THE CONCEPT OF REFLEXION[1] IN IMMANUEL KANT'S
CRITIQUE OF THE PURE REASON
- an interpretation -
Gheorghe Stefanov
This paper was written with the intention of making an
enlightening analysis of the concept of reflexion (Überlegung)
that Kant employs in the Critique of the Pure Reason. It
regards especially the Chapter named Appendix of the
Equivocal Nature or Amphiboly of the Conceptions (Concepts[2])
of Reflexion from the Confusion of the Transcendental with the
Empirical use of the Understanding.[3] and also: Remark on the Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflexion[4]. I shall try to find what Kant understands by reflexion, if this is a sort of knowledge faculty or, if not, to what kind of knowledge faculty does it belong. Some classical distinctions should be pointed out in order to achieve, or at least try to achieve, this purpose, some new ones will prove themselves helpful. Once the concept of reflexion being defined, I shall have to briefly examine the concepts of reflexion that Kant introduces in this chapter, considering their role in the architecture of the kantian work and their relation with the concepts of the understanding and the ideas of reason. Finally I am to give a rational reconstruction of the kantian concept of reflexion, considering a metatheoretical utilization of it, through its own concepts. My assumption is that one particular understanding of the term reflexion may offer important results for the understanding of the entire philosophical system that Kant produces in the Critique of Pure Reason.
The importance of the chapter I have named before is not
entirely determined by those interpreters of Kant's book who
focused their attention on it[5]. Some of the interpreters have considered, because of the critiques raised by Kant in this chapter against traditional metaphysics, especially to Leibnitz, that: "This section is, indeed, like the chapter on Phenomena and Noumena, wrongly located. [...] (it) ought therefore to found its place in the Dialectic,"[6] Other interpreters think that Kant's chapter about the amphiboly of the concepts of reflexion is "at the ending of his critical ontology,"[7] and anothers have adopted an intermediate point of view.[8].
Although it is possible to appeal to philosophers like
Locke, Leibnitz, Baumgarten or Wolff for establishing the
understanding of the concept of reflexion in Kant's time, his
own understanding is a little different from theirs one.
Traditionally it has been meant by reflexion the attention's
focusing on the activity of ones own consciousness, on the
subject, or ego (for Leibnitz, reflexive acts "make us think of what is called "I", and observe that this or that is within us [...]"[9]) and on the means by which he or she thinks and/or knows something about one object[10]. Kant himself presents a kind of contiguity with these opinions in his thinking when he says, in his course of logic, that by reflexion we would understand "the reflection on the mode of conceiving various representations in one single consciousness"[11], though within his critical system the concept of reflexion is precisely redefined.
Thus, for Kant the reflexion "is not occupied about objects
themselves, for the purpose of directly obtaining concepts of
them, but is that state of the mind (Zustand des Gemüts) in which we set ourselves to discover the subjective conditions under which we obtain concepts. It is the consciousness of the relation of given representations to the different sources or faculties of cognition (das Bewußtsein des Verhältnisses gegebener Vorstelungen zu unseren Erkenntnisquelen), by which alone their relation to each other can be rightly determined."[12]
We may distinguish then between an exercising of the reflexion
for the comparison of our knowledge or our representations one to each other and an exercising of it for a comparison of our
knowledge with its sources. Since these sources of our knowledge
cannot be, for Kant, others than the sensibility or the
understanding, the problem concerning them that has to be solved
with the aid of reflexion is formulated as follows: "to what
faculty of cognition do they belong? To the understanding or to
the senses?"[13]
We have to notice here that our representations may be
connected (verknüpft) by the senses or compared (vergleichen) by
the understanding. This distinction between connection
(Verknüpfung) and comparison (Vergleichung) seems to be important for the solution of the problem. In his notes Kant formulates it more explicitly, saying: "The thing which I'm thinking at through the concept A but I am also thinking at the same thing through the concept B is a judgment (of connection[14]). The concept which I have got in A and also in B is a judgment of comparison."[15] This distinction between connection (of the things) and comparison (of concepts) leads us to the difference between representations which have the sensibility as source (namely phenomena) and representations which have the understanding as source (namely objects). The two judgments entailed by these different activities can be related with the judgments a priori and a posteriori like this: the judgments of connection are a posteriori while the judgments of comparison are a priori. So we can understand, for the beginning, why is the reflexion through which we are supposed to distinguish between these judgments so important for Kant, when he says that it "is a duty which no one can neglect who wishes to establish an a priori judgment upon things."[16]
Another distinction occurs by Kant between a logical
reflexion (eine logische Reflexion), which is "mere comparison,
for in it no account is taken of the faculty of cognition to
