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

Besides in the passages quoted, the assumption of Kant here criticised will be found expressed with admirable clearness in the "Critique of Judgment," § 36, just at the beginning; also in the "Metaphysical Principles of Natural Science," in the note to the first explanation of " Phenomenology." But with a nalveti which Kant ventured upon least of all with reference to this doubtful point, it is to be found most distinctly laid down in the book of a Kantian, Kiesewetter's " Orundriss einer algemeinen Logik," third edition, part i., p. 434 of the exposiCRITICISM p. 41tion, and part ii., § 52 and 53 of the exposition; similarly in Tief trunk's " Denklehre in rein Deutschem Gewande" (1825). It there appears so clearly how those disciples who do not themselves think become a magnifying mirror of the errors of every thinker. Once having determined his doctrine of the categories, Kant was always cautious when expounding it, but his disciples on the contrary were quite bold, and thus exposed its falseness.

According to what has been said, the object of the categories is for Kant, not indeed the thing in itself, but yet most closely akin to it. It is the object in itself; it is an object that requires no subject; it is a particular thing, and yet not in space and time, because not perceptible ; it is an object of. thought, and yet not an abstract conception.

Accordingly Kant really makes a triple division: (1.) the idea ; (2.) the object of the idea ; (3.) the thing in itself. The first belongs to the sensibility, which in its ca3e, as in that of sensation, includes the pure forms of perception, space and time. The second belongs to the understanding, which thinks it through its twelve categories.

The third lies beyond the possibility of all knowledge. (In support of this, cf. Critique of Pure Eeason, first edition, p. J 08 and 109.) The distinction of the idea from the object of the idea is however unfounded ; this had already been proved by Berkeley, and it appears from my whole exposition in the first book, especially chap. i. of the supplements; nay, even from Kant's own completely idealistic point of view in the first edition.

But if we should not wish to count the object of the idea as belonging to the idea and identify it with the idea, it would be necessary to attribute it to the thing in itself : this ultimately depends on the sense which is attached to the word object. This, however, always remains certain, that, when we think clearly, nothing more can be found than idea and thing in itself.

The illicit introduction of that hybrid, the object of the idea, is the source of Kant's errors ; yet when it is taken away, the doctrine of the categories as concep42 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

tions a priori also falls to the ground; for they bring nothing to the perception, and are not supposed to hold good of the thing in itself, but by means of them we only think those " objects of the ideas," and thereby change ideas into experience.

For every empirical perception is already experience; but every perception which proceeds from sensation is empirical: this sensation is related by the understanding, by means of its sole function (knowledge a priori of the law of causality), to its cause, which just on this account presents itself in space and time (forms of pure perception) as object of experience, material objecti enduring in space through all time, yet as such always remains idea, as do space and time themselves.

If we desire to go beyond this idea, then we arrive at the question as to the thing in itself, the answer to which is the theme of my whole work, as of all metaphysics in general.

Kant's error here explained is connected with his mistake, which we condemned before, that he gives no theory of the origin of empirical perception, but, without saying more, treats it as given, identifying it with the mere sensation, to which he only adds the forms of intuition or perception, space and time, comprehending both under the name sensibility.

But from these materials no objective idea arises : this absolutely demands the relation of the idea to its cause, thus the application of the law of causality, and thus understanding; for without this the sensation still remains always subjective, and does not take the form of an object in space, even if space is given with it.

But according to Kant, the understanding must not be assigned to perception ; it is supposed merely to think, so as to remain within the transcendental logic.

"With this again is connected another mistake of Kant's : that he left it to me to adduce the only valid proof of the a priori nature of the law of causality which he rightly recognised, the proof from the possibility of objective empirical perception itself, and instead of it gives a palpably false one, as I have already shown in my essay on the principle of