Image courtesy of DALL-E.

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It cannot be disputed that Kant's arrival and passing from the philosophical stage is singularly momentous in the development of Western thought. As was said even in his time, Kant inaugurated a Copernican Revolution whose tremors reverberated across all the sciences for generations to come. It may also be said that Schopenhauer was the one to book-end German Idealism in the same way that Newton did Copernicus.

Schopenhauer's influence may be less acknowledged than Kant's, but it is no less felt. While Hegelianism dwindled in the middle decades of the nineteenth century, and essentially puttered out, Schopenhauer's undercurrents were the driving impetus for the thinkers who would ground twentieth century thought. Nietzsche overtly acknowledges his debt to Schopenhauer. Bergson's metaphysics begins from Schopenhauer's. Phenomenology takes its cue from Schopenhauer via Dilthey's core inherited concept of "worldview". Tolstoy, Proust, and many other authors took Schopenhauer as their philosophical muse to light their literary creativity. Darwin's grand scheme of evolution is not secretly borrowed from Schopenhauer's vision of the grand history of life. Even Freud's emphasis on the driving power of the sexual impulse holds some debt to Schopenhauer. And then there's Wagner too, of course.

Schopenhauer was by no means the intellectual célèbre of his day as Kant or Hegel were. And he hated Hegel with a passion. When Schopenhauer came to the University of Berlin in 1820, he deliberately scheduled his lecture times at precisely the same time as Hegel. Unfortunately for him, hundreds attended Hegel's lectures while he allegedly only attracted five the first semester, then zero. Then his course was canceled and his academic career ended forever. Schopenhauer makes his loathing for the celebrated German Idealists no secret. The sheer amount of vitriol he held against Hegel manifests itself across his writings in salacious polemics that elicit the same smirks and chuckles that reality television does.

Be that as it may, one could dispute that Schopenhauer was the greatest mind of his generation, and it a blessing that such a great mind could also be such an enjoyable, vibrant writer, whose personality saturates every page.

The World as Will and Representation is a lengthy work, divided as it is across two volumes. What follows here is a summary of this one hundred twenty page appendix to its first volume: a comprehensive critique of Kant's philosophy.

This is particularly important for Schopenhauer did not see his philosophy as the overturning of Kant's philosophy, but rather its fulfillment. While the German Idealists of his generation corrupted the initial critical impulse, Schopenhauer regarded Kant as one of the greatest philosophical minds of all time (alongside Plato and the writers of the Vedas). Kant's philosophy was undercut by confusion and inconsistency in some places that Schopenhauer believed he could correct.

This is why Schopenhauer insisted that no one could begin to understand his philosophy unless they first engaged with Kant. His project directly maps onto Kant's.

As such his critique assumes a thorough memory and knowledge of Kant's individual arguments across the critiques. He does not reiterate or attempt to explain these. I have attempted to mitigate that to an extent though a knowledge of both philosophers individually is assumed here. And for those curious, quotations and page numbers come from the Cambridge edition of the translations of Schopenhauer's works.

Appendix - Critique of the Kantian Philosophy

Preamble

The Western tradition has long been mired in the erroneous, dogmatic assumption that the appearances of the world are themselves unconditioned reality. Schopenhauer associates this philosophical lineage with the scholastic tradition birthed by Augustine and which proceeds through Descartes who clung very tightly to dogmatic beliefs, despite his protests that he was using a rational method. Kant's greatest achievement was to reject this dogmatism and birth critical philosophy through the distinction between appearance and the thing in itself. Interestingly enough, Locke inspired this discovery for Kant. Locke distinguished between primary and secondary qualities. For Locke, secondary qualities such as color were less essential than primary qualities such as shape. Primary qualities were closer to a "thing in itself". However, both primary and secondary qualities are ultimately grounded in sense-perception, and thus appearance.

Kant showed that the world of the senses cannot have being, but only becoming. It is always conditioned by the subject. This is his momentous insight. He was the first to dare in modern time to overthrow the "blind adherence ot the laws of appearance" (450).

However what Kant failed to realize, in Schopenhauer's eyes, is that appearance is merely representation while the thing in itself is the will. He was able to grasp that apperances are conditioned by the subject, and he recognized the boundary between subject and object, but he failed to take this philosophical impulse to its conclusion, to its fruition.

Instead, Kant deduces his own version of a "thing in itself" which is ultimately an inconsistently that undermines his initial insight.

Schopenhauer continues by providing a meticulously detailed treatment of Kant's insights, his errors, and his confusion--all toward the end goal of bringing Kantian philosophy to its rightful fruition.

Critique of Pure Reason

General Criticism

Kant begins with three common assumptions that he holds in common with the general philosophical tradition: (1) Metaphysics is the science of what lies beyond the possibility of all experience. (2) Metaphysics can never be discovered using principles that are derived from experience (cf. Prolegomena §1), but only what is a priori, i.e. independent of all experience. (3) Some principles of this kind are found within reason and comprehended as "cognition from pure reason" (453)

Kant's predecessors would say these three principles are the expressions of the absolute possibility of all things. Absolute meaning unconditioned, coming before everything else. However, Kant says these principles are conditioned as mere forms of intellect. Metaphysics is quite frankly impossible. Instead we require a critique of pure reason, if you will.

Metaphysics is not identical to a priori cognition. Instead, outer and inner experiences are the main sources of all cognition.

Kant's presentation throughout both Critique of Pure Reason and his corpus as a whole suffers from two weaknesses: (1) He repeats himself far too often. This results in creating variations in definitions and arguments that do more to confuse and conflate than to organize. (2) Kant is thoroughly bent on the architectonic structure of his argument. Everything must fit into his symmetries of twos, threes, and twelves, and this introduces more problems than it solves. Schopenhauer compares these to blank windows on a storefront. The ground floor windows may be real, but fake, blank windows are added on higher floors to maintain an external symmetry and elegance. However, these blank windows shed no light on what lies inside.

Schopenhauer explains this second point like so:

His philosophy finds no analogy in Greek architecture, which presents large, simple proportions that can be taken in at a single glance. It is much more reminiscent of Gothic architectural design, since an entirely unique peculiarity of Kant’s spirit is a strange delight in symmetry that loves to take a colorful multiplicity and bring it into order, and then repeat the order in sub-orders, and so on indefinitely, just as in Gothic churches. In fact, he sometimes pursues this until it becomes a game, indulging this inclination so far that he does clear violence to the truth, which he treats in the way that old-fashioned gardeners treat nature, creating symmetrical avenues, squares and triangles, trees shaped like pyramids and spheres, and hedges in orderly curves. (457)

Taken broadly, Kant's argument begins by treating space and time in isolation as forms of the world of a priori intuition. He makes these the foundational dimensions of our forms of understanding, but he completely neglects to describe their content. He merely states that they are given to us. And with this simplistic, vague statement, he immediately jumps over to discussing the table of judgments which is the logical foundation of his philosophy, a table which is itself a "terrible Procrustean bed into which he violently forces everything in the world". (Ibid.)

Another illustrative example is the "system of principles of pure understanding" divided like so:

• Concepts
  • Axioms of Intuition
  • Anticipations of perceptions
• Judgments
  • Analogies of experience
  • Postulates of empirical thought in general

A clean-cut division, yes, but a schematism which has little permanent bearing on the structure of Kantian philosophy. Another example the strange, tenuous connection between (1) the three categories of relation, (2) three types of major premises for inference, and (3) soul, world, and God. These associations bear little philosophical importance in Schopenhauer's minds and only serve to confuse or misconstrue Kant's most fundamental insights.

Even more than this, Kant has a bad habit of merely arranging concepts and ideas within his symmetry without treating, or considering what they are on their own. Doing this prevents an assessment of the soundness of his tables. The most striking example of this is Kant's failure to consistently distinguish between intuitive and abstract cognition. In the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant treates the forms of inner intuition (e.g. space and time) astutely and with a proper amount of deliberation. However, once he finishes this section, he completely leaves behind the world of intuition without any analysis of the concrete content bound in space and time. He merely vaguely labels the world of the senses as "it is given".

Another equally crippling conflation is between the understanding and reason. In one palce, Kant defines "forms of judgments" as words but then never elaborates what words stand for. Schopenhauer speculates that Kant would say these are concepts, and concepts exist in their relation to corresponding intuitive representation. This is how intuition and abstraction can be distinguished succinctly and clear. Intuition represents, and abstraction deploys words and concepts that stand in relation to these representations.

