THE IMMANENTISM OF KANT’S TRANSCENDENTAL

IDEALIST CONCEPTUALISM

Paul Gerard Horrigan, Ph.D., 2016.

Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) transcendental idealism advocates conceptualism, a

particular answer given to the problem of the universals which affirms that our concepts are
indeed universal, but denies that they correspond to anything in extra-mental reality.
“Conceptualists differ from nominalists in as much as they admit that we can have truly
universal concepts. But they claim that there is nothing whatsoever in reality which corresponds
to these concepts.”1 Conceptualism, explains Peter Coffey, “admits that the human intellect can
form genuinely universal concepts, and can by means of each such concept, apprehend as a
mental or conceptual unity an indefinite multitude of similar individual data of sense; but denies
that there is in these latter any real ground for the concept, anything really represented or
apprehended through the concept; and therefore concludes that the universal concept gives us no
genuine or valid insight into the nature or reality of the data of sense.”2 Wallace notes that “for
conceptualism universal terms signify universal concepts that are mentally constructed and
correspond to nothing in reality.”3

In his Gnoseology, Alejandro Llano explains the immanentist foundations of Kant’s

Transcendental Analytic, showing that “the key concept of the Analytics is specifically that of
the transcendental subject. By ‘transcendental’ Kant means all knowledge, not about objects in
themselves, but about our way of knowing them, since this must be a priori possible. It is the
spontaneity of our intellect which synthesizes and confers conceptual objectivity upon empirical
phenomena, which possess only a spatio-temporal structure. The basis for scientific knowledge –
and the proper objects of this knowledge – must be sought, therefore in the a priori formal
principles of the intellect. This faculty unifies and determines sense phenomena, formalizing
them according to the structure of our judgments. The classification of judgments is precisely the
path towards the deduction of the table of categories. The Kantian categories are the root-
concepts, the fundamental modes of the synthesis of phenomena: ‘they are the forms of
experience in general.’

“Through the categories, or pure concepts, is carried out the unifying synthesis of
phenomena around the transcendental ego, and this culminates in transcendental perception, an
intellectual function by which all perceptions are referred to the consciousness of the ‘thinking
ego.’ But how are these a priori forms of the transcendental subject valid for the knowledge of
objects? Precisely – Kant has to reply – because these subjective forms are the condition and the
foundation of all knowledge: ‘The conditions for the possibility of experience in general are, at
the same time, the conditions for the possibility of the objects of experience and therefore they
have objective value in a synthetic a priori judgment.’4 Thus, according to Kant, it is the intellect
which imposes its conditions upon sense phenomena and not vice versa. This is precisely the

1
H. GRENIER, Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 3 (Metaphysics), St. Dunstan’s University, Charlottetown, 1950, p. 139.
2
P. COFFEY, Epistemology, vol. 1, Peter Smith, Glouchester, MA, 1958, p. 330.
3
W. WALLACE, The Elements of Philosophy, Alba House, Staten Island, NY, 1977, p. 25,
4
I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 158, B 197.

1
Copernican revolution which Kant carried out: instead of the subject attending to objects, it is
the objects which depend on the thinking ego. In broader term, we are facing a transfer of the
foundation from being to thought: now it is thought which founds being.

“Such is the line of argument of The Transcendental Deduction of the Categories, in

which Kant tries to demonstrate that an objectively valid a priori synthesis of the a posteriori is
possible, thanks to which Kant justifies the existence of synthetic a priori judgments in the
physical sciences. For Kant, nature is no more than a set of formalized phenomena whose laws
are not given by the structure of things as they are in themselves, but rather are prescribed to
nature by the intellect. It is we, says Kant, who introduce order and regularity into natural
phenomena, and we would not be able to discover this order and regularity if it had not originally
been placed there by the nature of our minds.5

“Scientific knowledge is, then, a rational construct related exclusively to empirical

intuition. The categories have not been extracted from experience, but are valid only for
experience, so that they cannot be applied beyond the domain of sense phenomena. From the
meeting of what is posited by the intellect with what is given by sense intuition arises objectivity:
‘Concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.’6 But given how
Kant has set things up, this statement is highly problematic, so he will have to seek a third
element: time, as a transcendental schema, a product of the imagination, which will carry out an
artificial mediation between the categories and the phenomena. The harmonizing of the intellect
with the senses is, without a doubt, one of the weakest points of Kantian gnoseology.

“As we can see, Kant only admits knowledge of what is immanent to the subject: we do
not know things, but rather our way of knowing them (we could almost say ‘our way of not
knowing them’). We cannot reach things in themselves, only the objects of experience are
accessible to us. Kant draws a drastic line of separation between noumena: things are as they are
in themselves, which can only be thought, but not known, and phenomena: things as they appear
to us. So as not to fall into total idealism Kant must, nonetheless, admit in some way the
existence of things in themselves as the unknowable origin of the matter of phenomena. But this
transcendental remainder does not fit into the context of the immanentist approach. This is why
Jacobi (1743-1819) observed that without the thing in itself one cannot enter into the Kantian
system, but with it one cannot remain within the system. This contradiction is one of the
principal reasons for the rise of post-Kantian absolute idealism.”7

Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Conceptualism: “Conceptualists defend the universality of

ideas in the mind. Like the nominalists they deny the external reality of the universals in nature;
but, unlike the nominalists, they maintain that our universal ‘names’ are expressions of genuinely
universal ‘ideas,’ so that the latter actually represent to the mind an essence which is one-
common-to-many. The main point in conceptualism, however, is the contention that the content
of our universal ideas is not realized in any form whatever in the individual sense-objects: there
is no foundation in the things themselves which would justify the intellect in forming universal
ideas. Our universal ideas are thus purely subjective products of the mind without a correlative in

5
I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 125.
6
I. KANT, Critique of Pure Reason, A 151, B 75.
7
A. LLANO, Gnoseology, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 2001, pp. 96-98.

2
nature; in other words, there is nothing in the individuals in nature which is genuinely
represented by these universal ideas. This, of course, gives to the universals only a strictly intra-
mental significance; as ‘universals’ they have no objective value.

“Kant actually tried to prove the validity of our universal ideas by showing that the
categories of the understanding are applicable to the data of sense-intuitions; but his
interpretation of the manner in which our universal ideas are formed from these intuitions of
sense make them invalid as representations of reality. According to him the data of sense are
united with the pure categories of the understanding. These categories, however, are innate a
priori forms of the understanding and are in no way derived from sense-intuitions. The mind
super-imposes these categories upon the data of sense, and now we apprehend in these combined
products of sense-data and categories relations which are ‘universal.’ We do not derive our
universal ideas by means of abstraction from the sense-data themselves; the universality of the
idea is exclusively the product of the intellect, without a foundation in the extra-mental reality of
the things in nature. In fact, the things in nature are noumena which are forever unknown and
unknowable to us. Our universal ideas thus have no reality corresponding to them in the outside
world and are mere creations of the mind; and that is the theory of conceptualism.”8

“Critique of Conceptualism. Extreme realists admit that we have ideas which are
universal and claim that the things to which they apply are also universal. Nominalists deny the
existence of universal entities and also deny that we have genuinely universal ideas in the mind.
Conceptualists deny the universality of extra-mental entities as existing in nature, and they admit
that the intellect has genuinely universal ideas which are expressed in universal names or words.
However, because the objects in the world are singular and not universal, they claim that our
universal ideas can have no objective value. In other words, since the objects are singular while
the ideas are universal, there is nothing in the objects themselves which would correspond in any
way to the content of the universal as ‘one-common-to-many.’ The universality of the idea is a
purely subjective product of the mind, without a foundation in the things themselves which
would entitle the mind to group a number of individuals under one (universal) idea. Hence, the
universal idea can give us no genuine knowledge of the real nature of the things.

“Conceptualists go too far when they assert that there is no foundation in things for our
universal ideas and consequently that the content of these ideas as ‘one-common-to-many’ is
purely subjective in character. If this were so, then the content of the universal idea would
neither be derived from the individual things nor applied to the individual things. If we can show
that they are derived from the individual things through sense-perception and are really applied
to individual things as they exist in nature, then we have proved that universals have a
foundation in these things and possess objective value. That indeed is the case.

“This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that our intellect can form no universal idea of
sense-qualities proper to a certain sense-faculty, if this sense-faculty has always been absent. A
person born blind, for instance, cannot form a genuine, universal, universal idea of light or color;
and a person born deaf has no idea of what is meant by sound or music. The same is true of any
other sense-quality. Whence do we derive our universal ideas of ‘man,’ ‘plant,’ ‘dog,’ star,’
‘table,’ and other objects, except from a previous perception of these things? …Hence,
8
C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1936, pp. 237-238.

3
conceptualists are wrong when they state that our universal ideas have no foundation in the
reality of the objects; we derive them from these objects as they exist in nature.

“That our universal ideas can be applied according to their content as ‘one-common-to-
many’ to objects, is a matter of everyday experience. When I state ‘Man is an animal,’ I most
certainly do apply the content ‘animal’ as a ‘sentient organism’ to each and every human being
and to all human beings who live in this world; and that in a true, genuine sense. The statement
has not merely value in the mind, but also in the order of reality: men actually are ‘sentient
organisms.’ And so with statements like ‘The gnat is an insect,’ the table is round,’ and with
innumerable other statements which contain universal ideas: they represent facts and objects of
the real order. Such statements could never be true, if our universal ideas had no foundation in
the reality of the things themselves.

“That the natural sciences apply the universal ideas incorporated in their classifications
and laws to the physical world, is too obvious for serious dispute. The classifications of animals,
plants, and inorganic substances have not only a subjective value for the mind; they really fit, as
classes and types, the things of nature. And how could it be otherwise? Science derives its
universal ideas of classes and types from its research into the beings which exist in the material
world. The only reason why it groups such beings into classes and types is because it finds
something ‘common-to-many’ in them; there is thus a foundation or ground in the things for the
formation of its univeral ideas. So, too, with its laws. They represent generalizations based on the
behavior of physical bodies. If these bodies did not act uniformly and constantly, science could
never formulate such laws, nor would the laws of science apply to them in their respective fields.
If scientists can and do predict the actions of physical bodies in nature, this is possible only
because these laws have a foundation in the reality of these bodies and actually apply to them
independently of the universalizing function of the mind. To deny this is tantamount to denying
the validity of all science; and that would be ruinous of all knowledge of the physical world.
Skepticism must inevitable follow.

“…Kant and his disciples, although they attempt to establish the validity and necessity of
scientific knowledge, are compelled to admit that all scientific classifications and laws have no
objective, but only subjective, value. This follows, of course, with logical consistency from their
theory that the reality of things-in-themselves is unknown and unknowable; the only objects we
can know are the phenomena. The universality of our ideas is due to certain innate a priori forms
or categories of the intellect, which are purely subjective in character and are imposed by the
mind upon the manifold of sense; as such, then, they can have no objective value. But if the
natural sciences are invalid as objective representations of the physical world and are nothing
more than subjective constructions of a fictionizing intellect, all knowledge and philosophy is
doomed as illusory. That is the logical outcome of a consistent conceptualism; and that we
cannot accept, because it means intellectual bankruptcy. Conceptualism must, therefore, be
rejected as a false theory.”9

Coffey’s Critique of Kant’s Conceptualism: “General Criticism of Kant’s Theory of

Universal Concepts. A. The Theory Fails to Account for the Facts. I. If conception consisted in
combining or unifying systematically a sense-manifold, and if this manifold were in itself wholly
9
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 253-256.

4
unsystematic and chaotic, then we should expect not a plurality of categories or ways of
combining it into concepts, but one general activity of mental synthesis.10

“‘Thus,’ – to take the example given by Prichard,11 – ‘suppose the manifold is given to
the mind to be combined consisted of musical notes, we could think of the mind’s power of
combination as exercised in combining the notes by way of succession provided that this be
regarded as the only mode of combination. But if the mind were thought also capable of
combining notes by way of simultaneity, we should at once be confronted by the insoluble
problem of determining why the one mode of combination [or category] was exercised in any
given case rather than the other. If, several kinds of synthesis [or categories] being allowed, this
difficulty be avoided by the supposition that, not being incompatible, they are all exercised
together, we have the alternative task of explaining how the same manifold can be combined in
each of these ways [or why it is not always combined de facto in every way, i.e., by the
simultaneous exercise of all the categories: which reflection on our cognitive processes reveals
never to be the case]. As a matter of fact, Kant thinks of manifolds of different kinds as
combined or related in different ways; thus events are related causally and quantities
quantitatively. But since, on Kant’s view the manifold as given is unrelated and all combination
comes from the mind, the mind should not be held capable of combining manifolds of different
kinds differently. Otherwise the manifold would in its own nature imply the need of a particular
kind of synthesis [or, in other words, would have ‘affinities’] and would therefore not be
unrelated.’

“Since what is given in the manifold of sense intuition is, according to Kant, a chaotic
manifold of isolated sense impressions, in themselves unknowable, he has really no right to
assume ‘different kinds of manifolds.’

“This line of criticism is so destructive of Kant’s theory that we will add an alternative
statement of it by a scholastic writer:12 ‘Suppose the conception of the object of the
understanding were a result of the natural [synthetic a priori] functioning of the mind in presence
of the passive impressions of the sensibility, should not the same impressions [and impressions
are always the same: a chaotic manifold of unknowable isolated units] necessarily determine the
same functioning, the exercise of one and the same category? And on this hypothesis how are we
to explain that one and the same matter [or datum] originates different concepts, sometimes, e.g.,
that of substance, sometimes that of cause or action, etc.?’

10
As a matter of fact the mental process of knowing, i.e., of interpreting, of apperceiving, recognizing, is
fundamentally one and the same, whether it be conceiving, judging, or reasoning. It is essentially a mental
apprehension and assertion of something, some datum, as real. Reasoning not only involves judgment, but is itself
judging: it is apprehending relations of dependence in the reality given to thought, and thus asserting reality to be
such or such (cf. Science of Logic, i., §§ 79-80, pp. 160-162; § 148, pp. 296-297). Judging, in turn, is using concepts
to interpret the real, and thereby implicitly asserting that the content or object of the concept is real; while
conceiving is itself intellectually apprehending, and implicitly asserting to be real, what is given in and through
sense perception. Reality as known intellectually, as object of intellect, has the features of abstractness and
universality: the only features which reflection shows to belong not to the content, but to the mode, of thought. And
that there are different kinds of concepts, judgments and inferences is due of course to the complexity and variety of
the given reality determining those differences in our cognition.
11
H. A. PRICHARD, Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1909, p. 214.
12
D. MERCIER, Critériologie Générale, ou Théorie Générale de la Certitude, Louvain, 1906, § 140, pp. 383-384,
3me. arg.

5
 “If therefore, conception were a function of systematically combining a priori into
definite unities a chaotic manifold given in sense intuition, it is inexplicable why there should be
a plurality of categories, or why, granted such a plurality, any one rather than any other should be
called into operation in any given case of conception.

“II. In the second place, even if such plurality of the categories were explained, and such
selective employment of them accounted for, it would still be true that each category is in itself
utterly inadequate to account for the numerous distinct modes of its application; or, in other
words, there would need to be as many categories in the understanding as there are universal
concepts, specific and generic, which the understanding can form, and not merely the dozen or
so which Kant maintains to be exhaustive and to account adequately for all our conceptions.

“When Kant is explaining how knowledge and self-consciousness alike imply the
synthesizing of a manifold by the a priori forms or principles of synthesis his illustrations clearly
show that each such synthesis ‘requires a particular principle which constitutes the individual
manifold a whole of a particular kind [e.g., ‘a triangle’ or ‘a sum of five units’]. But if this be the
case, it is clear that the categories, which are merely conceptions of an object in general, and are
consequently quite general, cannot possibly be sufficient for the purpose. And since the manifold
in itself includes no synthesis and therefore no principle of synthesis, Kant fails to give any
account of the source of the particular principles of synthesis required for particular acts of
knowledge.’13

“For instance, he illustrates the process (of combining a sense-manifold through a

category), whereby the sense-manifold acquires ‘objectivity’ in general, or ‘relation to an object’
in general, or ‘systematic unity and connectedness’ in general, by the example of ‘a synthesis on
a particular principle which constitutes the phenomenal object an object of a particular kind.
The synthesis which enables us to recognize three lines as an object [a triangle]14 is not a
synthesis based on general principles constituted by the categories, but a synthesis based on the
particular principle that the three lines must be so put together as to form an enclosed space.’15

“If the categories ‘can only contribute a general kind of unity, and not the special kind of
unity belonging to an individual object,’16 or class of objects, then it is clear that the categories
cannot account for the conception of all the numerous specific and generic ‘unities’ which the
objects of our universal concepts: ‘Suppose it be conceded that in the apprehension of definite
shapes we combine the manifold in accordance with the conception of figure, and, for the

13
H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 207 (italics ours). Cf. ibid., p. 177, n. 2; supra, § 89.
14
In this example (Critique, p. 87: ‘Thus we conceive a triangle as an object, if we are conscious of the combination
of three straight lines, according to a rule, which renders such an intuition possible at all times’), the process ‘plainly
requires a synthesis of a very definite kind’(H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 217, n. 1), and not merely a synthesis
according to the general category of quantity.
15
Ibid., p. 185. According to Kant, to know a sense-manifold as having systematic unity in general is to know it as
an object, or as objective; and it is made objective by the application of a category. In order, therefore, to apprehend
a sense-manifold as objective, i.e., in order to exercise the function of a category, we should not need to know the
particular kind of systematic unity which the manifold is to have. Yet, from his examples, it is clear that we must
know the latter as a means of knowing the former. Cf. op. cit., ibid.
16
Ibid., n. 1.

6
purpose of the argument, that figure can be treated as equivalent to the category of quantity.17 It
is plain that we apprehend different shapes, e.g., lines18 and triangles,19 of which, if we take into
account differences of relative length of sides, there is an infinite variety, and houses,20 which
may also have an infinite variety of shape. But there is nothing in the mind’s capacity of relating
the manifold by way of figure to determine it to combine a given manifold into a figure of one
kind rather than into a figure of any other kind; for to combine the manifold into a particular
shape, there is needed not merely the thought of a figure in general, but the thought of a definite
figure. No cue can be furnished by the manifold itself, for any such cue would involve the
conception of a definite figure, and would therefore imply that the particular synthesis was
implicit in the manifold itself, in which case it would not be true that all synthesis comes from
the mind.’21

“Thus, then, the categories can give at most only the widest and most generic sort of so-
called ‘objectivity,’ or ‘systematic unity,’ to the manifolds of sense intuition; they cannot
originate our specific and generic universal concepts.

“Nor does Kant prevent this breakdown of his theory by ascribing the principles of the
less universal syntheses to the productive imagination, for with Kant this faculty must mean the
understanding itself working unreflectively; and anyhow he fails to account for the intermediate
principles of synthesis which he locates in it. We have seen how in explaining the synthetic a
priori function of these faculties he felt forced to admit an ‘affinity’ in the elements of the sense-
manifold. But the exigencies of his theory prevented him from ascribing this ‘affinity’ to any
‘real’ or ‘extra-subjective’ or ‘extra-mental’ factor: ‘since the manifold is originated by the thing
in itself, it seems prima facie impossible to prove that the elements of the manifold must have
affinity [of themselves, or derived from their real source, viz., things in themselves], and so be
capable of being related according to the categories.’22 Accordingly, he tried ‘to carry out to the
full his doctrine that all unity or connectedness comes from the mind’s activity,’ by ‘maintaining
that the imagination, acting productively on the data of sense and thereby combining them into
an image, gives the data a connectedness which the understanding can subsequently recognize.
But to maintain this is, of course, only to throw the problem one stage further back. If
reproduction, in order to enter into knowledge, imples a manifold which has such connection that
it is capable of being reproduced according to rules, so the production of sense-elements into a
coherent image in turn implies sense-elements capable of being so combined. The act of
combination cannot confer upon them or introduce into them a unity which they do not already
possess. The fact is that this step exhibits the final breakdown of his view that all unity or
connectedness or relatedness is conferred upon the data of sense by the activity of the mind.’23

“We see then that if all our universal concepts be, as Kant claims, a priori syntheses of
forms of the understanding (or the ‘productive imagination’) with sense-manifolds, the mind

17
It is de facto, a more concrete conception than the category, and therefore more favorable to Kant’s contention.
18
Critique, p. 749.
19
Ibid., p. 87.
20
Ibid., p. 764.
21
H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 216.
22
Ibid., pp. 219-220; supra, p. 214, n. 2.
23
Ibid., p. 226.

