Inaugural Dissertation

K A N T S I N A U G U R A L D I S S E R ATAT I O N
165
Metaphysics, Mathematics and

the Distinction Between the
Sensible and the Intelligible in
Kants Inaugural Dissertation
EMILY CARSON*
of 1770, Kant introduces the distinction between the

faculties of sensibility and understanding. One consequence of this distinction is
that it gives Kant the means to resolve some longstanding metaphysical disputes.
If we keep straight the sources of our concepts and, in particular, dont make the
mistake of imposing sensible conditions on the concepts of the understanding,
we will avoid some of these disputes. What I want to emphasize in this paper is
another important consequence which, I think, is less widely recognized, and that
is the importance of this distinction for Kants comparison of the methods of
metaphysics and mathematics.
In his Prize Essay of 1764, Kant distinguishes mathematics and metaphysics
with respect to their certainty and their methods. In particular, Kant claims that
mathematics is capable of the highest degree of certainty and he argues that the
imitation of mathematics by metaphysics leads only to error and confusion. Ive
argued elsewhere that Kants comparison of mathematics and metaphysics in the
Prize Essay raises a number of philosophical questions which are finally resolved
only with the development of the notion of construction in pure intuition in the
Critique of Pure Reason.1 In this paper, I want to consider an intermediate stage on
the way to resolving the difficulties in the Prize Essay view. I want to show, first,
how Kants distinction between sensibility and intellect in the Inaugural Dissertation can be understood as arisingat least in partout of the open questions
faced by the comparison of metaphysics and mathematics in the Prize Essay. The
key feature of that comparison which is left unexplained is why invention is permissible in mathematics and not in philosophy. Why doesnt the arbitrary combiIN HIS INAUGURAL DISSERTATION
See Kant on the Method of Mathematics, Journal of the History of Philosophy 37 (1999): 62952.
* Emily Carson is Assistant Professor at McGill University

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nation of concepts in mathematics lead to flights of fancy in that discipline as

Kant claims it does in metaphysics?
Understanding the distinction in the context of the Prize Essay comparison
also requires that we take into consideration another concern of Kants, and that
is the dispute between the mathematicians and the metaphysicians. The dispute was essentially over the respective roles and claims to knowledge of mathematics and metaphysics. In the Prize Essay, Kant clearly favors the results of the
mathematicians over those of the metaphysicians, but its not clear that this preference is philosophically justified, given the open questions mentioned above.
Unless Kant can explain why the mathematical method is suitable to mathematics
and not metaphysics, its not clear why the results of the former should be privileged over those of the latter. The difference in the two cases is the role of sensibility. Sensibility, I shall argue, provides a constraint on the operations of the intellect in the case of mathematics, which is obviously not available to the
metaphysician.
The distinction between sensibility and intellect, therefore, provides Kant with
the means for explaining why the mathematical method is suitable for mathematics and not for metaphysics, and so in turn provides the means for grounding the
certainty of mathematics over that of metaphysics, and thus philosophically grounding Kants elevation of mathematics over metaphysics. In the first section of the
paper, I shall provide the necessary background by reviewing, first, the debate
between the mathematicians and the metaphysicians and second, briefly summarizing the comparison of the methods of mathematics and metaphysics from the
Prize Essay. I shall then argue that appreciation of this background imposes on us
a particular way of understanding the distinction between sensibility and intellect, and their objects, as they are understood in the Inaugural Dissertation. Understood in this way, the distinction provides Kant with a way of resolving that
debate, and of providing philosophical justification for the view of the mathematical
method put forward in the Prize Essay. Needless to say, the Inaugural Dissertation
in turn leaves unanswered a number of questions which lead the way to the Critical philosophy; indeed, as Ill argue in the final section, these questions are analogues of the open questions left over from the Prize Essay. This illustrates how
Kants reflections on mathematics contributed to the development of the Critical
philosophy by providing, as Kant himself says, a clue to the avoidance of metaphysical illusion. In this respect, Kant is following his own prescription in his essay
on negative magnitudes from 1763 on the use to which mathematics can be put
in philosophy: he is using the reliably established data of geometry to gain a
secure foundation on which to base his philosophical reflections. As well see,
though, although mathematics provides a foundation for reflection, Kant does not
appeal to its results in his philosophical arguments.
1.
BACKGROUND
1.1. The Mathematicians vs. the Metaphysicians