However, Kant never does this and in fact never satisfactorily defines either reason or the understanding. Although it is called Critique of Pure Reason, “it is really quite remarkable that he never once determines this final point [i.e. what is reason] in a proper and satisfactory manner; rather, he comes up with incomplete and erroneous explanations, and these only occasionally, as is required in a given context” (459)

The various ways that Kant defines reason include:

• Reason is the faculty of a priori principles (A11/B24)
• Reason is the faculty of principles, opposed to the understanding (i.e. the faculty of rules)* (A299/B356)
• Reason is the faculty of inferring (A330/B386)
• Judgment is an affair of the understanding (which is intended to mean so long as its empirical, transcendental, or metalogical). When it is logical, as in the case of inference, then it is reason. (A69/B94)
• Conclusions are drawn immediately from a proposition that are still a matter of the understanding. (A303/B360)
• Reason is the persisting condition of all voluntary actions (A553/B581)
• Reason is the ability to give an account of our assertions (A614/B642)
• Reason consists in uniting the concepts of understanding into ideas, just as understanding unites the manifold of objects into concepts. (A643-644/B671-672)
• Reason is nothing other than the faculty of deriving the particular from the universal. (A646/B674)

* This would indicate that principles and rules are entirely heterogeneous. This vast difference lies in the fact that rules are cognized a priori through pure intuition or the forms of the understanding. Principles only come a priori from mere concepts.

The various ways that Kant defines the understanding include:

• It is the faculty of bringing forth representations itself. (A51/B75)
• It is the faculty of judging/thinking/cognition through concepts. (A69/B94)
• It is the faculty of cognitions in general. (B137)
• It is the faculty of rules. (A132/B171)
• “[I]t is not only the faculty of rules, but also the source of principles, in accordance with which everything stands under a rule” (A158/B197)
• “The understanding is the faculty of concepts” (A160/B199)
• “It is the faculty of the unity of appearances by means of rules.” (A302/B359)

In addition to this, Kant has a habit of splicing in loaded scholastic terminology with his, which only confuses his meaning.

Kant should have started by investigating what a concept is. He also ignored exploring the nature of intuition, reflection, concept, reason, and understanding. He should have posed questions like:

• "What do I call an object in contrast to representation?"
• "What is existence?"
• "What is an object?"
• "What is a subject?"
• "What is truth, illusion, error?"

Beyond these issues, Kant also derives a problematic "thing in itself", a strange thing which ultimately causes critical philosophy to collapse upon itself.

How Kant introduces the "thing in itself":

“Kant grounded the presupposition of the thing in itself in an inference according to the law of causality, namely that empirical intuition, or more precisely the sensation in our sense organs that generates empirical intuition, must have an external cause. But according to his own, correct, discovery, we are familiar with the law of causality a priori; consequently it is a function of our intellect, and thus subjective in origin; further, the sensory sensation itself to which we apply the law of causality is undeniably subjective, and finally even space, in which we locate the cause of the sensation as an object by application of this law, is an a priori and thus subjective form of our intellect. Accordingly, the whole of empirical intuition remains on strictly subjective ground; it is simply an event within us, and there is nothing independent of and entirely different from it that can be imported as a thing in itself or verified as a necessary presupposition. In truth, empirical intuition is and remains merely our representation: it is the world as representation.” (463)

By framing the thing in itself in this way, "Kant did not do justice to Berkeley." (461) He denied the simple truth that Berkeley observed: there can be no object without a subject. What is strange is that Kant stated this principle very directly in the A edition, but each subsequent edition did more to obscure or efface this position.Kant does not distinguish properly between intuitive representation and abstract concept. He speaks of both vaguely but then also of an "object of experience" which is somehow a third intermediate between the two.

These are Schopenhauer's initial overall criticisms which he elaborates more in-depth as he takes the Critique of Pure Reason section by section.

Transcendental Aesthetic

Schopenhauer believes this section of the Critique of Pure Reason would alone be a reason to immortalize Kant as one of the greatest philosophers of history. This is the section where Kant argues that to move beyond the world of appearance we must grasp the a priori synthetic forms of the understanding, the forms of space and time which determine all our thought. It is through the forms of space and time, that we can grasp a real sense of causality and move past Hume's initial dilemma. Schopenhauer approves whole-heartedly of all this. But, as mentioned above, he contends that this section's main flaw is that it only discusses the form of empirical intuition without describing any of its content, and how it enters our consciousness. He skips straight from forms of intuition, past intuitive content, into thought. All Kant says is that empirical content "is given" to us.

And it is perhaps this neglect which gives rise to Kant's major confusion. The confusion between intuition and abstraction, and later between understanding and reason.

Strangely, Kant states: “Our cognition, has two sources, namely receptivity of impressions and spontaneity of concepts: the first is the capacity for receiving representations, the second is the capacity for cognizing an object by means of these representations: through the former an object is given to us, through the latter it is thought.” (466)

So cognition comes from the one hand from the passive reception of sensation and then on the other hand from spontaneous concepts. The former receives representations. The latter cognizes objects via representations. The former is a given object, the latter is thought. However, this is evidently false. Only the impression is given and this is a sensation. It is only by using the understanding via space and time, that our intellect transforms sensation into representation which can exist as an object. This is not given to us. (Cf. Schopenhauer's Principle of Sufficient Reason §21)

It is only by this distinction that we can comprehend the understanding and intuition without conflating it with abstract thought. If concepts enter into play, then this cognition is no longer intuitive. It would be reason. The suggestion of any "intuitive concepts" is oxymoronic.

Furthermore, by permitting an object grasped only through thought, Kant makes intuition purely passive. He makes the object of thought an individual, real object. This deprives thought of its essential character, to render a representation universal and abstract, untethered from any one single object.

Transcendental Logic

While the Transcendental Aesthetic is concerned with the role of sensibility, as structured a priori through space and time, the Transcendental Logic is concerned with the understanding, with thought, and with concepts.

Yet in this section alone, Kant defines the understanding in a variety of confusing ways:

• Understanding is not a faculty of intuition. Its cognition is not intuitive but discursive. (A67-9B92-94, A89-90/B122-123, B135, B139, B153)
• The understanding is the faculty of judging (A69/B94)
• A judgment is mediate cognition, the representation of a representation (A68/B93)
• The understanding is the faculty of thinking, and thinking is cognition through concepts (A69/B94)
• The categories of the understanding are by no means the conditions under which objects are given in intuition (A89/B122)
• The intuition has absolutely no need of the functions of thinking (A91/B123).
• Our understanding can only think, not intuit (B135, 139).
• Understanding is discursive, its representations are thoughts, not intuitions. (B247)

One could interpret these statements as saying the intuitive world would exist for us even if we did not have the understanding. It is inexplicable how it enters our minds, but it does. And Kant reiterates that intuition is given but never elaborates on this.

In addition to that, there are an amalgam of statements across the Transcendental Logic which confuse how the interplay of the understanding and the categories actually function:

• Through its categories, the understanding brings unity to the manifold of intuition, and the pure concepts of understanding apply a priori to objects of intuition (A79/B105)
• The categories are conditions of experience, whether of intuition or of the thinking that is encountered in it” (A94/B126) - This is a misquote, as Kant would deny thinking is encountered in intuition.
• The understanding is the originator of experience (B127)
• The categories determine the intuition of objects (B128)
• Everything that we represent as combined in an object must first be combined by an act of understanding (B130)
• Understanding is explained all over again as the faculty of combining a priori and of bringing the manifold of given representations under the unity of apperception. Apperception is not the thinking of a concept, it is intuition. (B135)
• The understanding as a supreme principle of the possibility of all intuition in reference to the understanding (B136)
• All sensuous intuition is conditioned by the categories (B143)
• The logical function of judgment brings the manifold of given intuitions under an apperception in general, and the manifold of a given intuition necessarily stands under the categories. (B143)
• Unity enters into intuition through the understanding by means of the categories (B144)
• The thinking of the understanding is explained in a very strange way as synthesizing, combining and ordering the manifold of intuitions (B145)
• Experience is possible only through the categories and consists in the connection of perceptions which are intuitions. (B161)
• Categories are a priori cognitions of objects of intuition in general (B159).
• The understanding is what first makes nature possible by prescribing laws to it a priori But nature is certainly intuitive and not an abstraction. (B163/B165)
• The concepts of the understanding are the principles of the possibility of experience, and this is the determinations of appearances in space and time in general. These appearances are present in intuition. (B168)
• An extended proof that neither the objective succession nor the simultaneity of objects of experience is perceived through the senses but instead is brought into nature only through the understanding. (A189-211/B232-256) Schopenhauer rebuts in Principle of Sufficient Reason §23

Looking at all these statements, not only do they complicate one another, but "[a]ll these passages stand in the most glaring contradiction to the whole rest of the doctrine of the understanding, its categories, and the possibility of experience." (468) How can this framing of these concepts be reconciled with the broader structure of the Critique of Pure Reason, where the categories are presented as the twelve pure concepts of the understanding, and where the understanding somehow both is and is not directly related to conceptual cognition.

