Section 57
Original German
§ 57.
Nach den allerklärsten Beweisen, die wir oben gegeben haben, würde es Ungereimtheit sein, wenn wir von irgend einem Gegenstande mehr zu erkennen hofften, als zur möglichen Erfahrung desselben gehört, oder auch von irgend einem Dinge, wovon wir annehmen, es sei nicht ein Gegenstand möglicher Erfahrung, nur auf das mindeste Erkenntniß Anspruch machten, es nach seiner Beschaffenheit, wie es an sich selbst ist, zu bestimmen; denn wodurch wollen wir diese Bestimmung verrichten, da Zeit, Raum und alle Verstandesbegriffe, vielmehr aber noch die durch empirische Anschauung oder Wahrnehmung in der Sinnenwelt gezogene Begriffe keinen andern Gebrauch haben, noch haben können, als blos Erfahrung möglich zu machen, und lassen wir selbst von den reinen Verstandesbegriffen diese Bedingung weg, sie alsdann ganz und gar kein Object bestimmen und überall keine Bedeutung haben.
Es würde aber andererseits eine noch größere Ungereimtheit sein, wenn wir gar keine Dinge an sich selbst einräumen, oder unsere Erfahrung für die einzig mögliche Erkenntnißart der Dinge, mithin unsre Anschauung in Raum und Zeit für die allein mögliche Anschauung, unsern discursiven Verstand aber für das Urbild von jedem möglichen Verstande ausgeben wollten, mithin Principien der Möglichkeit der Erfahrung für allgemeine Bedingungen der Dinge an sich selbst wollten gehalten wissen.
Unsere Principien, welche den Gebrauch der Vernunft blos auf mögliche Erfahrung einschränken, könnten demnach selbst transscendent werden und die Schranken unsrer Vernunft für Schranken der Möglichkeit der Dinge selbst ausgeben, wie davon Humes Dialogen zum Beispiel dienen können, wenn nicht eine sorgfältige Kritik die Grenzen unserer Vernunft auch in Ansehung ihres empirischen Gebrauchs bewachte und ihren Anmaßungen ihr Ziel setzte. Der Scepticism ist uranfänglich aus der Metaphysik und ihrer polizeilosen Dialektik entsprungen. Anfangs mochte er wohl blos zu Gunsten des Erfahrungsgebrauchs der Vernunft alles, was diesen übersteigt, für nichtig und betrüglich ausgeben; nach und nach aber, da man inne ward, daß es doch eben dieselbe Grundsätze a priori sind, deren man sich bei der Erfahrung bedient, die unvermerkt und, wie es schien, mit eben demselben Rechte noch weiter führten, als Erfahrung reicht, so fing man an, selbst in Erfahrungsgrundsätze einen Zweifel zu setzen. Hiemit hat es nun wohl keine Noth; denn der gesunde Verstand wird hierin wohl jederzeit seine Rechte behaupten; allein es entsprang doch eine besondere Verwirrung in der Wissenschaft, die nicht bestimmen kann, wie weit und warum nur bis dahin und nicht weiter der Vernunft zu trauen sei; dieser Verwirrung aber kann nur durch förmliche und aus Grundsätzen gezogene Grenzbestimmung unseres Vernunftgebrauchs abgeholfen und allem Rückfall auf künftige Zeit vorgebeugt werden.
Es ist wahr: wir können über alle mögliche Erfahrung hinaus von dem, was Dinge an sich selbst sein mögen, keinen bestimmten Begriff geben. Wir sind aber dennoch nicht frei vor der Nachfrage nach diesen, uns gänzlich derselben zu enthalten; denn Erfahrung thut der Vernunft niemals völlig Gnüge; sie weiset uns in Beantwortung der Fragen immer weiter zurück und läßt uns in Ansehung des völligen Aufschlusses derselben unbefriedigt, wie jedermann dieses aus der Dialektik der reinen Vernunft, die eben darum ihren guten subjectiven Grund hat, hinreichend ersehen kann. Wer kann es wohl ertragen, daß wir von der Natur unserer Seele bis zum klaren Bewußtsein des Subjects und zugleich der Überzeugung gelangen, daß seine Erscheinungen nicht materialistisch können erklärt werden, ohne zu fragen, was denn die Seele eigentlich sei, und wenn kein Erfahrungsbegriff hiezu zureicht, allenfalls einen Vernunftbegriff (eines einfachen immateriellen Wesens) blos zu diesem Behuf anzunehmen, ob wir gleich seine objective Realität gar nicht darthun können? Wer kann sich bei der bloßen Erfahrungserkenntniß in allen kosmologischen Fragen von der Weltdauer und Größe, der Freiheit oder Naturnothwendigkeit befriedigen, da, wir mögen es anfangen, wie wir wollen, eine jede nach Erfahrungsgrundsätzen gegebene Antwort immer eine neue Frage gebiert, die eben so wohl beantwortet sein will und dadurch die Unzulänglichkeit aller physischen Erklärungsarten zur Befriedigung der Vernunft deutlich darthut? Endlich, wer sieht nicht bei der durchgängigen Zufälligkeit und Abhängigkeit alles dessen, was er nur nach Erfahrungsprincipien denken und annehmen mag, die Unmöglichkeit, bei diesen stehen zu bleiben, und fühlt sich nicht nothgedrungen, unerachtet alles Verbots, sich nicht in transscendente Ideen zu verlieren, dennoch über alle Begriffe, die er durch Erfahrung rechtfertigen kann, noch in dem Begriffe eines Wesens Ruhe und Befriedigung zu suchen, davon die Idee zwar an sich selbst der Möglichkeit nach nicht eingesehen, obgleich auch nicht widerlegt werden kann, weil sie ein bloßes Verstandeswesen betrifft, ohne die aber die Vernunft auf immer unbefriedigt bleiben müßte.
