Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

Martin Heidegger, Parvis Emad, Kenneth Maly

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 1997
• ISBN:
  9780253004475
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophers

The eminent philosopher delivers an illuminating interpretation of Kant's magnum opus in what is itself a significant work of Western philosophy. The text of Martin Heidegger's 1927–28 university lecture course on Emmanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason presents a close interpretive reading of the first two parts of this masterpiece of modern philosophy. In this course, Heidegger continues the task he enunciated in Being and Time as the problem of dismantling the history of ontology, using temporality as a clue. Heidegger demonstrates that the relation between philosophy, ontology, and fundamental ontology is rooted in the genesis of the modern mathematical sciences. He also shows that objectification of beings as beings is inseparable from knowledge a priori, the central problem of Kant's Critique. He concludes that objectification rests on the productive power of imagination, a process that involves temporality, which is the basic constitution of humans as beings.

SECOND PART

The Analytic of Concepts in the Transcendental Logic

First Division

Exposition of the Idea of a Transcendental Logic and Analytic

Chapter One

The Significance of Transcendental Logic

§13. The Analysis of Thinking as Element of Knowledge and the Unity of Thinking and Intuition as the Two Themes of Transcendental Logic

In the arrangement of the Critique the transcendental logic is the second part of the doctrine of elements; and as already shown, compared with the transcendental aesthetic, it is disproportionately larger. We will have to inquire about the reason for this. And it will be shown that it is not the content of the logic—the theme of thinking—that requires a more comprehensive treatment than the aesthetic, but rather the fact that under the title “transcendental logic” Kant brings problems together which, alongside the aesthetic and the logic, strictly speaking require a specific kind of treatment and a corresponding discipline. If the transcendental logic had been structured entirely corresponding to the transcendental aesthetic, then the transcendental logic would have ended with B169, A130—that is, there in edition B where Kant allows the division by numbered paragraphs to end. We are introducing here a fundamental opening which does not exist in the same way in Kant—even though an opening there is also noticeable.

Kant justifies the division by numbered paragraphs, which he has used up to this point, as follows: “I consider the division by numbered paragraphs as necessary up to this point, because thus far we have had to treat of elementary concepts.”¹ This is to say that the preceding paragraphs had to do with the concepts of the elements of knowledge—sensibility and understanding—insofar as these elements were taken in isolation and analyzed in their structure. But this isolating dissection into elements (which is the function of the aesthetic and the logic) is a preliminary stage for investigating the whole of knowledge as the unification of sensibility and understanding with regard to the possibility of this unification. In this respect Kant himself speaks of an employment of elements and in the passage just mentioned he continues to say: “We have now to give an account of their employment, and the exposition may therefore proceed in continuous fashion, without such numbering.” Thus if in the following sections the employment of elements becomes a theme (of the investigation), then we are dealing neither with transcendental aesthetic nor with transcendental logic, but either with both or with neither of the two.

The important first part of the transcendental logic, namely the first book of the first division of transcendental logic, entitled Analytic of Concepts or the categories, ends with the passage just quoted. Corresponding to the pure intuitions of space and time in the aesthetic, the elements of pure thinking or categories are dealt with in this book—in the double consideration of a metaphysical and a transcendental exposition. This is followed by the analytic of principle, as the second book of the first division, which deals with the full range of the entire a priori knowledge. This book takes as its problem the a priori unification of the previously isolated elements in their possibility. This book no longer deals with pure thinking taken in isolation, thus is actually not a logic anymore. Rather it treats of this pure thinking insofar as thinking stands at the midpoint and in service to pure intuition, in accord with its ownmost inner possibility.

Although from the analytic of principles onward pure intuition of time and thinking’s possible unification with time becomes a problem, this theme remains within the transcendental logic. The fact that this second book appears within the transcendental logic itself covers over the beginning of a new problematic, which is no longer just a problematic of logic, as was the case with the analytic of concepts. With the inquiry into the possible a priori unity of pure intuition and pure thinking ontological knowledge emerges as a new central issue.

