UC-NRLF 
 
 B 3 3Sb SbS 
 
CORNELL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 No. 9 
 
 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM 
 
 OF 
 
 KANT'S Theory of Experience 
 
 RADOSLAV A TSANOFF, A.B. 
 
 FORMERLY SCHOLAR AND FELLOW IN THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 
 
 OF Cornell University for the Degree of 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 May, 1910 
 
 I vmv 
 Neto ¥ork ^^^J 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & COMPANY 
 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 I9II 
 
CORNELL STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY 
 No. 9 
 
 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM 
 
 OF 
 
 Kant's Theory of Experience 
 
 RADOSLAV a". TSANOFF, A.B. 
 
 FORMERLY SCHOLAR AND FELLOW IN THE SAGE SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY 
 
 A THESIS 
 
 Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School 
 
 OF Cornell University for the Degree of 
 
 Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 May, 1910 
 
 Neb) ¥tirfe 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & COMPANY 
 
 Fourth Avenue and Thirtieth Street 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 
 I9II 
 
Pkess of 
 r era printing compant 
 lancaster, pa. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The writer has found the literature on Schopenhauer in English 
 comparatively meagre on the technical side, particularly with 
 respect to Schopenhauer's criticism of the Kantian philosophy. 
 Professor Caldwell's article on "Schopenhauer's Criticism of 
 Kant" in Mind (Vol. XVI, 1891, pp. 355-374) is, of course, 
 a direct contribution to the subject, but, in his bulky volume, 
 Schopenhauer's System in its Philosophical Significance (New 
 York, 1896), Professor Caldwell does not discuss in any detail 
 Schopenhauer's "opinions upon Kant and Kant's works" (p. x), 
 believing quite seriously "not only that Schopenhauer himself 
 made little serious attempt to correlate his own thought with any 
 other system in existence (save perhaps the Kantian philosophy), 
 but that he did not care in the least to be understood" (p. 35). 
 The articles containing the controversy between J. Hutchison 
 Stirling and Edward Caird concerning Schopenhauer's inter- 
 pretation and criticism of Kant, particularly with respect to 
 the deduction of the categories, in the Journal of Speculative 
 Philosophy {Vo\.yil\\,^p.i-^o, 215-220; Vol. XIV, pp. 49-134, 
 353-376), comprise, to the best of my knowledge, the longest 
 discussion in English of problems directly connected with 
 the subject of the present investigation. But Caird's articles 
 are concerned mainly with explaining his own interpretation of 
 Kant, and lay little stress upon Schopenhauer's particular 
 criticisms; whereas Stirling's articles, written in a too contro- 
 versial spirit and full of irrelevant personal disputation, fail, 
 I think, to approach the problem from a significant point of 
 view. Professor Colvin's thesis, Schopenhauer's Doctrine oj the 
 Thing-in-itselJ and His Attempt to Relate It to the World of 
 Phenomena (Providence, 1897), contains a discussion of that 
 problem from an historical point of view, but I have had no 
 occasion to make direct use of it. Professor Wallace's Life of 
 Arthur Schopenhauer (London, 1890), in the Great Writers series, 
 
 i28205 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 is much the best book on Schopenhauer that has appeared in 
 EngHsh. Wallace's portrayal of Schopenhauer is admirable, and 
 the book as a whole is as good an introduction to Schopenhauer's 
 philosophy as could well be desired. But, of course, it is no more 
 than a brief introduction can be, and is not concerned with the 
 technical treatment of Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant. 
 
 Of the standard works on Schopenhauer in German and French, 
 few contain any at all extended treatment of his relation to 
 Kant. In Kuno Fischer's systematic study of his philosophy, 
 Arthur Schopenhauer, in his Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, 
 Vol. VIII (Heidelberg, 1893), only a few pages are devoted to 
 the technical treatment of our particular problem ; and Johannes 
 Volkelt, in his lucidly written volume, Arthur Schopenhauer, 
 seine Personlichkeit, seine Lehre, sein Glaube (Stuttgart, 1900), in 
 Frommanns Klassiker der Philosophie, while having the Critical 
 point of view clearly in mind in his analysis of Schopenhauer's 
 epistemology, is nevertheless concerned chiefly with Schopen- 
 hauer's own position, and does not therefore discuss in detail the 
 significance of Schopenhauer's criticism of Kant's philosophy. 
 Ribot's La philosophie de Schopenhauer (Paris, 1890) and Bos- 
 sert's Schopenhauer, Vhomme et le philosophe (Paris, 1904) each 
 devote a chapter to a brief outline of the "Appendix" to The 
 World as Will and Idea. 
 
 There are several monographs having a more or less direct 
 bearing upon the subject of the present study. I should mention 
 first of all Dr. Raoul Richter's dissertation, Schopenhauer's 
 Verhdltnis zu Kant in seinen Grundziigen (Leipzig, 1893), a study 
 which, in painstaking analysis, keenness of penetration, and 
 lucidity of exposition, already promised what that scholarly 
 author has fulfilled in his later works. Dr. Richter approaches 
 the problem by contrasting Kant and Schopenhauer as men, 
 thinkers, and writers, and exhibiting a corresponding contrast 
 between their systems. The technical nature of my own study 
 has led me to lay less stress upon the psychological aspects of the 
 problem, and to consider rather the inherent incompatibility 
 of the two systems themselves. I regret that I did not have 
 access to Dr. Richter's dissertation until after my work had been 
 
PREFACE. V 
 
 nearly completed. Nevertheless, I have made occasional refer- 
 ences to his views in the footnotes. Georg Albert's Kant's 
 transscendentale Logik, mit besonderer Berucksichtigung der Scho- 
 penhauer schen Kritik der Kantischen Philosophie(Wien, 1895) is a 
 well written and very suggestive monograph. Mscislaw Warten- 
 berg's articles, "Der Begrifif des 'transscendentalen Gegenstandes' 
 bei Kant — und Schopenhauers Kritik desselben : Eine Recht- 
 fertigung Kants," in Kantstudien (Vol. IV, pp. 202-231; Vol. V, 
 pp. 145-176), contain a systematic discussion of that particular 
 problem, and show a thorough grasp of some fundamental issues. 
 
 References could be made, of course, to many other books on 
 Schopenhauer, were it not for the fact that they have no very 
 direct bearing upon our special problem. It has not been my 
 intention to give here a list of the books which I have had 
 occasion to use. I merely wish to call attention to the fact that 
 the better known writers on Schopenhauer have not given his 
 criticism of Kant's theory of experience the share of attention 
 which I think it deserves. 
 
 In making references to Schopenhauer's works, the Grisebach 
 edition of the Werke, in Reclam's Universal-Bibliothek (Leipzig, 
 6 volumes) has been used throughout. The inaccurate and un- 
 reliable character of Frauenstadt's edition, formerly regarded as 
 the standard, has been pointed out by many recent writers on 
 Schopenhauer, and Grisebach's edition has gained in popularity. 
 (C/. Kuno Fischer, op. cit., pp. 140-146; Bossert, op. cit., pp. 
 vi-vii; Paulsen, Schopenhauer, Hamlet, Mephistopheles, Berlin, 
 1900, p. 3. Volkelt, op. cit., p. 359, also refers to the "muster- 
 giiltigen" edition of Grisebach.) Quotations from The World as 
 Will and Idea are given according to the admirable English 
 translation by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp (fourth edition, 
 London, 1896), in The English and Foreign Philosophical Library . 
 The references to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason are to the first 
 edition unless otherwise stated ; cross-references are always given 
 to Max MuUer's translation (second edition. New York, 1896), 
 which has been used for the quotations. 
 
 I wish to express my gratitude to Professors J. E. Creighton, 
 W. A. Hammond, and Frank Thilly, of The Sage School of 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 Philosophy, for valuable suggestions and generous help in the 
 course of my work. Professor Thilly also kindly allowed me access 
 to his collection of Schopenhauer literature. Above all, however, 
 I am profoundly indebted to the sympathetic guidance and 
 helpful criticism of Professor Ernest Albee, who is largely respon- 
 sible for whatever this monograph may possess of logical coher- 
 ence and technical accuracy, though not, of course, for the par- 
 ticular views expressed. I wish also to thank Professor S. F. 
 MacLennan, of Oberlin College, my first teacher in philosophy, 
 who introduced me to the study of both Kant and Schopenhauer, 
 for his kindness in looking over the proofs. 
 
 Radoslav a. Tsanoff. 
 
 New York City, 
 May, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Introduction ix 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 The Nature and Genesis of Experience: Perception and 
 Conception i 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The Principles of Organization in Experience: The Deduc- 
 tion and the Real Significance of the Categories 23 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 The Scope and Limits of Experience: Transcendental 
 Dialectic 43 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Experience and Reality: The Will as the Thing-in-itself . . 62 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Schopenhauer's interpretation and criticism of Kant's theory 
 ■of experience is also an indispensable commentary upon the 
 technical side of his own philosophical system, and for this reason 
 alone would deserve more serious attention than it has generally 
 received. That Schopenhauer professes to base his own philos- 
 ophy directly upon that of Kant, — or upon that part of the 
 Critical philosophy which he approves of, — must be evident to 
 all readers of The World as Will and Idea. His scornful re- 
 pudiation of the other Post-Kantians is almost as evident as his 
 reverence for the master, when he says in the Preface: "The 
 philosophy of Kant ... is the only philosophy with which a 
 thorough acquaintance is directly presupposed in what we have 
 to say here."^ 
 
 But, though Schopenhauer is fond of representing himself as 
 the true successor of Kant, he is anything but a mere disciple of the 
 older philosopher. His thoroughgoing criticism of Kant's theory 
 of experience, at once highly technical and decidedly unconven- 
 tional, is generally suggestive and often illuminating, even where 
 it signally fails to offer adequate solutions of the problems 
 considered. As might be expected, Schopenhauer shows little 
 capacity for sympathetic interpretation. His style is almost 
 invariably controversial, his point of view always distinctly his 
 own. To reinterpret and rectify Kant in the spirit of his own 
 epistemological phenomenalism and voluntaristic metaphysics, 
 and, while laying bare the inconsistencies of his master, clearly 
 to indicate the inevitableness of his own proffered solutions, and 
 thus establish firmly the grounds of his claim that between Kant 
 and himself nothing has been done in philosophy and that he is 
 Kant's immediate successor, — these are the aims of the Appendix 
 
 1 G., I, p. 13; H.K., I, p. xii. For the sake of convenience, Grisebach's edition 
 of Schopenhauer's works is referred to as G., Haldane and Kemp's translation of 
 The World as Will and Idea, as H.K., the first edition of the Krilik der reinen Ver- 
 nunft, as Kr. d. r. V., and Max MuUer's translation, as M. The other references 
 are self-explanatory. 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to The World as Will and Idea, which contains the major portion 
 of Schopenhauer's systematic criticism of the Kantian philosophy. 
 It is as an apologist for and defender of Kant at his best, and 
 often against himself, that Schopenhauer constantly addresses 
 himself to his readers. He would free Kant's philosophy from 
 its excrescences and show its essential meaning; he would expose 
 the charlatanry of the university professors who have distorted 
 the master's doctrine. His own system is intended not so much 
 to supersede as to complete Kant's work; for the essential prin- 
 ciples of Kantianism, he always insists, can never be superseded. 
 Perhaps the most convenient way to indicate the general spirit 
 of Schopenhauer's interpretation of the Kantian philosophy will 
 be to state briefly what he considered to be Kant's three incon- 
 testable achievements in the quest of truth. ^ Kant's greatest 
 merit in philosophy Schopenhauer finds in the fact that he dis- 
 tinguished clearly between the phenomenon and the thing-in- 
 itself. The inner nature of reality is hidden from our knowledge 
 by the intercepting intellect; our experience is fundamentally 
 'intellectual.' In reaching this momentous conclusion, Kant 
 clearly formulated and carried out to its logical results a doctrine 
 already implicit in Locke's Essay concerning Human Under- 
 standing. Locke explained the so-called 'secondary qualities' 
 of things as mere affections of the senses. This line of argu- 
 ment, which Locke had employed only in the case of the 'sec- 
 ondary qualities,' Berkeley and Hume extended to the whole 
 range of experience. Berkeley, as Schopenhauer says, first 
 showed himself in earnest with the subjective standpoint, and 
 may thus be regarded as "the originator of the proper and true 
 Idealism, "2 in that he shows the identity of existence and per- 
 ceptibility. But Berkeley did not know where to find the Real,^ 
 and borrowed from theology the notion of spiritual substance, 
 while rejecting that of material substance. Hume, making a 
 more consistent and thoroughgoing application of the method 
 
 • The following outline will adhere in the main to Schopenhauer's order in the 
 "Criticism of the Kantian Philosophy," as given in the "Appendix" to The World 
 as Will and Idea. 
 
 ' G., IV, p. 26; Bax, Schopenhauer's Essays, in Bohn's Library, p. 13. 
 
 3G., IV, p. 26; Bax, p. 14. 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xl 
 
 which Berkeley had followed to the extent of disproving the 
 existence of material substance, showed that the notion of spir- 
 itual substance was equally untenable. Moreover, his destruc- 
 tive analysis of the law of causality led him to the conclusion 
 that no necessary connection obtained in experience. 
 
 Kant, correcting the conclusions which Hume had drawn 
 from his wider application of the Lockean method, indicated the 
 real significance of the empirical point of view and systematized 
 the results of British empiricism. That is to say, Kant reinter- 
 preted the meaning of these results; for him they did not lead, 
 as they did for Hume, to any sceptical conclusions con- 
 cerning experience. He first brought out clearly the general 
 implications of the idealistic point of view, — a thing which Berke- 
 ley had been unable to do, because of the narrowness of his 
 line of attack, confined as that was to one point. ^ The distinc- 
 tion between phenomena and things-in-themselves, and the 
 necessary limitation of experience to the former, — principles 
 which now for the first time were consistently formulated, — 
 revealed the half-hidden meaning of dimly felt truths in Plato 
 and the Vedic writers; they showed at the same time the funda- 
 mentally false starting-point of Kant's rationalistic predecessors, 
 with their demand for 'eternal truths.' The recognition of the 
 fact that these truths themselves had their origin and basis in 
 the human mind, and that their supposedly absolute validity 
 was, as a matter of fact, restricted to phenomenal experience, 
 shook the very foundations of pre-Kantian dogmatism. No 
 wonder that Mendelssohn, 'the last of the sleepers,' called 
 Kant "den Alleszermalmer."^ This is the Copernican reversal 
 of method which Kant inaugurated. Instead of starting with 
 certain ultimate and immutable truths, as the rationalists had 
 done, Kant took these truths themselves as problems, and, 
 by discovering their real source in the human mind, and their 
 purely experiential validity, laid the foundations of a real 
 philosophy of experience.' His theory of knowledge, however, 
 involved a frank recognition of the fact that our experience con- 
 
 iG.. I, p. 542; H.K., II, p. 15. 
 
 ^G.. I, p. S37;H. K., II. p. 9. 
 
 ' Cf. G., I, pp. 537 f.; H.K., II, pp. 9 ff. 
 
Xll INTROD UCTION. 
 
 cerns only phenomena, and does not extend to things-in-them- 
 selves. 
 
 A second immortal achievement of the Critical Philosophy^ 
 according to Schopenhauer, is its assertion of the primacy of 
 the Will. For Kant, the nature of the thing-in-itself remained 
 in a large measure an untouched problem. Yet, in so far as he 
 established its non-intellectual character, and, furthermore, 
 explained the undeniably metaphysical significance of human 
 action as passing beyond the pale of the phenomenal, — in so far 
 Schopenhauer thinks that Kant was dimly conscious of that truth 
 which he himself was the first clearly to expound and formulate, 
 the truth, namely, that the Will is the Weltprincip. That this 
 truth of all truths should have been implicitly present in Kant's 
 thought, Schopenhauer regards as a deeply significant fact, in 
 that it connects his own philosophy with that of Kant. 
 
 The third permanent result of Kant's philosophy, Schopenhauer 
 thinks, is its complete refutation of Scholasticism, which had 
 treated philosophy as ancillary to theology and had dominated 
 the thought of almost every philosopher since Augustine, Gior- 
 dano Bruno and Spinoza being the notable exceptions. The 
 deathblow which the Critique of Pure Reason dealt to the rational- 
 istic psychology, cosmology, and theology was salutary alike 
 to philosophy and to natural science; it liberated both from the 
 shackles of creed-prejudice and allowed philosophical investi- 
 gation free play in its search after truth. ^ 
 
 The salient points of Schopenhauer's appreciative introduction 
 to his criticism of Kant's philosophy have been noted briefly. 
 The problems it raises, touching as they do epistemology, meta- 
 physics, and theology, and suggesting the tenor of Schopenhauer's 
 whole philosophy, cannot be considered to advantage until 
 after a detailed examination of what Schopenhauer asserts to 
 be Kant's epistemological errors, and a discussion of the funda- 
 mental principles of his own philosophy, which he invariably 
 advocates as offering the only logical solution of every real 
 Kantian problem. It will be well, however, to keep in mind 
 from the very start these three conclusions of Kant's philosophy, 
 
 'C/. G., IV, pp. ii8ff. 
 
INTROD UCTION. xiil 
 
 which Schopenhauer regards as most significant and, indeed, as 
 incontrovertible, (i) Philosophy must recognize the purely 
 phenomenal character of knowledge. This indicates, positively, 
 the phenomenalistic character of Schopenhauer's own epis- 
 temology; negatively, it opens the door to illusionism. (2) 
 Philosophy must realize the primacy of Will over Reason. Posi- 
 tively, again, this may be interpreted as an insistence upon the dy- 
 namic nature of experience, as opposed to the contrary tendency 
 of rationalism. Negatively, — and it is the negative side that 
 is unduly prominent in Scopenhauer's own system, — the recog- 
 nition of the primacy of the Will leads to the dogmatic assertion 
 of the ultimately irrational character of reality, and points 
 to a pessimistic conclusion. (3) Philosophy must be kept 
 distinct from theology. This means the rejection of any tran- 
 scendent principles of explanation, and the repudiation of all 
 dogmatism. These three aspects of Kant's philosophy, as inter- 
 preted by Schopenhauer, are merely indicated here. To analyze 
 them closely and to inquire into their consistency and philo- 
 sophical significance, as well as to determine as nearly as possible 
 their historical value as interpretations of Kant's philosophy, 
 will be the object of this study. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Nature and Genesis of Experience: 
 Perception and Conception. 
 
 The problem of the relative functions of Perception and Con- 
 ception in the genesis of experience raises the fundamental epis- 
 temological issue which split early modern philosophy in twain, 
 and the partial solution of which is one of the most substantial 
 achievements of modern logic. At the dawn of modern philos- 
 ophy we find the old scholastic dispute of Nominalism vs. 
 Realism assuming a new form. The rationalistic world of 'eter- 
 nal truths,' while having a certain abstract coherence of its own, 
 lacks any vital relation to the flesh-and-blood world of sense- 
 experience. If the actual facts are not in accord with its concep- 
 tual scheme, then, Schopenhauer says, experience is "given 
 to understand that it knows nothing of the matter and 
 ought to hold its tongue when philosophy has spoken a 
 priori.''^ The revolt against this worship of the abstract uni- 
 versal was represented by empiricism, which grounded its truths 
 in sense-experience and sought to explain all knowledge as 
 having its origin in perception. Rationalism had distrusted 
 the impressions of the senses, and viewed Reality from the 
 standpoint of its conceptual system, constructed by a process of 
 logical deduction from certain truths which were regarded as 
 axiomatic. For empiricism, on the other hand, the test of 
 Reality was to be found, not in the formal coherence of an 
 abstractly deduced system of concepts, but in the vividness and 
 immediate certainty of actual sense-experience. 
 
 Reality itself was conceived by both schools as in some sense 
 the transcendent ground of experience, either as the ultimate 
 basis of the rationalistic system of concepts, or else as the ' I 
 know not what,' accounting for the immediate presence of sense- 
 experience. Empiricism and Rationalism differed as to whether 
 
 iG., I, p. 538; H.K., II, p. II. 
 
2 "^CtiOPEl^tlAUERS CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 the real nature of things was more adequately to be defined in 
 perceptual or in conceptual terms; that is to say, the dispute 
 between them was primarily an epistemological one. But pre- 
 Kantian philosophy was unable to solve the problem as to the 
 relation between perception and conception precisely because of 
 its inadequate understanding of the relation between experience 
 and reality. And here is where Schopenhauer finds the great signifi- 
 cance of Kant's reconstruction of philosophy. "The main tend- 
 ency of the Kantian philosophy," he says, "is to place before us 
 the complete diversity of the Ideal and Real, after Locke had 
 already broken ground."^ Kant proved that the categories of 
 knowledge cannot apply to the Real, and thus ended dogmatic 
 philosophy once for all. The Critique of Pure Reason, Schopen- 
 hauer thinks, showed the spanless chasm which, for epistemology, 
 separates cognitive experience from Reality. But he holds that 
 Kant, while restating the problem of perception and conception 
 and putting it upon a new epistemological basis, was far from clear 
 and consistent in his own treatment. Schopenhauer criticises 
 severely what he calls Kant's "unfortunate confusion"^ of per- 
 ception and conception, and regards this as responsible for a 
 mass of inconsistencies in the Critique. "After he has . . . 
 dismissed this whole world of perception which fills space and 
 time, and in which we live and are, with the meaningless words 
 'the empirical content of perception is given us,' he immediately 
 arrives with one spring at the logical basis of his whole philosophy, 
 the table of judgments.''^ But "the world of perception," Schopen- 
 hauer argues, "is infinitely more significant, generally present, 
 and rich in content than the abstract part of our knowledge."^ 
 If Kant had given as much attention to the concrete content of 
 experience as to the pattern of its formal organization, he would 
 have realized, Schopenhauer thinks, the fundamental distinction 
 between perception and conception, a distinction which for 
 Schopenhauer himself determines the plan of his whole epistemo- 
 logical structure. The Kantian 'object of experience' is neither 
 
 'G., IV, p. io6; Bax, Schopenhauer's Essays, London, 1891, p. 99. 
 *G., I, p. 558; H.K., II, p. 32. 
 3G., I, pp. 549-550; H.K., II, p. 23. 
 *G., I, p. 551; H.K., II, p. 24. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 3 
 
 perceptual nor conceptual: it is "different from both, and yet 
 both at once, and is a perfect chimera."^ 
 
 Schopenhauer's way of looking at the matter is not wholly 
 wrong, but he misses what is after all the fundamental significance 
 of the Critical position. Kant's insistence upon the phenomenal 
 character of our whole experience, perceptual and conceptual 
 alike, certainly helped to emancipate philosophy from the un- 
 warranted assumptions of the earlier dogmatism. The Critique 
 of Pure Reason has no pledges to keep: its fundamental postulate 
 is the inevitable one of respect for its own problem, the postulate, 
 namely, of the intelligibility of experience. To show that expe- 
 rience is possible and that it is somehow intelligible, is no problem 
 for any philosophy that realizes its proper task. To explain 
 the nature of experience and the manner of its organization, 
 however, is the problem. Only in this sense can we ask: How 
 is experience possible? Experience is not a cryptogram, to be 
 transliterated by the use of any transcendent formula; it carries 
 its solution in its own bosom. No one of its aspects has signifi- 
 cance apart from the rest. This standpoint, involved in the 
 very presupposition of the intelligibility of experience, deter- 
 mines at the outset the Critical procedure. For neither are 
 concepts mere mutilated copies of sense-impressions, nor are 
 perceptions confused concepts, but the perceptual and the con- 
 ceptual are both factors in the organic unity of experience. 
 " Thoughts without contents are empty, intuitions without concepts 
 are blind.'"^ This is the fundamental guiding principle of Kant's 
 entire philosophy: the transcendent must give way to the tran- 
 scendental, and a Critical epistemology supplant its ontologizing 
 predecessor.^ 
 
 Whether Kant himself, in denying the possibility of a science 
 of metaphysics, denied along with it the metaphysical significance 
 of experience,^ and whether he carried his epistemological inten- 
 tion consistently through, are matters which had better be dis- 
 cussed later. The point here is, that the raison d'etre of the 
 
 'G., I, p. ss8; H.K., II, p. 32. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 51; M., p. 41. 
 