which the given conceptions belong, and they are consequently, as far as regards their origin, to be treated as homogeneous;"[17] and a transcendental reflexion (eine transcendentale Reflexion), that is "The act whereby I compare my representations with the faculty of cognition which originates them, and whereby I distinguish whether they are compared with each other as belonging to the pure understanding or to sensuous intuition [...]."[18] According to this distinction the two manners of exercising the reflexion, as a comparison of our representations to each other and as a comparison of them with their sources, come in fact from the existence of two different activities of our thinking. These two kinds of reflexion are entirely different, as long as "the faculties of cognition to which they belong are not even the same."[19]
We have now the first sign that the reflexion has not to be
considered as a special faculty of knowledge, different from the
sensibility, understanding or reason, but it must be regarded as
belonging to one, or more, of these faculties. Even more, the two sorts of reflexion that Kant has distinguished appear to belong to different faculties of knowledge.
Only now some of the difficulties that had made the
interpreters to pass silently over this chapter from Kant's
Critique are showing up. For the sensibility doesn't seem to be
this faculty, neither for the transcendental reflexion, nor for
the logical one, since it can apply through its pure intuitions
only to the empirical intuitions and it certainly cannot
determine the way in which the concepts are bounded together
in a "state of mind," as the reflexion can do. Nor the
understanding can serve as a support of the transcendental
reflexion's activities, since it cannot apply to itself, as Kant
says: "[...] the understanding which is occupied merely with
empirical exercise, and does not reflect on the sources of its
own cognition, may exercise its functions very well and very
successfully, but is quite unable to do one thing, and that of
very great importance, to determine, namely, the bounds that
limit its employment, and to know what lies within or without its own sphere."[20] This way, the understanding cannot know in what concerns a particular representation if it is the understanding itself the one which gives that representation or not[21]. In spite of this, the understanding may be the faculty of the logical reflexion, because "When we reflect in a purely logical manner, we do nothing more than compare concepts in our understanding [...]."[22] It remains the reason then the only one that has to be the faculty of the transcendental reflexion.
Nevertheless, our difficulties do not end here. For,
although the two sorts of reflexion, logical and transcendental,
are completely different, one belonging to the understanding and
the other to the reason, it seems that for logically reflecting
on the relation between our representations we'll have to take
account of these representations' relation "to the different
sources or faculties of cognition." It becomes problematical,
this way, the determination of that very manner in which the
reason, through transcendental reflexion, would offer assistance
to the understanding for its logical reflexion.
This dependence of the logical reflexion on the transcendental one, once accepted[23] and several times rejected[24], seems to become even more clearly when the concepts of reflexion (Reflexionsbegriffe) are presented. These concepts of reflection are those of the identity and the difference ("der Einerleiheit und Verschiedenheit"), the agreement and the opposition ("der Einstimmung und des Widerstreits"), the internal and the external ("des Inneren und des Äußeren") and finally of the determinable and the determination ("des Bestimmbaren und der Bestimmung"), or matter and form ("Materie und Form"). Yet, they apply differently to the relations between our representations,
depending on whether these prove themselves to be objects of the
pure understanding or phenomena of the sensibility. In what
concerns, for instance, the identity and difference, Kant says:
"When an object is presented to us several times, but always with the same internal determinations (qualitas et quantitas), it, if an object of pure understanding, is always the same, not several things, but only one thing (numerica identitas); but if a phenomenon (Erscheinung), we do not concern ourselves with
comparing the concept of the thing with the concept of some
other, but, although they may be in this respect perfectly the
same, the difference of place at the same time is a sufficient
ground for asserting the numerical difference of these objects
(of sense)."[25] We could figure then, taking this example as a starting point, the relation between transcendental reflexion and the logical one as follows: the determination, made by transcendental reflexion, of the understanding as the source