For his part, Schopenhauer welcomes any interlocutor to resolve these contradictions for him. He would like to see Kant succeed. He merely finds it strange that Kant “made the cognitive faculties into a very strange and complicated machine, with so many wheels” (469).

Instead of trying to reconcile all these asymmetric appendages together, Schopenhauer derives his own fresh picture which he believes clearly articulates what Kant could have intended.

An object that is not intuition nor concept is the true object for the understanding. It is the presupposition of an un-representable object which renders intuition into experience. Kant seems to have latched onto the dogmatic principle that there is an absolute object. But this object is not intuited, it is added in thought to intuition. When this is the case though, intuition becomes an experience with its own value and truth because it gains reference to a concept. Schopenhauer believes this is wrong as a concept acquires its value and truth from intuition itself.

For Schopenhauer, the object as such only exists for intuition and in intuition. What is thought is always a universal non-intuitive concept. Thought does not give reality to intuitions. Intuitions have their own reality already.

But Kant ascribes objects themselves to thought to make the objective world dependent on the understanding, thus excluding intuition. Objects become a confused melange of intuition and thought. Again, empirical intuition is immediately objective. When one enters thought, individual things are left behind. Empirical reality is given in the intuition, and this only comes about because we perceive causality (Schopenhauer's principle of sufficient reason).

In this way intuition is truly intellectual, but Kant denies this, thus sinking deeper into contradiction.

Additionally, Kant does not consider the object of the categories to be the thing in itself but rather its nearest relation: the object in itself. An object without a subject. It is an individual thing outside time and space, but is also not an abstract concept.

Thus Kant creates an unnecessary three-way distinction: (1) Representation (sensibility) (2) The object of representation (understanding) (3) The thing in itself (what lies beyond all cognition)

There is no reason to distinguish between (1) and (2). Berkeley already demonstrated that no such distinction is necessary. (2) is a misplaced grafting of (1) and (3). Again, as Schopenhauer sees it, there is merely represention and will. There is no intermediate object of representation.

It is not so simple to remove this third thing from Kant's philosophy, however. More is at stake. When this object of representation is removed from Kant's picture, the whole doctrine of the categories as a priori concepts collapses too. They do not add anything to intuition and are certainly not valid of the thing in itself. And at this point a significant segment of the structure of Kant's Critique is amputated.

To reiterate Schopenhauer's view, every empirical intuition is already experience. The sole function of the understanding is a priori cognition of causation. The understanding links a sensation as an effect to its cause. The cause presents itself in space-time as the object of experience, and always as empirical experience. Kant's mistake here is rooted in his failure to provide an analysis of the origin of empirical intuition. By taking this as given beforehand, he introduces an error to the body of his system.

Kant argues here that the understanding cannot be used for cognition. The understanding must limit itself to thinking (it is constrained to do so because the Transcendental Logic has constrained itself to only deal with thought). But this is linked to yet another error: there is no valid proof for the a priori character of the law of causality. This would be a proof from the possibility of objective, empirical intuition. Kant gives a false proof, and Schopenhauer redirects the reader to Principle of Sufficient Reason §23 for his rebuttal.

If it is true, as Kant would have it, that understanding can be thought through twelve different functions, then every real thing would have a large variety of determinations. In reality, causality is the only determination that functions in this way. Causality enters empirical intuition as a condition, and so it belongs to the understanding. The understanding does not contribute to experience but rather makes intuition possible by changing sensation into representation. In this way, “the law of causality is the real and the only form of the understanding, and the other eleven categories are only blank windows” (475).

What further muddies the waters here is that Kant introduces and juggles terms such as recognition, reproduction, association, apprehension, and transcendental unity of apperception in these discussions, but he does not clearly state how the understanding can produce experience from sensible intuition through thought. These varying concepts only mystify what Schopenhauer believes he can clearly and systematically present in his own framing.

Beyond this, Kant ignores the much more pressing question of how sensation and external cause are related. He neither admits nor denies they are related. Instead he tiptoes around the issue instead describing causality as a "ground of appearance", a phrase whose meaning is not fully transparent.

When it comes to the function of the understanding with the twelve categories, Kant describes it as "the combination if the manifold of intuition", but he never explains what exactly a "manifold of intuition" is before it is taken up by the understanding and combined through the categories. This is rather strange because time and space are both continua that are already combined. When the understanding grasps a cause, it grasps within a time and at a certain place. The cause is united in time in space. Kant seems to acknowledge this when he says, “the mere rule of the synthesis of that which perception may give a posteriori” (A719-26/B747-54). In this case, he is referring to how the mind conceives and constructs a triangle.

But in general for Kant, there are only concepts, not intuitions of objects. And again, for Schopenhauer, objects exist for intuition alone, and concepts are always abstracted from intuition at their root.

Schopenhauer speculates an ulterior motive for Kant structuring things in this way. Because the Transcendental Aesthetic establishes an a priori foundation for mathematics, logic must be grounded in a corollary way as well. This preserves the symmetry between the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Logic. Because of this, Kant derived the table of twelve categories from the table of twelve judgments. Pure understanding is forced to correspond to pure sensibility. And this schematism is extended through the pure concepts of the understanding. However this contradicts the broader truth of the critical project.

Kant is guided ultimately by the analogy between empirical schemata and pure, contentless, a priori concepts of the understanding, though he has no reason to do so, outside his love for schematic symmetry.

Nevertheless, this pins Kant with several complicated assumptions.

Complications: The Categories in General + Synthetic Unity of Apperception

First is this synthetic unity of apperception which Schopenhauer calls a “a very strange thing, very strangely presented” (480).

Kant argues the "I think" must be able to accompany all representations, and this is a "problematic-apodictic enunciation". But this takes away with one hand what it gives with the other. So does this mean all representing activity is merely thinking? Not at all, for in that case there would only be abstract concepts. So could this mean that there can be no object without a subject (which is a true statement). Perhaps, but the presentation is odd, if this is the meaning.

Ultimately, Schopenhauer rejects the doctrine of categories as a burden to a theory of cognition. (Cf. Principle of Sufficient Reason §§21, 26, 34.)

And by rejecting the table of judgments in this way, Schopenhauer demonstrates how he diverges from Kant. Kant's method begins with mediated, reflected cognition. Schopenhauer's method begins from immediate and intuitive cognition. Kant's philosophy is a science from concepts. Schopenhauer's philosophy is a science for concepts.

When it comes down to it, “[t]he essence of all science consists in uniting an endless manifold of intuitive appearances under comparatively few abstract concepts. We then use these concepts to construct a system in which all those appearances are fully under the control of our cognition” (482).

Kant should have carefully investigated how reflection and intuition are related, and the way in which reflection reproduces then stands in for intuition. This would show the true difference between intuition and thought. All reflective cognition (i.e. reason) has one form: the abstract concept. It is distinctive to reason itself. Kant unifies concepts into judgments through certain determinations and lawful forms by the table of judgments. However, other forms are grounded in the intuitive mode of cognition, and thus the understanding. Yet these other forms do not provide information about the same number of the particular forms of the understanding. Instead, they can be ultimately derived from cognition of causality. What Schopenhauer calls the principle of sufficient reason. The rest of the forms that Kant presents are some combination of intuition and reflection, which also must be rejected. This is why every single one of the categories must be rejected.