 'C/. Kr. d. r. V., p. 12; M.. p. 10 ; G., IV, pp. loi flf. 
 
 *Cf. Riehl, Der philosophische Kritizismus, Vol. I, Leipzig, 1908, p. 584. 
 
4 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 '^Critique of Pure Reason, the significance of its novel standpoint, 
 and the reason why in it both empiricism and rationalism were 
 aufgehoben (in the twofold HegeHan sense of that term^), are to 
 be found, not in its solution of the specific question as to whether 
 perception or conception is epistemologically prior, but in the 
 fact that it indicated the true method of approaching the problem. 
 In dealing with our experience from the transcendental point of 
 view, Kant showed that the conflict between empiricism and 
 rationalism lacked all ontological significance. Neither percep- 
 tion nor conception alone could any longer possibly claim to 
 represent reality, for both were shown to be mutually involved 
 in the very nature of experience. 
 
 Schopenhauer recognizes the importance of Kant's account of 
 the relation of experience to reality, but he fails to realize that 
 the Critical method necessitates a restatement of the whole 
 problem of perception and conception and of the genesis of 
 knowledge. In order to understand at once the significance and 
 the inadequacy of Schopenhauer's position, one should follow 
 carefully his consecutive analysis and criticism of Kant's theory 
 of knowledge. 
 
 Schopenhauer's admiration for the 'Transcendental Esthetic' 
 is evident. "The Transcendental Esthetic," he says, "is a work 
 of such extraordinary merit that it alone would have been sufft- 
 cient to immortalize the name of Kant. Its proofs carry such 
 perfect conviction, that I number its propositions among in- 
 contestable truths, and without doubt they are also among those 
 that are richest in results, and are, therefore, to be regarded as 
 the rarest thing in the world, a real and great discovery in meta- 
 physics. "^ In demonstrating that "space and time, no less than 
 causality, are known by us a priori, that is, lie in us before all ex- 
 perience, and hence belong to the subjective side of knowledge,"^ 
 Kant not only completed the work of Hume, but, in completing 
 it, reconstructed it and gave it an entirely new significance. 
 
 Up to a certain point Schopenhauer seems right. Indeed, 
 an interesting parallel might be drawn between the development 
 
 ^ Logic (Wallace's transl.). Oxford, 1892, p. 180. 
 2G.. I, p. 558; H.K.. II, p. 32. 
 'G., IV, p. 32; Bax., p. 20. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 5 
 
 of the phenomenalistic conception of space and time and the 
 genesis of modern epistemology. The scholastic conception of 
 space, as a metaphysical entity enclosing the finite universe, 
 proved inadequate to meet the issues of modern theory of knowl- 
 edge. In early rationalism, to be sure, something corresponding 
 to the old notion long retained a lodging place. In Descartes's 
 philosophy space is indubitably real, since it is regarded as the 
 essence of corporeal substance,^ and Spinoza insists that extension 
 is one of the infinite attributes of God.^ This realistic theory 
 of space Descartes and Spinoza held side by side with an 
 opposite estimate of time, which they explained as subjective, 
 derived from the mere correlation of represented motions, and 
 lacking all metaphysical reality.^ British empiricism, however, 
 grew emphatic in its insistence on the experiential character of 
 space and time alike. In Locke this tendency finds expression 
 in his opposition to Descartes's identification of space with cor- 
 poreal substance.^ Locke's protest is based largely on his agnos- 
 tic attitude concerning substance; this remained for him the 'I 
 know not what,' to identify which with extension he regarded 
 as a serious fallacy.^ The idea of space, according to Locke's 
 theory, has its origin in our sensations of sight and touch ;^ 
 and time is likewise considered from the standpoint of experience ^ 
 as explainable only in terms of the succession of ideas.^ This-, 
 method of approaching the problem of space and time gained 
 confidence and exactness of expression in Berkeley and Hume: 
 space is defined by them as our idea of the orderly distribution of 
 co-existent objects; time, again, is atomistically viewed as the 
 succession of discrete moments, corresponding to the sequence 
 of simple ideas.^ 
 
 iC/. Princ. ph.il.. Pars II, viii. "^Ethics, Part I, prop, xv, schol. 
 
 'C/. Princ. phil.. Pars I, Ivii; Spinoza, Cog. met., I, iv; Elh., II, xlv-xlvii. 
 Leibniz's theory of space and time differs materially from that of Descartes and 
 Spinoza, and it has therefore seemed advisable to refer to it separately, after 
 having indicated the differences between the earlier rationalistic position and 
 that of British empiricism. 
 
 * Essay concerning Human Understanding, Vol. I, Oxford, 1894, p. 226. 
 
 ^Op. cit.. Vol. I. p. 228. Cf. also Book II, chapter xiii, pp. 218-37. 
 
 ^Op. cit.. Book II, chapter iv. 
 
 "^Op. cit., Vol. I, p. 239; cf. Book II, chapters xiv and xv, pp. 238-269. 
 
 «C/. Berkeley, Works, Vol. I, Oxford, 1871, pp. 206, 282; Hume, Treatise of 
 Human Nature, Oxford, 1888, pp. 26-68, esp. pp. 36, 38, 53. 
 
O SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 Leibniz's theory of space is relational, quite the opposite of 
 the Newtonian doctrine of absolute space as the infinite collection 
 of actual points. Mr. Bertrand Russell considers Leibniz fairly 
 strong in his argument against the monistic theory of space as 
 an attribute, but inconclusive in establishing his own conception 
 of space as an assemblage of relations, a position logically neces- 
 sitated by his monadism. Time Leibniz distinguishes from 
 duration: duration is an attribute of objects; time is the ideal 
 measure of duration. Interpretations of Leibniz differ as to the 
 metaphysical reality of time in his system, and a discussion of 
 these would necessitate closer attention to his general theory of 
 monads than seems relevant for the present purpose. Whether 
 space and time, as ideal relations, obtain in the ontological order 
 of monads or not, however, the space and time of experience 
 Leibniz clearly regards as ideal. ^ 
 
 Thus one sees, alongside of the persistent speculation in modern 
 philosophy regarding the status of space and time in the tran- 
 scendent world of 'Reality,' a growing recognition of the fact 
 that for us they are significant only in terms of experience. 
 And the development of modern philosophy is characterized by 
 an increasing realization of the intimate relationship between 
 space and time, as co-essential aspects of experience; there is, 
 as it were, a growing rapprochement between the two. 
 
 In Kant's doctrine of the transcendental ideality of space and 
 time, all the partly thought-out and imperfectly formulated 
 views of their phenomenal character come to a focus. Space 
 and time are for Kant the a priori forms of outer and inner 
 intuition respectively. Their reality is purely experiential ; they 
 find their application solely within the scope of finite experience, 
 outside of which they would be utterly meaningless, but within 
 which they are indispensable, representing as they do its intui- 
 tional basis. The doctrine of the 'Transcendental Esthetic' is 
 among the very few Kantian theories which Schopenhauer accepts 
 unreservedly; the modifications he recommends are only by 
 
 1 See, in this connection, Russell's discussion of Leibniz's theory of space and 
 time in his admirable book. The Philosophy of Leibniz, Cambridge, 1900. Cf. 
 chapters ix and x, especially pp. 112 ff., 118 ff., and also his collection of leading 
 passages from Leibniz, pp. 230-59. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 7 
 
 way of emphasis and addition. "From the doctrine of the 
 Transcendental Esthetic," he says, "I knew of nothing to take 
 away, only of something to add."^ As against the conceptually 
 reasoned out procedure of the Euclidean geometry, which Kant 
 regarded as explainable only on the basis of his theory of space 
 and time, Schopenhauer champions a new geometry, based on 
 pure immediate intuition and unimpeded by roundabout, irrele- 
 vant demonstrations.- 
 
 It is not necessary to discuss here the principles of the 'Tran - 
 scendental Esthetic' in their relation to the Euclidean method in 
 geometry .3 Suffice it to say that Schopenhauer's is no voice 
 crying in the wilderness: his teacher, G. E. Schulze,* is one of 
 the many who have believed that the 'Transcendental Esthetic' 
 suggests a needed reconstruction of geometry. The significant 
 point in this connection is Schopenhauer's insistence upon the 
 distinctly intuitive character of space and time. Critics of 
 Kant have sometimes characterized his view of space as con- 
 ceptual ;5 others have regarded Euclidean space as distinctly in- 
 tuitional.^ There can be no room for doubt as to Schopenhauer's 
 own attitude on the subject. The infinite divisibility and ex- 
 pansion of space and time are for him matters of pure intuition ; 
 they represent the principium rationis sufficientis essendi, as the 
 basis of mathematical relatedness underlying geometry and 
 arithmetic respectively.^ This their mathematical character is 
 
 iG.. I. p. 559; H.K., II. p. 33- 
 
 ^Cf. G., I, pp. 114-119; H.K.. I, pp. 90-96. 
 
 »C/. Fritz Medicus, "Kants transscendentale Aesthetik unddie nichteuklidische 
 Geometrie," in Kantsludien, Vol. III. pp. 261-300. 
 
 *G., I, p. 559; H.K.. II, p. 33. "One of Kant's opponents, and indeed the 
 acutest of them," Schopenhauer calls Schulze, in referring to his argument as 
 presented in the Kritik der theoretischen Philosophic, Book I, sect. 15. Schopen- 
 hauer is not so appreciative when Schulze's views do not happen to coincide with 
 his own conclusions. 
 
 "C/., e. g., W. Caldwell, "Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant," in Mind, 1891, 
 
 P- 363- 
 
 «C/. Goswin Uphues, Kant und seine Vorgdnger, p. 120. Cf. also Richard 
 Honigswald's discussion of this point in Kanlstudien, Vol. XIII, "Zum Begriff der 
 kritischen Erkenntnislehre." pp. 409-456. especially pp. 420 ff. 
 
 'C/. Schopenhauer's Table of the "Praedicabilia a priori of Space and Time," 
 G., II.pp. 6off.; H.K., II, pp. 219 ff. The following brief outHne of Schopenhauer's 
 'four classes of objects,' as presented in the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufi- 
 
o SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 foreign to empirical perception; the world of perceptual expe- 
 rience is not a space-world and also a time-world, but a space- 
 time-world. 
 
 Now, after the intuitive basis and the form of perception have 
 received such a thorough-going treatment at the hands of Kant, 
 what of its content? Schopenhauer says: "The whole teaching 
 of Kant contains really nothing more about this than the oft- 
 repeated meaningless expression : ' The empirical element in per- 
 ception is given from without.'"^ And here it is that Schopen- 
 hauer discovers Kant's TrpcoTov yjrevSo^. "Our knowledge," Kant 
 says, "has two sources, receptivity of impressions and sponta- 
 neity of conceptions: the first is the capacity for receiving ideas, 
 the second that of knowing an object through these ideas: 
 through the first an object is given us, through the second it is 
 thought. "2 This theory of the conceptualizing of the material 
 of sense-impressions into so-called 'objective' experience, Schg,- 
 penhauer repudiates as false. The object, the Vorstellung, is not' 
 'given' us. What is actually given, he insists, is the raw sensa- 
 tion, i. e., the mere stimulation of a sense-organ. By means of 
 the twofold form of space-time, whose union yields causal related- 
 ness, the understanding transforms this primal meaningless sense- 
 organ stimulation into a perception, an idea, a Vorstellung, 
 "which now exists as an object in space and time, and cannot 
 be distinguished from the latter (the object) except in so far as 
 we ask after the thing-in-itself, but apart from this is identical 
 with it."^ "It is only when the Understanding begins to act 
 
 cient Reason, does not follow Schopenhauer's own order {principium rationis suf- 
 ficientis fiendi, cognoscendi, essendi, agendi) ; it has been adapted rather to the order 
 of the general argument in the Kritik der Kantischen Philosophic, which order has 
 been the one usually followed in this monograph. The change in the order of 
 exposition does not affect the force of the argument as presented in the Fourfold 
 Root, and it indicates more adequately and with greater clearness, I trust, Schopen- 
 hauer's fundamental epistemological principles, as distinguished from those of 
 Kant. 
 
 'G., I, p. 560; H.K., II, p. 34. 
 
 ^Ibid.; cf. Kr. d. r. V., p. 50; M., p. 40. 
 
 'G., I, p. 560; H.K., II, p. 34. Cf. also Section 21 of the Fourfold Root of the 
 Principle of Sufficient Reason (G., Ill, pp. 64 ff.; Hillebrand's translation, Bohn's 
 Library, pp. 58 ff.), in which Schopenhauer demonstrates at length the a priori 
 character of the conception of causality and the 'intellectual' character of empirical 
 perception. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 9 
 
 . . . only when it begins to apply its sole form, the causal law, 
 that a powerful transformation takes place, by which subjective 
 sensation becomes objective perception. . . . Accordingly our 
 every-day empirical perception is an intellectual one. . . ."^ 
 Experience, then, arises for Schopenhauer, not through the con- 
 ceptualizing of the intuitions of sense, as he understands Kant 
 to hold, but through the intervention of the understanding, 
 which he regards as the perceptual faculty par excellence, common 
 to man and brute alike. The multiform relatedness obtaining 
 in the perceptual order thus originated, Schopenhauer finds 
 epitomized in the principium rationis sufficientis fiendi, i. e.. 
 Causality. Spatial co-existence and temporal succession here 
 fuse into the concrete perceptual process involving causally con- 
 nected changes. 
 
 It should be observed here that Schopenhauer's criticism of 
 Kant's account of the genesis of experience ignores the factor of 
 the productive or creative imagination. Kant says, for example: 
 "We must admit a pure transcendental synthesis of imagination 
 which forms even the foundation of the possibility of all experi- 
 ence. "^ And again: " The whole of our experience becomes pos- 
 sible only by means of that transcendental function of imagi- 
 nation, without which no concepts of objects could ever come 
 together in one experience."^ Such passages clearly imply that 
 unity-in-variety is the condition of the very possibility of expe- 
 rience, i. e., that experience is implicitly, intrinsically organic. 
 Kant's theory of the productive imagination, in spite of its 
 vagueness and its too free use of metaphors, as when he speaks 
 of its work being done 'in a dark chamber of the soul,' is, after 
 all, his confused expression of a most profound truth. The 
 organic unity of experience is for Kant a presupposition of its 
 very possibility; Kant felt that the unity was there somewhere 
 in the very essence of experience. This failure on the part of 
 Schopenhauer to give due recognition to the fundamental role 
 played by the productive imagination in the Critical theory of 
 experience, should be kept in mind in estimating the value of 
 
 iG., Ill, pp. 66, 67; Hillebr., pp. 60, 61. , 
 
 '^Kr. d. r. V., p. loi; M., p. 84. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 123; M., p. loi. 
 
10 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 his criticism of what he calls the conceptualizing of the perceptual 
 material in Kant's epistemology. 
 
 Schopenhauer spares no pains to impress upon his readers the 
 exclusively phenomenal character of causality. The 'Principle 
 of Becoming' affects changes of states alone, changes conditioning 
 each other in a definite way. ''Every change in the material 
 world can only take place because another has immediately preceded 
 it; this is the true and the whole content of the law of causality."^ 
 Substances, Dinge, are altogether beyond its scope. The cause- 
 effect relation is never a vague one: by 'cause' we always under- 
 stand the temporally antecedent change which actually evokes 
 the consequent 'effect.' The change formerly considered as 
 effect then turns cause, evoking in its turn a new change, and 
 so on ad infinitum. There is a logical as well as a temporal 
 irreversibility of cause and effect, according to Schopenhauer's 
 theory, to ignore which irreversibility is to ignore the entire sig- 
 nificance of the causal relation. 
 
 In accordance with the equality or inequality of the two 
 causally connected changes, Schopenhauer distinguishes three 
 kinds of causation. He says: (i) "I call a cause (Ursach), in 
 the narrowest sense of the word, that state of matter, which, 
 while it introduces another state with necessity, yet suffers as 
 great a change itself as that which it causes; which is expressed 
 in the rule: 'action and reaction are equal.' Further, in the case 
 of what is properly speaking a cause, the effect increases directly 
 in proportion to the cause, and therefore also the reaction. "^ 
 Here belong the mechanical causes of unorganized nature, operat- 
 ing in the phenomena dealt with by mechanics, chemistry, and 
 the physical sciences generally. (2) "On the other hand," he 
 says, "I call a stimulus (Reiz), such a cause as sustains no re- 
 action proportional to its effect, and the intensity of which does 
 not vary directly in proportion to the intensity of its effect, so 
 that the effect cannot be measured by it."^ This is the causation 
 of organic and vegetative nature. (3) We have, moreover, to 
 consider motive, or 'animal cause,' i. e., causation on the con- 
 ic, II. pp. 52-53; H.K.. II. p. 211. 
 2G.. I, p. 169; H.K., I, p. 149- 
 ' Ibid. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. II 
 
 scious plane, operating through knowledge. This is the causality 
 determining the purely animal functioning of all animals, and 
 the conscious activity of all conscious beings. "^ 
 
 Man's faculty of being determined by motives expands his 
 sphere of causal functioning. In the conflict of motives, however, 
 the one which actually proves strongest is a cause as truly neces- 
 sary as that impelling the inanimate object in its motion. In 
 this respect, there is no fundamental distinction between the two. 
 The consciousness we possess of our ability to determine our- 
 selves through motives is the only consciousness we have of 
 ourselves as subjects.- That is to say, the subject of knowledge, 
 as such, can never be known, never become an object of repre- 
 sentation. To adapt a passage from the Upanishads: "Id 
 videndum non est: omnia videt; et audiendum non est: omnia 
 audit; sciendum non est: omnia scit. . . ."^ The subject of 
 knowledge, the knower himself, is known only as willing: a propo- 
 sition which Schopenhauer regards as 'synthetic a posteriori,' 
 derived as it is from our inmost experience. "Introspection 
 always shows us to ourselves as willing."^ 
 
 Looked at from this point of view of volition, the basis of 
 relatedness of Schopenhauer's next general class of objects be- 
 comes manifest, principium rationis sufficientis agendi, i. e., 
 Motivation. Here, where the subject of knowledge itself is in 
 question, the rules affecting objects of representations no longer 
 apply. The "actual identity of the knower with what is known 
 as willing — that is, of Subject and Object — is immediately 
 giveny^ Schopenhauer calls this the inexplicable nodus of the 
 universe, "das Wunder Kar e^oxvi'." 
 
 The bearing of the question of motivation upon the issue of 
 man's freedom, and the fundamental metaphysical problem 
 of the relation of knowledge to the Will-Reality, will be duly 
 considered along with the examination of the Dialectic of 
 
 'Schopenhauer makes a nice distinction between activity of animals and animal 
 activity. Cf. Fr. d. Willens, G., Ill, pp. 410-411. In regard to the threefold 
 division of causes, cf. G., I, pp. 169 flf.; II, pp. 228 ff. 
 
 *G., Ill, p. 158; Hillebr., p. 165. 
 
 »G., Ill, p. 158; Hillebr., p. 166. 
 
 *G., Ill, p. 161; Hillebr., p. 168. 
 
 6G.. Ill, p. 161; Hillebr., p. 169. 
 
12 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 Pure Reason and the discussion of the Will as the thing-in-itself. 
 The significant point in this connection is that, in the three classes 
 of objects which have been discussed so far, Schopenhauer has 
 disclaimed any need of conceptions. Space and time yield the 
 principle of intuitive relatedness: taken separately, they are non- 
 perceptual pure intuitions; when they are united in concrete 
 experience, the understanding finds its sole function in transform- 
 ing sense-excitations into causally connected perceptions. The 
 action of motives, also, — the consciousness of self-determination, 
 — while raising metaphysical problems, is yet an immediate 
 matter, foreign to all conceptual thought. " The action of motives 
 is causality seen from within."^ The whole range of immediate 
 experience, intellectual and volitional alike, has thus been covered 
 without any reference to abstract thought. Our concrete ex- 
 perience, Schopenhauer declares, requires no thinking, no con- 
 cepts, no abstract categories, to dictate to it any organization 
 whatever. Perception leaps out of its sensation-shell complete 
 and perfect. If, however, we abandon concrete experience and 
 look for help from conceptions, then, he says, we find the intel- 
 lectual faculty of the understanding to be of no avail. Thoughts 
 are not present in perceptual, that is to say (for Schopenhauer) 
 concrete experience; they are the result of abstraction, and the 
 faculty operating in the process which releases them is what 
 Schopenhauer calls Reason (Vernunft). 
 
 Here, then, we have Schopenhauer's clear-cut distinction be- 
 tween Verstand and Vernunft in so many words. Understanding 
 is the faculty of perception, which man shares with the higher 
 animals. Its machinery is quite simple: through the union of 
 space and time it endows the material of sensation with causal 
 relatedness. Reason, on the contrary, is the faculty of reflection,^ 
 and of reflection alone. Its stock in trade is conceptions, which 
 are derived from perceptions by a process of abstraction; but 
 they "form a distinct class of ideas, existing only in the mind of 
 man, and entirely different from the ideas of perception. "^ Per- 
 ception always remains the asymptote of conception;^ what a 
 
 >G., Ill, p. 163; Hillebr., p. 171. 
 2G., I, p. 77; H.K.. I, p. 50. 
 3G., I. p. 99; H.K., I, p. 74- 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 13 
 
 conception gains in range of application, it loses in concreteness 
 of meaning: "the content and the extent of the concepts stand 
 in inverse relation to each other, and thus the more is thought 
 under a concept, the less is thought in it. . . ."^ 
 
 Schopenhauer's view of conception is thus not unlike Hume's: 
 "Reflection is the necessary copy or repetition of the originally 
 presented world of perception, but it is a special kind of copy 
 in an entirely different material. Thus concepts may quite 
 properly be called ideas of ideas."- Reality and certainty are 
 given only in perception, not in the conceptual structures of 
 science. These latter generalize, systematize, and store for future 
 reference our knowledge of ideas; but the concrete test of their 
 validity Schopenhauer finds in terms, not of immanent organi- 
 zation, but of perceptual immediacy. The connection obtaining 
 in the process of abstraction, which yields conceptions by the 
 selective elimination of differences, is that of reason and con- 
 sequent, — corresponding to the cause-efifect relation of the per- 
 ceptual world of the understanding. This is the last form of the 
 Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason : principium 
 rationis siifficientis cognoscendi. Just as the demonstration of a 
 causal connection between two perceptible changes establishes 
 the phenomenal reality of the process considered, so, by virtue 
 of the fact that a judgment has a sufficient reason, the predicate 
 'true' is applicable to it. 
 
