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§ 3
THE STEPPING MARCH OF THE PROBLEM
How is Kant going to reply to this question about the possibility of the transcendental order? Without forgetting what we said above about objects, let us see the reply Kant gives to this question in three steps.
First. The principle of transcendentality itself.
Second. The internal constitution of this transcendentality.
Third. What is the characteristic of this knowledge of transcendentality called Metaphysics?
I. The principle of transcendentality
The very principle of transcendentality has been centered, as we have seen, by the unity in which truth consists. This truth is a unity that man does not find as finished. So much so, that man has to make of things an object of his own thought in order to possess the truth. Here the problem of objective unity is strictly and formally the problem of a “doing”.
Kant tells us that unity, the synthesis, is a doing (Tun), an action (Handlung). The synthesis is not something that can be seen and is received, because in that case it would not have a transcendental characteristic for Kant, but is something that is made. Hence, it is not something that is seen, but something that is to be done, and as anything that is to be done it is determined {200} by the doing that does it. The unity, the unitary synthesis, as Kant says, is a blind faculty (ein blindes Vermögen). What is important for us here is not that it may or may not be blind, but that which interests Kant, and that is, as we have said, that such a synthesis is not something that is seen, but something that is done. We need for Kant to tell us what is done and how it is done. That is the question.
What is it that the understanding does when it makes an object out of something? To begin with, the understanding does not make what we might call the content of the object. This is a perfect fantasy, not only in the order of pure reason, but also in the order of sensibility, a fantasy that never entered the mind of Kant; it is one of the multiple naiveties that have been loaded on the philosophy of Kant. For Kant, the synthesis does not “make” the content of the object; what it does is to make of that content something mine, that is to say, it makes the objectuality; it does not make the content of the object, but its own objectuality. It will now be necessary for Kant to provide us with greater details as to how the making of this objectuality is accomplished. What does this mean?
Let us remember that the thinking Kant is going to operate on is the thinking of the understanding, the thinking that judges. To make an object out of something is to propose it as terminus of a judgment, which is going to try to tell us in truth what it is that constitutes its proper object. Consequently, for something to be the terminus of a judgment —Kant is the least possible subjectivist we can think of— means it is something intelligible. It is evident that if it were not intelligible that would not be a thought, it would be an imagination, a fantasy. Because it is a case of the terminus of a judgment, which is going to say that A is B, it is obviously understood that the synthesis opens the ambit of intelligibility that belongs to A. And precisely because thinking is to become aware of something, {201} it is the case of a function of intellection under the concrete form of a judgment.
Nevertheless, what is the meaning of making that something may be intelligible? It can mean two things. It can mean that it may be intelligible for me, and this can be accomplished by a myriad different ways. But for Kant it is not enough that it may be intelligible for me; he needs for the object to be intelligible insofar as object. Of course, Kant does not doubt that the conditions that make intelligibility possible are the same that make intelligibility possible for me.
Why and in what does this sameness consist? Simply in the fact that I am the one who makes of the thing an object for my intelligence; precisely because I am the one who in a certain way defines the ambit and the area of intelligibility with my function of judging, that is why the object is intelligible. In other words, could there be objects that are not intelligible? No, they would not be objects, perhaps they might be “things” and the least one could say of them is that they would never be objects. An unintelligible object is a kind of transcendental impossible for Kant. What the “I think” makes in the synthesis is the intelligibility of the object. It is not only the case that I cannot understand it unless it is in a certain way, but that it is the case that it would not be intelligible even if it were in another way. The object is object because it is intelligible and in this consists the proper doing of reason; it makes in the given that it may be intelligible, and precisely because of this, that intelligible is object of thought.
