Reading Guide: CPR, Transcendental Logic: Dialectic, pt.1
Transition: Transcendental Judgment
(354-355)
“Land of Truth”: Understanding within the boundaries of Nature
(356)
Uses of Pure Concepts of Understanding
Empirical use: concept related to appearances (objects of possible experience)
Transcendental use: concepts related to things in general and in themselves
(357-358)
Kant does a run-through of our inability to define concepts without taking recourse to the “conditions of
sensibility.” Consequently, ignoring this limitation evacuates pure concepts of all significance and bearing.
However, it is the natural disposition of theoretical reason to strive for knowledge beyond these
limitations of possible experience, which may lead to illusion.
Logical Possibility vs. Possibility of Transcendental Existence
The main mistake of our understanding is to, through reason, substitute logical possibility for possibility
of transcendental existence: “For the deception of substituting the logical possibility of the concept … for
the transcendental possibility of things … can deceive and satisfy only the inexperienced” (358)
(358-360)
Results:
1. Pure concepts have only empirical use, not transcendent use
2. Ontology is replaced by a more precise and humble method: analytic of understanding
3. No synthetic a priori principles beyond the field of possible experience
4. Pure concepts have transcendental SIGNIFICANCE, but no transcendental USE
5. Confusion: pure concepts are not grounded on sensibility (like space/time), thus it seems natural they
could be extended beyond those conditions, but this is false: they are the “forms of thought, which
contain merely the logical capacity for unifying the manifold given in intuition in a consciousness a
priori” (360), thus without sensibility they have even less significance than pure intuition
Phenomena & Noumena
1. Phenomena – (beings of sense) objects as appearances in which we distinguish the way we intuit them
from their own constitution
2. Noumena – (beings of understanding) objects thought through the understanding
(360, bottom-362)
Clarification: Noumena can be understood in two ways (negative/positive), one of which is a grave error.
The negative sense of noumena is that they are not objects of sensible intuition. The positive sense is that
they are objects of non-sensible intuition. This latter sense Kant rejects entirely.
(362-363)
Limitation, Noumenon as a Boundary Concept
Thus, Kant explains that we have no intellectual intuition, and that noumena are only an indication of our
limitation. We have no positive insight into the possibility of noumena – it is a boundary concept, and
only has a problematic status. In short, noumenon is a PROBLEMATIC concept (unavoidable thought,
necessarily unverifiable), but NOT an intellectual OBJECT.
(363-365)
Kant ends with some commentary on this issue in the philosophies of his contemporaries, and a
conclusion about the impossibility of transcendental USE of the pure concepts of the understanding, and
the impropriety of assuming positive noumena as “pure, merely intelligible objects.”
Transcendental Dialectic, Introduction
(384-386)
Analytic is a Logic of Truth, Dialectic is a Logic of Illusion
Transcendental logic as an analytic, which had to do judgments and with the relation between
Understanding and Sensibility, was explaining a “logic of truth,” since it deals with the possibility of
agreement between understanding and sense in a judgment. [Note: Kant stresses that our sensibility and
our understanding cannot err in themselves. It is only in judgment that truth or error can occur]
Transcendental logic as dialectic, conversely, is a “logic of illusion” having to do with TRANSCENDENT
principles that “incite us to tear down all those boundary posts [of Understanding and Sensibility] and to
lay claim to wholly new territory that recognizes no demarcations anywhere” (385-6).
(386)
Transcendental vs. Transcendent
1. Transcendental: The categories (pure concepts of understanding) are transcendental, but have no
transcendental use (only empirical use in possible experience). Their principles are immanent.
2. Transcendent: These principles (posited by Reason) are transcendent in that they attempt to overstep
the boundaries of possible sensible experience and extend our cognition beyond sense. These are
transcendent or supersensible.
Reason is the Cause of Transcendental Illusion
Kant explains that this illusion is unavoidable and natural to reason, and that the dialectic will be an
attempt to uncover the logic of these illusions.
“Hence there is a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason…” (386-387)
(387-389, pt.A)
On Reason, Supreme Faculty of Cognition
1. Reason has two aspects: 1. in relation to the understanding and cognition in general, it is a logical
capacity of drawing mediate inferences; 2. it also is a transcendental capacity that “generates
concepts”
2. Reason is distinguishable from Understanding as a “faculty of principles” (as opposed to a faculty of
rules)
“If the understanding may be a faculty of unity of appearances by means of rules, then reason is the
faculty of the unity of [those] rules of understanding UNDER principles” (389). Thus, Kant confirms that
reason is the last faculty to “work on the matter of intuition and bring it under the highest unity of
thinking” (387)
(389-390, pt.B)
This section discusses the logical use of reason with the plan of distinguishing it from pure use of reason.
Inferences of Understanding vs. Syllogisms
1. IU = immediate inferences, in which the other propositions are inferred from analysis of one that
contains them
2. S = inferences that require an intermediate (mediating) proposition
Kant explains the judgments of Relation classify the 3 logical forms of syllogistic reasoning: categorical,
hypothetical, disjunctive.
