{213} (cont’d)

A) The empirical fact. Synthesis of the categorial and the phenomenal.

In the first place, Kant will have to tell us what is the transcendental order, dealing precisely with the given in an empirical intuition. We are not going to make a summary of the Critique of Pure Reason here, but only to indicate the central idea.

What is given in the sensible intuition is a serious {214} problem for Kant. Things have to be given, but for man, in this order we are considering here, what is given is given by way of a sensible intuition, of an empirical intuition. In other words, this means that for Kant man cannot have knowledge of things unless things become visible to us. But to become visible for us in Greek is said phaínesthai, that is, things have to be “phenomena”.

“Phenomena” for Kant means neither a mere subjective appearance nor an extraordinary thing as when it is said that someone is a phenomenal (Sp. fenomenal, fantastic) person; that is not the case, here it is the case of phaínesthai, of “becoming visible”. The object is the one that becomes visible. But since I am the one to which it has to become visible, it will only become visible if it meets the conditions I have in order for something to become manifest to me. These conditions —Kant says— are space and time.

Space and time —Kant says— are not entia, they are not beings, they are purely and simply the conditions for the possibility that objects become visible for us sensibly. That is why he calls this part of his Critique of Pure Reason “Transcendental Aesthetics”, where “Aesthetics” means it is the domain of aísthesis, of sensing, this is the Transcendental Theory of Sensibility. The Transcendental Theory of Sensibility is nothing but the transcendental theory of the manifestation of an object through the sensitive way, the way of the senses.

We can then put the question, how is it possible to have a synthesis with the categorial order? Because when all is said and done, things are not actually concerned with what I may have in my head or with my capacity of judging with the structures of my purely subjective categories.

But this is not as simple as that. Because, actually, these conditions for things to manifest themselves to us, called {215} time and space are there a priori, that is, are present beforehand, as transcendental condition of every sensible manifestation. Space and time are properties of the subject, they are a priori. But then, the order of the categories is also an a priori order. The result is that we have a common moment, the “a priority” of the two orders that constitute the insertion point or the synthesis of the categorial order and the order of sensible manifestations. Indeed, let us consider something, for example, the sun. The sun that astronomy deals with is not a system of luminous sensations or luminous perceptions I have; the astronomer is not concerned with my sensations and perceptions, he is concerned with the laws of the sun. Of course, nothing can be known of the sun if somehow it cannot be seen, without perception (in photographic plates, by direct inspection or whatever). What is the difference? The difference is that what I perceive, I see it as a series of properties of an object, of something that is there. And that is precisely the sun, I perceive it as such, as an object, precisely because it is in time and space. But then, this second operation, seeing it as an object, depends on me; that is why in the most modest of perceptions, the transcendental synthesis of the categorial and the phenomenal is given.

In this unitary synthesis of the categorial and the phenomenal is in what, for Kant, the transcendental idea of experience is constituted. Experience for Kant does not simply mean the sensible experience or as it is said commonly, the sensations or sensible perceptions. Experience means the system of sensed objects.

The transcendental order, in what refers to these objects whose unity constitutes nature, is transcendental experience, that is, the synthesis of the categorial and the phenomenal {216}. Only then, when we have an object constituted as such an object, is when rigorously —according to Kant— we can have science. Astronomy and the celestial mechanics of Newton are constituted as sciences precisely because of this. It is not a system of perceptions, it is a system of objects provided with some laws, but I make the object in its objectuality. Certainly, I do not make the sun, but I make that the set of sensations and perceptions the sun gives me may be intelligible as manifestations of an object that is there, at such a place in space and time and called the sun.

This knowledge of the objects is called science. This means that science is made with concepts and this is what we have been commenting upon for some time. It is a case of the synthesis of the conceived with the given.

But man may attempt something else, he can try not only to know things with concepts and with the given, but to know the given “through” pure concepts, and this is a different task. This task is what Kant calls metaphysics. Is this possible? Kant will remain faithful to his idea that there is no science —and in this case we cannot even have metaphysics— unless something is actually given. But then —Kant says—, what happens is that what is given to me in the sensibility, internal or external, can be reduced to its minimum in order to have something given without entering into the whole richness of the details of the given. If I were to enter into the richness of the details of the given, I would have through external sensibility the unfathomable richness of Physics, and through internal sensibility the richness of the I and the whole of the psyche. But, if I take nothing more than the minimum strictly necessary and sufficient to have something given without any details, then we would have two facts, in the order of external sensibility, the res corporea, {217} and in the order of internal sensibility, the res cogitans. This is precisely the Cartesian way. Since corporeity and cogitation are given, it is possible to have a metaphysics, that is, a knowledge of nature and the human spirit through pure concepts because these concepts do nothing but determine something that is really and effectively given. Because of this, Kant says this metaphysics is strictly speaking an immanent metaphysics that by means of concepts constitutive of things, gives us determinations of them that do not make us exceed the domain of the given. Determinations that rather manifest the given, and allow us to know it in a completely different metaphysical dimension that lies beyond the dimensions of physics or psychology.