Grenzen (bei ausgedehnten Wesen) setzen immer einen Raum voraus, der außerhalb einem gewissen bestimmten Platze angetroffen wird und ihn einschließt; Schranken bedürfen dergleichen nicht, sondern sind bloße Verneinungen, die eine Größe afficiren, so fern sie nicht absolute Vollständigkeit hat. Unsre Vernunft aber sieht gleichsam um sich einen Raum für die Erkenntniß der Dinge an sich selbst, ob sie gleich von ihnen niemals bestimmte Begriffe haben kann und nur auf Erscheinungen eingeschränkt ist.
So lange die Erkenntniß der Vernunft gleichartig ist, lassen sich von ihr keine bestimmte Grenzen denken. In der Mathematik und Naturwissenschaft erkennt die menschliche Vernunft zwar Schranken, aber keine Grenzen, d. i. zwar daß etwas außer ihr liege, wohin sie niemals gelangen kann, aber nicht daß sie selbst in ihrem innern Fortgange irgendwo vollendet sein werde. Die Erweiterung der Einsichten in der Mathematik und die Möglichkeit immer neuer Erfindungen geht ins Unendliche; eben so die Entdeckung neuer Natureigenschaften, neuer Kräfte und Gesetze durch fortgesetzte Erfahrung und Vereinigung derselben durch die Vernunft. Aber Schranken sind hier gleichwohl nicht zu verkennen, denn Mathematik geht nur auf Erscheinungen, und was nicht ein Gegenstand der sinnlichen Anschauung sein kann, als die Begriffe der Metaphysik und Moral, das liegt ganz außerhalb ihrer Sphäre, und dahin kann sie niemals führen; sie bedarf aber derselben auch gar nicht. Es ist also kein continuirlicher Fortgang und Annäherung zu diesen Wissenschaften und gleichsam ein Punkt oder Linie der Berührung. Naturwissenschaft wird uns niemals das Innere der Dinge, d. i. dasjenige, was nicht Erscheinung ist, aber doch zum obersten Erklärungsgrunde der Erscheinungen dienen kann, entdecken; aber sie braucht dieses auch nicht zu ihren physischen Erklärungen; ja wenn ihr auch dergleichen anderweitig angeboten würde (z. B. Einfluß immaterieller Wesen), so soll sie es doch ausschlagen und gar nicht in den Fortgang ihrer Erklärungen bringen, sondern diese jederzeit nur auf das gründen, was als Gegenstand der Sinne zu Erfahrung gehören und mit unsern wirklichen Wahrnehmungen nach Erfahrungsgesetzen in Zusammenhang gebracht werden kann.
Allein Metaphysik führt uns in den dialektischen Versuchen der reinen Vernunft (die nicht willkürlich oder muthwilliger Weise angefangen werden, sondern dazu die Natur der Vernunft selbst treibt) auf Grenzen; und die transscendentale Ideen, eben dadurch daß man ihrer nicht Umgang haben kann, daß sie sich gleichwohl niemals wollen realisiren lassen, dienen dazu, nicht allein uns wirklich die Grenzen des reinen Vernunftgebrauchs zu zeigen, sondern auch die Art, solche zu bestimmen; und das ist auch der Zweck und Nutzen dieser Naturanlage unserer Vernunft, welche Metaphysik als ihr Lieblingskind ausgeboren hat, dessen Erzeugung so wie jede andere in der Welt nicht dem ungefähren Zufalle, sondern einem ursprünglichen Keime zuzuschreiben ist, welcher zu großen Zwecken weislich organisirt ist. Denn Metaphysik ist vielleicht mehr, wie irgend eine andere Wissenschaft durch die Natur selbst ihren Grundzügen nach in uns gelegt und kann gar nicht als das Product einer beliebigen Wahl, oder als zufällige Erweiterung beim Fortgange der Erfahrungen (von denen sie sich gänzlich abtrennt) angesehen werden.
Die Vernunft, durch alle ihre Begriffe und Gesetze des Verstandes, die ihr zum empirischen Gebrauche, mithin innerhalb der Sinnenwelt hinreichend sind, findet doch von sich dabei keine Befriedigung; denn durch ins Unendliche immer wiederkommende Fragen wird ihr alle Hoffnung zur vollendeten Auflösung derselben benommen. Die transscendentale Ideen, welche diese Vollendung zur Absicht haben, sind solche Probleme der Vernunft. Nun sieht sie klärlich, daß die Sinnenwelt diese Vollendung nicht enthalten könne, mithin eben so wenig auch alle jene Begriffe, die lediglich zum Verständnisse derselben dienen: Raum und Zeit und alles, was wir unter dem Namen der reinen Verstandesbegriffe angeführt haben. Die Sinnenwelt ist nichts als eine Kette nach allgemeinen Gesetzen verknüpfter Erscheinungen, sie hat also kein Bestehen für sich, sie ist eigentlich nicht das Ding an sich selbst und bezieht sich also nothwendig auf das, was den Grund dieser Erscheinung enthält, auf Wesen, die nicht blos als Erscheinung, sondern als Dinge an sich selbst erkannt werden können. In der Erkenntniß derselben kann Vernunft allein hoffen, ihr Verlangen nach Vollständigkeit im Fortgange vom Bedingten zu dessen Bedingungen einmal befriedigt zu sehen.