 Conceptual relatedness is a form of the selfsame principle 
 which, in the world of perceptual changes, assumes the form of 
 causality, though the cognitive content involved in the two cases 
 is fundamentally different. Schopenhauer repudiates any con- 
 fusion of the one Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient 
 Reason with the multiform character of its several spheres of 
 operation.^ Reasoning clarifies the abstract content of concep- 
 
 iG., II, p. 74; H.K., II, p. 236. 2G., I, p. 78; H.K., I. p. 52. 
 
 ' The tendency, already present in the Fourfold Root, to insist upon the four dif- 
 ferent classes of objects, while stoutly maintaining the oneness of the fourfold prin- 
 ciple, becomes clearly manifest in Schopenhauer's later writings, where the sharpest 
 separation is maintained between perceptual knowledge and conceptual thought. 
 The principles of Becoming and of Knowing part company, and one discerns a 
 fatal tendency to regard the Fourfold Root as four roots. This fact shows the 
 inadequacy of Schopenhauer's fundamental epistemological position, which will be 
 discussed later, in the critical portion of this chapter. 
 
14 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 tions, assigns their limits of application, and establishes their 
 perceptual genealogy. But conceptions are never 'what is first,' 
 they provide the thinking subject with no new knowledge; far 
 from being the necessary conditions of the possibility of percep- 
 tion, they themselves "receive their content only from the per- 
 ceptible idea, which is therefore primary knowledge {Urerkennt- 
 niss), and has consequently alone to be taken account of in an 
 investigation of the relation between the ideal and the real."'' 
 The concept is a vassal in epistemology, lacking all autonomy; 
 you can take out of it only what you first put into it through 
 perception. Schopenhauer follows Hume in demanding of each 
 conception its passport showing a legitimate perceptual ancestry, 
 and regards all self-originating 'rational' concepts as the vain 
 fictions of "the pure self-thinking absolute Idea, the scene of the 
 ballet-dance of the self-moving conceptions, "^ — an expression 
 which calls to mind Mr. Bradley's famous turn of the phrase.^ 
 
 How does this apparently clear and consistent theory of the 
 relation between perception and conception compare with what 
 Schopenhauer regards as Kant's account of the genesis of knowl- 
 edge? 
 
 With his characteristically sharp eye for details, Schopenhauer 
 brings together a list of definitions which apparently show Kant's 
 utter confusion as to what he meant by 'understanding' and by 
 ' reason.' The list is rather long and, in some respects, suggestive. 
 Reason is defined by Kant as the faculty supplying the principles 
 of knowledge a priori,^ and is as such opposed to the understand- 
 ing as the faculty of rules,^ a distinction which Schopenhauer, 
 properly enough, calls "arbitrary and inadmissible,"^ Kant, how- 
 ever, calls the understanding not only the faculty of rules,' but also 
 the source of principles,^ the "power of producing representations, 
 
 iG., II, p. 223; H.K., II, p. 401. 
 
 ''G., Ill, p. 140; Hillebr., p. 145. 
 
 ^Principles of Logic, London, 1883, p. 533. 
 
 *Kr. d.r. V., p. 11; M.. p. 9. 
 
 'Kr. d. r. v., p. 299; M., p. 243. 
 
 •G., I, p. 552; HK., II, p. 26. 
 
 '>Kr. d. r. V., pp. 132, 302; M., pp. 108, 245. 
 
 *Kr. d. r. V., p. 158; M., pp. 129-130. There are other abstract distinctions 
 which Kant makes and which Schopenhauer opposes for no obvious reasons. Thus 
 Kant calls mere judging the work of the understanding (Kr. d. r. V., p. 69; M., p. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 1$ 
 
 or the spontaneity of knowledge,"^ the faculty of judging,^ the 
 faculty of concepts,^ and the faculty of cognitions generally.'* 
 Reason, again, is variously described as the faculty of judging 
 mediately,^ as the constant condition of all free actions of man,^ 
 as the ground of all concepts, opinions, and assertions,'' as the 
 faculty which organizes and systematizes conceptions,^ as the 
 faculty of deducing the particular from the general,^ and so forth. ^'* 
 Now, from all this lack of consistency in his terminology, 
 Schopenhauer argues Kant's utter confusion of understanding 
 and reason. This perplexity on Kant's part Schopenhauer finds 
 not difficult to explain, from his own point of view: neither of the 
 two faculties is assigned a definite function, just because Kant 
 failed to recognize their respective spheres of operation. It is 
 in the failure sharply to discriminate between perception and 
 conception that Schopenhauer finds the ground of that " heillosen 
 Vermischung"^^ which mars the entire 'Transcendental Logic' 
 How do perception and conception each affect the genesis of the 
 
 57), and reason the faculty of inference {Kr. d. r. V., pp. 303, 330; M., pp. 246, 
 268). Now Schopenhauer himself regards judging as a sort of bridge between 
 perception and conception (G., I, pp. 108 ff.; H.K., II, pp. 84 ff.; cf. also the discus- 
 sion of Schopenhauer's theory of judgment in Chapter II of this monograph), and 
 inference as the conceptual connection of judgments with each other; so that the 
 Kantian distinction, as interpreted by Schopenhauer, would seem to be not wholly 
 out of accord with his own position. Of course, no such abstract distinction be- 
 tween judgment and inference could be valid for modern logic, which insists with 
 increasing emphasis upon the unitary character of the judgment-process, involving 
 judgment and inference alike. It is therefore hard to see in what respect Schopen- 
 hauer's explicit separation of what, as a matter of fact, is inseparable is less open to 
 criticism than Kant's confused and inconsistent distinction, confused because out 
 of harmony with his own fundamentally organic conception of experience. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 51; M., p. 41. 
 
 'Kr. d. r. V., p. 69; M., p. 57. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 160; M., p. 130. 
 
 *Kr. d. r. V., II Aufl., p. 137; M., p. 749. 
 
 ''Kr. d. r. V ., p. 330; M., p. 268. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. F., p. 553; M., p. 447. 
 
 ''Kr. d. r. V., p. 614; M., p. 494. 
 
 *Kr. d. r, V., pp. 634 f.; M., pp. 517 f. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 646; M., p. 520. 
 
 '"Note Schopenhauer's failure to recognize here the important Kantian distinc- 
 tion between understanding and reason, as dealing with the conditioned and the 
 unconditioned respectively. This point is taken up for closer consideration in the 
 sequel. 
 
 »G., I, p. 561; H.K., II, p. 35. 
 
1 6 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 object of experience? Kant's answer lacks all consistency: 
 "through the whole of his theory the utter confusion of the idea 
 of perception with the abstract idea tends towards a something 
 between the two which he expounds as the object of knowledge 
 through the understanding and its categories, and calls this 
 knowledge experience. It is hard to believe that Kant really 
 figured to himself something fully determined and really distinct 
 in this object of the understanding."^ 
 
 To prove his case, Schopenhauer traces through the whole 
 'Transcendental Logic' Kant's treatment of the understanding as 
 afTecting the object of experience. The Critique of Pure Reason 
 vacillates, he argues, between regarding the function of the under- 
 standing as perceptual and as conceptual. The understanding 
 is called, successively, the faculty of judging, of thinking, of 
 connecting a priori and bringing the manifold of given repre- 
 sentations under the unity of apperception ,2 and its categories 
 are declared not to be conditions underwhich objects can be given 
 in intuition.^ And the Prolegomena distinguishes understanding, 
 as the faculty of judging, from the senses, to which perception is 
 referred.* All such passages, seeming to argue for the abstractly 
 logical character of the understanding and the mere inexplicable 
 Gegebenheit of the perceptible world, are "contradicted in the 
 most glaring manner {atif das schreiendeste) by the whole of the 
 rest of his doctrine of the understanding, of its categories, and of 
 the possibility of experience as he explains it in the Transcen- 
 dental Logic. "^ Hence understanding is generally regarded by 
 Kant as the organizing function within perceptual experience 
 itself, which, by means of the categories, the a priori indispensable 
 conditions of all possible experience, synthetically combines, 
 connects, orders, and brings to intelligible unity the manifold of 
 sensation, and thus first makes 'Nature,' i. e., organic experience, 
 possible.® 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., pp. 67 ff.; H ed., p. 135; M., pp. 56 ff., 747. 
 3AV. d. r. v., p. 89; M., p. 74. 
 * Prolegomena, Sections 20, 22. 
 'G., I, p. 562; H.K., II, p. 36. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V.. pp. 79, 94; II Aufl. pp. 126 ff. 135 f-- I43 ff-. iSPff-; M., pp. 65 f., 
 78, 747 i: 752 ff., 762 ff. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 1 7 
 
 Schopenhauer, curiously enough, interprets all such passages 
 as meaning that the understanding is a distinctly perceptual 
 function, as in his own theory of knowledge. But the diametrical 
 opposition between this and the previous manner of treating the 
 understanding, prove to him conclusively the validity of his 
 original contention. He says : " I challenge every one who shares 
 my respect towards Kant to reconcile these contradictions and 
 to show that in his doctrine of the object of experience and the 
 way it is determined by the activity of the understanding and 
 its twelve functions, Kant thought something quite distinct and 
 definite. I am convinced that the contradiction I have 
 pointed out, which extends through the whole Transcen- 
 dental Logic, is the real reason of the great obscurity of its 
 language."^ The object of the understanding is really re- 
 garded by Kant as neither a perception nor a conception, but 
 as alone making experience possible. This is a "deeply rooted 
 prejudice in Kant, dead to all investigation."- Schopenhauer 
 continues: "It is certainly not the perceived object, but through 
 the conception it is added to the perception by thought, as some- 
 thing corresponding to it; and now the perception is experience, 
 and has value and truth, which it thus only receives through the 
 relation to a conception (in diametrical opposition to my exposi- 
 tion, according to which the conception only receives value and 
 truth from the perception)."^ 
 
 This is the way Schopenhauer reads his Kant. The Critique 
 of Pure Reason, he thinks, treats experience as the result of the 
 conceptualizing of the perceptual material, by which process this 
 material of sensation first becomes organized and real. Now he 
 finds perception in no need of such conceptual transformation, 
 for it possesses in itself all the concrete reality that is possible 
 in experience. Thinking owes its whole significance to the per- 
 ceptual source from which it arises through abstraction. " If we 
 hold firmly to this, the inadmissibleness of the assumption be- 
 comes evident that the perception of things only obtains reality 
 and becomes experience through the thought of these very things 
 
 iG., I. pp. 563-564; HK.. II, p. 38- 
 2G., I, p. 564; H.K., II, p. 39- 
 3G., I, pp. 564-565; H.K., II, p. 39- 
 
1 8 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 applying its twelve categories. Rather in perception itself the 
 empirical reality, and consequently experience, is already 
 given; but the perception itself can only come into exist- 
 ence by the application to sensation of the knowledge of the 
 causal nexus, which is the one function of the understanding. 
 Perception is accordingly in reality intellectual, which is just 
 what Kant denies."^ What, then, is the nature of this Kantian 
 'object of experience,' particular and j-et not in space and time, 
 because not perceptible (thus Schopenhauer), an object of 
 thought, and yet not an abstract conception, at once perceptual 
 and conceptual, yet incapable of being defined in terms of either 
 perception or conception alone? 
 
 Schopenhauer thinks that Kant makes a triple division: (i) 
 the idea, (2) the object of the idea, and (3) the thing-in-itself. 
 "The first belongs to the sensibility, which in its case, as in that 
 of sensation, includes the pure forms of perception, space and 
 time. The second belongs to the understanding, which thinks it 
 through its twelve categories. The third lies beyond the pos- 
 sibility of all knowledge."- The confusion seems evident to 
 Schopenhauer: "Theillicit introduction of that hybrid, the object 
 of the idea, is the source of Kant's errors,"^ he says. All we 
 have in concrete knowledge and experience is the Vorstellung; 
 " if we desire to go beyond this idea, then we arrive at the question 
 as to the thing-in-itself, the answer to which is the theme of my 
 whole work as of all metaphysics in general."^ With this epis- 
 temological hybrid, i. e., the 'object of the idea,' "the doctrine 
 of the categories as conceptions a priori also falls to the ground."^ 
 Instead of assuming (as Schopenhauer thinks that Kant assumes) 
 the existence of an intermediate world between the idea and the 
 thing-in-itself, as the sphere of operation of the pure understand- 
 ing and its twelve categories, Schopenhauer himself repudiates 
 the entire deduction of the categories as fundamentally false, 
 explains causality as the only valid category, and describes this 
 
 iG., I, p. 566; H.K., II, p. 40. 
 
 2G., I, p. 567; H.K.. II. p. 41; Kr. d. r. V., pp. io8f.; M., pp. 89 f. 
 
 'G., I, p. 567; H.K., II, p. 41. 
 
 ^G., I, pp. 567-568; H.K., II, p. 42. 
 
 'G., I, p. 567; H.K.. II, pp. 41-42. 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 19 
 
 as distinctly perceptual in character, thus referring all objective 
 relatedness and organization to the causal space-time union in 
 perception, and distinguishing the latter from the thing-in-itself 
 alone. All objectivity, all real knowledge, is perceptual for 
 Schopenhauer. A conception is a check drawn on the bank of 
 perception : its validity stands or falls with its perceptual deposit ; 
 intrinsic reality it has none, though, as an abstraction, it may 
 be of undeniable instrumental service.^ 
 
 Schopenhauer's argument is apparently lucid and seems to 
 admit of no variety of interpretations. Does it, however, repre- 
 sent a correspondingly clear understanding of Kant's problem? 
 What is the significance and the value of his interpretation and 
 criticism of the fundamental method of the Critical epistemology? 
 
 It should be noted that Schopenhauer does not recognize 
 what, after all, is Kant's real distinction between understanding 
 and reason, the distinction, namely, between understanding as 
 the faculty by which we deal with the conditioned and reason as 
 the faculty which demands the unconditioned. The understand- 
 ing itself Kant seems to treat in a twofold manner: (i) under- 
 standing in the wider sense, as the fundamental principle ol 
 objectivity in experience, including within itself the immanently 
 organizing function of the productive imagination; and (2)^ 
 understanding in the narrower sense, as the faculty of judgment 
 or interpretation, operating primarily through the categories.. 
 This distinction is of great importance for the interpretation 
 of Kant's pure concepts of the understanding; and it should! 
 be noted that Kant explicitly limits the application of the 
 understanding to finite experience, to the sphere of the condi- 
 tioned. On the other hand, Kant holds: "It is the peculiar 
 principle of reason (in its logical use) to find for every conditioned 
 knowledge of the understanding the unconditioned, whereby 
 the unity of that knowledge may be completed. "^ The pure 
 concepts of the understanding, the categories, find their meaning 
 and their sphere of operation in the organic interdependence of 
 
 'C/., in this connection, Richter's treatment of 'Verstand' and 'Vernunft' as 
 used by Kant and Schopenhauer, Schopenhauer' s Verhdltnis zu Kant in seinen 
 Grundziigen, pp. 144 ff. 
 
 "^Kr. d. r. V., p. 307; M., p. 249. 
 
20 SCHOPENHA UER'S CRITICISM OF KA NT. 
 
 the different sides of conditioned experience. The concepts 
 of pure reason, on the other hand, or the 'Transcendental Ideas, ' 
 as Kant calls them, are explicitly concerned with the uncondi- 
 tioned ground of experience; they refer to "something to which 
 all experience may belong, but which itself can never become 
 an object of experience."^ In this sense the distinction between 
 pure understanding and pure reason, in Kant's technical pro- 
 cedure, tends to correspond to the distinction between theory of 
 knowledge and theory of reality.^ 
 
 Whether the spirit of Kant's epistemology does actually 
 necessitate the conception of the unconditioned, and of a corre- 
 sponding faculty of pure reason to deal with it, is a problem of 
 too weighty a character to be disposed of at the outset, and its 
 solution cannot and need not be undertaken in this chapter. 
 One thing, however, is certain : whether the distinction between 
 the understanding, as the organizing faculty of experience, and 
 reason, as the faculty of the beyond-experiential, is or is not 
 consistent with the fundamental method of the Critical episte- 
 mology, the distinction between them as the faculties of per- 
 ception and conception respectively is surely contrary both to 
 the spirit and to the letter of Kant's procedure. In Kant's 
 view of 'experience,' perception and conception presuppose 
 each other in a way which makes it impossible to define knowl- 
 edge in terms of either separately. 
 
 Returning to Schopenhauer, it is hardly too much to say that 
 his whole argument is specious. The fact that in Kant's admit- 
 tedly confused way of treating perception and conception he sees 
 nothing but a solemn warning against undue adherence to an 
 ideal of 'architectonic symmetry,' shows how hopelessly he 
 misconceives both the aim and the fundamental trend of Kant's 
 'Critical' method.^ Kant's 'confusion' of the perceptual and 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 311; M., p. 253. Cf. the introductory sections of the 'Tran- 
 scendental Dialectic' especially Kr. d. r. V., pp. 299 fif., 305 ff., 310 ff., 322 ff.; 
 M., pp. 242 ff., 247 ff., 252 ff., 261 ff. 
 
 2 Kant regards speculative reason, however, as incapable of attaining knowledge 
 of ultimate reality, and therefore he introduces the notion of practical reason. 
 But this problem will more naturally come up for discussion in the sequel. 
 
 3 Mere textual criticism of Kant's Critiques is sure to lead one astray, unless 
 the fundamental spirit of his philosophy is kept constantly in mind. As Richter 
 
NATURE AND GENESIS OF EXPERIENCE. 21 
 
 the conceptual in experience is to be regarded, not as the failure 
 to discriminate ultimate differences, but rather as the imperfect 
 realization and the inadequate expression of the underlying 
 essential unity of concrete experience, which cannot be reduced 
 to merely perceptual or conceptual terms. Kant's confusion 
 is the confusion of depths not yet clarified; Schopenhauer's 
 lucidity manifests epistemological shallowness. Later idealism, 
 of course, brought to light much that escaped Kant himself; 
 but Kant was far more nearly right than Schopenhauer when he 
 said: "Thoughts ■without contents are empty, intuitions without 
 concepts are blind. . . . The understanding cannot see, the 
 senses cannot think. By their union only can knowledge be 
 produced."^ 
 
 The fundamental defect of Schopenhauer's epistemology 
 is to be found in his constant endeavor to explain one abstract 
 phase of experience in terms of another, supposedly prior, phase, — 
 really the vice of the older rationalism, — instead of reading 
 both into the organic unity which embraces both and derives 
 its own meaning precisely from such systematization of aspects 
 meaningless in abstract isolation. The relation between the 
 organizing principles of experience is for Kant, not one of formal 
 subsumption, but of organic interdependence. Experience in- 
 volves both perception and conception, the one as much as the 
 other; its progressive organization consists in the gradual 
 evolution of the two, which unifies them in one concrete process. 
 The perceptual content is essentially meaningful, and the 
 application of the categories brings out what is implicit in it. 
 Schopenhauer's universals are the universals of the old scholastic 
 logic, abstractions which do not exist outside of its text-books 
 and are alien to concrete experience. Conception, in the true 
 Kantian sense, is no mere attenuated perception, but the sig- 
 nificant aspect of experience. Conceptions, or, perhaps better, 
 
 puts it: "Es ist wirklich nicht so schwer, wenn man sich nur an den wortlichen 
 Text der Kritiken halt, Rationalismus und Empirismus, Dogmatismus (im weitesten 
 Sinne) und Scepticismus, Idealismus und Realismus aus ihnen herauszulesen" 
 {op. cit., pp. 91-92). And again, with special reference to Schopenhauer's procedure: 
 "Kantische Elemente hat Schopenhauer aufgenommen, Kantisch fortgebildet 
 hat er sie nicht" {op. cit., p. 77). 
 iKr. d. r. V., p. 51; M., p. 41. 
 
22 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 meanings, are involved in experience from the very beginning; 
 they are not merely its abstract terminus ad quern, as Schopen- 
 hauer would have it.^ Universality means, not erasure of 
 details and differences, but their gradual organization from a 
 point of view ever growing in catholicity. The progress of 
 knowledge is not from perception to conception, but from less 
 concrete to more concrete organization of both. 
 iG.. II. p. 55; H.K., II. p. 213. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Principles of Organization in Experience: The 
 
 Deduction and The Real Significance of 
 
 The Categories. 
 
 Schopenhauer's abstract distinction between perception and 
 conception, and his explanation of our original cognitive experi- 
 ence in exclusively perceptual terms, affect most vitally his 
 technical discussion of Kant's transcendental deduction of the 
 categories. What is the r61e of the categories? What is their 
 function in the genesis of experience? In what respect can we 
 conceive of perceptual knowledge as depending for its very 
 being upon the pure (i. e., for Schopenhauer, empty) abstrac- 
 tions of thought, derived from the classification of judgments as 
 found in the old logic? 
 
 Schopenhauer interprets Kant's formal procedure as follows: 
 "Kant's only discovery, which is based upon objective compre- 
 hension and the highest human thought, is the apperqu that 
 time and space are known by us a priori.''^ "Gratified by this 
 happy hit, "2 Schopenhauer says, Kant pursued the tactics which 
 he had employed in discovering the pure a priori constituents 
 of our unformed sensibility, in order to discover, if possible, the 
 a priori basis of the 'empirically obtained' conceptions. A 
 table of pure, logically grounded forms of conception was needed, 
 to correspond to the intuition-forms of space and time. Kant 
 therefore hit upon the table of judgments, "out of which he 
 constructed, as well as he could, the table of categories, the 
 doctrine of twelve pure a priori conceptions, which are supposed 
 to be the conditions of our thinking those very things the per- 
 ception of which is conditioned by the two a priori forms of sen- 
 sibility; thxxsdi pure understanding now corresponded symmetri- 
 cally to a pure sensibility.''^ To increase the plausibility of his 
 
 iQ., I, p. 572; H.K., II., p. 47- 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 'G.. I, p. 573; H.K.. II, p. 48. 
 
