Kant, Immanuel

KANT, IMMANUEL. - Philosopher, b. at Königsberg, capital of East Prussia, on 22 April 1724, d. there on 12 February 1804. He is unanimously considered the greatest thinker of the modern age; indeed, with him a new epoch of philosophy is made to begin. His life is almost devoid of external events: K., who lived almost always in his native city, remained a stranger to the great historical events of his time. The "Pietism" (v.) of his mother (his father was a saddler) exercised a strong influence on his spirit; the education he received at the Collegium Fridericianum, where he completed his secondary studies, was likewise conformed to Pietism. He subsequently attended the Faculty of Philosophy at Königsberg, where the teaching was conformed to the methods of the rationalism of Wolff, the popularizer of the Leibnizian system but with a greater centering on the "Enlightenment" dogma of the supremacy of reason as the sole source of truth. During his university years K. also devoted himself to the study of mathematics and physics and especially to that of Newton's physics, considered as the model of human knowledge. Having completed his courses and after having served as a private tutor in noble households, he set out on an academic career. In 1755 he obtained the venia legendi in philosophy; having failed in two attempts (in '56 and in '58) to obtain the official chair of philosophy, only in 1770 was he able to obtain that of logic and metaphysics, again at the University of Königsberg, where he taught until 1796, the year in which, owing to physical and mental decline, he gave up teaching.

Of a jovial and serene character, a man of few affections and friendships, meticulous almost to the point of exaggeration, open to the interests of culture, especially scientific culture: such was the character of K. The Pietist education, on the one hand, and the influences of the Enlightenment on the other, led him to reduce everything to the moral value of men and to the unprejudiced knowledge of nature. K., as man and philosopher, lacked a profound sensibility for the human and the divine (he is the philosopher of outer experience and not of inner experience) and therefore he lacked an authentic concept of man and of Christianity.

In K.'s intellectual formation it is necessary to note three important points: a) the Pietist education toward a sense of the dignity of man and of the inner life, of duty fulfilled in absolute independence from every external constraint and authority, confirmed by the reading of the works of Rousseau (v.), the critic of civilization and of rational "enlightenment," the defender of human "nature" as intimacy and spontaneity of feeling, consciousness of duty and of freedom; b) the Wolffian-Enlightenment formation, in some points contrasting with the other, exalting the supremacy of reason, a principle to which K. always remained faithful; c) the study of physics in the manner in which it is understood by Newton (v.), to which K. always looked even when he "critically" elaborated the problem of knowledge. Taking into account these three formative elements, to which must be added the strong influence of English empiricism (especially that of Hume), one sees already how K. was oriented in two directions that were not contrasting but divergent (two senses, but the one not against the other): supremacy of reason (Enlightenment-Wolff) and of physics as the model of rational knowledge (Newton), and together the problem of the conditions, the value and the limits of reason itself (empiricism-Hume); supremacy of human dignity as it reveals itself in the autonomous and inner moral consciousness (Pietism-Rousseau). In his intellectual formation are implicit the elements that explicitly explain the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason: "the starry sky above me, the moral law within me," words that, quite rightly, were chosen as the epitaph of the philosopher's tomb, inasmuch as they express the profound and essential meaning of his system.

I. THE SO-CALLED "PRE-CRITICAL WRITINGS.". — a) The writings of 1755-56. — Besides the Latin dissertation De igne (1755) and the other Monadologia physica (1756), notable from this period are the Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels (1755), published anonymously, in which is set forth the hypothesis (which became famous later, when it was taken up 41 years afterward by Laplace; and indeed it is known as the Kant-Laplace theory) that the solar system and that of the other celestial bodies originated from a primitive nebula; and the Latin dissertation Principiorum primorum cognitionis metaphysicae nova dilucidatio (1755), in which the argument for the existence of God is already formulated, which will be developed in a later writing, and in which there is already a lively interest in the problem of knowledge and, in particular, in that of "metaphysical knowledge."

b) From the writings of '62 to the "Dissertatio" of '70. — If the writings listed above are considered as belonging to the period of "dogmatic rationalism," those that follow are designated as testimony of the period called that of "skeptical empiricism"; namely: Die falsche Spitzfindigkeit der vier syllogistischen Figuren (1762); Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes and the Versuch, den Begriff der negativen Grössen in die Weltweisheit einzuführen, both from '63; Untersuchung über die Deutlichkeit der Grundsätze der natürlichen Theologie und der Moral (1764); and finally Träume eines Geistersehers, erläutert durch Träume der Metaphysik (1766). This group of writings presents in-