Oben (§ 33, 34) haben wir Schranken der Vernunft in Ansehung aller Erkenntniß bloßer Gedankenwesen angezeigt; jetzt, da uns die transscendentale Ideen dennoch den Fortgang bis zu ihnen nothwendig machen und nur also gleichsam bis zur Berührung des vollen Raumes (der Erfahrung) mit dem leeren (wovon wir nichts wissen können, den Noumenis) geführt haben, können wir auch die Grenzen der reinen Vernunft bestimmen; denn in allen Grenzen ist auch etwas Positives (z. B. Fläche ist die Grenze des körperlichen Raumes, indessen doch selbst ein Raum, Linie ein Raum, der die Grenze der Fläche ist, Punkt die Grenze der Linie, aber doch noch immer ein Ort im Raume), dahingegen Schranken bloße Negationen enthalten. Die im angeführten §ph angezeigte Schranken sind noch nicht genug, nachdem wir gefunden haben, daß noch über dieselbe etwas (ob wir es gleich, was es an sich selbst sei, niemals erkennen werden) hinausliege. Denn nun frägt sich: wie verhält sich unsere Vernunft bei dieser Verknüpfung dessen, was wir kennen, mit dem, was wir nicht kennen und auch niemals kennen werden? Hier ist eine wirkliche Verknüpfung des Bekannten mit einem völlig Unbekannten (was es auch jederzeit bleiben wird), und wenn dabei das Unbekannte auch nicht im Mindesten bekannter werden sollte — wie denn das in der That auch nicht zu hoffen ist —, so muß doch der Begriff von dieser Verknüpfung bestimmt und zur Deutlichkeit gebracht werden können.
Wir sollen uns denn also ein immaterielles Wesen, eine Verstandeswelt und ein höchstes aller Wesen (lauter Noumena) denken, weil die Vernunft nur in diesen als Dingen an sich selbst Vollendung und Befriedigung antrifft, die sie in der Ableitung der Erscheinungen aus ihren gleichartigen Gründen niemals hoffen kann, und weil diese sich wirklich auf etwas von ihnen Unterschiedenes (mithin gänzlich Ungleichartiges) beziehen, indem Erscheinungen doch jederzeit eine Sache an sich selbst voraussetzen und also darauf Anzeige thun, man mag sie nun näher erkennen, oder nicht.
Da wir nun aber diese Verstandeswesen nach dem, was sie an sich selbst sein mögen, d. i. bestimmt, niemals erkennen können, gleichwohl aber solche im Verhältniß auf die Sinnenwelt dennoch annehmen und durch die Vernunft damit verknüpfen müssen: so werden wir doch wenigstens diese Verknüpfung vermittelst solcher Begriffe denken können, die ihr Verhältniß zur Sinnenwelt ausdrücken. Denn denken wir das Verstandeswesen durch nichts als reine Verstandesbegriffe, so denken wir uns dadurch wirklich nichts Bestimmtes, mithin ist unser Begriff ohne Bedeutung; denken wir es uns durch Eigenschaften, die von der Sinnenwelt entlehnt sind, so ist es nicht mehr Verstandeswesen, es wird als eines von den Phänomenen gedacht und gehört zur Sinnenwelt. Wir wollen ein Beispiel vom Begriffe des höchsten Wesens hernehmen.
Der deistische Begriff ist ein ganz reiner Vernunftbegriff, welcher aber nur ein Ding, das alle Realität enthält, vorstellt, ohne deren eine einzige bestimmen zu können, weil dazu das Beispiel aus der Sinnenwelt entlehnt werden müßte, in welchem Falle ich es immer nur mit einem Gegenstande der Sinne, nicht aber mit etwas ganz Ungleichartigem, was gar nicht ein Gegenstand der Sinne sein kann, zu thun haben würde. Denn ich würde ihm z. B. Verstand beilegen; ich habe aber gar keinen Begriff von einem Verstande als dem, der so ist wie der meinige, nämlich ein solcher, dem durch Sinne Anschauungen müssen gegeben werden, und der sich damit beschäftigt, sie unter Regeln der Einheit des Bewußtseins zu bringen. Aber alsdann würden die Elemente meines Begriffs immer in der Erscheinung liegen; ich wurde aber eben durch die Unzulänglichkeit der Erscheinungen genöthigt, über dieselbe hinaus zum Begriffe eines Wesens zu gehen, was gar nicht von Erscheinungen abhängig, oder damit als Bedingungen seiner Bestimmung verflochten ist. Sondere ich aber den Verstand von der Sinnlichkeit ab, um einen reinen Verstand zu haben: so bleibt nichts als die bloße Form des Denkens ohne Anschauung übrig, wodurch allein ich nichts Bestimmtes, also keinen Gegenstand erkennen kann. Ich müßte mir zu dem Ende einen andern Verstand denken, der die Gegenstände anschauete, wovon ich aber nicht den mindesten Begriff habe, weil der menschliche discursiv ist und nur durch allgemeine Begriffe erkennen kann. Eben das widerfährt mir auch, wenn ich dem höchsten Wesen einen Willen beilege: denn ich habe diesen Begriff nur, indem ich ihn aus meiner innern Erfahrung ziehe, dabei aber meiner Abhängigkeit der Zufriedenheit von Gegenständen, deren Existenz wir bedürfen, und also Sinnlichkeit zum Grunde liegt, welches dem reinen Begriffe des höchsten Wesens gänzlich widerspricht.