Up to now the matter is clear. But human understanding —Kant says— has always had the desire to increase its knowledge (and will eventually have to give us the reason why it has always been trying to do this) beyond the given. It does it in order to lead us, by means of reasoning and the system of concepts, to objects not given in experience, to transcendental objects. With this the “meta-” of metaphysics not simply means trans in a transcendental sense, it means transcendent, that is, the supersensible.

Kant says these objects are the object of “metaphysics as such” (eigentliche Metaphysik). This is the heavy inheritance of Leibniz. At any rate, that is what Kant says. How has human understanding managed to do this? Doing it in a manner that is not simple, but plausible.

No one has seen all the things that are in the universe, but I see some things, perceive some things, intellectually know some things that are conditioned, that depend on a condition, and this one on another, etc. Then, because of my reason I rise to the consideration of everything that is conditioned, insofar as it {218} naturally depends on something absolutely unconditioned. This would precisely be the idea of the world, the idea of an unconditioned totality.

Analogously —although the reasoning such as we are going to refer to it in its homology may be somewhat simple—, in order to shorten things, if I do the same with what refers to my animated conditions, I shall be led to the idea of a soul.

Finally, if I take the totality of these two unconditioned totalities —world and soul— into a single totality, I have the idea of God.

Metaphysics, classical philosophy, has attempted to deal with the world, the soul and God as entities without which what is given would not be possible. But right here is where the sharp and irrefutable critique of Kant takes place.

In the first place, it is said “what is given to us”. No one has received the conditioned totality of experience; we have been given fragments of experience. If someone had in front of his eyes the conditioned totality of everything that happens in the world, then that reasoning might be applicable, but man is lacking in this. Man has an experience, more or less rich, more or less ample and voluminous, he can add all his experiences to the experiences of others, but in no manner at all, neither individual nor collective nor historically taken, is the totality of the external experience something given. A fortiori the same happens with the totality of internal experience. That totality is never given. Man has an experience of internal states —and we repeat again the same reasoning mentioned before— that totality is never given as a totality. This is something assumed by man, but at any rate it is a vicious circle.

In the second place, Kant will say, the proof that these {219} empirical totalities are never total but fragmentary, resides in the fact that any attempt to apply a transcendental reasoning to them leads to inexorable antinomies. Since they are well known, we shall only allude to them briefly. Whether reality is divisible or indivisible to the infinite, whether there is a first term in the series of these events, etc. There, we find reasoning with the same evidence for the thesis or for the antithesis. It is a reasoning strictly antinomic because the totality is never given in the experience.

In the third place, because lacking being given in experience there is the subsidiary impression —and here is the error, Kant says— that with the system of concepts we are referring to things themselves, when in reality concepts cannot transcend the order of objects and objectuality. Precisely within this order of objects is when it is absolutely impossible to step to things outside the world of these objects; we have to move within the world of objects. These three ideas, the world, the soul, and God are certainly immanent, but immanent to what? Not to the given, because the totalities of experiences are not given; they are immanent to knowledge, constitutive of knowledge. What they are useful for is to make that the science of human knowledge may not be a simple accumulation of isolated truths, but that they may truly constitute a system. They are ideas regulative of reason; they are the fundament for knowledge to have the form of system. But they are not objects at all to which we arrive through an inexorable conclusion of the totality of experience, subjected to a system of categories. They are —Kant says— regulative ideas; they are not constitutive of things, but regulative of knowledge and immanent to it.

{220} This does not mean for Kant that these objects may not be possible, that is another problem, but that they are only possible. If these objects were to fulfill the conditions for being something given and that actually this something given could make possible the application of the categories, then everything would be perfectly in order. But this never happens in speculative reason. Speculative theology, speculative cosmology, and speculative psychology are for Kant the dreams of reason. This is no metaphor. Kant wrote a pamphlet against Swedenborg, a famous visionary, and the title was, The dreams of a visionary explained by the dreams of Metaphysics¹. Metaphysics, thus understood, is for Kant the dream of reason. To pretend by the succession of experiential facts, internal or external, to reach something that transcends this world of sensed objects, to the reality of these three great ideas of God, soul and world, is completely chimerical. That is purely and simply the dream of reason. We shall never have science and true knowledge unless concepts are based and applied to something given, unless these concepts actually constitute some immanent moments of objects and things, beyond this, it is impossible to have knowledge. We shall have —Kant says— “thought”. Of course, we can think anything we wish, as long as we do not fall into contradiction; but this does not mean that what we think is an object, an object given in the world. To presume to reach by mere prolongation of the intellectual and transcendental constitution of the order of experience to {221} a transcendent being, God, the soul or the world, for Kant, this is the dream of reason (der Traum der Vernunft).