doubtful signs of the influence of English empiricism from Bacon to Hume. K. already begins to subject the principles of Leibnizian-Wolffian rationalism to critical revision, not in the sense that he doubts the validity of reason, but in the other sense that he does not see its efficacy and validity beyond the limits of experience. In particular, it should be noted that in the essay on Negative Quantities he, while not denying the objective validity of the principle of causality, highlights how the cause-effect relation remains incomprehensible, insofar as the "synthesis of reality" that it expresses is not reducible, as rationalism wanted, to the analytic procedure of pure logical thought. For now K. poses the problem without giving its solution. It should further be noted that the critical demand within rationalist dogmatism is posed not so much with regard to metaphysics as with regard to knowledge of the sensible world, that is, rationalism finds a limit precisely in the explanation of the sensible and not in that of the supersensible. Proof of this is also that in the same year K. resumes developing at length what he considers the only possible argument for a demonstration of the existence of God, in the essay of the same name. It can be formulated thus: to think is to affirm the possibility of an object; now one cannot think anything without the absolute necessity of a being, and therefore a necessarily existing being, being implicit in thought itself; this being is the "being in general," common to all our concepts, which are determinations of it; therefore being in general is the rational possibility, the foundation of particular possibilities. Such a being cannot be denied without denying thought, insofar as there is something thinkable for being in general; therefore the possible being is absolutely necessary; but since every possibility has its foundation in a reality or existence, therefore God exists as the principle of absolute possibility, the source of every reality. However, already in the Untersuchung of '64, K. holds it more necessary to "persuade oneself" of the existence of God than to "demonstrate" it. In the satirical essay Träume the confidence in the capacity of reason to know the supersensible and to demonstrate its existence is shaken. K., in fact, examining therein the fantasies of Swedenborg — a Swede famous at the time in Europe for his spiritual faculties and author of the eight volumes of the Arcana Caelestia — finds occasion to satirize the constructions of the metaphysicians, who claim to know everything about the supersensible. Instead, it escapes our cognitive faculties and can be neither affirmed nor denied. Already from this point, for K., metaphysics has a negative value (it demonstrates that its objects surpass the possibilities of reason) and a positive one, not with respect to itself, but with respect to the concepts of experience. There already takes shape the twofold Kantian position (which is then one) of metaphysics as "science of the limits of human reason" and of philosophy as determination of the concepts of experience, on which our judgments rest. As can be seen, the two phases outlined here do not present great discrepancies: at bottom, as has been maintained by some scholars, one finds critical elements in the writings of the so-called period of dogmatic rationalism and rationalistic elements in those of the so-called empiricist-skeptical period. K. is aware of how much truth is contained in the rationalistic demand and how much in the empiricist one and, amid oscillations and uncertainties, seeks the point of the solution. One cannot yet speak of awareness of the "criticist" position (at most it is implicit or barely glimpsed), nor of absolute dogmatism or of true and proper skepticism.

The criticist position is instead manifest in the De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis dissertatio (1770), with which the so-called "critical" period is unanimously made to begin. Indeed, there is found in it the fundamental intuition of the a priori, even if the whole deepening and extensive application that will come later are missing. In the Dissertation there is what will be the "transcendental aesthetic" in the Pure Reason: space and time are a priori forms of intuition and with them the sensible world is constituted as phenomenality. Therefore sensibility does not make us know reality as it is in itself (the supersensible), which instead is given to us by the intellect through the innate concepts (virtual or Leibnizian innatism) of existence, substance, cause, etc. (with their correlatives and opposites), if kept far from the contamination of the sensible phenomenon constituted by the forms of space and time. From this point of view the Dissertation, while containing the discovery of the a priori and of the phenomenality of sensible knowledge, represents, with respect to the problem of metaphysics, a less "critical" position (in the Kantian sense of the term) in comparison with the earlier writings. This explains why K., before writing the first Critique, meditated for ten years on the discovery of '70.

II. THE WORKS OF THE CRITICAL PERIOD

They begin with the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781), K.'s masterpiece, where the a priori is developed in its critical fullness and also takes in metaphysical knowledge. There followed the Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (1783), where the problems of the Critique are taken up again in a new form, such as to make them easier to understand and to dispel erroneous interpretations and obscurities. The Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785) and the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), another fundamental work, apply the principles of criticism (this is the name by which K.'s philosophy is designated) to the moral problem; the Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), the last fundamental work, addresses the problem of finality in nature. Among the minor writings mention should be made of: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (1786); Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793), the most remarkable of this group; Die Metaphysik der Sitten, comprising the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre and the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Tugendlehre, besides the Logik (1800) and the Pädagogik (1803).

III. THE PROBLEM OF THE «CRITIQUE»

Criticism presents itself first of all as a question of method, and in this it historically continues the great dialogue of rationalism and empiricism, divided and at the same time united (from Descartes and Bacon onward) precisely by this problem, posed in the following terms: in order to form true ideas about reality, must we start from reason or from experience? In the first case our ideas correspond to real things (as rationalism maintained), so that the deductive process of thought translates that of reality; or else this is given only by experience (as empiricism countered), but limited to what appears, so that the problem always remains unsolved whether ideas («sense impressions») actually correspond to things as they are in themselves? Rationalistic deductivism, whose typical procedure was the geometric method, had no doubts about the efficacy of analytic apriorism, as that which establishes a necessary connection of all beings, the only objective and therefore true knowledge. Empiricism, in its turn, asserted its critical claims, and precisely the impossibility of deducing the concrete real from abstract principles, so that experience turns out to be a twofold limit of reason, both with respect to the sensible and with respect to the supersensible.