The consequences of the Leibnizean doctrine of monads for the nature of space
and geometry gave rise to a debate which culminated with the Prize Essay question set by the Berlin Academy in 1748:
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We ask that, beginning by expounding in an exact and precise manner the doctrine of
monads, one examines whether on the one hand the monads can be solidly refuted and
destroyed by an argument without reply; or whether, on the other hand, after having proved
the monads, one is in a position to deduce an intelligible explanation of the principal
phenomena of the universe, and in particular of the origin and motion of bodies.2
As seen by Euler, this debate pitted the metaphysicians, adherents of the monadist
doctrine, against the mathematicians, who thought that this position undermined
the status of geometry. Euler himself, not surprisingly, took the side of the mathematicians; he summarized his argument in a short work from 1748, Rflexions
sur lespace et le tems, an essay which Kant certainly read and which clearly impressed him.3 The metaphysicians whom he opposed were followers of Wolff.
One of the key issues in this debate was the infinite divisibility of bodies, which
seems to conflict with the doctrine of monads. One thing I want to bring out is
Kants dissatisfaction with the Wolffian resolution of this conflict and the implications of this resolution for geometry. An important question here is the question
of how Kant views the relation between mathematics and natural science, on the
one hand, and metaphysics on the other.4
This Wolffian resolution is given a detailedthough not completely
unproblematicpresentation in the work of one of Wolffs expositors, the Marquise du Chtelet. Wolff himself recognised and celebrated her Institutions physiques as a compendium of his own metaphysics: he says that in the first part of
the work, she explains very clearly and precisely the principles of my metaphysics
and understands my Latin works with great zeal.5 For these reasonsthat the
Marquise takes seriously the consequences of the Wolffian metaphysics for the
status of geometry, that she can fairly be taken as a representative of that metaphysics, and that, in particular, her presentation fits very well Kants description
of the view he opposes (as well see below)I will present her side of the monadist
debate. My goal is not to provide a detailed critical assessment of this view, but
rather to show how Kants criticisms clearly apply to it.
In chapter 5 of her work, Chtelet considers how we come to form the ideas of
space and extension in order to reveal the source of the illusions that we have
about them. When we consider two things as different, when we distinguish one
from another, we place them in our minds one outside (hors de) the other; similarly, we see as outside (hors de) us everything that we take to be different from us.
It follows, according to Chtelet, that we cannot represent to ourselves several
different things as one, without there resulting (sans quil en resulte) a notion attached to this diversity and to this union, and we call this notion extension. For
example, we say that a line is extended because we must attend to many diverse
parts which we see as existing outside each other and which are united together.
2
Cited by Matter and Burckhardt in the introduction to Eulers Opera omnia, Series tertia, ii, xi.
He refers to it in the Preface to his essay on negative magnitudes from 1763 [2:168] and again
at the beginning of his essay on the differentiation of regions in space from 1768 [2:378] (references
to Kants works cite volume and page number of the Akademie edition of Kants collected writings
Kant gesammelte Schriften, [Berlin: G. Relmer, 1910 ]).
4
This question has also been addressed by, among others, Michael Friedman in the Introduction
to Kant and the Exact Sciences, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992.
5
Cited by Sonia Carboncini in the introduction to Chtelets Institutions Physiques in Christian
Wolff: Gesammelte Werke, Materialen, und Dokumente, Band 28, Georg Olms Verlag, 1988, ix.
3
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So the notion of extension results from this diversity and union of things.6 We in
turn form the idea of space as the place which contains all the extended beings:
the idea of space is just the idea of extension joined with the possibility of giving
to the coexisting and unified beings the determinations which we abstracted away
from in forming the notion of extension (79).
The Marquise goes on to describe how we attribute to this notion of space its
essential properties: we think of it as similar, uniform, continuous, self-subsisting,
penetrable, immutable, eternal and infinite. But with just a little attention, we see
that all of these alleged properties, as well as the being in which we suppose them,
have reality only in the abstractions of our minds, and that there does not exist
nor can there exist anything like this idea (85). Although this power of our
minds to form imaginary beings by abstraction is usefulall the sciences, especially mathematics, are full of these fictionsit becomes dangerous when we
take these beings for realities (86). Rather, we must recognize that there are no
actual parts of space other than those designated by actually existing extended
things. In a gesture undoubtedly towards the problem of the continuum, the
Marquise warns:
those who wished to apply to actual space the demonstrations that they deduced from
imaginary space could not avoid embroiling themselves in labyrinths of errors from which
it was impossible for them to escape. (87)
She goes on to explain the source of these labyrinths and how to avoid them.
In chapter 7 the Marquise rehearses the Leibniz-Wolffian argument regarding
the elements of bodies: we can only find the sufficient reason of composite, extended beings in simple and unextended beings, just as the sufficient reason for a
composite number can only be found in unity. We must conclude therefore that
wherever there are extended beings, there are simple beings (120). Extended,
composite beings, then, are not substances themselves, but only aggregates of
substances, that is, of simple beings. Although extension itself might appear to us
to be a substance because we see that it persists and is capable of modification,
if we examine this idea with the eyes of the understanding, we will be obliged to acknowledge
that this extension is only a phenomenon, an abstraction from many real things, out of the
confusion of which we form for ourselves this idea of extension; from this confusion are
born all the objects that fall under our senses and of which the reality is often infinitely
different from the appearance. Moreover, if we could see distinctly all that composes extension, this appearance of extension which falls under our senses would disappear, and
our souls would perceive only simple beings existing outside each other. . . . [my emphasis]
In addition, because it is impossible for us to represent to ourselves the internal states of all the simple beings, it is impossible for us to see distinctly how the
phenomena result from those beings. We must instead content ourselves with
having proved to ourselves the necessity of the simple beings, and to see by means
of sensible examples how the confusion that reigns in our sensations changes for
us the objects, and that by consequence, all perception of reality must escape us
by our nature (134). The understanding then establishes the necessity of simple
6
Institutions Physiques, 77. Subsequent references to this work in this section will appear in the
text. All translations are my own.
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beings, while the senses reveal to us the confusion with which we perceive those
simple beings.
All of this applies not only to extension in general, but also to particular physical bodies. Because they are extended composites (140), they are nothing but
phenomena which result from the confusion which reigns in our perceptions and
which is a result of the imperfection of our organs, and the limitations of our
being (152). In fact, if our organs became more perfect and our perceptions
more distinct, then all the phenomena which our senses perceive would cease
existing for us. The distinction of the parts and the phenomena which result from
their confusion are incompatible (153). Again, we know enough to know that
the real is infinitely different from the way it appears, but we can have no positive
conception of the real as it is.
In chapter 9, the Marquise returns to the subject of the warning in 87 and
considers the implications of her view of the nature of extension and of bodies on the
science of geometry. As we saw above, mathematics, on this view, is based on our
ability to abstract: although all bodies have three dimensions, we can consider length
apart from breadth or depth, length and breadth together without regard to depth,
etc. It is on these abstractions of our mind that geometry is founded (166).
Most philosophers, having confounded the abstractions of our minds with physical body, wished to demonstrate the infinite divisibility of matter by using the
reasoning of geometers on the divisibility of lines, which we can continue to infinity:
but they would have saved themselves all the difficulties which this divisibility entails if they
had taken care never to apply the reasoning that we make on the divisibility of geometrical
bodies to natural and physical bodies. (168)
Geometrical body is nothing but simple extension. It has no determinate and

actual parts, but only possible parts that we can increase as much as we want to
infinity. The number of parts is absolutely indeterminate and can be determined
as we wish: we can suppose that a given extension contains ten thousand or a
million or ten million parts, depending on how we take a given part as one. The
unit is absolutely indeterminate and depends on the wish of the one who considers the given extension (169).
But it is completely otherwise in nature. What actually exists must be determined in every way, and it is not in our power to determine it any other way. All
natural bodies are machines with determinate parts which cannot be expressed
by any number we please (170). It is thus only by confounding geometrical extension and physical extension, and thereby assuming that physical extension is
composed of infinitely many extended parts that the ancients formed their false
and specious arguments against the possibility of movement.
So the infinite divisibility of extension is at the same time a geometrical truth and a physical error: and all the reasoning about the divisibility of matter to infinity drawn from the
nature of asymptotes, the incommensurability of the diagonal of the square, infinite series,
and other geometrical considerations are absolutely inapplicable to natural bodies. (171)
The Marquise thus distinguishes three levels of being in order to escape the labyrinth of the continuum. There is the level of substance or monads, real things.
There is the level of phenomena which result from our confused perception of
the monadic realm: these are physically extended things with determinate parts.
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Finally, there is the imaginary realm of geometrical extension, which is abstracted

from phenomenathemselves idealand thus doubly removed from the real.
The key features of this view for our purposes are, first, that sensibility is conceived of as the confused perception of the real objects of the understanding, the
existence of which is established by the understanding, and secondly, that geometrical reasoning does not apply to physical bodies: infinite divisibility is a geometrical truth but a physical error. Kants way of distinguishing between sensibility and intellect in the Inaugural Dissertation, as well see, results in the rejection
of both of these claims.
1.2 Mathematics and Metaphysics in the Prize Essay 7