But then, to make that something may be intrinsically intelligible is, from the old formula of St. Thomas, convertible with that which is intelligible. For St. Thomas it is the case of entity. Kant would say that it is not things themselves, but that it is purely and simply the case of the object. Inasmuch as intelligibility is convertible with objectuality it is the first and radical transcendental characteristic. The object is object because it is intelligible {202} and intelligibility consists in its own transcendentality. The proper task of the human mind consists in making the transcendentality. Granted that this intelligibility is what since St. Thomas has been called truth, Kant does not doubt in saying this is a verum transcendentale; it is a truth that precisely affects things. Kant tells us, “The relationship of our knowledge to the empirically given objects is a transcendental truth (transcendentale Wahrheit). And that relationship makes transcendental truth possible, which precedes any Metaphysics”1. There can be as much logical truth and scientific truth as there is transcendental truth, that is to say, insofar as the object is intelligible to human intelligence. The intelligibility of this object is what human intelligence makes, simply by approaching it in the form of a judgment.
We are told by Kant that we are the ones that make the unity of our adjudicating thought, a unity not of the content of the object —this is held by the thing itself—, but the unity in which the objectuality consists. We make it, because what we really make is the intelligibility of the given. This intelligibility is the intrinsically verum and transcendentale character of what is given, and because of this the given acquires the characteristic of object. Thus, to say that human intelligence makes the objectuality is to say that it makes the intelligibility. Object is everything intelligible; everything that is intelligible is not necessarily object. The transcendental order, for Kant, is the order of objectual intelligibility. Therefore, this transcendental order does not rest upon itself, as for example, in the case of Aristotle; also, it does not rest upon God as Descartes and Leibniz suggested although in different ways. Descartes {203} by thinking that divine veracity is the one that confers upon reality a rational structure in conformity with the transcendentality of my own understanding, a free creature of God; and Leibniz, by making of the human intelligence an image of the divine. For Kant, the human and the divine are two essentially different reasons. The transcendental order does not rest upon itself and does not rest upon God, it rests on me. It is my own subjectivity, insofar as principle of the transcendental order, what should be called the transcendental subjectivity. Transcendental subjectivity is purely and simply subjectivity in the sense of a subjectum as opposed to an objectum, to a Gegenstand, it is subjectivity as principle of the transcendental order. Here “principle” does not mean what Suárez and Leibniz understood, in other words, that it is non-contradictory; this, Kant would say, is mere thinking (blosses Denken); we can think of many things that are non-contradictory, but that does not mean they may be objects. For Kant, “principle” means principle of the possibility of the object insofar as object (Grund der Möglichkeit des Gegenstandes), insofar as given object; and properly understood, insofar as the given may have intelligibility to be thought by the understanding, which judges about the given. It is principle of the given as intelligible object. The synthetic action of the understanding is principle of the intelligibility of the given.
We can now understand the sense of the paragraph mentioned at the beginning that already anticipated what we have just indicated, “God is creator of the world as thing in itself, but just as it appears to us, it is a creation of our own sensibility”2.
This gigantic stepping march of Kantian thought is not {204} quite a march, but rather a program. Now we need to be told by Kant concretely, in what does this making the intelligibility of the objectual order consist? In other words, what is the internal constitution of the transcendental order? In the second place, what is our possible knowledge of this transcendental order? Indeed, what is Metaphysics? This is what we have to analyze.
We had divided the stepping march mentioned above into three steps. In the first place, what is the principle or fundament of the transcendental order, in other words, of those universal and necessary truths that constitute the verum transcendentale of the objects? In the second place, what is the internal constitution of that transcendental order? In the third place, what is the presumed unity of this transcendental order —that is to say— the unity of Metaphysics?
Before proceeding, let us briefly summarize the road we have covered. We had inquired as to how this transcendental order is made. Kant will say that this is an action of the “I”. The action of the “I” is precisely what is called “to think”; Ich denke, I have to think.
To think —Kant will tell us— is to unite some representations with others. Let us put aside that the definition may be more or less exact in re, Kant tells us ad nauseam that to think is to unite representations. These representations, where are they united? Kant is not referring to the fact that they may be united in my conscience, since that would be a mere psychological unity. Also, he is not referring to the fact that they may be united from the logical point of view, for example, of Leibniz; a kind of inclusion of the notes that constitute the requisites of the predicate with the notes that constitute the requisites of the subject. Kant will tell us it is an objective union by virtue of which the multiple, the multiplicity of things, cannot be thought of unless a subject with an objective intention unifies it. The {205} “I think” —Kant consequently says— is something that must be able to accompany all my representations. Hence, the “I think” as possibility in principle accompanies all my representations.