The Categories, rejected individually

For those who may not be aware, Kant introduces twelve categories (in an Aristotelian vein) which he believes are the conditions of all thought in general. These are arranged in four groups of three. Under quantity, Kant ennumerates the universal, the particular, and the singular. Under quality, Kant posits the affirmative, the negative, and the infinite. Under relation are the categorical, hypothetical, and the disjunctive. Under modality are the problematic, the assertoric, and the apodeictic.

These will not be explained individually, but Schopenhauer takes Kant to task for both the groupings and the categories individually.

(1) Quantity of judgments stems from the essence of concepts as such. The broader concept operates with a particular judgment while the narrower concept is separated out by a universal judgment. Some trees have oak galls. Or, all oaks have oak galls. The difference of these operations is small, those Kant believes they are fundamentally different actions and categories of the understanding. A concept can be used to achieve a determinate, individual, intuitive representation, the concept itself being derived from this representation. This is the singular judgment.

(2) Quality of judgments falls completely within reason. It makes no reference to intuition. The metalogical truth of the laws of identity and non-contradiction come purely from reason. This presupposes the possibility of connecting and dividing spheres of concepts. The form of judgement lies solely in reason, unlike its content. Intuition “is a stranger to both affirmation and negation”. It speaks for itself, unlike abstract reason. It does not have its value and substance in reference to something outside of itself but in accordance with the principle of sufficient reason. It is reality, and it cannot be negated. Negation can only be added in reflection.

To affirmative and negative judgments, Kant adds infinite judgments, but this is merely scholastic, a blank window for the sake of his symmetrical architectonic.

(3) Relation - three entirely different kinds of judgment

(a) Hypothetical judgment: the abstract term for the principle of sufficient reason. Schopenhauer already demonstrated its fourfold root in different powers. This shows that the hypothetical judgment in general, this universal form of thought, cannot arise out of the understanding and its category of causality, but rather that the law of causality is only one of the modes of the principle of sufficient reason, a principle encompassing all a priori cognition. Elements of cognition with different origins appear one and the same when thought by reason. They can only be distinguished not by abstraction, but by intuition. However, Kant has entrapped himself inside abstract reason and cannot see this.

(b) Categorical judgment: this is simply the form of judgment in general. Judgment is the thinking of the combination or exclusion (irreconciliability) of conceptual spheres. Thus the hypothetical and disjunctive combinations are not special forms of judgments. They are only applied to already complete judgments. They connect these judgments again since the hypothetical form expresses their mutual dependence and the disjunctive their exclusion. The intersection and separation of these spheres was classified by Kant as quality. They are subdivided even further within quantity. Categorical judgments have the laws of identity and contradiction as their metalogical principle. But there are different grounds for connecting conceptual spheres, and these grounds give truth to judgment. The truth of the judgment can be logical, empirical, transcendental, or metalogical. (The concept of substance too is nothing other than matter. Accidents are merely effects. Both fall under cognition of causality. This will resurface later.)

(c) Disjunctive judgments: the law of excluded middle. This is a metalogical truth, and thus belongs to reason. Many have recognized Kant’s mistake in deducing the category of community or reciprocal causation from them, just for the sake of architectonic symmetry. What analogy is there between the problematic determination of a concept through mutually exclusive and predicates and the thought of reciprocal causation. They are completely at odds. When one of two disjuncts is posited, the other is suppressed. But if two things are thought of as being in a relation of reciprocal causation, both must be posited. In this case, the grounded is also the grounded. Reciprocal causation as a concept is meaningless. Causation deals with alterations. Matter does not fall under the law of causality but its state does. Causality has nothing to do with permanence. It can only occur with activity. Causality necessitates a temporal order. Reciprocal causation creates an absurdity because this violates temporal order. Both states are not simultaneous. If they necessarily belong together, it is one state. There is no single example of this. It either describes a state of rest or alternating successions of mutually conditioning steps. Aristotle also denies this in Physics II.3 and Metaphysics V.2.

(4) Modality - possibility, actuality, and necessity. These do give rise to problematic, assertoric, and apodictic forms of judgment respectively. But they are derived from one single form of cognition: the principle of sufficient reason. Cognition of necessity comes directly from it. Concepts of contingency, possibility, impossibility, and actuality only arise through reflection and the conflict between intuitive and abstractive cognition. The notion of necessity and that of consequence from a given ground are fully identical. Contingency is the negation of necessity. It is the absence of a connection to the principle of sufficient reason. The contingent can only be relative. Something absolutely contingent is just as unthinkable as absolutely necessary. Everything that happens in nature is necessary as it is tethered to a cause. The actual abstracts out a natural object from its necessity and contingency. It only considers the effect. The modality of judgment does not refer to the objective constitution of things but their relation as our cognition has to them. Thus everything actual is also necessary at this time in this place. Determination follows no further than that. Abstraction renders these natural laws in concepts as possibility, without a particular place or time. Thus possibility and its negation only exist for reflection. One cannot intuit possibility and impossibility. Kant confused the concept of contingency with the concept of necessity (following the erroneous precedent of earlier philosophy). All necessity exists relatively. It cannot exist absolutely. Kant retains this sense of absolute necessity in error (B289-291, A243/B301, A419/B447, A458/B486, A460/B488). This forces him into the obvious contradiction where he claims “everything contingent has a cause” but also “something is contingent whose non-existence is possible” (A301). If something has a cause, it must necessarily exist. If it does not exist, then how could it be caused? This error stems from Aristotle’s On Generation and Corruption II.2-11. The error comes from adhering strictly to concepts without considering their implication. Further remarks. Since all necessity is relative, all apodictic judgments are originally hypothetical. They become categorical only through an assertoric minor (a syllogism’s conclusion). If the minor is undecided and expressed as such, the judgment is problematic. What is apodictic in general, such as a law of nature, can only be problematic in reference to a particular case. Conversely, what is apodictic in the particular (each particular alteration made necessary by cause) is only problematic when expressed in general. Possibility only exists in the realm of reflection. Necessity, actuality, and possibility only exist in abstraction. They are all the same in sphere of intuition. Everything takes place necessarily in the eye of the understanding. Necessity is usually particular while possibility is usually more general.

Taken broadly, Kant seems conscious of the weakness of this arrangement. In later editions, he omits some of the weaker formulations of this doctrine from the Analytic of Principles (e.g. A241, A242, A244-246, A248-253). He even says in A241 “that he has not defined the individual categories because he could not define them even if he wanted to, since they are not capable of definition; — in doing so he had forgotten” that on A82 he had said “I deliberately spare myself the definition of these categories, although I should like to be in possession of them.”

The table of categories cannot be simply cast aside as incidental to Kant's thought because Kant argues that this table of categories should be the guide for all metaphysical and scientific inquiry (cf. Prolegomena §39). Instead it is a Procrustean bed in Schopenhauer's eyes. All of reality is forced into these twelve symmetrical boxes. They may rhyme but they have no reason to do so. Kant ensnared himself too much with Aristotelianism by trying to oppose quality to quantity. But this merely mismatches the dissimilar together and severs the similar apart.

Even turning to Kant's examples, there is little logical coherence.

Kant refers to this table to ground rational psychology. He argues that the soul's simplicity renders it a quality. But Kant's table binds quality to affirmation and negation. How do affirmation and negation come into play here? It seems more like a quantity. Quantity is supposed to be occupied with the soul's unity, but by being simple, it is also presupposed as a unity. So Kant forces modality in here and says the souls is related to possible to objects. But Kant already has a category for relation, so why does not he not use that here?

(Worse examples are found in the categories of freedom in Critique of Practical Reason and in the Critique of the Power of Judgment with taste, as well as in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science and its first chapter where the unity, multiplicity, and totality of the directions of lines are supposed to correspond to categories named according to the quantity of judgments. The principle of the permanence of substance is derived from the category of subsistence and inherence. However this can only come to us via the form of categorical judgments. Once again these are theoretical gymnastics just for the sake of preserving symmetry.)

Additionally, simultaneity and duration cannot exist in time without space (Cf. Principle of Sufficient Reason §18 and WWR Vol. 1 §4). Kant contradicts himself on this front by claiming that simultaneity is a mode of time (A177/B219), yet he then also says, ”Simultaneity is not a modus for time itself, in which no parts are simultaneous but rather all succeed on another” (A183/B226). The second statement contradicts the first, though Schopenhauer believes the second one is the true statement. Two things cannot be both distinct and simultaneous in time unless they also occupies different parts of space.

