Transcendental Analytic on Superphysics

The History of Pure Reason

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SS 2. Analytic of Conceptions.

By the term Analytic of Conceptions, I do not understand the analysis of these, or the usual process in philosophical investigations of dissecting the conceptions which present themselves, according to their content, and so making them clear; but I mean the hitherto little attempted dissection of the faculty of understanding itself, in order to investigate the possibility of conceptions a priori, by looking for them in the understanding alone, as their birthplace, and analysing the pure use of this faculty.

The Logical Function of the Understanding in Judgements

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

If we abstract all the content of a judgement, and consider only the intellectual form thereof, we find that the function of thought in a judgement can be brought under four heads, of which each contains three momenta. These may be conveniently represented in the following table:

Synthesis as a Process

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

General logic:

abstracts all the content of cognition
expects to receive representations from some other quarter, in order, by means of analysis, to convert them into conceptions.

On the contrary, transcendental logic has the manifold content of within-the-mind sensibility.

The Table of Categories

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The only faculties in the understanding are those in that table.

Like Aristotle, I call these conceptions as categories.

I have the same purpose as him, with a great difference in the execution.

The Deduction of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SS 9. SECTION I Of the Principles of a Transcendental Deduction in general.

Teachers of jurisprudence, when speaking of rights and claims, distinguish in a cause the question of right (quid juris) from the question of fact (quid facti), and while they demand proof of both, they give to the proof of the former, which goes to establish right or claim in law, the name of deduction.

Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SS 10. Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories

There are only 2 ways in which synthetical representation and its objects can coincide with and relate necessarily to each other and meet together.

Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SS 13. The Principle of the Synthetical Unity of Apperception is the highest Principle of all exercise of the Understanding.

The supreme principle of the possibility of all intuition in relation to sensibility was, according to our transcendental aesthetic, that all the manifold in intuition be subject to the formal conditions of space and time. The supreme principle of the possibility of it in relation to the understanding is that all the manifold in it be subject to conditions of the originally synthetical unity or apperception.* To the former of these two principles are subject all the various representations of intuition, in so far as they are given to us; to the latter, in so far as they must be capable of conjunction in one consciousness; for without this nothing can be thought or cognized, because the given representations would not have in common the act Of the apperception “I think” and therefore could not be connected in one self-consciousness.

Observation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SS 17. Observation

The manifold in an intuition, which I call mine, is represented by means of the synthesis of the understanding, as belonging to the necessary unity of self-consciousness, and this takes place by means of the category.*

The Application of the Categories Sensory Objects

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

SS 20. The Application of the Categories Sensory Objects in general.

The pure conceptions of the understanding apply to objects of intuition in general, through the understanding alone, whether the intuition be our own or some other, provided only it be sensuous, but are, for this very reason, mere forms of thought, by means of which alone no determined object can be cognized. The synthesis or conjunction of the manifold in these conceptions relates, we have said, only to the unity of apperception, and is for this reason the ground of the possibility of a priori cognition, in so far as this cognition is dependent on the understanding. This synthesis is, therefore, not merely transcendental, but also purely intellectual.