Section 13
Original German
§ 13.
Diejenigen, welche noch nicht von dem Begriffe loskommen können, als ob Raum und Zeit wirkliche Beschaffenheiten wären, die den Dingen an sich selbst anhingen, können ihre Scharfsinnigkeit an folgendem Paradoxon üben und, wenn sie dessen Auflösung vergebens versucht haben, wenigstens auf einige Augenblicke von Vorurtheilen frei, vermuthen, daß doch vielleicht die Abwürdigung des Raumes und der Zeit zu bloßen Formen unsrer sinnlichen Anschauung Grund haben möge.
Wenn zwei Dinge in allen Stücken, die an jedem für sich nur immer können erkannt werden, (in allen zur Größe und Qualität gehörigen Bestimmungen) völlig einerlei sind, so muß doch folgen, daß eins in allen Fällen und Beziehungen an die Stelle des andern könne gesetzt werden, ohne daß diese Vertauschung den mindesten kenntlichen Unterschied verursachen würde. In der That verhält sich dies auch so mit ebenen Figuren in der Geometrie; allein verschiedene sphärische zeigen unerachtet jener völligen innern Übereinstimmung doch eine solche Verschiedenheit im äußeren Verhältniß, daß sich eine an die Stelle der andern gar nicht setzen läßt; z. B. zwei sphärische Triangel von beiden Hemisphären, die einen Bogen des Äquators zur gemeinschaftlichen Basis haben, können völlig gleich sein in Ansehung der Seiten sowohl als Winkel, so daß an keinem, wenn er allein und zugleich vollständig beschrieben wird, nichts angetroffen wird, was nicht zugleich in der Beschreibung des andern läge, und dennoch kann einer nicht an die Stelle des andern (nämlich auf dem entgegengesetzten Hemisphär) gesetzt werden; und hier ist denn doch eine innere Verschiedenheit beider Triangel, die kein Verstand als innerlich angeben kann, und die sich nur durch das äußere Verhältniß im Raume offenbart. Allein ich will gewöhnlichere Fälle anführen, die aus dem gemeinen Leben genommen werden können.
Was kann wohl meiner Hand oder meinem Ohr ähnlicher und in allen Stücken gleicher sein, als ihr Bild im Spiegel? Und dennoch kann ich eine solche Hand, als im Spiegel gesehen wird, nicht an die Stelle ihres Urbildes setzen; denn wenn dieses eine rechte Hand war, so ist jene im Spiegel eine linke, und das Bild des rechten Ohres ist ein linkes, das nimmermehr die Stelle des ersteren vertreten kann. Nun sind hier keine innre Unterschiede, die irgend ein Verstand nur denken könnte; und dennoch sind die Unterschiede innerlich, so weit die Sinne lehren, denn die linke Hand kann mit der rechten unerachtet aller beiderseitigen Gleichheit und Ähnlichkeit doch nicht zwischen denselben Grenzen eingeschlossen sein (sie können nicht congruiren); der Handschuh der einen Hand kann nicht auf der andern gebraucht werden. Was ist nun die Auflösung? Diese Gegenstände sind nicht etwa Vorstellungen der Dinge, wie sie an sich selbst sind, und wie sie der pure Verstand erkennen würde, sondern es sind sinnliche Anschauungen, d. i. Erscheinungen, deren Möglichkeit auf dem Verhältnisse gewisser an sich unbekannten Dinge zu etwas anderem, nämlich unserer Sinnlichkeit, beruht. Von dieser ist nun der Raum die Form der äußern Anschauung, und die innere Bestimmung eines jeden Raumes ist nur durch die Bestimmung des äußeren Verhältnisses zu dem ganzen Raume, davon jener ein Theil ist (dem Verhältnisse zum äußeren Sinne), d. i. der Theil ist nur durchs Ganze möglich, welches bei Dingen an sich selbst als Gegenständen des bloßen Verstandes niemals, wohl aber bei bloßen Erscheinungen stattfindet. Wir können daher auch den Unterschied ähnlicher und gleicher, aber doch incongruenter Dinge (z. B. widersinnig gewundener Schnecken) durch keinen einzigen Begriff verständlich machen, sondern nur durch das Verhältniß zur rechten und linken Hand, welches unmittelbar auf Anschauung geht.
Anmerkung I.
Die reine Mathematik und namentlich die reine Geometrie kann nur unter der Bedingung allein objective Realität haben, daß sie blos auf Gegenstände der Sinne geht, in Ansehung deren aber der Grundsatz feststeht: daß unsre sinnliche Vorstellung keinesweges eine Vorstellung der Dinge an sich selbst, sondern nur der Art sei, wie sie uns erscheinen. Daraus folgt, daß die Sätze der Geometrie nicht etwa Bestimmungen eines bloßen Geschöpfs unserer dichtenden Phantasie sind und also nicht mit Zuverlässigkeit auf wirkliche Gegenstände könnten bezogen werden, sondern daß sie nothwendiger Weise vom Raume und darum auch von allem, was im Raume angetroffen werden mag, gelten, weil der Raum nichts anders ist, als die Form aller äußeren Erscheinungen, unter der uns allein Gegenstände der Sinne gegeben werden können. Die Sinnlichkeit, deren Form die Geometrie zum Grunde legt, ist das, worauf die Möglichkeit äußerer Erscheinungen beruht; diese also können niemals etwas anderes enthalten, als was die Geometrie ihnen vorschreibt. Ganz anders würde es sein, wenn die Sinne die Objecte vorstellen müßten, wie sie an sich selbst sind. Denn da würde aus der Vorstellung vom Raume, die der Geometer a priori mit allerlei Eigenschaften desselben zum Grunde legt, noch gar nicht folgen, daß alles dieses sammt dem, was daraus gefolgert wird, sich gerade so in der Natur verhalten müsse. Man würde den Raum des Geometers für bloße Erdichtung halten und ihm keine objective Gültigkeit zutrauen, weil man gar nicht einsieht, wie Dinge nothwendig mit dem Bilde, das wir uns von selbst und zum voraus von ihnen machen, übereinstimmen müßten. Wenn aber dieses Bild oder vielmehr diese formale Anschauung die wesentliche Eigenschaft unserer Sinnlichkeit ist, vermittelst deren uns allein Gegenstände gegeben werden, diese Sinnlichkeit aber nicht Dinge an sich selbst, sondern nur ihre Erscheinungen vorstellt, so ist ganz leicht zu begreifen und zugleich unwidersprechlich bewiesen: daß alle äußere Gegenstände