Here transpires in a dimension that is transcendental the notion that the metaphysics of Leibniz had introduced, namely, the apperception. The understanding, when judging, not only perceives or apprehends that A is B, but also co-apprehends itself in the form of thinking subject, of thinking “I”. This apperception is transcendental through what we have just mentioned, because it is not a subjective unity, but a rigorously objective one. When uniting some perceptions with others, what I will is precisely to propose that the A is effectively the B; not simply that I may think it is so or that it appears to be so, but that it is so really and effectively. The apperception is, in this sense, transcendental.
Hence, when we say that thinking is to judge Kant will say that what is subjacent in the function of judging is the radical function of thinking. By virtue of this thinking the given is placed within a perspective of the structures proper to thinking, insofar as thinking of the “I think”. Then, it is clear that to submit the multiple to the unity of apperception means that everything that is multiple is subjected a priori to the objective structure of judging. Nothing is intelligible as object unless it is made intelligible by me; nothing is made intelligible by me if it is not in conformity with the structure of my own function of judging. This tells us that the supreme principle of the understanding is the “I think”, insofar as principle of any possible intelligibility of the object; therefore, the “I think” is the very principle of the transcendental order. The transcendental order, formally, consists in the objective intelligibility; but principially3 it consists in the “I think” that makes it possible.
{206} The object has to present itself this way to the understanding in order to be intelligible, and therefore, to be object. Let us not think —we are here moving in the order of pure understanding— that Kant might find himself in the situation of an object that were not intelligible; according to Kant this situation cannot occur, it is a transcendental impossible. With respect to things themselves, the great majority will not be intelligible for me; but we are not dealing with that. It is the case that if something is object, it is such precisely under these conditions, because to be object means to have these conditions of intelligibility. Hence, if it were not intelligible it would start by not being object.
This is just what characterizes the philosophy of Kant on this point. The transcendental impossible of an unintelligible object depends essentially on the fact that intelligibility is made by my own function of judging. This intelligibility is what constitutes the objectual characteristic of the object, precisely of the given.
All this is quite abstract and in need of clarifications, which is logical since Kant in order to clarify it had to write his great work Critique of Pure Reason. We shall appeal to it in order to proceed to the second step that at the same time serves as clarification of what we have covered in this step just concluded.
II. Constitution of the transcendental order
The transcendental order is first and above all the order of the verum transcendentale, of the transcendental truth; properly understanding that transcendental truth is precisely in its transcendentality something made by the very “I think” in its judging dimension.
{207} With this Kant has the impression of having created a new science up to now unsuspected, Kant himself tells this to Christian Garve (1742-1798). According to Kant, he has made a science that “is not Metaphysics at all, but is a completely new science,
and that up to now has never been attempted (eine ganz neue und bisher unrersnchte Wissenschaft), that is, the critique of a reason that judges a priori”4. He says that
this new science is not metaphysics, although somewhat earlier he had written that this science of his “contains the metaphysics of metaphysics” (enthalt die Metaphysik von der
Metaphysik)5. It is a metaphysics —if you will— raised to the second power.
This metaphysics is a philosophy of the transcendental order. In another letter also written to Markus Herz (1747-1803), Kant says, “I will be very happy when I finish my transcendental philosophy, which strictly speaking is a Critique of Pure Reason”6. He adds that later he will take up Metaphysics as such.
Summarizing, Kant tells us the following, that it is the case of a transcendental philosophy. That this is what the Critique of Pure Reason is. That this transcendental philosophy, in the sense in which Kant takes it, is a completely new science because Kant fundaments it a priori on the very structure of human understanding. Therefore, it is necessary to ask in what the internal texture of this transcendental truth consists, about which Kant is talking to us.
This texture is constituted by two moments. The first is the moment of objectuality.
