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

After Kant had thus introduced such great errors into the first simple outlines of a theory of the faculty of perception, he adopted a variety of very complicated assumptions. To these belongs first of all the synthetic unity of apperception: a very strange thing, very strangely explained. "The 7" think must be able to accompany all my ideas." Must — be able : this is a problematicapodictic enunciation; in plain English, a proposition which takes with one hand what it gives with the other. And what is the meaning of this carefully balanced proposition ? That all knowledge of ideas is thinking ? That is not the case: and it would be dreadful; there would then be nothing but abstract conceptions, or at any rate a pure perception free from reflection and will, such as that of the beautiful, the deepest comprehension of the true nature of things, i.e., of their Platonic Ideas. And besides, the brutes would then either think also, or else they would not even have ideas. Or is the proposition perhaps intended to mean : no object without a subject ? That would be very badly expressed by it, and would come too late. If we collect Kant's utterances on the subject, we shall find that what he understands by the synthetic unity of apperception is, as it were, the extensionless centre of the sphere of all our ideas, whose radii converge to it. It is what I call the subject of knowing, the correlative of all ideas, and it is also that which I have fully described and explained in the 2 2d chapter of the Supplements, as the focus in which the rays of the activityp. 52 of the brain converge. Therefore, to avoid repetition, I now refer to that chapter.

That I reject the whole doctrine of the categories, and reckon it among the groundless assumptions with which Kant burdened the theory of knowledge, results from the criticism given above ; and also from the proof of the contradictions in the Transcendental Logic, which had their ground in the confusion of perception and abstract knowledge ; also further from the proof of the want of a distinct and definite conception of the nature of the understanding and of the reason, instead of which we found in Kant's writings only incoherent, inconsistent, insufficient, and incorrect utterances with regard to these two faculties of the mind.

Finally, it results from the explanations which I myself have given of these faculties of the mind in the first book and its Supplements, and more fully in the essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 21, 26, and 34, — explanations which are very definite and distinct, which clearly follow from the consideration of the nature of our knowledge, and which completely agree with the conceptioi of those two faculties of knowledge that appear in the language and writings of all ages and all nations, but were not brought to distinctness.

Their defence against the very different exposition of Kant has, for the most part, been given already along with the exposure of the errors of that exposition.

Since, however, the table of judgments, which Kant makes the foundation of his theory of thinking, and indeed of his whole philosophy, has, in itself, as a whole, its correctness, it is still incumbent upon me to show how these universal forms of all judgment arise in our faculty of knowledge, and to reconcile them with my exposition of it.

In this discussion I shall always attach to the concepts understanding and reason the sens given them in my explanation, which I therefore assume the reader is familiar with.

An essential difference between Kant's method and that which I follow lies in this, that he starts from indirect, reflected knowledge, while I start from direct or intuitive knowledge. He may be compared to a man who measures the height of a tower by its shadow, while I am like him who applies the measuring-rule directly to the tower itself.

Therefore, for him philosophy is a science of conceptions, but for me it is a science in conceptions, drawn from knowledge of perception, the one source of all evidence, and comprehended and made permanent in general conceptions.

He passes over this whole world of perception which surrounds us, so multifarious and rich in significance, and confines himself to the forms of abstract thinking ; and, although he never expressly says so, this procedure is founded on the assumption that reflection is the ectype of all perception, that, therefore, all that is essential in perception must be expressed in reflection, and expressed in very contracted forms and outlines, which are thus easily surveyed.

According to this, what is essential and conformable to law in abstract knowledge would, as it were, place in our hands all the threads by which the varied puppet-show of the world of perception is set in motion before our eyes.

If Kant had only distinctly expressed this first principle of his method, and then followed it consistently, he would at least have been obliged to separate clearly the intuitive from the abstract, and we would not have had to contend with inextricable contradictions and confusions.

But from the way in which he solves his problem we see that that fundamental principle of his method was only very indistinctly present to his mind, and thus we have still to arrive at it by conjecture even after a thorough study of his philosophy.