unsrer Sinnenwelt nothwendig mit den Sätzen der Geometrie nach aller Pünktlichkeit übereinstimmen müssen, weil die Sinnlichkeit durch ihre Form äußerer Anschauung (den Raum), womit sich der Geometer beschäftigt, jene Gegenstände als bloße Erscheinungen selbst allererst möglich macht. Es wird allemal ein bemerkungswürdiges Phänomen in der Geschichte der Philosophie bleiben, daß es eine Zeit gegeben hat, da selbst Mathematiker, die zugleich Philosophen waren, zwar nicht an der Richtigkeit ihrer geometrischen Sätze, sofern sie blos den Raum beträfen, aber an der objectiven Gültigkeit und Anwendung dieses Begriffs selbst und aller geometrischen Bestimmungen desselben auf Natur zu zweifeln anfingen; da sie besorgten, eine Linie in der Natur möchte doch wohl aus physischen Punkten, mithin der wahre Raum im Objecte aus einfachen Theilen bestehen, obgleich der Raum, den der Geometer in Gedanken hat, daraus keinesweges bestehen kann. Sie erkannten nicht: daß dieser Raum in Gedanken den physischen, d. i. die Ausdehnung der Materie selbst, möglich mache; daß dieser gar keine Beschaffenheit der Dinge an sich selbst, sondern nur eine Form unserer sinnlichen Vorstellungskraft sei; daß alle Gegenstände im Raume bloße Erscheinungen, d. i. nicht Dinge an sich selbst, sondern Vorstellungen unsrer sinnlichen Anschauung seien, und, da der Raum, wie ihn sich der Geometer denkt, ganz genau die Form der sinnlichen Anschauung ist, die wir a priori in uns finden, und die den Grund der Möglichkeit aller äußern Erscheinungen (ihrer Form nach) enthält, diese nothwendig und auf das präciseste mit den Sätzen des Geometers, die er aus keinem erdichteten Begriff, sondern aus der subjectiven Grundlage aller äußern Erscheinungen, nämlich der Sinnlichkeit selbst, zieht, zusammen stimmen müssen. Auf solche und keine andere Art kann der Geometer wider aller Chicanen einer seichten Metaphysik wegen der ungezweifelten objectiven Realität seiner Sätze gesichert werden, so befremdend sie auch dieser, weil sie nicht bis zu den Quellen ihrer Begriffe zurückgeht, scheinen müssen.
Anmerkung II.
Alles, was uns als Gegenstand gegeben werden soll, muß uns in der Anschauung gegeben werden. Alle unsere Anschauung geschieht aber nur vermittelst der Sinne; der Verstand schauet nichts an, sondern reflectirt nur. Da nun die Sinne nach dem jetzt Erwiesenen uns niemals und in keinem einzigen Stück die Dinge an sich selbst, sondern nur ihre Erscheinungen zu erkennen geben, diese aber bloße Vorstellungen der Sinnlichkeit sind, „so müssen auch alle Körper mit sammt dem Raume, darin sie sich befinden, für nichts als bloße Vorstellungen in uns gehalten werden und existiren nirgend anders, als blos in unsern Gedanken.“ Ist dieses nun nicht der offenbare Idealismus?
Der Idealismus besteht in der Behauptung, daß es keine andere als denkende Wesen gebe, die übrige Dinge, die wir in der Anschauung wahrzunehmen glauben, wären nur Vorstellungen in den denkenden Wesen, denen in der That kein außerhalb diesen befindlicher Gegenstand correspondirte. Ich dagegen sage: es sind uns Dinge als außer uns befindliche Gegenstände unserer Sinne gegeben, allein von dem, was sie an sich selbst sein mögen, wissen wir nichts, sondern kennen nur ihre Erscheinungen, d. i. die Vorstellungen, die sie in uns wirken, indem sie unsere Sinne afficiren. Demnach gestehe ich allerdings, daß es außer uns Körper gebe, d. i. Dinge, die, obzwar nach dem, was sie an sich selbst sein mögen, uns gänzlich unbekannt, wir durch die Vorstellungen kennen, welche ihr Einfluß auf unsre Sinnlichkeit uns verschafft, und denen wir die Benennung eines Körpers geben; welches Wort also blos die Erscheinung jenes uns unbekannten, aber nichts desto weniger wirklichen Gegenstandes bedeutet. Kann man dieses wohl Idealismus nennen? Es ist ja gerade das Gegentheil davon.
Daß man unbeschadet der wirklichen Existenz äußerer Dinge von einer Menge ihrer Prädicate sagen könne: sie gehörten nicht zu diesen Dingen an sich selbst, sondern nur zu ihren Erscheinungen und hätten außer unserer Vorstellung keine eigene Existenz, ist etwas, was schon lange vor Lockes Zeiten, am meisten aber nach diesen allgemein angenommen und zugestanden ist. Dahin gehören die Wärme, die Farbe, der Geschmack ꝛc. Daß ich aber noch über diese aus wichtigen Ursachen die übrigen Qualitäten der Körper, die man primarias nennt, die Ausdehnung, den Ort und überhaupt den Raum mit allem, was ihm anhängig ist (Undurchdringlichkeit oder Materialität, Gestalt ꝛc.), auch mit zu bloßen Erscheinungen zähle, dawider kann man nicht den mindesten Grund der Unzulässigkeit anführen; und so wenig wie der, so die Farben nicht als Eigenschaften, die dem Object an sich selbst, sondern nur den Sinn des Sehens als Modificationen anhängen, will gelten lassen, darum ein Idealist heißen kann: so wenig kann mein Lehrbegriff idealistisch heißen, blos deshalb weil ich finde, daß noch mehr, ja alle Eigenschaften, die die Anschauung eines Körpers ausmachen, blos zu seiner Erscheinung gehören; denn die Existenz des Dinges, was erscheint, wird dadurch nicht wie beim wirklichen Idealism aufgehoben, sondern nur gezeigt, daß wir es, wie es an sich selbst sei, durch Sinne gar nicht erkennen können.
Ich möchte gerne wissen, wie denn meine Behauptungen beschaffen sein müßten, damit sie nicht einen Idealism enthielten. Ohne Zweifel müßte ich sagen: daß die Vorstellung vom Raume nicht blos dem Verhältnisse, was unsre Sinnlichkeit zu den Objecten hat, vollkommen gemäß sei, denn das habe ich gesagt, sondern daß sie sogar dem Object völlig ähnlich sei; eine Behauptung, mit der ich keinen Sinn verbinden kann, so wenig als daß die Empfindung des Rothen mit der Eigenschaft des Zinnobers, der diese Empfindung in mir erregt, eine Ähnlichkeit habe.
