The Philosophical Review/Volume 1/Summary: Wundt - Was soil uns Kant nicht sein?
The title of this article connects it with Paulsen's Was uns Kant sein kann (V. f. W. Ph. Bd. V). There it was asserted that "the abstract schematic method of the transcendental deduction is not essential to the establishment of the fundamental thoughts of the K. d. r. V." Further, in the practical philosophy and in the teleology, this only serves to force the real thoughts into an artificial form. There is, moreover, an almost universal agreement of opinion as to the one-sidedness of the Kantian Ethics, and the moral impossibility of its demands. So far Paulsen. Wundt, however, maintains that so long as we hold fast to Kant's point of view, the functions a priori must be brought into relation with one another, and also into connection with sense perception. That is, we must have a 'Deduction of the Categories,' and a doctrine of the Schematism. Again, it is often supposed that the most important result of Kant's philosophy has been the limitation of knowledge to experience; but the establishment of the a-priority of the moral law is equally important. In fact, Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre, and not Positivism, is the real continuation of Kant. The real importance of Kant for our time lies in the penetrating force and caution of his thinking, and in the loftiness of his ethical conceptions. He must, however, be regarded in an historical light, and we must not imagine that the presuppositions under which his system arose are valid for us to-day. We must not submit ourselves to his authority. This would be to fall into the error which he himself characterized as Dogmatism.
Wundt claims that his own "System" has not been understood by critics, because he has not put himself at the Kantian standpoint. Here he shows his relation to Kant, in treating of the forms of perception and the categories. Under the first heading the questions are, What are the logical motives which induce us to separate (1) the form and matter of perception, and (2) the space and time forms from each other? (Kant doubtless thought of this latter separation as given; but to-day, we regard all experience as at once spatial and temporal.) The answer to the first question W. finds in the fact that "the formal elements of perception . . . cannot be thought as changing without a change in the matter of sensation; while the matter may change when the forms remain constant." The motive which leads to the separation of the space and time forms from each other is that time changes are thinkable without spatial changes; on the other hand, space can be regarded in its merely formal qualities without reference to time, while time as a merely formal event involves a reference to space. Again, Kant deduces the a-priority of time and space from their constancy. He never gets beyond an a priori postulated as really given. W. seeks to show that it is to the laws of thought that we owe the distinction as to worth between the content and the form of a sensation. Space and time must not be regarded as the given or ready-made a priori, but as the results of the functions of thought.
Still further, Kant has only shown in general that there must be categories, and there still remains the task of discovering the logical motives which have led to the formation of each individual category. Since, now, all presentations are spatial as well as temporal, we shall find the schema of each category by pointing out to what spatial and temporal condition each concept is subordinate. In all cases, we see that the employment of the categories presupposes definite qualities of the objects which constitute the logical criteria of that employment. These will be at the same time the conditions which necessitate our thought to form these concepts. W. finds the conditions of the empirical concept of substance in spatial independence, and temporal constancy in change. He also shows how the speculative notion of substance has arisen in accordance with the laws of thought. He urges, moreover (and finds confirmation in Kant's Refutation of Idealism), that outer experience is immediate. There is no meaning, then, in the distinction between 'phenomenon' and 'thing in itself'; the proper contrast is between phenomenon and reality. If outer experience is, as Kant himself said, immediate, the problem is no longer to determine how the object is again located outside us. We must rather ask how it comes that, in the course of the development of our knowledge, we recognize certain properties of the immediately known object as no longer objectively given, but ascribe them to the subject. And it is also necessary to explain how science, carrying further the distinctions made in ordinary experience, arrives gradually at pure conceptual determinations regarding the object; and finally, what is the logical justification of these determinations.