Thought, per se, is merely the purely spontaneous logical function which operates to connect the manifold of a possible intuition; and it does not represent the subject of consciousness as a phenomenon- for this reason alone, that it pays no attention to the question whether the mode of intuiting it is sensuous or intellectual.I therefore do not represent myself in thought either as I am, or as I appear to myself; I merely cogitate myself as an object in general, of the mode of intuiting which I make abstraction.When I represent myself as the subject of thought, or as the ground of thought, these modes of representation are not related to the categories of substance or of cause; for these are functions of thought applicable only to our sensuous intuition.The application of these categories to the Ego would, however, be necessary, if I wished to make myself an object of knowledge.But I wish to be conscious of myself only as thinking;in what mode my Self is given in intuition, I do not consider, and it may be that I, who think, am a phenomenon- although not in so far as I am a thinking being; but in the consciousness of myself in mere thought I am a being, though this consciousness does not present to me any property of this being as material for thought.
But the proposition, "I think," in so far as it declares, "I exist thinking," is not the mere representation of a logical function.It determines the subject (which is in this case an object also) in relation to existence; and it cannot be given without the aid of the internal sense, whose intuition presents to us an object, not as a thing in itself, but always as a phenomenon.In this proposition there is therefore something more to be found than the mere spontaneity of thought; there is also the receptivity of intuition, that is, my thought of myself applied to the empirical intuition of myself.Now, in this intuition the thinking self must seek the conditions of the employment of its logical functions as categories of substance, cause, and so forth; not merely for the purpose of distinguishing itself as an object in itself by means of the representation "I," but also for the purpose of determining the mode of its existence, that is, of cognizing itself as noumenon.But this is impossible, for the internal empirical intuition is sensuous, and presents us with nothing but phenomenal data, which do not assist the object of pure consciousness in its attempt to cognize itself as a separate existence, but are useful only as contributions to experience.
But, let it be granted that we could discover, not in experience, but in certain firmly-established a priori laws of the use of pure reason- laws relating to our existence, authority to consider ourselves as legislating a priori in relation to our own existence and as determining this existence; we should, on this supposition, find ourselves possessed of a spontaneity, by which our actual existence would be determinable, without the aid of the conditions of empirical intuition.We should also become aware that in the consciousness of our existence there was an a priori content, which would serve to determine our own existence- an existence only sensuously determinable- relatively, however, to a certain internal faculty in relation to an intelligible world.
But this would not give the least help to the attempts of rational psychology.For this wonderful faculty, which the consciousness of the moral law in me reveals, would present me with a principle of the determination of my own existence which is purely intellectual- but by what predicates? By none other than those which are given in sensuous intuition.Thus I should find myself in the same position in rational psychology which I formerly occupied, that is to say, Ishould find myself still in need of sensuous intuitions, in order to give significance to my conceptions of substance and cause, by means of which alone I can possess a knowledge of myself: but these intuitions can never raise me above the sphere of experience.I should be justified, however, in applying these conceptions, in regard to their practical use, which is always directed to objects of experience- in conformity with their analogical significance when employed theoretically- to freedom and its subject.At the same time, I should understand by them merely the logical functions of subject and predicate, of principle and consequence, in conformity with which all actions are so determined, that they are capable of being explained along with the laws of nature, conformably to the categories of substance and cause, although they originate from a very different principle.We have made these observations for the purpose of guarding against misunderstanding, to which the doctrine of our intuition of self as a phenomenon is exposed.We shall have occasion to perceive their utility in the sequel.
CHAPTER II.The Antinomy of Pure Reason.
We showed in the introduction to this part of our work, that all transcendental illusion of pure reason arose from dialectical arguments, the schema of which logic gives us in its three formal species of syllogisms- just as the categories find their logical schema in the four functions of all judgements.The first kind of these sophistical arguments related to the unconditioned unity of the subjective conditions of all representations in general (of the subject or soul), in correspondence with the categorical syllogisms, the major of which, as the principle, enounces the relation of a predicate to a subject.The second kind of dialectical argument will therefore be concerned, following the analogy with hypothetical syllogisms, with the unconditioned unity of the objective conditions in the phenomenon; and, in this way, the theme of the third kind to be treated of in the following chapter will be the unconditioned unity of the objective conditions of the possibility of objects in general.