This is why matter is the unification of space and time, and the understanding is the subjective correlate of causality.

Schopenhauer mentions there are a number of further criticisms he has for the Transcendental Analytic but these should be sufficient for the reader, who might lose patience if he were to continue.

Excursus: Categories through Grammar

Schopenhauer rejects the metalogical use of categories in the way Kant and Aristotle develop and deploy them. He believes in a third way: grammar.

To understand this, one must first ask: "What are categories?" Categories are the most general forms of concepts. Science and philosophy seeks to reduce more particular concepts to more general, universal ones. Categories are thought as the most universal, general concepts. And because categories are so universal, Schopenhauer believes they should ultimately rest in the classification of words, i.e. grammar. For the essential linguistic forms are in reality the ultimate grounding of thought. "Grammar is to logic as clothing is to the body." (507)

Schopenhauer then proceeds to map Kant's categories onto grammatical forms.

Verbs are judgments. Judgments cognize the relation between a subject and a predicate by uniting them in a particular identity. A copula and predicate are always required in this operation. Sometimes a single word signifies both that copula and predicate: "He blinks".

The other parts of speech can be derived from the original forms of thought.

• Kant's notion of quality (affirmation/negation) is the combination or separation of concepts. This is an activity of the copula.
• Kant's notion of quantity (universal/particular) is merely totality or multiplicity. The third piece, individuality, is merely attached to the subject.
• Kant's notion of modality (problematic/assertoric/apodictic) are all forms of the copula, stemming from the laws of contradiction and identity.
• Kant's notion of relation (categorical/hypothetical/disjunctive) is merely the law of the excluded middle. It states the relative dependence of judgments. It can combine them in hypothetical propositions, or it can state exclusion through disjunctive propositions. The copula separates and combines judgments.

The three components of judgments are subject (nouns/articles/pronouns), predicate (adverbs/adjectives/prepositions), and copula (verbs).

Rather than reverting to the dogmatism of categories, Schopenhauer argues, “Philosophical grammar teaches us the precise mechanism for expressing the forms of thought; similarly, logic tells us about the operations with the forms of thought themselves.” (509). But this must be done carefully as other attempts such as Stern's Provisional Foundations for a Philosophy of Language (1835) completely fails in this regard by confusing thought and intuition, attempting to derive intuition from grammatical thought. Stern is mistaken in that language can never relate to intuition, only abstraction.

Phenomena and Noumena

Moving on, Schopenhauer believes the next grave error happens when Kant divides all objects into phenomena and noumena. Again, Kant claims there is cognition of objects without concepts. He goes on to say intuition is not thought, and actually not cognition at all. It is mere affection of sensibility. Intuition without a concept is empty, while a concept without intuition can be something (A253/B309).

This is patently false in Schopenhauer's eyes. Concepts get their meaning and content only in reference to intuitive representations. Concepts are derived from representations, not the other way around. Concepts without this grounding are empty. Because intuitions have immediate meaning and value, they can never be empty.

Schopenhauer believes Kant was attempting to create a symmetrical critique of Leibniz and Locke, with Leibniz's conception of intuitive representations, and Locke's of abstractive representations. By drawing a line between the two, Kant constructs a third thing, an untenable hybrid of the two.

There is one particular statement which encapsulates Kant's error: “If I take all thinking (through categories) away from an empirical cognition, then no cognition of any object at all remains; for through mere intuition nothing at all is thought, and that this affection of sensibility is in me does not constitute any relation of such representation to any object at all.” (A253/B309)

Kant's misconception of how sensation, intuition, adn thought are related is clearly manifested here. He identifies intuition with simple sensation. Then he mentions an object cognized through thought alone. But in Schopenhauer's mind, objects can only be objects of intuition, not of thought. Concepts are what Kant should mean, for thought is abstracted from intuition.

This next chapter on the amphiboly is designed to critique Leibniz. It does so correctly, but once again the obsession with architectonic symmetry gives a strange form to the critique. He forces an analogy between four perspectives, though ten more could easily be added. Kant also claims there could also be an intuition different from our own, but to which the categories would still apply. How this is possible, he does not elaborate. Furthermore, the objects of that purported "intuition" are noumena. But the noumena are things which we can only think, not intuit. Another concerning contradiction.

Another fundamental contradiction is that Kant alternates between positing the categories as the condition for intuitive representation but other times as a function of abstract thought. Only the latter seems to apply in this section. If this is the case though, Kant should have determined the character of thought at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic before specifying its various functions. Kant never treats thought in general, only its various modes. “Instead, he jumps to abstract thought; not even to thought in general, but straight to certain forms of thought, and does not say a single word about the nature of thought, the nature of concepts, the relation of abstract and discursive cognition to concrete and intuitive cognition, the difference between human and animal cognition, or the nature of reason.” (506)

And this difference between intuitive and abstractive cognition was already understood by the ancients and the philosophical tradition as phainomena and nooumena. Kant for some reason appropriates these properly utilized terms and gives them new meanings that don't quite work. It is not quite clear why he feels the need to recycle these terms.

Transcendental Dialectic

The Transcendental Dialectic is concerned with the misuse of the principles of reason as they are applied to a world beyond sense experience, particularly in the paralogisms and the antinomies that deal with the question of the soul, the existence of God, and the role of human freedom.

Kant starts by defining reason as the faculty of principles. And here Kant tries to pull a fast one on the reader by saying that all a priori cognition up to this point (the foundations of mathematics and natural science) only provides rules, not principles. This is because it originates in intuition not concepts. Kant says a principle should be a synthetic cognition from pure concept, a statement which seems oxymoronic. Only analytic propositions by their nature can come from concepts. Isn't that the very basis of the distinction between analytic and synthetic?

Even Kant offers a principle for reason here, borrowed implicitly from Christian Wolff (Cosmologia I.2 §93 and Ontologia §178). This is strange because Kant criticizes similar presupposed principles as amphibolies in the case of Leibniz, but yet Wolff's can be accepted without concern. He does not explain why this is the case, and Kant presents it twice favorably (A307/B364 and A322/B379). Schopenhauer summarizes it thus: “If this conditioned is given, then the totality of its conditions must be given as well, and thus the unconditioned too, through which alone every totality is complete.” (510)

This appears to be true when you picture the relationship of conditions and conditioned as links in a chain that ascends upward infinitely. The image of a chain invokes the idea that there should be an initial link. Some first link to start off the chain. This is how reason likes things, even if there is infinite regression.

This would be a synthetic proposition because “analytically nothing follows from the concept of the conditioned except that of a condition”. (Ibid.)

This is not true, however. Only our illusion makes it seem true. Our immediate, a priori cognition is expressed through the principle of sufficient reason (apprehending causality) mediated abstractly through four forms. All abstract expressions of this principle are mediated. Abstract cognition is a shadow to intuitive cognition. Yet, this espoused principle of reason attempts to smuggle an abstract unconditioned into the scope of concepts through this shadow, even though this principle has no reality in intuition.

It is ultimately false that conditions form a chain-like series that must result in a beginning. The totality of conditions for each individual conditioned thing can only be contained "in its most proximate ground” (511). In other words, condition and causality only apply immediately to the thing right before it. It does not extend beyond this most proximate cause in a chain of events.

When one turns their attention to a cause and wants to analyze it as an effect, they begin the analysis of condition and causality from scratch. It depends on the perspective of what is condition and what is conditioned in each case. There is not an infinite series but rather an alternating set of series of conditions and conditioned which are not essentially sequential across the board. Yes, the principle of sufficient reason does demand the completeness of a series, but this series only extends to the most proximate cause operating on its effect. It does not go past that.

Kant's conception here presupposes that condition and conditioned are successive, but these in fact can only be taken simultaneously in separate cases. The presumption they are successive depends upon an arbitrary abstraction, the idea of a chain of events.

