第 35 页

appeal to a logical condition, which is no doubt a necessary condition

of the existence of the conception, but is far from being sufficient

for the real objective possibility of non-existence. I can

annihilate in thought every existing substance without

self-contradiction, but I cannot infer from this their objective

contingency in existence, that is to say, the possibility of their

non-existence in itself. As regards the category of community, it

may easily be inferred that, as the pure categories of substance and

causality are incapable of a definition and explanation sufficient

to determine their object without the aid of intuition, the category

of reciprocal causality in the relation of substances to each other

(commercium) is just as little susceptible thereof. Possibility,

existence, and necessity nobody has ever yet been able to explain

without being guilty of manifest tautology, when the definition has

been drawn entirely from the pure understanding. For the

substitution of the logical possibility of the conception- the

condition of which is that it be not self-contradictory, for the

transcendental possibility of things- the condition of which is that

there be an object corresponding to the conception, is a trick which

can only deceive the inexperienced.*

*In one word, to none of these conceptions belongs a corresponding

object, and consequently their real possibility cannot be

demonstrated, if we take away sensuous intuition- the only intuition

which we possess- and there then remains nothing but the logical

possibility, that is, the fact that the conception or thought is

possible- which, however, is not the question; what we want to know

being, whether it relates to an object and thus possesses any meaning.

It follows incontestably, that the pure conceptions of the

understanding are incapable of transcendental, and must always be of

empirical use alone, and that the principles of the pure understanding

relate only to the general conditions of a possible experience, to

objects of the senses, and never to things in general, apart from

the mode in which we intuite them.

Transcendental analytic has accordingly this important result, to

wit, that the understanding is competent' effect nothing a priori,

except the anticipation of the form of a possible experience in

general, and that, as that which is not phenomenon cannot be an object

of experience, it can never overstep the limits of sensibility, within

which alone objects are presented to us. Its principles are merely

principles of the exposition of phenomena, and the proud name of an

ontology, which professes to present synthetical cognitions a priori

of things in general in a systematic doctrine, must give place to

the modest title of analytic of the pure understanding.

Thought is the act of referring a given intuition to an object. If

the mode of this intuition is unknown to us, the object is merely

transcendental, and the conception of the understanding is employed

only transcendentally, that is, to produce unity in the thought of a

manifold in general. Now a pure category, in which all conditions of

sensuous intuition- as the only intuition we possess- are

abstracted, does not determine an object, but merely expresses the

thought of an object in general, according to different modes. Now, to

employ a conception, the function of judgement is required, by which

an object is subsumed under the conception, consequently the at

least formal condition, under which something can be given in

intuition. Failing this condition of judgement (schema), subsumption

is impossible; for there is in such a case nothing given, which may be

subsumed under the conception. The merely transcendental use of the

categories is therefore, in fact, no use at all and has no determined,

or even, as regards its form, determinable object. Hence it follows

that the pure category is incompetent to establish a synthetical a

priori principle, and that the principles of the pure understanding

are only of empirical and never of transcendental use, and that beyond

the sphere of possible experience no synthetical a priori principles

are possible.

It may be advisable, therefore, to express ourselves thus. The

pure categories, apart from the formal conditions of sensibility, have

a merely transcendental meaning, but are nevertheless not of

transcendental use, because this is in itself impossible, inasmuch

as all the conditions of any employment or use of them (in judgements)

are absent, to wit, the formal conditions of the subsumption of an

object under these conceptions. As, therefore, in the character of

pure categories, they must be employed empirically, and cannot be

employed transcendentally, they are of no use at all, when separated

from sensibility, that is, they cannot be applied to an object. They

are merely the pure form of the employment of the understanding in

respect of objects in general and of thought, without its being at the

same time possible to think or to determine any object by their means.

But there lurks at the foundation of this subject an illusion

which it is very difficult to avoid. The categories are not based,

as regards their origin, upon sensibility, like the forms of

intuition, space, and time; they seem, therefore, to be capable of

an application beyond the sphere of sensuous objects. But this is

not the case. They are nothing but mere forms of thought, which

contain only the logical faculty of uniting a priori in

consciousness the manifold given in intuition. Apart, then, from the

only intuition possible for us, they have still less meaning than

the pure sensuous forms, space and time, for through them an object is

at least given, while a mode of connection of the manifold, when the

intuition which alone gives the manifold is wanting, has no meaning at

all. At the same time, when we designate certain objects as

phenomena or sensuous existences, thus distinguishing our mode of

intuiting them from their own nature as things in themselves, it is

evident that by this very distinction we as it were place the

latter, considered in this their own nature, although we do not so

intuite them, in opposition to the former, or, on the other hand, we

do so place other possible things, which are not objects of our

senses, but are cogitated by the understanding alone, and call them

intelligible existences (noumena). Now the question arises whether the

pure conceptions of our understanding do possess significance in

respect of these latter, and may possibly be a mode of cognizing them.

But we are met at the very commencement with an ambiguity, which may

easily occasion great misapprehension. The understanding, when it

terms an object in a certain relation phenomenon, at the same time

forms out of this relation a representation or notion of an object

in itself, and hence believes that it can form also conceptions of

such objects. Now as the understanding possesses no other

fundamental conceptions besides the categories, it takes for granted

that an object considered as a thing in itself must be capable of

being thought by means of these pure conceptions, and is thereby led

to hold the perfectly undetermined conception of an intelligible

existence, a something out of the sphere of our sensibility, for a

determinate conception of an existence which we can cognize in some

way or other by means of the understanding.