of our given representations is the condition for the possibility of one mere logical reflexion, considered as a comparison of the intellectual concepts (since having the understanding as a source means for our representations that they are nothing else but intellectual concepts). Thus, we may be justified to admit there is not a univocal relation between the application of one or another from these concepts of reflexion (identity or difference) and the establishing of those representations, as given by understanding or sensibility, to which these concepts do apply, because it might be the case that "the concept is logically different from another when it contains indeed some, but not all of the other one's predicates."[26] We may ask indeed: 'By the reflexive exercise of which faculty would we apply the concept of difference, for instance, to the sensuous objects?' This is a very puzzling question. In fact, we may doubt even of the possibility of using the reflexion in the case of the sensuous objects, since Kant himself had said that "Reflection (reflexio) is not occupied about objects themselves [...]."[27] On the other side, as the logical use of concepts like identity and difference or agreement and opposition can be almost easily explained if we notice that "Before constructing any objective judgement, we compare the conceptions that are to be placed in the judgment, and observe whether there exists identity (of many representations in one conception), if a general judgment is to
be constructed, or difference, if a particular; whether there is
agreement when affirmative; and opposition when negative
judgments are to be constructed, and so on,"[28] it is still undetermined the way which the other pairs of concepts (internal and external, respectively, determinable and determination) might be used mere logically for reflexion. With respect to the first pair of concepts we have the possibility of representing the relations between the intellectual concepts through: 1) the total comprehension of all the characteristics of one concept into another concept (this particular relation is to be expressed by a categorical judgment); 2) the partial comprehension of some characteristics of one concept in the other one (this can be expressed by a hypothetical judgment); 3) all the characteristics of one concept existing out of the other concept's sphere (using the two concepts we'll formulate a disjunctive judgment). Anyway, this possibility seems quite different from the one which Kant offered for the comparison of the intellectual objects[29] with the phenomenal substance[30] from this point of view. Similarly, it is obvious that even in the latter case - those of the second pair of concepts - there is a difference between the comparison of the concepts through the logical reflexion and the connection of the things through the transcendental reflexion (which we have to suppose that is possible to exist). And this remains in spite of the former separation between transcendental and logical reflection made with respect to their different use - for determining the sources of our representations or for considering these representations in relation of one to each other. We'll know this way, for instance, that "In a judgment one may call the given concepts logical matter (for the judgment), the relation of these to each other (by means of the copula), the form of the judgment.[31] On the other side, we'll find that "In respect to things in general, unlimited reality was regarded as the matter of all possibility, the limitation thereof (negation) as the form, by which one thing is distinguished from another according to transcendental concepts."[32]
We are facing this way - by taking into account the
possibility for the transcendental reflexion to apply itself even to the things, for comparison, and not only for establishing the faculty of knowledge which gives us the things' representations - the necessity of providing a suitable reformulation for the kantian distinction between logical and transcendental reflection initially offered. This is not the proper thing to be urged, anyway. We'll distinguish then, following the suggestion present in "Remark on The Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflexion", a trancendental topic (transzendentale Topik), which "contains nothing more than the above-mentioned four titles of all comparison and distinction [...], "[33] but which requires "a determination of the place to which the representations of the things which are compared belong [...]."[34] Now we have, for this transcendental topic to work, a transcendental use of the reflexion for determining the sources of our representations but also a, let's say, empirical use for the comparisons and the distinctions between our sensuous representations as well as a logical (but not pure logical) use of the reflexion for another kind of comparisons of our representations given by understanding. The last one must be very carefully distinguished from the pure logical use of reflexion, since this reflection is supposed to find its place in a logical topic, as the Topic of Aristotle was. But our difficulties do not disappear, but multiply themselves, with all these distinctions. Even if we accept the existence of some sort of 'empirical' reflexion, by which means we'll be able to compare through the above-enumerated concepts the sensitive phenomena, we'll have to conclude for the existence of some special devices, like the schemes which endorses the intellectual categories application to the phenomena are. Once compared by the 'empirical' reflexion - which can exist only as an intellectual capacity - those things would become intelligible objects, capable of a new comparison, this time through the logical reflexion. But, since these intellectual objects are obtained through the concepts of reflection (and, eventually, some reflexive schemes or other devices) the application of the logical reflexion for their comparison will be different from the same application of the logical reflection to those intellectual objects obtained through the categories of the understanding and their schemes. This would lead us to distinguish again between two kinds of logical reflexion, considering the two differently constituted intellectual objects which they apply to, but we might find ourselves very far from Kant's systematic intention in this case.
