第 13 页

In general logic, therefore, that part which constitutes pure

logic must be carefully distinguished from that which constitutes

applied (though still general) logic. The former alone is properly

science, although short and dry, as the methodical exposition of an

elemental doctrine of the understanding ought to be. In this,

therefore, logicians must always bear in mind two rules:

1. As general logic, it makes abstraction of all content of the

cognition of the understanding, and of the difference of objects,

and has to do with nothing but the mere form of thought.

2. As pure logic, it has no empirical principles, and consequently

draws nothing (contrary to the common persuasion) from psychology,

which therefore has no influence on the canon of the understanding. It

is a demonstrated doctrine, and everything in it must be certain

completely a priori.

What I called applied logic (contrary to the common acceptation of

this term, according to which it should contain certain exercises

for the scholar, for which pure logic gives the rules), is a

representation of the understanding, and of the rules of its necessary

employment in concreto, that is to say, under the accidental

conditions of the subject, which may either hinder or promote this

employment, and which are all given only empirically. Thus applied

logic treats of attention, its impediments and consequences, of the

origin of error, of the state of doubt, hesitation, conviction,

etc., and to it is related pure general logic in the same way that

pure morality, which contains only the necessary moral laws of a

free will, is related to practical ethics, which considers these

laws under all the impediments of feelings, inclinations, and passions

to which men are more or less subjected, and which never can furnish

us with a true and demonstrated science, because it, as well as

applied logic, requires empirical and psychological principles.

II. Of Transcendental Logic.

General logic, as we have seen, makes abstraction of all content

of cognition, that is, of all relation of cognition to its object, and

regards only the logical form in the relation of cognitions to each

other, that is, the form of thought in general. But as we have both

pure and empirical intuitions (as transcendental aesthetic proves), in

like manner a distinction might be drawn between pure and empirical

thought (of objects). In this case, there would exist a kind of logic,

in which we should not make abstraction of all content of cognition;

for or logic which should comprise merely the laws of pure thought (of

an object), would of course exclude all those cognitions which were of

empirical content. This kind of logic would also examine the origin of

our cognitions of objects, so far as that origin cannot be ascribed to

the objects themselves; while, on the contrary, general logic has

nothing to do with the origin of our cognitions, but contemplates

our representations, be they given primitively a priori in

ourselves, or be they only of empirical origin, solely according to

the laws which the understanding observes in employing them in the

process of thought, in relation to each other. Consequently, general

logic treats of the form of the understanding only, which can be

applied to representations, from whatever source they may have arisen.

And here I shall make a remark, which the reader must bear well in

mind in the course of the following considerations, to wit, that not

every cognition a priori, but only those through which we cognize that

and how certain representations (intuitions or conceptions) are

applied or are possible only a priori; that is to say, the a priori

possibility of cognition and the a priori use of it are

transcendental. Therefore neither is space, nor any a priori

geometrical determination of space, a transcendental Representation,

but only the knowledge that such a representation is not of

empirical origin, and the possibility of its relating to objects of

experience, although itself a priori, can be called transcendental. So

also, the application of space to objects in general would be

transcendental; but if it be limited to objects of sense it is

empirical. Thus, the distinction of the transcendental and empirical

belongs only to the critique of cognitions, and does not concern the

relation of these to their object.

Accordingly, in the expectation that there may perhaps be

conceptions which relate a priori to objects, not as pure or

sensuous intuitions, but merely as acts of pure thought (which are

therefore conceptions, but neither of empirical nor aesthetical

origin)- in this expectation, I say, we form to ourselves, by

anticipation, the idea of a science of pure understanding and rational

cognition, by means of which we may cogitate objects entirely a

priori. A science of this kind, which should determine the origin, the

extent, and the objective validity of such cognitions, must be

called transcendental logic, because it has not, like general logic,

to do with the laws of understanding and reason in relation to

empirical as well as pure rational cognitions without distinction, but

concerns itself with these only in an a priori relation to objects.

III. Of the Division of General Logic into Analytic and Dialectic.

The old question with which people sought to push logicians into a

corner, so that they must either have recourse to pitiful sophisms

or confess their ignorance, and consequently the vanity of their whole

art, is this: "What is truth?" The definition of the word truth, to

wit, "the accordance of the cognition with its object," is presupposed

in the question; but we desire to be told, in the answer to it, what

is the universal and secure criterion of the truth of every cognition.

To know what questions we may reasonably propose is in itself a

strong evidence of sagacity and intelligence. For if a question be

in itself absurd and unsusceptible of a rational answer, it is

attended with the danger- not to mention the shame that falls upon the

person who proposes it- of seducing the unguarded listener into making

absurd answers, and we are presented with the ridiculous spectacle

of one (as the ancients said) "milking the he-goat, and the other

holding a sieve."

If truth consists in the accordance of a cognition with its

object, this object must be, ipso facto, distinguished from all

others; for a cognition is false if it does not accord with the object

to which it relates, although it contains something which may be

affirmed of other objects. Now an universal criterion of truth would

be that which is valid for all cognitions, without distinction of

their objects. But it is evident that since, in the case of such a

criterion, we make abstraction of all the content of a cognition (that

is, of all relation to its object), and truth relates precisely to

this content, it must be utterly absurd to ask for a mark of the truth

of this content of cognition; and that, accordingly, a sufficient, and

at the same time universal, test of truth cannot possibly be found. As

we have already termed the content of a cognition its matter, we shall

say: "Of the truth of our cognitions in respect of their matter, no

universal test can be demanded, because such a demand is

self-contradictory."

