Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 12.djvu/485

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

IDEALISM AND EMPIRICAL REALISM. 471 whenever it pleased him, to treat them merely as represen- tations (as in the first account above given of Empirical Realism), 1 and then again to class them with the things-in- themselves as substances (or as containing substances), but with the distinction that they are " phenomenal substances '* (the last subjects of existence in space, forever enduring in time), while things-in-themselves are " noumenal sub- stances" (the last subjects of being in general). 2 Indeed he avows that he treats phenomena as having two sides, the one as the object-in-itself is considered, the other as its appear- ance in the subject is sought after ; 3 and, more generally, he proclaims his teaching to be that an object is to be taken in two meanings, as phenomenon or as thing-in-itself. 4 And thus treating phenomena as aspects of things-in-themselves, he puts phenomena in the place of things-in-themselves, and so is able, in physics, to get along without concerning him- self about the latter. 5 There is still another bit of equivocation that runs parallel with the ambiguity in the Empirical Eealism, and abets it. This can hardly escape the attention of any one who follows the fortunes of the Analogies throughout the rest of Kant's work after he has in the second book of the Analytik satisfac- torily to himself set them up as proved principles or laws of the understanding. In the Analytik itself was introduced the distinction between constitutive and regulative principles. Still, before coming to the practical philosophy, which deals with regulative principles only, we are given to understand that that distinction applied only in reference to intuition and that as regards experience (and consequently as regards the phenomenally real) they are, all of them, constitutive (iii., 448). Yet so quickly as in the very next part of the work, the Dialektik, the constitutive principles are frequently treated as nothing better than regulative principles, though 1 E.g. " Erscheimingen, d.i. blose Vorstellungen," iii., 346-347; and frequently so. 2 IV., 394 ; less fully, iii., 215 n. For the epithets see iii., 234, cf. 170. 3 III., 70 ; cf. 374. Similarly in the case of the subject, he allows one and the same subject to be treated both as phenomenon and as thing-in- itself, iii., 375 ; iv., 92 ; v., 102, 120 ; vii., 453 ; viii., 530-531. 4 III., 23 ; cf. 78. Accordingly it was indifferent to him whether he said we are in our " outer sense " affected by outside phenomena, through motion, cf. iv., 366, or by things-in-themselves, iii., 592 ; iv., 63, 66, 299 ; vi., 35, without motion, iii., 609. Generally, however, he said merely we are affected by objects, iii., 33, 55, cf. 82, etc. 5 " In alien Aufgaben, die im Felde der Erfahrung vorkommen mogen, behandeln wir jene Erscheinungen [die ausseren] als Gegenstande an sich selbst, ohne uns urn den ersten Grund . . . zu bekummern," iii., 612 ; and similarly 64, 234 ; viii., 538.