Once with the necessity of distinguishing between the
concepts of reflexion, as titles of the transcendental topic, and the categories of the understanding, a new range of difficulties is coming up, forcing us to renounce to solve the precedent ones. At the first sight such difficulties should not find their place here, Kant saying clearly enough about the concepts of reflexion that they "differ from categories in this respect, that they do not represent the object according to that which constitutes its conception (quantity, reality), but set forth merely the comparison of representations, which precedes our conceptions of things."[35] This probably means that, since the comparison of the representations precedes the concept of the objects, the concepts of reflexion, at their turn, precede the categories of the understanding. What happens then in the case of the pure logical reflexion, where, as we have seen, the concepts of reflexion have to apply precisely to the concepts of the understanding for creating judgments? In this case it seems that the concepts of the understanding must pre-exist to those of reflexion, otherwise their application being not possible. On the other hand, if the transcendental reflexion is exercised through the pure reason, the concepts of (the transcendental) reflexion should find their place near the ideas (or the concepts) of the pure reason and so their separation from the concepts of the understanding will become useless.
All these difficulties, and even many other, led the kantian interpreters which did not avoid the anlysis of the chapter on the amphiboly of the concepts of reflexion to the conclusion that this chapter has no importance for the system of the Critique, but in fact it is an izolated part of the book devoted to the critique of Leibnitz's metaphysics. It has been suggested even that the necessities of the critique against Leibnitz has created the sistematization existing in the mentioned chapter. But it was often misconstrued that Kant's critique was directed against Locke as well. Kant considered that Lebnitz had situated all the representations within the understanding because he did not distinguished their sources, but he also considered Locke to misunderstand the very same probleme since he has "sensualized" the concepts of the understanding. Thus, the critiques adressed directly to Leibnitz could be doubled by those adressed to Locke. In the case of identity and difference, for instance, Kant reproached to Leibniz that he was expresing the principle of indiscernables "which is valid solely of concepts of things in general"[36] as applying also to the objects of sense. In the same way he could be able to reproach the same thing to Locke, who was using the space and the time - considered by Kant as pure intuitions of the sensibility - for the identification of inteligible objects such as the substances,[37] which are for Kant inteligible objects obtained by the aplication of the categories of inherence and subsistence, due to the permanence scheme (accordingly to the first analogy of the experience), to the sensuous intuitions.
Without discussing any longer the possibility of explaning all these obscurities using different terms from those which Kant himself proposed, I am going to propose another understanding of this chapter, considering once again its sistematic relevance. This particular understanding extends beyond the strictly interpretation of the text and, even if almost all the places from the kantian text which should justify it will be indicated, some necessar suppositions will be formulated only with the hope that they will justify themselves by their intuitive character. A real evaluation of the reconstruction that I am giving has to refer then to the conceptual clarification which this reconstruction could initiate.