The insufficiency and one-sidedness of the two methods pose the problem of method to K. again in precise terms: the aprioristic «analysis» of concepts cannot make us know reality; knowledge is «synthesis» or «connection» of data, which only experience can provide, but synthesis is impossible (and cannot have objective validity) without rational elements. If the innatism of concepts fed the illusion of rationalism of an a priori and purely analytic knowledge, the synthetic character of knowledge itself gave rise to the illusion of empiricism that sensible experience alone is sufficient to constitute knowledge. «To judge» (which for K. is «to know») is neither «adding» to one representation (subject) another (predicate) according to a purely empirical connection, nor «decomposing» analytically into its elements the concept that serves as subject and predicating one of them. Those of empiricism are «synthetic judgments», but a posteriori (they contain only sensible elements or states of consciousness) and therefore valid only subjectively; in them the connections are casual, of «succession» and «coexistence» of the data, with nothing necessary and universal; those of rationalism are «analytic judgments a priori», but precisely because «analytic» only «explicative», even if objective because deduced from rational principles independent of experience (Critica della ragione pura, Introd., § 4, Italian trans. by G. Gentile, Bari 1924, I, pp. 44-47). In short, the former are synthetic judgments, but only a posteriori; the latter are a priori, but only analytic. And here the problem is posed: by deepening the concept of experience, will it not perhaps be possible to discover conditions independent of it or a priori, which make experience itself possible? The question is no longer whether there are in us innate cognitions (a priori), but whether in experience there are pure a priori elements, conditions of it and such as to confer objectivity on human knowing. Therefore the objectivity of knowledge is given by reason (the only faculty that can give it, according to the legitimate claim of rationalism), but, on the other hand, since it is sensibility that provides the data, there is no knowledge without an a posteriori content to which to apply those a priori elements that constitute it into experience. Thus the activity of reason is «synthetic» (or of connection of sensory data) a priori insofar as the elements of the connection belong to reason itself and are immanent in it.

Are judgments of this kind possible, that is, syntheses of an a priori element or form and an a posteriori content? In other words, are synthetic a priori judgments possible, and not only "analytic a priori" ones (rationalism) or "synthetic a posteriori" ones (empiricism)? This is precisely one of the two central problems of the Critique of Pure Reason (Introd., § 6, ed. cit., I, pp. 51-52): to determine what the elements or a priori forms of our mind are and how they constitute experience. On the other hand, granted that the a priori forms require a sensible content, the question arises "whether metaphysics as a science is possible," given that the objects of metaphysics are supersensible. This is the other fundamental problem of the Critique. Criticism therefore presents itself as a "critique of experience" insofar as the "synthetic a priori judgment" is possible through the forms of reason, and as a "critique of metaphysics" insofar as the concept of "synthesis" posits metaphysics as a limit of reason itself, since its objects are pure, that is, not commingled with anything derived from experience. The claims of criticism are thus set forth with the new concepts of experience and of synthesis: experience is not adding a sensible to a sensible (empiricism), but is a construction of the rational subject, because it is possible through the necessary and universal relations established among sensibles (phenomena) by the a priori activity of thought; and synthesis does not mean that a content is added to a form (like a liquid poured into a vessel), but implies the activity of the subject, who constructs experience. This is the most original point of criticism; the order of things is formed by the activity of thought, which organizes sensory data — which in themselves are not experience — according to laws or forms of its own, universal and necessary. It is not nature that imposes laws on thought, but thought that gives laws to nature. This is what K. himself calls the "Copernican revolution" of philosophy: not the subject conforming to the object, but the subject as orderer and constructor of the world of experience, which is an irreducible synthesis of form and content, so that pure form without content is "empty" and content alone without form is "blind." To demonstrate that the human subject is capable of synthetic a priori knowledge means for K. to demonstrate that mathematics and physics are possible as sciences (ibid., ed. cit., I, pp. 49-51), but not yet that metaphysics is possible, since its objects are supersensible. On the other hand, there is a "natural metaphysics," as a human need, spontaneous and profound, for the supersensible, which, whatever the failures any metaphysical construction may meet with, is indestructible. Can this need be satisfied? And to what extent is a pure a priori knowledge possible? Before reason "dogmatically" abandons itself to metaphysical flights beyond the limit of experience, like the dove that "might imagine that it could fly much better in empty space without air" (ibid., Introd., ed. cit., I, p. 43), it is necessary that it "critically" examine its capacities before "the tribunal" of itself, in order to decide, according to its eternal and immutable laws (ibid., preface to the 1st ed., ed. cit., I, p. 7), whether it is permitted to found a metaphysics as a science or whether it is condemned to experience, every a priori construction being a mere "illusion" (ibid., preface to the 2nd ed., ed. cit., I, p. 31). The critique of reason is therefore a critique of pure reason as an activity independent of experience. But it is evident that the problem of metaphysics thus posed refers back to the solution of the other problem already mentioned: what are the conditions of the objective validity of knowledge in general. In this sense the first two parts of the first Critique are an introduction to the solution of the problem of metaphysics, which remains the central problem of criticism. Thus for K. it is no longer a matter of constructing a theory of knowledge, but of establishing the critique of knowing in general in order to ascertain to what extent man is capable of objective knowledge and whether reason has the means to construct a metaphysics as a rational science. Hence the parts of the Critique of Pure Reason: "Transcendental Aesthetic" ("aesthetic" in the sense of the doctrine of "sensibility" in general) or philosophy of mathematics; "Transcendental Logic" or philosophy of pure physics, divided into "Transcendental Analytic" (analysis of the a priori concepts) and "Transcendental Dialectic" (or critique of the dialectical illusion of reason, or of the use it makes of the a priori concepts beyond experience).

