I know, of course, what some of my philosophical friends will say. 'You speak of thoughts,' they will say, 'we speak of facts. You begin with the general, we begin with the particular. You trust to reason, we trust to our senses.' Let me quote in reply one of the most positive of positive philosophers, one who trusts to the senses, who begins with the particular, and who speaks of facts. Condillac in his famous Essai sur l'Origine des Connaissances humaines, writes: 'Soit que nous nous élevions, pour parler métaphoriquement, jusque dans les cieux, soit que nous descendions dans les abîmes, nous ne sortons pas de nous-mêmes; et ce n'est jamais que notre pensée que nous apercevons.' This was written in 1746.
And what applies to these, applies to almost all other problems of the day. Instead of being discussed by themselves, and with a heat and haste as if they had never been discussed before, they should be brought back to the broader ground from which they naturally arise, and be treated by the light of true philosophy and the experience gained in former ages. There is a solid ground formed by the thoughts of those who came before us, a kind of intellectual humus on which we ourselves must learn to march on cautiously, yet safely, without needing those high stilts which seem to lift our modern philosophers above the level of Locke, and Hume, and Kant, and promise to enable them to advance across the unknown and the unknowable with wider strides than were ever attempted by such men as Faraday, or Lyell, or Darwin, but which invariably fall away when they are most needed, and leave our bold speculators to retrace their steps as best they can.
Kant's Philosophy as judged by History
If my translation of Kant were intended for a few professional philosophers only, I should not feel bound to produce any credentials in his favour. But the few true students of philosophy in England do not want a translation. They would as little attempt to study Kant, without knowing German, as to study Plato, without knowing Greek. What I want, and what I hope for is that that large class of men and women whose thoughts, consciously or unconsciously, are still rooted in the philosophy of the last century, and who still draw their intellectual nutriment from the philosophical soil left by Locke and Hume, should know that there is a greater than Locke or Hume, though himself the avowed pupil and the truest admirer of those powerful teachers. Kant is not a man that requires testimonials; we might as well require testimonials of Plato or Spinoza. But to the English reader it may be of interest to hear at least a few of the utterances of the great men whose merit it is to have discovered Kant, a discovery that may well be called the discovery of a new world.
What Goethe said of Kant, we have mentioned before. Schiller, after having declared that he was determined to master Kant's Critique, and if it were to cost him the whole of his life, says: 'The fundamental ideas of Kant's ideal philosophy will remain a treasure for ever, and for their sake alone we ought to be grateful to have been born in this age.'
Strange it is to see how orthodox theologians, from mere laziness, it would seem, in mastering Kant's doctrines, raised at once a clamour against the man who proved to be their best friend, but whose last years of life they must needs embitter. One of the most religious and most honest of Kant's contemporaries, however, Jung Stilling, whose name is well known in England also, quickly perceived the true bearing of the Critique of Pure Reason. In a letter, dated March 1, 1789, Jung Stilling writes to Kant: 'You are a great, a very great instrument in the hand of God. I do not flatter,—but your philosophy will work a far greater, far more general, and far more blessed revolution than Luther's Reform. As soon as one has well comprehended the Critique of Reason, one sees that no refutation of it is possible. Your philosophy must therefore be eternal and unchangeable, and its beneficent effects will bring back the religion of Jesus to its original purity, when its only purpose was—holiness.'
Fichte, no mean philosopher himself, and on many points the antagonist of Kant, writes: 'Kant's philosophy will in time overshadow the whole human race, and call to life a new, more noble, and more worthy generation.'
Jean Paul Friedrich Richter speaks of Kant 'not only as a light of the world, but as a whole solar system in one.'
With more suppressed, yet no less powerful appreciation Wilhelm von Humboldt writes of him: 'Some things which he demolished will never rise again; some things which he founded will never perish again. A reform such as he carried through is rare in the history of philosophy.'
Schopenhauer, the most fearless critic of Kant's Critique, calls it 'the highest achievement of human reflection.' What he has written of Kant is indispensable indeed to every student of the Critique, and I deeply regret that I could not have added to my translation of Kant a translation of Schopenhauer's critical remarks.
