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

What distinguishes transcendental philosophy is, that besides giving the rules (or rather the general condition of rules) which are contained in the pure concept of the understanding, it can at the same time indicate a priori the case to which each rule may be applied. The superiority which it enjoys in this respect over all other sciences, except mathematics, is due to this, that it treats of concepts which are meant to refer to their objects a priori, so that their objective validity cannot be proved [p. 136] a posteriori, because this would not affect their own peculiar dignity. It must show, on the contrary, by means of general but sufficient marks, the conditions under which objects can be given corresponding to those concepts ; otherwise these would be without any contents, mere logical forms, and not pure concepts of the understanding.

Our transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgment will consist of two chapters. The first will treat of the sensuous condition under which alone pure concepts of the understanding can be used. This is what I call the schematism of the pure understanding. The second will treat of the synthetical judgments, which can be derived a priori ViVL^Q,x these conditions from pure concepts of the understanding, and on which all knowledge a p7'iori depends. It will treat, therefore, of the principles of the pure understanding.

THE

TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE

[p- 137]

OF THE

FACULTY OF JUDGMENT

OR

ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES CHAPTER I

OF THE SCHEMATISM OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE

UNDERSTANDING

In comprehending any object under a concept, the representation of the former must be homogeneous with the latter, ^ that is, the concept must contain that which is represented in the object to be comprehended under it, for this is the only meaning of the expression that an object is comprehended under a concept. Thus, for instance, the empirical concept of a plate is homogeneous with the pure geometrical concept of a circle, the roundness which is conceived in the first forming an object of intuition in the latter.

Now it is clear that pure concepts of the understanding as compared with empirical or sensuous impressions in general, are entirely heterogeneous, and can never be met

1 Read dem letzteren, as corrected by Rosenkranz, for der letzteren.

p. 112

Transcendental Analytic 113

with in any intuition. How then can the latter be comprehended under the former, or how can the categories be appHed to phenomena, as no one is Hkely to say that causahty, for instance, could be seen through the senses, and was contained in the phenomenon? It is [p. 138] really this very natural and important question which renders a transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgment necessary, in order to show how it is possible that any of the pure concepts of the understanding can be applied to phenomena. In all other sciences in which the concepts by which the object is thought in general are not so heterogeneous or different from those which represent it in concrete^ and as it is given, there is no necessity to enter into any discussions as to the applicability of the former to the latter.

In our case there must be some third thing homogeneous on the one side with the category, and on the other with the phenomenon, to render the application of the former to the latter possible. This intermediate representation must be pure (free from all that is empirical) and yet intelligible on the one side, and sensuous on the other. Such a representation is the transcendental schema.

The concept of the understanding contains pure synthetical unity of the manifold in general. Time, as the formal condition of the manifold in the internal sense, consequently of the conjunction of all representations, contains a manifold a prioid in pure intuition. A transcendental determination of time is so far homogeneous with the category (which constitutes its unity) that it is general and founded on a rule a priori ; and it is on the other hand so far homogeneous with the phe- [p. 139] nomenon, that time must be contained in every empirical

114 Transcendejital Analytic representation of the manifold. The application of the category to phenomena becomes possible therefore by means of the transcendental determination of time, which, as a schema of the concepts of the understanding, allows the phenomena to be comprehended under the category. •