On the other hand, with regard to our cognition in respect of its

mere form (excluding all content), it is equally manifest that

logic, in so far as it exhibits the universal and necessary laws of

the understanding, must in these very laws present us with criteria of

truth. Whatever contradicts these rules is false, because thereby

the understanding is made to contradict its own universal laws of

thought; that is, to contradict itself. These criteria, however, apply

solely to the form of truth, that is, of thought in general, and in so

far they are perfectly accurate, yet not sufficient. For although a

cognition may be perfectly accurate as to logical form, that is, not

self-contradictory, it is notwithstanding quite possible that it may

not stand in agreement with its object. Consequently, the merely

logical criterion of truth, namely, the accordance of a cognition with

the universal and formal laws of understanding and reason, is

nothing more than the conditio sine qua non, or negative condition

of all truth. Farther than this logic cannot go, and the error which

depends not on the form, but on the content of the cognition, it has

no test to discover.

General logic, then, resolves the whole formal business of

understanding and reason into its elements, and exhibits them as

principles of all logical judging of our cognitions. This part of

logic may, therefore, be called analytic, and is at least the negative

test of truth, because all cognitions must first of an be estimated

and tried according to these laws before we proceed to investigate

them in respect of their content, in order to discover whether they

contain positive truth in regard to their object. Because, however,

the mere form of a cognition, accurately as it may accord with logical

laws, is insufficient to supply us with material (objective) truth, no

one, by means of logic alone, can venture to predicate anything of

or decide concerning objects, unless he has obtained, independently of

logic, well-grounded information about them, in order afterwards to

examine, according to logical laws, into the use and connection, in

a cohering whole, of that information, or, what is still better,

merely to test it by them. Notwithstanding, there lies so seductive

a charm in the possession of a specious art like this- an art which

gives to all our cognitions the form of the understanding, although

with respect to the content thereof we may be sadly deficient- that

general logic, which is merely a canon of judgement, has been employed

as an organon for the actual production, or rather for the semblance

of production, of objective assertions, and has thus been grossly

misapplied. Now general logic, in its assumed character of organon, is

called dialectic.

Different as are the significations in which the ancients used

this term for a science or an art, we may safely infer, from their

actual employment of it, that with them it was nothing else than a

logic of illusion- a sophistical art for giving ignorance, nay, even

intentional sophistries, the colouring of truth, in which the

thoroughness of procedure which logic requires was imitated, and their

topic employed to cloak the empty pretensions. Now it may be taken

as a safe and useful warning, that general logic, considered as an

organon, must always be a logic of illusion, that is, be

dialectical, for, as it teaches us nothing whatever respecting the

content of our cognitions, but merely the formal conditions of their

accordance with the understanding, which do not relate to and are

quite indifferent in respect of objects, any attempt to employ it as

an instrument (organon) in order to extend and enlarge the range of

our knowledge must end in mere prating; any one being able to maintain

or oppose, with some appearance of truth, any single assertion

whatever.

Such instruction is quite unbecoming the dignity of philosophy.

For these reasons we have chosen to denominate this part of logic

dialectic, in the sense of a critique of dialectical illusion, and

we wish the term to be so understood in this place.

IV. Of the Division of Transcendental Logic into Transcendental

Analytic and Dialectic.

In transcendental logic we isolate the understanding (as in

transcendental aesthetic the sensibility) and select from our

cognition merely that part of thought which has its origin in the

understanding alone. The exercise of this pure cognition, however,

depends upon this as its condition, that objects to which it may be

applied be given to us in intuition, for without intuition the whole

of our cognition is without objects, and is therefore quite void. That

part of transcendental logic, then, which treats of the elements of

pure cognition of the understanding, and of the principles without

which no object at all can be thought, is transcendental analytic, and

at the same time a logic of truth. For no cognition can contradict it,

without losing at the same time all content, that is, losing all

reference to an object, and therefore all truth. But because we are

very easily seduced into employing these pure cognitions and

principles of the understanding by themselves, and that even beyond

the boundaries of experience, which yet is the only source whence we

can obtain matter (objects) on which those pure conceptions may be

employed- understanding runs the risk of making, by means of empty

sophisms, a material and objective use of the mere formal principles

of the pure understanding, and of passing judgements on objects

without distinction- objects which are not given to us, nay, perhaps

cannot be given to us in any way. Now, as it ought properly to be only

a canon for judging of the empirical use of the understanding, this

kind of logic is misused when we seek to employ it as an organon of

the universal and unlimited exercise of the understanding, and attempt

with the pure understanding alone to judge synthetically, affirm,

and determine respecting objects in general. In this case the exercise

of the pure understanding becomes dialectical. The second part of

our transcendental logic must therefore be a critique of dialectical

illusion, and this critique we shall term transcendental dialectic-

not meaning it as an art of producing dogmatically such illusion (an

art which is unfortunately too current among the practitioners of

metaphysical juggling), but as a critique of understanding and

reason in regard to their hyperphysical use. This critique will expose

the groundless nature of the pretensions of these two faculties, and

invalidate their claims to the discovery and enlargement of our

cognitions merely by means of transcendental principles, and show that

the proper employment of these faculties is to test the judgements