I must add, however, one paragraph: 'Never,' Schopenhauer writes in his Parerga (1, 183), 'never will a philosopher, without an independent, zealous, and often repeated study of the principal works of Kant, gain any idea of this most important of all philosophical phenomena. Kant is, I believe, the most philosophical head that nature has ever produced. To think with him and according to his manner is something that cannot be compared to anything else, for he possessed such an amount of clear and quite peculiar thoughtfulness as has never been granted to any other mortal. We are enabled to enjoy this with him, if, initiated by patient and serious study, we succeed, while reading the profoundest chapters of the Critique of Pure Reason, in forgetting ourselves and thinking really with Kant's own head, thus being lifted high above ourselves. If we go once more through the Principles of Pure Reason, and, more particularly, the Analogies of Experience, and enter into the deep thought of the synthetical unity of apperception, we feel as if lifted miraculously and carried away out of the dreamy existence in which we are here lost, and as if holding in our hands the very elements out of which that dream consists.'
If, in conclusion, we look at some of the historians of modern philosophy, we find Erdmann, though a follower of Hegel, speaking of Kant as 'the Atlas that supports the whole of German philosophy.'
Fortlage, the Nestor of German philosophers,18 who wrote what he calls a Genetic History of Philosophy since Kant, speaks of him in the following terms: 'In one word, Kant's system is the gate through which everything that has stirred the philosophical world since his time, comes and goes. It is the Universal Exchange where all circulating ideas flow together before they vanish again in distant places. It is the London of philosophy, sending its ships into every part of the world, and after a time receiving them back. There is no place in the whole globe of human thought which it has not visited, explored, and colonised.'
In more homely language Professor Caird expresses much the same idea of Kant's philosophy, when he says: 'So much has Kant's fertile idea changed the aspect of the intellectual world, that there is not a single problem of philosophy that does not meet us with a new face; and it is perhaps not unfair to say, that the speculations of all those who have not learned the lesson of Kant, are beside the point.'
Dr. Vaihinger, who has devoted his life to the study of Kant, and is now bringing out a commentary in four volumes on his Critique of Pure Reason,19 sums up his estimate in the following words: 'The Critique is a work to which, whether we look to the grandeur of conception, or the accuracy of thought, or the weight of ideas, or the power of language, few only can be compared—possibly Plato's Republic, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Spinoza's Ethics—none, if we consider their lasting effect, their penetrating and far-reaching influence, their wealth of thought, and their variety of suggestions.'20
Nearly the same judgment is repeated by Vacherot,21 who speaks of the Critique as 'un livre immortel, comme l'Organum de Bacon et le Discours de la Méthode de Descartes,' while Professor Noiré, with his wider sympathies for every sphere of intellectual activity, counts six books, in the literature of modern Europe, as the peers of Kant's Critique, viz. Copernicus, De revolutionibus orbium cælestium (1543); Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia (1641); Newton, Principia philosophiæ naturalis mathematica (1687); Montesquieu, Esprit des Loi
s (1748); Winckelmann, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums (1764); and Adam Smith, Inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776),—but he places Kant's Critique at the head of them all.
I confess I feel almost ashamed lest it should be supposed that I thought Kant in need of these testimonies. My only excuse is that I had to defend myself against the suspicion of having wasted my time, and I therefore thought that by pointing out the position assigned to Kant's Critique among the master-works of human genius by men of greater weight than I could ever venture to claim for myself, I might best answer the kindly meant question addressed to me by my many friends: 'But how can you waste your time on a translation of Kant's Critik der reinen Vernunft?'
On the Text of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason
I have still to say a few words on the German text on which my translation is founded.
I have chosen the text of the First Edition, first of all, because it was the centenary of that edition which led me to carry out at last my long-cherished idea of an English translation. That text represents an historical event. It represents the state of philosophy, as it was then, it represents Kant's mind as it was then, at the moment of the greatest crisis in the history of philosophy. Even if the later editions contained improvements, these improvements would belong to a later phase in Kant's own development; and it is this first decisive position, as taken by Kant against both Hume and Berkeley, that more than anything else deserves to be preserved in the history of philosophy.