(390-393, pt.C)
This section asks whether the logical procedure of inference by Reason exemplified in syllogisms (i.e. the
logical use of reason) can help us isolate the faculty and explicate it to reveal whether it is a source of
concepts itself.
Pure Reason as Subjective Law
“Yet [Reason] does not prescribe any law to objects, and does not contain the ground of the possibility of
cognition and determining them in general [as understanding does], but rather is merely a subjective law
of economy for the provision of our understanding…” (391, my brackets/italics)
Question: Does Reason Contain A Priori Synthetic Principles and Rules?
Clues from Syllogisms (logical use of reason):
1. Syllogism does not deal with intuition, but rather inferences from concepts and judgments. Thus, the
unity of reason is NOT the unity of possible experience
2. Since the rule of any syllogism can be subjected to the same inferential process by reason, we can see
that reason endlessly seeks the unconditioned for conditioned cognitions.
In short, reason naturally seeks the highest unity of particulars as its supreme principle, inevitably going
beyond possible experience to draw its conclusions.
Kant concludes that this supreme principle of pure reason can generate many principles, all of which will
be transcendent with respect to appearances. The task of the following analysis of Reason is to answer all
the “whether” questions he lists from bottom 392 to end of 393.
Transcendental Dialectic, Concepts of Pure Reason
(394-395, top)
Reflected vs. Inferred Concepts (Ideas)
Kant begins by distinguishing between the nature of the concepts in understanding, and the possible
concepts we are pursuing in the exploration of reason.
1. Reflected Concepts – the pure concepts of the understanding (categories) are “reflected” in the sense
that they contain the “unit of reflection on appearances”; these provide the material for inferences
 Concepts of understanding “serve for understanding perceptions”
2. Inferred Concepts – as concepts of reason, these are inferred from the cognitions made available
through the understanding; Kant renames them Ideas
 Ideas “serve for comprehension” (of a totality)
Note: the picture of the faculties so far:
Sensibility
intuitions
Understanding
concepts
Reason
ideas
Ideas never constitute “a member of the empirical synthesis” (detailed in the Aesthetic and Analytic as
cognition proper), but they can prove to be valid for experience, in which case they are “correctly inferred
concepts”; if not, then they arise by illusion of inference and are called “sophistical concepts” [note: think
of ideas as theories: they posit an ultimate idea of unity, but they cannot be verified as “in” the material
they use for inferences and whose order they try to explain]
(395-397)
Kant now turns to defining ideas more precisely, and thus clarifying the specific notion of transcendental
ideas. He begins by explaining that Plato was a pioneer in this topic, but did not develop the definition
consistently.
On Plato and his Ideas
Plato realized ideas could not be represented or be an object of experience, but that they were practically
operative in our everyday experience and were not just “figments of the brain”
[note: it is helpful to consider that ideas can only be EXEMPLIFIED, never made into concepts (of other
concepts, or intuitions)]
(398)
The “Spiritual Flight” and Morality
Kant admires Plato’s goals and some of his insights, especially in seeing the poverty of grounding morality
on empirical and experiential principles.
Reason’s Treasure Hunt
Kant laments that the uncritical pursuit of “majestic moral edifices,” reason’s “vain but confident treasure
hunting” via transcendental USE has undermined its value.
(398-399)
Overview of Representations
Representation (< genus, species v)
 Sensation –subjective perception (subject being affected)
 Cognition –objective perception (intuition or concept of an object of possible experience)
 Intuition –immediately related to object
 Concept –mediate relation to object
 Empirical Concept
 Pure Concept
 Notions –pure concept originating solely from understanding
 Idea –concept made up of notions which goes beyond possible experience
(399)
Analysis of Syllogisms
Kant explains that just as the logical forms of judgment, when “transformed into the concept of the
synthesis of intuitions,” yielded the categories of understanding, the logical forms of syllogisms, when
“applied to the synthetic unity of intuitions under the authority of the categories” will yield transcendental
ideas of reason.
[note: syllogisms are judgments inferred from judgments, and hence all species of RELATION]
(400-402)
Kant next explains that syllogisms are all species of relation, and thus there will be one idea of the
unconditioned for each class. He then clarifies his use of “absolute” in a long comment about its
degeneration and misuse in contemporary speculative philosophy.
(402)
The Transcendental Prescription of Direction
Reason prescribes the “DIRECTION toward a certain unity” which the understanding has no concept,
“proceeding to COMPREHEND all the actions of the understanding in respects to every object into an
absolute whole” (402, my caps)
(402-403)
Transcendental Ideas
1. are “problems” given by the nature of reason itself (not arbitrary)
2. are transcendent, corresponding to no object
3. are determined through an “absolute totality of conditions”
4. in theoretical use, they are “only ideas”
5. in practical use, they are necessary in respect to actual actions (serves as a “rule, original, and at least
limiting condition”)
(403-405)