Why? Because the experience upon which all of science is based and all this presumed attempt of transcendental metaphysics is that which is given under the form of an empirical intuition, that is, as something that appears to us in time and space. Then —Kant says— there is nothing that will allow us to step outside these limits of time and space, and within these limits, the totality of the internal or external experience and much less the totality of the two totalities, which is God, is never given.

Before proceeding to another kind of given, we cannot avoid taking a look and reflecting for a moment over that vigorous construction of the immanent metaphysics and the critique of speculative metaphysics Kant has just provided.

Kant starts for his whole construction from the point that all human knowledge begins with experience. Kant has no doubt about this because, how could the capacity for knowing be activated unless by the objects of the senses that impress us, that produce sensations? This is true and there is no need for the genius of Kant to affirm it. But, what does Kant understand here by “impression”? That is the question. Do we understand by impression purely and simply what empiricism understood? After all, rationalism, when it opposed all empiricist philosophy, was opposed precisely to this. Does it mean purely and simply that impression is the mere affection of a subject? In that case, we would be lost. Because, truthfully, any impression including the most trivial insofar as an impression, in one form or another, brings about the appearance right in front of the affected subject that which affects it. Clearly, there is a moment of “otherness”.

{222} Nevertheless, this otherness in man, different from the animal, has a specific dimension and one of its own. Man feels in the impression not only the sensitive contents, whatever they may be and with all their richness, but also feels something different, he feels their own characteristic of reality, he feels the content with a special formality of their own, the impression of reality. Given this case, the intellectual reflections would have taken quite different directions from the ones Kantian metaphysics followed.

The first of these differences consists in Kant telling us in an evidently plausible and truthful way that human understanding has to make an object out of things in order to know what they are, this is quite clear. But the question always is, when I make an object out of something, even supposing that I make the objectuality of the object, do I know the res objecta qua objecta or qua res? Do I know it insofar as object or insofar as thing? The answer for Kant is clear, it would only be as object because in the impression there has been no moment of reality. But if there had been one, the question would have taken a very different course.

In the second place, Kant demonstrates that the truth of understanding and reason is primarily and radically a verum logicum, a conformity of understanding with things that essentially depends on a verum transcendentale, that is, on the way how man behaves with respect to his first impressions. But this assumes that transcendental truth in that sense is the primary truth. But what if primary truth was not that? What if it was simply the naked presence of reality in the intellective act? What if the intellection of man is sentient intellection? Then we would have a “real” truth, and if real truth exists, then judgment is not the one that determines the intelligibility of things, {223} actually reality is the one that determines the structure capable of the intellectual understanding that judgment has.

Because of this, the Kantian meditation leads to other meditations. In addition, it leads to some questions that may appear as matters of detail, but that actually for Kant are very important. For example, Kant insists that science would be impossible without synthetic a priori judgments (let us prescind of what this has of synthetic), that is to say, without absolutely necessary universal truths; the immediate example Kant gives is causality. Actually, if we do not have a causal vision of the world, if objects were not to have a causal connection, they would be unintelligible. Kant understands causality saying “everything that is in time has an antecedent, which determines it in time”. With causality enunciated that way, is this judgment of Kant true? Is it true that a temporal antecedent intrinsically and necessarily determines everything that is in time? Present day Physics, correctly or incorrectly in having eliminated the idea of determinist causality in the consideration of its elementary particles, and in having introduced an indeterminist Physics, would be in line with the reflection I have just indicated. However, I do not wish to associate both reflections, this is something for indeterminist Physics to argue. The only thing I mean to say is that the idea of causality is not the same as the idea of temporal determination; that it might be true that a thing that appears in time has a cause. But, does this mean the cause may be an antecedent that is given in time? What if this was not so?

Nevertheless, there are clouds surrounding this vigorous construction of Kantianism. Now Kant has {224} one question pending. Empirical intuition, including its transcendental conditions of time and space, is that the only way something is given to human understanding? Kant will reply that there is another completely different way.

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¹ Träume eines Geistersehers, erläuter durch Träume der Metaphysik, a work published by Kant in 1776 (Königsberg, J. J. Kanter).