818 IMMANUELKANT
concepts of something and of nothing, and to construct accordingly* a systematic and
necessary table of their divisions.**
And this system, like every other true one founded on a universal principle, shows
its inestimable value in that it excludes all foreign concepts which might otherwise
intrude among the pure concepts of the understanding, and determines the place of every
cognition. Those concepts, which under the name of “concepts of reflection” have been
likewise arranged in a table according to the clue of the categories, intrude into ontology
without any privilege or just claim to be among the pure concepts of the understanding.
The latter are concepts of connection, and thereby of the objects themselves, whereas the
former are only concepts of mere comparison of concepts already given, and hence are of
quite another nature and use. By my systematic division*** they are saved from this con-
fusion. But the value of the special table of the categories will be still more obvious when
we separate—as we are about to do—the table of the transcendental concepts of reason
from the concepts of the understanding. As the transcendental concepts of reason are of
an entirely different nature and origin, the table of them must have quite another form
than the table of categories. This so necessary separation has never yet been made in any
system of metaphysics, where, as a rule, these Ideas of reason are all mixed up with the
concepts of the understanding, as if they were children of the same family—a confusion
which was unavoidable in the absence of a definite system of categories.THIRDPART OF THEMAINTRANSCENDENTALPROBLEM
HOW IS METAPHYSICS IN GENERAL
POSSIBLE?
§ 40. Pure mathematics and pure science of nature had, for their own safety and
certainty, no need for such a deduction as we have made of both. For the former rests
upon its own evidence, and the latter (though sprung from pure sources of the under-
standing) upon experience and its thorough confirmation. The pure science of nature
cannot altogether refuse and dispense with the testimony of experience; because with
all its certainty it can never, as philosophy, rival mathematics. Both sciences, therefore,
stood in need of this inquiry, not for themselves, but for the sake of another science:
metaphysics.326
*In the chapter on “The Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection,” in the Critique of Pure Reason.
**On the table of the categories many neat observations may be made, for instance: (1) that the third
arises from the first and the second, joined in one concept; (2) that in those of quantity and of quality there is
merely a progress from unity to totality or from something to nothing (for this purpose the categories of qual-
ity must stand thus: reality, limitation, total negation), without correlataor opposita,whereas those of relation
and of modality have them; (3) that, as in logic categorical judgments are the basis of all others, so the cate-
gory of substance is the basis of all concepts of actual things; (4) that, as modality in the judgment is not a par-
ticular predicate, so by the modal concepts a determination is not superadded to things, etc. Such observations
are of great use. If we enumerate all the predicables, which we can find pretty completely in any good ontol-
ogy (for example, Baumgarten’s), and arrange them in classes under the categories, in which operation we
must not neglect to add as complete a dissection of all these concepts as possible, there will then arise a
merely analytical part of metaphysics which does not contain a single synthetical proposition, which might
precede the second (the synthetical) and would, by its precision and completeness, be not only useful but, in
virtue of its system, be even to some extent elegant.
***See Critique of Pure Reason,“The Amphiboly of the Concepts of Reflection.”327