Anmerkung III.
Hieraus läßt sich nun ein leicht vorherzusehender, aber nichtiger Einwurf gar leicht abweisen: „daß nämlich durch die Idealität des Raums und der Zeit die ganze Sinnenwelt in lauter Schein verwandelt werden würde.“ Nachdem man nämlich zuvörderst alle philosophische Einsicht von der Natur der sinnlichen Erkenntniß dadurch verdorben hatte, daß man die Sinnlichkeit blos in einer verworrenen Vorstellungsart setzte, nach der wir die Dinge immer noch erkennten, wie sie sind, nur ohne das Vermögen zu haben, alles in dieser unserer Vorstellung zum klaren Bewußtsein zu bringen; dagegen von uns bewiesen worden, daß Sinnlichkeit nicht in diesem logischen Unterschiede der Klarheit oder Dunkelheit, sondern in dem genetischen des Ursprungs der Erkenntniß selbst bestehe, da sinnliche Erkenntniß die Dinge gar nicht vorstellt, wie sie sind, sondern nur die Art, wie sie unsere Sinnen afficiren, und also, daß durch sie blos Erscheinungen, nicht die Sachen selbst dem Verstande zur Reflexion gegeben werden: nach dieser nothwendigen Berichtigung regt sich ein aus unverzeihlicher und beinahe vorsetzlicher Mißdeutung entspringender Einwurf, als wenn mein Lehrbegriff alle Dinge der Sinnenwelt in lauter Schein verwandelte.
Wenn uns Erscheinung gegeben ist, so sind wir noch ganz frei, wie wir die Sache daraus beurtheilen wollen. Jene, nämlich Erscheinung, beruhte auf den Sinnen, diese Beurtheilung aber auf dem Verstande, und es frägt sich nur, ob in der Bestimmung des Gegenstandes Wahrheit sei oder nicht. Der Unterschied aber zwischen Wahrheit und Traum wird nicht durch die Beschaffenheit der Vorstellungen, die auf Gegenstände bezogen werden, ausgemacht, denn die sind in beiden einerlei, sondern durch die Verknüpfung derselben nach den Regeln, welche den Zusammenhang der Vorstellungen in dem Begriffe eines Objects bestimmen, und wie fern sie in einer Erfahrung beisammen stehen können oder nicht. Und da liegt es gar nicht an den Erscheinungen, wenn unsere Erkenntniß den Schein für Wahrheit nimmt, d. i. wenn Anschauung, wodurch uns ein Object gegeben wird, für Begriff vom Gegenstande oder auch der Existenz desselben, die der Verstand nur denken kann, gehalten wird. Den Gang der Planeten stellen uns die Sinne bald rechtläufig, bald rückläufig vor, und hierin ist weder Falschheit noch Wahrheit, weil, so lange man sich bescheidet, daß dieses vorerst nur Erscheinung ist, man über die objective Beschaffenheit ihrer Bewegung noch gar nicht urtheilt. Weil aber, wenn der Verstand nicht wohl darauf Acht hat, zu verhüten, daß diese subjective Vorstellungsart nicht für objectiv gehalten werde, leichtlich ein falsches Urtheil entspringen kann, so sagt man: sie scheinen zurückzugehen; allein der Schein kommt nicht auf Rechnung der Sinne, sondern des Verstandes, dem es allein zukommt, aus der Erscheinung ein objectives Urtheil zu fällen.
Auf solche Weise, wenn wir auch gar nicht über den Ursprung unserer Vorstellungen nachdächten und unsre Anschauungen der Sinne, sie mögen enthalten, was sie wollen, im Raume und Zeit nach Regeln des Zusammenhanges aller Erkenntniß in einer Erfahrung verknüpfen: so kann, nachdem wir unbehutsam oder vorsichtig sind, trüglicher Schein oder Wahrheit entspringen; das geht lediglich den Gebrauch sinnlicher Vorstellungen im Verstande und nicht ihren Ursprung an. Eben so wenn ich alle Vorstellungen der Sinne sammt ihrer Form, nämlich Raum und Zeit, für nichts als Erscheinungen und die letztern für eine bloße Form der Sinnlichkeit halte, die außer ihr an den Objecten gar nicht angetroffen wird, und ich bediene mich derselben Vorstellungen nur in Beziehung auf mögliche Erfahrung: so ist darin nicht die mindeste Verleitung zum Irrthum, oder ein Schein enthalten, daß ich sie für bloße Erscheinungen halte; denn sie können dessen ungeachtet nach Regeln der Wahrheit in der Erfahrung richtig zusammenhängen. Auf solche Weise gelten alle Sätze der Geometrie vom Raume eben sowohl von allen Gegenständen der Sinne, mithin in Ansehung aller möglichen Erfahrung, ob ich den Raum als eine bloße Form der Sinnlichkeit, oder als etwas an den Dingen selbst Haftendes ansehe; wiewohl ich im ersteren Falle allein begreifen kann, wie es möglich sei, jene Sätze von allen Gegenständen der äußeren Anschauung a priori zu wissen; sonst bleibt in Ansehung aller nur möglichen Erfahrung alles eben so, wie wenn ich diesen Abfall von der gemeinen Meinung gar nicht unternommen haͤtte.
Wage ich es aber mit meinen Begriffen von Raum und Zeit über alle mögliche Erfahrung hinauszugehen, welches unvermeidlich ist, wenn ich sie für Beschaffenheiten ausgebe, die den Dingen an sich selbst anhingen (denn was sollte mich da hindern, sie auch von eben denselben Dingen, meine Sinnen möchten nun auch anders eingerichtet sein und für sie passen oder nicht, dennoch gelten zu lassen?), alsdann kann ein wichtiger Irrthum entspringen, der auf einem Scheine beruht, da ich das, was eine blos meinem Subject anhängende Bedingung der Anschauung der Dinge war und sicher für alle Gegenstände der Sinne, mithin alle nur mögliche Erfahrung galt, für allgemein gültig ausgab, weil ich sie auf die Dinge an sich selbst bezog und nicht auf Bedingungen der Erfahrung einschränkte.
