the power to know an object through these representations (spontaneity in the production of concepts). Through the first, an object is given to us; through the second, the object is thought in relation to that representation … Intuition and concepts constitute, therefore, the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuitions without concepts, can yield knowledge. Both may be either pure or empirical. When they contain sensation (which presupposes the actual presence of the object) they are empirical. When there is no mingling of sensation with the representation, they are pure. Sensation may be called the material of sensible knowledge. Pure intuition, therefore, contains only the form under which something is intuited; the pure concept only the form of an object in general. Pure intuitions or pure concepts are possible only a priori; empirical intuitions and empirical concepts only a posteriori.
If the receptivity of our mind, its power of receiving representations in so far as it is in any way affected, is to be called ‘sensibility’, then the mind’s power of producing representations from itself, the spontaneity of knowledge, should be called ‘understanding’. Our nature is so constituted that our intuitions can never be other than sensible; that is, it contains only the mode in which we are affected by objects. The faculty, on the other hand, which enables us to think the object of sensible intuition is the understanding. To neither of these powers may a preference be given over the other. Without sensibility, no object would be given to us; without understanding, no object would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind. It is therefore just as necessary to make our concepts sensible, that is, to add the object to them in intuition, as to make our intuitions intelligible, that is to bring them under concepts. These two powers or capacities cannot exchange their functions. The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their union can knowledge arise …
Transition to the transcendental deduction of the categories
… There are only two conditions under which the knowledge of an object is possible, first intuition, through which it is given, though only as appearance; and second, the concept (corresponding to this intuition) through which an object is thought. It is evident that the first condition, whereby objects can be intuited, does actually lie a priori in the mind as the formal ground of the objects. All appearances necessarily agree with this formal condition of sensibility, since only through it can they appear, that is, be empirically intuited and given. The question now arises whether a priori concepts do not also serve as antecedent conditions, needed if anything can be, not just intuited, but thought of as an object in general. In that case, all empirical knowledge of objects would necessarily conform to such concepts, because only by presupposing them in this way is anything capable of being an object of experience. Now all experience does indeed contain, in addition to the intuition of the senses through which something is given, a concept of an object as thereby given or appearing. Concepts of objects in general thus underlie all empirical knowledge as its a priori conditions. The objective validity of the categories as a priori concepts rests, therefore, on the fact that (so far as the form of thought is concerned) it is only through them that experience becomes possible. They relate of necessity and a priori to the objects of experience, since only by means of them can any object of experience be thought.
Specimen Questions
1 How does Kant’s theory of knowledge involve a synthesis of rationalist and empiricist elements?
2 Why does Kant think that all our knowledge starts with experience? How does he argue for this claim?
3 What is Kant’s understanding of a priori knowledge?
Suggestions for Further Reading (Including Internet Resources)
1 I. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [1781; 2nd edn 1787], trans. N. Kemp Smith (New York: St Martin’s, 1986).
2 For a sound summary of Kant’s arguments see R. Scruton, Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982).
3 For a general introductory survey of the philosophical tradition to which Kant belongs, see J. Cottingham, Rationalism (London: Granada, 1984).
4 An excellent study guide is J. R. O’Shea’s, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason: An Introduction and Interpretation (Durham: Acumen, 2012; available online 2013).
5 For detailed analysis and criticism of Kant’s arguments see R. C. S. Walker, Kant (London: Routledge, 1978); J. F. Bennett, Kant’s Analytic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, 1966); P. Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
6 A valuable collection of essays is P. Guyer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). See esp. introduction and ch. 2.
7 For a clear overview of Kant’s philosophy see Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy at https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/ (by M. Rohlf), and for an entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy go to https://www.iep.utm.edu/kantview/ (by T. Jankowiak).
8 You can find podcasts on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason by D. Robinson at https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/kants-critique-pure-reason, with an introductory lecture on Kant’s project, recorded for Oxford University in 2011. Also, from A. F. Holmes’s classic lecture series in the History of Philosophy, see his introductory lecture on Kant (episode 51) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc9Q3TBFMFs.
9 Another popular series of lectures with excellent explanations of Kant’s transcendental philosophy is by S. Stuart, to be found at https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/kants-epistemology/id544311813.
Notes
* Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason [Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 1781; 2nd edn 1787]. Trans. N. Kemp Smith (2nd edn, London: Macmillan, 1933); with minor modifications. The extracts printed here are from the Introduction, Sections 1 and 2 (B1–5); the ‘Transcendental Logic’, Section 1 (B74–5); and from the ‘Transcendental Analytic’, Bk I, ch. 2 (‘Transition to the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories’), B124–6.
1 1 Critique of Pure Reason, A493, B521.
2 2 See below, Part VII, extract 5.
3 3 See below, Part VII, extract 6.
9 From Sense-certainty to Self-consciousness: Georg Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit*
In standard courses on the theory of knowledge in the ‘analytic’ tradition which today dominates Anglo-American philosophy, it has often been the custom to move swiftly on from Kant to the twentieth century, with only the briefest of passing references to what happened in between. The principal casualty of such an approach is the Hegelian movement, which in fact exerted an enormous influence even in Britain and America during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is a notoriously hard writer to understand, and his high-flown and abstract style makes his ideas particularly difficult to summarize, or to present in excerpts.