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should be furnished with a separate and distinct synthesizing principle or form for every specific
or generic class-notion which it can conceive.

“III. Whether the a priori categories of the understanding, whether the a priori
schematizing and image-producing functions of the ‘productive imagination’ be one, or few, or
indefinitely numerous, the sort of synthesis ascribed to them by Kant is incapable of originating
the universal concepts which de facto enter into our knowledge.

“To synthesize or combine the elements of a manifold is to relate them somehow to one
another as terms (and, in Kant’s meaning, also to recognize them as systematically inter-related,
as forming a conceived ‘objective’ unity). But in order that the elements be capable of entering
into relation with one another they must, as terms, (1) be adapted to the general nature of the
relationship to be effected; and (2) to the special kind of relation to be effected within that
general order of relationship. For example, (1) ‘if two terms are to be related as more or less loud
they must be sounds’;24 if ‘as right and left’ they ‘must be bodies in space’; if ‘as parent and
child’ they must be human beings,’ etc. And similarly, (2) ‘if one sound is to be related to
another by way of the octave, that other must be its octave’; ‘if we are to combine or relate a
manifold into a triangle, and therefore into a triangle of a particular size and shape, the elements
of the manifold must be lines, and lines of a particular size’; ‘if…into a house, and therefore into
a house of a certain shape and size, the manifold must consist in bodies of a suitable shape and
size,’ etc. Hence ‘the manifold must be adapted to fit categories not only…in the sense that it
must be of the right kind, but also in the sense that its individual elements must have that orderly
character which enables them to be related according to the categories.’ But in Kant’s theory the
manifold to be related consists solely of a chaotic stream of sensations, or isolated space-and-
time perceptions.25 The question therefore returns, Whence have these isolated data of sense the
characteristics of affinity which fit them, as terms, for the relations which the mind is supposed
to establish between them by synthesizing them into systematic objective unities or concepts?

“For Kant the chaotic manifolds of sense data are originated by the extramental reality,
which, though according to his own theory unknowable, he always thinks of in the plural, as
things (in themselves) or individuals.26 His first distinction between sensibility and
understanding was ‘that between the passive faculty by which an individual is given and the
active faculty by which we bring the individual under, or recognize it as an instance of a
universal.’27 Then he came to regard the ‘given individuals’ as terms, and the function of the
mind (the understanding and the productive imagination) as that of relating those terms. Thus he
confounds the two quite distinct processes of bringing individuals under a universal and
establishing between the given manifold of terms relations which transform these manifolds into
definite, systematic unities or objective concepts, – describing both as if they were one and the
same process of a priori synthesis, and thus ascribing all unity or connectedness to the activity of
the mind. But it is plain that before an individual can be brought under a universal it must first be
apprehended as an individual. The process by which we recognize an individual plane figure as
an instance of the universal ‘triangle’ cannot be the same as the process by which we recognize

24
Cf. H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 218-219; 226-229.
25
Ibid., p. 218.
26
And implcitly identifies with bodies in space (56-59), – H. A. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 67n., 77n., 257., 265.
27
Op. cit., p. 228.

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the given sense manifold (of perception or imagination) as a consciously apprehended individual
sense datum. According to Kant the latter process is one by which we so relate among
themselves and unify the isolated elements of the given manifold that we apprehend the products
as an ‘individual-space-bounded-by-straight-lines.’ But it is impossible for Kant to hold,
consistently with his general theory, that the isolated elements of the manifold are given as
terms, and that the mind contributes the unifying relations. For in the first place, if the elements
are given as terms they are given as having mutual affinities whereby they are of their own
nature mutually referable by the mind apprehending them: but Kant denies that the elements of
the manifold have in themselves, or derive from things in themselves, any affinity whatsoever:
indeed he holds that the manifold given in sense does not and cannot enter into consciousness at
all as it is, but only as unified by the activity of mental a priori forms. And in the second place, if
the manifold of sense be given as a manifold of terms, i.e., of elements which have mutual
affinities, which of their very nature demand and necessitate certain relations, – and it is thus that
the manifold of sense is de facto given, – then the ground of such relations, and the motive for
the mind’s formally establishing or apprehending them, are given with the sense-manifold, and
are apprehended in it by the mind: and so Kant’s main thesis falls to the ground, viz., that the
mind, in inter-relating the manifold of sense consciousness, in interpreting the given by means of
concepts and judgments, in ‘knowing’ the given as an orderly system of objects of scientific
knowledge, is not guided by evidence furnished to it in and with the data of sense; but through an
instinctive, subjective process of synthesizing unknowable data with a priori mental factors
creates for itself a system of mental products which are the phenomenal world, or physical
Nature.28

“That not only a manifold of individual terms (and not a chaotic stream of isolated sense
impressions), but a manifold of individual relations, is given in sense consciousness,
introspection itself clearly testifies.29 To illustrate this in the case of the (perceptive or
imaginative) apprehension of an individual sense datum Prichard takes ‘Kant’s favorite
instance…the apprehension of a straight line.’30

28
As a matter of fact since Kant holds that the real, whether Ego or non-Ego, is unknowable, and since he represents
the categories as transcendental functions, or functions of the noumenal Ego, he is inconsistent in maintaining that
reflection on our processes of cognition can discover the grounds of the laws and relations which make the objects
of knowledge a system or cosmos, in the categories, or in these with the ‘transcendental unity of apperception,’ – for
this position implies that we can after all discover something as to the character of the noumenal or real Ego. Cf.
supra, §§ 59, 89, p. 336, n. 5; p. 337, n. 1.
29
We here appeal to consciousness as testifying that the grounds of our conceptions and judgments are given with
the data of sense-consciousness, and are apprehended by intellect therein. Kant would probably object that nothing
can come into consciousness except already synthesized products; that the reason why the products are such as they
are cannot be found in consciousness but must lie beyond consciousness, in the transcendental Ego. (Query: Why
there, rather than in the transcendental non-Ego?); and that therefore it is impossible to argue from the facts of
consciousness against his theory (cf. supra, p. 215, n. 1). We join issue with this position in pointing out that Kant’s
theory, by denying that the grounds of conception and judgment can be discovered in the facts of consciousness,
thereby contradicts facts of consciousness; for while his main contention – that these grounds are transcendental – is
practically an agnostic confession that they are ultimately undiscoverable, our contention is that they are
discoverable in the data of consciousness and knowledge, that they are discovered there in the process of cognition,
and that they guide the mind in this process.
30
Op. cit., p. 226.

9
 “This, according to Kant, ‘presupposes that there is given to us a manifold, which –
whther he admits it or not – must really be parts of the line, and that we combine this manifold
on a principle involved in the nature of straightness. Now suppose that the manifold given is the
parts AB, BC, CD, DE, of the straight line AE. It is clearly only possible to recognize AB and
BC as contiguous parts of a straight line, if we immediately apprehend that AB and BC form one
line of which these parts are identical in direction. Otherwise we might just as well join AB and
BC at a right angle, and in fact at any angle; we need not even make AB and BC contiguous.31
Similarly the relation of BC and CD and of CD to DE must be just as immediately apprehended
as the parts themselves…Relations then, or in Kant’s language, particular syntheses, must be said
to be given in the sense in which the elements to be combined can be said to be given.’32

“Hence the apprehension of a sense-manifold as an individual unity is not to be

confounded, as Kant confounds it, with the apprehension of this individual unity as an instance
of a universal. ‘For, on the one hand, a relation between terms is as much an individual as either
of the terms. That a body A is to the right of a body B is as much an individual fact as either A or
B. And if terms, as being individuals, belong to perception and are given, in the sense that they
are in immediate relation to us, relations, as being individuals, equally belong to perception and
are given. On the other hand, individual terms just as much as individual relations, imply
corresponding universals. An individual body implies ‘bodiness’ just as much as the fact that a
body A is to the right of a body B implies the relationship of ‘being to the right of something.’
And if, as is the case, thinking or conceiving, in distinction from perceiving, is that activity by
which we recognize an individual, given in perception, as one of a kind, conceiving is involved
as much in the apprehension of a term as in the apprehension of a relation. The apprehension of
‘this red body’ as much involves the recognition of an individual as an instance of a kind, i.e., as
much involves an act of the understanding, as does the apprehension of the fact that it is brighter
than some other body.’33

“That the systematic unity and connectedness of the concept is not due to any instinctive
synthesizing operation of the transcendental and unknowable Ego on a chaotic sense-manifold
originating in the mind from an equally unknowable non-Ego, but that it has its ground in the
apprehended sense-manifold itself, – this is a doctrine of such capital importance, as against
Kant’s theory, that we will now further illustrate the real nature of the synthesis involved in
conception, by Mercier’s statement34 of the line of argument we have been so far developing:
‘Any specific essence [he writes] is composed of notes [or elements, or factors] each of which is
contained in the data of sense, and the formation of its concept is constantly guided by these. The
formation of a [concept of a] specific essence [or ‘kind’ of thing] is conditioned by a series of
judgments all of which refer to one and the same subject [or datum] of sense experience, the
notes successively abstracted therefrom by the mind. According to Kant…the first35 combination
of the notes that constitute a conceived object would be an exclusively subjective function of the
mind devoid of any guarantee that such combination corresponded with things [or reality], so
31
“In order to meet a possible objection, it may be pointed out that if AB and BC be given in isolation, the
contiguity implied in referring to them as AB and BC will not be known.”
32
Ibid., pp. 227-228.
33
Ibid., pp. 228-229.
34
D. MERCIER, op. cit., § 140, pp. 380-383.
35
Or earliest, or fundamental: cf. supra, § 88, p. 333, n. 1, where it was noted that synthesis must precede analysis,
that all concepts are synthetic-a-priori.

10
that our concepts would perforce be destitute of real objectively. Now this account misrepresents
the process of conception. No doubt the conception of an intelligible object [or ‘kind’ of thing] is
a work of synthesis. The human mind at first apprehends only fragmentarily, so to speak, what a
given thing is: such is the law of its finite nature. The adjustment of several fragmentary notes
into a whole is therefore the inevitable consequence of our abstractive mode of apprehending the
intelligible aspects of reality, and is accordingly the sine qua non condition of our knowing an
essence [or ‘kind’ of thing]. But the union of any two elements of an intelligible object
presupposes their comparison, and hence a judgment. But comparison implies intuition of the
terms compared, and judgment the intuition of their compatibility or incompatibility. And since
the total synthesis of any conceived object is only the sum of the partial syntheses of its
elements, it is the product of comparisons and judgments. But what is it that determines the mind
to operate these partial syntheses and to gather them into a total synthesis? A subjective law of
the mind? On the contrary, it is the real unity of the sense datum perceived by the external senses
or reproduced by memory. The mind is conscious of representing to itself, by the aid of a
plurality of abstract notes, a thing which in its concrete reality is one; and it is moreover aware
that it must unify these [successively apprehended] notes into one single [whole or] essence in
order to gain for itself a faithful representation of the reality. It is therefore undoubtedly the
intuition of the unity of the objective reality that guides the mind in the formation of concepts.

“To illustrate this let us suppose that in presence of a person whom I actually see I form
the concept of ‘a being subsistent-corporeal-living-sentient-rational.’ Before uniting the two
notes being and subsistent I have apprehended that what is subsistent is a being; before uniting
with subsistent being the note of corporeity I have apprehended that a body is a substance and a
being; and so, likewise, the notes of life, sentiency and rationality have revealed themselves as
compatible with those of corporeity, subsistence and being, before I combine the former with the
latter. In a word, whenever I unite any two notes [or factors] to form synthetically an intelligible
essence I am conscious of comparing them firstly and then by an act of judgment attributing the
one as predicate to the other as subject; and I am conscious, moreover, that such a union, so far
from being a fusion [or synthesis] of which I could see merely the result and in nowise
apprehend the determining reason, is formally an act of cognition. Now the partial syntheses
terminate in an act of total synthesis whereby I conceive the intelligible essence. And what
determines the mind to effect this total synthesis? The sense reality, apprehended by [sense]
experience. The individual person whom I saw with my eyes drew upon himself the active
attention of my mind and furnished to it the material for abstractive acts whereby I successively
conceived abstract being, abstract substantiality, abstract corporeity, and so on. But while I was
successively abstracting those vatious notes [or aspects] I was well aware that, in the person I
saw, these notes did not exist mutually isolated from one another; on the contrary I was aware of
them as united in one single reality, and of myself as unable nevertheless to grasp them mentally
by one single effort of thought. The irresistible tendency which naturally impels me to conform
my concept with the thing in Nature [the given reality] made me combine again the notes which
analysis had separated. Clearly, therefore, it is the sense reality that furnishes the notes [or
factors] of conceived essences [or objects]; and it is on a [ground or] substrate in sense that the
[synthesis or] unification of those elements into a conceived essence is based.

“Sometimes this sense substrate is an image: then the intellect grasps the notes of the
essence [or objective concept] in imagined representations, and the concept is of the ideal order.

11
Sometimes the sense substrate is given in perception: the intellect apprehends the identity of the
notes of the essence in a datum of actual sense experience, and then the concept is said to be of
the real, or more strictly, of the existential order. But imagination can only represent elements
given in perception. So that in ultimate analysis we must always find the notes or factors of our
concepts in some previous or original percepts, before synthesizing them [into a conceived
object]. Consequently Kant’s presentation of the process of conception as an a priori synthesis,
to account for the formation of objective concepts, is in conflict with the testimony of
consciousness.”36

“B. Conception is Not an A Priori Synthesis Whereby by Our Mental Representations are
Made “Objective” and Thus Become Cognitions. – I. Conception is Not a Synthesis which
Constructs the Objects of Knowledge. – In the preceding argument we have seen in what sense
conception37 is really a ‘synthesis,’ viz., in the sense that it is a conscious comparison of abstract
aspects of reality, aspects isolated by previous analysis, a recognition of their real identity, and a
consequent mental synthesis of them into a definite, specific object of thought. This is not a
process of mental fabrication, as it were, of an object; it is a process of discovering an object, of
recognizing the given sense-manifold as an object. Now Kant meant something wholly different
from this by describing cognition as a process of synthesis. Having in mind the synthesis ‘of
spatial elements into a spatial whole,’ or, in other words, ‘the construction or making of spatial
objects in the literal sense,’ Kant really represents the synthesis in which knowledge consists as
‘that of making or constructing parts of the physical world, and in fact the physical world itself,
out of elements given in perception.’38 Knowledge, for him, is really a process of manufacture, a
process by which the mind creates the physical universe. That this is really Kant’s view will
appear firstly from his own express statements, and secondly from the fact that it is only such a
synthesis that can fit in with his theory of the categories.

“His statements are unmistakable: ‘It is we, therefore, who carry into the phenomena
which we call nature, order and regularity, nay, we should never find them in nature, if we
ourselves, or the nature of our mind, had not originally placed them there’…39 ‘The
understanding therefore is not only a power of making rules by a comparison of phenomena, it is
itself the lawgiver of nature.’…40 ‘However exaggerated therefore and absurd it may sound, that
the understanding is the source of the laws of nature, and of its formal unity, such a statement is
nevertheless correct and in accordance with experience.’41

36
P. COFFEY, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 343-352.
37
Including judgment and inference (cf. supra, 91), and therefore as meaning cognition or knowledge in general.
38
PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 233-4. The author rightly notes that Kant uses “mathematical illustrations of the
synthesis” because they are “the most plausible for his theory. While we can be said to construct geometrical
figures, and while the construction of geometrical figures can easily be mistaken for the apprehension of them, we
cannot with any plausibility be said to construct the physical world.”
39
Critique, p. 102.
40
Ibid., p. 103.
41
Ibid., p. 104. This Kantian view, that physical nature, as known through the mathematical and physical sciences, is
but a system of mental conceptions whose function is purely regulative and confined to the mental products of our
thinking processes, but in nowise representative of extramental reality, is very prevalent among those of our present-
day scientists who carry their speculations into the philosophical domain. Cf. Mach’s theory of science as a
Denkoeconomie, Poincaré’s Science et hypothèse, etc. Stated baldly, the view that the mind creates physical nature
appears absurd and incredible. The absurdity is partly concealed, and the view rendered superficially plausible, by
Kant’s other and underlying contention that the “physical world” thus created is a world of mental representations

12
 “Secondly, it is only if conception or cognition be a process which literally constructs its
objects, that the categories can even lay claim to validity:

“‘If knowing is really making, the principles of synthesis must apply to the reality known,
because it is by these very principles that reality is made. Moreover…we are able to understand
why Kant should think (1) that in the process of knowledge the mind introduces order into the
manifold, (2) that the mind is limited in its activity of synthesis by having to conform to certain
principles of construction which constitute the nature of the understanding, and (3) that the
manifold of phenomena must possess affinity. If, for example, we build a house, it can be said
(1) that we introduce into the materials a plan or principle of arrangement which they do not
possess in themselves, (2) that the particular plan is limited by, and must conform to, the laws of
spatial relation and to the general presuppositions of physics, such as the uniformity of nature,
and (3) that only such materials are capable of the particular combination as possess a nature
suitable to it….We can understand why Kant should lay such stress upon the ‘recognition’ of the
synthesis, and upon the self-consciousness involved in knowledge. For if the synthesis of the
manifold is really the making of an object, it results merely in the existence of the object;
knowledge of it is yet to be effected… This recognition, which Kant only considers an element
in knowledge, is really the knowledge itself Again, since the reality to be known is a whole of
parts which we construct on a principle, we know that it is such a whole, and therefore ‘that the
manifold is related to one object,’ because, and only because, we know that we have combined
the elements on a principle. Self-consciousness, therefore, must be inseparable from
consciousness of an object.’42

“For Kant, therefore, conception or cognition is an a priori synthesis whereby the mind
literally makes or constructs its objects. This being so, we may briefly express the one
insuperable and sufficient refutation of the theory in the words of the author we have been
quoting:

“‘The fundamental objection to this account of knowledge seems so obvious as to be

hardly worth stating; it is of course that knowing and making are not the same. The very nature
of knowing presupposes that the thing known is already made, or to speak more accurately,
already exists, In other words knowing is essentially the discovery of what already is.43 Even if

only. “It sounds no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should have to conform to our subjective ground of
apperception, nay, be dependent on it, with respect to her laws. But if we consider that what we call nature is
nothing but a whole [‘Inbegriff’] of phenomena, not a thing by itself, we shall no honger be surprised that we only
see her through the fundamental faculty of all our knowledge, namely, the transcendental apperception, and in that
unity without which it could not be called…nature”(Critique, p. 94). “It is no more surprising that the laws of
phenomena in nature must agree with the understanding and its form a priori, that is, with its power of connecting
the manifold in general, than that the phenomena themselves must agree with the form of sensuous intuition a priori.
For laws exist as little in phenomena themselves, but relatively only, with respect to the subject to which, so far as it
has understanding, the phenomena belong, as phenomena exist by themselves, but relatively only, with respect to the
same being in so far as it has senses. Things by themselves would necessarily possess their conformity with the law,
independent also of any understanding by which they are known. But phenomena are only representations of things,
unknown as to what they may be by themselves. As mere representations they are subject to no law of connection,
except that which is prescribed by the connecting faculty”(ibid., p. 765). The error of this contention, that we cannot
know things in themselves, will be exposed in our treatment of sense perception.
42
PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 234-235.
43
[I.e., is already actual if known as actual, or already possible if known as possible.]