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1. Moment of objectuality, the categorial.
As we have said, things, the objects, are that upon which human understanding is going to judge. But then, judgment, precisely insofar as determinant of the intrinsic intelligibility of the transcendental order, has its own proper structure. This structure is the one that allows answering the question that has been stirring in your heads as it has been doing in mine for many years, what is it to make a thing intelligible? Kant is now going to attempt an answer to that question through a relatively simple consideration.
Let us imagine that I take an object prescinding that it may be real or not, and I say it has a particular color, for example, white; when I say it is white it is true, but beyond that I am presuming something else. We should remember that this is the same thing that happened to Aristotle. Thus, when I say about A that it is white, not only do I say it is white, but it is also presumed that the thing is really and effectively white, in other words, the fact of its being-quality. In every affirmation, besides what is said, there is also the accusation. We make an accusation that in the affirmation the characteristics of the way of being of the predicate exist, that is, the enunciated quality in the predicate accuses its way of being in the subject. Since accusing is kategoreín in Greek, Aristotle introduced the idea of the categories.
Hence, Kant will perform the same operation, but in a different dimension. It is true that when I say this is white I accuse... yes, but of what? The way of being? Of course not, what is accused is the way of being true, the way of being intelligible. Indeed, the categories are just that, the ways in which the intelligibility of the object for the human mind is accused. For example, the idea of causality is not a property that belongs to things; it is a property of intelligibility, {209} to which it belongs primo et per se. If it were not through the causal way, nothing would be intelligible to me; but causality does not enunciate something real and objective about things, it simply enunciates their intelligibility.
Although we are not going to run down the list of the categories, we are only going to recall that Kant lists twelve of them (Aristotle listed ten) and takes them out of the structure of judgment. Judgment, Kant tells us, has quality, quantity, relation and modality. Each one of these four things is subdivided into three, etc. This way Kant obtains the list of the categories, which are the twelve aspects that have to be given in judgment for the object to be intelligible. To make a thing intelligible precisely consists in representing it from the point of view of the twelve dimensions judgment has. This is exactly what Kant intended. And then, of this transcendental philosophy that Kant has told us is the metaphysics of metaphysics, he will tell us that its axioms “are simple principles of the exposition of phenomena (sind blosse Prinzipien der Exposition der Erscheinungen). And —what is important to us— the pompous name of an ontology, which proposes to offer synthetic a priori knowledge with respect to things themselves, has to recede before something more modest, before a pure, mere analytic of human understanding (muss dem bescheidennen, einer blossen Analytic des reinen Vertandes, Platz machen)”7.
Ontology is, actually, the science of these categories, and these categories are nothing but the dimensions of the very intelligibility of the object. The concepts that constitute the principle of the intelligibility of things do not proceed from things, as it is claimed, not only in empiricism, but also in all philosophies, for example, in Descartes or especially in {210} medieval philosophy. They do not proceed from things; they proceed from my “I think”. Also, they do not produce things, they only make them intelligible. To make them intelligible, now we can see it means to make them transcendentally true; that is, that they may be representable as substances, as qualities, etc. Hence, since intelligibility is convertible with the object, to make something intelligible is precisely to make it an object. Thanks to these twelve categories, that which the synthetic action of judging makes is the object as such.
However —Kant says—, here is where a serious equivocation can be hidden that for him it is necessary to dispel. Actually, putting it this way, it seems Kant could clearly say the following: I can now reason on a particular object by virtue of the twelve categories, and my reasoning will take me to a series of conclusions or consequences that constitute as many other known things of that object. But Kant says this is completely illusory. Because it is quite true that the categories and the capacity that the human mind (the “I think”) has, of making things intelligible, determine the characteristics of intelligibility of these things. But, if we prefer to use a terminology that Kant did not use to express more exactly the thinking of Kant, what the categories determine is the character (Kant says “the form”) of every object, i.e., the objectuality of the object. Nevertheless, the objectuality of an object is not one more object. Regardless of how many ways we turn the categories around or how many times we turn around the pure concepts of understanding, the only thing we will obtain are precisions. Precisions as rich as we may desire, but in the end they will only mean that if there is an object, it must have such and such conditions. But the objectuality of an object is not one more object, it is the character that {211} every object must have if it is actually an object, but it is not a real and positive object.
