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

requires also subjective causes in the mind of the person who is to judge. If the judgment is valid for everybody, if only he is possessed of reason, then the ground of it is objectively sufficient, and the holding it to be true is called conviction. If, on the contrary, it has its ground in the peculiar character of the subject only, it is called persuasion.

Persuasion is a mere illusion, the ground of the judgment, though it lies solely in the subject, being regarded as objective. Such a judgment has, therefore, private validity only, and the holding it to be true cannot be communicated to others. Truth, however, depends on agreement with the object, and, with regard to it, the judgments of every understanding must agree with each other {consentientia uni tertio consentiitnt inter se, etc.). An external criterion, therefore, as to whether our holding a thing to be true be conviction or only persuasion, consists in the possibility of communicating it, and finding its truth to be valid for the reason of every man. For, in that case, there is at least a presumption that the ground of the agreement of all judgments, in [p. 821] spite of the diversity of the subjects, rests upon the common ground, namely, on the object with which they all agree, and thus prove the truth of the judgment.

Persuasion, therefore, cannot be distinguished from conviction, subjectively, so long as the subject views its judgment as a phenomenon of his own mind only; the experiment, however, which we make with the grounds that seem valid to us, by trying to find out whether they will produce the same effect on the reason of others, is a means, though only a subjective means, not indeed of producing conviction, but of detecting the merely

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private validity of the judgment, that is, of discovering in it what is merely persuasion.

If we are able besides to analyse the subjective causes of our judgment, which we have taken for its objective grotmds, and thus explain the deceptive judgment as a phenomenon in our mind, without having recourse to the object itself, we expose the illusion and are no longer deceived by it, although we may continue to be tempted by it, in a certain degree, if, namely, the subjective cause of the illusion is inherent in our nature.

I cannot maintain anything, that is, affirm it as a judgment necessarily valid for everybody, except it work conviction. Persuasion I may keep for myself, if it [p. 822] is agreeable to me, but I cannot, and ought not to attempt to make it binding on any but myself.

The holding anything to be true, or the subjective validity of a judgment admits, with reference to the conviction which is at the same time valid objectively, of the three following degrees, trowing, believing, knowing. Trowing is to hold true, with the consciousness that it is insufficient both subjectively and objectively. If the holding true is sufficient subjectively, but is held to be insufficient objectively, it is called believing ; while, if it is sufficient both subjectively and objectively, it is called knowing. Subjective sufficiency is called conviction (for myself), objective sufficiency is called certainty (for everybody). I shall not dwell any longer on the explanation of such easy concepts.

I must never venture to trow, or to be of opinion, without knozving at least something by means of which a judgment, problematical by itself, is connected with truth, which connection, though it involves not a complete truth, is yet attended with more than arbitrary fiction. More66o Canon of Pure Reason over, the law of such a connection must be certain. For if, even with regard to this law, I should have nothing but an opinion, all would become a mere play of the imagination, without the least relation to truth.

In the judgments of pure reason opinion is not permitted. For, as they are not based on empirical grounds, but everything has to be known a priori, and [p. 823] everything therefore must be necessary, the principle of connection in them requires universality and necessity, and consequently perfect certainty, without which there would be nothing to lead us on to truth. Hence it is absurd to have an opinion in pure mathematics ; here one must either know, or abstain from pronouncing any judgment. The same applies to the principles of morality, because one must not hazard an action on the mere opinion that it is allowed, but must know it to be so.

In the transcendental employment of reason, on the contrary, mere opinion, no doubt, would be too little, but knowledge too much. Speculatively, therefore, we cannot here form any judgment at all, because the subjective grounds on which we hold a thing to be true, as for instance those which may very well produce belief, are not approved of in speculative questions, as they cannot be held without empirical support, nor, if communicated to others, can produce the same effect on them.