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

ever, they are wrong, and it is sufficient to remind them of non defensoribiLS istis tempiis eget. It is absolutely necessary that every one should plead his cause directly by means of a legitimate proof based on a transcendental deduction of the grounds of proof. Thus only can we see what he may have to say himself in favour of his own claims of reason. If his opponent relies on subjective grounds only, it is easy, no doubt, to refute him ; but this does not benefit the dogmatist, who generally depends quite as much on the subjective grounds of his judgment, and can be quite as easily driven into a corner by his opponent. If, on the contrary, both parties employ only the direct mode of proof, they will either themselves perceive the difficulty, nay, the impossibility of finding any title for their assertions, and appeal in the end to prescription only, or, our criticism will easily discover the dogmatical illusion, and compel pure reason to surrender its exaggerated pretensions in the sphere of speculative thought, and to retreat within the limits of its own domain, — that of practical principles.

METHOD OF TRANSCENDENTALISM

[p. 795]

CHAPTER II

THE CANON OF PURE REASON

It is humiliating, no doubt, for human reason that it can achieve nothing by itself, nay, that it stands in need of a discipline to check its vagaries, and to guard against the illusions arising from them. But, on the other hand, it elevates reason and gives it self-confidence, that it can and must exercise that discipline itself, and allows no censorship to any one else. The bounds, moreover, which it is obliged to set to its own speculative use check at the same time the sophistical pretensions of all its opponents, and thus secure everything that remains of its formed exaggerated pretensions against every possible attack. The greatest and perhaps the only advantage of all philosophy of pure reason seems therefore to be negative only ; because it serves, not as an organon for the extension, but as a discipline for the limitation of its domain, and instead of discovering truth, it only claims the modest merit of preventing error.

Nevertheless, there must be somewhere a source of positive cognitions which belong to the domain of pure reason, and which perhaps, owing to some misunderstand638

Canon of Pure Reason 639

ing only, may lead to error, while they form in [p. 796] reality the true goal of all the efforts of reason. How else could we account for that inextinguishable desire to gain a footing by any means somewhere beyond the limits of experience ? Reason has a presentiment of objects which possess a great interest for it. It enters upon the path of pure speculation in order to approach them, but they fly before it. May we not suppose that on the only path which is still open to it, namely, that of its practical employments, reason may hope to meet with better success } I understand by a canon a system of principles a priori for the proper employment of certain faculties of knowledge in general. Thus general logic, in its analytical portion, is a canon for the understanding and reason in general, but only so far as the form is concerned, for it takes no account of any contents. Thus we saw that the transcendental analytic is the canon of the pure tinderstandings and that it alone is capable of true synthetical knowledge a priori. When no correct use of a faculty of knowledge is possible, there is no canon, and as all synthetical knowledge of pure reason in its speculative employment is, according to all that has been hitherto said, totally impossible, there exists no canon of the speculative employment of reason (for that employment is entirely dialectical), but all transcendental logic is, in this respect, disciplinary only. Consequently, if there exists [p. 797] any correct use of pure reason at all, and, therefore, a canon relating to it, that canon will refer not to the speculative, but to the practical use of reason^ which we shall now proceed to investigate.

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Canon of Pure Reason

THE CANON OF PURE REASON

First Section