13
the reality known happens to be something which we make, e.g. a house, the knowing it is
distinct from the making it, and, so far from being identical with the making, presupposes that
the reality in question is already made. Music and poetry are, no doubt, realities which are in
some sense ‘made’ or ‘composed,’ but the apprehension of them is distinct from and presupposes
the process by which they are composed. . .’44

“‘It is simply impossible to think that any reality depends upon our knowledge of it, or
upon any knowledge of it. If there is to be knowledge there must first be something to be known.
In other words knowledge is essentially discovery, or the finding of what already is. If a reality
could only be or come to be in virtue of some activity or process on the part of the mind, that
activity or process would not be ‘knowing,’ but ‘making’ or ‘creating,’ and to make and to know
must in the end be admitted to be mutually exclusive…’45

“‘The fact seems to be that the thought of synthesis in no way helps to elucidate the
nature of knowing, and that the mistake in principle which underlies Kant’s view lies in the
implicit supposition that it is possible to elucidate the nature of knowledge by means of
something other than itself. Knowledge is sui generis and therefore a ‘theory’ of it is impossible.
Knowledge is simply knowledge, and any attempt to state it in terms of something else must end
in describing something which is not knowledge.’46

“II. Conception is Not a Process Whereby our Sense Representations are Rendered
‘Objective,’ or ‘Related to an Object.’ – According to Kant, the sense-manifold, which is in
itself a mere mental representation, a mere modification of the mind through sense impressions
(1) is combined into a unity by the operation of a category, (2) is recognized as being thus
combined according to a principle, and (3) by being thus recognized is apprehended as
‘objective,’ or as an ‘object,’ i.e. as being not a mere arbitrary play of thought but as having a
certain necessity and universality. But clearly, the only ‘objectivity’ or ‘relatedness to an object,’
which the manifold can derive from (1) the combining activity, is the relatedness of the separate
elements of the manifold to this same manifold as a mental whole; and thus we reach no object
distinct from the sense-manifold itself. And (2) the recognition of the manifold as combined into
a unity, though it gives this manifold as a mental product a relation to us as thus recognizing it,
certainly does not give this manifold any objectivity other than that which it already possessed as
a mere object of awareness (19, 20).47

“A little consideration of this whole question of the objectivity of our mental

representations will reveal the futility of all attempts to find an object for them once the

44
PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 235-236.
45
Op. cit,, p. 118. The author suggests three reasons why Kant thus resolved “knowing” into “making”: (1) the idea
that “knowing” can be “explained” by resolving it into something else, combined with the fact that in knowing we
are active and therefore “do” or “make” something; (2) the fact that “Kant never relaxed his hold upon the thing in
itself,” regarding it as “the fundamental reality…though…inaccessible to our faculties,” and therefore did not
consider it unreasonable that the mind should “make” the sort of secondary reality or “object” which is a mere
mental phenomenon or appearance; and (3) the fact “that Kant failed to distinguish knowing from that formation of
mental imagery which accompanies knowing,” and that he further confounded these mental images with the
individual things of physical nature (op. cit., pp. 238-41).
46
Op. cit. p. 245.
47
Cf. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 236-238.

14
erroneous assumption is accepted that our sense perceptions are perceptions of our mental states,
and not of realities as objects. It will show that Kant’s attempt is rendered barely plausible only
by his constantly juggling with the term ‘representation’ [‘Vorstellung’], taking it now as ‘the
function of apprehending something,’ now as the ‘something apprehended,’ according as the
context of his argument requires.

“First, then, when Kant asks, How do our representations acquire relation to an object? he
is really asking a meaningless question; for the question implies that it is possible to think of a
representation as not having an object. But it is impossible to do so, for a representation, or
apprehension, or idea, or cognition, – call it what you will, – is essentially a representation,
apprehension, etc., of an object, i.e. of something, which something is the object of the said
representation, etc.

“‘If there is no object which the apprehension is ‘of,’ there is no apprehension. It is

therefore wholly meaningless to speak of a process by which an apprehension becomes the
apprehension of an object. If when we reflected we were not aware of an object, i.e. a reality
apprehended, we could not be aware of our apprehension; for our apprehension is the
apprehension of it, and is itself apprehended in relation to, though in distinction from, it. It is
therefore impossible to suppose a condition of mind in which, knowing what ‘apprehension’
means, we proceed to ask ‘what is meant by an object of it?’ and ‘How does an apprehension
become related to an object?’ for both questions involve the thought of a mere representation, i.e.
of an apprehension which as yet is not the apprehension of anything.’48

“But Kant commenced with the assumption that in sense perception we become aware,
not of the reality or thing in itself which is assumed to produce impressions on our sensibility,
but of the conscious state aroused through these impressions. He thus ‘interposes a tertium quid
between the reality…and the percipient, in the shape of an ‘appearance.’ This tertium quid gives
him something which can plausibly be regarded as at once a perception and something
perceived. For, though from the point of view of the thing in itself an appearance is an
appearance or perception of it, yet, regarded from the point of view of what it is in itself, an
appearance is a reality perceived of the kind called mental.’49

“But since (1) he considers that such appearances do not reveal things in themselves as
perceived objects, and since (2) as perceptions they are themselves psychic facts or events, or
realities of the mental order, he proceeds to regard them on the one hand as ‘mere’
representations (or mere ‘determinations of the knowing subject’) and asks ‘How do they get
objects?’ and to regard these self-same mental facts or states on the other hand as ‘related to an
object,’ or as ‘objects’ (which phrases he uses as synonymous, though obviously they are not
synonymous), when he sees the representations to have that systematic unity and connectedness

48
Ibid., pp. 230-1; cf. ibid., p. 180. Cf. MERCIER, op. cit., § 131, p. 330: "Every cognition is ‘objective,’ it has
inevitably an ‘object,’ aliquid menti objectum. A representation which would not represent anything, and would be
purely ‘subjective,’ is pure nonsense. Even an ens rationis, a logical entity, has its objectivity."
49
Op cit., p. 137.

15
which actually (in his theory) makes of them the physical universe, or the world of material
objects in time and space.50

“But this identification of any cognitive process or state with that of which it is a
cognition is as utterly unwarranted in principle as it is inadmissible in the results which Kant
reaches by persisting in it throughout his whole theory. He first drops the thing in itself as an
object of perception; then he regards the latter as a mental appearance or a mental fact
apprehended by the mind, a fact which he considers a ‘mere’ apprehension or representation
(without any object) ; then he finds a new object for this ‘mere’ representation by erecting itself
into an object, viz. into a physical thing or event or ‘phenomenon’ in time and space: which latter
feat he achieves by merely discovering that it (the representation) has the systematic order,
connectedness, unity, etc., which characterizes the physical universe.

“Such a plan of getting objects for cognitive acts is plainly illegitimate. It confounds two
distinct aspects of the same mental act, the subjective or psychic or mental, and the objective or
representative. We are entitled, for example, to call an act of perception a mere mental fact (and
we can reflect upon it as such and make it an object of reflection, and study all its mental,
subjective relations to the percipient mind); but we are not entitled to take advantage of its
special character as representative for the purpose of calling it the object of perception, or, in
other words, for the purpose of confounding it with its own object, merely because we detect in
the latter (the ‘something’ of which it is a perception, apprehension, representation, etc.) a certain
systematic unity and connectedness.51

“Moreover, if this confusion of the ‘representation’ with the ‘thing represented’ conceals
more or less the absurdity of an ‘objectless apprehension,’ it has the serious defect of rendering
insoluble the problem of knowledge even as Kant himself conceives it, i.e. the problem of
explaining how it is that we form concepts and judgments which give us valid knowledge about
the physical universe of time and space: ‘For if a representation be taken to be an appearance or a
sensation, the main problem becomes that of explaining how it is that, beginning with the
apprehension of mere appearances or sensations, we come to apprehend an object, in the sense of
an object in nature, which, as such, is not a sensation but a part of the physical world. But if the
immediate object of apprehension were in this way confined to appearances, which are, to use
Kant’s phrase, determinations of our mind, our apprehension would be limited to these
appearances, and any apprehension of an object in nature would be impossible. In fact it is just
the view that the immediate object of apprehension consists in a determination of the mind which
forms the basis of the solipsist position. Kant’s own solution involves an absurdity at least as
great as that involved in the thought of a mere representation, in the proper sense of
representation. For the solution is that appearances or sensations become related to an object, in
the sense of an object in nature, by being combined on certain principles. Yet it is plainly
impossible to combine appearances or sensations into an object in nature. If a triangle, or a

50
Those of the conscious states that have not such systematic connectedness he regards as mere subjective plays of
fancy, mere arbitrary fictions; but even these have the distinct twofold character of (1) being mental facts, and (2)
mental facts of a special kind, viz. representative of “something,” which “something” is an “object,” aliquid menti
objectum seu menti praesens.
51
Cf. op. cit., pp. 231-232, 180-181.

16
house, or a ‘freezing of water’52 is the result of any process of combination, the elements
combined must be respectively lines, and bricks, and physical events; these are objects in the
sense in which the whole produced by the combination is an object, and are certainly not
appearances or sensations. Kant conceals the difficulty from himself by the use of language to
which he is not entitled. For while his instances of objects are always of the kind indicated, he
persists in calling the manifold combined ‘representations,’ i.e. presented mental modifications.
This procedure is of course facilitated for him by his view that nature is a phenomenon or
appearance, but the difificulty which it presents to the reader culminates when he speaks of the
very same representations as having both a subjective and an objective relation, i.e. as being both
modifications of the mind and parts of nature.’53

“There are several passages of the Critique in which Kant openly adopts this latter
gratuitous and unwarranted procedure.54 Among these there is one in particular where, on
account of the importance of the issues at stake, the fallacy of the procedure needs to be exposed.
It is the rather lengthy passage55 in which he endeavours to vindicate, against Hume, the
‘objectivity’ of the Principle of Causality.

“The Concept of Causal or Necessary Succession of Events in Physical Nature is, for
Instance, Not Made Objective by the Application of an ‘A Priori’ Mental Rule to Mere Mental
Representations. – We have already noted56 that Kant understood by ‘cause’ the ‘necessitating
phenomenal antecedent’ of an event, or what is nowadays described as a ‘physical’ cause; that
the necessity he was thinking of was the contingent or conditional necessity of the laws of
physical nature, the necessity which produces the order or uniformity of physical nature; and that
he wrongly conceived this necessity as absolute, like mathematical and metaphysical necessity.
In the same context (65) arguing from what is involved in the concepts of ‘contingent being,’
‘change,’ ‘happening’ or ‘beginning to exist,’ we vindicated the analytical character of the
Principle of Causality rightly understood.57 Abstracting now from Kant’s misinterpretation of the
nature of the physical necessity by which events in the physical world are connected as cause
and effect, we will here examine his attempt to vindicate ‘objectivity’ for this necessity, as he
conceived it, against the subjectivism of Hume.

52
Critique, p. 764.
53
PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 232-233.
54
A notable example is the passage (Critique, p. 752) in which he distinguishes the judgment-relation, or objectively
valid relation, of two representations (“bodies” and “heavy”) from the association-relaticn or subjectively valid
relation between the very same representations. Upon which Prichard rightly remarks (op. cit., p. 209, n. 3) : “There
is plainly involved a transition from representation, in the sense of the apprehension of something, to representation,
in the sense of something apprehended. It is objects which are objectively related; it is our apprehensions of objects
which are associated….Current psychology seems to share Kant’s mistake in its doctrine of association of ideas, by
treating the elements associated, which are really apprehensions of objects, as if they were objects apprehended.”
55
Critique, pp. 155 sqq.; pp. 774-775.
56
Cf. § 64, p. 224, n. 3 ; § 66.
57
It is interesting to note that while Kant ostensibly rejects this kind of proof “from conceptions” and what is
implied in them, as “dogmatical,” and professes himself to establish such principles as that of causality by arguing
“transcendentally,” i.e. from the possibility of perceiving, conceiving, etc., to what is implied a priori therein, his
arguments are as a matter of fact from conceptions. For instance, he seeks to establish the objectivity of the concepts
of “substance” and “cause” by what is involved in the nature of change as such. Cf. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 269,
274-275, 300-301.

17
 “Hume had reduced causality to a subjective feeling of expectation. He had ‘denied that
we are justified in asserting any causal connexion, i.e. any necessity of succession in the various
events which we perceive, but even this denial presupposed that we do apprehend particular
sequences in the world of nature [e.g. the positions of ‘a boat going down a stream’], and
therefore that we succeed in distinguishing between a sequence of events in nature [i.e. a
sequence that is ‘necessary’ at least in the sense of ‘regular,’ ‘uniform,’ ‘irreversible’] and a
mere [‘reversible’] sequence of perceptions such as is also to be found when we apprehend a
coexistence of bodies, in space [e.g. ‘the parts of a house’].’58

“Holding, as he did, ‘that in all cases of perception what we are directly aware of is a
succession of perceptions,59 Hume was of course utterly unable to explain how it is that we can,
and do de facto, make such a distinction. Kant recognized the fact that we do make the
distinction, and, while accepting Hume’s assumption – that what we are directly aware of is
always a mere sequence of perceptions or representations, – he attempted the impossible task of
showing that the distinction is compatible with the assumption, and of explaining how, on the
assumption, we come to make the distinction. Recognizing the fact that we make the distinction,
he contends that the reason we can make it is because, and only because, by virtue of an a priori
rule of the understanding (the pure category of cause and effect) we can think two
representations (which, apart from this category, are only successive representations in the
imagination, successive ‘internal determinations of our mind’60) as phenomena or objects, by
‘rendering necessary the connexion of [these] representations in a certain way, and subjecting
them to a rule.’61

“The possibility, therefore, of apprehending certain of our representation-sequences as

‘objective,’ or as necessarily determined in an irreversible order, involves the function of a
transcendental, a priori rule of the understanding, which rule is the Principle of Causality, or the
Law of Necessary Connexion of Events as Cause and Effect.

“Let us see what all that means. Kant’s starting-point is that ‘the manifold of phenomena
is always produced in the mind successively….The representations of the parts follow upon one
another.’62 But since he assumes the fundamental error of phenomenist idealism, common to
himself and Hume (cf. p. 186, n. 3) – that ‘how things may be by themselves (without reference
to the representations by which they affect us)63 is completely beyond the sphere of our
knowledge,’64 – and since, therefore, ‘we have always to deal with our representations only,’65
he is once more confronted with the problem of finding an ‘object’ for these representations.
Whether I indulge in a reverie, or gaze successively on the parts of a house, or watch a boat
gliding down a river, I have in all cases alike a sequence of representations. And this sequence of
mental facts is, according to Kant’s fundamental assumption, all that I am ever directly aware of

58
Ibid., p. 277, – italics ours.
59
Ibid., – italics ours.
60
Critique, p. 161.
61
Ibid.
62
Critique, p. 155.
63
Or, indeed, he might say, “even with reference to these latter,” since he holds that the “representation” does not
“represent” or in any way reveal the “things” to us.
64
Ibid.
65
Ibid.

18
How then is it that in the third case alone, not merely have the representations a temporal
sequence, as in the other two cases, but have a temporal sequence which is ‘necessary,’
‘determined by a rule,’ ‘irreversible’? Because, Kant answers, in this case they have become the
special kind of ‘objects’ which we call ‘events’ by being connected ‘causally’ by virtue of the
transcendental, a priori function of the category of causality. Which reply prompts us to ask,
Does a sequence of representations, then, become its own object by the fact that the mind a priori
and transcendentally endows it with a certain kind of connectedness? And now Kant’s answer is
a confession that this is so: ‘Since therefore phenomena [mental appearances] are not things by
themselves, and are yet the only thing that can be given us to know, I am asked to say what kind
of connexion in time belongs to the manifold of the phenomena itself [i.e. co-existence, as in the
parts of a house, or sequence as in the boat going down the stream], when the representation of it
is always successive….Here, that which is contained in our successive apprehension [i.e. the
temporal succession or flow of mental states] is considered as representation, and the given
phenomenon, though it is nothing but the whole of those representations, [is considered] as their
object, with which my concept . . . is to accord.’66 Kant had assumed gratuitously that things in
themselves are unknowable, that they cannot be the objects of our representations, that the
objects of these latter must be themselves mental, must be themselves representations or ideas;
but since it is the things and events of physical nature, bodies in space and events in time, that
are really the objects of which we are aware, the objects of our representations, his theory leaves
him no option but to assert these physical objects to be mental, to be in fact identical with the
representations themselves67 – unified and connected according to a priori transcendental
principles of the understanding. But this assertion that ‘the object of representations consists in
the representations themselves related in a certain necessary way’68 only shows the futility of
starting with representations that are mere (i.e. objectless) representations, and trying to restore
an object to them. It is ‘open to two fatal objections’:

“‘In the first place, a complex [or whole] of representations is just not a object in the
proper sense, i.e. a reality [or ‘something’ whether ‘physical’ or ‘mental’] apprehended. It
essentially falls on the subject side of the distinction between an apprehension and the reality
apprehended. The complexity of a complex of representations in no way divests it of the
character it has as a complex of representations. In the second place, on this view the same terms
have to enter at once into two incompatible relations. Representations have to be related
successively as our representations or apprehensions – as in fact they are related – and, at the
same time, successively or otherwise, as the case may be, as parts of the object apprehended, viz.
a. reality in nature. In other words the same terms have to enter into both a subjective and an
objective relation, i.e. both a relation concerning us, the knowing subjects, and a relation
concerning the object which we know. A phenomenon in opposition to the representations of
apprehension can only be represented as the object of the same, distinct therefrom, if it stands
under a rule which distinguishes it from every other apprehension, and renders necessary a mode
of conjunction of the manifold.'69 A representation, however, cannot be so related by a rule to

66
Critique, p. 156, – italics ours. Cf. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 280-281.
67
But we never thus “confuse an apprehension with its object, nor do we take the temporal relations which belong to
the one for the temporal relations which belong to the other, for these relations involve different terms which are
never confused, viz, apprehensions and the objects apprehended.” – PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 280.
68
Ibid., p. 281.
69
Critique, p. 156, – italics not in original.

19
another representation, for the rule meant relates to realities in nature, and however much Kant
may try to maintain the contrary, two representations, not being realities in nature, cannot be so
related. Kant is in fact only driven to treat rules of nature as relating to representations, because
there is nothing else to which he can regard them as relating. The result is that he is unable to
justify the very distinction, the implications of which it is his aim to discover, and he is unable to
do so for the very reason which would have rendered Hume unable to justify it. Like Hume he is
committed to a philosophical vocabulary which makes it meaningless to speak of relations of
objects at all in distinction from relations of apprehensions. It has been said that for Kant the
road to objectivity lay through necessity.70 But whatever Kant may have thought, in point of fact
there is no road to objectivity, and, in particular, no road through necessity. No necessity in the
relation between two representations can render the relation objective, i.e. a relation between
objects. No doubt the successive acts in which we come to apprehend the world are necessarily
related; we certainly do not suppose their order to be fortuitous. Nevertheless, these relations are
not in consequence a relation of realities apprehended.’71

“It is unnecessary now to examine in detail the long, laboured passage72 in which Kant
seeks to show that although we can be aware only of representations, and that in these we always
observe a temporal sequence, yet we can discover that their objects, though in some cases [e.g.
the parts of a house] necessarily coexistent, are in other cases necessarily successive [e.g. the
positions of a boat going down a stream], and that we can do so because in the latter class of
cases the objects are rendered necessarily successive by the fact that the corresponding
representations are synthesized under an objective (?) rule of necessary sequence—the law of
causality. For since, with him, ‘objects of apprehension’ are really and identically ‘apprehensions
of objects,’ he makes out to be a causal law which gives necessity to a sequence of objects or
events in nature what is really a subjective rule which gives a necessary or irreversible sequence
to our representations themselves.73

“He starts with the fact that we observe the sequence of our apprehensions to be in some
cases irreversible; but ‘any attempt to argue from the irreversibility of our perceptions to the
existence of a sequence in the object must involve a ὕστερον πρότερον,’ for we cannot know
them to be irreversible unless ‘we already know that what we have been perceiving is an
event,’74 i.e. unless we already know the objects of these perceptions to be subject to the law of
causality; but we cannot know this from the mere sequence of perceptions ‘at a stage where we
are not aware of any relation in the physical world at all.’75

70
CAIRD, i., p. 557.
71
PRICHARD, ibid., pp. 281-282.
72
Critique, pp. 156-164. Cf. PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 283-301.
73
Ibid., p. 284.
74
PRICHARD, op. cit., pp. 288-9; cf. p. 299: “The view that in our apprehension of the world we advance from the
apprehension of a succession of perceptions to the apprehension of objects perceived, involves a ὕστερον πρότερον.
As Kant himself in effect urges in the Refutation of Idealism [Critique, pp. 778-81], self-consciousness in the sense
of consciousness of the successive process in which we apprehend the world, is plainly only attained by reflecting
upon our apprehension of the world. We first apprehend the world and only by subsequent reflection become aware
of our activity in apprehending it.” Cf. supra, § 61, p. 214, n. 1.
75
Ibid., p. 276.