Let's come back to the initial definition of the reflexion which Kant gives in the Critique, before to distinguish between a logical reflexion and a transcendental one. We are told first that the reflexion "is not occupied about objects". But we saw latter that as reflexion about our representations which can be given by the understanding or by the sensibility it has something to do with the objects, either inteligible or sensible, and this is just for determining the condition of their inteligibility or sensibility and for comparing them as well. Also, in the initial definition of the reflexion as "state of mind" it appears rather like a dinstinct faculty than as being dependent of some other faculty. Yet, the pure logical reflexion provides us with propositional knowledge by itself. If we are to consider somehow from exterior the kantian system we may regard this reflexion, by which "we set ourselves to discover the subjective conditions under which we obtain conceptions," as a metatheoretical exercizing, first of all. For, as the impossibility of the reflexion's application to objects has, in the initial paragraph of the chapter, no determined sense, so the obtaining of concepts may be regarded, generaly speaking, as critical knowledge. This knowledge is of the same kind with the knowledge obtained by Kant himself when he introduces, for instance, the distinction between the concepts of sensibility and understanding. Considered as such, like a metatheoretical faculty or disponibility, the reflexion will have to be distinguished from the mere theoretical one. In what concernes the terms, this thing may be considered to happen in Kant's writing when he is passing from the initial explanation of the reflexion (Überlegung) - which we consider to be a metatheoretical faculty - to the distinction between the logical reflexion (logische Reflexion) and the transcendental reflexion (transzendentale Reflexion). Even if it does not exist a well-determined consistency of the distinction between Überlegung and Reflexion at the level of the curent use of the German terms[38] and this fact led to the impression that the two terms would be synonymous, the former seems to fit the usual understanding of reflexion[39]. In this sense the term is more closer to other term used by Kant, when he writes: "Within an enquiry of the pure elements of the human knowledge I have succeded only after a long reflection (Nachdenken)[40] to distinguish and separate the pure elementary concepts of the sensibility (the space and the time) from those of the understanding."[41] In any case, the separation of a reflection as a metatheoretical disponibility necessary for the construction of system from the Critique of the Pure Reason from a mere theoretical reflexion, either a pure logical one, or one which is used within the trancendental topic, seems to be helpfull for solving some of the above-mentioned difficulties[42].
Taking this supposition as a starting point we are to search for the limits of the reflection's[43] application, through its concepts (regarded this time as metatheoretical concepts, with respect to the suggestions from the kantian text which were initially ignored), within the critical system. The first place where this use of the reflection becomes obvious is in the Transcendental Aesthetic, where Kant sais: "That which in the phenomenon corresponds to the sensation, I term its matter; but that which effects that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations, I call its form."[44] We may say therefore that, reflecting under the manner in which we achieve knowledge, Kant comes to distinguish between a matter of the phenomenon, which is given by empirical intuition, and its form, given by the pure intuitions of the sensibility, namely the space and the time[45]. In the same manner will reflect Kant, using the concepts of matter and form, for distinguishing the sensibility from the understanding. The object is builded by the understanding through the application of its concepts (as forms), with the help of the schemes given by imagination, to the sensuous phenomena (which constitutes the matter of the formers). In what concernes the space and the time, these are distinguished, as forms of the sensibility, whith the aid of the reflection's concepts of the internal and external, as follows: "By means of the external sense[46] (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space. [...] The internal sense (der innere Sinn), by means of which the mind contemplates itself [...] is [nevertheless] a determinate form, [...] so that all which relates to the inward determinations of the mind (zu den inneren Bestimmungen) is represented in relations of time."[47] We may represent similarly the concepts of the understanding as externally determined, since they apply to the sensuous phenomena, and the concepts of the pure logical reflexion as internal determined, since they apply to the thinking through concepts. Within the metaphisical deduction of the categories of the understanding, that is the sistematical building and presentation of their table with the intellectual faculty of judgment as a starting point, Kant will reflect about the agreement or the opposition between judgments and categories. This thing does not become manifest untill the author realizes some sistematical difficulties, in the second edition of the Critique...: "With respect to one category, namely, that of community (Gemeinschaft), which is found in the third class, it is not so easy as with the others to detect its accordance (die Übereinstimmung) with the form of the disjunctive judgement which corresponds to it in the table of the logical functions."[48] In what concernes the transcendental deduction, the reflection on the possibility of deducing the concepts of the understanding as being related a priori with the objects is led by the idea of analytical or synthetical identity or unity[49] of apperception.[50] Even more "This fundamental principle of the necessary unity of apperception is indeed an identical, and therefore analytical, proposition; [...]"[51].
The use of the reflection and of its concepts can be easily detected in the Trancendental Aesthetic inasmuch as in the Trancendental Analitic.[52] We should see now whether the Trancendental Dialectic is also elaborated through reflection and its concepts, as prezented by Kant himself. Thus, let us notice first that even for the caracterization of the reason the same concepts of matter and form are still operational, because the reason, like the understanding, has "a formal use", and processes "the matter of the intuition"[53]. Once with the distinction between a regulative and a transcendental use of the pure reason the reflection about the agreement or the opposition between its ideas, namely on the opposition between the internal idea of subject and a subject considered as a determinable object, on the opposition (or discordance) between the assertions made about the cosmological ideas - in which the unconditioned, either as absolute beginning or as a whole of the conditions' series - is represented as determinable (bestimmbar), or the reflection on the opposition between the ideal of an absolutely necessary being (as completely determinable concept) and the completely determinate object (that is existent) which should correspond to it, becomes essential for the grasp of the reason's errors in its transcendental use.