Secondly, I must confess that I have always used myself the First Edition of Kant's Critique, and that when I came to read the Second Edition, I never could feel so at home in it as in the first. The First Edition seems to me cut out of one block, the second always leaves on my mind the impression of patchwork.
Thirdly, I certainly dislike in the Second Edition a certain apologetic tone, quite unworthy of Kant. He had evidently been attacked by the old Wolfian professors, and also by the orthodox clergy. He knew that these attacks were groundless, and arose in fact from an imperfect understanding of his work on the part of his critics. He need not have condescended to show that he was as well-schooled a philosopher as any of his learned colleagues, or that his philosophy would really prove extremely useful to orthodox clergymen in their controversies with sceptics and unbelievers.
So far, and so far only, can I understand the feeling against the Second Edition, which is shared by some of the most accurate and earnest students of Kant.
But I have never been able to understand the exaggerated charges which Schopenhauer and others bring against Kant, both for the omissions and the additions in that Second Edition. What I can understand and fully agree with is Jacobi's opinion, when he says:22 'I consider the loss which the Second Edition of Kant's Critique suffered by omissions and changes very considerable, and I am very anxious by the expression of my opinion to induce readers who seriously care for philosophy and its history to compare the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason with the second improved edition…It is not sufficiently recognized what an advantage it is to study the systems of great thinkers in their first original form. I was told by Hamann that the very judicious Ch. J. Krause (or Kraus) could never sufficiently express his gratitude for having been made acquainted with Hume's first philosophical work, Treatise on Human Nature, 1739, where alone he had found the right point of view for judging the later essays.'
Nor do I differ much from Michelet, in his History of the later systems of Philosophy in Germany (1837, Vol. I., p. 49), where he says, 'Much that is of a more speculative character in the representation of Kant's system has been taken from the First Edition. It can no longer be found in the second and later editions, which, as well as the Prolegomena, keep the idealistic tendency more in the background, because Kant saw that this side of his philosophy had lent itself most to attacks and misunderstandings.'
I can also understand Schopenhauer, when he states that many things that struck him as obscure and self-contradictory in Kant's Critique ceased to be so when he came to read that work in its first original form. But everything else that Schopenhauer writes on the difference between the first and second editions of the Critique seems to me perfectly intolerable. Kant, in the Preface to his Second Edition, which was published six years after the first, in 1787, gives a clear and straightforward account of the changes which he introduced. 'My new representa- tion,' he writes, 'changes absolutely nothing with regard to my propositions and even the arguments in their support.' He had nothing to retract, but he thought he had certain things to add, and he evidently hoped he could render some points of his system better understood. His freedom of thought, his boldness of speech, and his love of truth are, if I am any judge in these matters, the same in 1787 as in 1781. The active reactionary measures of the Prussian Government, by which Kant is supposed to have been frightened, date from a later period. Zedlitz, Kant's friend and protector, was not replaced by Wöllner as minister till 1788. It was not till 1794 that Kant was really warned and reprimanded by the Cabinet, and we must not judge too harshly of the old philosopher when at his time of life, and in the then state of paternal despotism in Prussia, he wrote back to say 'that he would do even more than was demanded of him, and abstain in future from all public lectures concerning religion, whether natural or revealed.' What he at that time felt in his heart of hearts we know from some remarks found after his death among his papers. 'It is dishonourable,' he writes, 'to retract or deny one's real convictions, but silence, in a case like my own, is the duty of a subject; and though all we say must be true, it is not our duty to declare publicly all that is true.' Kant never retracted, he never even declared himself no longer responsible for any one of those portions of the Critique which he omitted in the Second Edition. On the contrary, he asked his readers to look for them in the First Edition, and only expressed a regret that there was no longer room for them in the Second Edition.
Now let us hear what Schopenhauer says. He not only calls the Second Edition 'crippled, disfigured, and corrupt,' but imputes motives utterly at variance with all we know of the truthful, manly, and noble character of Kant. Schopenhauer writes: 'What induced Kant to make these changes was fear of man, produced by weakness of old age, which not only affects the head, but sometimes deprives the heart also of that firmness which alone enables us to despise the opinions and motives of our contemporaries, as they deserve to be. No one can be great without that.'
