Part 15

A question of no less importance is whether the logical _a priori_ synthesis (we might say, the _a priori_ synthesis in general) is to be conceived as a synthesis of opposites; if, in other words, intuition and concept, matter and form, exist in the _a priori_ synthesis in the same way as Being and not Being exist in true Being, which is Becoming; or as good and evil, true and false, and so on, exist in the special forms of the Spirit. The affirmative reply to this question finds, as is well known, its chief representative in the doctrine of Hegel. We do not wish to deny the great truth contained in this doctrine, in so far as by considering the _a priori_ synthesis as a synthesis of opposites, it insists upon this essential point: that intuition and concept matter and form, do not exist in the logical act as two separable elements, merely externally connected. Outside the synthesis the subject does not exist as subject, and the predicate does not exist in any way. We must banish altogether the idea of the _a priori_ synthesis, conceived as the reuniting of two facts existing separately. But having recognized the true side of the doctrine, we must correct the inexactness it contains. This arises from the confusion already criticized, by which the relation of opposition is unduly extended to distinct concepts, and the unity of effectual distinction is confused with the dialectic unity, which declares itself synthetic, only in so far as it makes war against an abstract distinction.[1] The _a priori_ synthesis is a unity of distinct concepts and not of opposites. That which is the material of the logical synthesis and which outside it has no logical character (is not subject), yet in another and inferior grade of the spirit is form and not matter, and is called intuition. Hence, there is distinction and unity together; form is not without matter; but the new matter was already form and, therefore, had its own matter. The logical _a priori_ synthesis presupposes an æsthetic _a priori_ synthesis. When considered in the logical sphere, this is certainly no longer a synthesis, but an indispensable element of the new synthesis. But outside the logical sphere, it possesses its own proper and peculiar autonomy. In the logical act intuition is _blind_ without the concept, as the concept is _void_ without the intuition. But pure intuition is not blind, because it has its own proper intuitive light. The concept contains the intuition, but the intuition transfigured. It is a synthesis, not of itself and its opposite, but of itself and its distinct concept which is indistinguishable from itself, save by an act of abstraction. In this way we satisfy the demand expressed in the formula of the synthesis as unity of opposites, and at the same time repress its tendency to usurpation. This tendency leads to the rejection of the concept of æsthetic synthesis, in favour of the concept of logical synthesis; it means the negation of art by philosophy, not only in the philosophical field (which would be just), but in the whole spiritual field. Extending itself from this to other usurpations and led on by the mirage of an ill-understood unity, it claims all the other syntheses for logical synthesis, and produces a great spiritual desert, in which logical thought itself at length dies of starvation.

[Sidenote: _The category in the judgment. Difference between category and innate idea._]

The logical element, the pure concept or judgment of definition considered in itself, is given the name of _category_ in the logical _a priori_ synthesis. This term is nothing but the Greek equivalent for the word "predicate," which we have hitherto employed. It has been asked if the category is what used to be called an _inniate idea._ The answer must be that it is both that and also something profoundly different. The innate idea was indeed the category, but the category taken as possessed and thought _prior_ to experience, according to the view that we have described as abstract or dogmatic. First the music, then the words; first definitions, then individual judgments or perceptions. The category, on the contrary, is neither the mother nor the first-born. It is born at one birth with the individual judgment, not as its twin, but as that judgment itself. From this aspect the category or the _a priori_ is not the innate, but the perpetually new-born. From this we see the vanity of the question, whether the judgment or the concept be logically _prior,_ not only in the relation, which we have already examined, of concept with verbal form (judgment of definition), but also in the relation of concept with individual judgment. We can say indifferently that to _think_ is to _conceive,_ or that to _think_ is to _judge,_ because the two formulæ are reduced to one. Equally vain is the question as to whether the categories precede the judgment or are obtained from it. They not only do not precede the judgment, but are not even obtained from it. We never issue forth from the judgment, as we never issue forth from reality and history.

[Sidenote: _The a priori synthesis, the destruction of transcendency, and the objectivity of knowledge._]

A final explanation, not less important than those already given, concerns the _importance_ of the logical _a priori_ synthesis. This too has been diminished by the very man who discovered and defined that mental act, and even more by those who have repeated him, without being capable of reviving again the moment of discovery, and of understanding the intimate reasons that brought it about. When the concept was placed outside and prior to the representative element, and thought prior to and outside the world, so that the former was applied to the latter, the world was bound to appear to be something inferior to the concept, a degradation or an impure contact, which thought had to undergo. When, on the other hand, the representative element was placed outside and prior to the concept, the latter seemed to be inferior to it, almost as though it were an expedient for taking hold of the world, without truly being able to do so, and thus in its turn a degradation or defilement of it. Hence the sigh that we hear already in antiquity and more strongly in modern times: oh, if _words_ (that is to say _concepts,_ because concepts were called words) were not, how directly should we apprehend things! Oh, if _thought_ were not, how vigorously should we embrace genuine reality!

