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.
The same thing must once have happened in Nature, when a great revolution had altered the whole surface of the earth, land and sea had changed places, and the scene was cleared for a new creation. It was then a long time before Nature could produce a new series of lasting forms all in harmony with themselves and with each other. Strange and monstrous organisations appeared which did not harmonise either with themselves or with each other, and therefore could not endure long, but whose still existing remains have brought down to us the tokens of that wavering and tentative procedure of Nature forming itself anew.
Since, now, in philosophy, a crisis precisely similar to this, and an age of fearful abortions, was, as we all know, introduced by Kant, it may be concluded that the serVOL. n. Bp. 1 vices he rendered were not complete, but must have been negative and one-sided, and burdened with great defects. These defects we now desire to search out.
First of all we shall present to ourselves clearly and examine the fundamental thought in which the aim of the whole " Critique of Pure Eeason " lies.
Kant placed himself at the standpoint of his predecessors, the dogmatic philosophers, and accordingly he started with them from the following assumptions : — (i.) Metaphysics is the science of that which lies beyond the possibility of all experience. (2.) Such a science can never be attained by applying principles which must first themselves be drawn from experience {Prolegomena, § 1) ; but only what we know "before, and thus independently of all experience, can reach further than possible experience. (3.) In our reason certain principles of this kind are actually to be found : they are comprehended under the name of Knowledge of pure reason.
So far Kant goes with his predecessors, but here he separates from them. They say: "These principles, or this knowledge of pure reason, are expressions of the absolute possibility of things, cetemce veritates, sources of ontology ; they stand above the system of the world, as fate stood above the gods of the ancients.
Kant says, they are mere forms of our intellect, laws, not of the existence of things, but of our idea of them ; they are therefore valid merely for our apprehension of things, and hence they cannot extend beyond the possibility of experience, which, according to assumption 1, is what was aimed at ; for the a priori nature of these forms of knowledge, since it can only rest on their subjective origin, is just what cuts us off for ever from the knowledge of the nature of things in themselves, and contines us to a world of mere phenomena, so that we cannot know things as they may be in themselves, even a posteriori, not to speak of a priori. Accordingly metaphysics is impossible, and criticism of pure reason takes its place. As opposed to the old dogmatism, Kant is here completely victorious; therefore all dogmatic attempts which have since appeared have been obliged to pursue an entirely different path from the earlier systems ; and I shall now go on to the justification of my own system, according to the expressed intention of this criticism.
A more careful examination, then, of the reasoning given above will oblige one to confess that its first fundamental assumption is a petitio principii. It lies in the proposition (stated with particular clearness in the Prolegomena, § 1): "The source of metaphysics must throughout be non-empirical ; its fundamental principles and conceptions must never be taken from either inner or outer experience.
Yet absolutely nothing is advanced in proof of this cardinal assertion except the etymological argument from the word metaphysic. In truth, however, the matter stands thus : The world and our own existence presents itself to us necessarily as a riddle.
It is now assumed, without more ado, that the solution of this riddle cannot be arrived at from a thorough understanding of the world itself, but must be sought in something entirely different from the world (for that is the meaning of " beyond the possibility of all experience ") ; and that everything must be excluded from that solution of which we can in any way have immediate knowledge (for that is the meaning of possible experience, both inner and outer); the solution must rather be sought only in that at which we can arrive merely indirectly, that is, by means of inferences from universal principles a priori.
After the principal source of all knowledge has in this way been excluded, and the direct way to truth has been closed, we must not wonder that the dogmatic systems failed, and that Kant was able to show the necessity of this failure ; for metaphysics and knowledge a priori had been assumed beforehand to be identical.
But for this it was first necessary to prove that the material for the solution of the riddle absolutely can2o CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
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