 23 
 
24 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 scheme as thus formulated, Kant conceived a way of connecting 
 a priori the pure forms of intuition and of understanding. Hence 
 arose the notion of the 'schemata,' or 'monograms of the pure 
 imagination,' which, according to Schopenhauer, represent 
 Kant's attempt to bridge over the chasm between the world of 
 sensibility and the fundamentally disparate world of thought. 
 
 One's attitude towards the fundamental objection which 
 Schopenhauer makes to the doctrine of the Schematism depends 
 largely upon one's acceptance or rejection of the separation 
 between perception and thought, between the content and the 
 form of experience. Schopenhauer regards Kant's pure con- 
 ceptions of the understanding as having no organic relation to 
 perception, hence as incapable of involving any pure schemata 
 or ' monograms of the imagination ' corresponding to the repre- 
 sentative conceptions or phantasms of empirically grounded 
 thought. That Kant was led into such an illogical position, — 
 instead of demonstrating, as Schopenhauer himself professes to 
 do, the transformation of sensation into perception by means 
 of the causal principle, — Schopenhauer considers sufificiently 
 accounted for by the above psychological explanation of the 
 'Transcendental Logic' And he regards this explanation as 
 adequate to refute Kant's treatment of the categories and of the 
 schematism. 
 
 As suggested above, Schopenahuer is not incorrect in his 
 analysis of the technical point discussed, but he draws the 
 wrong conclusion from it. In the 'Transcendental Esthetic' 
 Kant treats space and time as the pure forms of intuition or im- 
 mediate experience. Hence there is no need of any chapter on the 
 Schematism of the Pure Forms of Sense Intuition. From the 
 point of view of the 'Analytic,' however, the content and the form 
 of experience tend to assume a disparate, if not antithetical, 
 character. The rationalist in Kant looks for principles that shall 
 organize the content of perception, as it were, ah extra. As a 
 result, the functions of the pure understanding tend to be pre- 
 sented as formal logical concepts. The error is accentuated by 
 the notion of a definitely fixed number of fundamental functions 
 of pure experience. In consequence of this rationalistic bias, 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 25 
 
 coupled with an all too evident fondness for abstract symmetry 
 ("alle gute Dinge sind drei"), which Schopenhauer clearly per- 
 ceives and justly satirizes, a conceptual structure is evolved, 
 which is to condition the possibility of all objective experience 
 and shape the pattern of its formal organization. In his attempt 
 to connect perception with thought, Kant had swung over to 
 the conceptual side to such an extent that he had lost contact 
 with concrete experience. To span this gap in his epistemology, 
 he now proposes the doctrine of the schemata, which are to 
 serve as ladders to let the categories of the pure understanding 
 down to concrete experience. 
 
 But this gap was the result of Kant's own too abstract formula- 
 tion of the doctrine of the categories. The correct solution of 
 the difficulty, therefore, would have been to restate the theory in 
 a more nearly consistent, truly instrumental sense, and thus 
 interpret the categories in their true nature as functions operative 
 in concrete experience, immanently determining its progressive 
 organization, — not to span the artificial gap by a still more 
 artificial bridge. Kant, instead of rectifying his initial error, 
 sought to extricate himself by the inadequate doctrine of the 
 schematism. Schopenhauer, however, draws a different conclu- 
 sion from Kant's unsuccessful attempt to connect the concepts 
 of the understanding with the a priori perceptions. He regards 
 the difficulty resulting from Kant's artificial procedure as funda- 
 mental and insuperable. That is to say, for Schopenhauer 
 perception and conception can never be co-ordinate in experience; 
 thought never plays the part of immanent organizer in the 
 knowledge-process. 
 
 It must be frankly admitted that Schopenhauer's conclusion 
 is quite natural, if one is satisfied with criticising Kant's artificial 
 treatment and neglecting the deeper implications of his thought. 
 But if modern epistemology is to find any real significance in 
 Kant's treatment of the categories, it must draw a moral far 
 different from Schopenhauer's free and easy one. Instead of 
 arguing from the futility of the schematism the incapacity of 
 thought for immanently determining the organization of expe- 
 rience and thus making its objectivity possible, a correct diagnosis 
 
26 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 would locate the trouble in Kant's departing from his own ideal 
 of the organization of experience from within and attempting to 
 explain that organization, as it were, ab extra. The deduction of 
 the categories, therefore, should be re-interpreted in the true 
 Kantian spirit, its abstract formalism eliminated, and the im- 
 manent character of the organizing principles of experience 
 clearly emphasized. This would obviate the difficulty by 
 showing the irrelevancy and the needlessness of any schemata. 
 
 It may seem unnecessary to have insisted so much upon 
 Schopenhauer's illegitimate separation of conception from per- 
 ception. But the fact is that Schopenhauer himself finds all 
 of Kant's most serious epistemological errors to be due to this 
 one 'inextricable confusion.' Thus he writes at the beginning 
 of his examination of the categories: "That I reject the whole 
 doctrine of the categories, and reckon it among the groundless 
 assumptions with which Kant burdened the theory of knowledge, 
 results from . . . the proof of the contradictions in the Tran- 
 scendental Logic, which had their ground in the confusion of 
 perception and abstract knowledge. . . ."^ 
 
 The abstractions of science, Schopenhauer admits, have the 
 incomparable advantage over mere perception that they enable 
 us to comprehend, within the compass of a few clearly determined 
 and well-defined conceptions, the manifold of phenomenal expe- 
 rience, and to reduce its multifarious connections to uniformities 
 capable of being formulated. Kant's was 'a bold and happy 
 thought,' to isolate the purely conceptual and exhibit its function 
 in the development of abstract knowledge. But, Schopenhauer 
 insists, Kant should have recognized the indirect character of his 
 method. In effect, he says: In seeking the foundation-stones 
 for his edifice of experience in the formal table of judgments, 
 Kant "may be compared to a man who measures the height of 
 a tower by its shadow, while I am like him who applies the 
 measuring-rule directly to the tower itself."- The normal forms 
 of the combinations of conceptions, schematically embodied in 
 the Table of Judgments, are of various origin. Some are derived 
 from the relatedness obtaining in the perceptual world of the 
 
 iG., I. pp. 576-577; H.K.. II, p. 52. 
 = G.. I. p. 577;H.K.. II. p. 53- 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 2/ 
 
 understanding. Others, again, are of hybrid origin, due to the 
 intermixture of perception and conception. But for the most 
 part the judgment-forms are deducible from the nature of reflec- 
 tive knowledge itself, i. e., directly from reason, springing as 
 they do from the dictum de omni et nullo and from the four 
 'metalogical truths' founded on the conditions of all thinking, 
 to wit: the laws of identity and contradiction, and the principles 
 of excluded middle and of sufficient reason.^ 
 
 This different origin of the various judgment-forms does not 
 affect their invariably instrumental role in the process of expe- 
 rience. Schopenhauer's theory of judgment can apparently be 
 stated in a few words. Judgment is the connecting link between 
 perception and conception, "the power of rightly and accurately 
 carrying over into abstract consciousness what is known in 
 perception," and as such it is "the mediator between under- 
 standing and reason. "2 The erection of conceptual structures 
 upon the ground of manifold perceptions necessitates a coher- 
 ence of the abstract spheres of reference; and in the same way 
 as the elementary comparison of concepts (the referring of 
 the 'predicate' to the 'subject') yields the various logical judg- 
 ments,' just so does inference result from the interconnection of 
 completed judgments.* The judging process itself is essentially 
 reflective. For, while the content of judgment is originally per- 
 ceptual, "knowledge of perception suffers very nearly as much 
 change when it is taken up into reflection as food when it is 
 taken into the animal organism whose forms and compounds are 
 determined by itself, so that the nature of the food can no longer 
 be recognized from the result they produce."^ Only conceptual 
 outlines can enter into the schematic correlations of logical 
 thought. "An individual idea cannot be the subject of a judg- 
 ment, because it is not an abstraction, it is not something thought, 
 but something perceived. Every conception, on the other hand, 
 is essentially universal, and every judgment must have a con- 
 
 iG., III. pp. 125 ff.; Hillebr., pp. 127 ff. 
 
 2G.. I, p. 108; H.K.. I. p. 84. 
 
 3G., I. p. 81; H.K.. I. 55- 
 
 *G., II, p. 128; H.K., II. p. 295- 
 
 'G., I, p. 579; H.K.. II, pp. 54 f- 
 
28 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 ception as its subject."^ Explanatory passages of this kind serve 
 to indicate what appears to be Schopenhauer's real theory of 
 judgment. A 'mediator between the perceptual and the con- 
 ceptual,' he calls it; but its members are abstract concepts, and 
 the entire process involved in their manipulation is a matter of 
 reflection, of reason. 
 
 The initial definition of the faculty of judgment might have 
 suggested to a modern logician the possible basis for an organic 
 theory of cognition. In the judging process one witnesses the 
 radiating centre of the various aspects of knowledge, which here 
 fuse into the one unity of concrete thought. But Schopenhauer 
 treats the judgment-members as discrete in character; while he 
 regards the copula as non-significant beyond its function of 
 reference, he nevertheless conceives the process of judgment as 
 the mere comparison of two concept-spheres and their consequent 
 union or separation. The judging process, thus regarded, cannot 
 in any intelligible sense serve as the connecting link of perception 
 and conception, for the simple reason that no process can connect 
 two fundamentally different spheres of reference (as perception 
 and conception are in Schopenhauer's theory), and still remain 
 an organic, unitary whole. 
 
 Kant's technical treatment of judgment is unnecessarily ab- 
 stract, but its implications indicate his deeper realization of the 
 concretely organizing character of the judging process. "All 
 judgments," he writes, "are functions of unity among our 
 representations, the knowledge of an object being brought about, 
 not by an immediate representation, but by a higher one, com- 
 prehending this and several others, so that many possible cog- 
 nitions are collected into one."^ This position becomes more 
 adequately defined, and the unitary, dynamic character of the 
 judgment-process more consistently formulated, by later idealism. 
 Hegel's discussion of the matter, in the lesser Logic, is most 
 suggestive. In the introductory sections of his 'Doctrine of the 
 Notion', Hegel settles once for all the question of the organic 
 nature of thought and judgment. "It is a mistake to imagine 
 
 >G., II. p. 123; H.K., II, p. 289. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 69; M., p. 57. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 29 
 
 that the objects which form the content of our mental ideas 
 come first and that our subjective agency then supervenes, and 
 by the aforesaid operation of abstraction, and by colligating the 
 points possessed in common by the objects, frames notions of 
 them. Rather the notion is the genuine first; and things are 
 what they are through the action of the notion immanent in 
 them, and revealing itself in them."^ And again, referring more 
 specially to the process of judgment itself, he says: "It is . . . 
 false to speak of a combination of the two sides in a judgment, 
 if we understand by the term 'combination' to imply the inde- 
 pendent existence of the combining members apart from the 
 combination. ... To form a notion of an object means there- 
 fore to become aware of its notion: and when we proceed to a 
 criticism or judgment of the object, we are not performing a 
 subjective act, and merely ascribing this or that predicate to the 
 object. We are, on the contrary, observing the object in the 
 specific character imposed by its notion.'"^ 
 
 This point of view has become increasingly significant in 
 recent logical theory. Professor Bosanquet, for example, finds 
 in judgment the epitome of the entire procedure of knowledge. 
 The judgment-process is for him the immanent function of cogni- 
 tive experience. We do not first have clearly delimited and 
 defined concepts, which we then compare and connect or disjoin 
 as the case may be; the delimiting and defining itself of concepts 
 is accomplished precisely by means of this judging process, and 
 keeps pace with its actual development. The progressive organi- 
 zation of the significant elements in experience corresponds to the 
 technical perfecting of the judgmental procedure. The genesis 
 of judgment is the genesis of organized dynamic experience. Its 
 members are no barren abstractions deprived of all concrete 
 meaning: they are ideas bearing the significant essence of our 
 manifold experience. The true subject of judgment, therefore, 
 is no mere concept: it is invariably reality itself. "The word 
 and its reference — a reference to some continued identity in the 
 world of meanings — are inextricably welded together. "^ Judg- 
 ment and experience, conception and perception, move pari passu. 
 
 ^ Logic, p. 294. ^Ibid., pp. 298, 299. 
 
 ^ Logic, Vol. I, Oxford. 1888. p. 73- 
 
30 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 But let us return to Schopenhauer's criticism. The radical 
 fault which he finds with Kant's deduction of the categories is 
 its abstract character. From formal logical materials which af- 
 ford no glimpse of concrete reality, Kant has fashioned a Table 
 of 'pure concepts,' which he proffers as the functions of organiza- 
 tion and necessity, making experience itself possible. Schopen- 
 hauer's protest against Kant's abstract formalism is most just; 
 but his own theory of judgment incapacitates him at the very 
 start from indicating the fundamental error; namely, the formal, 
 abstract character of the Table of Judgments from which Kant 
 would derive his organizing principles of experience. This should 
 be borne in mind in the following examination of Schopenhauer's 
 criticism of Kant's categories, a criticism which is of paramount 
 significance, although actually leading to conclusions different 
 from those intended by the author. 
 
 I. Quantity. — Schopenhauer is brief in his account of the 
 Quantity and Quality of judgments, and of the categories which 
 Kant deduces from them. "The so-called Quantity of judgments 
 springs from the nature of concepts as such."^ The inclusion of 
 one concept within another and the relations arising from this 
 process he regards as purely abstract. To his mind, the dif- 
 ference between the universal and the particular judgment is 
 "very slight ";2 it depends upon the more exact definition of the 
 wider concept (the logical subject) in the judgment called uni- 
 versal. Indeed, to Schopenhauer, the distinction between 'Some 
 trees bear gall-nuts ' and ' All oaks bear gall-nuts ' is a mere matter 
 of the "richness of the language. "^ In place of Kant's three 
 categories. Unity, Plurality, Totality, Schopenhauer proposes two 
 forms of judgment. Totality and Multiplicity, their application 
 depending upon whether the subject-concept is taken in whole 
 or in part. Under Totality he includes the individual judgment: 
 Socrates = all Socrateses.^ 
 
 Schopenhauer's revision of the Quantity of judgments, equating 
 as it does the singular with the universal, represents a way of 
 
 'G., I, p. 580; H.K.. II, p. 56. 
 
 2G.. I, p. 581; H.K., II, p. 56. 
 
 ^Ibid. 
 
 *G., I, p. 610; H.K., II. .88. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 3 I 
 
 looking at the matter which was not unknown to Kant, but 
 which he attempted to transcend.^ Kant's endeavor to present 
 Totality as the synthesis of Unity and Plurality, suggests the 
 essentially correct solution of the problem which later Idealism 
 formulated more adequately: Totality is not mere Unity any 
 more than it is mere Plurality, but the concrete synthesis of the 
 two. Schopenhauer's distinction, on the other hand, points to 
 the abstract separation of Unity and Plurality. By the category 
 of Totality Kant sought to express the synthesis of the manifold 
 of differences and the universal significance which pervades them 
 all and makes them fit material for the organizing process of 
 thought. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is now evident that the merely quantitative 
 aspect of thought lacks the organic individuality which Kant 
 endeavored to represent by the category of Totality. Looked 
 at from this point of view, Schopenhauer's criticism is not tech- 
 nically incorrect; that is, in the sense that merely quantitative 
 Totality is not the synthesis of Unity and Plurality. But this 
 only suggests the valid objections of modern logic to any arbitrary 
 separation of the qualitative from the quantitative in experience. 
 Every principle of organization derives its own meaning from 
 its interrelations within the whole of experience; and the category 
 of Totality can have the meaning which Kant would ascribe 
 to it only when its synthetic character passes beyond the ab- 
 stractly quantitative phase of experience and becomes the im- 
 manent principle of individuality in concrete experience itself. 
 
 2, Quality. — The Quality of judgments consists, according to 
 Schopenhauer, in the possibility of uniting and separating the 
 spheres of abstract concepts,- and therefore concerns merely the 
 form and not the content of judgments. The content is per- 
 ceptual in origin, and Schopenhauer finds both assertion and 
 denial foreign to perception, which is "complete, subject to no 
 doubt or error " f whereas the quality-form of judgment, affirming 
 or denying the connection of the concept-spheres in question, 
 lies entirely within the province of reason. 
 
 ^Cf. Kr. d. r. V., p. 71; M., p. 59. 
 2C/. G., I, p. 581; H.K., II, p. 57. 
 3G., I, p. 582; H.K., II, p. 57. 
 
32 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 The infinite judgment, and the category^of Limitation deduced 
 from it by Kant, Schopenhauer summarily rejects as "a crotchet 
 of the old scholastics, an ingenuously invented stop-gap, which 
 does not even require to be explained."^ This, coupled with 
 his protest against the unreal character of abstract affirmation 
 and denial, is a just criticism of Kant's too formal treatment. 
 Kant does not sufficiently recognize the inseparable character 
 of affirmation and negation, which mutually imply and involve 
 each other. But Schopenhauer, on the other hand, would ob- 
 literate the distinction by describing concrete reality as neither 
 affirmed nor denied, but somehow 'being immediately present.' 
 Affirmation and Negation are both relative to the ideal signifi- 
 cance of experience from a certain point of view. In every 
 negation an affirmation is implicit; and, conversely, no affirma- 
 tion is mere abstract assertion but contains negative factors 
 which delimit its sphere of reference. Thus Bradley writes: 
 "We cannot deny without also affirming; and it is of the very 
 last importance, whenever we deny, to get as clear an idea as 
 we can of the positive ground our denial rests on."' 
 
 Kant's category of Limitation might well embody this qualita- 
 tive relativity in experience, which both points to, and explains, 
 its positive-negative polarity. But Kant tends to regard the 
 logical antecedent of the category of Limitation as the infinite 
 judgment, understood as expressing the mere absence of deter- 
 mination, and practically amounting to what logicians have 
 called the 'privative' judgment. The indefinite division of the 
 universe of discourse, by means of an arbitrarily chosen char- 
 acteristic which provides no adequate basis of distinction, does 
 not yield a new form of judgment, but indeed makes all significant 
 judging impossible. The soul 'as a non-mortal being' (to select 
 Kant's own example^) can be fit material for judgment, only 
 when it is explained as a possible material for thought, by a 
 proper understanding of the significance of mortality and im- 
 mortality. But it is precisely this lack of understanding of 
 concrete relationship which has suggested an escape from the 
 
 iG., I, p. 582; H.K., II, p. 58- 
 ^Principles of Logic, p. 120. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 72; M., p. 60. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 33 
 
 suspense of ignorance into the abstract indefiniteness of the 
 'infinite' judgment, justly criticised by recent logicians.^ 
 
 The synthesis of afifirmation and negation is not to be found 
 in their confusion but in their organization. Limitation means, 
 not indefiniteness, of course, but concrete interdependence, and 
 the proper delineation of the sphere of reference. As Bosanquet 
 says, "Exclusion by Privation rests on a conviction, won by 
 persistent lack of afifirmation, of the true negative limit and 
 external contour of knowledge, which limit, qua the true limit, 
 must be held true of reality. "^ Schopenhauer's rejection of 
 Kant's 'infinite judgment' does not necessarily involve a return 
 to the formal separation between abstract afifirmation and nega- 
 tion, as Schopenhauer himself seems to infer. Rather should 
 'Limitation' be reinterpreted to mean the precise indication of 
 the context which embodies within itself the organization of 
 reality, positive and negative, and gives both their real meaning 
 for experience; in the same way as, from the point of view of 
 Quantity, abstract Unity and abstract Plurality find their basis 
 of union in the concrete Totality of the Individual. 
 
 3. Relation. — In Kant's view there are three fundamental rela- 
 tions involved in Judgment: {a) relation of predicate to subject, 
 connecting two concepts (categorical judgment); {h) relation of 
 reason and consequent, involving the logical connection of two 
 judgments, the separate validity of each remaining undetermined 
 (hypothetical judgment); (c) relation of subdivided knowledge 
 and of the collected members of the subdivision to each other 
 (disjunctive judgment). In the disjunctive judgment, the rela- 
 tion is one not of consequence but of the logical opposition of 
 mutually exclusive alternatives, on the one hand, and of the 
 community of these alternatives, on the other hand, in that they 
 are complementary, and, taken together, "constitute the whole 
 contents of one given knowledge."^ 
 
 The categorical judgment, according to Schopenhauer, ex- 
 
 iSee in this connection Sigwart, Logic, translated by Helen Dendy, Vol. I, 
 London, 1895. pp. 127 fif.; Bradley. Principles of Logic, pp. 109 ff.; and especially 
 Bosanquet's treatment of Privation, which seems to me the most suggestive. Logic, 
 Vol. I, pp. 332 ff. 
 
 "^ Logic, Vol. I, p. 339- 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 74; M.. p. 61; Cf. Kr. d. r. V., pp. 73 ff-; M., pp. 60 ff. 
 
34 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 presses "the form of judgment in general, in its strictest sense. 
 For, strictly speaking, judging merely means thinking, the com- 
 bination of, or impossibility of combining, the spheres of the 
 concepts. "1 But it is a misconception, Schopenhauer says, to 
 explain the subject and predicate of judgment as having a 
 "peculiar and special correlative in perception, substance and 
 accident."- He adds: "I shall show clearly further on that the 
 conception substance has no other true content than that of the 
 conception matter."^ For a discussion of this latter point the 
 reader is referred to the next chapter, where Schopenhauer's 
 theory of Substance is treated at greater length. 
 
 The form of the hypothetical judgment expresses the abstract 
 connection of the ratio cognoscendi, but its scope of application 
 actually includes the entire world of ideas. The category of 
 causality is only one of the four forms of the Principle of Suf- 
 ficient Reason, and the causal relation does not, therefore, exhaust 
 the logical implications of the hypothetical in experience, as 
 Kant mistakenly supposes that it does, when he derives from the 
 hypothetical judgment merely the causal category. The hypo- 
 thetical judgment is for Schopenhauer the logical expression of 
 the dependence obtaining in experience, and formally concerns 
 the dependence of completed judgments upon each other; but 
 this its formal use by no means exhausts its significance. 
 