20
 “As a matter of fact Kant identifies, and must identify, the two irreversibilities (just as he
had to identify objects with representations) for the simple reason that ‘he has only one set of
terms to be related as irreversible, viz. the elements of the manifold, which have to be, from one
point of view, elements of an object, and, from another, representations or apprehensions of it.’76

“Hence we can see the necessarily futile character of Kant’s vindication of ‘objectivity’
for the law of physical causality in nature: ‘He is anxious to show that in apprehending AB as a
real or objective succession we presuppose that they are elements in a causal law of succession.
Yet in support of his contention he points only to the quite different fact that where we
apprehend a succession AB, we think of the perception of A and the perception of B as elements
of a necessary, but subjective succession.’77

“And, moreover, when we do think of two perceptions, A and B, as necessarily

successive, it should follow, on Kant’s theory, that, the succession being eo ipso ‘objective,’ the
necessity should consist in the fact that A is the cause of B. But no; the causal rule, being
general, only determines that in the state preceding B (the state of which A is a part or item)
there must be a ‘correlate, though a still undetermined correlate,’78 which necessitates B. He has
to adopt this position (1) in order to avoid the alternative inference ‘that all observed sequences
are causal, i.e. that in them the [temporal] antecedent and consequent are always cause and
effect, which is palpably contrary to fact’79; and (2) because the causal law ‘is quite general, and
only asserts that something must precede an event upon which it follows always and
necessarily.’80 But if the law is thus quite general, and if therefore, as Kant himself elsewhere
admits,81 ‘experience is needed to determine the cause of B,’ then it is admitted ‘that the
apprehension of objective [and ‘causal’] successions is prior to and presupposed by any process
which appeals to the principle of causality.82 …In other words, the process by which, on Kant’s
view, A and B become, and become known to be, events [i.e. causally connected] presupposes
that they already are, and are known to be, events.’83

“The fact is, of course, that our representations have objects, that these objects are things
and events, and orderly sequences of events, in physical nature; that the ground of this order,
uniformity, physical necessity of sequence, physical causality, lies not in any a priori mental
rule, productive of such characteristics, but in the things and events themselves, in the
apprehended realities. When, therefore, Kant gratuitously denies that realities are the objects of
our apprehensions, when he makes out the objects of our apprehensions or representations to be
these apprehensions or representations themselves as endowed with necessary relations and
connexions, it really matters very little whether he locates the grounds and principles of such
necessity in the ‘unknowable’ things-in-themselves (the ‘transcendental object or non-Ego’) or in
the equally ‘unknowable’ reality of the ‘transcendental subject or Ego’ which is the seat of the a

76
Ibid., p. 291.
77
Ibid.
78
Critique, p. 162, – apud PRICHARD, p. 292.
79
PRICHARD, ibid. Cf. Science of Logic, vol. 2, § 219, p. 76, for the same difficulty in Mill’s account of causality.
80
Ibid.
81
Critique, pp. 765-766.
82
PRICHARD, pp. 293-294. Cf. supra, § 91, ii, for this failure of the categories to accomplish their supposed
function.
83
Ibid., p. 295.

21
priori categories and their functions. In either case, knowledge is confined to the conscious states
of the individual mind, and solipsism is the un avoidable conclusion.84

“The general conclusion, therefore, to be derived from the discussion is that the
‘conceptualism’ of Kant is indefensible and erroneous, that the concept is not applicable merely
to a fictitious object constructed by the understanding operating a priori on ‘unknowable’ sense
data, but that it is really applicable to, and really grounded in, the data of sense perception.”85

Answer to Kant’s Conceptualism: Moderate Realism

For moderate realism, espoused by Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas, “our words and
universal concepts no doubt signify certain natures, but these natures do not exist in themselves
but are individualized in things. Only individual beings exist in reality, for the things that exist
cannot be predicated of another. Universality is a property only of our abstract concepts; it is by
virtue of their universality that they are predicable of many. ‘Something is a universal not only
because it can be predicated of many, but also because what is signified by its name can be found
in many.’86 For example, justice is a virtue proper to human nature; hence, the foundation of its
demands is found in every individual subject who possesses that nature. The common nature that
is possessed by many individual beings is common not numerically but formally. If I write ‘A’
twice – ‘A’ and ‘A’ –, I reproduce the same form in two numerically distinct letters; in the same
way, human nature is actualized in John, Frederick, and Timothy, in such a way that numerically,
each one has his own individual nature.

“For a nature to be multiplied in several individuals, the form must be capable of being
received in several material subjects. The answer to the problem of the universals is, therefore,
linked to the hylemorphic composition (the union of matter and form) of material beings (John
and Peter are both men because they share the same nature; but they are distinct individual men
because the formal principle of that nature has been received in different matters). As regards
accidental properties, the answer of moderate realism involves the distinction between substance
and accident (the property ‘yellow’ can be multiplied if there are many substances capable of
receiving it).”87

The Solution to the Problem of the Universals: Moderate Realism. The real solution to
the problem of the universals lies in the position of moderate realism. Describing moderate
realism, Maritain writes: “The moderate realist school, distinguishing between the thing itself
and its mode of existence, the condition in which it is presented, teaches that a thing exists in the
mind as a universal, in reality as an individual. Therefore that which we apprehend by our ideas
as a universal does indeed really exist, but only in the objects themselves and therefore
individuated – not as a universal. For example, the human nature found alike in Peter, Paul and
John really exists, but it has no existence outside the mind, except in these individual subjects
and as identical with them; it has no separate existence, does not exist in itself.”88

84
Cf. PRICHARD, op. cit., p. 123, for the observation that “the real contrary to realism is subjective idealism.”
85
P. COFFEY, Epistemology, vol. 1, Peter Smith, Gloucester, MA, 1958, pp. 343-366.
86
ST. THOMAS AQUINAS, In I Perih., lecture 10.
87
J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 1992, pp. 41-42.
88
J. MARITAIN, op. cit., p. 120.

22
 Sanguineti argues the case for moderate realism in two steps: “a) Firstly, we show that
common names express universal concepts. Common names do not signify concrete images or
concrete actions, but universal and intelligible essences. The signs with which animals
communicate with one another always have a material and concrete content. They may
sometimes give the impression of universality, but this is because some animals can associate
images and other sensible signs with one another (when the dog hears a certain sound, it ‘knows’
it is going to eat). On the other hand, words are signs of an act of understanding; they transmit
intelligible meaning. For example, when a man hears the term ‘relation,’ he does not understand
a concrete relation, but the essence of relation as such. When he grasps the meaning of ‘circle,’
he is not thinking of the circle on the blackboard but of the nature of the circle as such. The
concept of a circle is not material; it is not an image and it cannot be localized in a material
place; and yet, it is not something vague: it has a very precise intelligible meaning that is
applicable to every circle that we draw or imagine. Common names, therefore, express universal
concepts.

“b) Secondly, we show that concepts signify a real nature. When we speak of a ‘parrot,’
a ‘chair,’ or an ‘oath,’ we are referring to a certain perfection or essence which is found in
several individuals. These words do not signify something only in our mind; otherwise, there
would be no such thing as extramental reality. All chairs have a common structure or form which
is materialized in every chair that exists. The mind understands this form by abstracting it from
concrete chairs. What we understand by ‘chair’ is not something added to this particular chair: it
is precisely what this object called chair is. When we point to an object and ask ‘What is it?’ our
intention is not to find out ‘what it is called,’ though the reply to the former means giving the
reply to the latter. If the names of things did not signify the being of things – what things are - ,
they would only point to what we think about things or what we do with them. Hence, concepts
signify real natures.”89

89
J. J. SANGUINETI, op. cit., pp. 43-44.

23
 Critiques of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism90

90
Benignus Gerrity’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Part I: “Kant Failed to Prove His Central Thesis.
1. What Kant had to do in order to set in place the keystone of his whole philosophy was to prove that space, time,
and the categories are a priori (i.e., innate) forms of human cognition and are not extracognitional determinations of
real things. His method was to start by an analysis of experience, and to discover through this analysis the necessary
presuppositions or implications of both the fact and the character of human experience (Cf. L. WOOD, The
Transcendental Method, in The Heritage of Kant, edited by G. T. Whitney and D. F. Bowers, Princeton University
Press, Princeton, NJ, 1939, pp. 3-35).
“Kant’s analysis of experience yields three elements: (a) sense qualia, e.g., red, sweet, soft; (b) space and time;
and (c) categorical relations, e.g., substance and accident, cause and effect. The first is the matter of experience, and
the two latter are the forms of experience. It is worthy of note that Kant found in the matter of experience, namely
the sensible qualities through which anything is perceived, no implications at all as to the nature of either the
external source or the subject of experience. One would think that the primary data of all human experience ought to
have some significance relative to the source and the subject of experience; but Kant’s only inference from what he
considers the ‘pure given’ of perception is that sensation is possible only in so far as an extracognitional thing-in-
itself is its source. From the form or forms of experience he concluded that, ‘Experience is possible only on the
assumption that the formal features found in experience are a priori conditions of experience’(L. WOOD, op. cit.,
pp. 10-11).
“The argument by which he reaches this conclusion depends entirely upon the equation which he sets up between
‘universal and necessary’ and ‘a priori form of the mind.’ Whatever is universal and necessary in experience is a
priori; and whatever is a priori in experience is contributed to the object of experience by the mind – and not given
to the mind in experience. Consequently, since space and time determinations are features of every possible object
of perception, they are innate forms of the power of sensibility, not extramental forms of the reality which we
perceive. Similarly, since the understanding cognizes necessary and universal features among the objects of
experience only in so far as these are related according to the categories, the categories are a priori forms of the
understanding and are not extramental determinations or relations of the things which we understand.
“2. The Mental A Priority of the Forms is Not Proved. This equating of the necessary and universal in knowledge
with an innate form in the knowing mind is an assumption, pure and simple, and an unwarranted assumption. The
contrary assumption, namely, that the universal and necessary features of the objects of our experience are objective
determinations of all the things which we experience, is, on face value, just as likely as Kant’s assumption. Space,
time, and categorical relations would appear as universal and necessary in all the objects of our experience if they
were in fact features of those objects prior to our experiencing the objects. As a matter of fact, the initial advantage
lies with this hypothesis, because the forms in question seem to be forms of the things experienced rather than forms
of the subject experiencing. They could, of course, be universal forms of both; and that would go a long way toward
explaining why such subjects perceive only such objects. This, indeed, was St. Thomas’ theory; he believed that
men directly perceive only spatio-temporal things because they experience by means of their bodily senses; they are
themselves spatio-temporal beings living in a world with other spatio-temporal beings.
“3. Assumptions at the Base of Kant’s Argument. If the realistic view of space, time, and the categories is (at
least) as likely at the outset as Kant’s idealistic view, why did he make the assumption that his view alone could
account for the formal character of experience? The answer is that this assumption resulted from a prior assumption,
a dogma taken over from the very philosophers whose views he was combating. The pure empiricists held that there
is nothing in knowledge which is universal and necessary; and the pure rationalists held that the universal and
necessary is known innately; but both agreed that nothing universal and necessary can be derived from experience.
Kant was busy refuting the extreme views, but it does not seem to have occurred to him that the reason why each
side adopted an erroneous extreme might be because the mean which both rejected was the truth. A possible middle
road between pure empiricism and pure rationalism is the theory that the universal is derived from the empirical data
of sense perception; or, differently expressed, that form as well as matter is given in experience. Kant’s hypothesis
of the mental apriority of form is another possible middle road, but one not a whit preferable on first sight.
“Why did Kant uncritically accept the common assumption of the two schools of thought which he was trying to
refute? His belief that the universal and the necessary can never be derived from experience seems to have arisen
from assuming the subjective postulate and an exaggerated separation of the sensory and intellectual parts of the act
of experience. We have already pointed out how these errors lay at the root of Hume’s phenomenalism. If
intellection is a separate, second act following sensation, and if the data of sensation are subjective, the intellect
never can, as Hume made clear, attain to a valid universal principle or even a valid universal concept; because the

24
intellect could never do more than manipulate the singular and subjective data of sense – the impressions of Hume
and the manifold of sensation of Kant. In criticizing Hume, Kant did not attack either his subjectivistic assumption
or his separation of sense and understanding, and as a result he, too, accepted the ‘given’ of experience as a pure
phenomenal manifold. Hence he concluded that the forms by which it is unified in experience must be forms of the
experiencing mind, since no unifying forms are given in the manifold itself.
“4. The Thomistic View. If sense and intellect co-operate in one act in common perception or experience,
intellection is not limited to manipulating or unifying some manifold of sensuous representations, because these are
not what the intellect seizes upon directly at all. Our sensory impressions are not what we know, but means by
which we know. What the intellect attains directly in the perceptive act is a reality which is the subject and reason of
the sensible determinations perceived in sensation. It is by reference to this directly cognized reality that the intellect
‘unifies the manifold of sensation,’ not by reference to some innate but unknown forms of its own constitution. This
object, namely, the being, substance, and nature of the thing, is the foundation of the intellect’s universal
conceptions and judgments. The nature of the perceived thing is grasped as implicitly universal, and is immediately
universalized by the intellect, though the intellect does not dream, of course, of attributing this mode of universality
to the perceived thing itself. It does, however, see that what belongs to this particular instance of the nature, not
because it is this instance but because it is an instance of this nature, must belong to every instance of the nature.
Therefore, it is able to make universal and necessary judgments on the sole basis of the data of experience – sole
basis because such judgments do not add any elements not experienced; they simply assert what the mind
understands in the experience.
“5. Kant’s Theory Fails to Explain Some Features of Experience. a) Particular Formal Determinations. …Each
object that we percieve had its own individual spatial determinations differing from those of anything else, and its
own particular temporal and categorical determinations. The universal forms of space, time, and the categories are
given to each object in experience, but what determines the individual, concrete pattern which they take in each
case? Kant ought to have held that it is not determined by what is given in experience, since this is mere matter
without form, a pure manifold. The sense impressions given in different experiences have no spatial character at all
prior to their unification by sensibility; hence there is nothing in different matters of sensation to account for
different particular spatial patterns. Similarly, since representations bear to one another no categorical relations prior
to their subsumption under the pure conceptions of the understanding, nothing in different representations can
account for different particular categorical relations. But if particular spatio-temporal and categorical determinations
are not derivable from the matter of experience, neither are they from the form, since the a priori forms of
sensibility are mere undifferentiated sensuous continua and the a priori forms of the understanding mere universals.
“b) Differentiation of the Categories. An analogous difficulty exists for Kant in respect to the selectivity
exhibited by the understanding in subsuming phenomena under the categories. Why does the intellect relate some
phenomena as substance and attribute, and other as cause and effect? By the Kantian hypothesis there is nothing of
these relations in the representations presented by sensibility to the understanding; they arise entirely from the
synthesis effected by the understanding. The consequence would seem to be that in subsuming a set of
representations under a certain category the understanding gets no hints from the representations themselves;
nothing about them helps to determine how the categorical scheme shall be called into play. If this is so, then Nature,
as Kant conceived it, is not a rational construction, and its laws, far from having universal objective validity even in
the Kantian sense, are most precarious; not only is Nature a subjective construction, but it is an irrational and
unpredictable one.
“Of course, Kant’s account of the schematization of the categories through the work of the mediating imagination
is intended to explain why the categories are applied as they are. But the schematized category is quite as a priori as
the pure conceptions of the understanding, and unless some particular determination in the representations
themselves is given to the understanding, it still has no ground for selection in subsuming representations under the
categories. Now, this ground would seem to be, according to Kant, the particular time-determinations of particular
representations; thus, for example, we apply the category of cause and effect when the representations are presented
in a time sequence which follows a determinate rule of succession.
“At first sight, this theory seems to meet the objection which we have raised; but in truth it does not bear
analysis. To begin with, the origin of the particular time-determinations remains obscure. Second, it must be
remembered that the categories are not known objects of the understanding prior to experience, but become known
only by virtue of being applied to the data of experience, unifying it. To express Kant’s view in Thomistic terms, the
categories are potentially known forms of understanding which become actually known only by reflection upon the
operations of understanding. We do not, for example, first know cause and effect and then pigeonhole certain
phenomena under this idea; we instinctively relate certain phenomena as cause and effect, and then we get to know

25
both the pure conception of cause and effect and the fact that it is an a priori form of our understanding. Consider
the significance of this in relation to Kant’s account of the application of the schematized category. When we first
judge that certain phenomena are related causally, we have not previously known anything of causality; and
therefore we must actually make this judgment because sensibility presents the phenomena to us in a certain
temporal sequence. Now this is just what David Hume had maintained.
“The order of Kant’s exposition prevented him from seeing that in the end he was back where he started. Before
treating of the schemata of the imagination and the schematization of the categories, he had already made his
deduction of the categories, and he now treats them as known conceptions when he is explaining how we apply them
to the objects of knowledge. But, according to his explanation, we do not have them as known conceptions when we
actually apply them to the objects of experience. Kant, we may now conclude, gives no explanation of how such
conceptions as cause and substance can be validly applied to objects of experience, if they are not given to the mind
in experience. We have no right, as Hume made clear, to go, for example, from the perception of determinate
succession in time to the conception of causal relation. But that is just what Kant says that we do. He has not
succeeded in answering Hume, and he actually returns to Hume’s position without realizing that he is doing so.
“c) Valid, Universal, Synthetic Judgments. The full significance of the above is that Kant failed to account for
what it was his chief business to account for. He did not explain how we can pronounce universal and necessary
judgments which are not purely analytic. That every event must have a cause is a universal and necessary judgment.
It is clear that nothing can validate this judgment except the perception of a necessary relation of event to cause.
According to the Thomistic theory, I pronounce the judgment because I do perceive a necessary relation of real
events to causes which produce them. My judgment is not analytic in Kant’s sense; the concept of event does not
contain that of cause. But the real nature or quiddity represented by the concept event is seen to involve a reference
to a reason extrinsic to itself; if I do not see this reference in the real nature of an event, then my judgment, the
principle of causality, is simply invalid. Kant’s categorical theory will never validate it. If the concept of cause is
entirely outside the concept that which happens, and arises from the fact that, because of an a priori form of my
understanding, I understand events only as standing in relation to prior events which determine them, there is no
reason why I should ever judge that every event must have a cause, and certainly no reason for thinking the
judgment valid in case I did somehow pronounce it.
“d) Sensible Quality. Kant’s doctrine does not explain the matter of experience, that is to say, the sense qualia
with which all experience begins. Whether they be regarded as objective determinations of phenomena or as
subjective affections, as Kant and most modern philosophers regard them, they need some sort of explanation. Since
they are not forms of intuition, like space and time, the thing-in-itself is responsible for them. But a thing-in-itself
which cannot be known is hardly a satisfactory explanation for such an all-pervasive character of human experience
as sensible qualities. We might go so far as to say that Kant offers no explanation of experience itself. The thing-in-
itself and the mind are conditions of experience, but how are these two conditions related in producing experience?
A causal relation, that is to say, some action of the thing-in-itself upon the mind, would be an answer; but that
answer is ruled out by Kant’s doctrine that causal relations can be predicated only of phenomena”(BENIGNUS,
Nature, Knowledge, and God, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1947, pp. 345-351).
Benignus Gerrity’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism Part II: “The Universe of Kant is Unintelligible.
1. Relation of Noumena and Phenomena. The phenomenal world, that is to say, the spatio-temporal and categorized
world which we live in and know and of which we as men are parts, somehow arises out of prior conditions which
themselves belong to a world of noumena, or things-in-themselves, which we do not know. This is the basic
meaning of Kant’s philosophy if that philosophy means anything at all. The most fundamental criticism that can be
made of this philosophy is that the universe which it posits is unintelligible and incredible. This charge will be made
and proved in what follows. The charge is based upon the impossibility of discovering any intelligible relation
between noumena and phenomena. In order to grasp the force of the argument supporting the charge, it is necessary
to keep three facts about Kantian philosophy constantly in mind: (1) that the real existence of noumena (or
noumenon) distinct from the world of our experience was never doubted by Kant and is essential to his whole
philosophical construction (cf. H. J. PATON, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience: A Commentary on the First Half of
the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 2 vols, Macmillan, New York, 1936, page 61 of volume 1 and chapters 55 and 56 of
volume 2); (2) that we do not know anything about noumena as they are in themselves; and (3) that the objective
world of phenomena is the resultant or product of some sort of action or influence of the noumena upon the human
mind, the character of that phenomenal world being specifically determined by the a priori forms of sensibility and
understanding in that mind.
“There seem to be four possible interpretations of Kant’s conception of the relation of noumena and phenomena.
We shall state all four, but shall say no more than a word on those which Kant certainly did not intend.