In the first instance, reality is inferior to the concept, in the second the concept to reality; but in both alike, the two elements are always thought--as mutually external and truth as undiscoverable. Thus both these one-sided tendencies end in mystery. According to the former, the world is created by a God external to it, and will be disintegrated when it shall seem good to him, while the latter holds that the truth of things is plunged in impenetrable darkness. But granted the idea of the _a priori_ synthesis, reality is not inferior to thought nor thought to reality, nor is the one external to the other. Representations are docile to thought, and thought conceals representations even less than the tenuous and scanty veil concealed the beauty of Alcina. The interpenetration of the two elements is perfect, and they constitute unity. The false belief in the externality and heterogeneity of reality and thought can only arise when for the pure concept and the _a priori_ synthesis there are substitutes, either abstract concepts with their related analytic judgments, which are void of all representative content, or empirical concepts with their related and merely synthetic judgments, which are without logical form. The value of the _a priori_ synthesis lies in its efficacy in putting an end to doubts as to the _objectivity_ of thought and the _cognizability_ of reality, and in making triumphant the power of thought over the real, which is the power of the real to know itself.

[Sidenote: _Power of the a priori synthesis never known to its discoverer._]

But this efficacy of the _a priori_ synthesis remained obscure to its discoverer (and most obscure to his orthodox followers). To such an extent was this the case, that even to Kant the category did not seem to be immanent in the real and to be the thinking of its reality, but an extrinsic, though necessary adjunct, an inevitable alteration introduced into reality to make it thinkable, an anticipatory renunciation of the knowledge of genuine reality. Reality itself lay outside every category and judgment, a _thing in itself._ Even in Kant, the _a priori_ synthesis was confused with simple analysis and with simple synthesis. These being manipulations of the real, extrinsic and not intrinsic, practical and not logical, useful, but without truth, so the _a priori_ synthesis appeared to him to be an expedient to which man has recourse and cannot but have recourse, but which constitutes, not his power, but his weakness. Kant, too, dreamed of an ideal of knowledge, which was not _a priori_ synthesis, but the _intellectual intuition,_ the perfect adequacy of thought to reality, unattainable by the human spirit. He did not perceive that the intellectual intuition, which he longed for as an impossible ideal, was precisely the continuous operation of the _a priori_ synthesis, nor did he think that what is necessary and insuperable cannot be defective. He never knew that the _a priori_ synthesis, which he had discovered, is alone the true concept and the true judgment, and, therefore, operates in an altogether different way from simple analysis and simple synthesis, which are neither concept nor judgment; nor finally that if these last postulate a _thing in itself,_ the _a priori_ synthesis cannot postulate it, because it has _it in itself._

To understand all the richness of the _a priori_ synthesis is to pay honour to the genius of Emmanuel Kant; but it is also to recognize that the systematic construction of Kant showed itself altogether unequal to the great principle he laid down, but whose value he insufficiently estimated.

[Footnote 1: See above, Sect. I. Chap. VI.]

III

LOGIC AND THE DOCTRINE OF THE CATEGORIES

[Sidenote: _The demand for a complete table of the categories._]

When the definition of the _a priori_ synthesis and of the category has been attained, it is usual to demand of logical Science (and this will be demanded also of our exposition) that it should say how many and of what sort are the categories, how they are connected among themselves, _i.e._ that it should draw up a _table_ of them.

[Sidenote: _A request extraneous to Logic. Logical and real categories._]

Logic, in our opinion, should reject this demand, the origin of which lies in the confusion between thought in general and thought as the science of thought. The categories are certainly affirmed in the individual judgment, but Logic, as the science of thought, does not undertake to formulate judgments which will say what are the predicable terms, the ultimate or pure concepts, the categories, with which reality is thought. Logic cannot claim to substitute itself for the other philosophic sciences and itself to solve all the problems which offer themselves to thought as to the nature of reality. Its scope is to define categories and to formulate judgments _only on that aspect of Reality, which is logical thought._ It is, therefore, under the obligation to face the question as to whether there be logical categories, supreme concepts or supreme predicables from the point of view of logic, and if there be, to indicate and to deduce them. It is not obliged to indicate and to deduce all the supreme predicables and categories.