For this reason Kant will say that the categories have a transcendental meaning; that is, the categories do not consist in my subjective representations, but consist in assembling and structuring something that belongs to the world of the object, precisely its objectuality. They do not have any transcendental use at all, in other words, they do not allow for determining by pure reason, the character of a particular object. The only thing they could determine would be the character an object must have in order to be an object, but never the content or the reality of that object.
The categories have a transcendental sense, but they completely lack transcendental use. In order to have transcendental use something else is needed. It is required for the understanding, which has that structure and by virtue of that structure makes an object intelligible, to be given something that precisely constitutes that object.
This is precisely what corresponds to the second moment of the transcendental order, the given.
2. Moment of given
The given and what we have just indicated about the categories unitarily constitute something, and that something will precisely be a real and effective object. The synthesis of the categorial and the given is precisely what Kant called the transcendental deduction. With this, beforehand, we understand that the Kantian transcendental deduction is not an expression of the entity of things, not even an expression of the intelligibility of the object, but is a positive constitution {212} of the intelligibility of the object. It is the order made by man and by human intelligence. Therefore, the transcendental order does not express the object, but constitutes it. And constitutes it, because intelligence constitutes intelligibility and intelligibility converts precisely with objectuality.
1) In the end, the transcendental order is, for Kant, starting from intelligence, the order of the objectual intelligibility of something given.
2) It is an order constituted by the understanding upon the given.
3) It is a necessary a priori order. In this Kant will be inflexible.
4) It is an order founded on a principle, the “I think”.
But in order to have the transcendental order in its perfect concretion, it will be necessary for us to be given an explanation about the given, and also about the synthesis of the categorial and the given. Otherwise, we would not have a full answer to what the transcendental order is in Kant.
Therefore, the synthesis precisely depends on the character of the given. And the given may be of two types. Here is where the great task and the great Kantian speculation begin. I proceed here in a different order, the given after the categorial. It seems that with this I am doing nothing but to reverse the very index of the Kantian work, but this is not true. First, the Critique of Pure Reason has shown that the categories, the pure concepts of the understanding, do not have an empirical origin, but have their fountain and their a priori source in the pure understanding. Then, it has shown, in the second place, that these categories can be applied to these objects independently of any intuition of these objects. And third, that they can only {213} lead to a theoretical knowledge when these objects are empirically given. It is at that moment when practical reason offers to us a given object —in the moral order— that leads to a knowledge, to an intellection, and to a thought of the supersensible as such8. In other words, Kant explains there the stepping march of his thinking, in the first place, the constitution of the transcendental order, which the categories are. In the second place, the two types of the given, according to the two types of given that will also be the result of the transcendental order. With this, a third question will surface; in what does its transcendental unity consist?
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1 KrV A 146, B 185 (Zubiri’s quotation in this case is not literal).
2 Metaphysik, Vorlesungen (Ed. Kowalewsky), p. 183.
3 [Tr. note: for the Spanish principialmente, a Zubiri neologism from principio, principle, principially]
4 An Garve, Briefe, 110.
5 An Markus Herz, Briefe, 96.
6 An Markus Herz, Briefe, 48.
7 KrV A 247, B 303.
8 “Now then, the critique... demonstrated primarily that [the categories] are not of an empirical origin, but have their a priori source and fountain in the pure understanding; and in second place also, that, since they are referred to objects in general, independently of the intuition of the same, produce the theoretical knowledge only when they are applied to empirical objects; but, however, applied to a given object by practical reason, they are useful for the particular thought of the supersensible, although only insofar as that supersensible is determined again by the predicates, that necessarily belong to the pure practical purpose, given a priori, and the possibility of the same” (E. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. M. García Morente, Madrid, Espasa-Calpe, 3rd. ed., 1984, p. 196).