TRANSCENDENTAL LOGIC. SECOND DIVISION.
TRANSCENDENTAL DIALECTIC. INTRODUCTION.
I. Of Transcendental Illusory Appearance.
We termed dialectic in general a logic of appearance. This does
not signify a doctrine of probability; for probability is truth,
only cognized upon insufficient grounds, and though the information it
gives us is imperfect, it is not therefore deceitful. Hence it must
not be separated from the analytical part of logic. Still less must
phenomenon and appearance be held to be identical. For truth or
illusory appearance does not reside in the object, in so far as it
is intuited, but in the judgement upon the object, in so far as it
is thought. It is, therefore, quite correct to say that the senses
do not err, not because they always judge correctly, but because
they do not judge at all. Hence truth and error, consequently also,
illusory appearance as the cause of error, are only to be found in a
judgement, that is, in the relation of an object to our understanding.
In a cognition which completely harmonizes with the laws of the
understanding, no error can exist. In a representation of the
senses- as not containing any judgement- there is also no error. But
no power of nature can of itself deviate from its own laws. Hence
neither the understanding per se (without the influence of another
cause), nor the senses per se, would fall into error; the former could
not, because, if it acts only according to its own laws, the effect
(the judgement) must necessarily accord with these laws. But in
accordance with the laws of the understanding consists the formal
element in all truth. In the senses there is no judgement- neither a
true nor a false one. But, as we have no source of cognition besides
these two, it follows that error is caused solely by the unobserved
influence of the sensibility upon the understanding. And thus it
happens that the subjective grounds of a judgement and are
confounded with the objective, and cause them to deviate from their
proper determination,* just as a body in motion would always of itself
proceed in a straight line, but if another impetus gives to it a
different direction, it will then start off into a curvilinear line of
motion. To distinguish the peculiar action of the understanding from
the power which mingles with it, it is necessary to consider an
erroneous judgement as the diagonal between two forces, that determine
the judgement in two different directions, which, as it were, form
an angle, and to resolve this composite operation into the simple ones
of the understanding and the sensibility. In pure a priori
judgements this must be done by means of transcendental reflection,
whereby, as has been already shown, each representation has its
place appointed in the corresponding faculty of cognition, and
consequently the influence of the one faculty upon the other is made
apparent.
*Sensibility, subjected to the understanding, as the object upon
which the understanding employs its functions, is the source of real
cognitions. But, in so far as it exercises an influence upon the
action of the understanding and determines it to judgement,
sensibility is itself the cause of error.
It is not at present our business to treat of empirical illusory
appearance (for example, optical illusion), which occurs in the
empirical application of otherwise correct rules of the understanding,
and in which the judgement is misled by the influence of
imagination. Our purpose is to speak of transcendental illusory
appearance, which influences principles- that are not even applied
to experience, for in this case we should possess a sure test of their
correctness- but which leads us, in disregard of all the warnings of
criticism, completely beyond the empirical employment of the
categories and deludes us with the chimera of an extension of the
sphere of the pure understanding. We shall term those principles the
application of which is confined entirely within the limits of
possible experience, immanent; those, on the other hand, which
transgress these limits, we shall call transcendent principles. But by
these latter I do not understand principles of the transcendental
use or misuse of the categories, which is in reality a mere fault of
the judgement when not under due restraint from criticism, and
therefore not paying sufficient attention to the limits of the
sphere in which the pure understanding is allowed to exercise its
functions; but real principles which exhort us to break down all those
barriers, and to lay claim to a perfectly new field of cognition,
which recognizes no line of demarcation. Thus transcendental and
transcendent are not identical terms. The principles of the pure
understanding, which we have already propounded, ought to be of
empirical and not of transcendental use, that is, they are not
applicable to any object beyond the sphere of experience. A
principle which removes these limits, nay, which authorizes us to
overstep them, is called transcendent. If our criticism can succeed in
exposing the illusion in these pretended principles, those which are
limited in their employment to the sphere of experience may be called,
in opposition to the others, immanent principles of the pure
understanding.
Logical illusion, which consists merely in the imitation of the form
of reason (the illusion in sophistical syllogisms), arises entirely
from a want of due attention to logical rules. So soon as the
attention is awakened to the case before us, this illusion totally
disappears. Transcendental illusion, on the contrary, does not cease
to exist, even after it has been exposed, and its nothingness
clearly perceived by means of transcendental criticism. Take, for
example, the illusion in the proposition: "The world must have a
beginning in time." The cause of this is as follows. In our reason,
subjectively considered as a faculty of human cognition, there exist
fundamental rules and maxims of its exercise, which have completely
the appearance of objective principles. Now from this cause it happens
that the subjective necessity of a certain connection of our
conceptions, is regarded as an objective necessity of the
determination of things in themselves. This illusion it is
impossible to avoid, just as we cannot avoid perceiving that the sea
appears to be higher at a distance than it is near the shore,
because we see the former by means of higher rays than the latter, or,
which is a still stronger case, as even the astronomer cannot
prevent himself from seeing the moon larger at its rising than some
time afterwards, although he is not deceived by this illusion.
Transcendental dialectic will therefore content itself with exposing
the illusory appearance in transcendental judgements, and guarding
us against it; but to make it, as in the case of logical illusion,
entirely disappear and cease to be illusion is utterly beyond its
power. For we have here to do with a natural and unavoidable illusion,
which rests upon subjective principles and imposes these upon us as
objective, while logical dialectic, in the detection of sophisms,
has to do merely with an error in the logical consequence of the
propositions, or with an artificially constructed illusion, in
imitation of the natural error. There is, therefore, a natural and
unavoidable dialectic of pure reason- not that in which the bungler,
from want of the requisite knowledge, involves himself, nor that which
the sophist devises for the purpose of misleading, but that which is
an inseparable adjunct of human reason, and which, even after its
illusions have been exposed, does not cease to deceive, and
continually to lead reason into momentary errors, which it becomes
necessary continually to remove.