Kant struggled throughout his early career to reconcile these claims of the mathematicians and the metaphysicians, early on thinking that such a reconciliation
could be effected, then eventually adopting a more skeptical attitude towards
metaphysics. In the Prize Essay, Kant compared the methods of attaining certainty
in mathematics and metaphysics, arguing that mathematics is capable of the highest
degree of certainty and that its method is not to be imitated by metaphysics. I
shall now briefly summarize Kants discussion in the Prize Essay of the mathematical method and the comparison with metaphysics in order to bring out the open
questions which Kant begins to deal with in the Inaugural Dissertation.
The key distinguishing feature is the role of definitions in each: mathematics
arrives at all its definitions synthetically, whereas philosophy arrives at its definitions analytically [2:276].8 A synthetic definition, according to Kant, is arrived at
by the arbitrary combination of concepts. The concept thus defined is not given
prior to the definition, but rather comes into existence as a result of the definition. For example,
[w]hatever the concept of cone may ordinarily signify, in mathematics the concept is the
product of the arbitrary representation of a right-angled triangle which is rotated on one
of its sides. [2:276]
In philosophy, on the other hand, the concepts are always given in some way,
but confusedly or in an insufficiently determinate fashion. The task of the philosopher is then to discover by means of analysis the characteristic marks in the
confused concept in order to arrive at a complete and determinate concept, that
is, a definition. Thus Kant says for example, everyone has the concept of time.
This idea that everyone has must be examined in all kinds of relations, and once
the characteristic marks have been made distinct, and then combined together,
the resulting concept has again to be compared with the concept of time which
was originally given in order to determine whether or not it is adequate, whether
it has captured the original idea. If by contrast we tried to arrive at a definition of
time synthetically, by arbitrarily combining concepts, it would have been a happy
coincidence if the resulting concept had been exactly the same as the idea of
time which is given to us [2:277].
7
For a more detailed treatment of this topic, see the paper cited in n. 1 above. The following
section summarizes section 3 of that paper.
8
Translations taken from Theoretical Philosophy 177570, tr. and ed. by David Walford in collaboration with Ralf Meerbote, Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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Kant attributes much mistaken philosophy to the failure to recognize this fundamental methodological difference between philosophy and mathematics. Indeed, it underlies his diagnosis of the main problem of philosophy: nothing has
been more damaging to philosophy, he says, than the imitation of the method of
mathematics in contexts where it cannot possibly be employed [2:283]. For
example, a philosopher could offer a synthetic definition by arbitrarily thinking
of a substance endowed with a faculty of reason and calling it a spirit. However,
this would not be a philosophical definition, but rather a grammatical one, a
mere linguistic stipulation, and no philosophy is needed to say what name is to
be attached to an arbitrary concept [2:277]. Indeed, Kant accuses Leibniz of
having made this mistake in imagining a simple substance which had nothing
but obscure representations and calling it a slumbering monad. He did not
thereby define the monad, he merely invented it, for the concept of a monad was
not given to him but created by him. This kind of invention, then, is permissible
in mathematics, but not in philosophy.
So the following picture of the mathematical method emerges from the Prize
Essay. Mathematics begins with a few given concepts, which mathematicians cannot and must not define, such as magnitude in general, unity, plurality, and space,
and a small number of indemonstrable propositions which are regarded as immediately certain, presupposed as true, such as the propositions that the whole
is equal to all its parts taken together, and that there can only be one straight line
between two points. Further concepts are built up out of these given ones by
arbitrary combinationby synthesis. The mathematician then derives further
propositions from these complex concepts together with the fundamental propositions. In the proofs and inferences, however, the mathematician does not consider the objects themselves or their universal concepts, but considers rather their
signs. The greater degree of objective certainty in mathematics derives from its
use of the synthetic method (it can say with certainty that what it did not intend
to represent in the object by means of the definition is not contained in that
object) and the greater degree of subjective certainty arises from the role of
sensible signs (by means of which things can be known with the degree of assurance characteristic of seeing something with ones own eyes).
The problem I wish to raise is that Kants account of the certainty of mathematics, without philosophical supplementation, risks being subject to his own
objections to the metaphysicians treatment of mathematics. Kants objections to
this view go back at least as far as the Physical Monadology, where he attacks the
metaphysicians for thinking that they had to maintain that the properties of geometrical space are as good as imaginary. The metaphysicians turn mathematical
concepts into subtle fictions, which have little truth to them outside the field of
mathematics. In an attempt to save the artificially contrived concepts of metaphysics, they raise specious objections against mathematics, claiming that its fundamental concepts have not been derived from the true nature of space at all, but
arbitrarily invented. This, of course, is the Wolffian view described above. In the
Physical Monadology, Kant purports to show that neither is geometry deceived nor
does the thought of the metaphysician deviate from the truth [1:480].
But we have just seen that for the Kant of the Prize Essay, non-primitive mathematical concepts are arbitrary concepts: they are, as he puts it in his logic lec-
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tures, concepts that are made, are such as are created by us arbitrarily, or fabricated, without previously having been given [24:133]. He even goes so far as to
call them fictitious concepts. Indeed, Kants account of the objective certainty
of mathematics rests on the arbitrariness of its definitions, on its proceeding by the
synthetic method. The question naturally arises as to how he differentiates his
view that mathematical concepts are arbitrarily created, fabricated, from the view
which he attacks so vehemently that they are subtle fictions, arbitrarily invented,
and figments of the imagination. Both views might seem to be kinds of formalism about mathematics, according to which mathematical concepts are convenient idealizations, perhaps indispensable tools for physics, but with no claim to
truth on their own.
I am not suggesting that Kant does hold such a view in the Prize Essay, just that
more must be said to differentiate his view from those he objects to. How is it that
my fabricating a geometrical concept results in legitimate geometrical knowledge,
where my fabricating a concept of a slumbering monad does not? After all, both
involve the formation of complex concepts from given primitive ones. Indeed,
the question arises within mathematics itself: why does the arbitrary representation of a right-angled triangle which is rotated on one of its sides issue in a legitimate mathematical concept, while the representation of a figure enclosed by two
straight lines does not?
The obvious answer to this latter question is that the figure described cannot
be defined in accordance with the indemonstrable propositions, for it contradicts
the proposition that between two points only one straight line may be drawn. But
this then simply pushes the question onto the indemonstrable propositions which
constrain the arbitrariness of definitions. What is their status? Kant says that they
are taken to be immediately certain, but he gives no epistemological account of
these concepts and propositions. Without further argument, the rejection of slumbering monads on these grounds seems as dogmatic as their affirmation. The
problem is that Kants description of the mathematical method seems to correspond to that appropriate to a formal axiomatic system; unless some explanation
is given of the content of those primitive concepts and propositions and, especially, the ground of their certainty, this account simply collapses into the formalism that Kant so obviously opposes. In addition, this threat of formalism undermines his attempt to distinguish the methods appropriate to mathematics and
metaphysics. If the geometer is simply deducing properties and relations of imaginary or ideal objects given by arbitrary definitions, what is to stop the metaphysician from developing an axiomatic system for slumbering monads in a similar
way? In what sense can we say that mathematics is a body of truths, and the theory
of slumbering monads is not? More importantly, given Kants concern with the
relative certainty of mathematics and metaphysics, how can we say that we know
these truths with certainty?
To sum up then, Kants attempt to account for the certainty of mathematics in
the Prize Essay seems to leave open the question of the relation between the method
of mathematics and its truth. First of all, its not clear how mathematical concepts
are anything but arbitrary inventions with no objective content, rather than derived from the true nature of space. Secondly, mathematical propositions then
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seem to lose their claims to truth as opposed to mere deducibility from axioms
and definitions. Kants concern with these issues is clear from the fact that he
articulates them frequently and throughout his career as objections to the metaphysicians. The key to these questions with respect to geometry is the relationship between geometry and space: how can he establish this relation in such a way
that avoids the problems he associates with the metaphysicians view, and yet retains the privileged claims to certainty accorded to mathematics? In the remainder of this paper, I want to show how the distinction between sensibility and intellect is a key step towards the resolution of the difficulties arising out of Kants
concern with the respective methods of mathematics and metaphysics.
2.
THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSIBILITY AND INTELLECT
Kant clearly viewed the distinction between sensibility and intellect, first drawn in
his Inaugural Dissertation, as a key to discovering the correct method for metaphysics. He describes the dissertation as a specimen of a propaedeutic science
for metaphysics which teaches the distinction between sensitive cognition and
the cognition which derives from the understanding [2:395]. Indeed, in a letter
to Mendelssohn from 1766, Kant again expresses his repugnance for what passes
in metaphysics as insight:
I am fully convinced that the path that has been selected is completely wrong, that the
methods now in vogue must infinitely increase the amount of folly and error in the world,
and that even the total extermination of all these chimerical insights would be less harmful
than the dream science itself, with its confounded contagion. [10:70]9
On the other hand, he continues,