In Schopenhauer's view, reason is only concerned with objects, and an object can only exist in relation to a subject. This is why there can be no Absolute which precedes all else. “And in fact all the talk about the Absolute, which has been the almost exclusive theme in all the philosophy attempted since Kant, is nothing but the cosmological argument incognito.” (513)

Schopenhauer, in his characteristic style, offers an alternative to the Absolute through matter:

“But if my dear sirs absolutely must have an Absolute, then I will supply them with one that satisfies all requirements for such a thing much better than the misty forms they dream up: it is matter. Matter is uncreated and imperishable, and is thus truly independent, that which is in itself and is grasped through itself, and everything emerges from its womb and everything returns to it: what more could you want in an Absolute?”

Kant himself admits this principle of reason is merely subjectively necessary, not objectively (A306/B364). Our reason wants to subsume every truth under a more general one. But to suggest this series of grounds (i.e. of causes) must end, cannot be proven. The series of the grounds of cognition really is a series of grounds of becoming, one that need not terminate (cf. Principle of Sufficient Reason §50).

If this demand for a principle of reason is insisted upon, one must conflate the forms of the principle of sufficient reason. Kant obscures this through introducing a strange wordplay of universalitas and universitas (A322/B379). There is no justification for why reason needs an unconditioned object as the ultimate ground of thought.

Kant even denies the objective validity of this principle but for some reason holds it as subjectively necessary. Yet this introduces a problematic dichotomy which creates cracks in his larger project as he develops it further to fit it within his architectonic (A322/B379).

Out of the three categories of relation come three types of inference, in turn rooted in three unconditioned Ideas: the soul, the world in itself, and God. Schopenhauer finds it strange how Kant defines soul and world as unconditioned, when they are both created (i.e. conditioned) by God. Kant seems to pass over this fact because he is too focus on the chain of the three inferences.

To argue that these three are necessary, unconditioned objects for reason, would require a universal analysis of non-Christian cultures, for this assumption could very well be a joint byproduct of Greek and Judaic thought. Other cultures may not be so tied to this requirement for thought.

Schopenhauer also knocks Kant for misappropriating the term Idea to refer to soul, world, and God. The Ideas are a Platonic conception that had been used consistently throughout the philosophical tradition. It is not clear why Kant felt the need to reinvent this term in a way so dissonant with how it had been used by every other writer up to that point. For Plato, the idea is an imperishable form we intuit, not any possibility of intuition.

Critique of Rational Psychology

The critique of rational psychology is Kant's repudation of traditional arguments for the soul.

Schopenhauer finds Kant's critique of rational psychology to be rather astute, at least in the A edition. He speculates that because rational psychology was so popular in Kant's day, Kant was forced to dilute his criticism of it in subsequent editions, as he faced so much criticism. The critique has great strength even if it again lapses into the tendency toward symmetry by trying to derive the concept of soul from paralogisms, as Kant demands an ultimate unconditioned thing for substance.

Kant does err here however, an error derived from Aristotle’s Metaphysics IV.8. He claims that something can exist only as a subject and not as a predicate (A323/B412). Yet, nothing can exist as both subject and predicate. This could only happen in abstract logic. In the world of intuition, these would be correlated with substance and accident. And if this is true, matter would always be substance and never accident. “[M]atter is really the final subject of all predicates of every empirically given thing” (518). Kant conflates logic with intuition and does so to allow the soul to arise from the form of a categorical inference.

This gives birth to a larger problem. By opposing the objective and subjective in this way, Kant introduces an unnatural soul-body dichotomy. For Schopenhauer, people grasp themselves in external intuition as a body. In the internal intuition of self-consciousness, people grasp themselves as a creature that can represent and will things, free from intuition. (Again, will for Schopenhauer is the thing in itself.)

The concept of soul is formed here from applying the principle of sufficient reason not to an object in time and space (as it should be) but rather to the subject of will which lies outside intuition. The assumption is that thought and will are effects of this soul, because one cannot assume the body can do this. This illusion is a hypostatized, immaterial cause that has a long history in the Western philosophical tradition from Plato's Phaedrus to Christian Wolff. It is only after assuming this that philosophy can derived soul from substance. But this is question begging. The goal has been presupposed.

Schopenhauer believes that substance is a useless concept, a redundant layer on top of matter.

The representation of matter is given with the first class of representation (i.e. those of the intuitive world). The principle of the permanence of substance arises in the understanding as the representation of matter. Space persists matter, and time changes it. Matter as such can only be thought in the abstract. It cannot be intuited. Substance is another abstraction from the concept of matter, i.e. a second-order concept. It arises because people only allow permanence as a concept to remain in the concept of matter after thinking away other essential qualities such as extension, divisibility, etc. “Like every higher genus, the concept of substance contains less in itself than the concept of matter” (520). Matter is the only true subspecies of the concept of substance, and the only thing that can realize its content. Reason produces higher concepts to think concepts simultaneously in different subspecies that are differentiated by secondary determinations. This normal function does not quite work here. Consequently the abstraction of substance is rather pointless. Matter is the immaterial and indestructible substance of the soul. Substance was devised to smuggle in other presuppositions.

Any investigation into substance has already presupposed it as some immaterial entity, posited before matter takes it rightful place. Again, substance can only be derived if one mistakenly proceeds from the most general, abstractions to specific concretes, when they should be proceeding from particulars to universals.

It is for this reason that substance must be rejected wholesale.

As Schopenhauer explains earlier, the categories are fundamentally a mistake. They resurface here as the three types of inference that map onto the three Ideas.

Above, Kant forced the idea of soul out of the categorical form of inference.

The Antinomy of Pure Reason

Kant offers four antinomies of pure reason. The idea is that reason can reach a conclusion by proving the opposite is impossible. However, it does so for both sides paradoxically when it comes to the question of: (1) if the world has a beginning in space and time, (2) if indivisible elements exist, (3) if human freedom exists, and (4) if some first being was the first cause.

Starting with the first, Kant wants to derive the idea of world in itself as something arising out of the categorical form of hypothetical syllogism. The argument goes that the idea of world arises from conceiving of two boundaries between the most miniscule particular as the boundary of smallness and the whole totality of the world as the boundary of largeness. Again, this is an unjustified extrapolation of the principle of sufficient reason which should only be used to explore local causality, not global chains.

While Kant believes the space-time boundaries of the world are only determined through quantity, there are no grounds for this application. It is only by accident that logic entails the scope of the concept of the subject in judgment. It is merely metaphorical. Quantity should not be inferred from this association, but Kant does so to preserve his symmetry.

Furthermore, Kant links the transcendental ideas to quality, which is even more groundless. The divisibility of matter is not quality but quantity. The idea of divisibility has no connection to the principle of sufficient reason (i.e. causation). Kant tries to gird this claim by likening part to condition as whole is to conditioned. A whole and its parts are mutually codependent. It is not like the whole is less dependent on the part as the part is to the whole, though Kant's simile would assert this. This does not hold, because a ground must unilaterally ground what it is underneath. It cannot be a bilateral dependence.

Moreover, the idea of a first cause for the world should belong to relation. But Kant cannot assign it this way, as symmetry requires modality be used here instead. He does by saying that what is contingent becomes necessary for the first cause. And to extend the symmetry, freedom surfaces as the third idea, which only means the idea of the cause of the world, as is stated in Third Antimony of Pure Reason.

Ultimately, the third and fourth conflicts are fundamentally tautological.

The antinomies are merely proxy battles. The theses have only subjective grounds, based in weak reasoning. Meanwhile, the antitheses are truly based in the forms of human cognition (i.e. the necessary, a priori, certain, most universal laws of nature). Only the proofs of the antitheses proceed from objective grounds. The proofs for the theses are rooted in the finitude of the human mind and the arbitrary assumptions it thus introduces. For some reason Kant tries to equalize these through sophistical gymnastics which Schopenhauer likens to the Socrates of Aristophanes' The Clouds. In every case, the antithesis is the much more valid option.

The first thesis argues that the world, as existing in time and space, is bound by a beginning limit. The antithesis argues that the world, as existing in time and space, is infinite.

Kant's strategy in the thesis and antithesis proofs for the first two antinomies is simply to prove that the opposite is impossible. So the thesis for the first antinomy attempts to argue for a beginning of the world by asserting that an infinite world without beginning is impossible. He does so by arguing like this.

If the world has no beginning, then every given moment has had an eternity precede it. This creates a series of infinite successions before each moment. The infinity of a series depends on the fact it can never be completed. Consequently, it is impossible for an infinite series to have transpired, and the world must have a beginning.