After we briefly identified various places from the Critique where the use of a metatheoretical faculty or disposition of reflection (Überlegung), through its concepts, for the examination, the conception and the exposition of the system of knowledge, have appeared, we might be able to conclude, in what concerns the limits of the reflection's use within the Critique of the Pure Reason, that there are no such limits, and the reflection is used in its quality of metatheoretical faculty along the entire kantian book. This conclusion is entirely compatible with the considerations about reflection developed by Kant in the "Critique of Judgment", when he says that: "To think (to reflect) means: to compare the given representations, either with other, or with their faculty of knowledge with respect to a concept which we made through this possible. The reflective faculty of judgment is that which is also called faculty of estimation (facultas dijudicandi)"[54]. The faculty of judgment as conceived by Kant like a sort of intermediate faculty between understanding and reason is "the faculty of thinking the particular as included in the general."[55] Thus it is distinguished a determinative faculty of judgment which is exercised only when the general is given and the particular has to be determined from a reflective faculty of judgment which is in fact the reflection, whose principal function is that of searching the general in which one given particular is somehow included. This faculty is that one by which the universals are given in our thinking and our knowledge is systematically builded. It "deals therefore with the given phenomena for grouping them under the empirical concepts of some natural determined objects. It proceeds not systematically but technically; somehow not just mechanically like an instrument standing under the leadership of the understanding and the senses but artistically by the general, yet undetermined, principle of the finalistic organization of the nature into a system."[56] The leading principle of this faculty is: "the nature specifies its general laws into particular laws according to a logical system which satisfies the interest of the faculty of judgment."[57] In other words, if we are to understand the external phenomena, but also, and especially our mind as nature the philosophical reflection focused on them has to develop as a system. The Critique of the Pure Reason, conceived by the use of the reflection in the analysis of the natural reality constituted in our knowledge, is such a system.
It remains a single thing that stops us from giving a complete answer to the question: "What kind of faculty has used Kant when he was writing the Critique of the Pure Reason? ", or, in other words: "Which one from the faculties of knowledge is in such a way that allows us to use it for the other faculties analysis as well as for its own from those that Kant has mentioned?" We already know that the reflection, as a metatheoretical faculty or disposition, is explicitly used for the building of the kantian system within the Critique.... What we still do not know is wether the reflection is the only faculty of this kind. Yet, it is not very probable that another faculty from those who Kant himself distinguished might be seen as capable of such a metatheoretical use like that of the reflection is. The understanding, as we already saw, can not apply to itself and in no case can it apply to the reason for ascertaining its limits. The reason, at its turn, does no supply any knowledge. Therefore to accept that the reason might be such a metatheoretical faculty is to accept that the kantian system brings no knowledge, which would be in contradiction with Kant's pretensions. Thus the reflection remains the only metatheoretical faculty used for the entire critique of the pure reason made by Kant.
Altough the use of the reflection and of its concepts for the constitution of the Critique... as a system has not been entirely described, but only illustrated in this paper, I do not doubt the possibility of such a description to be made from the perspective of the reconstructive hypotesis which I have been alleging here. This has to remain a task for the future inquires of those interested in it.
University of Bucharest
27 December 1994
NOTE
[1] I shall use the term reflexion instead of the more usual term reflection because this last term will be considered in my paper as having another meaning.
[2] Although the translation of the Critique of the Pure Reason which I am using consecvently gives 'conception' as the English word for 'Begriff', I will use from now on as my translation for the German term, the English 'concept'
[3] Anhang von der Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe durch die Verwechselung des empirichen Verstandesgebrauchs mit dem transzendentalen; [B316; A260]
[4] Anmerkung zur Amphibolie der Reflexionsbegriffe; [B324; A268]
[5] Amphiboliekapitel is often neglected because of its misleading character and its ambiguousness.
