Kant´s Notion of a Transcendental Schema. Lara Scaglia

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This passage is only one example of many in the Prior Analytics, in which the term ‘schema’ is found. In this work, Aristotle focuses on his theory of the syllogism, whose propositions (premises and conclusion) consist of a major, a minor and a middle term, which joins these premises and whose position determines the schema, namely “figure” of the whole syllogism. Interestingly enough, this Aristotelian use of the noun ‘schema’ as a middle logical term was used not only during the Middle Ages, but also in modern logic¹⁰.←25 | 26→

      Theophrastus gives Aristotle’s view a more scientific rather than metaphysical bent. In his work on sensibility (On Sense Perception - Περὶ αἰσθήσεων -) he compares Democritus and Plato’s theories. He states that while both Plato and Democritus separate sensibility and understanding, Democritus does not ascribe an objective status to perception, since it merely depends on the subject’s sensible modifications. In contrast, objectivity is provided by a principle (archē), which consists in indivisible elements that cannot be grasped through the senses, namely the atoms, which are objects of the understanding and have quantitative and measurable features such as their size, dimension and shape or ‘schema’ (Thphr. Sens. 65–66).21

      Later on, Philo of Alexandria uses the notion to describe the physical external shape of things (Philo. Alex, De op. m. § 120), while Proclus attributes to ‘schema’ a new original, epistemological sense, which is close to that of Kant: it does not refer to external features of things or linguistic or logical structures, but rather to representations, which mediate between things and concepts, sensibility and intellectual activity (Proclus, In Euc., 51, 21, 94, 25). There is no evidence to support a direct, historical lineage to Kant, although the similarity of the two perspectives is impressive.

1.2 Middle Ages

According to several studies¹¹ during early medieval times, the Greek term ‘schema’ was translated by logicians into the Latin noun figura which derives from the verb fingĕre (modelling, shaping, giving form) and came to be used to talk about symbols, allegories, rhetorical figures¹² and qualities as well as to indicate the visible appearance of a person or the visible and tangible form of anything. But it was in its logical use, which refers to the Aristotelian ‘syllogistic figures’, that the noun became widespread in the philosophical works of these times. In Aristotle’s Lyceum, ‘schema’ was used to talk about the syllogistic figures. The oldest translation of the Greek ‘schema’ into the Latin ‘figura’ can be found in a passage from Cicero’s Brutus:

“The Greeks themselves acknowledge that the chief beauty of composition results from the frequent use of those mutated forms of expression which they call tropes, and of those ←26 | 27→various attitudes of language and sentiment which they call schemata [figures].”(Brut., 69, transl. E. Jones)¹³

      Another example of the synonymy and interchangeability of ‘schema’ and ‘figura’ is found in Augustin’s allusion to modes of speech, in his explanation of the term ‘enigma’:

“Chapter 9. - Of the Term Enigma, And of Tropical Modes of Speech. 15. What has been said relates to the words of the apostle, that we see now through a glass; but whereas he has added, in an enigma, the meaning of this addition is unknown to any who are unacquainted with the books that contain the doctrine of those modes of speech, which the Greeks call Tropes, which Greek word we also use in Latin. For as we more commonly speak of schemata than of figures, so we more commonly speak of tropes than of modes.”(De trinitate, XV, IX.15, transl. A. W. Haddan)¹⁴

      However, there are some controversies on the translation of the term ‘schema’ into ‘figure’ or ‘form’: the first being the Aristotelian figure of the syllogism, whilst the second concerns the logical form.

      For example, taking Boethius (475/477 – 524/526), who translates Aristotle’s Prior Analytics as well as the Topics: he develops in his main works, namely De syllogismo categorico, Introductio ad syllogismos categoricos, De hypotheticis syllogismis (Boethius 1882–1891) a theory on the hypothetical syllogism and modifies the figures (schemata) of syllogism by changing the translation of the copula used by Aristotle (Boethius uses the verb: “to be”, instead of the more literal “to belong”).←27 | 28→

This concept of schema as figura syllogismi is present also in the Dialectica (Abelard 1970) written by Peter Abelard which is completely based on Boethius’ theory of logic except for the introduction of an innovative method in reducing the four standard figures (called ‘schemata’), to the first one. Moreover, in a work wrongly attributed to Thomas Aquinas, the term ‘figura’ indicates the middle term which determines the structure of the judgement¹⁵.

      Later on, William of Ockham and John Buridan also used the noun ‘schema’ to indicate the figure of the syllogism. More specifically, the former, in his Summa logicae (Ockham 1974) proposes to substitute Aristotle’s method to prove syllogisms’ figures (ekthesis) through the use of a particular syllogism (called expository), in which the middle term (which determines the form or schema of the syllogism) is the subject of both premises. While the latter develops in his Summulae de Dialectica (Buridan 1487) and in Consequentiae (Buridan 1493) a theory of syllogism, considered as a kind of formal consequence, distinguished in figures (or ‘schemata’), the conclusion of which might be direct or indirect (i.e. the minor term is predicated of the major).

      This logical connotation of the noun endures in the Modern Ages also. However, it comes to possess also a new, epistemological sense, which later on develops and flourishes especially in the works of Kant.

1.3 Modern Ages

      Differing from the Middle Ages, the notion of schema in the Modern Ages returns to hold a variety of non-logical connotations: figurative (Wolff), rhetorical (Sturmius, Diderot, D’Alembert), biological (Ploucquet), physical (Bacon) and epistemic (Thomasius, Darjes, Tetens).

References to the use of the term are present in Rudolph Goclenius’s work (1547–1628) who relates it to ‘figure’ in two senses: first, in a geometrical sense and secondly, in a rhetorical one, which finds support in the work of Ioannes Sturmius (1507–1589), who defines ‘schema’ as argument, structure of discourse: “[…] schemata are arguments directed to prove and amplify, as similarities and examples.” (Goclenius 1613, p. 579, transl. L.S.)¹⁶←28 | 29→

      A more philosophical connotation is attributed to the term by Francis Bacon, who uses the notions ‘schematismus’ and ‘meta-schematismus’ (Bacon 1620, I, pp. 45–5) to indicate the structure of matter and its changes:

“The human understanding is carried away to abstraction by its own nature, and pretends that things which are in flux are unchanging. But it is better to dissect nature than to abstract; as the school of Democritus did, which penetrated more deeply into nature than the others. We should study matter, and its structure (schematismus), and structural change (meta-schematismus)” (Bacon 1620, I, p. 51, transl. M. Silverthorne)¹⁷

      In contrast with metaphysics, which looks for forms and essences beyond experience, he aims at elaborating a new method in philosophy, intended as an actual science, which works through the help of observations and experiments and aims to discover objective properties of nature. This