IV. THE "A PRIORI" FORMS OF KNOWING AND THE LIMITS OF PURE REASON

The knowledge that refers to objects and that every thought aims at as a means is what K. calls intuition (v.). The capacity (receptivity) "to receive" representations in the manner in which we are affected by objects he calls sensibility. Accordingly, objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone provides us with intuitions; but these are thought by the understanding, and from it concepts derive. The action of an object on the representative capacity, insofar as we are affected by it, is sensation. That intuition which refers to an object by means of sensation is called empirical. The undetermined object of an empirical intuition is called phenomenon, of which "matter is what corresponds to sensation," while "form" is "that whereby the manifold of the phenomenon can be ordered in determinate relations." All representations in which nothing belonging to sensation is mixed are "pure," and therefore the pure form of sensible intuitions is found in the mind, and it is what K. calls pure intuition. Transcendental aesthetic is the "science of all the a priori principles of sensibility" (Crit. of Pure Reason, I, part 1, § 1, ed. cit., pp. 63-65). "Transcendental" is the term by which K. designates the a priori, namely: it is not "empirical," insofar as it is not derived from or dependent on experience; and it is not "transcendent," insofar as, although not deriving from experience, it is valid only when applied to it, as the law or form by which we know the objects of experience itself. There are two forms of sensible intuition: space, or outer sense, by which we represent objects outside us, which is not an empirical concept but a "necessary a priori representation" that underlies all outer intuitions and makes geometry possible "as synthetic a priori knowledge" (ibid., I, part 1, sec. 1, §§ 2 and 3, pp. 67-69); and time, or inner sense, likewise not empirical and a necessary a priori representation, in which "one after another, two contradictory opposite determinations can meet together in one thing" (ibid., sec. 2, § 5, p. 75). Outside these two transcendental forms (or a priori conditions) of sensibility, no experience can be conceived.

To intuit an object sensibly is not to think it, and therefore other relations are needed to transform intuitions into concepts. It is the understanding that, by means of "functions" of its own, or categories, unifies the various intuitions and formulates synthetic a priori judgments. K. distinguishes (in the second part of the Pure Reason, called "Transcendental Logic," and precisely in that part of it called "Transcendental Analytic") judgments according to: 1) the quantity; 2) quality; 3) relation; 4) modality; and from these classes of judgments he derives respectively twelve categories: 1) totality, plurality, unity; 2) reality, negation, limitation; 3) substance and accident, cause and effect, action and reaction; 4) possibility and impossibility, existence and non-existence, necessity and contingency. By means of the universal and necessary categories the understanding constitutes sensible impressions into thought objects. But in order that the manifold representations be unified, it is necessary that they be referred to a point of reference. This center, for K., is the consciousness that I have of being always the same. Therefore, through the identity of my consciousness, in the succession of representations, I can establish relations among them and thus unify them in an object. The I think (Ich denke) is the condition of their unity. But it is not enough that the representations be in me: in the act by which I unify them, they are mine, but distinct from me, representations of mine but of something. The manifold individual subjects presuppose a deeper unity, that which K. calls consciousness in general (Bewusstsein überhaupt) or transcendental I, or organizing activity, according to universal laws, of all possible representations of all possible empirical consciousnesses. Consciousness in general in every subject expresses itself as the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, which manifests itself in the "I think." This consciousness does not act outside individual consciousnesses, inasmuch as the I think cannot be abstracted from inner sense, proper to empirical consciousness, which becomes self-consciousness because through it universal consciousness acts (ibid., I, part 2, § 17 and 18, pp. 133-35). The I think is the legislator of nature, the constructor of the world of experience, the unifier of the manifold into concepts of objects. It does not, however, know itself in itself, as "res cogitans" or substantial soul, but as transcendental activity, that is, in its modes of "functioning."

But there is heterogeneity between the pure concepts or categories, forms of possible concepts, and sensory impressions. And then, "how is the subsumption of these under those possible, and therefore the application of the category to phenomena?" (ibid., I, part 1, l. II, ch. 1, p. 159). K. resolves the problem with the doctrine of schematism: there is a third term homogeneous, on the one hand, with the categories and, on the other, with the phenomenon, so that it renders possible the application of the former to the latter; and it is the transcendental schema. The schema is in itself a product of the imagination, but it is to be distinguished from the image. "Now I call the schema of the imagination of a concept the representation of the general procedure whereby the imagination provides that concept with its image. In fact, at the basis of our pure sensible concepts there are not images of objects, but schemata" (ibid., p. 161). The schematism of our understanding is "a hidden art" in the depths of the human soul. "We can say only this: the image is a product of the empirical faculty of productive imagination; the schema of sensible concepts (as of figures in space) is a product and, so to speak, a monogram of pure a priori imagination, by which and according to which images first become possible; which images, moreover, are never connected to the concept except always by means of the schema which they designate; and in themselves they never perfectly coincide with it (the concept)" (ibid., p. 162). The schema of substance, for example, "is the permanence of the real in time, that is, the representation of the real as substratum of the empirical determination of time in general; a substratum which therefore remains while everything else changes" and "the schema of cause and of the sensibility of a thing in general is the real, to which, once it is posited, something else always follows. It consists therefore in the succession of the manifold, insofar as it is subjected to a rule" (ibid., p. 163), and so on. "The schemata therefore are nothing but a priori determinations of time according to rules, and these refer, according to the order of the category, to the series of time, to its content, to its order, and finally to the sum of time with respect to all possible objects" (ibid., p. 164).