Also ist es so weit gefehlt, daß meine Lehre von der Idealität des Raumes und der Zeit die ganze Sinnenwelt zum bloßen Scheine mache, daß sie vielmehr das einzige Mittel ist, die Anwendung einer der allerwichtigsten Erkenntnisse, nämlich derjenigen, welche Mathematik a priori vorträgt, auf wirkliche Gegenstände zu sicheren und zu verhüten, daß sie nicht für bloßen Schein gehalten werde, weil ohne diese Bemerkung es ganz unmöglich wäre auszumachen, ob nicht die Anschauungen von Raum und Zeit, die wir von keiner Erfahrung entlehnen, und die dennoch in unserer Vorstellung a priori liegen, bloße selbstgemachte Hirngespinste wären, denen gar kein Gegenstand, wenigstens nicht adäquat, correspondirte, und also Geometrie selbst ein bloßer Schein sei; dagegen ihre unstreitige Gültigkeit in Ansehung aller Gegenstände der Sinnenwelt eben darum, weil diese bloße Erscheinungen sind, von uns hat dargethan werden können.
Es ist zweitens so weit gefehlt, daß diese meine Principien darum, weil sie aus den Vorstellungen der Sinne Erscheinungen machen, statt der Wahrheit der Erfahrung sie in bloßen Schein verwandeln sollten, daß sie vielmehr das einzige Mittel sind, den transscendentalen Schein zu verhüten, wodurch Metaphysik von je her getäuscht und eben dadurch zu den kindischen Bestrebungen verleitet worden, nach Seifenblasen zu haschen, weil man Erscheinungen, die doch bloße Vorstellungen sind, für Sachen an sich selbst nahm; woraus alle jene merkwürdige Auftritte der Antinomie der Vernunft erfolgt sind, davon ich weiter hin Erwähnung thun werde, und die durch jene einzige Bemerkung gehoben wird: daß Erscheinung, so lange als sie in der Erfahrung gebraucht wird, Wahrheit, sobald sie aber über die Grenze derselben hinausgeht und transscendent wird, nichts als lauter Schein hervorbringt.
Da ich also den Sachen, die wir uns durch Sinne vorstellen, ihre Wirklichkeit lasse und nur unsre sinnliche Anschauung von diesen Sachen dahin einschränke, daß sie in gar keinem Stücke, selbst nicht in den reinen Anschauungen von Raum und Zeit etwas mehr als blos Erscheinung jener Sachen, niemals aber die Beschaffenheit derselben an ihnen selbst vorstelle, so ist dies kein der Natur von mir angedichteter durchgängiger Schein; und meine Protestation wider alle Zumuthung eines Idealisms ist so bündig und einleuchtend, daß sie sogar überflüssig scheinen würde, wenn es nicht unbefugte Richter gäbe, die, indem sie für jede Abweichung von ihrer verkehrten, obgleich gemeinen Meinung gerne einen alten Namen haben möchten und niemals über den Geist der philosophischen Benennungen urtheilen, sondern blos am Buchstaben hingen, bereit ständen, ihren eigenen Wahn an die Stelle wohl bestimmter Begriffe zu setzen und diese dadurch zu verdrehen und zu verunstalten. Denn daß ich selbst dieser meiner Theorie den Namen eines transscendentalen Idealisms gegeben habe, kann keinen berechtigen, ihn mit dem empirischen Idealism des Cartes (wiewohl dieser nur eine Aufgabe war, wegen deren Unauflöslichkeit es nach Cartesens Meinung jedermann frei stand, die Existenz der körperlichen Welt zu verneinen, weil sie niemals gnugthuend beantwortet werden könnte) oder mit dem mystischen und schwärmerischen des Berkeley (wowider und andre ähnliche Hirngespinste unsre Kritik vielmehr das eigentliche Gegenmittel enthält) zu verwechseln. Denn dieser von mir sogenannte Idealism betraf nicht die Existenz der Sachen (die Bezweifelung derselben aber macht eigentlich den Idealism in recipirter Bedeutung aus), denn die zu bezweifeln, ist mir niemals in den Sinn gekommen, sondern blos die sinnliche Vorstellung der Sachen, dazu Raum und Zeit zu oberst gehören, und von diesen, mithin überhaupt von allen Erscheinungen habe ich nur gezeigt: daß sie nicht Sachen (sondern bloße Vorstellungsarten), auch nicht den Sachen an sich selbst angehörige Bestimmungen sind. Das Wort transscendental aber, welches bei mir niemals eine Beziehung unserer Erkenntniß auf Dinge, sondern nur aufs Erkenntnißvermögen bedeutet, sollte diese Mißdeutung verhüten. Ehe sie aber dieselbe doch noch fernerhin veranlasse, nehme ich diese Benennung lieber zurück und will ihn den kritischen genannt wissen. Wenn es aber ein in der That verwerflicher Idealism ist, wirkliche Sachen (nicht Erscheinungen) in bloße Vorstellungen zu verwandeln: mit welchem Namen will man denjenigen benennen, der umgekehrt bloße Vorstellungen zu Sachen macht? Ich denke, man könne ihn den träumenden Idealism nennen zum Unterschiede von dem vorigen, der der schwärmende heißen mag, welche beide durch meinen sonst sogenannten transscendentalen, besser kritischen Idealism haben abgehalten werden sollen.
Musean translation
Mouseia’s complete machine-assisted Musean translation, made directly from the complete German of the Prolegomena (AA IV 253–383, all §§1–60 and the Appendix), for fidelity, the steps of Kant’s argument, clarity and structure.
§ 13.
Those who still cannot free themselves from the notion that space and time are actual characteristics attaching to things in themselves may exercise their acumen on the following paradox. If their attempts to solve it prove fruitless, they may, free of prejudice for at least a few moments, suspect that there might after all be grounds for demoting space and time to mere forms of our sensible intuition.
If two things are completely identical in every respect that can be cognized in each taken by itself—in all determinations belonging to magnitude and quality—it must surely follow that one can be substituted for the other in every case and relation without this exchange causing the slightest discernible difference. This is indeed so with plane figures in geometry. But various spherical figures, despite that complete inner agreement, nevertheless show such a difference in their external relation that one cannot be substituted for the other at all. For example, two spherical triangles in opposite hemispheres, sharing an arc of the equator as their common base, can be completely equal in both sides and angles, so that a complete description of either one taken alone contains nothing that is not also contained in the description of the other; and yet one cannot be substituted for the other, namely in the opposite hemisphere. Here, then, there is an inner difference between the two triangles that no understanding can specify as internal, and that reveals itself only through their external relation in space. But I shall offer more familiar cases that can be drawn from everyday life.