Schopenhauer notes several issues with this line of reasoning: (1) This conflates the notion of change in time with time itself. Doing so requires that time as such must have a beginning. But this is absurd because there could always be a time before time. Time is infinite with respect to itself. (2) The original problem states that the series lacks a beginning, but Kant switches it to speaking of it ending. Yes, completeness contradicts endlessness, but this is not the issue at stake. We can conceive of a series that begins but has no end. Likewise a series that has no beginning could end. Infinity can be bounded on one side.

On the side of the antithesis, it does not stand refuted. It is simply true: “the alterations of the world absolutely and necessarily presuppose an infinite, regressive series of alterations.” (524)

The spatial counterpart to the temporal proof also suffers from similar weaknesses. Kant argues that if the world is a given whole, it must have boundaries. The conclusion is correct given the premise, but Schopenhauer believes the premise is groundless in itself. What necessitates the world is a given whole? It can quite easily not be a totality, and the argument collapses.

Even on the antithesis side, the argument could be stronger. The antithesis argues with comparison to time that since time cannot have a prior, empty time, so too space cannot have an adjacent empty spacelessness. However, this is a non sequitur. Causality determines the sequencing of time, but not of space. It is true no change in time can ever be the first change. This does not mean that some space could border a spacelessness, at least not a priori. This argument does work against the world having a temporal beginning, but not against a spatial boundary. Space is necessarily infinite, and so the world cannot be bound as some finite totality. Kant argues this elsewhere (Natural History and Theory of the Heavens II.7). Aristotle says the same in Physics III.4. This is the truth in Kant's argument, even if its presentation obscures this fact.

The second thesis argues that everything in the world consists of simple elements. The antithesis argues that everything is composite.

The thesis proof argues that every composite substance is composed of simple parts. However, this very first step is blatant question begging. The true issue here is that all matter is composite, and the thesis proof comes no closer to tackling this. The opposite of the simple is not the composite but rather the extensible, divisible whole (i.e. that which has parts). Kant assumes again here that the parts precede the whole, but there is no essential temporal relation between the parts and the whole. They are simultaneous, mutually conditioning each other.

On the other hand, the antithesis is quite simply true. Space is infinitely divisible, and so too is matter. Kant even presents this as objective fact elsewhere (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science p. 108) instead of pretending it is merely one possible position.

The third thesis argues that the world is caused through freedom. The antithesis argues that there is no freedom, only nature.

The argument for the third thesis operates via a subtle sleight of hand which is ultimately a misapplication of the principle of sufficient reason. “It tries to prove the finitude of the series of causes from the fact that a cause, in order to be sufficient, must contain the complete sum of the conditions that give rise to the resulting state, the effect. But the argument takes this completeness of the determinations that are simultaneously present in the state that is the cause, and in its place substitutes the completeness of the series of causes through which that state itself if first actualized” (527).

To put it differently, completeness presupposes some self-contained, finite entity or set. Kant uses this trick to derive the existence of an unconditioned first cause to close out the series. Again, Kant ignores the fact that causation can only be analyzed locally, not globally. State A may cause State B, but the conditions in which State A arise are a completely separate investigation from that State B's emergence. One cannot transpose a series of causes sequentially in this way. It is not necessary to presuppose some first beginning, just as a present moment does not categorically require a universal beginning to time.

What Schopenhauer finds "ludicrous" is that Kant's example here of an uncaused beginning is someone rising from a chair, as if the will is not a cause. It is the same as saying a ball could start rolling on its own.

Again, the antithesis is simply true. Everything that happens within the world occurs according to the laws of nature.

The fourth thesis argues that in the series of causation, there is some necessary uncaused being. The antithesis argues that nothing is necessary with respect to the world; all of its series are contingent. The proofs here are fundamentally the same as in the previous antinomy.

It begs the same questions through the infinite series of conditions rather than from infinite series of causes.

What is strange for Schopenhauer is that this is the only antimony of the four which has faced no criticism or disagreement from interlocutors. It is plausible, yes, but why is this, of all Kant's doctrines, the least opposed?

This is more striking because Kant asserts something that is clearly false. Both sides are forced to presuppose that when a conditioned is given, so is the completed series of all prior conditions. How is in any way necessary or even possible? Both thesis and antithesis have to argue from this false premise. Additionally, Kant also burdens each side other question begging such as a world existing in itself (even though this contradicts the antithesis). An infinite series cannot be a series that is completely given. A series is infinite not in itself but only with respect to proceeding through it, and the fact that it has not yet ended. An infinite totality is an oxymoron. This is something Aristotle already understood in Physics III. Infinity cannot be independent of regress. The presupposition here is an assumption, one that Kant himself notes is arbitrary (A562/B590).

This is why the antithesis is again just simply true. "[I]f the world is not an unconditioned whole and does not exist in itself but rather only in representation, and if its series of grounds and consequents do not exist prior to the regress of its representations but rather only through this regress, then the world cannot contain any determinate or finite series, because their determination and limitation would have to be independent of representation, which would only be added on: rather, all its series must be endless, i.e. cannot be exhausted by any representation.” (530)

The Ideal of Pure Reason

In this section, Kant outlines why pure reason goes beyond it bounds to conceive of a supreme being (God) who is the subject of all predicates, the highest of all realities.

Schopenhauer finds this chapter to be unworthy of Kant, useless, and a section “which brings us right back to the rigid scholasticism of the Middle Ages. You would think you were listening to Anselm of Canterbury himself.” (537)

The issue is not that Kant is posturing this as an argument for God's existence, as Anselm, does. Kant is using this to illustrate the erroneous course of reason unbound. Rather, Schopenhauer's problem is that Kant fully mirrors Anselm's ontological proof in its terminology and progression, without qualifications. In other words, Kant is posing the ontological proof as the natural progression of reason.

But such a notion as the sum total of all possible realities is purely scholastic invention. Kant should not have encumbered himself with this baggage.

This is not truly rational. Leibniz and Wolff knew this as well. For if anyone's reason can attain a concept of God without revelation, this could happen from causation. Thus everyone would naturally know God's existence, and no proof would be required. Nothing necessitates this to be reason's course.

Refutation of Speculative Theology

Kant's next section presents critiques of the three standard modern arguments for God's existence: the ontological proof, the cosmological (prime move) proof, and the physico-theological (watch maker) proof.

Speculative theology is not, for Schopenhauer, an eternal philosophical question that deserves a seat in the foundational investigation of the critique of reason. Dedicating a section to refuting these three arguments for God's existence does not seem necessary. However, some credit can be due to Kant for responding to the pressing questions of his day. In this chapter, Kant once again mirrors Hume. Just as Hume challenged popular theology, Kant in turn pressed upon speculative theology.

Kant refutes the ontological proof on grounds that being is not in itself a predicate, so the proof itself is built upon a leap. Schopenhauer acknowledges the validity of this rebuttal but reiterates the ontological proof is mere wordplay. It should simply be dismissed as sophistry without engaging it directly.

In turns Kant properly applies the results of his investigation to both the cosmological and physico-theological proofs, dismissing both as an overextension of reason. Schopenhauer notes that the physico-theological proof itself has already presupposed the cosmological proof, in that some first agent designed it.

All in all, Schopenhauer believes Kant did not go far enough. In typical vituperative style, Schopenhauer launches his own critique of popular theology and why people believe in God out of the “human feeling of helplessness, impotence, and dependence in the face of the infinitely superior, inscrutable, and mostly ominous powers of nature” (542).

Tangent aside, Kant's refutations here were historically significant in derailing the ongoing debate between theism and materialism. From this it became clear that theistic proofs were not rationally grounded as had been supposed before.

Transcendental Doctrine of Method

The second book of the Critique of Pure Reason is the Transcendental Doctrine of Method and this is significantly shorter than the first. The goal here is to show how pure reason can be used properly to avoid the errors enumerated above.

Schopenhauer's note on this section is even briefer still. He remarks how the three transcendent ideas of soul, world, and God are somehow supposed to be regulative principles that guide our understanding of nature in a healthy way.

But it is not clear to Schopenhauer how Kant could have meant this seriously. For such principles are presuppositions, and dogmatism of this kind is an impediment to scientific investigation, rather than its boon. How, for example, should the assumed existence of a soul affect medicine? Has this not already impeded science for centuries?