26
 “a) There is one noumenon, and it somehow gives rise to the phenomenal world. This doctrine amounts to an
absolutistic appearance-reality theory. We need spend no time on it, because: first, Kant certainly did not intend
such a doctrine; second, it takes all meaning from his doctrine of the function of the a priori forms of the mind in
producing the world of phenomena; and third, it explains nothing at all of either the appearance or the reality.
“b) There are a plurality of noumena, none of which are conscious selves or egos, but which nevertheless give
rise to phenomenal egos and the phenomenal world which they experience. Again, Kant did not intend this; it is the
most incredible of all possible interpretations of his philosophy; it renders purposeless his explanation of the role
which the a priori forms of the mind play in producing objective phenomena; and, finally, it quite destroys his
central idea of the transcendental unity of apperception as the first condition of any knowledge.
“c) There are a plurality of noumena, all of which are conscious selves or egos, and which give rise to the world
of phenomena by appearing to one another. Kant does not seem to have intended this view although he does not
reject it. We need not treat it separately from the fourth view (which follows) for two reasons: first, nothing in
Kant’s system would ever enable us (or him) to decide between the two views, since we cannot know noumena; and
second, the criticisms which we shall direct against the fourth view apply equally to the third.
“d) There are a plurality of noumena, some of which are conscious selves or egos and some of which are not; the
phenomenal world arises from the influence of noumena (of both kinds, probably) upon those noumena which are
selves or egos. This view is the least unlikely of all, and seems to be what Kant generally was thinking of when he
mentioned noumena. We shall therefore direct our criticism against this view. The difficulties which we shall point
out in it apply equally to the third view and a fortiori to the first and the second. These difficulties all hinge upon the
most characteristic feature of Kant’s philosophy, namely, his theory of the a priori forms of space, time, and the
categories.
“2. What Kant’s Doctrine Really Means. Before explaining the difficulties of this theory, we may state
summarily and bluntly its real significance. Are space, time, and the categories phenomenal or noumenal? Kant’s
insistence that we know nothing of things as they are in themselves forbids us to say that these a priori forms of the
human mind are noumenal; for if they were, they would be known characters of a noumenon, namely, a human
mind, and would give us a considerable knowledge of that noumenon as it is in itself. They must, therefore, be
considered phenomenal. But then, since (together with the noumena which are the source of the matter of
experience) they determine the world of phenomena, they are phenomena which are the prior conditions of all other
phenomena. Hence, they must be themselves phenomena resulting entirely from noumenal conditions. These
noumenal conditions are prior to and produce the human mind; and then the noumena themselves appear to the
human mind, giving rise to the world of objective phenomena. Thus Kant’s philosophy reduces itself to an
appearance-reality theory in which the human individual falls on the side of appearance. This, in historical fact, was
what some post-Kantians made of it.
“3. Absurdities in Kant’s Doctrine. Never mind the significance of the theory; let us examine its internal
structure. Can it hold together? It cannot. It falls apart at its precise center, its doctrine of the a priori forms.
According to this theory some conditions existing among things-in-themselves give rise to the phenomenal world,
the world in which phenomenal egos experience objective phenomena. The a priori forms of sensibility and
understanding, as we have seen, are, according to Kant’s intention, forms of the mind of the empirical ego. But it
must be remembered that these forms play an essential part, the all-important part, in conditioning or producing the
world of phenomenal objects. In view of this, Kant’s theory really means the following: conditions existing in the
noumenal world give rise to phenomenal egos with certain a priori forms of sensibility and understanding; and then
things-in-themselves, appearing to these phenomenal egos, give rise to the objective world of phenomena. Does that
make sense? It means that noumena interact with noumena (thus falling, by the way, under the categorical scheme)
and also with phenomena; that is, they interact with the resultants of their mutual interactions. To express the
situation in another way: noumena act upon (or, perhaps, appear to) noumenal egos, thus producing phenomenal
egos; then they appear to (or, perhaps, act upon) these phenomenal egos, thus producing objective phenomena.
Nature is the appearances of things-in-themselves to their own appearances.
“This interpretation of Kant’s teaching seems closest to his real intention, because it seems to be necessarily
implied in his distinction between the noumenal and phenomenal ego and in his assumption that noumena are in fact
a plurality. It seems quite unintelligible and impossible, since it makes the essential prior conditions of the whole
phenomenal world – space, time, and the categories – themselves phenomena. It breaks down, in other words,
because of the double distinction between the empirical ego and noumenal ego and between the empirical ego and
objective phenomena”(B. GERRITY, op. cit., pp. 351-354).

27
 Kant’s immanentist philosophical system of transcendental idealist is plagued with
numerous errors and contradictions. For one thing, he affirmed the existence of the noumenon
but added that it was impossible to know anything about it. But if we know that it exists then
Kant’s claim that we know nothing of the thing-in-itself (noumenon) is not true. He also claimed

John J. Toohey gives us a gnoseological critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism and synthetic a priori
judgments in his Notes on Epistemology (1952) as follows: “The theory of Kant offers no escape from the scepticism
of subjective idealism and undermines its own foundation.
“Proof of Part I: The theory of Kant offers no escape from the scepticism of subjective idealism.
“That theory which limits all our knowledge to phenomena (appearances) in the thinking subject offers no escape
from the scepticism of subjective idealism. But the theory of Kant limits all our knowledge to phenomena in the
thinking subject.
“Therefore the theory of Kant offers no escape from the scepticism of subjective idealism.
“Major: It is a matter of no consequence whether we call the objects of our knowledge ideas or phenomena, so
long as we confine our knowledge within the thinking subject; in either case we are driven into scepticism as
regards the world outside of us. Kant sought to overthrow the scepticism of Hume, but his own system is as
profoundly sceptical as that of Hume.
“The Minor is evident from the constantly reiterated assertion of Kant that we cannot go beyond the phenomena
of sense to the thing-in-itself; the thing-in-itself, is in the theory of Kant utterly unknown to us.
“Proof of Part II: The theory of Kant undermines its own foundation.
“That theory which pronounces as unknowable the principle on which it is based undermines its own foundation.
“But the theory of Kant pronounces as unknowable the principle on which it is based.
“Therefore the theory of Kant undermines its own foundation.
“The Major is evident.
“Minor: The principle on which the theory of Kant is based is the universal reception by mankind of, the
conclusions of mathematics and physics. He rejected all previous systems of metaphysics because none of them had
met with universal reception. Because of the universal reception of the truths of mathematics, and physics he
declared that the judgments of these sciences were the types to which all scientific judgments should conform. But
by his theory he is compelled to doubt the existence of mankind of all men except himself; for the only things he
can know are the phenomena within himself; everything else is unknowable. Hence the existence of mankind is
unknowable to Kant, and therefore the principle which his theory is based is unknowable, namely, the universal
reception by mankind of the conclusions of mathematics and physics.
“Note. Kant says that the judgments of mathematics and physics are certain, and that they are synthetic a priori.
But there are no judgments which are certain and also synthetic a priori in the Kantian sense, and we prove it as
follows:
“A judgment in which the mind has not adequate evidence of what it assents to is not a certain judgment.
“But the Kantian synthetic a priori judgments are judgments in which the mind has not adequate evidence of
what it assents to.
“Therefore the Kantian synthetic a priori judgments are not certain judgments.
“Minor: The synthetic a priori judgment, in the Kantian sense, is a judgment in which the synthesis or union of
the predicate with the subject is effected independently of all experience, that is, by means of a subjective form or
category; and it is only after this subjective form is applied that there is an object which the judgment can assent to.
The application of the category of Reality constitutes an object of affirmative judgment; the application of the
category of Negation constitutes an object of negative judgment (cf. 7). Since there is no object for the mind to
assent to till the category is applied, and since the category is applied independently of the mind’s perception, and
since Kant gives no reason why in any given case the category of Reality should be applied rather than the category
of Negation, it follows that in the Kantian synthetic a priori judgment the mind has not adequate evidence of what it
is going to assent to. One man would make the judgment, “Two plus three are equal to five,” because the category of
Reality had been applied; another man could just as easily and with just as much warrant make the judgment, “Two
plus three are not equal to five,” because the category of Negation had been applied.
“It is Kant’s contention that we can know nothing about the things-in-themselves, that the only objects we can
know are phenomena, and that all synthetic a priori judgments are concerned with phenomena. But we have just
shown that, on Kant’s theory, even the synthetic a priori judgments about phenomena are uncertain judgments. This
practically reduces the theory of Kant to the status of universal scepticism.”(J. J. TOOHEY, Notes on Epistemology,
Fordham University Press, New York, 1952, chapter 9, nos. 11-13).

28
that the noumenal world is a chaotic mass. It is the mind that eventually structures the object and
not the mind conforming to the laws of extra-mental reality. But how can we know that the
noumenal world is a chaotic mass since the Kantian claim is that we can know nothing of the
thing-in-itself (the noumenon)? Again, he is inconsistent.

Kant claimed that existing extra-mental things-in-themselves (noumena) are the causes of
the initial raw sense data that initially become molded by the two a priori forms of sensibility,
namely, space and time. The initial raw sense data would be effects of their causes which are
noumena.91 In the Prolegomena we read that things-in-themselves are unknowable as they are in
themselves but that “we know them through the representations which their influence on our
sensibility procures for us.”92 But this is making use of objective efficient causality and
acknowledging objective efficient causality operating in the extra-mental world. This is a plain
violation of his philosophical system that claims that efficient causality is not something of the
extra-mental real world but rather something rooted in the very structure of the human mind.93
Efficient causality is, for Kant, a subjective a priori category of the understanding which can
only be applicable, according to his transcendental idealist doctrine, to phenomena and not
things-in-themselves or noumena. R. P. Phillips observes that “Kant’s system is open to
objection at almost every stage, but as Professor Ward remarks, the thing-in-itself is the
‘Achilles’ heel’ of his theory. For it is plain that if it is unknowable we cannot know that it
exists; and, moreoever it is contradictory to assert that it does so and is the cause of sense
impressions, while denying that existence and causality, as being mental categories, can apply to
it.”94

Kant attempts to solve the skeptical consequences of Hume’s phenomenalist and sensist
nominalism wherein nothing universal can come from experience, by means of his synthetic a
priori judgments that would provide the universality and necessity needed for truly scientific
judgments, while at the same time providing an increment of knowledge. Universality and
necessity, for Kant, would come from the a priori forms and categories of the mind. But the
universal can come from experience by way of the moderate realist abstraction.95

91
Cf. C. BITTLE, Reality and the Mind, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1936, p. 111-112.
92
I. KANT, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Prologue 13, remark 2.
93
Cf. F. COPLESTON, A History of Philosophy, Volume 6: Wolff to Kant, Image Doubleday, New York, 1985, pp.
270-271.
94
R. P. PHILLIPS, Modern Thomistic Philosophy, vol. 2 (Metaphysics), Newman, Westminster, MD, p. 95.
95
Joseph Thomas Barron writes: “Moderate Realism. Distinction Between the Senses and the Reason. Introspection
clearly evidences the distinction between our higher and lower cognitional powers. Through the senses we become
aware of particular things. For example, through the sense of sight I see this or that particular object, possessing a
certain size, shape, and color, existing in this place at this time. If we touch an object, the resistance we encounter is
this resistance, and if we strike it we hear this sound. Whenever we sense a reality, it is always endowed with
individuality – it always has specific individuating notes. But reflection tells us that we have another kind of
knowledge which differs widely from sense knowledge. It is not a knowledge of the particular and concrete, but of
the general and abstract. I can, for example, think of a book which is totally different from this book I now sense,
and which has none of its individuating characteristics. This new thought is no longer bound up with this particular
book. It is applicable, as I can see by reflection, to any number of individual books. Its object is not a particular
object but a universal object. Furthermore my senses do not tell me what things are; they do not apprehend the
essence or whatness of things. But I seemingly do know what things are; I know not only the qualities of things but I
also know what things are in themselves; I know their natures. Thus my senses alone do not tell me this is a book.
They report color, size, shape, etc., but I know it is a book, proving thereby that I have a kind of knowledge which is
not sense knowledge.

29
 “Again, I know what is meant by such notions as justice, hope, causality, knowledge, none of which I can sense.
None of these can be perceived through a sense organ, yet I can and do know them. Moreoever, the senses have not
the power of reflection. They cannot make their data the objects of their own examination. But the power of
reflection is a fact, and this points also to a difference between sense knowledge and a higher kind of knowledge.
Then there are our judicial and ratiocinative powers. These cannot be allocated in the senses. From a comparison of
the conceptual, judicial, and ratiocinative aptitudes of the intellect with the functioning of the senses we see that
there is a radical difference between the senses and the intellect.
“But while we differentiate the one from the other, and while we see they are irreducible to each other, we must
not think that though distinct they are separate. Intellect and sense do not function separately and apart from each
other. In actual concrete experience we cannot divorce the operation of the lower faculty from that of the higher. In
our adult experience the sensuous and intellectual elements are closely interwoven. A sensation is hardly, if ever,
given without an accompanying intellection. Continuity and solidarity are always present between them. So closely
are they interwoven that it is often difficult to discriminate between the purely sensory elements in our knowledge
and those which are the result of higher factors. We must not forget that the knowledge-process is complicated, and
that sensation, perception, retention and reproduction, conception, judgment, and reasoning, all intermingle with one
another, and that all have an integral part in the process of cognition.
“The existence of rational concepts has been established. The formation of concepts depends on and begins with
sense knowledge, but it is completed by the intellect. The process whereby concepts emerge from precepts demands
an exposition.
“The Origin of Concepts. Since our concepts are not a priori (or prior to sense experience) and since
introspection shows us that in our judgments we identify these concepts with the data of sense, the intellect must
apprehend them in some way in the data of sense (we are constantly making judgments in which we identify the data
of sense with our concepts, e.g., ‘This is a book’). There is no other explanation. The intellect gets all its data or
objects in and through sense perception – and self-consciousness. This does not mean that the intellect can conceive
only what the senses perceive, i.e., only the physical or material. This is the sensistic interpretation of this principle.
The principle means that while the intellect gets its data from sense perception it nevertheless has the power of
apprehending modes of being which transcend sense perception. For example, it can form such concepts as ‘being,’
‘quality,’ ‘change,’ ‘thought,’ none of which objects can be the objects of the senses. Again, the intellect can reflect
on its own activities and form concepts such as ‘intellect,’ ‘cognition,’ which are concepts of realities unperceivable
by the senses. Our theory of moderate realism, therefore, which holds that the thought-objects of the intellect are
somehow apprehended in the data of sense is not sensistic.
“The Theory of Abstraction. Since the thought-objects of the intellect are apprehended in sense data, the obvious
question arises: How is the concept derived from the percept – or sense data? How can we bridge the gap between
sense knowledge and intellectual knowledge? The answer is: by the process of abstraction. An extramental object
produces an impression on one or more of the senses. Through this impression the mind becomes cognizant of a
concrete object. This impression evokes the activity of the intellect. In every object there are certain qualities or
attributes which may or may not belong to the object without any substantial or essential difference being made in
the nature of the object; e.g., the height, weight, and clothing of any individual may all be different from what they
are and he would still be a man. There are other attributes, however, the absence of which would destroy the
character of the object and cause it to be other than it is. If we did away with either the rationality or the animality of
a man he would no longer be a man. The functioning of the intellect at this juncture is abstractive. Abstraction is the
concentration of the intellect on these latter elements to the exclusion of the former. It is the withdrawal of the
attention of the mind from what is accidental and the fixing of it on the essential. It is the act whereby the intellect
abstracts or selects from an object that portion which is essential and neglects the rest. The result of this abstraction
is the concept which expresses in the abstract the essence of the object. The concept is not the representation of a
single, particular object; it is universal and abstract because, as we shall see, it is capable of being realized in an
indefinite number of objects. In a word, the intellect conceives what the senses perceive but in a different way.
“The term ‘abstraction’ as descriptive of the conception process has given rise to much misunderstanding. Some
have understood it as connoting the taking away of something from the concrete object. Such a view is a travesty on
the nature of abstraction. The essence or nature which is said to be abstracted is an attribute of the object and it never
ceases to be such. Abstraction is a purely mental process. It does not take away the physical essence of the object.
Just as the eye can see an object, so does the intellect represent to itself the object without changing in any way its
physical reality. Abstraction does not change the nature of the object but rather the nature of our awareness of the
object. In brief, abstraction simply means the representation of the essence of an object in the intellect.

30
 “The Universality of Concepts. The fact that concepts are devoid of the individuating characteristics which are
always found in sensed objects has two implications.
“(1) The thought-object considered in itself is neither universal nor particular (cf. De Ente et Essentia, c. 4). The
concept considered in this abstract condition is said to be the direct or potential universal, and as such it is
fundamentally real, i.e., its basis is in the object independently of the work of the mind. We are warranted in
claiming objectivity for the direct or potential universal since the mind finds the content of the concept in the object.
The mind does not create the content of the universal by its own activity but it discovers the content objectively
existing.
“(2) After the direct universal has been generated the intellect sees that the thought-object is not only in this
object and predicable of it, but that it is capable of indefinite repeated realizations in an indefinite number of other
similar objects. It thus formally universalizes the concept. When by reflection a concept is seen to be universally
predicable of all the objects of a class it is said to be a formal or reflex universal. Thus at first one forms the concept
of man as a rational animal. This is a direct universal. By an act of reflection the concept ‘rational animal’ is seen to
be predicable of all men, past, present, and future – it is formally universalized (cf. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 39, a. 3
; De Anima, 2; Summa Theologiae, I, q. 85, a. 2, ad 2).
“The universalizing is the work of the intellect. Hence universals, as universal, exist in the mind alone. The
concept of the nature or essence which is universalized has its basis in the object of sense, but the universality and
abstractness which characterize the concept are the work of, and are in, the intellect. There are universal thought-
objects but no universal objects. Whatever is real, i.e., in the real or objective order, is individual. But individual
things, while they do not constitute one reality, have similar natures. Because of this the intellect can apprehend this
similarity of nature and form a concept, which it may universalize, and which is predicable of the various different
but similar individuals. This predication of the same attribute to different individuals does not imply that they are the
same reality. They are distinct and separate individuals, but because of their similarity of nature the same essence
can be predicated of them. Similarity is not a real identity – it is a mental identity.”(J. T. BARRON, Elements of
Epistemology, Macmillan, New York, 1936, pp. 86-92).
Regarding moderate realist abstraction Sanguineti writes: “1. Abstraction. The existence of ideas is a fact of
internal experience, and the capacity to produce ideas is called intelligence. For the critique of knowledge it is
important to ensure how the ideas are formed and what their meaning is. Classical rationalism considers them innate
and tends to connect them with a world of possible essences, while the existent reality would be the exclusive object
of sensible knowledge. Empiricism reduces the importance of ideas, which at best would be constructions of a very
vague, schematic imaginative knowledge, although they would be useful for orienting ourselves in the world. The
dissatisfaction awakened by these extreme solutions leads to other gnoseological theories: Kantian idealism
recognizes the value of necessity and of universality of the ideas, but believes them to be a human production which
serves to unify contingent and particular experience; absolute idealism reduces reality to idea, while sensible
knowledge becomes a mere phenomenal apparition; pragmatism, vitalism and existentialism place the ideas in
function of the activities of man, depriving them of cognitive value.
“For realistic philosophy, the idea or concept is derived from experience and corresponds to the being of things.
However, there does not exist a total conformity between the idea and the thing (as is conceived by the exaggerated
realism of Plato, or by idealism in another context), because the idea represents the thing in an abstract way, adding
to it some logical elements that belong no longer to that which is comprehended, but rather to the human mode of
comprehension. This relative unconformity can be known as such, and in some way is overcome thanks to the
connection of ideas with experience, or to the use of some conceptual techniques such as analogy.
“Let us briefly confront the problem of the formation of the initial concepts, leaving out some technical details
that are studied in psychology or that we have seen in formal logic. We refer for the moment to knowledge of
material reality, the point of departure of human thought.
“The intelligibility of things is not given to us in an immediate way: for the fact of seeing a thing, we do not
comprehend its essence. The things of the world are for us sensible in act, but intelligible in potency. For example,
we think of a group of persons that move, run, shake their hands, without knowing in a precise way what they are
doing. We must observe more attentively, comparing and keeping in cosideration the various movements in order to
understand their reason; only after this experimental knowledge, in which both the external and the internal senses
concur, one arrives at the point of understanding that which holds the interplay of relations together: we have
understood that this a game (or even a specific game) – that is, we have arrived at a new concept. In other words,
this intelligible reality (because only the intelligence can register it) that first potentially existed in our experience,
has now passed to an intelligibility in act.

