OF THE CONCEPTIONS OF PURE REASON.
The conceptions of pure reason- we do not here speak of the
possibility of them- are not obtained by reflection, but by
inference or conclusion. The conceptions of understanding are also
cogitated a priori antecedently to experience, and render it possible;
but they contain nothing but the unity of reflection upon phenomena,
in so far as these must necessarily belong to a possible empirical
consciousness. Through them alone are cognition and the
determination of an object possible. It is from them, accordingly,
that we receive material for reasoning, and antecedently to them we
possess no a priori conceptions of objects from which they might be
deduced, On the other hand, the sole basis of their objective
reality consists in the necessity imposed on them, as containing the
intellectual form of all experience, of restricting their
application and influence to the sphere of experience.
But the term, conception of reason, or rational conception, itself
indicates that it does not confine itself within the limits of
experience, because its object-matter is a cognition, of which every
empirical cognition is but a part- nay, the whole of possible
experience may be itself but a part of it- a cognition to which no
actual experience ever fully attains, although it does always
pertain to it. The aim of rational conceptions is the comprehension,
as that of the conceptions of understanding is the understanding of
perceptions. If they contain the unconditioned, they relate to that to
which all experience is subordinate, but which is never itself an
object of experience- that towards which reason tends in all its
conclusions from experience, and by the standard of which it estimates
the degree of their empirical use, but which is never itself an
element in an empirical synthesis. If, notwithstanding, such
conceptions possess objective validity, they may be called conceptus
ratiocinati (conceptions legitimately concluded); in cases where
they do not, they have been admitted on account of having the
appearance of being correctly concluded, and may be called conceptus
ratiocinantes (sophistical conceptions). But as this can only be
sufficiently demonstrated in that part of our treatise which relates
to the dialectical conclusions of reason, we shall omit any
consideration of it in this place. As we called the pure conceptions
of the understanding categories, we shall also distinguish those of
pure reason by a new name and call them transcendental ideas. These
terms, however, we must in the first place explain and justify.