What could be more like my hand or my ear, and more equal to it in every respect, than its image in a mirror? Yet I cannot substitute such a hand as is seen in the mirror for its original. For if the original was a right hand, the one in the mirror is a left; and the image of the right ear is a left ear, which can never take the former’s place. Now here there are no inner differences that any understanding could so much as think; yet the differences are internal, as far as the senses teach, since the left hand, despite all the equality and similarity on both sides, cannot be enclosed within the same boundaries as the right—they cannot be congruent. The glove of one hand cannot be used on the other. What, then, is the solution? These objects are not representations of things as they are in themselves and as pure understanding would cognize them. Rather, they are sensible intuitions, that is, appearances whose possibility rests on the relation of certain things, unknown in themselves, to something else, namely our sensibility. Space is the form of this sensibility’s outer intuition, and the inner determination of any particular space is possible only through the determination of its external relation to the whole space of which it is a part—its relation to outer sense. That is, the part is possible only through the whole, which never occurs with things in themselves as objects of mere understanding, but does occur with mere appearances. Hence we cannot make the difference between things that are similar and equal yet incongruent—for example, spiral shells winding in opposite directions—intelligible through any single concept, but only through their relation to the right and left hands, which refers immediately to intuition.
Remark I.
Pure mathematics, and pure geometry in particular, can have objective reality only on the sole condition that it concerns merely objects of the senses. With regard to these objects, however, the principle stands firm: our sensible representation is by no means a representation of things in themselves, but only of the way they appear to us. It follows that the propositions of geometry are not determinations of a mere creature of our inventive imagination, incapable of being reliably related to actual objects. Rather, they necessarily hold of space, and therefore also of everything that may be encountered in space, because space is nothing but the form of all outer appearances, under which alone objects of the senses can be given to us. Sensibility, whose form geometry takes as its foundation, is that on which the possibility of outer appearances rests; these can therefore never contain anything other than what geometry prescribes to them. It would be quite otherwise if the senses had to represent objects as they are in themselves. For then it would by no means follow, from the representation of space with all the various properties the geometer assumes a priori as his foundation, that all this, together with what is inferred from it, must be just so in nature. The geometer’s space would be considered a mere invention, and no objective validity would be credited to it, since there is simply no seeing why things must necessarily agree with the image we form of them by ourselves and in advance. But if this image—or rather this formal intuition—is the essential property of our sensibility, through which alone objects are given to us, and if this sensibility represents not things in themselves but only their appearances, then it is quite easy to understand, and at the same time indisputably proved, that all outer objects of our sensible world must necessarily agree with the propositions of geometry with perfect exactness. For sensibility, through its form of outer intuition—space—with which the geometer concerns himself, first makes these objects themselves possible as mere appearances. It will always remain a remarkable phenomenon in the history of philosophy that there was a time when even mathematicians who were also philosophers began to doubt, not indeed the correctness of their geometrical propositions insofar as these concerned space alone, but the objective validity and application to nature of this concept itself and all its geometrical determinations. They feared that a line in nature might after all consist of physical points, and hence that true space in the object might consist of simple parts, although the space the geometer has in mind cannot possibly consist of them. They failed to recognize that this space in thought makes physical space—that is, the extension of matter itself—possible; that space is not a characteristic of things in themselves at all, but only a form of our sensible power of representation; that all objects in space are mere appearances, that is, not things in themselves but representations of our sensible intuition; and that, since space as the geometer thinks it is precisely the form of sensible intuition that we find in ourselves a priori, containing the ground of the possibility of all outer appearances as regards their form, these appearances must necessarily and with the greatest precision agree with the geometer’s propositions. He draws these not from an invented concept but from the subjective foundation of all outer appearances, namely sensibility itself. In this way, and no other, the geometer can be secured against all the quibbles of a shallow metaphysics concerning the undoubted objective reality of his propositions, however strange they must appear to that metaphysics, since it does not return to the sources of its concepts.
Remark II.
Everything that is to be given to us as an object must be given to us in intuition. But all our intuition takes place only through the senses; the understanding intuits nothing, but only reflects. Now, according to what has just been proved, the senses never and in no respect allow us to cognize things in themselves, but only their appearances; and these are mere representations of sensibility. “Thus all bodies, together with the space in which they are situated, must be held to be nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere else but merely in our thoughts.” Is this not manifest idealism?
Idealism consists in the assertion that there are none but thinking beings; the other things we believe we perceive in intuition are only representations in thinking beings, to which in fact no object outside these beings corresponds. I, by contrast, say: things are given to us as objects of our senses situated outside us, but of what they may be in themselves we know nothing; we know only their appearances, that is, the representations they produce in us by affecting our senses. Accordingly, I certainly admit that there are bodies outside us: that is, things which, though entirely unknown to us as regards what they may be in themselves, we know through the representations that their influence on our sensibility supplies us, and to which we give the name of a body. This word therefore signifies merely the appearance of that object, unknown to us but nonetheless actual. Can this really be called idealism? It is precisely the opposite.
That we can say of a multitude of the predicates of outer things, without detriment to their actual existence, that these predicates belong not to the things in themselves but only to their appearances, and have no existence of their own outside our representation, is something that was generally accepted and conceded long before Locke’s time, but especially afterward. Heat, color, taste, and so forth belong here. But for important reasons I also count among mere appearances, in addition to these, the remaining qualities of bodies that are called primary: extension, place, and space in general, with everything attaching to it—impenetrability or materiality, shape, and so forth. Not the slightest ground for denying the legitimacy of this can be offered. Someone who regards colors not as properties attaching to the object in itself, but only as modifications attaching to the sense of sight, cannot be called an idealist on that account; no more can my doctrine be called idealistic merely because I find that still more, indeed all properties constituting the intuition of a body, belong only to its appearance. For the existence of the thing that appears is not thereby abolished, as it is in genuine idealism; it is only shown that through the senses we cannot cognize it at all as it is in itself.
I should like to know what my assertions would have to be like, then, in order not to contain an idealism. No doubt I would have to say that the representation of space is not merely in perfect accord with the relation our sensibility bears to objects—for I have said this—but is even completely similar to the object. This is an assertion to which I can attach no sense, any more than to the assertion that the sensation of red bears a similarity to the property of cinnabar that arouses this sensation in me.
Remark III.
