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.