[Sidenote: _The uniqueness of the logical category: the concept._]

Now we have already treated of the question as to the categories of Logic and have solved it, partly affirmatively, partly in the negative. That is to say, we have denied to Logic a multiplicity of categories, since the three fundamental categories, usually given as concept, judgment, and syllogism, have been revealed to be identical. The others, derived from formalist Logic and relating to classes of concepts, to forms of judgments and to figures of the syllogism (and even these three preceding, if they are taken as separable or distinguishable), have been shown to be empirical and arbitrary. Finally, those that were based upon the gnoseology of the pseudoconcepts have shown themselves to be extraneous to pure Logic. On the other hand, we have affirmed the category proper to Logic,--the unique category to which it gives rise. It has been defined as the pure concept, at once judgment of definition and individual judgment, the logical _a priori_ synthesis. Thus the enquiry can be looked upon as exhaustive as regards this part of the subject.

[Sidenote: _The other categories. No longer logical, but real. Systems of categories._]

A glance at the tables of categories that have appeared in the course of the history of philosophy, from that of Aristotle, which is the first, at least among the conspicuous, to that of Stuart Mill, or if it be preferred, to the Kategorienlehre of E. von Hartmann, which is the last, or among the last, shows at once that the other categories, which have been described as logical categories, can be reduced to verbal variants of this unique one of the pure concept, or belong to other aspects of the spirit and of reality, as distinct from that of logical thought. For if in the Aristotelian table the _ousia_ and the _poion,_ substance and quality, to some extent denote the subject and the predicate of the judgment, that is to say, the abstract elements of the _a priori_ synthesis: the _poson,_ on the other hand, appeals to the processes of enumeration and of measurement, the _pou_ and the _poté_ to the determination of space and time, the _poiein_ and the _paschein_ to the principles of practical activity, and so on. The Kantian table seems to refer, or to mean to refer, to logical thought; but that does not prevent the appearance in it of traces of the principles of mathematical, naturalistic, heuristic, and other processes. Furthermore, in the Kantian philosophy, the whole system of the categories is to be deduced, not from the transcendental Logic alone, but also from the transcendental Æsthetic (space and time), and from the Critique of Practical Reason and Judgment, which all lead to functions or forms, operating as spiritual syntheses and reappearing as categories in judgments. Finally, we must not neglect the Kantian metaphysical categories of Physics.

[Sidenote: _The Hegelian system of the categories and other later systems._]

All this becomes clearer in the doctrine of Hegel, where the categories are not only those of logical thought or subjective thought, concept, judgment, syllogism; but also those of quality, quantity and measure, essence, phenomenon and reality, with their subforms and transitions, and those of the objective concept, mechanism, chemism, and teleology, and those of the Idea, life, knowing, and the absolute Idea. The Hegelian, Kuno Fischer, makes certain declarations in his _Logic_ to which it is expedient to give heed. Following the example of the master, he was induced to include knowing and willing among the categories; "It may at first sight seem strange (he says), that knowing and willing should appear here as logico-metaphysical concepts, as categories. Knowledge has need of categories; but is knowledge itself a category? Willing belongs to Psychology and Morality, not to Logic and Metaphysic. It seems, then, that the categories lose themselves now in Physics or Physiology, by means of concepts such as those of mechanism and organism, now in Psychology and Ethics, with the concepts of knowing and of willing. Objections of this sort have often been made. We have shown that the concept must be thought as object, and that the concept of object demands that of mechanism: the justification of the thing resides in this proof. Willing and knowing are indeed categories. If the test, by which we recognize the categories, consists in that they are valid, not only for certain objects, but for all, and in that they should express the universal nature of things, it is not difficult to see in what a profoundly significant way knowing and willing emerge triumphantly from such a test. They belong not only to what are called the faculties of the human spirit, but in truth to the _very conditions of the world._ If the world must be understood as end it must also be understood as willing; for the end without the willing is nothing. ... If knowing and willing were only a small human province of the world, they would certainly not be categories. Their concept would belong not to metaphysic, but to the anthropological sciences. Since they are, on the contrary, both of them cosmic principles, universal concepts, without which the concept of objects and of the world cannot be thoroughly thought and known, for that reason they necessarily have the value of categories. And since, in truth, they compose the concept of the world, they are the supreme categories."[1] This argument amounts to saying, that whenever a concept is truly universal (not restricted to this or that class of manifestations of reality and therefore empirical), whenever a concept is a pure concept, it is always a category. This thesis is most exact, but it amounts to excluding such a search from pure Logic, which does not give the concepts or concept of reality, but only the _concept of the concept._ The attempt of Hegel to embrace the totality of the categories was not understood and was abandoned at a later date, and a return was made in some sort to the categories of the theoretic and practical--theoretic spirit alone--(von Hartmann gives them in his fundamental tripartition of the categories into sensibility, reflective thought and speculative thought). But the tendency to totality reappeared, in an elementary form, in Stuart Mill, who opposed to the Aristotelian table his own, divided into the three classes of _sentiments_ (sensations, thoughts, emotions, volitions), of _substances_ (bodies and spirits), and of _attributes_ (quality, relation, quantity): a vertiginous regression to an infantile conception, which yet sought to embrace in its own way the whole of reality.