We can now easily dismiss an objection that is easy to foresee but groundless: “that through the ideality of space and time the entire sensible world would be transformed into sheer illusion.” First, all philosophical insight into the nature of sensible cognition had been spoiled by making sensibility consist merely in a confused way of representing things, according to which we still cognized things as they are, only without the capacity to bring everything in this representation of ours to clear consciousness. We, by contrast, have proved that sensibility consists not in this logical distinction of clarity or obscurity, but in the genetic distinction concerning the origin of cognition itself: sensible cognition does not represent things as they are at all, but only the way they affect our senses; thus through it only appearances, not the things themselves, are given to the understanding for reflection. After this necessary correction, an objection arises from an inexcusable and almost deliberate misinterpretation, as though my doctrine transformed all things in the sensible world into sheer illusion.
When an appearance is given to us, we remain entirely free as to how we wish to judge the thing on its basis. The former, namely appearance, rested on the senses, but this judgment rests on the understanding; the only question is whether there is truth in the determination of the object or not. The difference between truth and dream, however, is not settled by the character of the representations referred to objects, since these are the same in both cases. It is settled by their connection according to the rules determining the coherence of representations in the concept of an object, and by the extent to which they can or cannot coexist in one experience. Here it is not the fault of appearances if our cognition takes illusion for truth: that is, if the intuition through which an object is given to us is taken for a concept of the object, or even of its existence, which the understanding alone can think. The senses represent the planets’ course to us now as forward, now as backward, and in this there is neither falsehood nor truth. As long as we recognize that for the present this is only appearance, we make no judgment at all about the objective character of their motion. But since a false judgment can easily arise if the understanding does not take proper care to prevent this subjective way of representing from being taken as objective, we say that they seem to move backward. Yet the illusion is not charged to the senses, but to the understanding, to which alone it belongs to make an objective judgment from the appearance.
In this way, even if we did not reflect at all on the origin of our representations, but connected our sensible intuitions, whatever they might contain, in space and time according to the rules governing the coherence of all cognition in one experience, either deceptive illusion or truth could arise, depending on whether we were careless or cautious. This concerns solely the use of sensible representations in the understanding, not their origin. Likewise, if I regard all representations of the senses, together with their form, namely space and time, as nothing but appearances, and the latter as a mere form of sensibility not encountered in objects outside it, and if I use these representations only in relation to possible experience, then my regarding them as mere appearances contains not the slightest inducement to error or illusion. For despite this they can cohere correctly in experience according to the rules of truth. In this way all geometrical propositions about space hold equally of all objects of the senses, hence of all possible experience, whether I regard space as a mere form of sensibility or as something attaching to things themselves. Yet only in the former case can I understand how it is possible to know those propositions a priori of all objects of outer intuition. Otherwise, as regards all possible experience, everything remains just as though I had never undertaken this departure from common opinion.
But if I venture with my concepts of space and time beyond all possible experience, an important error can arise that rests on an illusion. Such a venture is unavoidable if I declare them to be characteristics attaching to things in themselves—for what would then prevent me from holding that they apply to those very things, even if my senses were differently constituted, whether or not they were suited to those things? The error arises when I declare universally valid what was a condition of the intuition of things attaching merely to me as subject, and certainly valid for all objects of the senses, hence for all possible experience, because I refer it to things in themselves rather than restrict it to conditions of experience.
Thus, far from making the whole sensible world into mere illusion, my doctrine of the ideality of space and time is rather the only means of securing the application to actual objects of one of the most important kinds of cognition of all—namely, what mathematics sets forth a priori—and preventing it from being taken for mere illusion. Without this observation it would be wholly impossible to determine whether the intuitions of space and time, which we borrow from no experience and which nevertheless lie a priori in our representation, were merely self-made fantasies to which no object corresponded, at least not adequately, and whether geometry itself was therefore a mere illusion. By contrast, we have been able to demonstrate its indisputable validity for all objects of the sensible world precisely because these are mere appearances.
Second, far from transforming the truth of experience into mere illusion by making representations of the senses into appearances, these principles of mine are rather the only means of preventing the transcendental illusion by which metaphysics has always been deceived and thereby led into the childish endeavor to catch soap bubbles, because appearances, which are mere representations, were taken for things in themselves. From this arose all those remarkable episodes of the antinomy of reason that I shall mention later. This antinomy is resolved by the single observation that appearance, so long as it is used in experience, produces truth; but as soon as it passes beyond experience’s boundary and becomes transcendent, it produces nothing but sheer illusion.
Since, then, I leave their actuality to the things we represent to ourselves through the senses, and restrict only our sensible intuition of these things by saying that in no respect—not even in the pure intuitions of space and time—does it represent anything more than mere appearance of those things, never their character as they are in themselves, this is no pervasive illusion I have fictitiously ascribed to nature. My protest against every imputation of idealism is so conclusive and clear that it would even seem superfluous if there were not unauthorized judges ready to substitute their own delusion for well-determined concepts and thereby twist and disfigure them: judges who would like an old name for every departure from their mistaken though common opinion, and who never judge the spirit of philosophical terms but cling merely to the letter. For my having given this theory of mine the name of transcendental idealism cannot entitle anyone to confuse it with the empirical idealism of Descartes—although his was only a problem, whose insolubility, in Descartes’s opinion, left everyone free to deny the existence of the corporeal world, since it could never be answered satisfactorily—or with the mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley, against which, and other similar fantasies, our Critique in fact contains the proper antidote. For this idealism, as I called it, concerned not the existence of things—doubting this is what really constitutes idealism in the received meaning, and it never occurred to me to doubt it—but only the sensible representation of things, to which space and time belong first and foremost. Of these, and thus of all appearances in general, I have shown only that they are not things, but mere ways of representing, nor determinations belonging to things in themselves. The word “transcendental,” however, which for me never signifies a relation of our cognition to things, but only to the faculty of cognition, was meant to prevent this misinterpretation. Rather than let it occasion the same misunderstanding in the future, I prefer to withdraw this designation and wish my idealism to be called critical. But if it is indeed a reprehensible idealism to transform actual things—not appearances—into mere representations, what name shall we give the idealism that, conversely, makes mere representations into things? I think it can be called dreaming idealism, as distinct from the former, which may be called visionary; both, through my otherwise should have been kept from so-called transcendental, or better, critical idealism.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same complete German text.
§ 13.
Those who still cannot give up the idea that space and time are real characteristics belonging to things in themselves can exercise their ingenuity on the following paradox. If they try to solve it without success, they may at least be free from prejudice for a few moments and suspect that perhaps there is some basis for reducing space and time to mere forms of our sensible intuition.