Die Einwürfe des Hume wider den Deismus sind schwach und treffen niemals etwas mehr als die Beweisthümer, niemals aber den Satz der deistischen Behauptung selbst. Aber in Ansehung des Theismus, der durch eine nähere Bestimmung unseres dort blos transscendenten Begriffs vom höchsten Wesen zu Stande kommen soll, sind sie sehr stark und, nachdem man diesen Begriff einrichtet, in gewissen (in der That allen gewöhnlichen) Fällen unwiderleglich. Hume hält sich immer daran: daß durch den bloßen Begriff eines Urwesens, dem wir keine andere als ontologische Prädicate (Ewigkeit, Allgegenwart, Allmacht) beilegen, wir wirklich gar nichts Bestimmtes denken, sondern es müßten Eigenschaften hinzukommen, die einen Begriff in concreto abgeben können; es sei nicht genug, zu sagen: er sei Ursache, sondern: wie seine Causalität beschaffen sei, etwa durch Verstand und Willen; und da fangen seine Angriffe der Sache selbst, nämlich des Theismus, an, da er vorher nur die Beweisgründe des Deismus gestürmt hatte, welches keine sonderliche Gefahr nach sich zieht. Seine gefährlichen Argumente beziehen sich insgesammt auf den Anthropomorphismus, von dem er dafür hält, er sei von dem Theism unabtrennlich und mache ihn in sich selbst widersprechend, ließe man ihn aber weg, so fiele dieser hiemit auch, und es bliebe nichts als ein Deism übrig, aus dem man nichts machen, der uns zu nichts nützen und zu gar keinen Fundamenten der Religion und Sitten dienen kann. Wenn diese Unvermeidlichkeit des Anthropomorphismus gewiß wäre, so möchten die Beweise vom Dasein eines höchsten Wesens sein, welche sie wollen, und alle eingeräumt werden, der Begriff von diesem Wesen würde doch niemals von uns bestimmt werden können, ohne uns in Widersprüche zu verwickeln.
Wenn wir mit dem Verbot, alle transscendente Urtheile der reinen Vernunft zu vermeiden, das damit dem Anschein nach streitende Gebot, bis zu Begriffen, die außerhalb dem Felde des immanenten (empirischen) Gebrauchs liegen, hinauszugehen, verknüpfen: so werden wir inne, daß beide zusammen bestehen können, aber nur gerade auf der Grenze alles erlaubten Vernunftgebrauchs; denn diese gehört eben so wohl zum Felde der Erfahrung, als dem der Gedankenwesen; und wir werden dadurch zugleich belehrt, wie jene so merkwürdige Ideen lediglich zur Grenzbestimmung der menschlichen Vernunft dienen, nämlich einerseits Erfahrungserkenntniß nicht unbegrenzt auszudehnen, so daß gar nichts mehr als blos Welt von uns zu erkennen übrig bliebe, und andererseits dennoch nicht über die Grenze der Erfahrung hinauszugehen und von Dingen außerhalb derselben als Dingen an sich selbst urtheilen zu wollen.
Wir halten uns aber auf dieser Grenze, wenn wir unser Urtheil blos auf das Verhältniß einschränken, welches die Welt zu einem Wesen haben mag, dessen Begriff selbst außer aller Erkenntniß liegt, deren wir innerhalb der Welt fähig sind. Denn alsdann eignen wir dem höchsten Wesen keine von den Eigenschaften an sich selbst zu, durch die wir uns Gegenstände der Erfahrung denken, und vermeiden dadurch den dogmatischen Anthropomorphismus; wir legen sie aber dennoch dem Verhältnisse desselben zur Welt bei und erlauben uns einen symbolischen Anthropomorphism, der in der That nur die Sprache und nicht das Object selbst angeht.
Wenn ich sage: wir sind genöthigt, die Welt so anzusehen, als ob sie das Werk eines höchsten Verstandes und Willens sei, so sage ich wirklich nichts mehr als: wie sich verhält eine Uhr, ein Schiff, ein Regiment zum Künstler, Baumeister, Befehlshaber, so die Sinnenwelt (oder alles das, was die Grundlage dieses Inbegriffs von Erscheinungen ausmacht) zu dem Unbekannten, das ich also hiedurch zwar nicht nach dem, was es an sich selbst ist, aber doch nach dem, was es für mich ist, nämlich in Ansehung der Welt, davon ich ein Theil bin, erkenne.
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.
§ 57.
After the clearest proofs we have given above, it would be absurd to hope to cognize more of any object than belongs to possible experience of it, or to claim even the slightest cognition of anything we assume not to be an object of possible experience, in order to determine it according to its constitution as it is in itself. For by what means would we make this determination? Time, space, and all concepts of the understanding—and still more the concepts drawn from empirical intuition or perception in the world of sense—have, and can have, no use other than to make experience possible. If we remove this condition even from the pure concepts of the understanding, they then determine no object at all and have no meaning whatever.
On the other hand, it would be a still greater absurdity to admit no things in themselves at all, or to pass off our experience as the only possible way of cognizing things, hence our intuition in space and time as the only possible intuition, and our discursive understanding as the archetype of every possible understanding; thus to demand that principles of the possibility of experience be taken as universal conditions of things in themselves.
Our principles, which restrict the use of reason solely to possible experience, could therefore themselves become transcendent, and pass off the limits of our reason as limits of the possibility of things themselves—as Hume's Dialogues can serve to illustrate—unless a careful critique guarded the boundaries of our reason even with regard to its empirical use and set a limit to its pretensions. Skepticism originally sprang from metaphysics and its unpoliced dialectic. At first it may well have declared everything that exceeds reason's use in experience null and deceptive merely for the benefit of that use. But gradually, when it became apparent that the very same a priori principles employed in experience led imperceptibly, and seemingly with the very same right, still further than experience reaches, people began to cast doubt even on principles of experience. There is, to be sure, no danger in this, for sound understanding will surely always maintain its rights here. Yet a peculiar confusion arose in science, which cannot determine how far reason is to be trusted, and why only that far and no further. This confusion can be remedied, and any future relapse prevented, only by a formal determination, drawn from principles, of the boundaries of our use of reason.