I am far from regarding metaphysics itself, objectively considered, to be trivial or dispensable; in fact, I have been convinced for some time now that I understand its nature and its
proper place in human knowledge and that the true and lasting welfare of the human race
depends on it. . . . (ibid.)
He reports to Mendelssohn that he thinks he has reached some important insights in this regard, insights that will establish the proper procedure for metaphysics, and that his reflections are not merely general ones but will provide a
specific criterion. His suggested treatment will admittedly only serve a negative
purposethe avoidance of stupiditybut it will prepare the way for a positive
one.
But Kant does much more than this in the Inaugural Dissertation. In distinguishing the conditions governing the sensible world from those governing the
intelligible world, he also provides the philosophical underpinning for the view
of the mathematical method presented in the Prize Essay. The special role of
sensibility as construed by Kant in mathematics explains the peculiar certainty of
that science and provides the necessary distinction from metaphysics.
Kant begins with an example to illustrate that our concepts have two sources.
The example is of the concept of a world in general, that is, the concept of a
whole which is not a part. Kant thinks that by paying attention to the two-fold
9
Translations taken from Correspondence, tr. and ed. Arnulf Zweig, Cambridge University Press,
1999.
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genesis of the concept out of the nature of the mind, we can secure a deeper
insight into the method of metaphysics. It is one thing, Kant says,
given the parts, to conceive for oneself the composition of the whole, using an abstract concept of the understanding, and it is another thing to follow up this general concept, as one
might do with some problem of reason, by the sensitive faculty of cognition, that is to say,
to represent the same concept to oneself in the concrete by a distinct intuition. [2:387]
We conceive the composition of a whole by means of the concept of composition in

general insofar as a number of things are contained under it, and therefore by
means of universal ideas of the understanding. The representation of the concept in the concrete by a distinct intuition, however, rests upon the conditions of
time, in so far as it is possible, by the successive addition of part to part, to arrive
genetically, that is to say, by SYNTHESIS, at the concept of a compound.
The concept of a simple offers another example. We arrive without difficulty,
Kant says, at the idea of a simple, given a substantial compound, just by taking
away the concept of composition: what remains when the elements of conjunction have thus been removed is simple. But under the laws of intuitive cognition,
composition is taken away only by means of a regress from the given whole to all
its possible parts whatsoever, which in turn rests on the condition of time. In other
words, we can think of the simple parts of a substantial compound just by abstracting away from the composition of the compoundconsidering the concept of
the compound minus the concept of composition. To represent the concept of a
simple in the concrete by a distinct intuition, though, requires the distinct intuition of each of the parts. But, Kant continues, the analysis and synthesis will only
be completed, the concept of simple will only emerge by means of analysis, the
concept of a whole will only emerge by means of synthesis, if the respective processes can be carried out in a finite and specifiable period of time [2:388].
These two different ways of representing the concept of a whole or of a simple
begin to reveal the difference between the conditions governing the understanding and those governing sensibility. In particular, the representation of the concept in intuition is subject to the conditions of time, whereas the representation
of the concept by the understanding is not. The significance of this difference
comes out when we consider the examples of continuity and infinity. The regression from the whole to the parts required for the analysis of a continuous magnitude and the progression from the parts to the whole required for the synthesis of
an infinite magnitude have in each case no limit [2:388]. Thus neither the complete synthesis nor the complete analysis is possible; consequently, in the first
case, the [continuous] whole cannot, according to the laws of intuition, be thought
completely as regards composition and, in the second case, the [infinite] compound
cannot be thought completely as regards totality. In other words, Kant says, we
cannot represent the concepts of continuity or infinity in intuition: according to
the laws of intuitive cognition, any representation of these concepts is absolutely
impossible [2:388] for neither the synthesis nor the analysis could be completed
in a finite amount of time.
This is not to say, however, that the concept itself is impossible. We must not
treat unrepresentable in intuition and impossible as having the same meaning. Whatever conflicts with the laws of the understanding and the laws of rea-
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son is impossible, but an object of pure reason which simply doesnt come
under the laws of intuitive cognition is not thereby impossible. What this makes
clear is the lack of accord between the sensitive faculty and the faculty of the
understanding: as a result of this lack of accord, the abstract ideas which the mind
entertains when they have been received from the understanding very often cannot be followed up in the concrete and converted into intuitions [2:389]. The conflation of
unrepresentable with impossible has led some schools to expel in disgrace the
concepts of infinity and continuity, but it is one of the goals of the Dissertation to
show that those who use such a perverse method of arguing are guilty of the
gravest errors [2:389].
So it is by means of the distinction between the abstract ideas of the understanding and the concrete representations of the peculiarly human faculty of sensibility that Kant shows that no objective inconsistency can be inferred from the
subjective resistance of sensibility to the dictates of the understanding. Things
which do not accord with a fixed law of a certain subject do not, for that reason,
pass beyond all understanding; after all, there could be an understanding, though
certainly not a human understanding, which might distinctly apprehend a multiplicity at a single glance [2:388n].
To return to our original example, how does all of this apply to the question of
the absolute totality of the component parts of a world? This concept seems to
present a serious problem for it is hardly possible to conceive how the never to be
completed series of the states of the universe, which succeed one another to eternity,
can be reduced to a whole, which comprehends absolutely all its changes [2:391].
It follows from the infinity of the series that it has no limit, and it seems to be
required from the concept of a whole that all the things should be taken simultaneously. It follows from that that there can be no such absolute totality. The mistake here is to think that the concept of a whole requires that all things be taken
simultaneously, for neither the successive nor the simultaneous coordination of
several things (since both coordinations depend on concepts of time) belongs to
a concept of a whole which derives from the understanding but only to the conditions of sensitive intuition. Although this totality cannot be sensitively conceived, it
does not cease to belong to the understanding. All that is required is that the
coordinates be given in some way or other and that they should all be thought as
constituting a unity [2:392]. So this is how we can avoid philosophical muddles by
keeping straight the sources of our concepts. This, as we shall see, is the key to Kants
new conception of method as propounded towards the end of the Dissertation.
Having shown that there are two ways of representing concepts, Kant next
takes up the question of the nature of the distinction of these faculties. I want to
argue now that taking seriously Kants opposition to the metaphysicians reduction of sensible knowledge to confused knowledge of whats known more clearly
by the intellect imposes conditions on our reading of this distinction. Sensibility,
he says, is the receptivity of a subject by means of which the subjects own representative state [is] affected in a definite way by the presence of some object.
Intelligence, on the other hand, is the faculty of the subject by means of which it
has the power to represent things which cannot by their own quality come before
the senses of that subject [2:392]. The object of sensibility is the sensible (phe-
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nomenon); that which contains only what is cognized through the intelligence is
the intelligible (noumenon). Insofar as cognition is subject to the laws of sensibility, it is sensible; insofar as it is subject to the laws of intelligence, it is intellectual
or rational. The account of the intelligence, so far, is purely negative: whereas
sensibility is the receptive faculty and is affected by objects, intelligence is not
receptive and is not affected by objects. It remains to be explained (as Kant recognized in a letter to Herz two years later) how objects are given to the intelligence if
not by the way they affect it. How does the understanding come by its representations? I shall return to this question below.
In the next section, Kant goes on to assert that whereas the sensitive element
in cognition is dependent on the special character of the subject, whatever cognition is exempt from such subjective conditions relates only to the object. It
follows from this that things which are thought sensitively are representations of
things as they appear, while things which are intellectual are representations of
things as they are [2:392].
This is a difficult characterization to understand. It seems as though Kant is
saying that the intellect represents as they really are the very same things which
sensibility represents only as they appear. This is the picture that Friedman, for
example, presents of the Inaugural Dissertation: the intellectual faculty of understanding or reason allows us to represent the underlying monadic realm of nonspatio-temporal simple substances as it is in itself, while the newly introduced
faculty of sensibility allows us to represent this underlying reality as it appears to
creatures like ourselves.10
The problem with this reading emerges when we view the Inaugural Dissertation against the background of the debate between the monadists and the mathematicians. The key element of the metaphysicians account of mathematics is
the reduction of sensible knowledge to confused knowledge of what is known
more clearly by the intellect: so recall that the Marquise de Chtelet reconciled
the conflicting claims of mathematics and metaphysics by asserting that geometrical truths are physical errors. It seems that if Kant were to hold that intellectual
knowledge is knowledge of the objects of sense as they really are, he would commit himself to something like this view of the relation between mathematics and
10
Friedman, Kant and the exact sciences, 3031. This reading is indeed suggested by some passages
in the Dissertation, most notably where Kant considers the question, which can only be solved by the
understanding, of the principle upon which this relation of all substances itself rests, and which,
when seen intuitively, is called space [2:407, my emphasis]. The answer to this question requires an
explanation of how it is that a plurality of substances should be in mutual interaction with each other,
and in this way belong to the same whole, which is called a world. He then argues that the unity in
the conjunction of substances in the universe is a corollary of the dependence of all substances on one
being [2:408]. In other words, the principle upon which the unity of the world rests is the mutual
dependence of all substances on a single necessary cause, and this relation of dependence, when
seen intuitively, is called space. This suggests that the understanding does provide knowledge of the
same objects, substances, which appear to us as spatial phenomena. But as Guyer points out, Kants
claim here is very limited: it consists of the single thesis that the objects which appear to us phenomenally are, metaphysically, contingents dependent upon a common cause for their mutual relation.
And, he says, this is more a claim about an ontologically distinct object (a being which exists outside
the world [2:408] to which ordinary objects are related than some insight into the real nature of
those ordinary objects (Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987], 18).
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metaphysics, a view which, as we have seen, he vehemently rejects. That his opposition to such a view is playing a role in the Inaugural Dissertation is clear from
the following passage. Immediately after distinguishing the logical and the real
uses of the understanding, thus completing his characterization of the faculties,
Kant begins to draw conclusions from the distinction:
From this one can see that the sensitive is poorly defined as that which is more confusedly
cognized, and that which belongs to the understanding as that of which there is a distinct
cognition. For these are only logical distinctions which do not touch at all the things given,
which underlie every logical comparison. [2:394]
The key difference from the metaphysicians view, of course, is that Kant treats
the distinction between what belongs to sensibility and what belongs to understanding as more than a logical distinction based on relative distinctness. Instead,
he says it must be based on the things given. But he goes on to distinguish them
on the basis of their relations to their objects, rather than on the nature of the
objects themselves. Sensibility is affected by objects, intellectual representations
are given by the very nature of the understandingthey come from the understanding itself, independently of any relation to objects. Kant says nothing here,
though, about what those representations are representations of. This also comes
out clearly in a later characterization of the distinction in Kants lectures on metaphysics, where he describes the lower faculty as a power to have representations so far as we are affected by objects and the higher faculty as a power to
have representations from ourselves; it is a faculty of representation so far as
one is wholly independent of objects.11 Kant here again emphasizes the difference between his distinction and a merely logical one:
Sensible cognitions are sensible not because they are confused, but rather because they take
place in the mind so far as it is affected by objects. The intellectual cognitions are again
intellectual not because they are distinct but because they arise from ourselves. Accordingly
intellectual representations can be confused and sensible ones distinct. [28:229]
So Kant distinguishes the faculties by means of their relations to objects, not by