Critique of Practical Reason

For his views on Kant's ethics, Schopenhauer refers readers to his Two Fundamental Problems in Ethics but does offer a more abbreviated critique here as well.

Kant's love for symmetry, which haunted the Critique of Pure Reason resurfaces here as well in the specter of the intellectus practicus a scholastic concept which Kant reappropriates to mean the source and origin of all ethical human action in reason, and in reason alone. This hyperrationalism is absurd for Schopenhauer who argues that identifying reason and virtue as the same thing has never been done in the history of the world outside a small contingent of German scholars.

Are not villains often rational? Their methodical scheming actually makes them more rational than most. Malice is not exclusive to reason.

For Schopenhauer, reason is the faculty of the concepts. It is practical when it is connected with human action through reflection. That being said, true rational agents are extraordinarily rare as they are able to maintain thorough equanimity in whatever circumstance they endure.

This misleading dichotomy of rational and irrational action comes down to a question of whether our motives are located in abstract concepts or intuitive representations. Kant is original in mistaking reason as an ethical faculty, as he extends his symmetrical framing over to the realm of ethics.

Again, Kant should have defined what reason is in general before starting with a vague distinction between theoretical and practical reason. He does not do so and consequently both particular kinds of reason (as well as their shared genus) remain unclear.

Although many look to the Critique of Practical Reason for the categorical imperative, this concept was first introduced in the Critique of Pure Reason A802/B830. Kant states that we are determined not only by intuitive motives but also by abstract ones. Hence this also yields laws that are imperatives for us as objective laws of freedom.

The key word here "hence" is how Kant shepherds in an "ought" where none really belongs. There is nothing conditioning or necessitating this ought.

Every "ought" can be nothing deeper than a threat of punishment or promise of reward. The word itself is necessarily bound to one or the other. Because of this, the "ought" is always conditioned by either of these things. It can never be unconditioned.

Kant's unconditioned ought goes further than this however. He postulates a highest good of virtue that is married to happiness. This highest virtue can unlock happiness for us. But this contradicts what he had said earlier about the categorical imperative being for itself. It conditions the "ought" with a promise of happiness. In introduces a motive. In Schopenhauer's view, “any virtue that is practised for the sake of some reward is based on a cunning, methodical, far-sighted egoism” (555).

Even if this "ought" is permitted, how are we to derive it? If we say the "ought" is directed toward the well-being of all universals, then it ensnares itself in a universal egoism. Since everyone wants their own rights respected, I as an individual should not injure another person, because they could injure me in turn. Isn't this merely egoistic self-protection?

The agent of categorical imperative has to think through the "ought" in terms of what other people would prefer. But that agent could only do so by projecting their own preferences upon everybody else by posing the question: "What would I not want to happen to me?" That is the ultimate question of the categorical imperative.

More than this, Kant's ethics are immaterial, and that is not a good thing. He merely describes a "formula for finding a law" (556), but the law is already captured far more quickly and intuitively in the Silver Rule, which is itself rooted in rational egoism.

Another point that is rightly criticized is Kant's assertion that a deed is truly good if and only if it is performed out of duty to an abstract maxim. This would annul compassion or goodwill and make then irrational, and thus immoral. Kant would force all deeds to be done reluctantly and with self-restraint. Schopenhauer likens it to saying that true art can be created only out of following the rules of aesthetics.

Additionally, what Kant fails to remember that the ancients already knew is that virtue can never be taught. It is not explicit, discursive knowledge like an assemblage of facts.

Lastly, Kant's doctrine of the highest good is the last major error in this work. The doctrine of the highest good unites by necessity virtue with happiness by saying that virtue makes you worthy of happiness. But this concept of worthiness already presupposes some objective standard, it question begs the ethics it attempts to prove. One cannot be worthy without some criteria of valuation, which is clearly ethical in this case. Ethics cannot be derived from a doctrine of the highest good.

Doctrine of Right

Schopenhauer detests this book. He puts it this way. “The Doctrine of Right is one of Kant’s last works, and it is so weak that, although I reject it completely, I think polemics against it are superfluous; it will have to die a natural death from its own weakness, just as if it were the work of an ordinary mortal and not a great man.” (558)

There are two overarching errors in this book for Schopenhauer: (1) Kant attempts to distinguishes between ethics and rights, without having rights be dependent on law (i.e. rule by violence). This simply is not possible because all action must exist either out of ethical significance or physical relation to other people. Rights are thoroughly rooted in ethics. (2) Kant defines rights and liberty in a purely negative sense. This is not satisfactory. Freedom means not being obstructed here. And this means freedom has no difference from compatibility and coexistence. If we have freedom, we could not even know what it is, because it could only be apparent in its absence. It should not be a purely negative concept of absence.

Out of these two foundational mistakes Kant develops other "perverse" views:

• No property rights in the state of nature. But if this is true, then all rights must be positive (e.g. I have a right to property in society.)
• Legal acquisition is grounded in the violent seizure of property
• Every society has an ethical obligation to set up a constitution
• Attempting to prove and ground a right to punish, when this is not necessary

Ultimately, these errors obscure what is already universally known to be true and can only give rise to debates that are best bizarre and at worst dangerous for political thought.

Critique of the Power of Judgment

Schopenhauer begins this closing section by remarking how extraordinary it is that Kant, a man who by no account, could ever have been exposed to beauty whether artistic or literary or geographic, stuffed away as he was in a Baltic city. And yet here, before Romanticism, he gives it such strong preferential treatment.

Kant's true insight here is in overturning the philosophical assumption that beauty emanates from the object when beauty is in fact a phenomenon of the subject. While Kant discovered this path to his credit, he unfortunately does not draw it to its conclusion.

Once again, Kant begins with abstract cognition when he should have begun with intuitive cognition. He starts with judgment and only then proceeds to beauty. And this misordering of his investigation trips him up by wrongly problematizing taste as a key concept. What is also strange is that Kant cites many accounts of what beauty is, but without ever describing what he takes to be beautiful. Schopenhauer puts it this way.

“It is as if he knew about [beauty] only from hearsay, not directly. In almost the same way, a highly intelligent blind person could combine precise reports concerning colours into a theory.” (561)

And another recurring pattern is Kant's love for symmetry. By Schopenhauer's reckoning, Kant probably discovered the concept of purposiveness in beauty and wanting to arrange a triptych out of it, framed it in light of reason, judgment, and understanding.

And ultimately, the antinomy he introduces for aesthetic judgment is by far, for Schopenhauer, the most far-fetched parody of the other antinomies already stuffed into the architectonic of the Critique of Pure Reason.

What truly surpasses the rest of the book is the "Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" and Kant's theory of the sublime which is far superior to his abstract, rational theory of beauty.

By contrast, "Critique of Teleological Judgment" is “perhaps more than anywhere else, Kant’s rare talent for twisting a thought back and forth and expressing in many different way until it turns into a book. The whole book says only this: although organized bodies necessarily seem to us as if they were composed according to a concept of purpose that preceded them, we are still not justified in assuming this to be objectively the case.” (563)

Such organized bodies cannot be explained in this way. Hume criticizes these bodies based on experience, while Kant criticizes them a priori. Both are correct in a complementary manner.

For the truth is that the concept of purpose is bound up in how we represent things in a way that precedes their being (i.e. their origin is subjective). Kant correctly claims we can never explain how an organic body arises out of mechanical causes. Yet there is still a gap in the argumentation. Kant denies the possibility of this sort of mechanistic explanation merely with respect to purposiveness in organic bodies. Which seems to say that mechanistic purposiveness is fair game for rocks, the ocean, and the stars.

However, this restriction must be placed on all natural phenomena across all realms of nature. And this cannot be done by merely transferring this proof to the other spheres of nature. This view must be arrived at by visiting each science. And in this way an exploration of contradictory appearances in chemistry or physics could have strengthened Kant's argument even more.

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While Schopenhauer certainly has rather biting criticism of Kant, his unqualified admiration is quite clear to any reader. His directness can be refreshing for students of Kant who become bungled in juggling his wobbly architectonic.

It is perhaps by ripping this forced structure off of the Critiques, and by letting their ideas breathe, that the true insights of Kant's critical philosophy can be drawn toward their deserved conclusion.