| The form of judgements--converted into a conception of the synthesis of intuitions--produced the categories which direct the employment of the understanding in experience. |
| This consideration warrants us to expect that the form of syllogisms, when applied to synthetical unity of intuitions, following the rule of the categories, will contain the origin of particular a priori conceptions, which we may call pure conceptions of reason or transcendental ideas, and which will determine the use of the understanding in the totality of experience according to principles. |
| The function of reason in arguments consists in the universality of a cognition according to conceptions, and the syllogism itself is a judgement which is determined a priori in the whole extent of its condition. |
| The proposition; "Caius is mortal," is one which may be obtained from experience by the aid of the understanding alone; but my wish is to find a conception which contains the condition under which the predicate of this judgement is given--in this case, the conception of man--and after subsuming under this condition, taken in its whole extent (all men are mortal), I determine according to it the cognition of the object thought, and say; "Caius is mortal." |
| Hence, in the conclusion of a syllogism we restrict a predicate to a certain object, after having thought it in the major in its whole extent under a certain condition. |
| This complete quantity of the extent in relation to such a condition is called universality (universalitas). |
| To this corresponds totality (universitas) of conditions in the synthesis of intuitions. |
| The transcendental conception of reason is therefore nothing else than the conception of the totality of the conditions of a given conditioned. |
| Now as the unconditioned alone renders possible totality of conditions, and, conversely, the totality of conditions is itself always unconditioned; a pure rational conception in general can be defined and explained by means of the conception of the unconditioned, in so far as it contains a basis for the synthesis of the conditioned. |
| To the number of modes of relation which the understanding cogitates by means of the categories, the number of pure rational conceptions will correspond. |
| We must therefore seek for, first, an unconditioned of the categorical synthesis in a subject; secondly, of the hypothetical synthesis of the members of a series; thirdly, of the disjunctive synthesis of parts in a system. |
| There are exactly the same number of modes of syllogisms, each of which proceeds through prosyllogisms to the unconditioned--one to the subject which cannot be employed as predicate, another to the presupposition which supposes nothing higher than itself, and the third to an aggregate of the members of the complete division of a conception. |
| Hence the pure rational conceptions of totality in the synthesis of conditions have a necessary foundation in the nature of human reason--at least as modes of elevating the unity of the understanding to the unconditioned. |
| They may have no valid application, corresponding to their transcendental employment, in concreto, and be thus of no greater utility than to direct the understanding how, while extending them as widely as possible, to maintain its exercise and application in perfect consistence and harmony. |
| But, while speaking here of the totality of conditions and of the unconditioned as the common title of all conceptions of reason, we again light upon an expression which we find it impossible to dispense with, and which nevertheless, owing to the ambiguity attaching to it from long abuse, we cannot employ with safety. |
| The word absolute is one of the few words which, in its original signification, was perfectly adequate to the conception it was intended to convey--a conception which no other word in the same language exactly suits, and the loss--or, which is the same thing, the incautious and loose employment--of which must be followed by the loss of the conception itself. |
| And, as it is a conception which occupies much of the attention of reason, its loss would be greatly to the detriment of all transcendental philosophy. |
| The word absolute is at present frequently used to denote that something can be predicated of a thing considered in itself and intrinsically. |
| In this sense absolutely possible would signify that which is possible in itself (interne)- which is, in fact, the least that one can predicate of an object. |
| On the other hand, it is sometimes employed to indicate that a thing is valid in all respects--for example, absolute sovereignty. |
| Absolutely possible would in this sense signify that which is possible in all relations and in every respect; and this is the most that can be predicated of the possibility of a thing. |