the nature of the objects themselves. This leaves us with the difficult question of
how to understand the opposition between things as they are and as they appear: is this, as Friedman would have it, a relation between an underlying monadic
reality and the way it appears to creatures like us? I have suggested that it is not;
but then what is it?
Guyer has suggested that Kant is making not just an epistemological distinction but an ontological one where each faculty represents a different set of objects altogether, where the understanding represents those objects which do not
manifest themselves to the senses at all. On his view, the proper objects of intellectual cognition are entirely distinct from the objects of empirical knowledge
considered from any point of view and so are entirely distinct from the objects of
sensible cognition.12 Intellectual knowledge is not noumenal knowledge of the
objects which appear phenomenally, knowledge of them as they really are, but
11
Metaphysik L1, 28:229. Translations taken from Lectures on Metaphysics, Karl Ameriks and Steve
Naragon eds. and trans. (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
12
Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, 1516.
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rather is moral philosophy and rational theology, the objects of which are God
and moral perfection. One consequence of this is that, as Guyer himself concludes, the faculties of sensibility and intellect in the Dissertation correspond more
closely to the faculties of sensibility and reason in the Critique ; the faculty which
Kant later calls the understanding hardly plays any role in the Dissertation.
I dont think we have to go quite this far to make sense of Kants distinction
and various pronouncements in the Dissertation. It seems that Kant does mean to
allow the application of intellectual concepts to sensible ones; for example, he
describes the concept of number as one which belongs to the understanding
but whose actualization in the concrete requires the auxiliary notions of time
and space [2:397]. Similarly, Kant says that if we focus the understanding on
experience, we shall see that the relation of cause and caused, at least in the case
of external objects, requires relations of space [2:406]. Earlier, he has described
the concept of cause, together with the concepts of possibility, existence, necessity, and substance, as concepts found in the very nature of the pure understanding, abstracted from the laws inherent in the mind [2:395]. It seems clear then
that these are examples of intellectual concepts which are applied to sensible ones.
Taking seriously Kants opposition to the metaphysicians requires only that
we interpret Kants distinction in such a way that the faculties do not offer competing accounts of the very same objects. The key here, I think, is to recognize Kants
emphasis on the generality and abstractness of intellectual cognition. As Ive
pointed out, most of Kants characterizations of the intellect in the Inaugural
Dissertation are negative: it represents things which cannot come before the senses;
the intelligible contains nothing but what is to be cognized through the intelligence;
intellectual cognition is exempt from subjective conditions. One way to understand
these negative characterizations is to take Kant as saying that intellectual cognition is cognition of the most general properties of things, independently of the
subjective conditions under which they may be given to us; it presents conditions
under which we must think objects in general. In sensibility, however, we are given
objects in all their concrete particularity, something the discursive understanding
is not capable of delivering because it is limited to universal concepts. We are
therefore given in sensibility material that is not given to the intellect, but depends on the subject.
The major exception to the negative characterizations is the one that Im trying to explainthat it gives cognition of things as they are. The main point I want
to emphasize here is that we need not take this to mean that the intellect gives us
cognition of an independent and self-subsisting realm of real objects, monads.
We should take this to mean just that intellectual cognition is of objects independently of how they affect us, independently of how (and indeed of whether or
not) they appear to us. The intelligible, the object of the intellect, contains nothing but what is to be cognized through the intelligence [2:393, my emphasis].
This seems to fit with the way Kant describes the opposition between as it is and
as it appears in the following passage. The sensitive element in cognition depends on the special character of the subject in so far as the subject is capable of
this or that modification by the presence of objects, but whatever cognition is
exempt from such subjective conditions relates only to the object:
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It is thus clear that things which are thought sensitively are representations of things as they
appear, while things which are intellectual are representations of things as they are. [2:392]
So this is all there is to the things as they appear vs. things as they are distinction. It is not, at least in the first instance, a metaphysical distinction among distinct kinds of objects, where cognition of things as they appear is cognition of the
perceived world and cognition of things as they are is cognition of the underlying reality, some more metaphysically real realm of objects. It is primarily a distinction between cognition that depends on subjective conditions and cognition
that does not. As well see below, intellectual cognition can apply to the phenomena, but well also see that it may not.
Kant offers an argument for why sensible cognition depends on subjective conditions and therefore is of things as they appear: a representation of sense contains both matterthe sensationand form. But, Kant says, objects do not strike
the senses in virtue of their form or aspect [2:393]; the form must therefore be
contributed by the mind. But he apparently sees no need to argue for the claim
that whatever is exempt from such conditions relates to the object, though of
course he later comes to recognize the crucial importance of this question. In any
case, the point again is that this is all there is to the distinction between as they
appear and as they are. Things as they are, then, just are things considered
independently of these subjective conditions. The main point is that the distinction between things as they are and things as they appear does not carry any implication that cognition of things as they are is somehow superior to cognition of
things as they appearin Guyers phrase, that the former has more epistemic
dignityor that cognition of things as they appear is somehow misleading, or
more importantly, that the understanding gives us cognition of an entirely distinct realm of objects.
Kants warning about the ambiguity of the word abstract is instructive here.
Properly speaking, he says, we ought to say to abstract from some things and not
to abstract something [2:394]. A concept of the understanding abstracts from everything sensitive, but is not abstracted from what is sensitive. So such a concept can be
given purely, abstracting from everything sensitive. This formulation makes
clearer that the characterization is negative, that an intellectual concept is one
which leaves something out. It abstracts from the way in which things are given to
us. But as we saw above, the Marquise argued that abstracting from conditions
under which things are given does not leave us with determinate objects; rather, it
provides us only with imaginary beings incapable of existing in reality. For Kant,
as well see next, precisely because they abstract from sensible conditions, pure
concepts may not apply to sensible concepts. This, I hope, makes it clearer why
cognition at this general level need not have more epistemic dignity than sensible cognition. There is no suggestion that the intellect provides a full alternative
account of the same things, presents us with their underlying reality.13
13
For a similar reading of the Inaugural Dissertation, see Frederick Beiser, Kants Intellectual
Development: 174681 in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, Paul Guyer, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 4652. Beiser points out that this reading removes the puzzle of explaining
why Kant moves from the skepticism of Dreams of a spirit-seer from 1766 to the revival of speculative
metaphysics in 1770: the simple answer is that he does not revive speculative metaphysics in 1770.
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Most of Kants discussion of the relation of sensible cognition to intellectual