If, by the term noumenon, we understand a thing so far as it is

not an object of our sensuous intuition, thus making abstraction of

our mode of intuiting it, this is a noumenon in the negative sense

of the word. But if we understand by it an object of a non-sensuous

intuition, we in this case assume a peculiar mode of intuition, an

intellectual intuition, to wit, which does not, however, belong to us,

of the very possibility of which we have no notion- and this is a

noumenon in the positive sense.

The doctrine of sensibility is also the doctrine of noumena in the

negative sense, that is, of things which the understanding is

obliged to cogitate apart from any relation to our mode of

intuition, consequently not as mere phenomena, but as things in

themselves. But the understanding at the same time comprehends that it

cannot employ its categories for the consideration of things in

themselves, because these possess significance only in relation to the

unity of intuitions in space and time, and that they are competent

to determine this unity by means of general a priori connecting

conceptions only on account of the pure ideality of space and time.

Where this unity of time is not to be met with, as is the case with

noumena, the whole use, indeed the whole meaning of the categories

is entirely lost, for even the possibility of things to correspond

to the categories is in this case incomprehensible. On this point, I

need only refer the reader to what I have said at the commencement

of the General Remark appended to the foregoing chapter. Now, the

possibility of a thing can never be proved from the fact that the

conception of it is not self-contradictory, but only by means of an

intuition corresponding to the conception. If, therefore, we wish to

apply the categories to objects which cannot be regarded as phenomena,

we must have an intuition different from the sensuous, and in this

case the objects would be a noumena in the positive sense of the word.

Now, as such an intuition, that is, an intellectual intuition, is no

part of our faculty of cognition, it is absolutely impossible for

the categories to possess any application beyond the limits of

experience. It may be true that there are intelligible existences to

which our faculty of sensuous intuition has no relation, and cannot be

applied, but our conceptions of the understanding, as mere forms of

thought for our sensuous intuition, do not extend to these. What,

therefore, we call noumenon must be understood by us as such in a

negative sense.

If I take away from an empirial intuition all thought (by means of

the categories), there remains no cognition of any object; for by

means of mere intuition nothing is cogitated, and, from the

existence of such or such an affection of sensibility in me, it does

not follow that this affection or representation has any relation to

an object without me. But if I take away all intuition, there still

remains the form of thought, that is, the mode of determining an

object for the manifold of a possible intuition. Thus the categories

do in some measure really extend further than sensuous intuition,

inasmuch as they think objects in general, without regard to the

mode (of sensibility) in which these objects are given. But they do

not for this reason apply to and determine a wider sphere of

objects, because we cannot assume that such can be given, without

presupposing the possibility of another than the sensuous mode of

intuition, a supposition we are not justified in making.

I call a conception problematical which contains in itself no

contradiction, and which is connected with other cognitions as a

limitation of given conceptions, but whose objective reality cannot be

cognized in any manner. The conception of a noumenon, that is, of a

thing which must be cogitated not as an object of sense, but as a

thing in itself (solely through the pure understanding), is not

self-contradictory, for we are not entitled to maintain that

sensibility is the only possible mode of intuition. Nay, further, this

conception is necessary to restrain sensuous intuition within the

bounds of phenomena, and thus to limit the objective validity of

sensuous cognition; for things in themselves, which lie beyond its

province, are called noumena for the very purpose of indicating that

this cognition does not extend its application to all that the

understanding thinks. But, after all, the possibility of such

noumena is quite incomprehensible, and beyond the sphere of phenomena,

all is for us a mere void; that is to say, we possess an understanding

whose province does problematically extend beyond this sphere, but

we do not possess an intuition, indeed, not even the conception of a

possible intuition, by means of which objects beyond the region of

sensibility could be given us, and in reference to which the

understanding might be employed assertorically. The conception of a

noumenon is therefore merely a limitative conception and therefore

only of negative use. But it is not an arbitrary or fictitious notion,

but is connected with the limitation of sensibility, without, however,

being capable of presenting us with any positive datum beyond this

sphere.

The division of objects into phenomena and noumena, and of the world

into a mundus sensibilis and intelligibilis is therefore quite

inadmissible in a positive sense, although conceptions do certainly

admit of such a division; for the class of noumena have no determinate

object corresponding to them, and cannot therefore possess objective

validity. If we abandon the senses, how can it be made conceivable

that the categories (which are the only conceptions that could serve

as conceptions for noumena) have any sense or meaning at all, inasmuch

as something more than the mere unity of thought, namely, a possible

intuition, is requisite for their application to an object? The

conception of a noumenon, considered as merely problematical, is,

however, not only admissible, but, as a limitative conception of

sensibility, absolutely necessary. But, in this case, a noumenon is

not a particular intelligible object for our understanding; on the

contrary, the kind of understanding to which it could belong is itself

a problem, for we cannot form the most distant conception of the

possibility of an understanding which should cognize an object, not

discursively by means of categories, but intuitively in a non-sensuous

intuition. Our understanding attains in this way a sort of negative

extension. That is to say, it is not limited by, but rather limits,

sensibility, by giving the name of noumena to things, not considered

as phenomena, but as things in themselves. But it at the same time