It is true: beyond all possible experience, we can give no determinate concept of what things in themselves may be. Yet we are not free to refrain entirely from asking about them. For experience never fully satisfies reason; in answering questions, it always refers us further back and leaves us dissatisfied with regard to their complete elucidation, as anyone can sufficiently see from the dialectic of pure reason, which has its sound subjective ground for precisely this reason. Who can bear our arriving, as regards the nature of our soul, at a clear consciousness of the subject and at the same time the conviction that its appearances cannot be explained materialistically, without asking what the soul actually is, and, if no concept of experience suffices for this, at least assuming a concept of reason—that of a simple immaterial being—solely for this purpose, although we cannot demonstrate its objective reality at all? Who can be satisfied with mere experiential cognition in all cosmological questions about the world's duration and magnitude, about freedom or natural necessity, when, however we proceed, every answer given according to principles of experience always gives birth to a new question that equally demands an answer, and thereby clearly demonstrates the inadequacy of all physical modes of explanation to satisfy reason? Finally, who does not see, in the thoroughgoing contingency and dependence of everything they can think and assume merely according to principles of experience, the impossibility of stopping there? And who does not feel compelled, despite every prohibition against losing themselves in transcendent ideas, to seek rest and satisfaction beyond all concepts they can justify through experience in the concept of a being whose idea cannot indeed be understood in itself as regards its possibility, though neither can it be refuted, because it concerns a mere being of the understanding—yet without which reason would have to remain forever unsatisfied?
Boundaries, in extended beings, always presuppose a space found outside a certain determinate place and enclosing it; limits require no such thing, but are mere negations affecting a magnitude insofar as it lacks absolute completeness. Our reason, however, sees around itself, as it were, a space for the cognition of things in themselves, although it can never have determinate concepts of them and is restricted solely to appearances.
So long as reason's cognition is homogeneous, no determinate boundaries of it can be thought. In mathematics and natural science human reason does indeed recognize limits, but no boundaries: it recognizes that something lies outside it, where it can never reach, but not that it will itself ever reach completion anywhere in its internal progress. The expansion of mathematical insight and the possibility of ever new discoveries extend to infinity; so too does the discovery, through continuing experience, of new properties of nature, new forces and laws, and their unification through reason. Yet limits here are nonetheless unmistakable. For mathematics concerns only appearances, and whatever cannot be an object of sensible intuition, such as the concepts of metaphysics and morals, lies entirely outside its sphere, and it can never lead there; nor does it need these concepts at all. There is therefore no continuous progress and approach toward these sciences, and, as it were, no point or line of contact. Natural science will never disclose to us the interior of things, that is, what is not appearance but can nevertheless serve as the supreme ground for explaining appearances; but neither does it need this for its physical explanations. Indeed, even if something of this sort were offered to it from elsewhere—for example, the influence of immaterial beings—it should reject it and not introduce it at all into the progress of its explanations. Instead, it should always ground these only on what, as an object of the senses, can belong to experience and be connected with our actual perceptions according to laws of experience.
Metaphysics, however, leads us to boundaries in the dialectical attempts of pure reason—attempts not begun arbitrarily or wantonly, but driven by the very nature of reason. And the transcendental ideas, precisely because we cannot avoid them yet they can never be realized, serve not only to show us the boundaries of the use of pure reason, but also the way to determine them. This, too, is the purpose and benefit of this natural predisposition of our reason, which has brought forth metaphysics as its favorite child. Its generation, like any other in the world, must be ascribed not to chance accident, but to an original germ wisely organized for great purposes. For metaphysics, perhaps more than any other science, is implanted in us in its basic features by nature itself, and cannot be regarded at all as the product of an arbitrary choice or as a chance extension in the course of experiences, from which it separates itself entirely.
With all its concepts and laws of the understanding, which suffice for empirical use and thus within the world of sense, reason nevertheless finds no satisfaction on its own. For questions recurring endlessly rob it of all hope of a complete solution. The transcendental ideas, which aim at this completion, are such problems of reason. Now reason sees clearly that the world of sense cannot contain this completion; nor, therefore, can all those concepts that serve solely to understand it: space and time and everything we have listed under the name of pure concepts of the understanding. The world of sense is nothing but a chain of appearances connected according to universal laws. It therefore has no subsistence of its own, is not properly the thing in itself, and thus necessarily refers to what contains the ground of this appearance: to beings that can be cognized not merely as appearance but as things in themselves. In cognition of them alone can reason hope at last to see its demand for completeness satisfied in the progression from the conditioned to its conditions.
Above (§§ 33, 34) we indicated the limits of reason with regard to all cognition of mere beings of thought. Now that the transcendental ideas nevertheless make our progression to them necessary, and have thus led us, as it were, only to the contact between full space, experience, and empty space, the noumena of which we can know nothing, we can also determine the boundaries of pure reason. For in all boundaries there is also something positive—for example, a surface is the boundary of corporeal space, yet is itself a space; a line is a space that is the boundary of a surface; a point is the boundary of a line, yet is still a place in space—whereas limits contain mere negations. The limits indicated in the sections cited are no longer enough once we have found that something lies beyond them, although we shall never cognize what it is in itself. For the question now is: how does our reason proceed in this connection of what we know with what we do not know and shall never know? Here there is an actual connection of the known with something wholly unknown, which it will always remain; and even if the unknown should not thereby become in the least better known—as indeed there is no hope that it will—the concept of this connection must nevertheless be capable of determination and clarification.