cognition focuses on the need to prevent sensible cognition from transgressing
its limits and affecting what belongs to the understanding. But what we are interested in, what generates the conflict I wish to focus on, is really the other way
around: to what extent does intellectual cognition apply to sensible cognition?
Can metaphysics undermine geometry? I have said that intellectual cognition is
more general than sensible cognition in that it applies to things independently of
how they are given to us. But its also clear that it doesnt always apply to intuitions. As weve seen, Kant says that the abstract ideas of the understanding very
often cannot be converted into intuitions [2:389]. In discussing the principles of
sensitive cognition, the pure intuitions of space and time, Kant says that [i]n
these intuitions, the parts and, in particular, the simple parts do not, as the laws of
reason prescribe, contain the ground of the possibility of a compound [2:405; my
emphasis]. Kant does not infer from this, as the Marquise does, that space and
time are therefore imaginary. To say that they are subjective or ideal is, for Kant,
not to say that cognition of them is illusory or confused. The conflict with the laws
of reason is therefore merely apparent. Those laws simply do not apply.
The domain of metaphysics thus begins to seem rather limited, and indeed,
this fits with Kants cautious attitude in the Dissertation and, of course, with his
opposition to the metaphysicians. We now have to ask what positive role there is
in the Inaugural Dissertation for metaphysics, and whether it is compatible with
the reading of Kants distinction presented above.
Consider the discussion of the principle of the form of the intelligible world in
section 4 (which, interestingly, he tells Lambert to skim, together with section
1). The key question here, one which can only be answered by the understanding, is how it is possible that a plurality of substances should be in mutual interaction with each other such that they belong to the same world. An answer to this
question will tell us what the principle is on which the mutual interaction of all
substances rests. Space and time cannot fulfill this role, first because space only
concerns the sensitive laws of the subject rather than conditions of objects themselves, so does not generalize to non-spatial substances, and secondly, because
space only signifies the possibility of universal coordination. We are not considering the world with respect to the natures of the substances it consists of, whether
material or immaterial; rather we are contemplating it with respect to its form
that is, we want to know how in general, a connection between a plurality of substances comes to be and how a totality between them is brought about. This example of intellectual cognition then is not exclusively cognition of an immaterial
realm of substances. Rather it is cognition of substances in general, by which Kant
means cognition of substances considered independently of any subjective conditions of their apprehension. The result of this investigation is that the unity in
the conjunction of substances in the universe is a corollary of the dependence of
all substances on one being [2:408]. In other words, the principle upon which
the unity of the world rests is the mutual dependence of all substances on a single
necessary cause; this relation, when seen intuitively, is called space. So this is an
example of where metaphysics gives us knowledge of phenomena, but it does not
do so by giving us insight into the real nature of phenomenal objects; it rather
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expresses conditions on substances in general, and the result is meant to hold for
any plurality of substances.14
Another example of a metaphysical investigation is the question of the causes
of sensitive intuition, which may be known through the understanding alone
[2:409]. Again, the answer is found in the common sustaining and general
cause [2:410] and so again, Kants example of metaphysical knowledge is not
knowledge of the underlying reality of phenomena as they really are. It is simply
knowledge which is known through the understanding alone. It counts as intellectual not by virtue of the nature of its object, but by virtue of its source. Curiously, though, Kant qualifies this example as stepping beyond the limits of the
apodeictic certainty which befits metaphysics, and warns us that it would be better to keep close to the shore of the cognitions granted to us by the modest
character of our understanding rather than put out into the deep sea of such
mystical investigations. Perhaps the latter qualification applies to Kants claim
that the view expounded here is very close indeed to Malebranches view that
we intuit all things in God, but the former qualification, that we are transgressing
the limits of certainty, seems to apply to the investigation of the cause of sensitive
intuition. It is not clear to me, at least, how this investigation differs from the
main one of section 4 and so why one transgresses those limits while the other
presumably does not. But this fits, I think, with Kants description to Mendelssohn
(cited above) of his treatment for metaphysics as serving only a negative purposethe avoidance of stupidityand as only preparing the way for a positive one. We shouldnt expect Kant to tell us how to proceed in metaphysics; his
goal here is simply to tell us how not to proceed.
The point of these examples has been to suggest again that there is no evidence in the Inaugural Dissertation that Kant conceives of metaphysics as providing an account of the underlying reality of phenomenal things, more specifically,
of the underlying monadic realm of non-spatio-temporal simple substances.
Metaphysics does not offer a competing account of the phenomenal world at all.
In fact, it seems that Kant is more than willing to reject the results of metaphysics
in favor of sensible cognition (of the sensible). Weve already seen one example
where Kant acknowledges that intuitions violate the laws of reason. Even in the
Prize Essay, Kant emphasized the superior degree of certainty (both subjective
and objective) that mathematics has over metaphysics, and in the Inaugural
Dissertation, as well soon see, this superior degree of evidence has to do with the
fact that geometry doesnt demonstrate its propositions by thinking an object
through a universal concept, as happens in the case of what is rational, but rather
it does so by placing it before the eyes by means of a singular intuition, as happens in the case of what is sensitive [2:403]. So the isolation of sensibility as a
distinct faculty bolsters Kants claims in the Prize Essay for the superior certainty
of mathematics, and it is presumably this that explains why the claims of sensibility with respect to phenomena may trump those of the understanding.
To sum up, I have tried to argue that in the Inaugural Dissertation, the understanding does not present us with knowledge of the ultimate reality underlying
14
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Cf. n.10 above.
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phenomenal appearances. An indirect argument for this is that if it did, Kant