 The disjunctive form of judgment, in a similar way, expresses 
 the incompatibility of judgments with respect to each other. 
 Kant, — basing on the fact that the alternatives in complete 
 disjunction, while being incompatible with and excluding each 
 other, nevertheless, if taken together, exhaust the sphere of 
 reference expressed by the judgment, — deduces from what he 
 calls the 'community' of logical disjunctions the category of 
 Reciprocity. Schopenhauer emphatically denies the validity of 
 the deduction. In real disjunction, he insists, the affirmation 
 of one alternative means the negation of all the rest, hence it 
 could by no means serve as the logical basis of the category of 
 Reciprocity, in which the affirmation of anything involves at 
 
 >G., I, p. 583; H.K., II. p. 59- 
 5C/. G., I, pp. 584; H.K., II, p. 60. 
 3G., I, pp. 584-585; H.K., II, p. 60. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 35 
 
 the same time the affirmation of everything else towards which 
 it stands in a 'reciprocal' relation. "Therefore," he says, "un- 
 questionably, the real logical analogue of reciprocity is the vicious 
 circle, for in it, as nominally in the case of reciprocity, what is 
 proved is also the pfoof, and conversely. And just as logic 
 rejects the vicioUs circle, so the conception of reciprocity ought 
 to be banished from metaphysics."^ 
 
 Thus Schopenhauer proceeds "quite seriously, to prove that 
 there is no reciprocity in the strict sense. "^ A proper understand- 
 ing of the nature of causality, as "the law according to which 
 the conditions or states of matter which appear determine their 
 position in time,"^ a law regulating our entire perceptual world, 
 would show clearly', Schopenhauer maintains, the empty, false, 
 and invalid character of the conception of reciprocity. The 
 direction of the causal succession is by no means a matter of 
 indifference. Cause and effect are no vague, interchangeable 
 terms. Cause is precisely the antecedent state of matter A, 
 which necessarily evokes the consequent state of matter B. The 
 temporal factor is of the very first importance in any causal 
 succession, and this is just what is completely left out of account 
 in the category of Reciprocity. For, in calling the two states A 
 and 5 'reciprocal/ Kant virtually asserts "that both are cause 
 and both are effect of each other; but this really amounts to 
 saying that each of the two is the earlier and also the later; thus 
 it is an absurdity."'* 
 
 Causality and reciprocity are thus incompatible; and, inas- 
 much as the entire world of perception is a causally connected 
 world, reciprocity is inadmissible as a category of the under- 
 standing. In the realm of reason, to be sure, where nothing 
 'happens,' e. g., in the abstract reasons and consequents of logic 
 and mathematics, reciprocity is the ruling principle precisely 
 because there causality as the category of perception is ruled out. 
 Thus, Schopenhauer concludes, the category of Reciprocity is, 
 in the first place, not deducible from the disjunctive judgment, 
 
 iG., I, p. 585; H.K., II. p. 61. 
 
 2G., I, pp. 585-586; H.K., II, pp. 61-62. 
 
 'G., I, p. 586; H.K., II, p. 62. 
 
 <G., I, p. 586; H.K., II, pp. 62-63. 
 
36 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 but finds its logical counterpart in the vicious circle, and, sec- 
 ondly, it is untenable as a category of the understanding (in 
 Schopenhauer's sense), because it is found to be incompatible 
 with causality and causal succession. 
 
 Schopenhauer's attitude towards reciprocity is quite consistent 
 with his interpretation of causality. Having described the per- 
 ceptual order in exclusiv^ely causal terms, and having defined the 
 law of causality itself as meaning nothing more nor less than the 
 dependence of any state of matter B upon a preceding state A 
 necessarily evoking it, he cannot but draw the logical conclusion 
 that in such a perceptual world, in which such a law of causality 
 holds complete sway, organic interaction in the broad sense, or 
 reciprocity, is inadmissible. 
 
 Does it follow, however, that Reciprocity is inadmissible as a 
 category of concrete experience? If the causal category is really 
 to express the Principle of Sufficient Reason in the world of 
 events, if one is to reduce to it all the twelve categories of the 
 understanding, it must itself be conceived in a far broader sense 
 than Schopenhauer allows. Concrete experience is too complex 
 a system to be adequately dealt with from the point of view of 
 'causality' reduced to terms of mere temporal succession. The 
 unitary character of experience, its essentially organic nature, 
 means just this: that every element, every factor in it, obtains 
 its being and its essence precisely by virtue of its relations to the 
 rest of the system. And these relations are not of mere abstract 
 dependence. The dependence in experience is organic interde- 
 pendence: the entire process is one of constant give-and-take, a 
 process of progressive organization. The causal category, as 
 Schopenhauer defines it, is a correct enough statement of this 
 interdependence regarded from one particular point of view, and, 
 in its abstract form, it is indispensable for the procedure of phys- 
 ical science, though not necessarily adequate for all purposes even 
 of physical science.^ But this cannot be used as an argument 
 against the category of reciprocity, for the reason that reciprocity 
 takes a less abstract view of experience than causality does. The 
 category of reciprocity expresses a deeper recognition of the 
 
 ^Cf. Bosanquet's pertinent remarks on the conception of 'ground,' as implied 
 in the procedure of physical science. Logic, Vol. I, pp. 264 ff. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 37 
 
 concrete organization of experience; as Hegel puts it, "reciprocal 
 action realises the causal relation in its complete development." ^ 
 Kant's account of reciprocity is far from clear or adequate, 
 but the principle of in/erdependence in the organization of expe- 
 rience is indispensable from the point of view of the Critical 
 method, and, indeed, from the point of view of science. In tak- 
 ing too narrow a point of view, and failing to realize the inevitably 
 instrumental character of all categories, Schopenhauer displays 
 all of Kant's dogmatic tendency and carries Kant's initial error 
 to its logical extreme. 
 
 4. Modality. — Schopenhauer finds Kant's reasoning much more 
 consistent in the case of the categories of Modality. In contrast 
 to the "willkiirlichsten Zwange"^ characterizing the previous 
 'deductions,' the categories of Modality are really derivable from 
 the forms of judgments corresponding to them. "Thus that it 
 is the conceptions of the possible, the actual, and the necessary 
 which occasion the problematic, assertatory, and apodictic forms 
 of judgment, is perfectly true; but," Schopenhauer continues, 
 "that those conceptions are special, original forms of knowledge 
 of the understanding which cannot be further deduced is not 
 true."' The knowledge of necessity, Schopenhauer asserts, 
 springs directly from the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the one 
 original form of all knowledge. The conceptions of contingency,, 
 possibility, actuality, and impossibility, on the other hand, arise^ 
 only through the conflict of abstract and intuitive knowledge.*^ 
 Schopenhauer elucidates his point of view by analyzing the 
 notion of necessity at some length, showing it to be nothing more 
 than the application of the general Principle of Sufficient Reason. 
 "The conception of necessity," he emphatically declares, "con- 
 tains absolutely nothing more than this dependence, this being 
 established through something else, and this inevitably following 
 from it."^ Accordingly, the four forms of the Principle of Sufficient 
 Reason manifest the four kinds of necessity in experience: logical, 
 physical, mathematical, and moral.^ 
 
 ^ Logic, p. 280. ^G., I, p. 590. 
 
 3G., I, p. 590; H.K., II, p. 66. 
 
 *C/. G., I, p. 590; H.K., II, p. 67. 
 
 6 Ibid. 
 
 ^Cf. G., Ill, p. 171; Hillebr., p. 182. 
 
38 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 One should keep clearly in mind that, while the Principle of 
 Sufficient Reason itself, being a ' metalogical truth,' is axiomatic 
 and incapable of proof, nevertheless everything which comes 
 under its regulation, has its meaning, truth, and reality precisely 
 in reference to something else. Hence, Schopenhauer insists, 
 the thoroughly relative character of all necessity becomes evident. 
 Nothing is necessary in itself, but solely by virtue of something 
 else upon which it depends and in which it finds its meaning. 
 Necessity is thus the general way of expressing this coherence, 
 this multiform organization in experience, of which the Principle 
 of Sufficient Reason is, for Schopenhauer, the most general 
 statement. If once this relative character of necessity is com- 
 prehended, the meaning of contingency becomes obvious. Kant's 
 confusion on this point is due to his adherence to the abstract 
 rationalistic notion of the contingent (as that of which the non- 
 existence is possible), opposed, on the one hand, to the necessary 
 (that which cannot possibly not be), and, on the other hand, 
 to the impossible (that which cannot possibly be).^ This Aristo- 
 telian conception of the contingent^ in Kant results from "sticking 
 to abstract conceptions without going back to the concrete and 
 perceptible."^ As a matter of fact, contingency is nothing more 
 jior less than the denial of necessity in a particular case, i. e., 
 '"absence of the connection expressed by the principle of sufficient 
 treason. "* 
 
 Contingency is relative, just as necessity is relative, and for 
 the same reason. Every thing, every event in the actual world 
 "is always at once necessary and contingent; necessary in relation 
 to the one condition which is its cause; contingent in relation to 
 everything else."^ The absolutely contingent would be some- 
 thing out of all relation: a thought as meaningless, Schopenhauer 
 insists, as the absolutely necessary, dependent upon nothing else 
 in particular. In both necessity and contingency the mind turns 
 
 iC/. K. d. r. v., II ed., p. 301; M., p. 198; G.. I, p. 594; H.K., II. p. 70. 
 ^ Ibid. Schopenhauer refers here to De generatione et con uptione, Lib. II, C.-9 
 et II. 
 
 'G.. I. p. 594; H.K.. II, p. 71. •...-. 
 
 *G., I, p. 591; H.K., II, p. 67. 
 'G., I. p. 591; H.K., II, p. 68. 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 39 
 
 back in search of explanation ; the necessary and the contingent 
 thus mean merely the relevant and the irrelevant in the process 
 of organization. If one considers merely the given event by 
 itself, merely the eflfect, without looking for the explanatory 
 cause which necessitates it and makes it contingent with respect 
 to everything else, then one understands the meaning of the 
 immediately existing, the actual, the thing as directly appre- 
 hended. The actual in nature, however, is always causally re- 
 lated, hence also necessary here and now. If, on the other hand, 
 the mind abstracts from this 'here' and 'now,' and presents to 
 itself all the laws of nature and thought, physical and meta- 
 physical, i. e., known to us a posteriori and a priori respectively/ 
 then the conception of possibility arises, which means compati- 
 bility with our conceptual systems and laws, without reference 
 to any particular time and place. That which is inadmissible 
 even from this abstract point of view, Schopenhauer calls the 
 impossible. This development of the conceptions of necessity, 
 actuality (existence), and possibility, showing as it does their 
 common basis in the one Principle of Sufificient Reason, demon- 
 strates, Schopenhauer asserts, " how entirely groundless is Kant's 
 assumption of three special functions of the understanding for 
 these three conceptions. "^ 
 
 A comparison of this outline of Schopenhauer's conclusions 
 with Kant's summary of his own treatment of the modality of 
 judgments, will illustrate the difference between the two positions. 
 Kant says: "As in this way everything is arranged step by step 
 in the understanding, inasmuch as we begin with judging prob- 
 lematically, then proceed to an assertory acceptation, and finally 
 maintain our proposition as inseparably united with the under- 
 standing, that is as necessary and apodictic, we may be allowed 
 to call these three functions of modality so many varieties or 
 momenta of thought."^ The three characteristic stages in the 
 logical progression might well indicate three points of view in the 
 self-organization of experience, and in this sense Kant may be 
 justified in distinguishing three categories of Modality. Never- 
 
 iG., I. p. 592; H.K., II. p. 69. 
 ^G.. I, p. 593; H.K.. II. p. 69. 
 2Kr. d. r. V.. p. 76; M.. p. 63. 
 
40 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 theless Kant's distinctions are too sharp and abstract: while he 
 suggests a process of logical development in the passage just 
 quoted, he fails to explain the matter adequately and clearly to 
 emphasize the essential interdependence of these 'momenta of 
 thought,' which involve each other in the systematic organization 
 of experience.^ On the other hand, Schopenhauer is quite unable 
 to realize the organic character of concrete experience, which 
 implies, not the absorption of possibility and actuality into neces- 
 sity, but their proper correlation in the systematic whole. In 
 his constant tendency to make hard and fast distinctions, to the 
 neglect of the concrete unity of the system of experience, Schopen- 
 hauer represents what Hegel called ' the standpoint of the under- 
 standing,' As Professor Bosanquet says: "The real prophet of 
 the understanding . . . was Schopenhauer. His treatment of 
 the principle of sufficient reason as at once the fundamental axiom 
 of human science and the innate source of its illusions, forms an 
 ultimate and irreversible criticism on the aspect of intelligence 
 which consists, to sum up its nature in a popular but not in- 
 accurate phrase, in explaining everything by something else — 
 a process which taken by itself is necessarily unending and un- 
 satisfying. "^ 
 
 The constant protest which Schopenhauer makes against "the 
 inadmissibility and utter groundlessness of the assumption of 
 twelve special functions of the understanding,"^ is quite modern 
 in so far as it insists upon the unitary character of the principle 
 of objectivity in experience. The notion of a numerically fixed 
 table of organizing principles conditioning the possibility of expe- 
 rience, is diametrically opposed to any consistently organic theory 
 of knowledge. The desire for 'architectonic symmetry' made 
 Kant oblivious to the fact that concrete experience follows, not 
 the formal classifications of the logician, but its own immanent 
 principles of interdependence. The categories are nothing more 
 nor less than the functions of thought by means of which we can 
 recognize the objectivity or coherence of experience from the 
 
 'C/. in this connection Bosanquet's analysis and criticism of Kant's treatment 
 of Modality, Logic, Vol. I, pp. 377 ff. 
 ^Op. cit.. Vol. II. pp. 81-82. 
 3G., I. p. 598; H.K., II. p. 75- 
 
PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION IN EXPERIENCE. 4 1 
 
 various points of view that have proved permanently significant 
 in the development of the special sciences and of the various 
 philosophical disciplines. Every clearly defined point of view 
 from which we can study experience to permanent advantage is 
 itself a category. The exact number of valid categories is thus 
 a matter of vain speculation. The 'roots' of the Principle of 
 Sufficient Reason, the categories of experience, are neither twelve, 
 nor four, nor twelve times four; their number is constantly vari- 
 able and 'their name is legion.' The essentially functional 
 character of the principles by means of which we deal with the 
 concrete organization of experience, when duly recognized, shows 
 the impossibility of any complete enumeration. 
 
 The categories, then, are exclusively instrumental in character; 
 their truth is in no sense abstractly fixed and immutable. Kant's 
 conception of their fixedness is but a relic of the 'eternal truths' 
 of the older rationalism. Nothing is more evident in recent 
 theory of knowledge than the tendency to realize the non-static 
 and developing character of all categories. The proof of all 
 principles of organization in science and philosophy, the only 
 test of their validity, is to be found precisely in their ability to 
 organize. Science and philosophy alike are a continuous re- 
 construction and restatement of categories, a perpetual striving 
 after ever more adequate formulations of the coherence immanent 
 in experience. 
 
 It is unfortunate, though not difficult to explain, that Schopen- 
 hauer, whose keen criticism of the doctrine of the categories had 
 disclosed so many of its flaws, should have overlooked one of 
 Kant's most questionable distinctions, namely, that which he 
 makes between 'constitutive' and 'regulative' principles. This 
 distinction is employed by Kant with little consistency, although 
 the tendency is to discriminate between: (a) the fundamental 
 forms of intuition, the productive imagination, and the functions 
 of thought, which condition the possibility of all experience and 
 'constitute' its organization; and {h) the rational assumptions 
 which, while not determining the actual form of experience, 
 serve to rationalize the moral order and the aesthetic judgment. 
 The distinction, otherwise expressed, is between the mechanical 
 
42 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 categories of the Understanding, which Kant calls 'constitutive,' 
 and the teleological categories, the postulates of Practical Reason 
 and of the Esthetic Judgment, which he regards as 'regulative.'^ 
 
 The incompatibility of this hard and fast distinction with any 
 interpretation of experience which attempts to do justice to its 
 organic character is amply illustrated in Kant's own technical 
 procedure. The teleological categories are declared to be merely 
 'regulative,' because not 'constitutive' of experience mechani- 
 cally considered. But are the mechanical {i. e., 'constitutive') 
 categories constitutive of moral and aesthetic experience? Such 
 considerations, which Kant would have been the last to take 
 lightly, should have warned him of the untenability of a dis- 
 tinction that negates the immanent unity of experience, which 
 is the fundamental postulate of the Critical philosophy. 
 
 The 'Transcendental Dialectic' aims to show that the categories 
 are invalid, and, indeed, without significance, if applied beyond 
 the sphere of 'possible experience.' But Kant fails to draw the 
 important, if, to us, fairly obvious conclusion that all categories 
 as such, whether theoretical, practical, or aesthetic, are instru- 
 mental and essentially regulative, i. e., that every valid principle 
 is valid only within its specific sphere of application, true (in the 
 complete sense) only from a certain definite point of view. Just 
 because of this purely instrumental significance of all the cate- 
 gories, they lose all meaning if taken out of their proper context. 
 And this is the real significance of the ' Transcendental Dialectic ' : 
 it shows the futility of confusing the various aspects of experience 
 with each other, and the necessity of rejecting all 'transcendent' 
 principles of explanation as incompatible with the Critical theory 
 of experience. 
 
 The elucidation and justification of this contention will be 
 the object of discussion in the next chapter. 
 
 1 Regarding this whole problem, c/. Professor Albee's article on "The Significance 
 of Methodological Principles," in The Philosophical Review, 1906, pp. 267-276, 
 esp. pp. 270 a. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The Scope and Limits of Experience: Transcen- 
 dental Dialectic. 
 
 The real distinction between Understanding and Reason wliich 
 Kant makes in the Critique of Pure Reason, and which he sub- 
 stantially maintains throughout the 'Dialectic', is the distinction 
 between understanding as the faculty which deals with the con- 
 ditioned and reason as the faculty which demands the uncondi- 
 tioned. Although, as already observed in Chapter I,^ Schopen- 
 hauer does not at first explicitly recognize this, Kant's real 
 distinction between understanding and reason, nevertheless, in 
 his examination of the 'Transcendental Dialectic,' he attempts to 
 account for the origin of the notion of the unconditioned and to 
 point out its role in Kant's philosophy. "It is the peculiar 
 principle of reason (in its logical use)," Kant says, "to find for 
 every conditioned knowledge of the understanding the uncon- 
 ditioned, whereby the unity of that knowledge may be com- 
 pleted. "^ Now Schopenhauer insists that the whole plausibility 
 of Kant's conception is due to its abstractness. Kant's argument 
 is summarized by Schopenhauer as follows: "If the conditioned 
 is given, the totality of its conditions must also be given, and 
 therefore also the unconditioned, through which alone that totality 
 becomes complete. "^ But, Schopenhauer argues, this 'totality 
 of the conditions of everything conditioned' is contained in its 
 nearest ground or reason from which it directly proceeds, and 
 which is only thus a sufficient reason or ground.* In the alter- 
 nating series of conditioned and conditioning states, "as each 
 link is laid aside the chain is broken, and the claim of the principle 
 of sufficient reason entirely satisfied, it arises anew because the 
 condition becomes the conditioned."^ This is the actual modus 
 
 ^Cf. above, pp. 14 ff., 19 ff. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 307; M.. p. 249. 
 3G., I. p. 612; H.K., II, pp. 90-91- 
 <C/., G., I, pp. 613-614; H.K., II, p. 92. 
 «G.. I. p. 614; H.K.. II. p. 92. 
 
 43 
 
44 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 operandi of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. "Only through 
 an arbitrary abstraction," Schopenhauer says, "is a series of 
 causes and effects regarded as a series of causes alone, which 
 exists merely on account of the last efifect, and is therefore 
 demanded as its sufficient reason."^ 
 
 The unconditioned is unthinkable; and Kant himself, of course, 
 does not claim objective validity for the conception. He does, 
 however, regard the demand of reason for the unconditioned as 
 a regulative principle, "subjectively necessary. "^ The employ- 
 ment of reason in this sense, as the faculty which demands the 
 unconditioned, offers Kant a great opportunity for satisfying 
 his ideal of 'architectonic symmetry.' Corresponding to the 
 three categories of relation, Kant finds three syntheses of reason, 
 each of which yields a special unconditioned: "First, the uncon- 
 ditioned of the categorical synthesis in a subject; secondly, the 
 unconditioned of the hypothetical synthesis of the members of a 
 series; thirdly, the unconditioned of the disjunctive synthesis of 
 the parts of a system. "' The 'Dialectic' is thus divided by Kant 
 into three parts, dealing respectively with the refutation of 
 rational psychology, rational cosmology, and rational theology. 
 Now, while it is doubtless true that these are "the three principal 
 subjects round which the whole of philosophy under the influence 
 of Christianity, from the Scholastics down to Christian Wolff, has 
 turned,"^ Schopenhauer counts it an error on the part of Kant 
 that he accepts without question these 'transcendental ideas' 
 as the product of the essential nature of reason, instead of recog- 
 nizing them for what they really are, the artifacts of scholastic 
 theology. An historical investigation into the rise and extent 
 of theistic belief, Schopenhauer maintains, would have shown 
 Kant its actual role in philosophical thought, and would have 
 indicated the artificiality of these so-called 'transcendental ideas.' 
 As it is, Kant is now involved in "an unfortunate necessity . . . 
 in that he makes these three conceptions spring necessarily from 
 the nature of reason, and yet explains that they are untenable 
 
 >G., I, p. 614; H.K., II, pp. 92-93. 
 2G., I. p. 616; H.K.. II, p. 95. 
 'Xr. d. r. v., p. 323; M., p. 262. 
 *G., I, p. 618; H.K., II, p. 97. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 45 
 
 and unverifiable by the reason, and thus makes the reason itself 
 a sophisticator."^ 
 
 The real value and significance of Schopenhauer's rejection of 
 the unconditioned can be better appreciated after an examination 
 of his detailed criticism of the 'Transcendental Dialectic* Be- 
 fore proceeding to this, however, mention should be made of a 
 technical point which Schopenhauer raises in criticising Kant's 
 use of the term ' Idea.' 
 
 Schopenhauer is doubtless right in holding that Kant's use 
 of the term 'Idea' is essentially different from Plato's. By his 
 'Ideas' Plato sought to represent the unchanging, the permanent 
 behind this our world of fleeting shadows. He regarded the 
 'Ideas' as the archetypes of our multiform experience, speculative 
 and mathematical as well as practical. Kant, however, seizing 
 upon the 'transcendent' character of the 'Ideas,' employs the 
 term to denote his own practical 'as ifs.' But the potential 
 perceptibility of the Platonic ' Idea' is incompatible with the mean- 
 ing which Kant reads into Plato's doctrine, and in so far Schopen- 
 hauer's criticism is quite just. 
 
 This, however, does not mean that Schopenhauer's own con- 
 ception of the Platonic 'Idea,' as developed in Book III of The 
 World as Will and Idea, is true to the spirit of the original Platonic 
 doctrine. If Kant unduly emphasizes the non-empirical char- 
 acter of the ' Ideas,' to support his own doctrine of teleological 
 postulates, Schopenhauer, in a similarly abstract way, makes 
 use of their archetypal character of permanence and their poten- 
 tial perceptibility, in order to secure the prestige of a great name 
 in support of his endeavor to span the chasm between his two 
 worlds of Idea and Will by means of his Theory of Art. Neither 
 Kant's nor Schopenhauer's use of the term 'Idea' contributes in 
 any real sense to the actual historical criticism of Plato's doctrine, 
 although their interpretations of the term are of undeniable sig- 
 nificance for the understanding of their own respective systems. 
 I. Rational Psychology. — Schopenhauer admits that Kant's 
 refutation of rational psychology "has as a whole very great 
 merit and much truth. "^ But he criticises Kant for neglecting 
 
 iG.. I, p. 620; H.K., ir, p. g 
 «G.. I, p. 621; H.K., II, p. I 
 
 99. 
 
