Oyonale - 3D art and graphic experiments
ThinkSpam
Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
.
In this sphere, therefore, Reason is mistress of a possession, her title to which she does not require to prove--which, in fact, she could not do. [Footnote 10 If the reader is desirous to see how a great genius may be influencd by these seemingly trivial principles of the imagination, as well as the mere vulgar, let him read my Lord SHAFTSBURYS reasonings concerning the uniting principle of the universe, and the identity of plants and animals. Thus there are maxims of speculative reason, which are based solely upon its speculative interest, although they appear to be objective principles. This path--the only one now remaining--has been entered upon by me; and I flatter myself that I have, in this way, discovered the cause of--and consequently the mode of removing--all the errors which have hitherto set reason at variance with itself, in the sphere of non-empirical thought. As there is here a person, who by means of a double relation is the object of my passion, the very same reasoning leads me to think the passion will be carryed farther. This tribunal is nothing less than the critical investigation of pure reason. But the operations of the understanding are, without the schemata of sensibility, undetermined; and, in the same manner, the unity of reason is perfectly undetermined as regards the conditions under which, and the extent to which, the understanding ought to carry the systematic connection of its conceptions. We must show, moreover, the misconceptions and illusions that intrude into syllogisms, the major proposition of which pure reason has supplied--a proposition which has perhaps more of the character of a petitio than of a postulatum--and that proceed from experience upwards to its conditions. Virtue, genius, power, and riches are for this reason associated with height and sublimity; as poverty, slavery, and folly are conjoined with descent and lowness.