We are therefore to think of an immaterial being, an intelligible world, and a supreme being—all of them noumena—because only in these, as things in themselves, does reason find the completion and satisfaction it can never hope for in deriving appearances from grounds homogeneous with them. And appearances do actually refer to something distinct from them, hence wholly heterogeneous, since appearances always presuppose a thing in itself and therefore point to it, whether or not we cognize it more closely.
But since we can never cognize these beings of the understanding according to what they may be in themselves—that is, determinately—and yet must nevertheless assume them in relation to the world of sense and connect them with it through reason, we can at least think this connection by means of concepts expressing their relation to the world of sense. For if we think a being of the understanding through nothing but pure concepts of the understanding, we actually think nothing determinate, and our concept is therefore without meaning. If we think it through properties borrowed from the world of sense, it is no longer a being of the understanding; it is thought as one of the phenomena and belongs to the world of sense. Let us take an example from the concept of the supreme being.
The deistic concept is an entirely pure concept of reason, but it represents only a thing containing all reality, without being able to determine any single reality. For to do that, an example would have to be borrowed from the world of sense, in which case I would always be dealing only with an object of the senses, not with something wholly heterogeneous that cannot be an object of the senses at all. For example, I would attribute understanding to it; but I have no concept whatever of an understanding except one like my own, namely one to which intuitions must be given through the senses, and which occupies itself with bringing them under rules of the unity of consciousness. But then the elements of my concept would always lie in appearance, whereas it was precisely the inadequacy of appearances that compelled me to go beyond them to the concept of a being not at all dependent on appearances, or intertwined with them as conditions of its determination. But if I separate understanding from sensibility in order to have a pure understanding, nothing remains but the mere form of thinking without intuition, through which alone I can cognize nothing determinate, hence no object. For that purpose I would have to think of another understanding that intuited objects, of which, however, I have not the slightest concept, because human understanding is discursive and can cognize only through universal concepts. The same happens if I attribute a will to the supreme being. For I have this concept only by drawing it from my inner experience; but underlying it is the dependence of my satisfaction on objects whose existence we need, and thus sensibility, which entirely contradicts the pure concept of the supreme being.
Hume's objections to deism are weak and never touch anything more than the proofs, never the proposition of the deistic assertion itself. But as regards theism, which is supposed to arise through a closer determination of our concept of the supreme being, there merely transcendent, they are very strong and, depending on how this concept is framed, irrefutable in certain cases—indeed, in all the usual ones. Hume always insists on this: through the mere concept of an original being to which we attribute only ontological predicates—eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence—we actually think nothing determinate at all; properties must be added that can yield a concept in concreto. It is not enough to say that it is a cause; one must say what its causality is like, perhaps through understanding and will. Here his attacks on the matter itself, namely theism, begin, whereas before he had merely stormed the grounds of proof for deism, which entails no particular danger. His dangerous arguments all concern anthropomorphism, which he holds to be inseparable from theism and to make it self-contradictory; but if anthropomorphism were omitted, theism would fall with it, leaving nothing but a deism from which nothing can be made, which can be of no use to us and serve as no foundation whatever for religion and morals. If this inevitability of anthropomorphism were certain, then, whatever the proofs of the existence of a supreme being might be, and even if they were all conceded, we could still never determine the concept of this being without entangling ourselves in contradictions.
If we combine the prohibition requiring us to avoid all transcendent judgments of pure reason with the command, apparently conflicting with it, to go out as far as concepts lying outside the field of immanent, or empirical, use, we become aware that both can coexist, but only precisely on the boundary of every permissible use of reason. For this boundary belongs just as much to the field of experience as to that of beings of thought. At the same time, we are thereby taught how those remarkable ideas serve solely to determine the boundaries of human reason: on the one hand, not to extend experiential cognition without limit, so that nothing but the world would remain for us to cognize; and on the other, nevertheless not to go beyond the boundary of experience and seek to judge things outside it as things in themselves.
We keep to this boundary, however, when we restrict our judgment solely to the relation the world may have to a being whose very concept lies outside all cognition of which we are capable within the world. For then we attribute to the supreme being none of the properties in themselves through which we think objects of experience, and thereby avoid dogmatic anthropomorphism. Yet we do attribute them to its relation to the world, and allow ourselves a symbolic anthropomorphism, which in fact concerns only language and not the object itself.
When I say that we are compelled to regard the world as if it were the work of a supreme understanding and will, I actually say no more than this: as a watch, a ship, a regiment stands to its maker, builder, commander, so the world of sense—or everything that constitutes the foundation of this totality of appearances—stands to the unknown. Through this I cognize the unknown not indeed according to what it is in itself, but according to what it is for me, namely with regard to the world of which I am a part.
Plain English translation
Mouseia’s complete Plain English edition, made independently and directly from the same complete German text.
§ 57.
After the very clear proofs given above, it would be absurd to hope to know more about any object than belongs to possible experience of it. It would be equally absurd to claim even the slightest knowledge determining the character of any thing as it is in itself, when we assume it is not an object of possible experience. For how would we make this determination? Time, space, and all concepts of the understanding have, and can have, no use other than to make experience possible. Still less can concepts drawn from empirical intuition or perception in the world of sense have any other use. If we remove this condition even from the pure concepts of the understanding, they determine no object at all and have no meaning whatsoever.
