Short Commentary on a Selection from The Critique of Pure Reason, Transcendental Dialectic: Book I. Section 1. On Ideas As Such.
Jamie Mellway
Forum: Undergraduate course, University of Waterloo, 2000
This essay is submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for participation in Enlightenment’s First
Annual Meeting, June, 2001. The author has submitted an informal proposal for a
paper on logical-argumentative dialectic to be presented at the meeting.
In the A319-20/B376-7[1]
passage, Kant starts with a few polemical words directed against the
Leibniz-Wolffian German tradition and then Kant divides the term ‘presentation’[2]
into several species. The passage
begins with:
“I beseech
those who have philosophy at heart (which is saying more than one commonly
encounters)—if they should find themselves convinced by what I say here and
later—to safeguard the expression idea
in its original meaning, lest it henceforth and up among the remaining
expressions by which people commonly designate, in carefree disorder and to the
detriment of science, sundry kinds of presentation.”
Here Kant is attacking the Leibniz-Wolffian
notion of philosophy as
organizing appearances synthetically (i.e., arbitrarily) in order that we can
read them as experiences[3]. When one forms definitions synthetically
(e.g., as Leibniz does with ‘slumbering monad’) one is at best making a
grammatical definition and not a philosophical definition[4]. While synthetic definitions are valid for
mathematical definitions such as “trapezoid”[5],
this type of defining is inappropriate for philosophy.
Philosophers should instead be concerned with
a conception of philosophy that is concerned with constructing analytic (i.e.,
explicative) definitions. Analytic
definitions are arrived at by spelling out
distinctions and dissecting concepts[6]
from analysis[7].
The term that Kant highlights in the above
passage is ‘idea’. While the Leibniz-Wolffian tradition (among
others) used the term to include such things as the “idea of red”[8]
and the “idea of a triangle”, while not using it to include such things as the
concept of God and virtue[9]. The Leibniz-Wolffian tradition is using the
term such that it expresses anything we experience; I experience red, so ‘red’
must be an idea. Ideas are abstracted
from sensible perception and the relationship between an object and an
associated idea is of taken for granted.
Kant instead takes a very different route by
denying any relationship between an idea to a real object and whose referent
“simply cannot be met with in experience”[10].
Since his conception is different from the
common usage and coining new words is rarely successful, Kant looks “around in
a dead and scholarly language” to find an appropriate expression[11].
Plato’s Ideas are similar to Kant’s ideas in so far as Kant’s ideas are not
taken from experience, they contain archetypes that are used by the
understanding faculty[12],
cannot be defined synthetically (see above), and all of morals is based on
ideas[13];
while Plato’s Ideas are not taken from experience (i.e., the senses)[14],
are archetypes of things themselves, are not formed by merely sorting out
appearances according to synthetic unity (as Leibniz-Wolffian tradition’s ideas
are formed), and are primarily practical.
This is not to say that Kant’s ideas are the
same as Plato’s Ideas, but they are similar enough that it justifies Kant in
using the term. This analogy between
ideas and Ideas is what Kant meant by “safeguard the expression idea in its original [i.e., Platonic]
meaning.”
“We are, after all, not lacking in names properly
fitting each kind of presentation, and do not [in defining idea] need to
encroach upon the property of another kind of presentation.”
That is, since we have the below chart, we do
not have to have imprecision in explicating our terms.
Figure 1: Presentation Genus-Species Tree (with differentia
in brackets)
“Here is a chart [Stufenleiter]
of them. The genus is presentation [Vorstellung] as such (repraesentatio). Under it falls presentation with consciousness (perceptio). A perception
[Perzeption] that refers solely
to the subject, viz., as the modification of the subject’s state, is sensation
[Enfindung] (sensatio); an objective perception is cognition
[Erkenntnis] (cognitio). Cognition is either intuition
or concept [Anschauung, Begriff] (intuitus
vel conceptus). An intuition refers directly to the object and is
singular; a concept refers to the object indirectly, by means of a
characteristic that may be common to several things.”
In Aristotelian fashion, Kant is presenting
his definitions in genus-differentia form.
The highest genus term being used here is presentation. Unfortunately, Kant believes that
presentation cannot be defined nor explained despite that everyone “knows
immediately” what a presentation is.
This is because logic presupposed the consciousness of presentations;
hence, logic cannot teach how to present something. He is willing to say that every presentation is something that is
in us and is related to something else that is its object[15]. In CPR, Kant describes presentations as
“inner determinations of our mind in this or that time relation”[16],
but this seems rather unhelpful a description than, say, something like
presentations are psychological or mental states in general.
A presentation-with-consciousness
is called a perception. Here, consciousness
is a presentation of another presentation in me[17]. Conscious presentations are also called clear presentations. While Kant does not discuss unconscious presentations in CPR, he does
elsewhere where they are called obscure
presentations (dunkle
Vorstellungen)[18]. Kant describes obscure presentations as presentation whose activity “goes
unnoticed even while it is being exercised” although it is “an admirably busy
activity”[19]. One example Kant gives there is reading.
We are not conscious of the detailed activities of reading.
Perceptions are divided into perceptions that are objective (i.e., deal
with objects although are not derived from objects or ideas) are cognitions and perceptions that refer to one’s self only are sensations. Sensations include feelings of pain and the like, while
cognitions refer to an object or a concept.
Cognitions that refer to a singular object are intuitions and cognitions that refer to
many objects are concepts. Kant also says that intuition refer to
objects directly and conception refer indirectly, but these does not imply any
“direct awareness” of the physical object in itself, but only that an intermediate
concept isn’t needed.
Bibliography
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Critique of Pure Reason. New
York: Routledge.
Kant, Immanuel. Werner S. Pluhar, tr. 1996 [1781, 1787]. Critique of Pure Reason. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.
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