[Sidenote: _The logical order of the predicates or categories._]

The doctrine of the categories has been introduced and retained in Logic, not only because of the confusion between the thought of thought and thought in general, which has just been explained, but also because of another confusion, which must now be explained, as it has far deeper roots and far greater importance. It has been and may be argued in this way. It is true that the categories are nothing but simply the concepts of reality; but these concepts, acting as predicates, are presented in logic in a necessary order, which it is the task of logical Science to deduce. In determining reality by means of thought, we begin with a first predicate, for instance _being,_ judging that reality is. This judgment immediately shows itself insufficient, whence it becomes necessary to determine it with a second predicate and to judge that reality both is and is not, or is _becoming._ This predicate of becoming appears in its turn vague and abstract, and it becomes necessary to determine reality as _quality,_ then as _quantity, measure, essence, existence, mechanism, teleology, life, reflexion, will, idea,_ in short with all the predicates that exhaust the concept of reality.

[Sidenote: _Illusion as to the logical reality of this order._]

But we know that this order, this supposed succession, is illusory and is simply the product of abstract analysis. In the predicate to which verbal prominence is given, there is concentrated or understood every predicate, because in every judgment complete reality[2] is predicated of the subject. Moreover this is shown just by the observation, which reveals the insufficiency of an isolated and abstract predicate, and requires for sufficiency nothing less than the totality of the predicates, the full concept of the Real, of the Spirit or of the Idea. The concept of Reality, of Spirit or the Idea, can without doubt be developed, in its unity and in its distinctions; but (let us yet again repeat) logical Science has for its object, not the effective unity and distinction of the Real, but the _concept_ of unity and distinction..

[Sidenote: _The necessity of the order of the predicates, not founded in Logic in particular, but in the whole of Philosophy._]

The ordering of the variety of the predicates, their gradation according to their greater or less adequacy to reality, arises from the fact that disputes as to reality show themselves as one-sided affirmations of this or that predicate or group of predicates, coupled with the neglect or negation of others, which are not less indispensable. When, therefore, we attack such one-sidedness and affirm the complete indivisibility of the predicates, the single predicates, the objects of the one-sided affirmations, are scrutinized one after the other, in order to demonstrate their insufficiency, and for this very reason a certain order is given to them. This order is, without doubt, necessary, because the possibility of errors, or of one-sided thoughts, is a consequence of the distinctions, in which the unity of the Real lives, and which are necessary to it. But for this very reason the order must be sought, not in logical Science, but in the total conception of Reality. For instance, in researches concerning the ethical concept, only he who thinks, not the concept of the concept (logical science), but the concept of ethical activity (ethical science), will be able to determine what one-sided concepts are there possible and what is their order. Only he who thinks a whole philosophy will be able to determine how many and what and how connected are the one-sided and erroneous modes of philosophy. This cannot be found in the concept of the concept; or rather only those erroneous modes are there found which derive from a one-sided thinking of the concept of the concept. This we shall see in its place. The order of the categories in the sense indicated is certainly not subjective and arbitrary, as a didactic ordering of them would be, a _πρότερον prὸs ἡμᾶς_; it is a _πρότερον φύσει._ But since this first by nature is identical with the whole concept of Reality, it is not wholly contained in the concept of Logic.

[Sidenote: _False distinction of philosophy into two spheres, Metaphysic and Philosophy, rational philosophy and real philosophy, etc., due to the confusion between Logic and doctrine of the categories._]