 [00. 
 
46 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 the historical origin of the notion of the soul, in order to deduce 
 it, for the sake of 'architectonic symmetry,' from the paralogism 
 of substantiality, "by applying the demand for the unconditioned 
 to the conception of substance, which is the first category of 
 relation. "1 
 
 As a matter of fact, Schopenhauer says, the actual proof is 
 based upon a pure intuition of time. The succession of time, 
 Kant argues, is unintelligible without the assumption of an under- 
 lying permanent; change involves the changeless: "Substances, 
 therefore (as phenomena) are the true substrata of all determina- 
 tions of time. "2 Now "it is false," Schopenhauer says, "that 
 in mere time there is simultaneity and duration; these ideas only 
 arise from the union of space with time."^ Kant's assumption of 
 a permanent in time through all change is a complete miscon- 
 ception; "a permanent time is a contradiction."^ Moreover, the 
 law of causality, the principle of change, can in no way arise out 
 of the notion of mere succession in time, as Kant endeavors to 
 show in the 'Second Analogy.' Temporal succession need not 
 necessarily be causal succession; phenomena may follow one 
 another without following from one another.^ Kant seems to 
 reverse Hume's conclusion by tending to identify sequence with 
 consequence; such a view Schopenhauer finds little better than 
 the Scholastic post hoc ergo propter hoc. In order that mere 
 temporal succession may be transformed into causal connection, 
 a union of sequence in time with permanence in space is necessary. 
 The causal law cannot be deduced from anything else ; it is merely 
 the a priori certainty that we have of necessary connection in 
 our perceptual world, which makes us ever seek the cause account- 
 ing for any perceived effect. 
 
 It is the perception of connected changes, viewed in the light 
 of causality, which raises the question of a permanent bearer of 
 all changes; that is, what Schopenhauer calls 'causality objecti- 
 fied,' 'matter.' That which in perceptual experience appears 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. i88; M., p. IS4- 
 
 3G.. I, p. 6oi; H.K.. II, p. 78. 
 
 * Ibid. 
 
 ^Cf. G., Ill, p. 107; Hillebr., p. 106. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 47 
 
 as a chain of causally connected changes, when regarded from 
 the point of view of its permanence, is what Schopenhauer calls 
 'matter.' He would not be understood as upholding the old 
 doctrine of a hypothetical Substance behind experience; that is 
 precisely the view which he combats. "Matter is never known 
 otherwise than as producing effects, i. e., as through and through 
 causality; to be and to act are with it one, which is indeed signi- 
 fied by the word actuality.''^ In the space-time union of the 
 perceptual order, 'causality' represents the connected sequence 
 of changing states, that is to say, the temporal element; 'matter,' 
 the permanent, abiding essence of the changing properties, i. e., 
 the spatial element. This shows plainly that the conception of 
 the permanent is contributed by space, but only in its union 
 with time. "Intimate union of space and time — causality, 
 matter, actuality — are thus one, and the subjective correlative 
 of this one is the understanding."- 
 
 Schopenhauer's conception of matter has been considered in this 
 connection, partly because it leads to his view of the groundless 
 character of the idea of soul as immaterial substance. He asks 
 the reader to bear in mind the fact that matter derives all its 
 real meaning from its relation to the causal order. By itself, 
 therefore, and apart from its action in causality, matter can 
 only be thought in abstracto, in conception. Now, Schopenhauer 
 argues, from this notion of matter, when thus abstractly regarded 
 by itself, 'substance,' hypothetically a higher genus, is abstracted 
 by means of retaining its one predicate of permanence and 
 ignoring its other essential attributes, i. e., extension, impenetra- 
 bility, divisibility, etc. Moreover, " like every higher geww5 . . . 
 the concept substance contains less in itself than the concept 
 matter, but, unlike every other higher genus, it does not contain 
 more under it, because it does not include several lower genera 
 besides matter; but this remains the one true species of the 
 concept substance, the only assignable thing by which its content 
 is realized and receives a proof. "^ The real motive for this 
 needless abstraction, however, is not far to seek. Just because 
 
 iG., I, p. 602; H.K., II, p. 79- 
 
 2 Ibid. 
 
 3G., I, p. 624; H.K., II, p. 103. 
 
48 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 the genus 'substance' was framed, not by means of a legitimate 
 abstraction from several lower genera, but by means of the 
 arbitrary isolation of the characteristic of permanence of its one 
 and only sub-species, 'matter,' a second species can now be co- 
 ordinated with 'matter' under the concept 'substance,' i. e., 
 '.'the immaterial, simple, indestructible substance, soul."^ The 
 arbitrary and artificial character of the whole procedure seems 
 quite obvious to Schopenhauer. The new species is obtained 
 by the express denial of precisely those characteristics which 
 had been tacitly omitted in the 'abstraction' of the concept 
 'substance' from its one valid sub-species, 'matter.' Thus the 
 notion of the soul is shown to be "an exceedingly superfluous 
 concept, because its only true content lies already in the concept 
 of matter, besides which it contains only a great void, which can 
 be filled up by nothing but the illicitly introduced species imma- 
 terial substance."^ 
 
 Schopenhauer, accordingly, does not even discuss Kant's 
 reasoning in the 'Paralogisms of Pure Reason'; he regards his 
 own account of the origin of the concept 'soul' proof positive 
 that it cannot be employed legitimately in philosophy. Along 
 with the notion of immaterial substance, therefore, "the concept 
 substance must be entirely rejected, and the concept matter 
 everywhere put in its place. "^ 
 
 This, then, is Schopenhauer's account of the real significance 
 of 'Substance' in experience. And, while recent epistemology 
 must take exception to many of the conclusions which Schopen- 
 hauer (in his more materialistic moments, in The Will in Nature 
 and in the 'Supplements' to Book II of The World as Will and 
 Idea) draws regarding the metaphysical role of matter in the 
 genesis of knowledge, it must be admitted that his general con- 
 ception of matter, as the permanence implied in the causal order, 
 is, on the whole, well grounded. It rightly emphasizes the in- 
 separable union of space and time in the world of perception, 
 and insists upon the concreteness of causal connection. Its 
 validity as a basis for criticism of Kant's account of causality 
 
 1 Ibid. 
 
 2G.. I, p. 625; H.K., II, p. 104. 
 
 » Ibid. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 49 
 
 depends to a large extent upon one's interpretation of Kant's 
 real meaning. Kant's endeavor to treat causality in terms of 
 objective succession may plausibly be interpreted and criticised 
 as Schopenhauer interprets and criticises it; or, again, it may be 
 viewed difTerently, more in harmony with the real spirit of the 
 Critical method, as a recognition of the deeper significance of 
 causality, by regarding it as the typical expression of the all-per- 
 meating coherence and objectivity immanent in all experience. 
 
 Regarding the status of the notion of ' substance ' in philosophy, 
 one thing is certain: 'substance' is emphatically not admissible 
 in its old dogmatic sense of a transcendent substratum existent 
 behind experience. Such a hypostatized abstraction is not only 
 of no instrumental value for philosophy, but it makes impossible 
 any consistent theory which shall do justice to the organic char- 
 acter of experience. For the more recent idealistic epistemology, 
 experience is one and undivided, and its principles both of unity 
 and of permanence must be in terms of itself; otherwise a dualism 
 is unavoidable, with all its insoluble problems and hopeless surds. 
 Schopenhauer, then, holding as he does that 'substance' is one 
 and immanent in concrete experience, seems justified in refusing 
 even an audience to the illegitimate concept of the immaterial 
 soul, to which Kant devotes a whole chapter of his 'Transcendental 
 Dialectic' 
 
 Is Schopenhauer's own position, however, equally defensible, 
 when he identifies his one Substance with Matter? This identi- 
 fication of Substance with the hypothetically permanent in 
 physical causation involves a tendency towards a materialistic 
 interpretation of experience; it means ignoring for the time the 
 abiding character of the rational elements in experience. If the 
 principle of permanence is to be immanent and unitary, experi- 
 ence itself must be regarded as one and undivided. The correct 
 solution must lie in the opposite direction from the one Schopen- 
 hauer follows. The unitary character of substance can be an 
 instrumentally valid conception only for an epistemology which 
 recognizes its one Reality in the all-embracing, coherent, intel- 
 ligible experience, in which every element is a factor in a self- 
 perpetuating process of organization, and contributes to the 
 permanent significance of the absolute whole. 
 
50 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 II. Rational Cosmology: Antinomy of Pure Reason. — The 
 idea of the soul was technically deduced by Kant from the 
 categorical syllogism, but only through the most artificial manipu- 
 lation. In the case of the 'Antinomy of Pure Reason,' however, 
 Schopenhauer finds no such violence necessary, in order to dis- 
 cover the logical basis of the "dogmatic ideas concerning the 
 universe, as far as it is thought as an object in itself, between two 
 limits — that of the smallest (atom), and that of the largest 
 (limits of the universe in time and space). "^ These do really 
 proceed from the hypothetical syllogism. For, as Schopenhauer 
 says, "in accordance with that principle, the mere dependence 
 of an object upon another is ever sought for, till finally the 
 exhaustion of the imagination puts an end to the journey, "^ 
 and thus the real character of the Principle of Sufficient Reason 
 is forgotten, namely, its necessary restriction to the world of 
 representations. The 'transcendental ideas' of the hypostatized 
 universe, therefore, do actually find their source in this applica- 
 tion, — or rather misapplication, — of the hypothetical judgment, 
 the logical form of the Principle of Sufficient Reason. 
 
 But "so much the more is sophistry required," Schopenhauer 
 asserts, "in order to classify those Ideas according to the four 
 titles of the categories."^ Thus he sees no reason why the 
 ' Cosmological Ideas' concerning the limits of the world in space 
 and time shouFd be classed under 'quantity,' which denotes 
 nothing more than the extent of inclusion of the subject-concept 
 in the judgment. Even less justified is the arbitrary linking of 
 the idea of 'matter' to 'quality.' For the notion of the divisi- 
 bility of matter, Schopenhauer holds, not only has nothing to 
 do with 'quality,' but does not even spring from the Principle of 
 Sufficient Reason. The relation of parts to the whole, which is 
 the real meaning of the second Cosmological Idea, is based upon 
 the ' metalogical principle ' of contradiction ; for " the whole is not 
 through the parts, nor the parts through the whole, but both 
 are necessarily together because they are one, and their separation 
 is only an arbitrary act."^ The relation of parts to the whole is 
 
 iG., I. p. 625; H.K., II, p. 104. 
 2G., I, p. 625; H.K.. II. p. 105. 
 3G.. I. p. 626; H.K.. II, p. 105. 
 *G., I, pp. 626-627; H.K., II, p. 106. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 5 I 
 
 thus one of mutual implication, not one of dependence, of reason 
 and consequent. But Kant neglects this obvious fact; "such 
 great difficulties are here overcome by the love of symmetry."^ 
 The idea of a First Cause, connected as it is with the category of 
 causality, would naturally come under the rubric of 'relation.' 
 But Kant assigns this to 'modality,' by making use of the 
 ' totality of that series,' to transform the contingent, the accidental , 
 into the necessary ,2 a procedure which perverts the whole meaning 
 of ' contingent ' and ' necessary,' as Schopenhauer uses these terms. 
 For Kant's meaning becomes intelligible only when, regarding 
 the hypothetical series as absolutely complete, we are forced to 
 admit that everything must be in some way necessarily con- 
 nected within the whole. But under such arbitrary conditions 
 necessity and contingency alike become meaningless, and we 
 could with perfect right reverse Kant's conclusion and say that 
 in the 'absolute completeness of the series' everything necessary 
 becomes contingent; and both statements would be equally 
 meaningless. For necessity and contingency are complementary 
 conceptions; contingency means nothing more nor less than 
 the absence of definite dependence between two particular states; 
 in a system which is affirmed in the very notion of necessity.. 
 This is the simple meaning of necessity and contingency when- 
 applied to the empirical world, and no absolute completion of 
 any series can identify the two conceptions. 
 
 Schopenhauer is right in insisting upon the complementary 
 character of necessity and contingency as applied to the world 
 of experience. Kant connects the Idea of First Cause and abso- 
 lute necessity with modality by postulating the existence of a 
 hypostatized 'complete system,' which would make the very 
 conception of necessity meaningless. Necessity and contingency 
 alike have significance only for coherent, dynamic experience. 
 In taking his stand, therefore, on the inevitable distinction be- 
 tween the necessary and the contingent in finite experience, and 
 in opposing Kant's transcendent transformation of the contingent 
 into the necessary, Schopenhauer justly combats an untenable 
 position. 
 
 iG., I, p. 627; H.K., II, p. 106. 
 2C/". Kr. d. r. v., p. 415; M., p. 335. 
 
52 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 "About all this, however," he says, "I find and assert that 
 the whole antinomy is a mere delusion, a sham fight. "^ Only 
 the antitheses remain consistently on the objective basis of the 
 Principle of Sufficient Reason. The theses, on the contrary, 
 in all four conflicts, are mere subjective assertions, resting solely 
 upon "the weakness of the reasoning individual, "^ or rather, 
 upon the indolence of his imagination, seeking to put an end to 
 an endless regressus. "The proof of the thesis in all the four 
 conflicts is throughout a mere sophism, while that of the antithe- 
 sis is a necessary inference of the reason from the laws of the world 
 as idea known to us a priori."^ Kant succeeds in maintaining 
 the appearance of a real conflict and a balanced antinomy in 
 each case by the constant artifice of not showing clearly the 
 nervus argumentationis, but rather confusing and complicating 
 the argument by means of "a mass of superfluous and prolix 
 sentences."^ 
 
 Whether this view of the utter groundlessness of the four theses, 
 and the consequent absence of any real antinomy, is tenable or 
 not, can best be determined by a detailed analysis of the line 
 of argument followed by Kant. " I assume," Schopenhauer says, 
 "that in this examination the reader has always before him the 
 Kantian antinomy itself,"^ — a suggestion which may also prove 
 helpful to the reader of the present monograph. 
 
 I. Antinomy of Space and Time. — In the first conflict, Scho- 
 penhauer says, the thesis, 'The world has a beginning in time 
 and is limited with regard to space,' avoids the point at issue 
 by a mere sophism. For, first, with regard to time, its proof 
 applies equally well to a beginning in time and to a beginning of 
 time, which is absurd.^ Again, instead of arguing against the 
 impossibility of beginning the series of states constituting the 
 world, it suddenly turns its proof against the conception of the 
 endlessness (infinity) of the series; and this it shows to be in- 
 compatible with the fixed completeness of the series, which it 
 
 iG.. I. p. 627; H.K.. II. p. 107. Cf. Kr. d. r. V., p. 430; M.. p. 346. 
 
 2G., I, p. 627; H.K., II, p. 107. 
 
 SQ., I, pp. 627-628; H.K., II, p. 107. 
 
 *G., I, p. 628; H.K., II, p. 107. 
 
 6G.. I, p. 628; H.K., II. p. 108. iCf. G., IV, p. 125. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 53 
 
 takes for granted. The antithesis, however, shows that an 
 absolute beginning of the world in time presupposes an ante- 
 cedent empty time in which, it is argued, no existence can possibly 
 have its beginning. And against this proof of the antithesis 
 nothing whatever is advanced by the thesis. An absolute end, 
 Schopenhauer asserts, is thinkable, but not an absolute beginning. 
 The causal law "affords us a priori the certainty that no occupied 
 time can ever be bounded by a previous empty time, and that 
 no change can be the first change."^ In assuming the complete- 
 ness of the world as a given whole, the thesis begs the question. 
 Thus it shows that "in order ... to conceive the world, which 
 fills all space, as a whole, "^ we must consider it as spatially 
 limited. But the totality of the world, in such a sense of the 
 term 'totality,' is just what was to be proved; the rest follows 
 logically enough. "Totality presupposes limits, and limits pre- 
 suppose totality; but here both together are arbitrarily pre- 
 supposed."^ Inasmuch as the causal law applies to changes in 
 time only, it cannot prove a priori the incompatibility of occupied 
 and empty space. But the mind cannot conceive of any possible 
 relation between the two. In other words, in the case of both 
 time and space, the antithesis proceeds on the basis of the actual 
 world of perceptual experience, whereas the thesis assumes 
 throughout the given 'totality' of the world, which latter is the 
 very point at issue. 
 
 2. Antinomy of Matter. — In a similar way, Schopenhauer says, 
 in the second conflict "the thesis is at once guilty of a very 
 palpable petitio principii.''* It starts by assuming a compound 
 substance, from the compoundness of which it proves the neces- 
 sity of simple parts without any difficulty. But, he argues, the 
 point to be proved is just this, that all matter is compound. 
 For "the opposite of simple is not compound, but extended, that 
 which has parts and is divisible."^ The thesis fails to note that 
 the relation of parts and whole is nowise temporal, and asserts 
 
 1 G., I. p. 630; H.K., II, p. 109. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V ., p. 428; M., p. 346. 
 3G., I, p. 629; H.K., II, p. 109. 
 <G., I, p. 631; H.K., II, no. 
 
 6 Ihid. 
 
54 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 the existence of the parts as in some sense preceding the whole; 
 for this is the very meaning of compoundness, which asserts the 
 existence of the parts a parte ante. Hence the thesis, if it is to 
 prove its case, must show that there is necessarily a limit to the 
 divisibility of matter. Thus, Schopenhauer insists, the argu- 
 ments of the thesis evade the problem and do not even touch the 
 proofs of the antithesis. "The infinite divisibility of matter, 
 which the antithesis asserts, follows a priori and incontrovertibly 
 from that of space, which it fills. "^ Kant says in his observations 
 on the thesis: "we ought not to call space a compositum, but a 
 totum."^ This, Schopenhauer thinks, "holds good absolutely 
 of matter also, which is simply space become perceptible."^ This 
 is the real force of the antithesis : its proof rests on its realization 
 of the concrete character of matter. In his effort to make the 
 conflict appear as real as possible, Schopenhauer says, Kant 
 "spoils the proof of the antithesis by the greatest obscurity of 
 style and useless accumulation of words, with the cunning inten- 
 tion that the evidence of the antithesis shall not throw the 
 sophisms of the thesis too much in the shade."'' 
 
 Kant's 'Critical Solution' attempts to maintain the balance in 
 the antinomies by taking sides with neither thesis nor antithesis, 
 but, ostensibly substituting for the dogmatic aut-aiit of the 
 alternatives in the first two conflicts a nec-nec^ condemning 
 both as inadequate. As a matter of fact, however, Schopenhauer 
 finds that the verdict is "really the confirmation of the antitheses 
 by the explanation of their assertions."^ Thus, Kant's view that 
 both theses and antitheses depend upon the dialectical argument 
 that, if the conditioned is given, the whole series of conditions 
 is also given, is obviously erroneous. This is assumed only by 
 the thesis, and is exactly what the antithesis opposes, starting 
 as it does on the basis of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which 
 is concerned only with connected conditioned and condition- 
 
 iG.. I. p. 63i;H.K.. II, p. III. 
 -^Kr. d. r. V., p. 438; M., p. 356. 
 'G.. I. p. 631; H.K., II. p. III. 
 <G., I, pp. 631-632; H.K., II, p. HI. 
 
 ^Cf. Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, translated by J. E. Creighton and A. Lefevre, 
 New York, 1902, pp. 217 ff. 
 
 «G., I, p. 634; H.K.. II. p. 114. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 5 5 
 
 ing states, and not with the series of conditions. Again, it is 
 only the thesis that, in assuming a world in space and time, 
 mistakenly conceives space and time as existent by themselves, 
 and makes "the false assumption of a self-existent universe, i. e., 
 a universe given prior to all knowledge, and to which knowledge 
 came as to something external to itself."^ Kant's solution, — 
 the world is neither finite nor infinite in time and space, because 
 time and space have no meaning for the world as a whole, — 
 does not controvert the proofs of the antithesis in the least. 
 For the antithesis maintains that in the world with which it 
 concerns itself, the spatial-temporal world of knowledge, no limits 
 of time and space can be postulated; and the conclusion of 
 Kant's own solution follows directly from this: "The infinity 
 of the world is only through the regressus, not before it."^ Thus it 
 is seen that the antithesis does not assert, as Kant claims that 
 it does, an infinity apart from the progress of experience, but 
 merely refuses to admit that the progress can at any point come 
 to an absolute stop. 
 
 The same criticism applies to the second conflict. It is the 
 thesis that, in asserting the compoundness of substance (matter), 
 ignores the reciprocal relation of parts and whole. The an- 
 tithesis, on the other hand, in refusing to admit any limit to the 
 divisibility of matter, simply recognizes its concrete character 
 in the process of experience, and is fully conscious of the in- 
 separableness of matter from space. When Kant maintains that 
 "none but sensuous conditions can enter into the mathematical 
 connection of the series of phenomena,"^ he is but re-afifirming 
 the contention of the antithesis, which is concerned throughout 
 with the world of representations. " Indeed," Schopenhauer con- 
 cludes, "if, reversing the procedure, we take as the starting- 
 point what Kant gives as the solution of the conflict, the assertion 
 of the antithesis follows exactly from it."^ 
 
 This attempt to vindicate the antitheses of the several anti- 
 nomies is of considerable significance in that it illustrates the 
 
 » Ibid. 
 
 ^Cf. G.. I. p. 635;H.K., II, p. IIS. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 530; M., p. 430. 
 <G.. I. p. 636; H.K., II, pp. 115-116. 
 
56 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 general character of Schopenhauer's own philosophical attitude 
 no less than of his criticism of Kant. He seems correct in the 
 main in his interpretation of the first two Antinomies and their 
 solution, i. e., in claiming that the assertions of the theses are 
 utterly untenable, whereas the proofs of the antitheses are valid 
 so far as they go. If taken in the negative sense of merely 
 refusing to admit in the world of representations laws other 
 than those resting on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, the 
 position represented by the antitheses is not open to attack. 
 The vindication of the antitheses in the Antinomies would not 
 call for criticism, if it were confined to the mere re-affirmation of 
 the validity of the mechanical categories in experience physically 
 considered. But it means more than that. It means the sur- 
 render of the entire world of possible experience to the mechanical 
 categories; and in this respect Kant's 'Critical Solution' does 
 actually lead him to the same conclusion that Schopenhauer 
 draws from a thoroughgoing acceptance of the antitheses. Space 
 and time are indisputably essential aspects of experience. The 
 objectivity of the causal process, which necessitates and is actual- 
 ized in the conception of matter, is fundamental to any intelligible 
 view of our world, and is a ground of its coherence. But space, 
 time, and matter all become meaningless, if we lose sight of the 
 all-embracing character of the experience of which they are 
 aspects. Space is real for experience, but it does not exhaust 
 the reality of experience. Time is indispensable to dynamic, 
 objective experience, but objectivity cannot be expressed in terms 
 of time alone. The spatial-temporal factors of experience are 
 subject to laws which cannot be set aside at pleasure; but expe- 
 rience is more than merely spatial-temporal, and its other aspects 
 manifest uniformities which may require their own special 
 principles of explanation. 
 