would be saddled with something like the metaphysicians view which he condemns. To be sure, it would not be the same view, because Kants non-logical distinction between the faculties rules out the view that sensibility is just the confused perception of the underlying reality. But he would still be committed to
holding that there are two different accounts of the same phenomena. More directly, though, I think there is no textual basis for attributing such a view to Kant.15
One source of confusion here is Kants talk of the objects of intellect and sensibility, of noumena and phenomena. In a later discussion of the historical distinction
between phenomena and noumena, Kant says the following:
One should not have divided things into intelligibles and sensibles or noumena and phenomena, but rather said that our cognition is twofold (first intellectual and second sensitive), which would have prevented the coming about of a mystical concept of the intellectual . . . through which metaphysics deteriorated into wild fantasy.16
In the Inaugural Dissertation, though, Kant uses the language of both: he does
talk about the objects of the intellect and of sensibility, but also stresses that the
main contribution of the work is the distinction between sensitive and intellectual
cognition. I have tried to give a minimalist reading of his talk of objects and of
noumena and phenomena, things as they appear and things as they are, a reading
which does not demand their reification, and therefore does not commit the error
diagnosed in the passage above. This is not to say that the faculties dont have
different objects as well: God and the soul, for example, are presumably intelligibles
in a stronger sense. But we neednt, I think, take Guyers view that the intellect
concerns itself solely with an entirely distinct set of objects from sensibility.
3.
THE SCIENCE OF SENSORY THINGS
The question before us now is how Kant thinks that this strict separation of the
objects of sensitive cognition and the objects of intellectual cognition secures the
truth of the science of sensory things. It is clear that he thinks it does, for he
concludes the section on the distinction between intelligible and sensible things
with the claim that thus there is a science of sensory things, although, since they are
phenomena, the use of the understanding is not real but only logical [2:398].
This is supposed to explain why those who drew their inspiration from the Eleatic
school supposed that science was denied in the case of phenomena. They committed the mistake which Kant diagnosed in section 1 of the Dissertation, that is,
the failure to recognize the inevitable lack of accord between the sensitive faculty
and the faculty of the understanding. It is this failure which leads to the false
impression of an objective inconsistency between ideas of the understanding and
the laws of intuitive cognition [2:38889]. Kant thus sees the sharp distinction
between the intelligible and the sensible as rescuing the claim to truth of the science of sensory things, including, of course, pure mathematics.
15
A complete and more detailed defense of this reading of the Dissertation is the subject of
another paper.
16
Metaphysics Mrongovius, 29: 759. Translations taken from Lectures on Metaphysics, Karl Ameriks
and Steve Naragon, eds. and trans. (Cambridge University Press, 1997).
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This distinction on its own, however, is not sufficient for the claim that there is
a science of sensible things. Another of the problems with the metaphysicians
view was that there is no account of how the phenomena result from simple beings. Consequently, there is no guarantee that there is even one true account of
the phenomena qua phenomena, that there is one phenomenal world commonly
experienced by all finite creatures. My confused perception of the underlying
reality may be quite different from the next persons confused perception, so that
there may be no laws governing the phenomenal world at all; indeed, there may
be no common phenomenal world at all. This difficulty is not eliminated by the
distinction of the faculties, particularly given the subjectivity of sensible cognition. What is also required is an account of the law-governed nature of our faculty
of intuition.
Kant grants that, because whatever in cognition is sensitive is dependent upon
the special character of the subject insofar as the subject is capable of this or that
modification by the presence of objects, it follows that these modifications may
differ in different cases, according to the variations in the subject [2:392]. But
he also argues that in a sensible representation there are two elements, the mattersensationand the form. The form of sensibility is that aspect of sensible
things which arises according as the various things which affect the senses are
coordinated by a certain natural law of the mind [2:3923]. This form, while
evidence of a certain relation in what is sensed, is not an outline or a schema of
the object, but only a certain law, which is inherent in the mind and by means of
which it coordinates for itself that which is sensed from the presence of the object [2:393]. The idea seems to be that the senses are affected by various factors in the object, and as a result of which the mind receives a variety of impressions. Because, Kant argues, the objects do not strike the sense in virtue of their
form, but rather in virtue of their matter, the form must be contributed by the
subject:
if the various factors in an object which affect the sense are to coalesce into some representational whole there is needed an internal principle in the mind, in virtue of which those
various factors may be clothed with a certain aspect, in accordance with stable and innate
laws.
In addition, we can have representations of the form of sensory cognition even if

it were to be found free from all sensation [2:393]. This provides us with knowledge of the principles of sensitive form which are found in geometry: in this
way, the truth of geometry and its status as a science are preserved. Even though
phenomena do not express the internal and absolute quality of objects, cognition of them is nonetheless in the highest degree true [2:397]. Note that there
is no implication here that the understanding does capture the internal and absolute quality of objects.
The argument for this claim that cognition of phenomena is in the highest
degree true comes at the end of section 2 of the Dissertation. First of all, insofar
as phenomena are sensory, Kant claims, they are, as things caused, witnesses to
the presence of an object. This dispenses with any threat to the truth of the
sciences posed by idealism. But secondly, truth in judging, Kant explains, consists
in the agreement of a predicate with a given subject. The concept of a phenom-
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enal subject is given only through its relation to the sensitive faculty of cognizing.
Similarly, sensitively observable predicates are given only through the same relation. It is clear then that representations of a subject and a predicate arise
according to common laws: they thus furnish a foothold for cognition which is
in the highest degree true [2:397]. These phenomena are set out in physics (the
phenomena of external sense) and empirical psychology (the phenomena of internal sense). But in addition to these phenomenaobjects which relate to our
sensesthere are things which do not touch the senses, but contain only the
singular form of sensibility. These things belong to pure intuition, and are the
objects of pure mathematics. This science also provides us with a cognition which
is in the highest degree true, and, at the same time, it provides us with a paradigm
of the highest kind of evidence in other cases [2:398].
It is important to note, however, that Kant does not argue that we must posit
these stable and innate laws simply in order to safeguard the science of sensory
things. This would provide a rather weak reply to the metaphysicians position. If
they are willing to accept the diminished status of the science of phenomena, why
should they countenance Kants doctrines of sensibility and understanding? A
stronger argument against the metaphysicians would not take as a premise the scientific status of our knowledge of sensory things.17 Instead, the key premise for
this argument is the claim that the representations of a subject and predicate of
judgements arise according to common LAWS, precisely what the metaphysicians position lacked. Whereas for the metaphysicians, the ideas of mathematics and
mechanics arose out of our attempts to make sense of our confused perceptions,
for Kant, these laws are prior to and indeed necessary for our experience of phenomena.
The existence of a science of sensory things is grounded in these necessary laws.
These laws are, of course, based on the principles of the form of the sensible
world, and Kants argument for the necessity of these principles is quite independent of concerns about the truth or scientific status of our cognition of sensory
things. Rather, he argues that the formal principles, space and time, are the condition under which something can be an object of our senses [2:396]. The argument for this claim is the subject of section 3 of the Dissertation.18 Thus Kant
claims that the ideas of time and space are presupposed by the senses:
only through the idea of time is it possible for the things which come before the senses to
be represented as simultaneous or successive; [2:3989]
similarly,
I may only conceive of something as placed outside me by representing it as in a place
which is different from the place in which I am myself; and I may only conceive of things
outside one another by locating them in different places in space. [2:402]
17
This is the kind of argument that Friedman attributes to Kant: . . . because Kants delineation of
the new faculty of sensibility is grounded entirely in the mathematical exact sciences, sensible cognition can no longer be characterized as either confused or imaginary in comparison with intellectual cognition (Kant and the Exact Sciences, 31, my emphasis).
18
I will not deal with this argument in detail here, as it foreshadows the arguments contained in the
Transcendental Aesthetic which I have discussed elsewhere. The point here is simply to show that Kant
does indeed provide an argument, not to assess the argument. For an excellent treatment of these
issues, see Daniel Warren Kant and the apriority of Space, Philosophical Review 107 (1998), 179224.
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From this he concludes that