That Kant deals with the problem in the transcendental logic is an indication that ontology is grounded in logic. Something noteworthy emerges here, something which determines every ontological or metaphysical problematic since antiquity, especially in Aristotle and Plato. What is noteworthy is that the question of being or the inquiry into the ontological constitution of beings, ontology, is primarily guided by Logos, i.e., by the true statement about beings. This traditional grounding of ontology in logic reaches so far that even the traditional designations for the ontological structures of beings is taken from the field of Logos: categories, κατηγορίαι. But Kant, under strong pressure from traditional motives, centers ontology in logic in a new way. The further consequence of this step, which on the whole is sketched out in the development of modern thinking since Descartes, is Hegel’s logic, which according to its title is what we usually understand by logic but according to its subject matter is pure ontology or metaphysics.

These remarks are meant to indicate that under Kant’s title “transcendental logic” we find significantly more than a mere, isolated analysis of understanding. But considering the factual problems and the debate with Kant, this means that initially we are supposed to pursue logic as logic only up to that point where he lets the analytic of the elements end. What follows then is the actual core content of the Critique; and the decisive part is pulled together in a very small section of eleven pages, in the chapter “The Schematism of the Pure Concepts of Understanding.”² It is in this chapter that we must look for the hinge upon which the entire Critique turns—critique understood as the problem of laying the foundation of metaphysics, the problem of general ontology.

That in the transcendental logic Kant undertakes not only the analysis of pure thinking, as the second element of knowledge, but also the problem of the unification of the two fundamental sources in the entirety of the enactment of knowledge—this misled Kant-interpretation all along and allowed it to bypass crucial problems. That is why, right at the beginning of our interpretation of the transcendental logic, we pointed out that in Kant this logic goes way beyond its rights and in so doing completely covers up the unique character of the problem of unification of sensibility and understanding—not only for the later debate with Kant but also for Kant himself. Since this crossing of the limits of logic is not accidental but, seen from the perspective of tradition, almost self-evident, it is even more necessary here to see things clearly. Prepared in this way, we must still attempt first to follow the specific Kantian intention. Prior to any critique and radicalization we must see things and take them as Kant presents them.

§14. Kant’s Determination of Thinking

First we shall follow the introduction to the transcendental logic, which explains the “idea of a transcendental logic.”¹ This introduction to the second part of the doctrine of elements is more extensive than the introduction to the first part, the transcendental aesthetic. This introduction has four sections: (1) logic in general, (2) transcendental logic, (3) the division of general logic into analytic and dialectic, and (4) the division of transcendental logic into transcendental analytic and dialectic.

Already in the introduction to the transcendental aesthetic we saw how Kant proceeds from the general concept of knowledge and first characterizes the two elements of sensibility and understanding or receptivity and spontaneity, affection and function, intuition and thinking, in order then to isolate the observation of sensibility or intuition and to circumscribe the task of the transcendental aesthetic. Correspondingly, Kant now again begins with juxtaposing the two stems of knowledge, in order then to move on to a separate investigation of thinking, spontaneity, and function of understanding and to circumscribe the task of logic: “We therefore distinguish the science of the rules of sensibility in general, that is, aesthetic, from the science of the rules of the understanding in general, that is, logic.”²

Now we inquire into that which in advance regulates thinking as thinking, into that which determines thinking, into pure thinking and its original elements, the categories. The transcendental aesthetic inquires into the ownmost inner possibility of space and time; transcendental logic, into the ownmost inner possibility of the categories.

Kant now explains the idea of transcendental logic as a special logic from out of the idea of logic in general. Transcendental logic means ontological logic; it indicates an investigation of thinking and its elements of the type which reveals thinking in terms of how these elements make an a priori knowledge of the ontological constitution of beings possible and how they themselves are possible in this function. In connection with the following interpretation of the idea of transcendental logic, the concept of “the transcendental” in Kant becomes increasingly more clear to us.