On the other hand, it would be still more absurd to allow no things in themselves at all. It would be absurd to present our experience as the only possible way of knowing things, our intuition in space and time as the only possible intuition, and our discursive understanding as the model for every possible understanding. That would make principles of the possibility of experience into universal conditions of things in themselves.
Our principles restrict reason's use to possible experience. Yet these very principles could become transcendent and present the limitations of our reason as limitations on the possibility of things themselves. Hume's Dialogues can serve as an example. This would happen unless a careful critique guarded the boundaries of our reason even in its empirical use and set a limit to its pretensions. Skepticism originally arose from metaphysics and its unregulated dialectic. At first, perhaps merely to favor reason's use in experience, it declared everything beyond that use empty and deceptive. But people gradually realized that the very same a priori principles used in experience also led unnoticed beyond the reach of experience, and apparently with just as much right. They then began to doubt even the principles of experience. There is no real danger here: sound understanding will surely always maintain its rights in this matter. Still, a special confusion arose in science, which cannot determine how far reason is to be trusted, or why only that far and no farther. Only a formal determination of the boundaries of our use of reason, drawn from principles, can remedy this confusion and prevent every future relapse.
It is true that, beyond all possible experience, we can give no determinate concept of what things may be in themselves. Yet we are not free simply to refrain from asking about them. Experience never fully satisfies reason. In answering its questions, experience always sends it farther back and leaves it dissatisfied with the complete explanation of them. Anyone can see this clearly enough from the dialectic of pure reason, which for that very reason has a sound subjective basis. Who could bear reaching, in our inquiry into the nature of our soul, a clear consciousness of the subject and at the same time the conviction that its appearances cannot be explained materialistically, without asking what the soul actually is? And if no concept from experience is adequate, who could refrain from at least assuming a concept of reason—a simple immaterial being—for this purpose alone, even though we cannot demonstrate its objective reality? Who can be satisfied with mere experiential knowledge in all the cosmological questions about the world's duration and size, or about freedom and natural necessity? Whatever approach we take, each answer based on principles of experience always gives birth to a new question that equally demands an answer. This clearly shows that no physical explanation is adequate to satisfy reason. Finally, everything we can think and assume according to principles of experience is thoroughly contingent and dependent. Who does not see that it is impossible to stop there? Who does not feel compelled, despite every prohibition against losing oneself in transcendent ideas, to go beyond all concepts that experience can justify and seek rest and satisfaction in the concept of a being? We cannot gain insight into the possibility of the idea of this being in itself, though neither can we refute it, since it concerns a mere being of the understanding. Yet without it reason would have to remain forever dissatisfied.
Boundaries, in the case of extended beings, always presuppose a space found outside a certain definite location and enclosing it. Limitations require no such thing. They are mere negations affecting a magnitude insofar as it lacks absolute completeness. Our reason, however, sees, as it were, a space around itself for the knowledge of things in themselves, although it can never have determinate concepts of them and is restricted to appearances alone.
As long as reason's cognition remains of the same kind, no definite boundaries can be thought for it. In mathematics and natural science, human reason recognizes limitations but no boundaries. It recognizes that something lies outside it that it can never reach, but not that its own internal progress will ever be completed anywhere. The expansion of mathematical insight and the possibility of ever new discoveries go on to infinity. So do the discovery of new properties of nature, new forces and laws through continued experience, and reason's unification of them. Yet limitations here are unmistakable. Mathematics concerns only appearances. Whatever cannot be an object of sensory intuition, such as the concepts of metaphysics and morality, lies entirely outside its sphere, and it can never lead us there. But neither does it need them at all. There is thus no continuous progress or approach toward these sciences, nor even, so to speak, a point or line of contact. Natural science will never reveal to us the interior of things: what is not appearance but can nevertheless serve as the highest ground for explaining appearances. But it does not need this for its physical explanations either. Indeed, even if something of this kind were offered to it from elsewhere—for example, the influence of immaterial beings—it should reject it and not introduce it into the progress of its explanations. It should always base them only on what can belong to experience as an object of the senses and can be connected with our actual perceptions according to laws of experience.
Metaphysics, however, leads us to boundaries in pure reason's dialectical attempts. These are not undertaken arbitrarily or recklessly; reason's own nature drives us to them. The transcendental ideas are unavoidable, yet can never be realized in objects. Precisely for that reason, they serve not only to show us the actual boundaries of pure reason's use, but also how to determine those boundaries. This is also the purpose and benefit of this natural disposition of our reason, which has given birth to metaphysics as its favorite child. Like every other birth in the world, its production must be attributed not to mere chance, but to an original seed wisely organized for great purposes. Perhaps more than any other science, metaphysics has been implanted in us in its basic features by nature itself. It cannot be regarded as the product of an arbitrary choice, or as an accidental extension in the progress of experience, from which it separates itself entirely.
With all its concepts and laws of the understanding, which are sufficient for empirical use and thus within the world of sense, reason still finds no satisfaction in itself. Questions recurring to infinity take away all hope of a complete answer. The transcendental ideas, which aim at this completeness, are problems of reason of this kind. Reason now sees clearly that the world of sense cannot contain this completeness. Neither, therefore, can all the concepts serving solely to understand that world: space, time, and everything we have listed under the name of pure concepts of the understanding. The world of sense is nothing but a chain of appearances connected according to universal laws. It therefore has no independent subsistence. It is not really the thing in itself, and so necessarily refers to what contains the ground of these appearances: beings that can be known not merely as appearance, but as things in themselves. Only in knowing these can reason hope at last to satisfy its desire for completeness in progressing from what is conditioned to its conditions.