All this is simply abominable. First of all, as a matter of fact, Kant, when he published his Second Edition, had not yet collapsed under the weakness of old age. He was about sixty years of age, and that age, so far from making cowards of us, gives to most men greater independence and greater boldness than can be expected from the young, who are awed by the authority of their seniors, and have often to steer their course prudently through the conflicts of parties and opinions.23 What is the use of growing old, if not to gain greater confidence in our opinions, and to feel justified in expressing them with perfect freedom? And as to 'that firmness which alone enables us to despise the opinions and motives of our contemporaries,' let us hope that that is neither a blessing of youth, nor of old age. Schopenhauer personally, no doubt, had a right to complain of his contemporaries, but he would have been greater if he had despised them either less or more, or, at all events, if he had despised them in silence.
I am really reluctant to translate all that follows, and yet, as Schopenhauer's view has found so many echoes, it seems necessary to let him have his say.
'Kant had been told,' he continues, 'that his system was only a réchauffé of Berkeley's Idealism. This seemed to him to endanger that invaluable and indispensable originality which every founder of a system values so highly (see Prolegomena zu jeder künftigen Metaphysik.). At the same time he had given offence in other quarters by his upsetting of some of the sacred doctrines of the old dogmas, particularly of those of rational psychology. Add to this that the great king, the friend of light and protector of truth, had
just died (1786). Kant allowed himself to be intimidated by all this, and had the weakness to do what was unworthy of him. This consists in his having entirely changed the first chapter of the Second Book of the Transcendental Dialectic (first ed., p. 341), leaving out fifty-seven pages, which contained what was indispensable for a clear understanding of the whole work, and by the omission of which, as well as by what he put in its place, his whole doctrine becomes full of contradictions. These I pointed out in my critique of Kant, because at that time (in 1818) I had never seen the First Edition, in which they are really not contradictions, but agree perfectly with the rest of his work. In truth the Second Edition is like a man who has had one leg amputated, and replaced by a wooden one. In the preface to the Second Edition (p. xlii), Kant gives hollow, nay, untrue excuses for the elimination of that important and extremely beautiful part of his book. He does not confessedly wish that what was omitted should be thought to have been retracted by him. "People might read it in the First Edition," he says; "he had wanted room for new additions, and nothing had been changed and improved except the representation of his system." But the dishonesty of this plea becomes clear if we compare the Second with the First Edition. There, in the Second Edition, he has not only left out that important and beautiful chapter, and inserted under the same title another half as long and much less significant, but he has actually embodied in that Second Edition a refutation of idealism which says the very contrary of what had been said in the omitted chapter, and defends the very errors which before he had thoroughly refuted, thus contradicting the whole of his own doctrine. This refutation of idealism is so thoroughly bad, such palpable sophistry, nay, in part, such a confused "galimatias," that it is unworthy of a place in his immortal work. Conscious evidently of its insufficiency, Kant has tried to improve it by the alteration of one passage (see Preface) and by a long and confused note. But he forgot to cancel at the same time in the Second Edition the numerous passages which are in contradiction with the new note, and in agreement with what he had cancelled. This applies particularly to the whole of the sixth section of the Antinomy of Pure Reason, and to all those passages which I pointed out with some amazement in my critique (which was written before I knew the First Edition and its later fate), because in them he contradicts himself. That it was fear which drove the old man to disfigure his Critique of rational psychology is shown also by this, that his attacks on the sacred doctrines of the old dogmatism are far weaker, far more timid and superficial, than in the First Edition, and that, for the sake of peace, he mixed them up at once with anticipations which are out of place, nay, cannot as yet be understood, of the immortality of the soul, grounded on practical reason and represented as one of its postulates. By thus timidly yielding he has in reality retracted, with regard to the principal problem of all philosophy, viz. the relation of the ideal to the real, those thoughts which he had conceived in the vigour of his manhood and cherished through all his life. This he did in his sixty-fourth year with a carelessness which is peculiar to old age quite as much as timidity, and he thus surrendered his system, not however openly, but escaping from it through a back-door, evidently ashamed himself of what he was doing. By this process the Critique of Pure Reason has, in its Second Edition, become a self-contradictory, crippled, and corrupt book, and is no longer genuine.'
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