The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
Finally, then, as regards the source or the foundation of metaphysical knowledge, I have already declared myself above to be opposed to the assumption, which is even repeated by Kant, that it must lie in mere conceptions. In no knowledge can conceptions be what is first ; for they are always derived from some perception. What has led, however, to that assumption is probably the example of mathematics. Mathematics can leave perception altogether, and, as is especially the case in algebra, trigonometry, and analysis, can operate with purely abstract conceptions, nay, with conceptions which are represented
1 [Bayard Taylor's translation of Faust, vol. i. iSo. Tra.]
p. 385
only by signs instead of words, and can yet arrive at a perfectly certain result, which is still so remote that any one who adhered to the firm ground of perception could not arrive at it.
But the possibility of this depends, as Kant has clearly shown, on the fact that the conceptions of mathematics are derived from the most certain and definite of all perceptions, from the a priori and yet intuitively known relations of quantity, and can therefore be constantly realised again and controlled by these, either arithmetically, by performing the calculations which are merely indicated by those signs, or geometrically, by means of what Kant calls the construction of the conceptions.
This advantage, on the other hand, is not possessed by the conceptions out of which it was believed metaphysics could be built up ; such, for example, as essence, being, substance, perfection, necessity, reality, finite, infinite, absolute, ground, &c.
For such conceptions are by no means original, as fallen from heaven, or innate ; but they also, like all conceptions, are derived from perceptions ; and as, unlike the conceptions of mathematics, they do not contain the mere form of perception, but more, empirical perceptions must lie at their foundation.
Thus nothing can be drawn from them which the empirical perceptions did not also contain, that is, nothing which was not a matter of experience, and which, since these conceptions are very wide abstractions, we would receive with much greater certainty at first hand from experience. For from conceptions nothing more can ever be drawn than the perceptions from which they are derived contain.
If we desire pure conceptions, ie., such as have no empirical source, the only ones that can be produced are those which concern space and time, ie., the merely formal part of perception, consequently only the mathematical conceptions, or at most also the conception of causality, which indeed does not originate in experience, but yet only comes into consciousness by means of it (first in sense-perception) ; therefore experience indeed is only possible by means of it ; but it also is only vol. n. 2 B valid in the sphere of experience, on which account Kant has shown that it only serves to communicate the connection of experience, and not to transcend it ; that thus it admits only of physical application, not of metaphysical.
Certainly only its a priori origin can give apodictic certainty to any knowledge ; but this limits it to the mere form of experience in general, for it shows that it is conditioned by the subjective nature of the intellect Such knowledge, then, far from taking us beyond experience, gives only one part of experience itself, the formal part, which belongs to it throughout, and therefore is universal, consequently mere form without content.
Since now metaphysics can least of all be confined to this, it must have also empirical sources of knowledge ; therefore that preconceived idea of a metaphysic to be found purely a priori is necessarily vain. It is really apetitioprincipii of Kant's, which he expresses most distinctly in § i of the Prolegomena, that metaphysics must not draw its fundamental conceptions and principles from experience.
In this it is assumed beforehand that only what we knew before all experience can extend beyond all possible experience. Supported by this, Kant then comes and shows that all such knowledge is nothing more than the form of the intellect for the purpose of experience, and consequently can never lead beyond experience, from which he then rightly deduces the impossibility of all metaphysics.
But does it not rather seem utterly perverse that in order to discover the secret of experience, i.e., of the world which alone lies before us, we should look quite away from it, ignore its content, and take and use for its material only the empty forms of which we are conscious a priori ? Is it not rather in keeping with the matter that the science of experience in general, and as such, should also be drawn from experience ?
Its problem itself is given it empirically; why should not the solution of it call in the assistance of experience ? Is it not senseless that he who speaks of the nature of things should not look at things themselves, but should
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