If two things are completely alike in every respect that can ever be known in each taken by itself—in all determinations concerning magnitude and quality—then it must follow that one can replace the other in every case and relation, without this exchange producing the slightest discernible difference. This is in fact true of plane figures in geometry. But certain spherical figures, despite that complete internal agreement, show such a difference in their external relation that one cannot replace the other at all. For example, two spherical triangles in opposite hemispheres, with an arc of the equator as their common base, can be completely equal in both sides and angles. When either one is described on its own and completely, nothing is found in it that is not also in the description of the other. Yet one cannot be put in the other's place, namely in the opposite hemisphere. Here, then, is an internal difference between the two triangles that no understanding can identify as internal, and that reveals itself only through their external relation in space. But I will give more familiar cases that can be taken from everyday life.
What could be more like my hand or my ear, and more equal to it in every respect, than its image in a mirror? Yet I cannot put a hand such as the one seen in the mirror in place of its original. If the original was a right hand, the one in the mirror is a left hand. And the image of the right ear is a left ear, which can never take the first one's place. Now there are no internal differences here that any understanding could even think. Yet the differences are internal as far as the senses teach us. Despite all the equality and similarity on both sides, the left hand cannot be enclosed within the same boundaries as the right: they cannot coincide. The glove for one hand cannot be used on the other. What, then, is the solution? These objects are not representations of things as they are in themselves and as pure understanding would know them. They are sensible intuitions, that is, appearances. Their possibility rests on the relation of certain things, unknown in themselves, to something else: our sensibility. Space is the form of this sensibility's outer intuition. The internal determination of any particular space is possible only by determining its external relation to the whole space of which it is a part—its relation to outer sense. That is, the part is possible only through the whole. This never occurs with things in themselves as objects of mere understanding, but it does occur with mere appearances. So we cannot make the difference between similar and equal but incongruent things—for example, snail shells spiraling in opposite directions—understandable through any single concept. We can do so only through their relation to the right and left hand, which refers directly to intuition.
Remark I.
Pure mathematics, and in particular pure geometry, can have objective reality only on the condition that it concerns solely objects of the senses. For these objects, however, the following principle is established: our sensible representation is in no way a representation of things in themselves, but only of how they appear to us. It follows that the propositions of geometry are not determinations of something merely created by our inventive imagination, so that they could not be reliably related to actual objects. Rather, they necessarily hold for space, and therefore also for everything that may be found in space. For space is nothing but the form of all outer appearances, under which alone objects of the senses can be given to us. Sensibility, whose form geometry takes as its basis, is what makes outer appearances possible. So these appearances can never contain anything other than what geometry prescribes for them. It would be quite different if the senses had to represent objects as they are in themselves. In that case, the representation of space that the geometer takes as a basis a priori, with all sorts of its properties, would not at all imply that all this, together with what is inferred from it, must hold in just the same way in nature. The geometer's space would be taken for a mere invention, with no claim to objective validity. For we do not see at all why things would necessarily have to agree with the image we form of them on our own and in advance. But suppose this image—or rather, this formal intuition—is the essential property of our sensibility, through which alone objects are given to us. And suppose this sensibility represents not things in themselves but only their appearances. It is then very easy to understand, and at the same time proved beyond dispute, that all outer objects of our sensible world must necessarily agree with the propositions of geometry in every detail. For sensibility, through its form of outer intuition—space, which the geometer studies—first makes those objects themselves possible as mere appearances. It will always remain a noteworthy phenomenon in the history of philosophy that there was a time when even mathematicians who were also philosophers began to doubt—not the correctness of their geometrical propositions insofar as these concerned space alone, but the objective validity and application to nature of this concept itself and all its geometrical determinations. They feared that a line in nature might after all consist of physical points, and therefore that true space in the object might consist of simple parts, even though the space the geometer has in mind cannot possibly consist of them. They did not recognize that this space in thought makes physical space, that is, the extension of matter itself, possible; that it is not at all a characteristic of things in themselves, but only a form of our sensible power of representation; and that all objects in space are mere appearances, that is, not things in themselves but representations of our sensible intuition. Space as the geometer thinks it is exactly the form of sensible intuition that we find in ourselves a priori, and that contains the ground of the possibility of all outer appearances as to their form. These appearances must therefore agree necessarily and with the greatest precision with the geometer's propositions. He draws them not from an invented concept, but from the subjective foundation of all outer appearances: sensibility itself. In this way, and no other, the geometer can be secured against all the quibbles of a shallow metaphysics regarding the undoubted objective reality of his propositions—however strange they must seem to that metaphysics, since it does not go back to the sources of its concepts.
Remark II.
Everything that is to be given to us as an object must be given in intuition. But all our intuition occurs only through the senses. The understanding intuits nothing; it only reflects. As we have just proved, the senses never let us know things in themselves in any respect at all, but only their appearances, which are mere representations of sensibility. “So all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must also be regarded as nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere except in our thoughts.” Is this not obvious idealism?
Idealism consists in claiming that none but thinking beings exist. The other things we believe we perceive in intuition are supposedly only representations in thinking beings, with no object outside those beings actually corresponding to them. I say, by contrast: things are given to us as objects of our senses located outside us. We know nothing about what they may be in themselves, but know only their appearances: the representations they produce in us by affecting our senses. So I certainly admit that there are bodies outside us. That is, there are things that are completely unknown to us as to what they may be in themselves, but that we know through the representations their influence on our sensibility provides us, and to which we give the name of a body. This word therefore means only the appearance of that object, which is unknown to us but nonetheless actual. Can this really be called idealism? It is precisely the opposite.
We can say of many predicates of external things that they belong not to these things in themselves, but only to their appearances, and have no existence of their own outside our representation, without harming the actual existence of external things. This was generally accepted and granted long before Locke's time, but especially afterward. Warmth, color, taste, and so on belong here. For important reasons, I count the remaining qualities of bodies, called primary qualities, as mere appearances too: extension, place, and space in general, with everything attached to it—impenetrability or materiality, shape, and so on. Not the slightest ground can be given for declaring this inadmissible. Someone who will not accept colors as properties belonging to the object in itself, but regards them only as modifications belonging to the sense of sight, cannot be called an idealist on that account. Just as little can my doctrine be called idealist merely because I find that still more properties, indeed all the properties that make up the intuition of a body, belong only to its appearance. For this does not cancel the existence of the thing that appears, as actual idealism does. It only shows that through the senses we cannot know it at all as it is in itself.
I would like to know what my claims would have to be like to avoid containing idealism. No doubt I would have to say not merely that the representation of space conforms perfectly to the relation our sensibility has to objects—for I have said that—but that it is even completely similar to the object. I can attach no meaning to that claim, any more than to the claim that the sensation of red resembles the property of cinnabar that arouses this sensation in me.