From what has been said two conclusions can be drawn: a) the objectivity of knowledge (mathematics and physics) is given by the a priori bonds that the subject establishes among sensory data; b) the transcendental a priori forms are valid only if applied, as unifying, to sensory data. Consequently our knowledge is only of phenomena. But K. does not identify all reality with the phenomenon. We receive sensory impressions and, therefore, there is a reality in itself from which the impressions come to us, but we always apprehend reality as it appears to our consciousness, that is, through the subjective forms of space and time. But man naturally aspires to the knowledge of the unconditioned or of the absolute, the object of metaphysics. Is it possible to satisfy this aspiration? As we know, for K., if one of the two elements of the synthesis is lacking, there is no longer knowledge; now the unconditioned is not given to us by any experience, and therefore to claim to know it with the forms of the understanding is to make the latter function in a void, since a content is lacking. Criticism therefore recognizes the irrepressibility of the metaphysical exigency, but declares unjustified and impossible to realize the pretension of reason to know the supersensible. To these pretended knowledges K. gives the name of Ideas (a pure form devoid of sensible content); and he reduces to three the Ideas of pure reason corresponding to the three fundamental problems of special metaphysics, according to Wolff's systematization, namely: a) the idea of the absolute unity of the thinking subject or idea of the soul as substance (rational psychology); b) the idea of the absolute unity of the series of phenomena (rational cosmology); c) the idea of the absolute unity of all objects of thought (rational theology). In short, the ideas of the soul, of the world and of God. In attempting to resolve these problems, reason becomes entangled in false reasonings (paralogisms and sophisms) and in contradictions, insofar as it extends the a priori forms of the understanding beyond experience. It fashions for itself and deludes itself into knowing objects corresponding to them (K. devotes to the treatment of the ideas of reason more than half of the Critique of Pure Reason, and precisely the other part of Logic, which he calls "Transcendental Dialectic").

Indeed: a) rational psychology turns the soul into a simple, immortal substance, etc. The paralogism lies precisely in making the "I think," which is known as the synthesizer of experience, into a substance — that is, in claiming to know the soul beyond experience and in illegitimately using the category of substance, which serves to unify phenomena. "I think myself in the service of a possible experience, while I still abstract from every real experience, and I conclude from this that I can be conscious of my existence even outside experience and its empirical conditions. Thus I exchange the possible abstraction of my empirically determined existence for the supposed consciousness of a possible existence separate from my thinking Self, and I believe I know what is substantial in me as transcendental subject, whereas in thought I have merely the unity of consciousness, which is the foundation of every determination as the mere form of knowledge" (ibid., II, p. 327). b) Similarly, rational cosmology claims to attain an unconditioned principle that represents the totality of phenomena and of their conditions. From this claim arise what K. calls the antinomies or conflicts of pure reason, in each of which the thesis and the antithesis are equally justifiable. But both the thesis and the antithesis start from a mistaken presupposition — namely, they presuppose that it is possible to know the idea of the totality of phenomena (the unconditioned), when such an idea is never given by intuition. c) Finally, rational theology claims to demonstrate the existence of the Supreme Being or God. For K., three proofs are possible: ontological, cosmological, physico-theological. We shall limit ourselves to mentioning the critique of the ontological proof, which regards the proposition "God exists" as analytic — that is, as having the predicate of existence contained in the essence of the subject. K. observes: "you have already committed a contradiction when, into the concept of a thing that you wished to think solely in its possibility, you have introduced, even if under a hidden name, the concept of its existence"

(ibid., II, p. 371). In its logical use, "being" is not a real predicate, but the copula of a judgment. Therefore when I say "God is," I do not affirm a new predicate of the concept of God, and hence "the real contains nothing more than the merely possible. A hundred real thalers amount to nothing more than a hundred possible thalers... The object of reality is not contained, without further ado, analytically in my concept, but is added synthetically to my concept (which is a determination of my state) without this causing the hundred thalers of thought to be increased in the least by being intrinsic to my concept" (ibid., II, pp. 472-73). In the case of the most perfect Being or God, existence cannot be added synthetically because there is no sensible content of God — he is beyond experience. Pure reason therefore cannot demonstrate the existence of God: experience is the limit of human knowledge. K. concludes that the claim of pure reason to know the objects of metaphysics (the soul, the world, freedom, God) is unjustified and that, consequently, a metaphysics as science is not possible, precisely because there is science only of what is an object of experience. The use of the ideas of pure reason is not gnoseological, inasmuch as the ideas are not constitutive principles of our knowledge, but only regulative or normative. He distinguishes between "natural theology" and "transcendental theology," the latter of which has "an important negative use, and is a constant censure of our reason, if this has to deal simply with pure ideas, which for that very reason admit of no measure other than the transcendental" (ibid., II, p. 499). If transcendental theology convinces reason of the impossibility of demonstrating the existence of God, on the other hand it convinces it of the impossibility of denying it. "The supreme Being therefore remains, for the merely speculative use of reason, a simple but perfect ideal, a concept that closes and crowns the whole of human knowledge, and whose objective reality, it is true, is not demonstrated, but can also not be contested; and if there is to be a moral theology capable of supplying this defect, then transcendental theology, at first only problematic, demonstrates its necessity for the determination of its concept and for the incessant censure of a reason very often deceived by sense and not always in agreement with its own ideas" (ibid., II, p. 500).