 Experience is an organic system, and no one of its significant 
 aspects can be persistently ignored without wrecking the entire 
 structure of knowledge. This does not mean that all phases 
 of experience are of equal 'reality,' from the point of view of 
 philosophy, and that time, space, and matter are no more and 
 no less 'real' than any other aspects of experience. The degree 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 57 
 
 of reality of any phase or factor of experience must be determined 
 in terms of its significance for the whole of experience considered 
 in the light of its immanent organization. But this point of 
 view is only one way of regarding the problem of philosophy. 
 Here it is merely insisted that space, time, and matter, funda- 
 mental factors though they are in the progressive organization 
 of experience, do not exhaust its significance. The antitheses, as 
 Schopenhauer interprets them, refuse to admit the tenability 
 of any philosophical theory which treats space, time, and matter 
 in a transcendent way, out of their interrelation within concrete 
 experience. But precisely for that reason it is philosophically 
 inadmissible to regard space, time, and matter out of their con- 
 text by ignoring other aspects of experience. 
 
 3. Antinomies of Causality. — The third and fourth antinomies, 
 Schopenhauer thinks, differ only in their external form ; at bottom 
 they both concern the possibility of an unconditioned First Cause, 
 and are thus essentially tautological.^ 
 
 The real point at issue is this: Are all changes in the world of 
 phenomena explainable only in terms of causality, and therefore 
 conditioned in nature according to the Principle of Sufficient 
 Reason; or does causality presuppose the unconditioned? The 
 thesis of the third antinomy Schopenhauer characterizes as "a 
 very fine sophism. "^ It starts, correctly enough, by arguing 
 that a cause is adequate only when it completely accounts for its 
 consequent effect. But then it proceeds to substitute, for the 
 completeness of the determining conditions present together in 
 the production of a concrete effect, the completeness of the 
 chain of causes of which the state in question presumably forms 
 the last link. And, inasmuch as its abstract conception of com- 
 pleteness involves the notion of a closed system, and that, again, 
 implies finiteness, "the argument infers from this a first cause, 
 closing the series and therefore unconditioned. "^ 
 
 But "die Taschenspielerei liegt am Tage,"" as Schopenhauer 
 puts it. For the causal law means nothing more than this: that 
 
 >G., 1. p. 633: H.K.. II. p. 113- 
 2G., I, p. 632; H.K., II, p. III. 
 3G., I, p. 632; H.K., II, p. 112. 
 < Ibid. 
 
58 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 for every state B, in the world of experience, an adequate ante- 
 cedent state A must be presupposed, which conditions it neces- 
 sarily and completely. This exhausts the demand of the causal 
 law in each specific case. The question as to how the 'cause' 
 A itself came about is irrelevant to the problem raised by the 
 consideration of state B; that question can concern the law of 
 causality only when we turn to A, and, regarding it no longer 
 as the conditioning cause of B, but as itself an effect, a conditioned 
 state, demand an explanation of it in causal terms. The Prin- 
 ciple of Sufficient Reason of 'becoming' proceeds throughout 
 from the conditioned effect to the conditioning cause. It can 
 never be used to trace chains of causes, because it can never 
 start with a cause as such. 
 
 The successive alternation of effects and causes in the causal 
 series is complete only in reference to the process of tracing the 
 connection of causal dependence, and is thus inseparable from 
 the progress of perceptual knowledge. Hence any theory of a 
 finite causal series assumes an arbitrary cessation of the law of 
 causality at some one point, and is due only to "the laziness of 
 the speculating individual."^ This, Schopenhauer argues, is the 
 sum and substance of the law of causality, and it expresses the 
 real argument of the antitheses, in spite of the confused language 
 in which the latter are couched. Schopenhauer insists through- 
 out that the Principle of Sufficient Reason in general and the law 
 of causality in particular apply only to concrete dependence in 
 the world of phenomena, and distinctly not to the universe taken 
 as a hypostatized whole. The assumptions of "a primary begin- 
 ning, "^ "absolute spontaneity of causes,"^ "necessity of a first 
 beginning of a series of phenomena from freedom ... so far 
 only as it is necessary in order to comprehend an origin of the 
 world, "^ are all incompatible with the fundamental meaning of 
 the Principle of Sufficient Reason. 
 
 In his 'Critical Solution' of the two antinomies of causality, 
 Kant attempts to show the partial truth of both thesis and 
 
 iG., I, p. 633; H.K., II. p. 112. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 446; M., p. 362. 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 446; M., p. 364. 
 
 *Kr. d. r. V., p. 448; M., p. 366. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 59 
 
 antithesis; but his attempt is necessarily futile. The arguments 
 of thesis and antithesis alike concern, not any transcendent 
 world of things-in-themselves, but only the phenomenal, the 
 objective World as Idea. The whole force of the thesis is directed 
 to prove that the phenomenal world itself involves unconditioned 
 causes, and this is precisely what the antithesis denies. This is 
 explicitly stated in the fourth conflict: the thesis demands some- 
 thing absolutely necessary, which nevertheless "belongs itself 
 to the world of sense, "^ and is "contained in the world. "^ The 
 causality of freedom, the validity of which the thesis seeks to 
 prove in the third antinomy, is no transcendent matter, but is 
 merely the spontaneous originating of a series, which thence- 
 forward is to operate "according to mere laws of nature."^ And 
 it is precisely against this doctrine of the arbitrary violability of 
 the causal law in the empirical world that the antithesis directs 
 its proofs, depending as it does throughout upon the explicitly 
 phenomenal Principle of Sufficient Reason. 
 
 Kant's theory of freedom, therefore, in so far as it concerns the 
 thing-in-itself, is entirely irrelevant in this connection. For the 
 relation of the intelligible to the empirical character, Schopen- 
 hauer insists, is nowise a causal relation, but passes beyond the 
 phenomenal world and raises the fundamental metaphysical 
 problem of the thing-in-itself. In so far as it concerns the present 
 issue, however, that theory also affirms the argument of the 
 antithesis. For, in Kant's 'Critical Solution,' it is argued that 
 in the phenomenal world causality is supreme; the empirical char- 
 acter of man is unalterably determined. Hence man can by 
 no means originate a causal series in the world of nature. Free- 
 dom is the principle of explanation of the world itself, which (for 
 Schopenhauer) is in itself a manifestation of Will. But in the 
 world, — and this is the point at issue here, — "w the world causal- 
 ity is the sole principle of explanation, and everything happens 
 simply according to the laws of nature."* Thus, Schopenhauer 
 concludes, "the right lies entirely on the side of the antithesis, 
 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 452; M., p. 370. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V., p. 454; M., p. 372. 
 ^Kr. d. r. V ., p. 448; M., p. 366. 
 *G., I, p. 644; H.K., II. p. 124. 
 
60 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 which sticks to the question in hand, and uses the principle of 
 explanation which is valid with regard to it; therefore it needs 
 no apology. The thesis, on the other hand, is supposed to be 
 got out of the matter by an apology, which first passes over to 
 something quite different from the point at issue, and then as- 
 sumes a principle of explanation which is inapplicable to it."^ 
 
 III. Transcendental Ideal: God. — Schopenhauer is quite curt in 
 dismissing the arguments of speculative theology. He thinks 
 that Kant makes too long work of his refutation of the theological 
 proofs. "No critique of reason was necessary for the refutation 
 of the ontological proof of the existence of God; for without 
 presupposing the aesthetic and analytic, it is quite easy to make 
 clear that that ontological proof is nothing but a subtle playing 
 with conceptions which is quite powerless to produce conviction. "^ 
 It should be recognized for what it is, a veritable masterpiece 
 of the monstrous productions of scholastic theology.^ This sum- 
 mary manner of dealing with the ontological argument exemplifies 
 Schopenhauer's general attitude towards Kant's chapter on "The 
 Ideal of Pure Reason." He dismisses the two other scholastic 
 proofs without much ado : the cosmological proof, as incompatible 
 with the law of causality; the physico-theological proof, as com- 
 pletely misconceiving the meaning of teleology in experience. 
 Philosophy and theism, Schopenhauer holds, are fundamentally 
 opposed to each other, and the conception of God is out of place 
 in any consistent epistemology.^ The real basis for the notion of 
 an Ultimate is to be sought for, not in terms of transcendent, but 
 of immanent teleology. 
 
 The indubitable significance of the teleological categories leads 
 Kant to the assumption of a transcendent world of Reason, and 
 the conception of things-in-themselves inevitably introduces a 
 line of cleavage between the theoretical and the practical, which 
 makes consistent unity impossible in the technical formulation 
 of Kant's theory of reality. The world of freedom remains for 
 
 I Ibid. 
 
 2G., I, pp. 648-649; H.K., II, p. 129. 
 
 'G., I. p. 646; H.K., II. p. 127. 
 
 *Cf. G., IV, pp. 128 ff., where Schopenhauer discusses further the three proofs 
 of speculative theology, in connection with some remarks bearing more directly 
 upon his views on the philosophy of religion. 
 
SCOPE AND LIMITS OF EXPERIENCE. 6 1 
 
 him an 'as if,' a necessary postulate of Practical Reason; it never 
 acquires epistemological validity for the world of possible expe- 
 rience. Schopenhauer's solution of this problem, on the other 
 hand, points in the opposite direction. The world of Will and 
 freedom is for him the absolute reality which underlies the world 
 of cognitive experience; Kant's 'world of possible experience' 
 is therefore regarded, from the point of view of metaphysics, as 
 lacking in ultimate validity and truth, as an appearance, an 
 illusion, as the veil of Maya concealing the free Will-Reality. 
 
 In spite of essential differences in standpoint, which have been 
 at least sufficiently accentuated in the above comparison of their 
 treatment of the teleological principles, Kant and Schopenhauer 
 make the same fundamental mistake. Neither fully realized 
 the essentially instrumental character of all categories. Each 
 and every category considers experience, all of it, from its own 
 point of view. Experience is one, and the categories are its 
 categories, the points of view from which it may profitably be 
 regarded ; no one of them can exhaust its meaning, nor can any 
 truly significant category find its own meaning exhausted in 
 any one part of experience, for the simple reason that experience 
 is organic and is therefore not divisible into discrete parts. 
 
 Schopenhauer's failure to draw this inevitable conclusion from 
 the results of the Transcendental Dialectic, and the consequent 
 dualism of his own metaphysics, will be considered in the next 
 chapter. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Experience and Reality: The Will as the Thing-in-Itself. 
 
 The Critical epistemology leads inevitably to the conclusion 
 that all possible experience is phenomenal, i. e., that it has no 
 meaning except in terms of knowledge and in reference to the 
 knowing subject. This realization of the fundamentally sub- 
 jective character of the phenonemal 'object,' Schopenhauer 
 regards as "the theme of the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' "^ 
 The organization of this subject-object world of possible ex- 
 perience is formulated by Kant in terms of the mechanical 
 categories, to the exclusion of the teleological. This is the 
 formal result of the 'Dialectic' 
 
 The rejection of the rationalistic solution of the teleological 
 problem does not, however, do away with the problem itself. 
 The 'practical' can have no real application in an experience 
 conceived in purely mechanical terms; nevertheless, Kant is 
 deeply impressed with the undeniable significance of the moral 
 and aesthetic phases of experience, and with the inadequacy of 
 the mechanical categories to explain these. His vindication 
 of the real significance of the teleological categories is intimately 
 connected with his justification of the notion of the thing-in- 
 itself. A change of philosophical method is to be observed at 
 this stage of Kant's exposition, which Schopenhauer interprets 
 as follows. Kant does not affirm, clearly and distinctly, the 
 absolute mutual dependence of subject and object in all possible 
 experience. "He does not say, as truth required, simply and 
 absolutely that the object is conditioned by the subject, and 
 conversely, but only that the manner of appearance of the object 
 is conditioned by the forms of knowledge of the subject, which^ 
 therefore, come a priori to consciousness. But that now which 
 in opposition to this is only known a posteriori is for him the 
 immediate effect of the thing in itself, which becomes phenom- 
 
 iG., II, p. 205; H.K., II, p. 381. 
 
 62 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 63 
 
 enon only in its passage through these forms which are given 
 a priori/'^ And Kant fails to realize that "objectivity in gen- 
 eral belongs to the forms of the phenomenon, and is just as much 
 conditioned by subjectivity in general as the mode of appearing 
 of the object is conditioned by the forms of knowledge of the 
 subject; that thus if a thing in itself must be assumed, it abso- 
 lutely cannot be an object, which however he always assumes 
 it to be, but such a thing in itself must necessarily lie in a sphere 
 toto genere different from the idea (from knowing and being 
 known). "2 
 
 Schopenhauer criticises Kant's conception of the thing-in- 
 itself in the same manner in which he had criticised his theory of 
 the a priori character of the causal law. ' ' Both doctrines are true, 
 but their proof is false. "^ Kant argues that "the phenomenon, 
 thus the visible world, must have a reason, an intelligible cause, 
 which is not a phenomenon, and therefore belongs to no possible 
 experience."^ But this is perverting entirely the meaning of the 
 law of causality, which applies exclusively to relations between 
 phenomenal changes, and can therefore in no way account for the 
 phenomenal world as a hypostatized entity. This "incredible 
 inconsistency "^ was early discerned by Kant's critics, especially 
 by G. E. Schulze.® Schopenhauer explains it as due to Kant's irre- 
 sistible desire to establish in some way the reality of the practical 
 postulates, God, freedom, and the immortality of the soul, which 
 he found himself unable to establish upon the speculative basis 
 of rationalism. Making use of the distinction between theoreti- 
 cal and practical reason, he now transports the machinery of 
 rational dogmatism into the practical sphere, and thus justifies 
 the practical validity of the Ideas of God, Freedom, and Immor- 
 tality in the world of possible experience, by maintaining their 
 metaphysical validity in the supersensible world of things- 
 in-themselves. 
 
 Kant's technical view of this problem, and his entire method 
 
 'G., I. pp. 638-639; H.K., II, pp. 118-119. 
 2G., I, p. 639; H.K., II, p. 119- ^Ibid. 
 
 'G., I, p. 638; H.K., II, pp. 117-118. 
 sQ., I, p. 638; H.K., II. p. 1:8. 
 «C/. G.. IV, pp. iioff. 
 
64 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 of dealing with it, in the Critique of Practical Reason, Schopen- 
 hauer regards as fundamentally false. His own Basis of Moral- 
 ity contains a vigorous attack upon the fundamental principles 
 of Kant's ethical theory. According to him, Kant "founds . . . 
 his moral principle not on any provable fact of consciousness, 
 such as an inner natural disposition, nor yet upon any objective 
 relation of things in the external world, . . . but on pure 
 Reason, which ... is taken, not as it really and exclusively 
 is, — an intellectual faculty of man, — hut as a self-existent hypo- 
 static essence, yet without the smallest authority."^ The second 
 Critique inconsistently retains what was declared untenable 
 in the 'Transcendental Dialectic', by the obvious subterfuge of 
 raising the speculative reason into a genus, and then deducing 
 from it a second species, practical reason, — a procedure similar 
 to that accounting for the origin of immaterial substance, and 
 as inconsistent as it is useless in the solution of the ethical 
 problem.^ Through the road of knowledge, through understand- 
 ing and reason, we can arrive at perception and conception 
 respectively; but cognition is always restricted to phenomena, 
 the thing-in-itself is xxnknowahXe. The Critical account of 
 experience as phenomenal in character, and its definition of 
 'phenomenal' as synonymous with cognitive experience, made 
 possible through the mechanical categories, show that the thing- 
 in-itself, the kernel of experience, is forever beyond the reach 
 of knowledge. 
 
 It is at this point that Schopenhauer makes what he regards 
 as his own great contribution to philosophical thought; here 
 it is that Schopenhauer's philosophy joins onto the Kantian, 
 or rather springs from it as from its parent stem.^ "Upon 
 the path of the idea one can never get beyond the idea; it is 
 a rounded-oflf whole, and has in its own resources no clue leading 
 to the nature of the thing in itself, which is toto genere difTerent 
 
 •G., Ill, pp. 510, 511; Basis of Morality, tr. by A. B. Bullock, London, 1903. 
 pp. 44, 45. For a fuller discussion of this problem, cf. the writer's article on 
 "Schopenhauer's Criticism of Kant's Theory of Ethics," The Philosophical 
 Review, Vol. XIX, No. 5, Sept., 1910, pp. 512-534- 
 
 2G.. Ill, pp. SI I ff.; Bullock, pp. 45 ff. 
 
 'C/. R. Behm, Vergleichung der kantischen und schopenhauerischen Lehre in 
 Ansehung der Kausalitdt, Heidelberg, 1892, p. 39. 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 65 
 
 from it. If we were merely perceiving beings, the way to the 
 thing in itself would be absolutely cut off from us. Only the 
 other side of our own being can disclose to us the other side of 
 the inner being of things. This path I have followed."^ Kant 
 is correct in holding that we are unable to arrive at the ultimate 
 reality of things by the road of knowledge; but he then pro- 
 ceeds to deny the possibility of all metaphysics, thus ignoring, 
 in his Critique of Pure Reason, the paramount ontological sig- 
 nificance of non-cognitive experience. 
 
 Nevertheless, Kant's theory of freedom, untenable though 
 it is in its technical form, serves to indicate his realization of the 
 inadequate and incomplete character of his epistemology and its 
 implications. The doctrine of the transcendental freedom of 
 man's will recognizes implicitly, Schopenhauer maintains, that 
 in man necessity is phenomenal only, and that in him the thing- 
 in-itself manifests its inner nature in the form of Will. "What, 
 then, Kant teaches of the phenomenon of man and his action 
 my teaching extends to all phenomena in nature, in that it makes 
 the will as a thing-in-itself their foundation. "^ For man is not 
 toto genere different from the rest of experience, but differs only 
 in degree. The World as Idea is, as Kant says, purely phenom- 
 enal; but it does not exhaust reality. "As the world is in one 
 aspect entirely idea, so in another it is entirely will. A reality 
 which is neither of these two, but an object in itself (into which 
 the thing in itself has unfortunately dwindled in the hands of 
 Kant), is the phantom of a dream, and its acceptance is an ignis 
 fatuus in philosophy."^ The path of objective knowledge does 
 not lead us to the real nature of things, and so far Schopenhauer 
 is in thorough agreement with Kant. But "the thing in itself can, 
 as such, only come into consciousness quite directly, in this way, 
 that it is itself conscious of itself; to wish to know it objectively 
 is to desire something contradictory."* The thing-in-itself 
 is unknowable, precisely because it is not a matter of knowledge 
 but is in its inmost essence Will. Our consciousness of willing 
 
 iG., I. p. 638; H.K., II. p. 118. Cf. G., IV, p. lis- 
 2G.. II, pp. 201-202; H.K., II, p. 377. 
 'G., I, p. 3S; H.K.. I, p. s- 
 *G., II, p. 227; H.K.. II, p. 405- 
 
66 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 is the only 'knowledge' which we can have of the thing-in-itself. 
 But by 'will' Schopenhauer does not mean " merely willing and 
 purposing in the narrowest sense, but also all striving, wishing, 
 shunning, hoping, fearing, loving, hating, in short, all that 
 directly constitutes our own weal and woe, desire and aversion. "^ 
 
 Kant, then, recognized the metaphysical significance of human 
 volition, but his perverse explanation of it in terms of Practical 
 Reason led him to regard volition as a special prerogative of 
 man. Schopenhauer considers it his own great achievement in 
 philosophy to have completed Kant's idealism by indicating the 
 ultimate character of the Will as the Weltprincip, as the one 
 and only thing-in-itself. For this is the greatest truth in all 
 philosophy: the nature of man manifests the character of ulti- 
 mate reality .2 "We must learn to understand nature from our- 
 selves, not conversely ourselves from nature."^ Man is not the 
 microcosm; nature is, rather, the macanthropos. This is the 
 point of view from which Schopenhauer now proceeds to re- 
 interpret the entire universe of phenomena, which, in his theory 
 of knowledge, he had characterized as mere spatial-temporal 
 ideas, necessarily determined by the Principle of Sufficient 
 Reason in the subject-object world. 
 
 The consciousness of willing and striving, in which the thing- 
 in-itself reveals itself in man, is different from the striving and 
 willing manifest in all nature, but different only in degree. 
 "Even the lowest forces of nature themselves are animated 
 by that same will, which afterwards, in the individual beings 
 provided with intelligence, marvels at its own work, as the 
 somnambulist wonders in the morning at what he has done in his 
 sleep; or more accurately, which is astonished at its own form 
 which it beholds in the mirror."^ There is in all things a meta- 
 physical element, ultimate and refusing further analysis, which 
 remains after their existence as ideas of the subject has been 
 set aside.^ What this metaphysical kernel is, Kant is unable to 
 
 >G., 11, p. 233; H.K., II, p. 412. 
 2C/. G., I, p. 164; H.K.. I, p. 143- 
 3G., II. p. 227; H.K., II, p. 406. 
 *G., II, p. 381; H.K., III, p. 73- 
 »G., I, p. 157; H.K., I, p. 136. 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 6/ 
 
 say; but he is right, Schopenhauer thinks, in stating what it is 
 not. In excluding space, time, causaHty, and all the categories 
 of knowledge from it, Kant asserts its non-cognitive character 
 and is dimly conscious of the truth to which Schopenhauer him- 
 self first gives adequate expression. Science investigates phe- 
 nomena, generalizes, systematizes our knowledge. But all 
 science whatever finally ends in some surd or other which it is 
 unable to solve on the basis of its own premises. "This that 
 witholds itself from investigation ... is the thing-in-itself, is 
 that which is essentially not idea, not object of knowledge, but 
 has only become knowable by entering that form. The form is 
 originally foreign to it, and the thing-in-itself can never become 
 entirely one with it, can never be referred to mere form, and, 
 since this form is the principle of sufficient reason, can never be 
 completely explained."^ It is not capable of any abstract formu- 
 lation; its non-cognitive, dynamic character is its essential char- 
 acteristic. The thing-in-itself, which reveals itself in man as 
 conscious willing, is manifest in the action of all things, assuming 
 an infinity of forms, but remaining throughout the series a rest- 
 less, endless striving, a conative flux. 
 