31
 “This passage has not taken place in base of an a priori idea of game. The concept has been stripped from
experience, and is born precisely when the experience has become sufficiently mature. However, pure experience by
itself does not suffice to make seen the essence contained in this, because experience is always a particular fact,
while the idea, such as that of game, absolutely transcends this particular game that I can observe ‘here and now.’
Therefore, it is necessary for man to have an intellectual potency which is capable of illuminating the experience in
order that the essence may shine in it, which at first is hidden from our eyes. On the other hand, this illumination
also implies a separation of the intelligible element with respect to the sensible content, a procedure called
abstraction. For Thomism, the illuminating and abstracting potency is the agent intellect, called by this name
because it acts by performing the passage from the intelligible in potency to the state of intelligibility in act. In the
Kantian theory of knowledge, the human mind introduces the forms in matter, which is furnished by sensation. In
the Aristotelian doctrine of forms are in the things themselves: the intelligence uses its light in order to that these
forms become intelligible for man.
“Once the essence has been separated from the experience, it immediately impresses itself on the human
intelligence, which in this new function is called passive intellect; thus is produced the identification in act between
the intentional essence present to the intellect and the faculty that receives this content. Now the intelligence is
informed by the intellectual species and can pass to the act of knowing the object to which the intentional species
refers.
“However, this (abstract) object does not exist as such in the external world, and not even in the initial
experience. The sensible species of the external sensation refers directly to the present external object; the
imagination, not finding a present object, must forge a representation, which is the image; on its part, the human
intelligence is not only independent from the physical presence of the object, but comprehends the essence in a
different state from the one in which it is found in the individual being. Therefore, the intellect must conceive
a…concept or mental word (expressed species). On the one hand, the production of the expressed species is an index
of the imperfection of knowledge, insofar as it implies a certain distance from the object; nevertheless, in another
sense it implies perfection, if we consider it as an internal spiritual production that belongs to the proper immanence
of life. The concept is the immanent terminus of intellectual knowledge, be it a simple notion or rather a judgment
(which for Saint Thomas is also a conceptio intellectus, in the sense just explained). The concept is an intellectual
representation in which is contemplated the essence of the thing, as an object is contemplated in a mirror.
“However, the intellectual operation does not finish with the formation of the concept, because the abstract nature
of the latter does not perfectly express the thing that is intended to be understood, which is individual and material
(when considering knowledge of the physical world). After the separation of the essence performed by the agent
intellect there must follow an operation in the inverse sense, which will connect the essence, already comprehended,
with the reality it belongs to. ‘The nature of the rock or of any other material thing cannot be completely and truly
known until one knows it as existent in particulars, which are understood by means of the senses and the
imagination. Therefore, it is necessary, in order that the intellect may comprehend in act its proper object, that it
convert itself to experience (ad phantasmata), in such a way as to contemplate the universal nature as existent in the
particular’(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 84, a. 7, c.).
“This operation is called conversio ad phantasmata, conversion of the mind to experience, where are to be found
the existent objects that are intended to be known. After the formation of the general concept of game, to continue
our example, we may return to the intuitive knowledge of these particular games, known now according to the new
essential content, and thus we do not limit ourselves to seeing colours, movements, etc., but rather we comprehend
the unity of these experiences as a game – that is, as a sensible reality in which there exists an essence known in act.
‘Our intellect abstracts the intelligible species from experiences, insofar as it considers the nature of things in a
universal way; and yet, it comprehends them in experiences, since it cannot understand the things from where it
abstracts the species, without turning to experience’(Summa Theologiae, I, q. 85, a. 1, ad 5).
“The intelligence knows in a direct line only the universals, because the material individuals are the object of
empirical experience. However, in an immediate, albeit indirect way, the intelligence comprehends the individual or
physical nature precisely in virtue of the intimate union between the intellective potency and human sensibility.
Therefore, there exists an intellectual comprehension of individuals, which for Saint Thomas is the work of the
cogitative, the superior faculty of sensibility, strictly united to the intelligence, in whose force it participates.
Without this bridge between the abstract intelligence and concrete sensibility, our intellectual comprehension would
be purely ideal, and our sensitive knowledge would regard only facts: an enormous gap would be opened between
these two spheres, which is precisely the abyss opened up by the currents such as Platonism, rationalism, and
empiricism, which have not suceeded in explaining the unity of human knowledge, even if it is so very clear on the
level of ordinary experience. For realism, the thesis of intellective knowledge of the concrete is very important,

32
 Bittle’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Bittle lists a number of other
problems with Kant’s transcendental idealism: “Kant’s theory is contrary to the science of
psychology. He maintains that ‘space’ and ‘time’ are subjective ‘forms’ of the mind, given prior
to all experience. The findings of psychology are definitely opposed to this claim. Sensory
experience contributes its share to our perception of ‘space’ and ‘time,’ as experimental
psychology has definitively established. We acquire our knowledge of space and time from a
perception of objects which are larger or smaller and which are at rest or in motion. Persons
suffering from a congenital cataract have no antecedent knowledge of visual space; after a
successful operation, they must acquire knowledge of space through experience and perception.
If the subjective mental form of ‘space’ were, as Kant claims, a necessary condition for
perception, making the perception of phenomena possible, then there seems to be no valid reason
why the mind cannot impose the form of ‘visual space’ upon the incoming impressions, even
though a person be congenitally blind. The evidence, however, points clearly to the fact that the
knowledge of space on the part of the mind is conditioned by the perception of objects, and not
that the perception of space is conditioned by some a priori form present in the mind antecedent
to experience. But if ‘space’ is an attribute of bodies, then so is ‘time,’ because both are on a par
in this respect.”96

“Kant’s theory is contrary to the fundamental principles of the physical sciences. Kant
evolved his theory for the expressed purpose of revindicating scientific knowledge and freeing it
from the bane of Hume’s skepticism. He failed. Science treats of the physical objects of the
extra-mental world and not of mental constructions; Kant’s world, however, is a world of
phenomena, and these phenomena are mental constructions which give us no insight whatever
into the nature and reality of things as they are in themselves. According to Kant’s conclusions,
the physical, noumenal world is unknown and unknowable. Science is convinced that it contacts
and knows real things outside the mind. Science is based on the objective validity of the
principle of cause and effect operating between physical objects and physical agencies;
according to Kant, this principle is an empty a priori form merely regulating our judgments and
applying only to phenomena. The laws which science establishes are considered by scientists to
be real laws operating in physical bodies independent of our thinking; according to Kant, these
laws merely relate to phenomena within the mind and not to nature at all. Kant states: ‘It sounds
no doubt very strange and absurd that nature should have to conform to our subjective ground of
apperception, nay, be dependent on it, with respect to her laws. But if we consider that what we
call nature is nothing but a whole (Inbegriff) of phenomena, not a thing by itself, we shall no
longer be surprised.’97 We are indeed surprised that Kant would accept this conclusion of this
theory rather than see therein the utter fallaciousness of the theory itself which could consistently
lead to such a ‘very strange and absurd’ conclusion. That such a conclusion destroys the validity
of science in its very foundations, must be obvious.”98

because otherwise one risks blocking thought within the universals, which are not existent, while the existential
reality would remain entrusted to an impoverished experience”(J. J. SANGUINETI, Logic and Gnoseology,
Urbaniana University Press, Rome, 1987, pp. 221-225).
96
C. BITTLE, The Whole Man, Bruce, Milwaukee, 1956, p. 312.
97
I. KANT, The Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd ed., trans. by Max Muller, Macmillan, New York, 1900, p. 94.
98
C. BITTLE, op. cit., pp. 312-313.

33
 “Kant’s theory destroys the foundation of all intellectual knowledge. Ideas and
judgments are supposed to reflect and represent reality; they are supposed to tell us ‘what things
are.’ Truth and error reside in the judgment. In forming judgments we first understand the
contents of ideas and then have an intellectual insight into the relation existing between the
subject-idea and the predicate-idea. According to Kant, we do not make judgments because we
perceive the objective relation of the subject-idea and the predicate-idea, but because a blind,
subjectively necessitating law of our mental constitution draws certain sense-intuitions under
certain intellectually empty categories prior to our thinking, and we do not know why these
particular categories, rather than others, were imposed by the mind on these sense-intuitions. Our
‘knowledge’ is as blind as the law that produces it. Intellectual knowledge is thus utterly
valueless, because it gives us no insight into the nature of the reality our ideas and judgments are
supposed to represent.”99

Jolivet’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Régis Jolivet gives us a critique of

Kant’s transcendental idealism in the third volume of his Trattato di filosofia, Psicologia, as
follows: “L’idealismo critico. 430 - Si chiama così (dal titolo della Critica della Ragion pura) o
anche idealismo trascendentale la dottrina idealistica di Kant.

“1. Le forme a priori - Kant osserva che ogni nostra conoscenza, matematica, fisica e
metafisica riposa su nozioni generali (nozioni di causa, di fine, di sostanza, d’anima, di Dio), e
su princìpi (princìpi di causalità, di finalità, di sostanza), che, essendo universali e necessari, non
possono derivare dall’esperienza sensibile, la quale ci fornisce soltanto il contingente ed il
singolare.100 Per spiegare queste nozioni o categorie e questi princìpi, Kant propone di
ammettere che si tratta di forme innate all’intelletto e che risultano dalla sua struttura. Questa
ipotesi, imposta dal principio nominalistico della dottrina101 sembra a Kant sia la sola capace di
spiegarci la nostra illusione che il pensiero astratto sia l’espressione fedele di un ordine esteriore.
In realtà il pensiero è il vero legislatore dell’universo; la natura è opera nostra e siamo noi che ci
ritroviamo in essa. L’intelletto impone alla massa dei fenomeni che colpiscono i sensi e che
costituiscono l’unica materia della conoscenza, le forme proprie della sensibilità e della ragione,
cioè le forme a priori dello spazio e del tempo e le categorie razionali: causalità, finalità,
sostanzialità. È grazie all’intervento di queste forme a priori, cioè innate e che costituiscono la
nostra struttura mentale, che l’universo ci appare come governato da leggi universali e
necessarie.102 Così si spiega l’affermarsi della scienza; essa non fa che ritrovare nei fenomeni

99
C. BITTLE, op cit., p. 313.
100
Kant considera questi princìpi come «sintetici a priori». Avremo modo di discutere più innanzi questa
concezione, nello studio dei princìpi di ragione.
101
Kant confessa infatti che Hume, cioè il nominalismo empiristico, ha il merito di averlo risvegliato dal suo «sonno
dogmatico».
102
Cfr. Kritik der reinen (teoretischen) Vernunft, Introduzione della prima edizione: «Si danno conoscenze
universali, che hanno al tempo stesso il carattere di una necessità intrinseca, che devono essere chiare e certe per se
stesse indipendentemente dall’esperienza. Vengono chiamate per questa ragione conoscenze a priori; al contrario,
ciò che è preso unicamente dall’esperienza non è conosciuto, secondo le espressioni d’uso, che a posteriori o
empiricamente. Si vede ora, ed è una cosa molto notevole, che alle nostre stesse conoscenze si mescolano
conoscenze che hanno necessariamente un’origine a priori e che forse servono soltanto a connettere le nostre
rappresentazioni sensibili. Infatti, se da queste esperienze si scarta tutto ciò che appartiene ai sensi, rimangono
ancora certi concetti primitivi con i giudizi che ne derivano, concetti e giudizi che devono prodursi senz’altro a
priori, cioè indipendentemente dall’esperienza, poiché essi fan sì che si possa dire, o per lo meno che si creda di
poter dire, degli oggetti che appariscono ai sensi, più di quanto non insegnerebbe la sola esperienza, e siffatte

34
quell’ordine che la ragione vi costituisce necessariamente. Così, d’altra parte, si spiega
l’insuccesso della metafisica, giacché questa, per speculare su quanto è al di là dell’esperienza
(noumeni), si serve di categorie e di principi che non hanno valore se non nel mondo
dell’esperienza (fenomeni).

“431 - b) Discussione. La dottrina di Kant dovrà essere discussa in Critica, poiché essa
concerne anzitutto il problema del valore della ragione metafisica. Dal punto di vista
psicologico, ci possiamo limitare a due osservazioni. La prima è che la ragione per la quale
Kant scarta l’ipotesi dell’astrazione dell’universale partendo dall’esperienza sensibile
costituisce un mero sofisma. Egli scrive infatti, nella sua dissertazione del 1770, De mundi
sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis (sectio 1a, § 5): «Per quanto concerne gli
intelligibili come tali e propriamente detti, nei quali l’esercizio dell'intelligenza è reale, bisogna
dire che i concetti che rappresentano tanto oggetti intelligibili quanto rapporti, derivano dalla
natura stessa dell'intelligenza, che essi non sono affatto astratti dall’esperienza mediante un
qualsiasi intervento della conoscenza sensibile, e che non contengono alcun elemento che
provenga dalla conoscenza sensibile come tale, perché un’astrazione operata nel sensibile non
può fornire concetti che oltrepassano il piano della conoscenza sensibile, così che, per quanto
spinta possa essere l’astrazione, essi restano indefinitamente dei concetti sensibili (immagini)».
Da ciò si vede che l’astrazione non è mai, agli occhi di Kant, altro che un semplice processo di
generalizzazione delle immagini fornite dall’esperienza. Noi abbiamo visto (414) che questa
concezione è erronea e smentita ad un tempo dall’analisi dell’idea astratta e dai risultati dei
processi sperimentali.

“In secondo luogo, l’asserzione di Kant secondo cui la teoria delle forme a priori è la
sola capace di render ragione del fatto che la scienza abbia successo, mal s’accorda col fatto che
la scienza, nel campo stesso dell’esperienza, non fa che cozzare contro la natura. Si può anzi
affermare che essa progredisce soltanto in virtù di questi urti, il che sarebbe inconcepibile se la
natura non fosse altro che opera della nostra mente. Come si spiegherebbe l’universale
convinzione di trovarci di fronte ad un ordine di cose che ci sfugge in gran parte e che possiamo
conoscere solo a forza di pazienza e di perspicacia?”103

Jolivet also presents a critique of Kant’s transcendental idealism in the fourth volume of
his Trattato di filosofia, Metafisica I, as follows: “112 - Abbiamo distinto in Psicologia (III, 428-
432) tre tipi di idealismo: l'idealismo problematico di Cartesio, l'idealismo formale di Kant e
l'idealismo assoluto dei post-kantiani. Sotto queste tre forme, l'idealismo stesso, come abbiamo
constatato (37-40), non è che un tentativo per risolvere i problemi derivanti dal nominalismo. Per
una dottrina che neghi il valore ontologico dei concetti universali, non c'è infatti altra soluzione,
una volta scartato l'empirismo, che tentare di spiegare le idee mediante la pura attività soggettiva
del conoscente.

“Noi abbiamo già studiato questa concezione in Cartesio e abbiamo mostrato quali
problemi essa poneva, senza risolverli, riguardo al valore oggettivo della conoscenza (problema
del mondo esterno), riguardo alla natura dell'essere (problema della («comunicazione delle

asserzioni implicano una vera e propria universalità ed una necessità rigorosa che la conoscenza puramente empirica
non produrrebbe proprio». (Cfr. Critica della Ragion pura, tr. it. di Gentile e Lombardo-Radice, 2 voll., Bari, 1910).
103
R. JOLIVET, Trattato di filosofia, vol. 3 (Psicologia), Morcelliana, Brescia, 1958, nos. 430-431.

35
sostanze»), infine riguardo al fondamento della certezza (problema della verità). Ci resta da
esaminare in qual modo Kant e i suoi successori abbiano tentato di risolvere, dal punto di vista
dell'idealismo, le difficoltà derivate dal cartesianesimo.

Ҥ 1 - L'idealismo formale di Kant

“A. Il contesto storico del kantismo.

“113 - Storicamente, l’opera di Kant si presenta come un tentativo di soluzione dei

problemi posti dall’empirismo fenomenistico di Hume. Questi problemi sono quelli stessi che
formano il problema critico nato dalla dottrina cartesiana: problemi del mondo esterno,
dell'ordine dell'universo, della verità. Il cartesianesimo aveva fallito nel cercare di dare ad essi
una soluzione soddisfacente.104 Hume tentò una via nuova, più psicologica, ricorrendo
all’associazione, come principio di una spiegazione generale, capace di dar ragione sia della
realtà che dell’ordine dell’universo.

“1. Critica dell’associazionismo. - Kant giudica questa spiegazione radicalmente

inadeguata. L’universo, in quanto sistema ordinato di fenomeni, come è dato nella
rappresentazione, non può assolutamente venire spiegato dal semplice gioco della coesistenza e
della successione dei fenomeni. Coesistenza e successione implicano una necessità determinata
nelle cose solo quando gli oggetti della percezione sono legati tra loro da relazioni di natura
intelligibile. Ce ne si convincerà considerando che il rapporto di un oggetto all’altro, per es. di A
e B, poco importa se di coesistenza o di successione, può sempre essere invertito reciprocamente,
mentre al contrario sarebbe impossibile tale reciproca inversione se si trattasse di un rapporto di
causa a effetto o di sostanza ad accidente. Bisogna dunque convenire che gli oggetti, se li
pensiamo nel loro essere o nella loro costituzione interna, sono dei fasci di qualità di natura
affatto diversa da quelli che può produrre l’associazione psicologica. Proprio per questo motivo,
allo stesso modo come non sono nati per un’associazione, così un’associazione differente o
contraria non potrà mai distruggerli né, per conseguenza, potrà modificare in qualsiasi maniera
l’organismo oggettivo dell’intelletto (Critica della ragion pura). Avvertito dal fallimento di
Hume, Kant si orienterà in un’altra direzione, quella delle forme a priori della sensibilità e
dell'intelletto. Ma bisogna tener per fermo che si tratta per lui solo di legalizzare in certo modo il
nominalismo, risolvendo in maniera intelligibile i problemi ch'esso pone alla speculazione.

“114 - 2. Il postulato nominalistico - Kant è integralmente nominalista. Il concetto, egli

dice, non deriva in alcun modo dall’esperienza105 (124); esso è assolutamente a priori. Infatti,
un’astrazione operata nel sensibile non può darci concetti che oltrepassino il livello della

104
Né l’occasionalismo di Malebranche, né l’armonia prestabilita di Leibniz (III, 627), furono oggetto di durevole
attenzione, poiché il sistema della «visione di Dio» come quello delle monadi senza via d’uscita, erano troppo
lontani dall’esperienza psicologica. Tuttavia, Malebranche, poco cartesiano su questo punto, aveva compreso la
necessità, per una critica decisiva del conoscere, di perseguire una giustificazione «trascendentale» della
conoscenza. Su questo punto, d’altronde, espressamente l’influenza agostiniana è quella dominante sul suo pensiero.
105
Cfr. I. KANT, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis, 1770, ora nella edizione completa delle
opere di Kant a cura dell’Accademia delle Scienze di Berlino, 22 voll., 1902-1955, II, Sectio Ia, § 6: «Quod autem
intellectualia stricte talia attinet, in quibus unus intellectus est realis, conceptus tales tam obiectorum quam
respectuum dantur per ipsam naturam intellectus, neque ab ullo sensuum usu sunt abstracti, nec formam ullam
continent cognitionis sensitivae, qua talis».

36
conoscenza sensibile, poiché, per quanto spinta possa essere l’astrazione, essi rimangono sempre
dei concetti empirici o sensibili (o immagini).106

“La petizione di principio è evidente. Essa consiste nel negare la possibilità

dell'astrazione metafisica (o intuizione intellettuale) per la sola ragione che l’astrazione operata
sul sensibile darebbe sempre nient’altro che ciò che è sensibile, cioè sarebbe sempre un semplice
processo di generalizzazione delle immagini fornite dall’esperienza sensibile, e proprio in ciò sta
il problema! (III, 415). L'intera critica kantiana riposa su questa petizione di principio, e la sua
divisione in giudizi analitici e sintetici a priori non ne è che uno degli aspetti (I, 59; III, 483).

“Nel suo punto di partenza Kant è dunque, come dichiara egli stesso (Critica della ragion
pura, Logica trascendentale, § 13, nota della 28, ediz.), perfettamente d’accordo con Hume, il
quale ha ben veduto che i concetti metafisici sono a priori. Il punto debole del sistema di Hume è
stato di non aver compreso che questi concetti a priori sono forme o strutture soggettive
dell’intelletto. Così egli viene a smentire in certo modo la scoperta capitale dell’apriorità dei
concetti puri, allorché tenta di farli derivare dall’esperienza mediante il gioco delle leggi
d’associazione.

“B. Le forme a priori.

“115 - Secondo Kant, il problema della conoscenza è dunque stato formulato chiaramente
dagli empiristi, ma da essi risolto assai male. Locke favorisce le stravaganze della ragion pura.107
(126). Hume sfocia nello scetticismo. Tra i due, esiste una via di mezzo, consistente
nell'ammettere che le categorie sono delle semplici forme del pensiero. Con questa ipotesi e con
essa sola verrà risolto il duplice problema dell’esistenza (o del mondo esterno) e dell’ordine (o
dell’unità complessa del reale), che è nello stesso tempo il problema della scienza.