V. PRACTICAL REASON AND ITS POSTULATES

Only an a priori form or a law can confer on the will the character of universality and necessity. Consequently, morality cannot be founded on subjective principles, such as feeling in all its forms: sentimentalist, sympathetic, hedonistic, eudaemonistic, utilitarian moralities, etc., are therefore insufficient (Cr. d. r. pratica, part 1, Ital. trans., 3rd ed., Bari 1924, pp. 26 ff.). For an action to be moral it is necessary that the will be independent of every particular object and that it determine itself unconditionally according to the law, which, for K., is duty (Grundlegung, ch. 1 § 4). "Thou shalt" is the categorical imperative ("imperative" because it is a command that demands obedience; "categorical" because it is unconditional), the tone that the law of practical reason assumes in us, valid for the will of every rational being (ibid., ch. 2, § 3-4). Man, however, is not only pure will, but also natural "inclinations," which impel him to act not from duty, but from sympathy, for pleasure, for utility, etc. Morality is severe discipline, subordination of inclination to the law. The first formula of the categorical imperative therefore runs thus: "Act in such a way that the maxim of your action can always at the same time hold as a universal principle of conduct" (ibid., § 6). For this to happen it is necessary that no particular content determine my action. If, for example, I act for my own utility, the maxim of my action holds for me — and for me in those determinate particular circumstances — and cannot hold for everyone (another in my place might act differently). But in that case the maxim of my action is empirical and subjective and therefore is not a universal law of conduct. Hence the categorical imperative commands no action, no determinate good, inasmuch as there is no good and no action, however noble, that can hold universally and always for all rational beings. Every particular good is always conditioned by determinate circumstances: for example, you must also die, if the fatherland is in danger. This command holds not universally, but in a determinate circumstance ("hypothetical imperative"). In every action one must therefore always distinguish the law or form from the content. The content or matter of the will is particular and a posteriori; the form is the universal law a priori. Now the particular action is moral when it is willed according to the form or rational law, not for the effects we expect from it, but from the duty of performing it. Only thus can a particular end enter into a universal order. In short, only the action conformable to the law is good, and good will is that which determines itself according to the law. Only the rational being is a moral person and therefore only he is an end. Hence the second formula of the categorical imperative: "Act in such a way as to treat humanity [rationality] both in your own person and in the person of another always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (ibid., II, § 10). Now the subject of all ends is every rational being as an end in himself (on the basis of the second principle): from this there now follows the third practical principle of the will as the supreme condition of its agreement with universal practical reason, namely the idea of the will of every rational being considered as a universally legislating will" (ibid., § 12).

The will that determines itself according to the law is autonomous, unconditioned; if for another motive, heteronomous (Cr. d. r. prat., part 1, ch. 2, § 8, pp. 40-41). Hence, according to K., to place the motive of action in the feeling of pleasure or pain, of utility or interest, in instinct or in something else, is to deny the autonomy of the will. Even if the command is placed in God, such autonomy ceases. All ethics other than his are therefore heteronomous. The fact that the will must not depend on external circumstances and that the law commands nothing in particular has led to K. being accused of "formalism," and not entirely without reason. It must be recognized, however, that for K. content is indispensable to the moral action. He does not say to act without inclination, but to act from duty. One may therefore act also with inclination provided that the end of the action is always the fulfillment of the law. Morality thus conceived is distinguished from legality, which is the exterior conformity to the law (ibid., part 1, ch. 3, p. 26). For the law, legality and external sanction suffice. Therefore an action may be not legally condemnable, but morally condemnable. If I do not steal only for fear of prison I cannot be punished, but morality nonetheless condemns my intention to steal. The juridical order, which by external coercion imposes respect for the law, is necessary to society, inasmuch as it makes possible the coexistence of the freedom of individuals, that is, it prevents the abuses of one from hindering the freedom of others. For the law, however, to exercise this function of its own, a power is necessary that makes it respected, namely the authority of the State. For K., the function of the State is limited solely to the protection of the law.

With morality we have entered the world of the supersensible, of the unconditioned, and hence it is legitimate to re-examine the problems of metaphysics in the domain of practical reason. Morality and autonomy of the will are not possible without freedom, which is therefore a postulate of morality. Moreover, virtue, the unconditioned moral good, is not the highest good, even though it is the "supreme good"; happiness must be added to it (Cr. d. r. prat., part 1, bk. IV, p. 133 ff.). The perfect adaptation of the will to the moral law is holiness. Of this perfection, however, no rational being of the sensible world at any point of its existence is capable. From the need to realize perfection and to attain the highest good, and from the impossibility of realizing it in this life, is born the faith in the immortality of the soul (second postulate of morality), which makes us believe that we continue, beyond this life (ibid., ch. 2, § 4, p. 146 ff.), the progress toward perfection. For the realization of the complete good, that is, for the attainment of virtue accompanied by happiness, a third postulate is necessary: the existence of God. Indeed, since nothing in nature guarantees the union of virtue and happiness, it is necessary to postulate the existence of a cause of the world distinct from the world itself, as the principle of the connection of happiness and virtue. This cause is God (ibid., ch. 2, § 5, p. 148 ff.). Freedom, the immortality of the soul and God are the three postulates of morality.

