| For, as a doctrine, that is, as an endeavour to enlarge the sphere of the understanding in regard to pure a priori cognitions, philosophy is worse than useless, since from all the attempts hitherto made, little or no ground has been gained. |
| But, as a critique, in order to guard against the mistakes of the faculty of judgement (lapsus judicii) in the employment of the few pure conceptions of the understanding which we possess, although its use is in this case purely negative, philosophy is called upon to apply all its acuteness and penetration. |
| But transcendental philosophy has this peculiarity, that besides indicating the rule, or rather the general condition for rules, which is given in the pure conception of the understanding, it can, at the same time, indicate a priori the case to which the rule must be applied. |
| The cause of the superiority which, in this respect, transcendental philosophy possesses above all other sciences except mathematics, lies in this; it treats of conceptions which must relate a priori to their objects, whose objective validity consequently cannot be demonstrated a posteriori, and is, at the same time, under the obligation of presenting in general but sufficient tests, the conditions under which objects can be given in harmony with those conceptions; otherwise they would be mere logical forms, without content, and not pure conceptions of the understanding. |
| Our transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgement will contain two chapters. |
| The first will treat of the sensuous condition under which alone pure conceptions of the understanding can be employed-- that is, of the schematism of the pure understanding. |
| The second will treat of those synthetical judgements which are derived a priori from pure conceptions of the understanding under those conditions, and which lie a priori at the foundation of all other cognitions, that is to say, it will treat of the principles of the pure understanding. |
| TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF THE FACULTY OF JUDGEMENT OR, ANALYTIC OF PRINCIPLES. |
| CHAPTER I. Of the Schematism at of the Pure Conceptions of the Understanding. |
| In all subsumptions of an object under a conception, the representation of the object must be homogeneous with the conception; in other words, the conception must contain that which is represented in the object to be subsumed under it. |
| For this is the meaning of the expression; "An object is contained under a conception." Thus the empirical conception of a plate is homogeneous with the pure geometrical conception of a circle, inasmuch as the roundness which is cogitated in the former is intuited in the latter. |
| But pure conceptions of the understanding, when compared with empirical intuitions, or even with sensuous intuitions in general, are quite heterogeneous, and never can be discovered in any intuition. |
| How then is the subsumption of the latter under the former, and consequently the application of the categories to phenomena, possible?--For it is impossible to say, for example; "Causality can be intuited through the senses and is contained in the phenomenon."--This natural and important question forms the real cause of the necessity of a transcendental doctrine of the faculty of judgement, with the purpose, to wit, of showing how pure conceptions of the understanding can be applied to phenomena. |
| In all other sciences, where the conceptions by which the object is thought in the general are not so different and heterogeneous from those which represent the object in concreto--as it is given, it is quite unnecessary to institute any special inquiries concerning the application of the former to the latter. |
| Now it is quite clear that there must be some third thing, which on the one side is homogeneous with the category, and with the phenomenon on the other, and so makes the application of the former to the latter possible. |
| This mediating representation must be pure (without any empirical content), and yet must on the one side be intellectual, on the other sensuous. |
| Such a representation is the transcendental schema. |
| The conception of the understanding contains pure synthetical unity of the manifold in general. |
| Time, as the formal condition of the manifold of the internal sense, consequently of the conjunction of all representations, contains a priori a manifold in the pure intuition. |
| Now a transcendental determination of time is so far homogeneous with the category, which constitutes the unity thereof, that it is universal and rests upon a rule a priorI. On the other hand, it is so far homogeneous with the phenomenon, inasmuch as time is contained in every empirical representation of the manifold. |
| Thus an application of the category to phenomena becomes possible, by means of the transcendental determination of time, which, as the schema of the conceptions of the understanding, mediates the subsumption of the latter under the former. |