[6] Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, London, 1918, p.419; see also:
A. C. Ewing, A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Pure Reason,
London, 1936: "This section should really belong to the
Dialectic."
[7] Martin Heidegger, in Kants These über das Sein, p.30: (Amphiboliekapitel ist) "am Schluß seiner kritischen Ontologie"
[8] See: O. Lange in "Materie und Form als Reflexionsbegriffe bei Kant", Diss., Göttingen, 1958
[9] G. W. Leibnitz, Monadology, $30
[10] See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Chapter I, Paragraph 4: "By reflection then, in the following part of this discourse, I would be understood to mean, that notice which the mind takes of its own operations, and the manner of them, by reason whereof there come to be ideas of these operations in the understanding.[...]"
[11] Immanuel Kant, General Logic [...]
[12] [B316; A260]
[13] [B316; A260]
[14] Kant's addition.
[15] See: Die Philosophischen Hauptvorlesungen Immanuel
Kants, ed. Arnold Kowalewski, Leipzig und München, 1924,
Reflexion 3933: "Das Ding, was ich durch den Begriff A denke,
eben dasselbe denke ich auch durch den Begriff B ist ein Urtheil
(der Verknüpfung). Der Begriff, den ich in A denke, ich auch in
B: ist ein Urteil der Vergleichung."; after: Renate Broeken, Das
Amphiboliekapitel der Kritik der reine Vernunft. Der Übergang de
Reflexion von der Ontologie, Köln, 1970"
[16] The original text: "ist eine Pflicht, von der sich niemand lossagen kann, wenn er a priori etwas über Dinge urteilen will." [B319; A263]
[17] [B318-319; A262-263]
[18] [B317; A261]
[19] [B319; A263]
[20] [B297; A238]; in German: "daß der bloß mit seinem
empirischen Gebrauche beschäftige Verstand, der über die Quelen
seiner eigenen Erkenntnis nicht nachsinnt, zwar sehr gut
fortkommen, eines aber gar nicht leisten könne, nämlich, sich
selbst die Grenzen seines Gebrauchs zu bestimmen, und zu wissen,
was innerhalb oder außerhalb seiner ganzen Sphäre liegen mag;
[...]"
[21] It might be considered here the case of the transcendental apperception, as a faculty of consciousness to be self-conscious, though belonging (usually considered) to the understanding, as a counterexample relative to this affirmation. Yet, the source of this transcendental apperception is an empirical apperception, that is a grasp of an internal sensuous intuition of the thinking subject through the concepts of the understanding, which gives us the unity of the consciousness in the transcendental apperception and with this the unity of any possible knowledge.
[22] [B335; A279]; in the German text: "Wenn wir bloß logisch reflektieren, so vergleichen wir lediglich unsere Begriffe unter einander im Verstande [...]"
[23] See the initial definition of the reflexion in the text quoted from Kant's Critique in this paper, page 3, paragraph 1.
[24] See, for instance, how Kant defines the logical reflexion in which "no account is taken of the faculty of cognition to which the given conceptions belong."
[25] [B219; A263]
[26] Kowalewski, op. cit., 1.c. page 534; after: Renate Broeken, op. cit., page 81: "der Begriff ist von dem anderen logisch verschieden, wenn er zwar einige, aber nicht alle Prädicate desselben enthält"
[27] Original: "Die Überlegung (reflexio) hat es nicht mit den
Gegenständen selbst zu tun [...]"
[28] [B317-318; A262]
[29] "In an object of the pure understanding, only that is internal which has no relation (as regards its existence) to anything different from itself." - [B231; A265]
[30] "On the other hand, the internal determinations of a substantia phaenomenon in space are nothing but relations, and it is itself nothing more than a complex of mere relations (ein Inbegriff von lauter Relationen)." - [B231; A265]
[31] [B322; A266]; the original text: "In jedem Urteile kann man die gegeben Begriffe logische Materie (zum Urteile), das Verhältnis derselben (vermittelst der Kopula) die Form des Urteils nennen."; This case seems quite different from the other cases because the form and the matter seem not to apply any longer directly to the concepts for their comparison but rather to give the entire structure of this comparison. Yet, Kant will say somewhere else that through matter and form we are still comparing two concepts, searching for "which of the two is given, and which is merely a mode of thinking that given." - [B335; A279]
[32] [B322; A266-267]; Even here the matter and the form seem to be meta-concepts by which the real comparison of the things becomes possible.