Remark III.
We can now easily dismiss an objection that is easy to foresee but groundless: “that the ideality of space and time would turn the entire sensible world into mere illusion.” All philosophical insight into the nature of sensible cognition had first been spoiled by treating sensibility as merely a confused way of representing things. On that view, we would still know things as they are, only without the ability to bring everything in our representation to clear awareness. We have proved, by contrast, that sensibility does not consist in this logical difference between clarity and obscurity. It consists in a genetic difference, one concerning the origin of cognition itself. Sensible cognition does not represent things as they are at all, but only how they affect our senses. Through it, therefore, only appearances, not the things themselves, are given to the understanding for reflection. After this necessary correction, an objection arises from an inexcusable and almost deliberate misinterpretation: that my doctrine turns all things in the sensible world into mere illusion.
When an appearance is given to us, we are still entirely free in how we choose to judge the thing from it. The appearance rested on the senses, but this judgment rests on the understanding. The only question is whether the determination of the object contains truth or not. The difference between truth and dream is not settled by the character of the representations referred to objects, for these are alike in both cases. It is settled by their connection according to the rules that determine how representations are joined in the concept of an object, and by the extent to which they can or cannot stand together in one experience. It is not the appearances' fault at all if our cognition takes illusion for truth: that is, if the intuition through which an object is given to us is taken for a concept of the object, or even of its existence, which only the understanding can think. The senses represent the planets' course to us as sometimes forward and sometimes backward. In this there is neither falsity nor truth. As long as we acknowledge that this is, for now, only appearance, we make no judgment at all about the objective character of their motion. But a false judgment can easily arise if the understanding does not take care to prevent this subjective way of representing from being taken as objective. So we say: the planets seem to go backward. Yet the illusion is to be charged not to the senses, but to the understanding, which alone is responsible for making an objective judgment from the appearance.
In this way, even if we did not reflect at all on the origin of our representations, but connected our sensible intuitions in space and time, whatever they might contain, according to the rules for joining all cognition in one experience, deceptive illusion or truth could arise, depending on whether we were careless or careful. This concerns only the understanding's use of sensible representations, not their origin. Likewise, suppose I take all representations of the senses, together with their form, space and time, as nothing but appearances, and take space and time as a mere form of sensibility that is not found at all in objects apart from sensibility. If I use those representations only in relation to possible experience, then taking them as mere appearances contains not the slightest temptation to error or any illusion. Despite this, they can still be correctly connected in experience according to the rules of truth. Thus all the propositions of geometry about space hold equally for all objects of the senses, and therefore for all possible experience, whether I regard space as a mere form of sensibility or as something belonging to things themselves. It is only in the first case, however, that I can understand how it is possible to know those propositions a priori of all objects of outer intuition. Otherwise, as regards all possible experience, everything stays just as it would if I had never departed from the common opinion.
But suppose I dare to go beyond all possible experience with my concepts of space and time. This is unavoidable if I present them as characteristics belonging to things in themselves. For what would then prevent me from letting them hold for those very same things even if my senses were differently arranged, whether or not my senses fitted those things? Then a serious error can arise, based on an illusion. What was a condition of intuiting things that belonged only to me as subject, and certainly held for all objects of the senses and thus for all possible experience, I presented as universally valid. I did so because I related it to things in themselves instead of restricting it to the conditions of experience.
So far from making the whole sensible world into mere illusion, my doctrine of the ideality of space and time is instead the only means of securing the application to actual objects of one of the most important bodies of cognition: the cognition that mathematics presents a priori. It also prevents this cognition from being taken as mere illusion. Without this observation, it would be entirely impossible to determine whether the intuitions of space and time—which we borrow from no experience, yet which lie a priori in our representation—might be mere fantasies of our own making. No object might correspond to them, or at least not correspond adequately, and geometry itself might therefore be a mere illusion. By contrast, we have been able to demonstrate its indisputable validity for all objects of the sensible world precisely because these are mere appearances.
Second, these principles of mine are far from replacing the truth of experience with mere illusion because they make representations of the senses into appearances. Instead, they are the only means of preventing the transcendental illusion that has always deceived metaphysics and thereby led it into the childish pursuit of grasping at soap bubbles. This happened because appearances, which are mere representations, were taken for things in themselves. From this came all those remarkable episodes of the antinomy of reason that I will mention later. That antinomy is resolved by this single observation: as long as appearance is used within experience, it produces truth; but as soon as it goes beyond the limit of experience and becomes transcendent, it produces nothing but illusion.
I therefore leave their actuality to the things that we represent through the senses. I only restrict our sensible intuition of these things: in no respect, not even in the pure intuitions of space and time, does it represent anything more than the mere appearance of those things, never their character in themselves. So this is no universal illusion that I have invented and attributed to nature. My protest against every accusation of idealism is so conclusive and clear that it would even seem unnecessary, were it not for unauthorized judges ready to replace well-defined concepts with their own delusions, thereby distorting and disfiguring them. They like to have an old name for every departure from their mistaken, though common, opinion. They never judge the spirit of philosophical terms, but cling only to their letter. The fact that I myself have given this theory of mine the name transcendental idealism gives no one the right to confuse it with the empirical idealism of Descartes. That was, however, only a problem; because he considered it insoluble, Descartes held that everyone was free to deny the existence of the bodily world, since the problem could never be adequately answered. Nor may my theory be confused with the mystical and visionary idealism of Berkeley. Against that and similar fantasies, our Critique in fact contains the proper antidote. What I called idealism did not concern the existence of things—doubting their existence is what actually constitutes idealism in the accepted sense. It never occurred to me to doubt that existence. It concerned only the sensible representation of things, to which space and time belong first and foremost. Of these, and therefore of all appearances in general, I have shown only that they are not things, but mere ways of representing, and are not determinations belonging to things in themselves either. The word transcendental, which in my usage never means a relation of our cognition to things, but only to the faculty of cognition, was meant to prevent this misinterpretation. But rather than let the term continue to cause it, I prefer to withdraw that name and call this idealism critical. If it is indeed a reprehensible idealism to turn actual things—not appearances—into mere representations, what name should we give to the idealism that, conversely, makes mere representations into things? I think we can call it dreaming idealism, to distinguish it from the former, which may be called visionary idealism, both of which, through my otherwise were supposed to have been kept from so-called transcendental idealism, better called critical idealism.
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