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.
In order to become quite certain of that accordance, we must remark that in all disjunctive judgments their sphere (that is, all that is contained in them) is represented as a whole, divided into parts (the subordinate concepts), and that, as one of them cannot be contained under the other, they are conceived as co-ordinate, not as subordinate, determining each other, not in one direction only, as in a series, but reciprocally, as in an aggregate (if one member of the division is given, all the rest are excluded, and vice versa),
A similar connection is conceived in a tvhole of things, in which one, as effect, is not subordinated to another as the cause of its existence, but is co-ordinated with it, simultaneously and reciproSupplement XII 739 cally, as cause of the determination of the other (as, for instance, in a body of which the parts reciprocally attract and repel each other). This is a kind of connection totally different from that which exists in a mere relation of cause to effect (of ground to consequence), for here the consequence does not reciprocally determine the ground again, nor (as in the case of the Creator and the creation) constitute with it a whole. The process of the understanding, in representing to itself the sphere of a divided concept, is the same as that by which it thinks a thing as divisible : and in the same manner in which, in the former, the members of a division exclude each other, and are yet connected in one sphere, the understanding represents to itself the parts of the latter as existing (as substances), each independent of the rest, and yet united in a whole.
§ 12
In the transcendental philosophy of the ancients there is another chapter containing concepts of the understanding which, though they are not counted among the categories, are yet considered by them as concepts a priori of objects. If so, they would increase the number of the categories, which cannot be. They are set forth in the famous proposition of the Schoolmen, ^ qicodlibet ens est unuffty verum, bonum.^ Now, although the inferences to be drawn from this principle (yielding nothing but tautological propositions) were very meagre, so that modern metaphysicians mention it almost by courtesy only, a thought which has maintained itself so long, however empty it may seem, deserves an investigation with regard to its origin, nay, leads us to suspect that it may have its foundation in some rule of the understanding which, as often happens, has only been wrongly interpreted. What are supposed to be transcendental predicates of things are nothing but logical requirements and criteria of all knowledge of things in general, whereby that knowledge is founded on the categories of quantity, namely, unity, plurality , and totality. Only, instead of taking them as materially belonging to the possibility of things by themselves.
740 Supplement XII they (the predicates, or rather those who employed them) used them, in fact, in their formal meaning only, as forming a logical requisite for every kind of knowledge, and yet incautiously made these criteria of thought to be properties of the things by themselves.
In every cognition of an object there is unity of concept, which may be called qualitative unity, so far as we think by it only the unity in the comprehension of the manifold material of our knowledge : as, for instance, the unity of the subject in a play, or a speech, or a fable. Secondly, there is truth, in respect to the deductions from it.
The more true deductions can be made from a given concept, the more criteria are there of its objective reahty. This might be called the qualitative plurality of criteria, which belong to a concept as their common ground (but are not conceived in it, as quantity).
Thirdly, there is completeness, which consists in this, that the plurality together leads back to the unity of the concept, according completely with this and with no other concept, which maybe called the qualitative coinpleteness (totality).
This shows that these logical criteria of the possibihty of knowledge in general do nothing but change the three categories of quantity, in which the unity in the production of the quantum must throughout be taken as hotnogeneous, for the purpose of connecting heterogeneous elements of knowledge also in one consciousness, by means of the quality of the cognition as the principle of the connection.
Thus the criterion of the possibility of a concept (but not of its object) is the definition of it, in which the unity of the concept, the truth of all that may be immediately deduced from it, and lastly, the completeness of what has been deduced from it, supply all that is necessary for the constitution of the whole concept.
In the same manner the criterion of an hypothesis consists, first, in the intelligibility of the ground which has been admitted /d?r the sake of explanation, or of its unity (without any auxiliary hypothesis) ; secondly, in the truth of the consequences to be deduced from it (their accordance with themselves and with experience) ; and lastly, in the completeness of the ground admitted for the explanation of these consequences, which point back to neither more nor less than what was admitted in the hypothesis, and agree in giving us again, analytically a posteriori, what had
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