The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

Now all that has been quoted is contradicted in the most glaring manner by the whole of the rest of hi doctrine of the understanding, of its categories, and of th< possibility of experience as he explains it in the Trans cendental Logic. Thus (Critique of Pure Eeason, p. 79 ; V 105), the understanding through its categories brings unit; into the manifold of perception, and the pure conception of the understanding refer a priori to objects of per ception. P. 94 ; V. 126, the " categories are the conditio: of experience, whether of perception, which is found i it, or of thought." V. p. 127, the understanding is th originator of experience. V. p. 128, the categories detei mine the perception of objects. V. p. 130, all that we pn sent to ourselves as connected in the object (which is y« certainly something perceptible and not an abstraction), hi been so connected by an act of the understanding. V. 135, the understanding is explained anew as the faculty combining a priori, and of bringing the multiplicity of giv«

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; deas under the unity of apperception ; but according to all 1 wdinary use of words, apperception is not the thinking of t 1 conception, but is perception. V. p. 1 36, we find a first principle of the possibility of all perception in connection (iwith the understanding. V. p. 143, it stands as the heading, that all sense perception is conditioned by the fsategories.

At the same place the logical function of the i judgment also brings the manifold of given perceptions under an apperception in general, and the manifold of a t given perception stands necessarily under the categories. |V. p. 144, unity comes into perception, by means of the i categories, through the understanding.

V. p. 145, the 'l thinking of the understanding is very strangely explained J as synthetically combining, connecting, and arranging the manifold of perception. V. p. 161, experience is only ; possible through the categories, and consists in the connection of sensations, which, however, are just perceptions. ! V. p. 1 59, the categories are a priori knowledge of the objects of perception in general.

Further, here and at V. p. 163 and 165, a chief doctrine of Kant's is given, this : that the understanding first makes Nature possible, because it prescribes laws for it a priori, and Nature adapts itself to the system of the understanding, and so on. Nature, however, is certainly perceptible and not an abstraction; therefore, the understanding must be a faculty of perception.

V. p. 168, it is said, the conceptions of the understanding are the principles of the possibility of experience, and the latter is the condition of phenomena in space and time in general ; phenomena which, however, certainly exist in perception. Finally, p. 189-2 11 ; V.

232-265, the long proof is given (the incorrectness of which is shown in detail in my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 23) that the objective succession and also the coexistence of objects of experience are not sensuously apprehended, but are only brought into Nature by the understanding, and that Nature itself first becomes possible in this way. Yet it is certain that Nature, the course of events, and the coexistence

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of states, is purely perceptible, and no mere abstract thought.

I challenge every one who shares my respect towards Kant to reconcile these contradictions and to show that in his doctrine of the object of experience and the way it is determined by the activity of the understanding and its twelve functions, Kant thought something quite distinct and definite. I am convinced that the contradiction I have pointed out, which extends through the whole Transcendental Logic, is the real reason of the great obscurity of its language. Kant himself, in fact, was dimly conscious of the contradiction, inwardly combated it, but yet either would not or could not bring it to distinct consciousness, and therefore veiled it from himself and others, and avoided it by all kinds of subterfuges. This is perhaps also the reason why he made out of the faculties of knowledge such a strange complicatec machine, with so many wheels, as the twelve categories the transcendental synthesis of imagination, of the inner sense, of the transcendental unity of apperception, also the schematism of the pure conceptions of the understanding, &c, &c. And notwithstanding this great apparatus, not even an attempt is made to explain the perception of the external world, which is after all the principal fact in our knowledge; but this pressing claim is very meanly rejected, always through the same meaningless metaphorical expression: "The empirical perception is given us." On p. 145 of the fifth edition, we learn further that the perception is given through the object ; therefore the object must be something different from the perception.