[33] [B325; A269]
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.; the original (about Reflexionsbegriffe): "die
sich dadurch von Kategorien unterscheiden, daß durch jene nicht
der Gegenstand, nach demjenigen, was seinen Begriff ausmacht
(Größe, Realität), sondern nur die Vergleichung der Vorstellungen, welche vor dem Begriffe von dingen vorhergeht, in
aller ihrer Mannigfaltigkeit dargestellt wird."
[36] [B328; A272]
[37] See Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book III, Chapter XXVII, Paragraph 2
[38] It appears, for instance, the phrase transzendentale Überlegung, like in: "Diese transzendentale Überlegung ist eine Pflicht, von der sich niemand lossagen kann, wenn er a priori etwas über Dinge urteilen will." [B319; A263] (Yet, this kind of expresion also appears to be rather a metatheoretical one, since the entire Critique of the Pure Reason pretends to offer an a priori knowledge.)
[39] We might distinguish here, in English, between reflexion and reflection, the latter being more appropriate to render the sense of Überlegung.
[40] We should find, for instance, in Rudolf Eisler's Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe, Berlin, 1910, second volume, page 657, the reflection logically defined as "das daran anknüpfende Nachdenken".
[41] Prolegomena, $39, paragraph 4;
[42] This hypothesis was advanced by other exegets too. See, for example, Joachim Kopper, in the introduction to Materialen zu Kants Kritik der Reine Vernunft, Frankfurt am Main, 1975, page 10: "Der Aufbau der Kants Kritik der Reine Vernunft ist die Ausdruck der transcendentalen Reflexion, des Verstehens, in dem das Erkennen seiner selbst als Erkennen inne ist." It does not appear at Kopper, in spite of this (nor even in his own book, Reflexion und Determination, Berlin / New York, 1976), an explicit refference to Amphiboliekapitel.
[43] I have started to call, by convention, the metatheoretical reflexion as "reflection" (see also the note 39)
[44] [B34; A20]; the German text: "In der Erscheinung nenne ich das, was der Empfindung korrespondiert, die Materie derselben, dasjenige aber, welches macht, daß das Mannigfaltige der Erscheinung in gewissen Verhältnissen geordnet werden kann [A: 'angeschauet wird'], nenne ich die Form der Erscheinung."
[45] See, for instance, Artur Buchenau, Grundprobleme der Kritik der Reine Vernunft, Leipzig, 1914, page 83, for the idea that the pure intuitions does not succeed to what-is-given because the matter and the form, as concepts of reflexion, are about a single object in itself ("über den an sich einheitlichen Gegenstand")
[46] in German: "Vermittelst des äußeren Sinnes"
[47] [B37; A22-23]
[48] [B111-112]
[49] The kantian concept of 'Einerleiheit' being in fact intermediate between 'Identität' and 'Einheit', I shall consider that both the latters underlie to it, as its particular notes.
[50] It must be noticed that for Kant the synthetical unity of the apperception, on which is founded thereafter the analytical identity of the apperception, is somehow originally set. Yet, "Synthetical unity of the manifold in intuitions, as given a priori, is therefore the foundation of the identity of apperception itself, which antecedes a priori all my determinate thought ( m e i n e m bestimmten Denken)." [B135]
[51] [B136]
[52] It might be interesting, from this point of view, an analysis of the combined use of the reflection's concepts for the fundamental distinctions from the system of the Critique... emphasizing. Such distinctions, as those between analytical and synthetical or between a priori and a posteriori are, seem to appear in the kantian thought from a much profound reflection wherein the reflection's concepts are developed toghether. Nevertheless, such an investigation would recquire a speciall effort and, first of all, would interupt the argumentative line of the present writing, if it would have been undertaken here.
[53] See: Critique of the Pure Reason [B355; A298]
[54] "Critique of Judgment", The First Introduction, ...
[55] Critique of Judgment, The First Introduction, ...
[56] Kant, op. cit., ...
[57] idem, ...