“1. La realtà oggettiva dell’universo - È del tutto impossibile, dichiara Kant, dubitare
della realtà delle cose. Kant è categorico al massimo su questo punto e propone le sue
osservazioni come una «confutazione dell’idealismo» (Critica della ragion pura. Analitica
trascendentale, 1. II, cap. II, 78. sezione, n. 4). Infatti, egli dice, la semplice coscienza della mia
esistenza è nello stesso tempo coscienza immediata dell’esistenza di altre cose fuori di me. La
mia esperienza interna è una esperienza di determinazione nel tempo (che è quanto dire che la
successione delle mie rappresentazioni è determinata). Ora, questa determinazione implica
qualche cosa di permanente, esistente fuori di me, in quanto l’esperienza interna pura (definita
dal cogito) mi darebbe la mia esistenza, ma non le sue determinazioni nel tempo (cioè
l’esperienza). La mia esperienza interna può dunque spiegarsi solo mediante la percezione di
cose esterne a me.

106
Cfr. I. KANT, De mundi sensibilis..., Sectio Ia, § 5: «Conceptus itaque empirici, per reductionem ad maiorem
universalitatem non fiunt intellectuales in sensu reali, et non excedunt speciem cognitionis sensitivae, sed, quousque
abstrahendo ascendant, sensitivi manent in indefinitum».
107
Queste «stragavanze della ragion pura» nel pensiero di Locke, consistono nell’ammettere, come si è visto più
su, che deve esserci qualche soggetto sconosciuto dei fenomeni (Cfr J. LOCKE, Essay, op. cit., II, cap. XXXII, n.
37). Ora questa nozione d’un soggetto statico o d’un substrato inerte, d'una cosa sotto altre cose è, in realtà, una
stravaganza, ma dell’immaginazione pura, non della ragione (III, 557).

37
 “Riguardo a questo argomento, Kant aggiunge le osservazioni seguenti: «Si noterà nella
prova precedente che il gioco dell’idealismo viene rivolto contro questo sistema. Esso
ammetteva che la sola esperienza immediata sia l’esperienza interna e che da essa ci si limiti a
concludere all’esistenza delle cose esterne, ma che qui, come in tutti i casi in cui si conclude da
dati effetti a determinate cause, la conclusione è incerta, perché la causa delle rappresentazioni
può anche essere in noi stessi, e noi forse le attribuiamo falsamente a delle cose esterne. Ora qui
è dimostrato che l’esperienza esterna è propriamente immediata e che solo mediante questa
esperienza è possibile non la coscienza, è vero, della nostra propria esistenza, ma la
determinazione di questa esistenza nel tempo, cioè l’esperienza interna».

“Non c'è dunque, per Kant, dimostrazione della realtà del mondo esterno, ma solo
dell’immediatezza della percezione del mondo esterno. Il mondo esterno non si dimostra, si
percepisce. L’atteggiamento critico consiste qui semplicemente nell’assumere una coscienza
riflessa del carattere immediato della nostra esperienza del mondo esterno. Kant collega questo
problema a quello della distinzione dell’immagine e della percezione. «E’ chiaro, egli scrive,
che, anche perché noi possiamo immaginarci qualche cosa come esterna, bisogna che abbiamo
già un senso esterno, e che così noi distinguiamo immediatamente la semplice recettività di una
intuizione esterna dalla spontaneità che caratterizza ogni immaginazione» (III, 180).

“116 – 2. L’ordine dell’universo - L’universo che io percepisco è un universo ordinato,

sottomesso alla giurisdizione delle intuizioni di spazio e tempo e delle categorie della ragion
pura. Ora queste categorie, grazie alle quali l’universo forma un sistema e un sistema di sistemi,
non possono in alcun modo, dichiara Kant (postulato nominalistico), provenire dall’esperienza,
che ci offre solo puri fenomeni singoli e contingenti, e mai ciò che è assoluto e necessario. Sono
dunque dei concetti puri, cioè a priori, dell’intelletto, risultanti dalla funzione logica di
quest’ultimo, o, in altri termini, dalla nostra struttura mentale. Questi concetti ci servono per
organizzare il dato fenomenico e per costruire la scienza. La natura, cioè l’universo in quanto
organizzazione intelligibile, è dunque un prodotto dello spirito. Questa è la dottrina che Kant ha
definita come idealismo formale (o trascendentale).

“Kant dà come prova (che egli giudica assolutamente decisiva108) di questa dottrina i
giudizi da lui detti sintetici a priori, cioè i giudizi nei quali il predicato aggiunge alcunché alla
nozione del soggetto (attua una sintesi), ma in una maniera puramente a priori. Kant offre come
esempi: «tutto ciò che comincia ad essere ha una causa»; «tra due punti, la linea retta è la più
breve»; 7 + 5 = 12». In questi giudizi, dice Kant, non è l’intuizione che rende possibile la sintesi
del soggetto e del predicato, poiché l’esperienza è sempre singolare, mentre questi giudizi sono
universali e necessari. Bisogna concludere che essi sono effetto della nostra struttura mentale.

“Abbiamo mostrato in logica (I, 59) che non ci sono giudizi sintetici a priori. L’errore di
Kant sta nel limitare il giudizio analitico al primo modo di attribuzione per sé (I, 45), in cui il
predicato forma sia l’essenza (l’uomo è un animale ragionevole), sia una parte dell’essenza
(l'uomo è un essere ragionevole) del soggetto. Ora i giudizi nei quali il predicato è una proprietà
del soggetto devono anch’essi essere ritenuti come analitici, nel senso che queste proprietà

108
Cfr. I. KANT, Critica della ragion pura, Dialettica trascendentale, 9a sezione, IV: «Ciò che potrebbe toccare di
più molesto a queste ricerche, è che qualcuno facesse questa scoperta inattesa, che non esiste affatto conoscenza a
priori e che non può esservene. Ma non vi è, sotto questo aspetto, alcun pericolo».

38
implicano necessariamente il loro soggetto (secondo modo di attribuzione per sé). Così se non si
può trarre la nozione di «essere causato» dalla nozione «ciò che comincia ad essere», né la
nozione di 12 da quella di 7 + 5, vuol dire che le nozioni di «essere causato» e di 12 sono
proprietà essenziali di «ciò che comincia ad essere» e di 7 + 5, il che significa che queste nozioni
sono collegate tra loro in maniera necessaria e il loro legame è percepito proprio in virtù delle
esigenze dell’oggetto.109

“C. – Il problema del kantismo.

“117 - Kant, come Cartesio, ci ha lasciato in eredità un numero maggiore di questioni in

sospeso che di problemi risolti, o, più esattamente, le sue soluzioni comportavano tali difficoltà
che è stato impossibile attenervisi. Questa constatazione è avallata dai tre punti essenziali che
costituiscono il problema critico moderno: problema del mondo esterno (divenuto con Kant il
problema della «cosa in sé»), problema dell’ordine del mondo (divenuto con Kant il problema
della natura e della scienza), problema della verità e della sua giustificazione trascendentale.
“1. Problema della «cosa in sé».

“a) Fenomeni e noumeni. La teoria delle forme a priori conduce ad ammettere che il
reale è costituito da due gruppi distinti e separati di realtà: i fenomeni, oggetti di esperienza
sensibile (sensazioni) e i noumeni o cose in sé, misterioso aldilà dell’esperienza, substrato
sconosciuto e inconoscibile in se stesso del flusso fenomenico. Chiamandole noumeni (νούμενον
= ciò che è oggetto di νόησις = intuizione intellettuale), Kant non vuol dire che queste cose in sé
siano realmente date all’intelligenza, ma solo che esse si presentano (senza prova) come oggetti
di intuizione intellettuale. Invero nulla permette di affermare legittimamente ciò che è
metafisico: l’esperienza, per definizione, non ce ne fa conoscere nulla; e così pure il
ragionamento, poiché tutti i princìpi della nostra ragione, essendo condizionati dall’esperienza,
sono validi solo nel dominio dell’esperienza sensibile.

“Questa concezione della «cosa in sé» è una conseguenza naturale del nominalismo
empiristico, che può pensare solo con la categoria di cosa, come abbiamo constatato più volte;
ogni distinzione è reale, come tra cosa e cosa. San Tommaso osservava che i peggiori errori in
filosofia consistono nel prendere le forme (princìpi o aspetti del reale) per cose,110 come sempre
fanno il nominalismo e il fenomenismo o l'idealismo che ne derivano. Queste dottrine ci danno
l’esempio di due tipi di «cosismo» integrale; senza tener conto che la loro teoria dell’idea-copia
o dell’immagine-copia non è che una materializzazione pura e semplice della coscienza.

“118 - b) L’irrazionalità della «cosa in sé». La posizione kantiana non poteva essere
mantenuta, e per due ragioni. Da una parte, essa era contraddittoria, poiché, come osserva Jacobi
(Werke, 6 voll., Lipsia, 1812-25, II, p. 303), la «cosa in sé» è nello stesso tempo necessaria al
sistema (in quanto idealismo semplicemente formale o trascendentale), e inconoscibile perfino
109
Cfr. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 44, a. 1, ad 1: «Licet habitudo ad causam non intret definitionem entis quod est
causatum, tamen sequitur ad ea quae sunt de eius ratione; quia ex hoc quod aliquid per participationem est ens
sequitur quod sit causatum ab alio. Unde huiusmodi ens non potest esse quin causatum, sicut nec homo quin sit
risibilis. Sed quia esse causatum non est de ratione entis simpliciter, propter hoc invenitur aliquod ens non
causatum».
110
SAN TOMMASO, De Virtutibus in communi, art. 11: «Multus error accidit circa formas, ex hoc quod de eis
iudicant sicut de substantiis iudicatur».

39
quanto alla sua esistenza. Dall’altra, fenomeni e cose in sé sono separati, così che questa «cosa
in sé» necessaria e inconcepibile ripete esattamente l’assurda sostanza-substrato
dell'empirismo. Queste sono le difficoltà che ricorrono lungo tutta la speculazione del XIX
secolo (ad eccezione di qualche pensatore isolato, come Maine De Biran, Ravaisson, Cournot).111
Di questa «cosa in sé», che il kantismo lasciava sussistere davanti all’intelletto come un dato
irrazionale, si tratta ormai di non tener assolutamente conto, non potendosi esorcizzarla o
spiegarne la genesi paradossale. Gli uni, idealisti puri, la elimineranno del tutto: l’idealismo
formale di Kant si trasforma, con Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, in conformità alla logica del
fenomenismo, in un idealismo radicale. Kant, suo malgrado, ha portato acqua al mulino
idealista.112 Altri pensatori, diffidando delle speculazioni astruse degli idealisti, stimeranno assai
più semplice astrarre completamente dal problema metafisico e limitare l’ambizione della
filosofia ad essere nient’altro che una riflessione sulla scienza.

“119 – 2. Il problema dell’ordine - Kant si era lusingato di spiegare il successo della

scienza; ma il suo sistema non riusciva a spiegarne i fallimenti, e nemmeno i brancolamenti e le
approssimazioni. Se invero siamo noi ad introdurre nei fenomeni l’ordine e la regolarità che
costituiscono ciò che chiamiamo natura, è difficile comprendere come questa natura ci resista
fino a tal punto e come ci rimangano gelosamente preclusi i suoi segreti. L’ipotesi delle forme a
priori mal si adatta al fatto che sempre si ripete delle approssimazioni e degli errori della
scienza. Ma, ancor più, non si comprende come si accordino fino a tal punto nel loro gioco le
due sorgenti separate della rappresentazione, ossia le forme a priori della sensibilità e quelle
dell’intelletto. Kant postula questo accordo senza darne la ragione, così che la giustificazione
della scienza (cioè, in questo caso, della natura o dell’ordine dell’universo), lungi dall’avere il
carattere trascendentale che Kant si proponeva di conferirle, è solamente empirica e arbitraria.

“L’argomento di Kant è che deve esistere accordo tra la sensibilità e l’intelletto, benché
essi siano «due sorgenti del tutto differenti di rappresentazioni» (Critica della ragion pura,
Analitica trascendentale, c. III, Appendice), poiché, senza armonia, il pensiero non sarebbe
possibile, non avendo più alcun oggetto. C’è qui un evidente circolo vizioso: l’accordo tra
sensibilità e intelletto, di cui il sistema deve mostrare la necessità di diritto, è giustificato dal
sistema critico stesso.

111
Maine de Biran e Cournot dipendono ancora entrambi parzialmente dalla critica kantiana, di cui non pensano a
discutere i princìpi, ma soltanto le conseguenze. Ciò appunto esprime chiaramente una curiosa osservazione di
Cournot, il quale approva Maine de Biran per aver fatto consistere il «fatto primitivo» nell’atto di cogliere l’io come
causa e non come sostanza, poiché, aggiungeva Cournot, l’idea di sostanza è una «idea che si potrebbe definire
fatale allo spirito umano, essendosi questo sempre precipitato in abissi senza uscita. dacché ha voluto penetrarla a
fondo» (Essai sur les fondements de la connaissance, Parigi, 1852, p. 381). Questa osservazione di Cournot è giusta,
ma di fatto regge solo contro la concezione empiristica della sostanza come «cosa in sé» o substrato inerte (III, 562).
Cournot, come Maine de Biran, ha torto di pensare che ogni concetto di soggetto sostanziale non possa essere che di
tipo empiristico e kantiano.
112
M. LACHIÈZE-REY (L’idéalisme kantien, Parigi, 1931) pensa, in rapporto all’Uebergang (opera postuma di
Kant) che questi si sia orientato, alla fine della sua vita, verso una teoria propriamente idealistica, consistente
nell’affermazione che lo spirito si riveli a se stesso in una maniera assolutamente immediata come attività pura.

40
 “3. Problema della verità.

“120 - a) Un nuovo tipo di certezza. Kant rimproverava a Hume e, in generale,

all’empirismo fenomenistico, di condurre allo scetticismo; questo è un rimprovero fondato.
Nominalismo e scetticismo sono, storicamente e logicamente, congiunti; ne abbiamo fatto or ora
la constatazione. Infatti le sostanze, le nature e le essenze, in quanto compenetrate di
un’intenzione di universalità, le forme, i generi e le specie, i princìpi universali, in breve, tutti gli
aspetti dell’essere attinti dall’esperienza sensibile, vengono considerati solo come prodotti
dell’immaginazione ontologica. Unicamente gli attributi, qualità o fenomeni, che formano, da
soli, tutto l’universo,113 sussistono come conoscibili e reali. Poiché, d’altra parte, non ci si poteva
accontentare di questa concezione atomistica, i fenomeni stessi, sprovvisti, se così si può dire, di
coesione metafisica, vengono abbandonati al gioco delle forze meccaniche, che hanno il compito
di spiegare i loro collegamenti accidentali. In altri termini, è proprio il caso che diviene
principio universale dell'ordine; così il nominalismo sfocia in pieno scetticismo. È quanto
constata Kant, dopo Cartesio. La mirabile originalità di questi due grandi pensatori è consistita
nel rifiuto di accontentarsi di uno scetticismo infecondo, e contrario d’altronde alle tendenze più
profonde della nostra natura razionale: sia l’uno che l’altro, partendo dal nominalismo (e di
conseguenza dallo scetticismo stesso), tentarono, per vie diverse, di erigere sulle rovine del
realismo intellettuali sta una nuova forma di certezza e un nuovo tipo di scienza.

“b) Ritorno allo scetticismo. Bisogna ora vedere se ci siano riusciti. Per quanto riguarda il
cartesianesimo, abbiamo già accertato l’esito negativo del tentativo da esso compiuto. Il
criticismo kantiano non può pretendere a un successo maggiore. Da una parte, infatti, la
giustificazione trascendentale della scienza non è che una lusinga, in quanto essa viene ridotta,
come abbiamo appena mostrato, al puro postulato dell’accordo della sensibilità e dell’intelletto.
Per di più, il capovolgimento operato dalla Critica della ragion pratica, col postulare l’esistenza
di Dio e l’immortalità dell’anima come condizioni assolute del dovere, non può essere
considerato come una giustificazione autentica delle asserzioni metafisiche, in quanto il
procedimento, così come viene concepito da Kant, rimane irrazionale e costituisce un processo
analogo a quello della fede.114 Infine, Kant non giunge ad eliminare lo scetticismo, poiché non
perviene a dare un contenuto oggettivo alla verità. L’idealismo formale, nonostante le illusioni di
Kant, non si presenta come un progresso reale sul fenomenismo di Hume. Se infatti il reale, nella
sua essenza, necessariamente ci sfugge, se tutte le nostre affermazioni d’ordine metafisico sono
necessariamente sofistiche, l’idea di verità diviene illusoria, nella misura in cui essa significa
accordo dello spirito con il reale, perché ormai si tratta tutt’al più d’un accordo del pensiero con
sé stesso, cioè di semplice coerenza formale (I, 102). Di conseguenza, come osserva assai
giustamente Lachièze-Rey, la conoscenza umana perde «l’interesse religioso che essa possedeva
anteriormente, quando le si proponeva come scopo di risolvere l’enigma e di penetrare il mistero;

113
Pietro Aureolo nel XIV secolo, con una chiarezza perfetta, aveva fornito la formula di questo nominalismo
empiristico, suscettibile di avviarsi sia verso un positivismo puro, sia verso l’idealismo. «Prima quidem [via
demonstrationis], via experientiae, cui adhaerendum est potius quam quibuscumque rationibus logicis, cum ab
experientia habeat ortum scientia, et communes animi conceptiones, quae sunt principia artis. Unde signum est
sermonum verorum convenientia cum rebus sensatis» (Comment. in Sent., 2 voll., Roma, 1596-1605, Prologo).
114
Non vi sono dimostrazioni dell’esistenza di Dio e dell’immortalità dell’anima: una tale dimostrazione, in
conformità ai princìpi della Critica della ragion pura, sarebbe rigorosamente sofistica. Ma, dice Kant, l’esistenza
della legge morale (imperativo categorico) postula l’immortalità dell’anima e l’esistenza di Dio, cioè ci costringe,
nell’impossibilità in cui ci troviamo di avere una prova razionale, a fare un atto di fede in queste realtà metafisiche.

41
l’uomo sa che ritroverà solo se stesso in atto d’esprimersi in modi diversi», che egli apprenderà
nient’altro che il grado della propria abilità pratica, e questo ideale non potrà bastargli.115”116

Alessi’s Critique of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. Adriano Alessi critiques Kant’s

transcendental idealism in his Sui sentieri della verità as follows: “Esperienza veritativa e
criticismo kantiano. Secondo Kant l’uomo è costitutivamente inabilitato a conoscere l’in sé (il
noumeno, l’essere vero della realtà) dal momento che il nostro mondo conoscitivo risulta
dall’interazione inscindibile dell’«in sé» con il nostro modo peculiare di conoscere. La
conoscenza umana (la ragion pura) non ci fa attingere la realtà se in quanto e filtrata, o letta,
attraverso le lenti soggettive delle nostre categorie mentali. Per questo siamo in grado di
conoscere la «realtà come appare» (il fenomeno), ma in nessun modo la «realtà così come in se
stessa è». 117 L’obiezione di Kant è certamente grave. Essa tuttavia è inficiata da pregiudizi che,
alternando la vera natura della conoscenza, pervengono a conclusioni errate.

“1. Circa l’incapacità radicale dell’uomo di cogliere il noumeno occorre dire che
l’argomentazione di Kant si pone sul piano della riflessione seconda anziché su quello della
riflessione prima. Il ragionamento kantiano è sostanzialmente il seguente. Penso (cogito), quindi
riflettendo sul mio atto di pensiero lo percepisco come esistente. In questo caso però il cogito
iniziale da «atto pensante» diventa «oggetto pensato» di una riflessione successiva la quale, a
motivo della strutturazione congenita dell’intelligenza, non può fare a meno di cogliere l’oggetto
(e dunque anche il cogito) in chiave di essere. In realtà non sappiamo se gli oggetti del pensiero
siano veramente esseri; sappiamo solo che non possiamo fare a meno di considerarli come tali.