Above, in sections 33 and 34, we indicated reason's limitations regarding all knowledge of mere beings of thought. Now the transcendental ideas nevertheless make progress toward them necessary. They have led us only, so to speak, to the point of contact between filled space—experience—and empty space—the noumena, of which we can know nothing. We can therefore also determine the boundaries of pure reason. For every boundary also contains something positive. A surface, for example, is the boundary of a solid space, yet is itself a space. A line is a space that bounds a surface. A point bounds a line, yet is still a location in space. Limitations, by contrast, contain mere negations. The limitations indicated in the sections cited are no longer enough, now that we have found that something lies beyond them, even though we will never know what it is in itself. For the question now is: how does our reason function in this connection between what we know and what we do not and never will know? There is an actual connection here between the known and something completely unknown, which will always remain so. Even if the unknown should not become in the least better known through this—as in fact we cannot hope it will—the concept of this connection must still be capable of being determined and made clear.
We are therefore to think of an immaterial being, a world of the understanding, and a highest of all beings—all noumena. For only in these, as things in themselves, does reason find the completeness and satisfaction it can never hope for when deriving appearances from grounds of the same kind. Appearances really do refer to something different from them, and thus of an entirely different kind. For appearances always presuppose a thing in itself and therefore point to it, whether or not we know it more closely.
Now we can never know these beings of the understanding in terms of what they may be in themselves: we can never know them determinately. Yet we must still assume them in relation to the world of sense and connect them with it through reason. At least, then, we can think this connection through concepts expressing their relation to the world of sense. If we think of a being of the understanding through nothing but pure concepts of the understanding, we really think nothing determinate, and our concept has no meaning. If we think of it through properties borrowed from the world of sense, it is no longer a being of the understanding. It is thought as one of the phenomena and belongs to the world of sense. Let us take the concept of the supreme being as an example.
The deistic concept is a wholly pure concept of reason. But it represents only a thing containing all reality, without being able to determine any single reality within it. To do that, we would have to borrow an example from the world of sense. I would then always be dealing only with an object of the senses, not with something entirely different in kind that cannot be an object of the senses at all. For example, I would attribute understanding to it. But I have no concept of an understanding except one like my own: one to which intuitions must be given through the senses, and which works to bring them under rules of the unity of consciousness. The elements of my concept would then always lie in appearance. Yet it was precisely the inadequacy of appearances that forced me to go beyond them to the concept of a being that does not depend on appearances at all, and is not entangled with them as conditions of its determination. If, however, I separate understanding from sensibility to obtain a pure understanding, nothing remains but the mere form of thinking without intuition. Through that alone I can know nothing determinate, and thus no object. For that purpose I would have to think of a different understanding that intuited objects. But I have not the slightest concept of such an understanding, since the human understanding is discursive and can know only through general concepts. The same thing happens if I attribute a will to the supreme being. I have this concept only by drawing it from my inner experience. But underlying that experience is my satisfaction's dependence on objects whose existence we need, and therefore sensibility. This entirely contradicts the pure concept of the supreme being.
Hume's objections to deism are weak. They never strike anything beyond its proofs, and never the deistic claim itself. But they are very strong against theism, which is supposed to arise through a closer determination of our concept of the supreme being, a concept that in deism is merely transcendent. Depending on how this concept is framed, his objections are irrefutable in certain cases—in fact, in all the usual cases. Hume always insists on this: the mere concept of an original being to which we attribute only ontological predicates—eternity, omnipresence, omnipotence—lets us think nothing determinate at all. Properties must be added that can supply a concrete concept. It is not enough to say that it is a cause. We must say what its causality is like, perhaps through understanding and will. At this point his attacks on the matter itself, namely theism, begin. Previously he had only attacked the grounds of proof for deism, which involves no particular danger. All his dangerous arguments concern anthropomorphism. He holds that it is inseparable from theism and makes theism self-contradictory. But if anthropomorphism were removed, theism would fall with it. Nothing would remain but a deism that we can do nothing with, that can be of no use to us and provide no foundation for religion and morals. If anthropomorphism really were unavoidable, then whatever proofs there might be of the existence of a supreme being, even if all were accepted, we could never determine the concept of this being without becoming entangled in contradictions.
Let us combine the prohibition against making any transcendent judgments of pure reason with the apparently conflicting command to go out to concepts lying beyond the field of immanent, empirical use. We then realize that both can coexist, but only right on the boundary of all permitted use of reason. This boundary belongs as much to the field of experience as to that of beings of thought. At the same time, we learn how those remarkable ideas serve only to determine the boundaries of human reason. On one side, we must not extend knowledge from experience without limit, leaving nothing but the world for us to know. On the other side, we must not go beyond the boundary of experience and try to judge things outside it as things in themselves.
We stay on this boundary when we restrict our judgment solely to the relation the world may have to a being whose very concept lies outside all the knowledge we are capable of within the world. For then we do not attribute to the supreme being in itself any of the properties through which we think objects of experience. We thereby avoid dogmatic anthropomorphism. But we still attribute these properties to its relation to the world. We allow ourselves a symbolic anthropomorphism that really concerns only language, not the object itself.
When I say that we are compelled to regard the world as if it were the work of a supreme understanding and will, I am really saying no more than this: as a watch relates to its maker, a ship to its builder, or a regiment to its commander, so the world of sense—or everything making up the basis of this totality of appearances—relates to the unknown. Through this I do not know the unknown as it is in itself. I do, however, know it as it is for me: in relation to the world of which I am a part.
About this section
Section 57 is part of Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics by Immanuel Kant. This page sets the German original beside 2 direct-source translations, so any line can be checked against the source. It is section 67 of 72 in the work, which is kept in the European tradition.
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