39

ART. III.-PSYCHOLOGY OF KANT.*

BY PROFESSOR HOPPUS.

(Continued from vol. xi. p. 521.)

For

We now proceed, from the Categories, to further developments. Our philosopher next gives us what he terms the deduction of the categories, meaning their derivation from their transcendental (à priori) source in the understanding itself, which applies them to the objects of our senses, since these objects constitute the matter, the categories the forms of our knowledge. knowledge is possible only on two conditions-intuition, by which the object is given merely as bare phenomenon, that is, something presented to sense-and conception, by which it is thought. Kant is too chary of examples. But here he says: "A savage sees a house in the distance, but he knows not its use; he has the same object before him as another man has who knows it as a place to dwell in; but, in form, there is a difference; to the savage there is only intuition (Anschauung), to the other intuition and conception (Begriff), at the same time."t Now, the diversity of representations which are given in intuition (which is sensuous) are simply a mode in which we are passively affected: but the act by which this diversity is brought to unity in any case, does not come from our senses; nor is it included in the pure form of intuition-either space or time. In all cases of the union of different elements, whether they are given in our sensuous or in our thinking nature, there is an act of the understanding which we term a synthesis. All combination implies both diversity and unity. Sensible things furnish us with intuitions or sensuous representations: understanding collects and unites them by its syntheses, and thus gives rise to empirical conceptions. In all our knowledge, sense and understanding must concur to produce the result.

In thus collecting into one diverse representations, the understanding, which is the faculty of cognition (knowledge,) must have the aid of imagination, memory, and consciousness. Reproductive imagination is required, because the putting together, mentally, of a diversity of sensible representations is an affair which must take place by successive steps: imagination must be always ideally reproducing, at each step, the parts which are successively put together, or they would be lost to us, and the picture would be imperfect. But such a reproduction involves the memory of what has already presented itself to our

* Immanuel Kant's sämmtliche Werke, (Rosenkranz,) Leipzig.

+ Logik: Einleitung, V.

+ Vorstellungen; presentations would here be a better word, though not usual.

senses. Again, memory implies the conviction of consciousness that the successive representations which present themselves in us are always identical. Thus every synthesis which the understanding makes when it thinks the objects of sense, is effected by the joint agency of imagination, memory, and consciousness -faculties which Kant regards as subservient to it.

The whole discussion on the "transcendental deduction" of the categories, or the legitimacy of their origin in the spontaneous activity of the understanding, and of their application to phenomena, is sufficiently obscure, although this portion of the Kritik was almost entirely recast in the second edition. It is closely interwoven with Kant's theory of consciousness-no longer now, as before, regarded as attaching to sensuous intuition, but as developed in the acts of the understanding—the faculty of thought. His speculations on consciousness are involved in considerable difficulty; and the changes he made, in different editions, on this subject, indicate something like a want of reliance on his own statements.

Here we must remind the reader that we have already glanced at our author's doctrine of internal sense-that is, of the intuition of self and our internal state, of which the form is time, since all that passes within us must take place in time. We have seen that he has identified this internal sense of self and its states, with consciousness (Bewusstseyn); and he says that, by means of it, the phenomenal reality of myself and of my internal state are clear to me. In the Transcendental Esthetic, he described the consciousness of oneself, or " apperception," as the simple representation of the ego; and he adds, that the subject (mind) intuits or views itself according to the manner in which it is internally affected, or as it appears, not as it is-that is, the mind is presented to itself phenomenally only, like any phenomenon of external sense. Hence this sort of consciousness is an affair of sense, and not of understanding; we are as passive in it as we are when a sound salutes our ears, or the sun dazzles our eyes.

.*

In his doctrine of the understanding, however, Kant presents to us a very different view of consciousness. It is now an affair of thought, not of sense. The terms, indeed, in which these two aspects of the subject are expressed (Bewusstseyn-Apperception) are used in reference to both, which tends to perplexity rather than to clearness;† but when he wishes to distinguish the con

* Das Bewusstseyn seiner selbst (Apperception) ist die einfache Vorstellung des Ich, etc., Vid. Kritik (Rosenkranz), Supplem. XI. This whole passage contains the main development of Kant's theory of consciousness as identified with the internal Perhaps some light may be thrown on this obscure portion of the Kritik, by a reference to the two different views which have been entertained respecting con

sense.

sciousness of thought from the consciousness of sense, he names the former apperception, the latter internal sense. We give a very few brief quotations:

"The I think (Ich denke) must accompany all my representations, or else they would be in relation to me nothing. Representation given previously to all thought is called intuition. All the diversity of intuition has a necessary relation to the I think, in the subject (mind) in which this diversity is found. But this representation, I think, is an act of spontaneity; that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility. I call it pure apperception. It is a selfconsciousness to which all my representations belong, and in which I unite them.* I am conscious of a necessary à priori synthesis of my representations, which is called the original synthethic unity of apperception. In systems of psychology, the internal sense is commonly held to be one with this faculty of apperception; while we, on the contrary, carefully distinguish them."

"How the ego which thinks is distinct from the ego which intuits (views) itself, and is yet one and the same with it, as the same subject-how I as thinking intelligence know myself as an object thought, in intuition, like other phenomena-not as I am in myself, and as considered by the understanding, but merely as I appear?-is a question neither more nor less difficult than the question, How can I be an object to myself?-how can I be an object of my intuition and inward perceptions? Such, however, is the fact."