“Osserviamo che l’affermazione in base alla quale il pensiero riconosce come essere la
realtà che gli si presenzializza non è risultato di una riflessione successiva al cognosco, ma
un’evidenza implicita, concomitante lo stesso atto iniziale di percepire. In questo senso viene
detta giustamente reflexio prima: esplicitazione di un’evidenza intrinseca, o autoconsapevolezza,
in base alla quale il soggetto conoscitivo si riconosce come esistente e, dunque, come «essere»
nell’atto stesso con cui – conoscendo – coglie il darsi della realtà.118

“2. Circa il carattere soggettivo delle categorie mentali occorre sottolineare che Kant
suppone indebitamente che esse siano ultimamente modificanti (nel senso di deformanti o
velanti) l’in sé della realtà e non, invece, aperture contenutisticamene neutre attraverso le quali il
noumeno si manifesta nella sua oggettività.

“All’opposto è una tesi, la cui validità fa capolino nella stessa esperienza veritativa
fondamentale, che i concetti non sono id quod cognoscitur, vale a dire fotografie o
rappresentazioni più o meno fedeli del reale. Non sono neppure id quo conoscitur: non sono cioè
lenti, più o meno deformanti, tramite le quali il pensiero coglie le cose. Sono id in quo res

115
P. LACHIÈZE-REY, L’Idéalisme kantien, p. 478.
116
R. JOLIVET, Trattato di filosofia, vol. 4 (Metafisica I), Morcelliana, Brescia, 1959, nos. 112-120.
117
È questo l’insegnamento fondamentale sotteso alla dottrina dei «giudizi sintetici a priori», proposti da Kant
sopratutto nella Critica della ragion pura.
118
Cfr. la distinzione tra «atto riflesso» e «atto di reflessione» proposta da J. DE SAINTE-MARIE, Intentionalité et
réflexivité, base psychologique d’un fondement critique du réalisme de la connaissance, in: L’essere. Atti del
Congresso Internazionale (Roma-Napoli 17-24 aprile 1974). Tommaso d’Aquino nel suo Settimo Centenario,
Napoli 1977, pp. 506-509.

42
cognoscitur, aperture dell’intelligenza grazie alle quali la mente si dispone a cogliere la realtà
nella sua autenticità noumenica. Infatti, nell’atto conoscitivo primigenio ciò che direttamente
conosciamo non sono i concetti, ma la realtà…

“3. Il criticismo kantiano è inficiato, infine, da gravi incongruenze. Anzitutto risulta

insostenibile la contrapposizione tra fenomeno e noumeno. Anche nell’ipostesi in cui il
fenomeno risultasse camuffamento, anziché manifestazione della realtà, dovrebbe porsi come
essere dal momento che ciò che non ha spessore ontologico non può neppure rivestire il ruolo di
«parvenza». Il nulla, infatti, non appare; simpliciter non è. Inoltre, il concetto di realtà
fenomenica presuppone il darsi del soggetto conoscente cui appare qualche cosa; è quindi un
concetto posteriore a quello di soggetto e di oggetto, i quali a loro volta presuppongono la
nozione di ente, o di ciò che è.

“Inoltre, anche Kant fa un uso contraddittorio del principio di causalità. «Infatti dopo
averlo dichiarato ‘forma a priori,’ pura legge soggettiva del pensare, se ne serve come se avesse
valore ontologico per dimostrare l’esistenza della cosa in sé».119 Pertanto, o il noumeno è – in
qualche modo almeno – direttamente attingibile dal pensiero, o l’accettazione della sua esistenza
risulta illogica e gratuita.

“La contraddizione è insita anche nell’affermazione secondo cui il soggetto umano sia in
grado di individuare – in forma oggettivamente valida – le strutture a priori del conoscere. Se
l’incapacità di raggiungere l’in sé ha valore apodittico, non ha senso investigare la natura dello
spirito e il suo modo di operare. Infatti, se conoscere è deformare, ogni affermazione implica una
deformazione. Di conseguenza «anche l’affermazione che ‘conoscere è deformare’ è una
deformazione di quello che la conoscenza davvero è».120 In altre parole, l’incapacità di conoscere
il noumeno comporta ipso facto l’impossibilità di determinare la natura autentica dell’ambito
conoscitivo. Poiché, lo si voglia o no, anche il «mondo di pensiero» deve riverstire pregnanza
noumenica e rivendicare un proprio spessore entitativo se non vuole annullarsi.”121

Critique of Immanentism

What is the principle of immanence? Alejandro Llano states that “the principle of
immanence consists in the denial that being transcends consciousness…being is constituted from
within the immanence of the thinking subject…A great part of post-Cartesian philosophy
basically holds to the principle of immanence.122 In positions as apparently opposed to idealism
as empiricism, dialectical materialism and existentialism, one can discover – in effect – that the
starting point is the immanence of human consciousness and that these positions never attain

119
Cfr., G. BERGHIN-ROSÉ, Elementi di filosofia, vol. 5 (Critica), Marietti, Torino, 1958 p. 57.
120
F. AMERO, L’uomo e la verità, Colle Don Bosco, Asti, 1944, p. 39.
121
A. ALESSI, Sui sentieri della verità, LAS, Rome, 2003, pp. 92-94.
122
See: C. FABRO, Introduzione all’ateismo moderno, 2nd edition, Studium, Rome, 1969 (English translation of 1st
edition: C. FABRO, God in Exile: An Introduction to Modern Atheism, Newman Press, Westminster, MD, 1968) ;
C. CARDONA, Metafísica del la opción intelectual, Rialp, Madrid, 1973 (Italian translation: C. CARDONA,
Metafisica dell’opzione intellettuale, EDUSC, Rome, 2003).

43
genuine transcendence.”123 Carlos Cardona notes the eventual agnostic (and atheistic) outcome
of the immanentist “option” which endeavors “di definire l’essere a partire dalla mia conoscenza.
Quando questo atteggiamento diviene esclusivo e dichiara la non validità dell’apprensione
immediata dell’essere e pretende di costituire quello che è stato chiamato inizio assoluto, vera
origine dell’essere, posizione radicale di tutta la realtà, siamo di fronte a un’interpretazione del
cogito, storicamente data, che porta alla negazione di Dio.”124

The root problem with the transcendental idealist system of Kant is its immanentism:
Kant, like his predecessor the sensist phenomenalist Hume, who awoke the philosopher from
Königsberg from his “dogmatic slumbers” of Wolffian rationalism, is ultimately trapped within
the phenomenal prison of his mind, unable to access and know things in extra-mental reality.
Being unable to access and know the extra-mental world of real things, of real beings endowed
with their respective acts of being (esse as actus essendi), since he is restricted to the realm of
phenomena, he is unable to demonstrate the existence of God using objective efficient causality,
since causality, for him, is an a priori category of the understanding applicable only to
phenomena.

The solution to the problem of immanentism lies in a vigorous and healthy philosophical
realism open to gnoseological and ontological transcendence. But what exactly is immanentism
and what exactly do we mean by realism and transcendence? In philosophical usage, the term
immanentism is derived from the concept immanence, which means to remain within oneself,
which is opposed to transcendence, which means to go beyond oneself. In immanentism, what
man knows in the first instance is that which remains enclosed within the sphere of human
consciousness (e.g., ideas), and not the extra-mental real thing, which is either only mediately
known (Descartes’ mediate “realism,” a pseudo-realism, unsuccessful in its attempts at
reclaiming reality) or is simply unknowable (Humean and Kantian phenomenalism). Realism, on
the other hand, retains that what is known in the first instance is the extra-mental thing which
really exists (e.g., that real pine tree to the right of me, or that particular brown cat in front of
me). For the immanentist, who is incarcerated within the cell of his mind, unable to escape to a
knowledge of noumenal reality, thought is prior to being. Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am), that famous Cartesian dictum, is the name of the immanentist state penitentiary. Realism,
instead, maintains that being is prior to thought. The actual dog that exists in reality is prior to
the universal concept “dog” that exists in the mind in an intentional manner. Dobermans and
dachshunds are out there in reality and will continue to exist there whether we think of them or
not. What is known in the first instance is the real dog and not the idea “dog.” What is known in
the first instance is the extra-mental sensible thing itself really existing in the world. For the
immanentist, then, thought is the starting point of philosophical investigation, whereas for the
realist it is real sensible being, leading to the affirmation res sunt (things are).

In his book Methodical Realism, the great twentieth century philosopher-historian

Étienne Gilson explains that “when St. Thomas tells us that the intellect reaches objects, things,
no one can misunderstand what he means by that: ‘Could we not say that the res St. Thomas

123
A. LLANO, Gnoseology, Sinag-Tala, Manila, 2001, p. 88, 92. Italian translation: A. LLANO, Filosofia della
conoscenza, Le Monnier, Florence, 1987, p. 92, 96 ; Spanish original: A. LLANO, Gnoseologia, EUNSA,
Pamplona, 1984, p. 96, 100.
124
C. CARDONA, Metafisica dell’opzione intellettuale, EDUSC, Rome, 2003, p. 15.

44
talks about, and which the judgment should conform to, although something objective and
independent, is nevertheless in the mind? Anyone who thought that would be thoroughly wrong.
If St. Thomas does not feel it necessary to be explicit on the subject, it is probably because he
never dreamed that anyone could misunderstand him. For him, the thing is plainly the real thing
posited as an entity existing in its own right and outside human consciousness.’125

“Exactly so, and it could not be better put. But if that is the way things are, how can one
maintain that in Thomism one can start from a something apprehended prescinding from its
reality? Whatever object I apprehend, the first thing I apprehend is its being: ens est quod
primum cadit in intellectu.126 But this being which is the first object of the intellect – ens est
proprium objectum intellectus, et sic est proprium intelligibile127 – is, in virtue of what has just
been said, something entirely different from ‘an apprehended’ without the reality; it is reality
itself, given by means of an act of apprehension no doubt, but not at all as simply apprehended.
In short, one could say that if the block which experience offers us for analysis needs to be
dissected according to its natural articulations, it is still an ‘apprehended reality’ which it
delivers us, and unless we are going to alter the structure of reality, no method authorizes us to
present it merely as a ‘reality apprehended’(italics added).

“Besides, one only has to reread the text of St. Thomas to realize that the order he follows
is not an accidental one, or something one can modify simply as a temporary expedient. The
order lies at the heart of the teaching. For an intellect like ours which is not its own essence, as
God’s would be, and whose essence is not its natural object, as with the finite pure spirits, that
object must necessarily be something extrinsic. That is why the object which the intellect
apprehends must be something extrinsic as such. The first thing it grasps is a nature inhabiting an
existence which is not its own, the ens of a material nature. That is its proper object: etideo id
quod primo cognoscitur ab intellectu humano est hujusmodi objectum.128 It is only secondarily
that it knows the actual act by which it knows the object; et secundario cognoscitur ipse actus,
quo cognoscitur objectum.129 And finally it is the act that the intellect itself is known: et per
actum cognoscitur ipse intellectus.130”131

Gilson also writes that, for St. Thomas Aquinas, “all existence is individual and singular.
As he said again and again, when we grasp the singular as such it is the work of our sense
faculty: id quod cognoscit sensus materialiter et concrete, quod est cognoscere singulare
directe; – similitudo quae est in sensu, abstrahitur a re ut ab objecto cognoscibili, et ideo res
ipsa per illam similitudinem directe cognoscitur.132 Unquestioningly the intellect does more and
better, since it grasps what is abstractly intelligible, but it has another function: universale est

125
L. NOËL, Notes d’épistémologie thomiste, p. 33.
126
Being (ens) is what first strikes the intellect.
127
Being (ens) is the proper object of the intellect, and thus it is specifically intelligible. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 5,
a. 2, resp.
128
And therefore what the human intellect knows first is an object of this kind…
129
And what is known secondarily is the act itself by which the object is known…
130
And through the act, the intellect itself is known…Summa Theologiae, I, q. 87, a. 3, resp.
131
É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 74-76.
132
What the sense faculty knows materially and concretely, it knows directly as singular; – the likeness which is in
the senses is abstracted from the thing as from a knowable object, and therefore the thing itself is directly known
through that likeness.

45
dum intelligitur, singulare dum sentitur.133 But the singular is the concretely real. So one must
consign the task of solving the problem to viribus sensitivis quae circa particularia
versantur.134”135

Against immanentism, realism holds that epistemology (gnoseology) is founded upon the
metaphysics of being; being is prior to thought, and thought is dependent upon being. The act of
being (esse as actus essendi) is the radical act of a being (ens); it is, in every being (ens), the
internal principle of its reality and of its knowability, and therefore, the foundation of the act of
knowledge.

In philosophical immanentism, transcendence (first gnoseological, then ontological) is

first emarginalized, then debilitated, and in the end, eliminated. In realism, on the other hand,
both gnoseological and ontological transcendence is respected. There is a difference between
gnoseological transcendence and ontological transcendence. The former regards the possibility
of knowing realities distinct from consciousness and its representations; transcendence here is
intended as extra-subjective. Ontological transcendence, on the other hand, regards the existence
of realities that surpass the factual data of empirical experience, the most eminent of these
realities being God, the absolutely transcendent Supreme Being. The history of modern
philosophy, beginning with Cartesian rationalism, has shown that the refusal of a gnoseological
transcendence (though not always in a direct and immediate way, as was precisely the case with
the mediate “realism” of Descartes) impedes recognition of an authentic ontological
transcendence.

The starting point of philosophy is not the Cartesian “I think, therefore I am” (Cogito,
ergo sum), but rather: “things are” (res sunt). That “I think” is surely evidence, but it is not the
first evidence. It is not the point of departure for doing philosophy. That “things are,” that
“things exist,” on the other hand, is the first in the order of all evidence. This is the correct
starting point. “Realism accepts reality in toto and measures our knowledge by the rule of reality.
Nothing that is validly known would be so if its object did not first exist…The first thing offered
us is the concept of a being thought about by the intellect, and given us in a sensory intuition. If
the being, in so far as it can be conceived, is the first object of the intellect, that is because it is
directly perceived: res sunt, ergo cogito (things are, therefore, I think). We start by perceiving an
existence which is given us in itself and not first of all in relation to ourselves. Later, on
inquiring into the conditions which make such a fact possible, we realize that the birth of the
concept presupposes the fertilization of the intellect by the reality which it apprehends. Before
truth comes the thing that is true; before judgment and reality are brought into accord, there is a
living accord of the intellect with reality…”136

Gilson defended methodical realism against the immanentism underlying much of

modern philosophy in many of his works, such as Thomist Realism and the Critique of

133
The universal is grasped while things are being understood, the singular while they are being sensed.
134
…to the powers of sense which relate to particular objects. Summa Theologiae, I, q. 86, a. 1, ad 4; De Veritate, q.
2, a. 6, resp., et q. 10, a. 6, sed contra and resp.
135
É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 78-79.
136
É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 120-121.

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Knowledge137 and Methodical Realism.138 In Methodical Realism he points out that it was in the
thought of Descartes, and not Kant, where the “Copernican Revolution” took place for the first
time: “Critical idealism was born the day Descartes decided that the mathematical method must
henceforth be the method for metaphysics. Reversing the method of Aristotle and the medieval
tradition, Descartes decided that it is valid to infer being from knowing, to which he added that
this was indeed the only valid type of inference, so that in his philosophy, whatever can be
clearly and distinctly attributed to the idea of the thing is true of the thing itself: when we say of
anything that it is contained in the nature or concept of a particular thing, it is the same as if we
were to say it is true of that thing, or could be affirmed of it…Indeed, all idealism derives from
Descartes, or from Kant, or from both together, and whatever other distinguishing features a
system may have, it is idealist to the extent that, either in itself, or as far as we are concerned, it
makes knowing the condition of being…With Descartes the Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I
am) turns into Cogito ergo res sunt (I think, therefore, things are)”139 Once trapped within the
immanent sphere of one’s thoughts, initially doubting the extra-mental reality perceived by the
senses, and commencing from the cogito as the first certainty, we become unable to recuperate
reality itself. All we will be able to do with the immanentist method is to conjure up a thought of
reality, all the while remaining locked up within the prison of our minds. From mere mental
representations we cannot reach the thing-in-itself which is doubted at the outset by the Cartesian
universal doubt. If you have a hat stand painted on a wall, the only thing you will ever be able to
hang on it is a hat likewise painted on a wall. Neither the principle of causality nor belief or
assertion can get us out of the immanentist domain of the mind once we have initially doubted
the existence of reality, and then commence from the cogito as the primal certitude.

Gilson describes for us the futility of those pseudo-realists who make their starting point
of knowledge the cogito and then attempt a recuperation of reality by means of the principle of
causality: “He who begins as an idealist ends as an idealist; one cannot safely make a concession
or two to idealism here and there. One might have suspected as much, since history is there to
teach us on this point. Cogito ergo res sunt is pure Cartesianism; that is to say, the exact
antithesis of what is thought of as scholastic realism and the cause of its ruin. Nobody has tried
as hard as Descartes to build a bridge from thought to reality, by relying on the principle of
causality. He was also the first to make the attempt, and he did so because he was forced to by
having set the starting point for knowledge in the intuition of thought. It is, therefore, strictly true
that every scholastic who thinks himself a realist, because he accepts this way of stating the
problem, is in fact a Cartesian… If the being I grasp is only through and in my thought, how by
this means shall I ever succeed in grasping a being which is anything other than that of thought?
Descartes believed that it was possible, but even apart from a direct critique of the proof he
attempted to give, history is there to show us that his attempt ends in failure. He who begins with
Descartes, cannot avoid ending up with Berkeley or with Kant…It won’t do to stop at the man
who took the first step on the road to idealism because we shall then be forced to go the whole of
the rest of the road with his successors. The Cartesian experiment was an admirable
metaphysical enterprise bearing the stamp of sheer genius. We owe it a great deal, even if it is

137
É. GILSON, Réalisme thomiste et critique de la connaissance, Vrin, Paris, 1939. English: Thomist Realism and
the Critique of Knowledge, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, 1986.
138
É. GILSON, Le réalisme méthodique, Téqui, Paris, 1935. English: Methodical Realism, first published in English
in 1990 by Christendom Press and now available in the edition published by Ignatius Press of San Francisco.
139
É. GILSON, Methodical Realism, Christendom Press, Front Royal, VA, 1990, pp. 18-19.

47
only for having brilliantly proved that every undertaking of this kind is condemned in advance to
fail. However, it is the extreme of naïveté to begin it all over again in the hope of obtaining the
opposite results to those which it has always given, because it is of its nature to give them.”140

“The absolute being that the Cogito immediately delivers to me can only be my own and
no other. In consequence, whether the operation by which I apprehend the object as distinct from
myself be a process of induction and therefore mediate, or an immediate grasp, the problem
remains the same. If one’s starting point is a percipi, the only esse one will ever reach will be
that of the percipi…‘Can we, or can we not arrive at things if we make our standpoint that of the
Cogito?’ No, we can’t, and if the fate of realism depends on this question, its fate is settled; it is
impossible to extract from any kind of Cogito whatsoever a justification for the realism of St.
Thomas Aquinas.”141

The way for us to promote an authentic methodical realism in philosophy (and in doing
so be once again in a position to validly demonstrate God’s existence, departing from the things
that we see in the world, an a posteriori, quia effect to cause demonstration) is to “free ourselves
from the obsession with epistemology as the necessary pre-condition for philosophy. The
philosopher as such has only one duty: to put himself in accord with himself and other things. He
has no reason whatever to assume a priori that his thought is the condition of being, and,
consequently, he has no a priori obligation to make what he has to say about being depend on
what he knows about his own thought…I think therefore I am is a truth, but it is not a starting
point…The Cogito is manifestly disastrous as a foundation for philosophy when one considers
its terminal point. With a sure instinct as to what was the right way, the Greeks firmly entered on
the realist path and the scholastics stayed on it because it led somewhere. Descartes tried the
other path, and when he set out on it there was no obvious reason not to do so. But we realize
today that it leads nowhere, and that is why it is our duty to abandon it. So there was nothing
naïve about scholastic realism; it was the realism of the traveler with a destination in view who,
seeing that he is approaching it, feels confident he is on the right road. And the realism we are
proposing will be even less naïve since it is based on the same evidence as the old realism, and is
further justified by the study of three centuries of idealism and the balance sheet of their results.
The only alternatives I can see today are either renouncing metaphysics altogether or returning to
a pre-critical realism. This does not at all mean that we have to do without a theory of
knowledge. What is necessary is that epistemology, instead of being the pre-condition for
ontology, should grow in it and with it, being at the same time a means and an object of
explanation, helping to uphold, and itself upheld by, ontology, as the parts of any true philosophy
mutually will sustain each other.”142

140
É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 21-23.
141
É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 27-28.
142
É. GILSON, op. cit., pp. 34-35.

48