Thus the three regulative ideas of speculative reason are now necessary truths for practical reason. Not that there is objective knowledge of the metaphysical ideas, but only a practical necessity of admitting their existence. Speculative reason recognizes the legitimacy of the demands of practical reason, but moral faith is not demonstrated truth; and therefore an extension of pure reason in the practical respect is conceivable, without its knowledge as speculative being thereby extended (ibid., part 1, bk. II, ch. 2, § 6, pp. 160 ff.). In other words, for practical demands, man acts as if the will were free, the soul immortal and God existent. Therefore practical persuasion (I am "subjectively" persuaded that God exists) and not rational demonstration valid "objectively." "Transcendental theology" authorizes only "moral theology" and not "natural" or "rational" theology.

The theoretical and practical principles already set out contain a pedagogical conception, as the autonomous formation of the personality. K.'s pedagogy (a collection of lecture notes drawn up by a disciple) is a speculative deepening of Rousseau's Émile (v.). K. is against every form of sentimentalism: the autonomy of the person is realized in the rigid and conscious subordination to the law of duty, which coincides with freedom. Only respect for the law is capable of forming a character, of making man feel his own dignity, and of enabling the spirit to find an unsuspected strength to tear itself away from every sensible affection and to have, in the independence of its intelligible nature and in the greatness of the soul, a compensation for its sacrifices. For K., man by nature is neither good nor evil. He becomes good when he raises himself to the idea of duty and of the law. The aim of education must be precisely to make man morally good, that is, to give him the possession of virtue, which is mastery of himself, autonomy and freedom of the person.

The problem of religion, too, is treated by K. from the point of view of criticism; religion within the limits of mere reason is a rationalist interpretation of Christian doctrine (the supersensible we can represent to ourselves only symbolically: and the dogmas of positive religions are "symbols" of moral virtues, having only a practical value), so much so that, because of its Enlightenment spirit, Frederick William II of Prussia had the old philosopher admonished to refrain from demolishing the foundations of Christianity.

VI. THE PURPOSE OF NATURE

The world of phenomenal nature is governed by necessity, the moral world by freedom; hence the two worlds are antithetical. Man participates in both, and therefore it is not a matter of indifference to him to know whether nature hinders or does not hinder the realization of his ends. That is: is a finalistic representation of the world possible, in which the mechanism of natural causes does not present itself as an obstacle to the attainment of the ends of the moral life? This is precisely the problem that K. sets out to resolve in the Critique of Judgment. To this end he introduces a new form of judgment, the reflecting judgment (different from the determining judgment, that is: the universal — the category — is determined in the particular to which it is applied), in which, given the intuition of the particular, the mind reflects upon it in order to connect it with a universal that is not a concept but is lived in feeling (Introd., IV, Ital. trans., Bari 1923, p. 17). The Critique of Judgment has as its object the reflecting judgments, by which the particulars of nature are referred to a universal order of finality in which they are comprised.

Two forms of reflecting judgment make possible a finalistic representation of nature: the aesthetic judgment and the teleological judgment. The aesthetic representation is intuition of the pure form of the Beautiful: given only the particular, the judgment finds the universal in it, that is, refers it to the pure form of the Beautiful. "The pleasure in the beautiful is neither a pleasure of enjoyment, nor of a lawful activity, nor of reasoned contemplation according to ideas, but a pleasure of mere reflection; and, without having as its guide either an end or a principle, it accompanies the common apprehension of an object, which results from the imagination, as the faculty of concepts, through a procedure of judgment that must also be found in the most common experience; with this difference, however, that in the latter case the judgment aims at an empirical objective concept, whereas in the former (in the aesthetic judgment) it has only the purpose of perceiving the finality of the representation with respect to the harmonious (subjectively final) action of the two cognitive faculties in their freedom, that is, of feeling with pleasure the state of the representative activity" (ibid., part 1, section I, book II, § 39, p. 145). It is a disinterested enjoyment that suggests an accord between nature and our faculty of knowing, as if nature were constituted to arouse this enjoyment in us. The aesthetic feeling (as feeling and pleasure) is subjectivity that is not subjective but objective, inasmuch as for K. the Beautiful is a universal form like the true and the good. This correspondence between us and things is still more manifest in living organisms, where the accord among the various parts of a being is thought by us as determined by the concept of an end (teleological judgment). But reflecting judgments always have a "regulative" and not a cognitive value. Not a "theological physics," but a "physical theology (properly physico-teleological)," which "can at least serve as a propaedeutic to a true theology, giving occasion, through the consideration of the ends of nature of which it offers a rich material, to the idea of a final end, which nature cannot establish; and therefore it can make felt the need of a theology that sufficiently determines the concept of God for the supreme practical use of reason, although it cannot produce it and ground it sufficiently on its proofs" (ibid., part 2, section II, p. 368).

