Kant´s Notion of a Transcendental Schema. Lara Scaglia

ansolute prima, catholica et cuiuslibet praeterea in cognition humana sensitive quasi schemata et condiciones, bina esse, Tempus et Spatium, iam demonstrabo.”

57 “Tetens untersucht die Begriffe der reinen Vernunft bloss subjektiv (menschliche Natur), ich objektiv. Jene Analysis ist empirisch, diese transzendental.”

58 “Spatium non est aliquid obiectivi et realis nec substantia. Nec accidens, nec relatio; sed subiectivum et ideale er e natura mentis stabili lege proficiscens veluti schema, omnia omnino externe sense sibi coordinandi.”

59 “Intuitus autem purus (humanus) non est conceptus universalis s. logicus, sub quo, sed singularis, in quo sensibilia quaelibet cogitantur, ideoque continet conceptus spatii et temporis; qui, cum quoad qualitatem nihil de sensibilibus determinent, non sunt obiecta scientiae, nisi quoad quantitatem. Hinc MATHESIS PURA spatium considerat in GEOMETRIA, tempus in MECHANICA pura. Accedit hisce conceptus quidam, in se quidem intellectualis, sed cuius tamen actuatio in concreto exigit opitulantes notiones temporis et spatii (successive addendo plura et iuxta se simul ponendo), qui est conceptus numeri, quem tractat ARITHMETICA.”

60 “Die - Ansteckung - das contagium des Intelligiblen durch das Sinnliche, wie sie so deutlich in Newtons Gotteslehre hervortrat, ist beseitigt;”

61 “Non est aeternitas & infinitas, sed aeternus & infinitus; non est duratio & spatium, sed durat & adest. Durat semper, & adest ubique, & existendo semper & ubique durationem & spatium constituit. Cum unaquaeque spatii particula sit semper, & unumquodque durationis indivisibile momentum ubique, certe rerum omnium fabricator ac dominus non erit nunquam, nusquam”.

62 More specifically, Kant defines the understanding as the superior faculty of the soul characterised by two uses: usus realis, through which concepts of things and their relation are given, and usus logicus, proper to sciences, through which it is possible to subordinate inferior concepts to superior ones, related according to the logical principle of non-contradictoriness. Through the usus logicus appearance turns to experience: the understanding, confronts and coordinates empirical contents towards universality. But this does not imply that the sensible content can develop into an intellectual one; the intelligible, the pure ideas, are grasped (and not abstracted) from the understanding as symbols in its usus realis.

63 “Ich hatte mich in der Dissertation damit begnügt die Natur der intellectual Vorstellungen bloß negativ auszudrücken: daß sie nämlich nicht modifikationen der Seele durch den Gegenstand wären. Wie aber denn sonst eine Vorstellung die sich auf einen Gegenstand bezieht ohne von ihm auf einige Weise affiziert zu seyn möglich überging ich mit Stillschweigen. Ich hatte gesagt: die sinnliche Vorstellungen stellen die Dinge vor, wie sie erscheinen, die intellectuale wie sie sind. Wodurch aber werden uns denn diese Dinge gegeben, wenn sie es nicht durch die Art werden, womit sie uns affizieren und wenn solche intellectuale Vorstellungen auf unsrer innern Thätigkeit beruhen, woher kommt die Übereinstimmung die sie mit Gegenständen haben sollen”.

3.The introduction of the transcendental forms in the Critique of Pure Reason

      In this third chapter, I will present the necessary premises for understanding the problem of schematism in the Critique of Pure Reason. The literature on Kant’s main work is innumerable. The neo-Kantian school saw Hermann Cohen and Paul Natorp as main exponents and commentators of the Critique, who put the accent on the subjective process of cognition rather than on the existence of things in themselves. In his Kants Theorie der Erfahrung (1871) Cohen puts aside the interpretation of the things in themselves as causes of the impressions and interprets Kant’s account as a theory on experience. Later on Heinrich Rickert in his Kant als Philosoph der modernen Kultur. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch (1924), Grundprobleme der Philosophie Methodologie, Ontologie, Anthropologie (1934) and Ernst Cassirer in his Kants Leben und Lehre (1918) stress the importance in Kant’s philosophy of the problem of objectivity and the conditions of experience. In 1896 Hans Vaihnger founded the Kant-Studien, which will be later followed by reviews such as Studi Kantiani (1990), Kantian Review (1997) and Con-Textos Kantianos (2014).

      Among the commentators of the 20th Century, Willard Van Orman Quine opens up for discussion the distinction between analytical and synthetic judgements, while Peter Frederick Strawson combines his analytical standpoint and his interest in the transcendental philosophy in The Bounds of Senses (1966). Classical introductions and commentaries are those of Norman Smith A Commentary to Kant’s ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ (1918), Karl Vorländer’s Immanuel Kant, Der Mann und das Werk (1924) and Lewis White Beck’s Studies in the Philosophy of Kant (1965), Otfried Höffe’s Immanuel Kant (1983), Heiner F. Klemme’s Immanuel Kant (2004). Whilst Norbert Hinske’s Kant als Herausforderung an die Gegenwart (1980). Heinz Heimsoeth’s Transzendentale Dialektik. Ein Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 4 Teile (1966–71) and Herman Jan de Vleeschauwer’s La deduction transcendentale dans l’oeuvre de Kant (1934–37) are particularly concentrated on the Transcendental Deduction.

      For my purposes a text of great importance is Henry Allison’s Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. An Interpretation and Defense (2004), which gives a ←57 | 58→brilliant overview of the reasons for the importance of schematism. Recently, the Kant-Lexikon edited in 2015 by Marcus Willaschek, Jürgen Stolzenberg, Georg Mohr and Stefano Bacin provides the largest and most accurate lexical reference on the author taking into account the most contemporary research.

      I have made full use of this literature to elaborate the following chapter. In the first section, I will focus on the doctrine of sensibility and its forms, while in the second one on the Transcendental Analytic, in order to understand the need to include the schematism chapter in the project of the Critique, intended as an inquiry on the conditions of experience. This overview will provide an interpretation of Kant’s perspective as neither being idealistic (in a subjective sense) nor psychologistic.

3.1 The doctrine of sensibility

      Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is divided into Doctrine of Elements and Doctrine of Method: while the first doctrine concerns the two faculties of human cognition (sensibility and understanding); the second one focuses properly on the problem of method and aims at organising the conditions of cognition within a system.

The first chapter of the Doctrine of Elements constitutes the Transcendental Aesthetic, concerning sensibility, that is the faculty through which we are affected by things immediately, thus giving sensibility a sort of priority to the understanding (at least in the order of explanation of the process of cognition). A thing, in order to be thought, must be first of all be given: “[…] the conditions under which alone objects of human knowledge can be given must precede those under which they are thought.” (KrV A15/B29)⁶⁴

      The indeterminate object of an empirical intuition, called by Kant ‘phenomenon’ or ‘Erscheinung’, is given not only by matter but also by form:

“I call that in the appearance which corresponds to sensation its matter; but that which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations, I call the form of appearance.” (KrV A20/B34)⁶⁵←58 | 59→

In order to find the forms of sensibility, Kant analyses the phenomenon, isolating everything that belongs to the function of the understanding and to matter,