The exposition of the idea of transcendental logic proceeds from the idea of logic in general as the science of the rules of understanding or of the general logical employment of understanding. In order to attend to this exposition, we anticipate a section which Kant presents after the introduction within the transcendental logic and which is entitled “The Logical Employment of the Understanding.”³ We shall supplement the text here with a look at Kant’s discussions of logic in his lecture courses on this subject.⁴

First we shall try to circumscribe how Kant determines understanding in general, i.e., the function of understanding, or thinking. Then it can be made clear why the science of logic deals with the rules of understanding. We know already that intuition, like thinking, is a representing, repraesentare. Intuition is directly allowing the extant to be encountered; it is an immediate representing. But understanding is a “non-sensuous” faculty of knowledge; it is not intuitive, although it is representing [vorstellend]. This means that thinking is not an immediate representing, but a mediated one. As finite, intuitions rest on the way in which beings announce themselves; they rely on affections. By contrast, concepts as representations do not rest on affections from beings because they are not immediately related to them. Rather, concepts rest on the functions of the spontaneous understanding. As mediated representations, concepts do not directly refer to beings. They do refer to beings insofar as beings are given through immediate representations, through intuitions. Hence conceptual representing is a representing that relates to representations—it is a representation of a representation.

Understanding judges by means of mediated representations or concepts. Judging is the function of “the unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation.”⁵ “… all judgments are functions of unity among our representations.”⁶ “Function of unity” means functioning in the manner of unifying, of gathering of representations, in such a way that, instead of an immediate representation, i.e., intuition, a higher representation will be used which grasps several representations within itself. Judging, asserting, λέγειν means a gathering together, a grasping together, a coniunctio or synthesis. Thus here, too, as in the first stem of knowledge, a certain manner of unification comes to the fore. With regard to pure intuition we spoke of a syndosis. Here, in contrast, we are dealing with spontaneous unification by the activity of understanding; we are dealing with synthesis in the narrow sense. Judgment, assertion, Logos is σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις.⁷ Logos is a taking together in such a way that the determinations, the νοήματα, that are taken together are at the same time taken apart, so that what is intuitively given with regard to its determinate characteristics is articulated. In the course of such a taking together which sets apart, we come to know explicitly the determinations which are implicitly given and indistinctly shown in intuition. Although a representation, Logos is not intuition but a representation which determines and articulates by letting something be seen as something.

Accordingly, as faculty of thinking, understanding is “a faculty of judging.” Instead of an immediate representation, intuition of a definite solid matter, for example this piece of chalk, a higher representation will be used when I judge: “This piece of chalk is a solid matter.” In judging we grasp what is intuitively given in terms of a higher determination which in terms of its content is also valid for other things. We represent anew what is represented in intuition, the immediate representation, by determining what is represented as solid matter. In order to think this definite chalk-thing as solid matter, we move beyond what is immediately intuited to the representation “solid matter,” in order to come back from this representation to the chalk-thing—in such a way as to grasp this chalk-thing in terms of the representation “solid matter.” In thinking we necessarily move away from the immediate representation, the intuition, right through the determining representation back to the thing. Thus true to its inner core, thinking proceeds in a roundabout way; thinking moves through the determining representation; thinking is a running through—is discursive. The finitude of thinking gets manifested in this character of thinking as roundabout and discursive, i.e., in the fact that, as a function of understanding, judging is a representation of a representation, a mediated representation. In B71 Kant states that thinking “always involves limitations”; for, essentially, thinking is not a direct, immediate grasping, but rather is roundabout and enjoined to the mediating determination. Kant expresses the same state of affairs of the fundamental finitude of thinking by saying: “We must first learn to spell before we begin to read.”⁸ We cannot in one stroke directly intuit something in its full determinateness. Rather, we must first move through what is given in advance, articulate it, and thus bring to light its determinateness.

Human knowledge is made up of intuition ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translators’ Foreword
• Preliminary Consideration
• First Part: The Transcendental Aesthetic
• Second Part: The Analytic of Concepts in the Transcendental Logic
• Editor’s Epilogue
• Glossary of German Terms