As regards internal intuition, we know our own subject (mind) as phenomenon, and not as it is in itself. On the other hand, in the transcendental synthesis of manifold representations, consequently in the synthetical unity of apperception, I am conscious to myself, not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that Ĩ representation is a thought, not an intuition."

am. This

"I do not see why so much difficulty should be found in admitting that our internal sense is affected by ourselves; every act of attention exemplifies it. . . . . The I think expresses the act of determining my own existence; but the mode in which it is determined is not given in this spontaneous act; my existence remains determinable in a purely sensuous manner, as the existence of any other phenomenon.” † sciousness among English writers. Some hold that consciousness is that power of inward self-survey, by which we make the conception of self and our internal states an object of attention and thought. Others say, that the having any sensation or thought, or being in any state whatever, however passively, is consciousness; and these would not allow that the term should be restricted to the peculiar state in which we are when we are making the idea of self and our internal modifications a special object of attention. Perhaps the two views admit of being somewhat harmonized, but our sphere forbids our entering on this subject. Possibly Kant intended both a general and a special consciousness: he evidently saw no contradiction in his theory, as given under the head of sense, and as given here under the head of understanding, though he was quite alive to the mystery of the fact that the mind can and does direct itself to an observation of its acts and states, as its own.

* Wolf says (Metaphys, cap. iii. § 194,) "Die Verbindung der Vorstellung mit dem Bewusstseyn heisst denken."

+ Kritik der r. Vernunft: Deduction der reinen Verstandes-begriffe. Ausg. 2.

It is evident from these statements and others that might be quoted, that Kant held with two principles in consciousness, which were always found co-existing. This union of both has perhaps saved him from wholly contradicting himself on this subject.* The internal sense, the instrument of psychological observation, is not the same thing as the faculty of pure apperception. It is in the same relation to this latter as external sense is. The ego as a thinking subject is to be distinguished from the ego as an object of intuition and thought. Self-consciousness, or mere intuition, is not yet knowledge of self: this knowledge is the product of the operation of the understanding on the data of internal sense. Kant strenuously maintains that "the "I think' is, in all acts of consciousness, one and the same;" and that, unaccompanied by it, no representation whatever, and therefore not the simple representation of the ego, 66 can exist for me." He inquired into the contents of consciousness, and aimed to show what there is in it that is sensuous and empirical, as belonging merely to the internal sense, and what there is à priori and belonging to the understanding. The internal sense contains no synthesis; therefore the diversity of representations or intuitions which present themselves in it would have no meaning, unless to this diversity there were superadded a certain unity. The synthetic process which reduces to unity the various matter furnished by intuitions, both pure and empirical, is a spontaneous operation of the understanding; and this unity has its principle in the unity of consciousness—that is, in the pure apperception " I think." The diversity of representations to the mind produce only "empirical apperceptions:" the unity comes from the synthetic power of pure or primitive apperception, or the self-consciousness which attends all thought, and is its proper seat. Kant sometimes terms this principle of unity in which all representations belong to one identical ego, the transcendental unity of apperception, as being the principle of all knowledge, and therefore of the categories-it is indeed the highest principle of the understanding itself. It is primitive and absolute, the basis of all the activity of the understanding, a condition of all knowledge and of all intuition.

But from this subjective unity of consciousness by means of which everything is referred to the ego, we are to distinguish that objective unity by means of which the variety of intuition is referred to an object. The act of understanding by which the latter unity is effected is the judgment. Objective knowledge is therefore subjected to the primitive elements of judgment—that is, to the categories. These, though only simple forms of thought, have an objective validity in their application to phenomena, which

* M. Cousin, however, maintains that the two views are in absolute contradiction, and wonders that no critic of Kant has ever pointed this out. Leçons sur Kant, 5.

these forms determine. Our experience of all nature becomes possible only by means of these categories, for that experience must be in accordance with them. As the à priori conditions of experience, they are not derived from nature-they constitute its laws. The phenomena of nature have reality, therefore, only in relation to our sensuous faculties: their laws only exist for our faculty of thought. We know nothing of things in themselves or their laws. The laws of phenomena are all that we know, and these are the laws of thought. Nature is nothing but the systematic aggregate of phenomena, such as we conceive them in virtue of the laws of our faculties of sense and understanding.

2. The Analytic of Principles (Analytik der Grundsätze) next follows. It is to be a guide to the faculty of judgment in applying to phenomena the categories, which are the necessary conditions of à priori principles, as will appear; for understanding includes both conception and judgment; which latter faculty brings particular cases under some general rule or form.

The schematism of the pure conceptions of the understanding (categories) is the first point to be noticed under this "transcendental doctrine of judgment." When an object is brought under a conception, the representation must be homogeneous with the conception. The empirical conception we form of a plate is homogeneous with the pure geometrical conception of a circle; for the roundness which is thought in the latter, is intuited (seen) in the former. But the pure conceptions of the understanding are not at all homogeneous with sensuous intuitions, and can never be discovered in them. How then can phenomena be brought under the categories? Take, as an instance, the second of the categories of relation,* which is causality. This is not an object of sense. We do not see causes: we only think them. We simply see changes and successions of phenomena—that is, we see objects in different circumstances. How then are we entitled to unite the pure conceptions of the understanding with these intuitions of sense? There must be, says Kant, some third thing, some medium, homogeneous with the special category and with the particular object which is to be subsumed under it. This medium must be both sensuous and intellectual.

This medium is time. It is the "transcendental schema;"+ for it is the form or condition under which all the objects of sense must present themselves to us. They all appear in time; and all conception and thought must also go on in time. Time is the common form both of external and internal sense. It is therefore the uniting bond of both; and its transcendental determi

* See the Table of the Categories in our Number for July, 1858.

+ Aristotle uses this term (oxnua) for the figures of the syllogism.-Analyt. Prior. Lib. i. cap. 6.