 In the higher grades of the manifestation of the will, indi- 
 viduality comes to occupy a prominent position f but we should 
 err if we mistook the absence of self-conscious individuality for 
 absence of the will-reality. "If ... I say," Schopenhauer 
 writes, "the force which attracts a stone to the earth is according 
 to its nature, in itself, and apart from all idea, will, I shall not 
 be supposed to express in this proposition the insane opinion 
 that the stone moves itself in accordance with a known motive, 
 merely because this is the way in which will appears in man."^ 
 That is to say, to quote a significant passage: "When in any 
 phenomenon a knowing consciousness is added to that inner being 
 which lies at the foundation of all phenomena, a consciousness 
 which when directed inwardly becomes self -consciousness, then 
 that inner being presents itself to this self-consciousness as that 
 which is so familiar and so mysterious, and is denoted by the 
 
 iG., I, pp. 176-177; H.K., I, p. 157- 
 2G., I, p. 188; H.K., I, p. 170. 
 3G., I, p. IS8;H.K., I.p. 137- 
 
68 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 word will. Accordingly we have called that universal funda- 
 mental nature of all phenomena the will, after that manifestation 
 in which it unveils itself to us most fully. ""^ 
 
 Comparing the intellectual and the conative aspects of expe- 
 rience, therefore, Schopenhauer emphasizes the direct immediacy 
 of the latter, as over against the merely presentative character 
 of the former. The world of perception is directly apprehended 
 by the knowing subject, through the faculty of the understanding 
 and its one category of cause-eflfect, resulting from the union 
 of space and time. Its cognitive directness is in marked contrast 
 to the abstract character of conception, with its multitude of 
 artificial abstractions and formal laws, lacking all application to 
 direct experience. But perception and conception alike, Scho- 
 penhauer holds, lack the immediacy of the conative experience. 
 In the willing consciousness the entire intellectual web of the 
 World as Idea is swept aside; the multiplicity of things in space 
 and time, which hides the metaphysical oneness of all reality 
 from the knowing subject, is no more; the one ultimate condition 
 of the possibility of consciousness alone remains, — time. This 
 the consciousness of man cannot efface without effacing itself. 
 
 "The will, as that which is metaphysical, is everywhere the 
 boundary-stone of every investigation, beyond which it cannot 
 go. "2 No "systematically connected insight"^ into this meta- 
 physical unity of Will is possible; the inevitably temporal char- 
 acter of our consciousness makes us unable to grasp the thing- 
 in-itself once for all in its inmost nature. But, Schopenhauer 
 frankly admits, "the question may still be raised, what that will, 
 which exhibits itself in the world and as the world, ultimately 
 and absolutely is in itself? i. e., what it is, regarded altogether 
 apart from the fact that it exhibits itself as will, or in general 
 appears, i. e., in general is known. This question can never be 
 answered: because, as we have said, becoming known is itself 
 the contradictory of being in itself, and everything that is known 
 is as such only phenomenal. But the possibility of this question 
 shows that the thing in itself, which we know most directly in 
 
 'G., II. pp. 373-374; H.K.. Ill, pp. 65-66. 
 2G., II, p. 421; H.K., III, p. 116. 
 3G.. II, p. 379; H.K.. III. p. 71. 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 69 
 
 the will, may have, entirely outside all possible phenomenal 
 appearance, ways of existing, determinations, qualities, which 
 are absolutely unknowable and incomprehensible to us."^ 
 
 Thus, ultimately, in its own inmost being, the thing-in-itself 
 is for Schopenhauer also unknowable. We never can penetrate 
 in consciousness through the last, thinnest of veils, time, and be 
 the thing-in-itself; nevertheless, Schopenhauer warns us against 
 considering will as a mere example or analogue of the thing-in- 
 itself. Bradley's way of regarding the matter is quite different: 
 "Thought . . . must have been absorbed into a fuller experience. 
 Now such an experience may be called thought, if you choose to 
 use that word. But if any one else prefers another term, such 
 as feeling or will, he would be equally justified."- Schopenhauer 
 would not have consented to any such generous policy. 'Will,' 
 used in the metaphysical sense, refers not only to the funda- 
 mentally conative character of all animal beings, but also to 
 "the force which germinates and vegetates in the plant, and 
 indeed the force through which the crystal is formed, that by 
 which the magnet turns to the north pole, . . . the force which 
 appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attrac- 
 tion, decomposition and combination, and, lastly, even gravita- 
 tion. . . ."3 Thus it would be a misunderstanding of Schopen- 
 hauer's theory, to interpret his thing-in-itself as will in the narrow? 
 sense of motived volition. But, Schopenhauer insists, "I should 
 be equally misunderstood by any one who should think that it 
 is all the same in the end whether we denote this inner nature 
 of all phenomena by the word will or by any other. "^ For this 
 would be the case only if the thing-in-itself were indirectly known, 
 if 'Will' were its mere symbol. "But," as he says, "the word 
 will, which, like a magic spell, discloses to us the inmost being of 
 everything in nature, is by no means an unknown quantity, 
 something arrived at only by inference, but is fully and imme- 
 diately comprehended, and is so familiar to us that we know and 
 understand what will is far better than anything else."^ 
 
 •G., II, pp. 229-230; H.K., II, p. 408. 
 
 "^Appearance and Reality, second edition, London, 1897, p. 171. 
 
 3G., I, p. 163; H.K., I, p. 142. 
 
 ^G., I, p. 164; H.K., I, p. 144- 
 
 'G., I, p. 165; H.K., I, p. 144- 
 
70 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 The willing consciousness, therefore, affords us the first direct 
 hint as to what the inner nature of reality may be. When, 
 having thus realized our own inner nature, we look again at 
 the world and recognize that "every kind of active and operating 
 force in nature is essentially identical with will,"^ that the cona- 
 tive is in all experience the most immediate, the prior, the ulti- 
 mately unanalyzable because subject to no abstract laws, then 
 the word 'will' acquires a new meaning. Then the real sig- 
 nificance of the world first dawns upon us, and the metaphysical 
 character of the ethical aspect of experience becomes evident. 
 Then only, as Schopenhauer says, do we understand the meaning 
 of the Kantian doctrine that time, space, and causality do not 
 belong to the thing-in-itself, but are only forms of knowledge. ^ 
 And, on the other hand, only when the solution of the meta- 
 physical problem has disclosed to us the essential nature of 
 the thing-in-itself as Will, does Kant's inconsistently formu- 
 lated doctrine of the primacy of Practical Reason acquire a real 
 meaning for philosophy. On Kant's basis metaphysics is im- 
 possible and the thing-in-itself unknowable. Schopenhauer pro- 
 poses his theory of Will as offering an immanent solution of 
 the problem of metaphysics: it repudiates the untenable logic 
 of Kant's transcendent explanations, while at the same time it 
 consistently reveals the true significance of Kant's doctrine of 
 Practical Reason, thus supplementing and bringing to completion 
 the Idealistic philosophy. This is Schopenhauer's estimate of 
 his own philosophical achievement. 
 
 In his criticism of Kant's ' Transcendental Dialectic,' Schopen- 
 hauer advocates a position which, up to a certain point, is in 
 marked agreement with recent epistemology and its interpreta- 
 tion of science and scientific methods. Schopenhauer constantly 
 insists that in the World as Idea the Principle of Sufficient Reason 
 is the sole principle of explanation. The causally connected 
 universe discloses the operation of immutable laws, to ignore 
 which, even in a slight degree, would make any real progress 
 in science impossible. To offer an answer in terms of 'freedom,' 
 when a scientific answer in causal terms is demanded, is to shirk 
 
 iG., I, p. 164; HK., I, p. 143- 
 
 'G., I, pp. 166-167; H.K., I, p. 146. 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 7^ 
 
 the point at issue. If science is to remain science, it must rest 
 all its conclusions upon the Principle of Sufficient Reason. But, 
 for Kant, the distinction between the subject-matter of physics 
 and that of metaphysics is identical with the distinction between 
 what appears and what is. This Kant has "nettement etablie," 
 as Ribot puts it, following Schopenhauer. ^ And, inasmuch as 
 all experience is 'what appears,' i. e., phenomenal, the thing-in- 
 itself, which 'is,' is unknowable; and hence metaphysics, in the 
 strict sense of the term, is impossible. 
 
 Here it is that Schopenhauer attempts to improve upon Kant, 
 by asserting the possibility of an immanent metaphysics, a meta- 
 physics of experience. Philosophy, he says, begins where science 
 leaves off, it takes things up and "treats them after its own 
 method, which is quite distinct from the method of science. "^ 
 This essential difference in method Schopenhauer indicates in no 
 vague terms. Science is concerned with the systematic connec- 
 tion of differences. But in the conative consciousness the dif- 
 ferences of the World as Idea vanish into one immediate unity, 
 and scientific knowledge is transmuted into a consciousness of 
 will, which demands no explanation, starts from nothing, points 
 to nothing, but is itself an unending immediate striving. Scho- 
 penhauer, therefore, denies, on the basis of Kant's own epistemo- 
 logical results, the possibility of metaphysics, if by metaphysics 
 is meant the scientific explanation of the inmost nature of the 
 thing-in-itself as such, considered apart from its manifestation 
 in consciousness. But he emphatically affirms the possibility of 
 a metaphysics of experience, in terms of its completest and most 
 immediate, i. e., most real manifestation. Will. 
 
 In this sense, then, Schopenhauer asserts that his own meta- 
 physics of Will is the key to the world-riddle. His test of the 
 metaphysical ' realness ' of any phase of experience is in terms of 
 a unity which absorbs multiplicity. This unity, however, is not 
 the result of the abstracting process of conception, but, in contrast 
 to the mediate character of all thought, is concrete, i. e., imme- 
 diately present in consciousness. Schopenhauer seeks his ulti- 
 mate reality in some specific aspect of experience, or rather in 
 
 ^La philosophie de Schopenhauer, Paris, 1890, p. 35. 
 2G.. I, p. 128; H.K., I, p. 107. 
 
72 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 some one sort of experience, in which, as in the apex of the cone, 
 all the various radii may somehow vanish and be lost in one un- 
 differentiated unity. The ' real ' is conceived by him as opposed 
 to and contradistinguished from the rest of experience, which is 
 thereby declared illusory. The ultimate unity is possible, on 
 Schopenhauer's basis, only by means of the erasure of the 
 organized multiplicity of phenomena. Reality is not truly re- 
 vealed by its phenomenal appearance; rather is the World as Idea 
 the fleeting shadow of the Real, its veil of Maya. All the organi- 
 zation and coherence implied in the Principle of Sufficient Rea- 
 son avail us nothing in the solution of the ultimate problems of 
 experience. To learn metaphysics, we must unlearn science: 
 this is the spirit of Schopenhauer's theory of reality. 
 
 The result of such a conception of metaphysics for the inter- 
 pretation of the reality now recognized as Will, is not difficult to 
 foresee. We know ourselves as willing in our separate acts of 
 striving. But it is precisely this our knowledge of the conative 
 that introduces the element of multiplicity and makes impossible 
 the complete metaphysical unity. Our consciousness of willing 
 is metaphysically 'real,' not by virtue of its being conscious, but 
 in spite of it, — by virtue of its being Will. The Will-Reality 
 as such, the metaphysical kernel of the universe, is not in time, 
 because it absorbs all multiplicity in itself. Consciousness, in- 
 evitably temporal in character, is itself a mere accident of the 
 metaphysical Real. The ultimate thing-in-itself is non-temporal, 
 unconscious, irrational, free. "The will in itself is without con- 
 sciousness, and remains so in the greater part of its phenomena. 
 The secondary world of idea must be added, in order that it 
 may become conscious of itself."^ Will is the prius, the Welt- 
 princip; vov<; is secondary, intellect is the posterius, a derivation 
 and a mere appearance of the thing-in-itself. To urge the 
 primacy of the intellect over the will, is therefore an "enormous 
 irpuiTov \pev8os and fundamental vampov Tr/aore/oov.''^ 
 
 "It is the unconscious will," Schopenhauer insists, "which 
 constitutes the reality of things, and its development must have 
 
 »G., II, pp. 323-324; H.K., III, p. 12. 
 2G., II, p. 230; H.K., II, p. 409. 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 71 
 
 advanced very far before it finally attains, in the animal con- 
 sciousness, to the idea and intelligence; so that, according to me, 
 thought appears at the very last."^ This position leads Schopen- 
 hauer to materialistic excesses. The whole world of perception 
 and conception, of body and matter, which he formerly regarded 
 as intellectual in character, he now describes in terms of the bodily 
 organism.^ The intellect is reduced to a tertiary position, being 
 the instrument necessitated by a complete organism, which is 
 secondary and is itself the embodiment of the one and only 
 Prius, the blind unconscious Will. The intellect is accordingly 
 a function of the brain, which, again, is the will-to-perceive-and- 
 think objectified, just as the stomach is the embodiment of the 
 will-to-digest, the hand, of the will-to-grasp, the generative 
 organs, of the will-to-beget, and so on. "The whole nervous 
 system constitutes, as it were, the antennae of the will, which it 
 stretches towards within and without."^ 
 
 The relation in which the development of knowledge stands 
 to the gradual objectification of the Will is conceived by Scho- 
 penhauer with curious inconsistency. In this respect, there are 
 some apparent differences in point of view between certain pas- 
 sages in Schopenhauer's earlier and later works; but there seems 
 to be no sufficient ground for maintaining any fundamental 
 change of attitude on Schopenhauer's part. Schopenhauer might 
 seem to hold two fundamentally opposite positions. On the 
 one hand, he says: "The organ of intelligence, the cerebral sys- 
 tem, together with all the organs of sense, keep pace with the 
 increasing wants and the complication of the organism."* This 
 conclusion follows logically from Schopenhauer's theory of the 
 absolute bondage of intelligence; but it does not account for the 
 obvious facts of consciousness. Is the highest development of 
 intelligence always accompanied by a corresponding intensity of 
 'will,' in Schopenhauer's sense of that term? How is the 'dis- 
 interestedness' of thought at all possible on such a basis? Scho- 
 
 iG.. II, pp. 314-315; H.K., III. p. 2. 
 
 2 Schopenhauer's 'physiological-psychological' method, which here manifests 
 itself in terms so extreme, is nevertheless implied in his very starting-point, «. e., 
 in his distinction between perception and conception. Cf. Richter, op. cil., pp. 139 f. 
 
 3G., II, p. 299; H.K., II, p. 482. 
 
 *G., II, p. 237; H.K., II, p. 416. 
 
74 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 penhauer, evidently realizing the difficulty of the situation, 
 seems to shift his position. The gradual objectification of the 
 Will, he says, is accompanied by a gradual 'loosening' of the 
 intellect from its will-ground. In the course of its development, 
 the intelligence gradually obtains freedom from the brute will- 
 impulse, and evolves an ideal world of its own, a world of knowl- 
 edge, subject to universal laws of nature. This is the World as 
 Idea, which Schopenhauer regards as at once the manifestation 
 and the very antithesis of the World as Will. But the intellect 
 "may, in particular exceptionally favoured individuals, go so far 
 that, at the moment of its highest ascendancy, the secondary or 
 knowing part of consciousness detaches itself altogether from the 
 willing part, and passes into free activity for itself."^ Thus, in 
 the man of genius, "knowledge can deliver itself from this 
 bondage, throw off its yoke, and, free from all the aims of will, 
 exist purely for itself, simply as a clear mirror of the world. "^ 
 This is the aesthetic knowledge of the Platonic Ideas, a unique 
 consciousness of unity, different alike from the metaphysical 
 unity of the Will and from the abstract unity of conception. 
 
 No discussion of the problems raised by Schopenhauer's 
 Theory of Art seems to be called for here, inasmuch as it has 
 no direct bearing upon his criticism of Kant. It should be 
 noted, however, that Schopenhauer finds himself obliged to 
 reassert the autonomy of the intellect, which his metaphysic 
 has put under the bondage of the ultimate Will. This autonomy 
 of the intellect, in the passionless contemplation of works of art, 
 is, nevertheless, only a passing phase. The real solution of the 
 world-riddle is stated by Schopenhauer, not in aesthetic, but in 
 ethical terms. The liberation of intelligence from the tyrant 
 Will becomes complete and final only when the will is denied in 
 the supreme act of self-renunciation. This denial of the will, 
 to be sure, involves the cessation of consciousness, the total 
 effacement of all phenomenal multiplicity, and the sinking into 
 the nothingness of Nirvana. Enlightened by intelligence, the 
 will of man may be led to realize the brute-like character of its 
 
 iG.. II, p. 238; H.K., II. p. 417- 
 'G., I, p. 214; H.K., I, p. 199- 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 75 
 
 nature, and, directing itself against itself, achieve its own self- 
 annihilation. The denial of the will is really the denial of its 
 striving towards multiplicity; it is the denial of that impulse 
 in it which leads to its objectification in phenomena, — the denial 
 of the will-to-self-perpetuation, of the will-to-become-manifest, 
 of the will-to-live. This is what Schopenhauer means when he 
 says, at the end of The World as Will and Idea: "We freely ac- 
 knowledge that what remains after the entire abolition of will 
 is for all those who are still full of will certainly nothing; but, 
 conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and has denied 
 itself, this our world, which is so real, with all its suns and milky 
 ways — is nothing."^ 
 
 How are the seemingly incompatible elements of this many- 
 sided philosophy to be reconciled? Phenomenalistic idealism 
 and voluntaristic materialism, eesthetic quietism and ethical 
 nihilism, are advocated one after another; and, while the criticism 
 of Kant's principles often lays bare the concealed inconsistencies 
 of the Critical system, the solutions ofifered are as often inade- 
 quate. Is not the real explanation of the situation to be found 
 in the fact that Schopenhauer is not the true successor of Kant 
 at all? Instead of being a neo-rationalist, as Kant, on the whole, 
 remained, he is fundamentally an irrationalist, so far as his 
 attitude towards ultimate reality is concerned. He is keen in 
 perceiving and criticising Kant's confusion of various aspects 
 and elements of experience; but, instead of tracing their imma- 
 nent organic unity, which Kant imperfectly realizes and formu- 
 lates, he goes so far, in almost every case, as to assert their actual 
 separation. This was seen to be true of his treatment of per- 
 ception and conception, understanding and reason. Instead of 
 recognizing their unity in the concrete process of knowledge, 
 Schopenhauer dogmatically separates them in a scholastic man- 
 ner, thus substituting a lucidly wrong theory for Kant's con- 
 fusedly right one. Similarly, in the case of the categories, 
 Schopenhauer rightly shows the artificiality of Kant's 'deduc- 
 tion'; but, while correctly insisting upon the unitary character 
 -of the organization of experience, he expresses this unitary char- 
 
 iG.. I. p. 527; H.K., I, p. 532. 
 
76 SCHOPENHAUER'S CRITICISM OF KANT. 
 
 acter in terms of one category for every 'kind' of knowledge: 
 causa essendi, fiendi, agendi, cognoscendi. He fails to realize the 
 essentially instrumental character of all categories, and the ideal 
 nature of the reality which they interpret. Thus, in his criticism 
 of the 'Transcendental Dialectic,' while clearly showing the im- 
 possibility of expressing the nature of the thing-in-itself in terms 
 of the mechanical categories, he misses what, after all, is the chief 
 result of the 'Dialectic,' — the truth, namely, that the mechan- 
 ical categories are not the only categories, that experience has 
 phases which demand explanation in terms of teleological prin- 
 ciples of organization. Schopenhauer points out the confusion 
 and error of Kant's proposed transcendental solution of the 
 problem of the thing-in-itself by means of the postulates of 
 Practical Reason, and correctly insists on finding the solution 
 of the problem of experience in terms of experience itself. But, 
 instead of showing that the mechanical categories cannot by 
 themselves embody the ultimate solution, and therefore need 
 to be supplemented by other organizing principles, Schopenhauer 
 declares the causally connected world to be a world of mere 
 appearance and illusion, and proceeds to seek reality in some 
 other sphere of experience. He finds this metaphysical Real in 
 the conative experience. Here, again, had Schopenhauer satis- 
 fied himself with asserting the deeper significance of the conative, 
 as compared with the merely cognitive experience, his position 
 would have been fairly defensible. But he goes on to deny of 
 his Will-Reality everything which he had affirmed of the World 
 as Idea, — with the result that the conative, no longer dynamically 
 rational, is described as ceaseless irrational striving. In short, 
 Schopenhauer's World as Idea and World as Will are at least as 
 incompatible philosophically as Kant's two worlds of phenomena 
 and noumena. 
 
 Thus Schopenhauer fails to profit by his own criticism of 
 Kant. He censures his master for attempting to explain the 
 world of experience by reference to a transcendent world of 
 things-in-themselves; but he does not realize that it is just as 
 futile to attempt an ultimate explanation of experience in terms 
 of any one of its many aspects. In what sense can the 'Will- 
 
EXPERIENCE AND REALITY. 77 
 
 Reality' be consistently described as the inmost essence of ex- 
 perience, when it negates essential features of the only experience 
 we know? The Will is of paramount significance for experience; 
 no philosopher can ignore it without making his system static, 
 fatally lacking in concreteness and vitality. But, if taken in 
 abstract isolation as a hypostatized Weltprincip, it is not only 
 incapable of explaining all the problems of experience, but is 
 itself quite meaningless for any consistent epistemology. Expe- 
 rience must be interpreted in terms of its own self-organizing 
 totality. In the solution of its problems we can ignore no one 
 of >? elements or aspects. Cognition is an essential aspect of 
 e.-perience, but cognition is not all ; this is the lesson to be learned 
 from the Critique of Pure Reason, 3ind especially from the 'Dialec- 
 tic' The same is true of Will. Will finds its meaning only in 
 the concrete whole of experience, only in relation to the many 
 factors which constitute its cosmic process. There are contrasts 
 in experience, oppositions and antitheses; but ultimately these 
 must be capable of mutual organization, ultimately experience 
 must be unitary and intelligible. This is the only basis on which 
 any consistent philosophy is at all possible, and this is the real 
 significance of Kant's epistemological method. Schopenhauer's 
 philosophy, on the other hand, represents an endless conflict, 
 in which now one aspect of experience, now another, is unduly 
 emphasized and set over against the rest of experience. His 
 every problem is stated in the form of a dilemma: either Per- 
 ception or Conception, either Understanding or Reason, either 
 Knowledge or Will, either Egoism or Self- Renunciation. He 
 never fully comprehended the immanent unity of experience, 
 in reference to which all its various aspects must find their real 
 significance. And this is the fundamental defect of his philos- 
 ophical system, which makes him incapable of grasping the real 
 problems of Kant's philosophy, and of indicating a consistent 
 method for their solution. 
 
1 7 090 ft 
 
!?si NRLF 
 
 1 
 
 2 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 
 5 
 
 6 
 
 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 
 
 
 DUE AS STAMPED BELOW 
 
 
 SENT OM ILL 
 
 
 
 JAN 8 ^8 
 
 
 
 U. C. BERtCPS PY 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 
 FORM NO. DD 19 BERKELEY, CA 94720 ^^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 LD 21-32»v-3,'74 
 (B7057sl0)476— A-32 
 
 G< 
 Univet 
 
 -neral Library 
 sity of California 
 Berkeley 
 
 
U.C. BERKELEY LIBRHBIES 
 
 I