do without them to counteract misgivings that may arise in our minds. In this character they should be maintained, but we must take great care less they should assume independent authority and a certain absolute validity, and drown our reason beneath fictions and phantoms.
THE DISCIPLINE OF PURE REASON
Section IV
The Discipline of Pure Reason with Regard to its Proofs
What distinguishes the proofs of transcendental and synthetical propositions from all other proofs of a synthetical knowledge <3: /n^n is this, that reason is not allowed here to apply itself directly to an object through its con-
•^ Read reine instead of keine.
628 Discipline of Pin'e Reason cepts, but has first to prove the objective vahdity of those concepts and the possibility of their synthesis a priori. This rule is not suggested by prudence only, but refers to the very nature and the possibility of such proofs. If I am to go beyond the concept of an object a priori, this is impossible without some special guidance coming to me from without that concept.
In mathematics it is intuition a prio7'i which thus guides my synthesis, so that all our conclusions may be drawn immediately from pure intuition. In transcendental knowledge the same [p. 783] guidance, so long as we are dealing with concepts of the understanding only, is to be found in possible experience.
For here the proof does not show that the given concept (for instance, the concept of that which happens) leads directly to another concept (that of a cause). This would be a saltus which nothing could justify. What our proof really shows is, that experience itself and therefore the object of experience would be impossible without such a (causal) connection.
The proof, therefore, had at the same time to indicate the possibility of arriving synthetically and a priori at a certain knowledge of things which was not contained in our concept of them. Unless we attend to this point, our proofs, like streams which have broken their banks, run wildly across the fields wherever the inclination of some hidden association may chance to lead them.
The semblance of a conviction, based on subjective causes of association and mistaken for the perception of a natural affinity, cannot balance the misgivings which are justly roused by such bold proceedings. Hence all attempts at proving the principle of sufficient reason have, according to the universal admission of all competent judges, been vain ; and before the appearance of transcenI I
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