VII. The key to the whole Kantian system — architectonic, complete and powerful for depth and originality of inquiry (it is an obligatory point of passage of philosophical research and has influenced world thought) — is the discovery of the a priori as transcendental, that is, as the objective form of a sensible content. From this it follows: a) that knowledge is of the phenomenon; b) that experience is the limit of knowledge; c) therefore a metaphysics as science is not possible, but only as moral faith. But the reduction of the a priori or of the categories to a pure transcendental condition is an unjustified affirmation, not critically deduced and demonstrated. K. reduced the real elements of knowing to functions of the intellect, and it is evident that the objectivity of knowledge no longer escapes a fundamental subjectivity; in fact, the knowledge of things is knowledge of phenomena, and the world is our "representation." If the ideas are empty forms of a sensible content, their functioning remains blocked by experience, and knowledge is valid only within these limits, that is, within the limits of physico-mathematical science. But in this way the critical concept of the a priori, which has its limit of functionality in experience, and the critical concept of experience, which has its limit in the a priori that organizes it, are critical by halves: they are critiques of the concept of science, not critiques of the concept of metaphysics; the a priori has its adequation in the world (in the natural order: "the starry heaven" and "the moral law") and consequently the world is its supreme finality, and hence also its first initial one. Enough: with this God is eliminated from the order of thought and from the order of reality; it is no longer even explained how the exigency of God and the Ideas of reason can arise, which are not justified, within the Kantian system, even as postulates of practical reason: K. introduces them, but they remain extraneous to the Critique as he understands it, which resolves itself into the system of "cosmicity" (M. F. Sciacca, Filosofia e metafisica, Brescia 1950, pp. 188-189). "Critical" reason is not that which denies to itself the capacity to go beyond experience, but is the reason that knows it cannot but go beyond experience and itself. Only if reason knows that truth is more and not less than it, does it find itself and God again. Therefore the problem of God's existence is not added to experience (as it were from outside), but is implicit in the very problem of experience and in experience itself. In this sense, experience is testifying: by the fact that I am there (and the world is there), God exists. If God were only an idea of reason in the Kantian sense, he would be a pure possible: but to say that God is only possible is to say that he is impossible; and everything suddenly becomes impossible and inexplicable. The true critical problem is not that of experience as the limit of reason, but that of the critique of experience, that is, of proving that the problem of experience adequately resolved demonstrates rationally (and not as a pure and pragmatic moral exigency) the existence of God. The fact is that the Kantian system tends to do without God, who is replaced by the I think, legislator of nature and of the moral world. The autonomy of pure and practical reason is significant in this regard: it means the founding of natural and human science (moral, juridical, etc.) independently of metaphysics and hence of natural theology. K.'s thought is fundamentally atheistic and skeptical, and therefore it has nourished all later forms of secular (and dogmatic) rationalism, as well as those of pragmatism and fideism. Kantian transcendentality is therefore irreconcilable with the natural order of reason and with Catholic dogma.

Italian translations: Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by G. Gentile and G. Lombardo Radice, Bari 1909; Critique of Practical Reason, trans. by F. Capra, ibid. 1908; Critique of Judgment, trans. by A. Gargiulo, 4th ed., ibid. 1907; Minor Writings, trans. by P. Carabellese, ibid. 1923; Prolegomena, trans. by P. Martinetti, Turin 1913; Metaphysical Foundations of Morals, trans. by G. Vidari, Bari 1908; Metaphysics of Morals, trans. G. Vidari, ibid. 1921; Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. by A. Poggi, Modena 1941; Pedagogy, trans. by N. Abbagnano, Turin 1930.

Bibliographical guides: E. Adickes, German Kantian Bibliographie, New York 1895-96; Überweg, III, 12th ed., Berlin 1924, pp. 709-49.

Principal monographs: C. Cantoni, K., 3 vols., Milan 1883; F. Paulsen, K., sein Leben und seine Lehre, Stuttgart 1898; T. Ruysen, K., Paris 1909; A. D. Lindsay, The Philos. of K., London 1913; J. Ward, A study of K., Cambridge 1922; P. Lamanna, K., 3 vols., Milan 1925; E. Boutreux, La philos. de K., Paris 1926; P. Carabellese, La filosof. de K., I. Florence 1926; A. Renda, Il criticismo, fondamenti etico-religioni, Palermo 1927. — Still good today: K. Fischer, I. K. und seine Lehre, Heidelberg 1880; E. Caird, The critical philos. of K., London 1889.

On the pre-critical period: A. Guzzo, K. pre-critico, Turin 1924; E. Oggioni, K. empirista, Milan 1947.

On the Critique of Pure Reason: H. Vaihinger, Kommentar zur K. d. r. V., 2 vols., Stuttgart 1881-92; F. Tocco, Studi kantiani, Palermo 1910; H. Cornelius, Kommentar zur K. d. r. V., Erlangen 1926; L. Scaravelli, Saggio sulla categoria kantiana della realtà, Florence 1947. On moral philosophy: V. Delbov, La philosophie pratique de K., Paris 1905. On the doctrine of law and history: K. Borries, K. als Politiker, Leipzig 1928. On the doctrine of religion: C. J. Webb, K.'s philosophy of religion, Oxford 1926; C. Sestroul, La phil. rel. de K., Brussels 1912; W. Reinhard, Über das Verhältnis von Sittlichkeit und Religion bei K., Bern 1927.

Michele Federico Sciacca