all things which are in any way sensible can only be thought as either simultaneous or as
placed before each other, and, thus, as enfolded, as it were, by a period of one single time,
and as related to one another by a determinate position in that time; [2:402]
and
things cannot appear to the senses under any aspect at all except by the mediation of the
power of the mind which coordinates all sensations according to a law which is stable and
which is inherent in the nature of the mind . . . [thus] nothing at all can be given to the
senses unless it conforms with the fundamental axioms of space and its corollaries. . .
It then follows from this that nature is completely subject to the prescriptions of
geometry:
And this is so not on the basis of an invented hypothesis but on the basis of one which has
been intuitively given, as the subjective condition of all phenomena, in virtue of which
condition alone nature can be revealed to the senses. [2:404]
Geometry is not merely an ideal hypothesis which we create to make sense of the
confused data of sensibility; it expresses the principles which are the necessary
conditions of sensibility: whatever can be given to the senses will necessarily accord with these axioms even though their principle is only subjective. Indeed,
had not the concept of space been given originally by the nature of the mind (and so given
that anyone trying to imagine any relations other than those prescribed by this concept
would be striving in vain, for such a person would have been forced to employ this selfsame concept to support his own fiction), then the use of geometry in natural philosophy
would be far from safe. [2:405]
This makes it clear that Kant believes that by showing space to be a necessary
presupposition of sensibility, and thus of experience, he has returned geometry
to its position at the summit of certainty, possessing both universality and necessity [2:404]. The key step is the recognition of sensibility as a faculty governed by
necessary principles which provide us with cognition which is in the highest degree true, and this Kant argues for on the basis of the nature of sensible experience.
4.
T H E M E T H O D O F M E TA P H Y S I C S
Ultimately, the question we want resolved here is the question of how Kant can
justify the difference in the methods of metaphysics and mathematics. So we now
have to consider the question of what the isolation of sensibility as a source of
knowledge in its own right teaches us about the method of metaphysics. Kant
takes up a more detailed diagnosis of the problems of metaphysics in the final
section of the Dissertation, On method in metaphysics concerning what is sensitive and what belongs to the understanding. The distinction between the faculties and their respective principles exposes at least one source of error in metaphysics, that is, the infection of cognition deriving from understanding by sensitive
cognition.19 This both misleads the unwary in the application of principles and
19
Although what Kant says here is the converse nempe sensitivae cognitionis cum intellectuali contagium,
it is clear from what follows that he must mean nempe intellectualis cognitionis cum sensitiva contagium, as
Walford and Meerbote point out in their translation. Indeed, one of the problems with the Dissertation,
as well see, is that Kant says very little about the role of the understanding in sensitive knowledge.
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invents spurious principles themselves in the guise of axioms [2:411]. This diagnosis results in the following prescription for metaphysics: great care must be
taken lest the principles which are native to sensitive cognition transgress their
limits, and affect what belongs to the understanding. What results from failing to
observe this prescription is what Kant calls a metaphysical fallacy of subreption,
or an intellectuated phenomenon [2:412]. An axiom of subreption results when
we claim to make an objective judgement by predicating what belongs to the relations of space and time to a concept of the understanding. The problem is that if
the subject is a concept of the understanding, then the predicate ascribes a property to the object itself; but if the predicate is a sensitive concept, then it ascribes
spatial and temporal determinations to the object, whereas those determinations
belong only to the conditions of sensitive human cognition [2:412]. These spurious subreptic axioms have given rise to principles which deceive the understanding and have disastrously permeated the whole of metaphysics: what is
needed is a clearly cognisable criterion for these judgements, a touchstone, so to
speak, by which we may distinguish them from genuine judgements. This prescription, then, seems to be the criterion of which Kant spoke to Mendelssohn.
One example of a subreptic axiom arises from taking the sensitive condition
under which the intuition of an object is possible to be a condition of the possibility of the object [2:413]: i.e., Crusiuss fundamental axiom, Whatever is, is somewhere and somewhen. By subjecting beings cognized by the understanding to
the conditions of space and time, this spurious principle gives rise to those idle
questions about, for example, the place in the corporeal universe of immaterial
substances.20 It is simply not the case that everything cognized by the intellect is
in space and time.
A second species of subreptic axiom, and the one most relevant for our purposes, involves taking the sensitive condition under which it is possible to compare
what is given in order to form a concept of the understanding of the object as a
condition of the possibility of the object. With respect to the cognition of quantity,
this axiom leads to the prejudice that every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and thus every magnitude is finite [2:415]. As we saw in section 1, any
magnitude or series is cognized distinctly only by means of successive coordination: we must go through or survey each element of a given manifold or series
one by one. This successive coordination rests on the conditions of time [2:387].
Thus the concepts formed by the understanding of magnitude and of a series arise
only with the help of the concept of time. Of course, the enumeration of the
members of an infinite manifold will never come to an end, so according to the
laws of sensibility, such a concept can never reach completion since the successive
coordination cant be completed in a finite time. But we must not conclude from
the fact that an infinite series cannot be comprehended distinctly because of the
limits of the understanding, that such a series is impossible. The resulting concept of the understanding must not be taken to be subject to the laws of sensibility.
Take for example a series of caused things: according to the laws of the understanding, any series of caused things has its own principle. Thus in a series of
caused things, there is no regress without a limit. According to the laws of sensibil20
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This presumably applies to Kants own physical monadology.
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ity, any series has its own specifiable beginning. We must not, however, take these
principles to be identical, for one governs the dependence of the whole series, whereas
the other governs the measurability of the series. So our inability to run through an
infinite series of causes tells us nothing about the possibility of such a series: the
concept of measurability simply does not apply.
Another example of the first subreptic axiom of the second kind occurs when
the argument of the understanding which proves that if there is a substantial
compound, then there are principles of compositioni.e., simplesis confused
with a principle from sensitive cognition that there is no regress in the composition of parts to infinity, or in other words, that there is a definite number of parts
in any compound. Again, one principle governs the dependence of the whole on
simples, the other governs the number of simples. But the concept of number, like
that of measure, rests on time, and thus does not apply to the objects of the understanding. What Kant is describing here is the perverse method of arguing which
he isolated in section 1 of the Dissertation and which purports to expel in disgrace the concept of the continuous. From the fact that a complete analysis of a
continuous magnitude into its parts cannot be completedaccording to the laws
of intuition, the whole cannot be thought completely as regards compositionit
is inferred that a continuous magnitude is impossible. The mistake here, though,
is to take an object of pure reasonthe abstract concept of the composition of a
wholeas coming under the laws of intuitive cognition. We should recognize
here that one philosopher who is clearly guilty of this fallacy of subreption is the
Marquise de Chtelet. As we have seen, she treats the concept of the infinitely
divisible as imaginary precisely because it appears to conflict with the argument
of the understanding which establishes the existence of simples. Again, according
to Kant, there is no conflict because the laws of intuition do not apply to the
abstract concept of composition.
So far, contrary to what we might have expected given Kants criticism of metaphysical chimeras, he seems to have restricted the application of sensible concepts of the sciences while actually loosening the reins on the intelligible concepts of metaphysics. The only condition he has imposed is that intelligible
concepts not be limited by the conditions of sensibility, and that therefore, the
realm of possibility is much wider than the realm of the humanly intuitable. This
seems to open the door for precisely the kind of metaphysical speculation that
Kant was trying to do away with.
Kant partially recognizes this and warns against it in his treatment of the second subreptic axiom of the second kind, that concerning quality. This axiom arises,
Kant says, from the rash conversion of the principle of contradiction from Whatever simultaneously is and is not, is impossible to Everything impossible simultaneously is and is not. Although the first is completely true and in the highest
degree self-evident [2:416], the second arises from subjecting a concept of the
understandingthe possible or the impossibleto the conditions of sensible
cognition, because the predicate appeals to the notion of simultaneity, and thus
to the relations of time. The human understanding only notices an impossibility
if it notices the simultaneous assertion of opposites about the same thing, i.e.,
when a contradiction occurs. So wherever there is no such contradiction, a judge-
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ment of possibility is not open to the human understanding. But it is a mistake to

conclude on that basis that no judgement of impossibility is open to any understanding at all and, accordingly, that whatever does not involve a contradiction is
possible:
This is why so many vain fabrications of I know not what forces are invented at pleasure.
Freed from the obstacle of inconsistency, they burst forth in a horde from any architectonic mind, or, if you prefer, from any mind which inclines to chimaeras. [2:416]
Because force is the relation of a substance to something else, the possibility of a

force cannot rest on the identity of cause and caused. It follows from this that the
impossibility of falsely fabricated forces does not depend on contradiction alone:
One may not, therefore, accept any originary force as possible unless it has been given by
experience; nor can its possibility be conceived a priori by any perspicacity of the understanding. [2:417]
So the correct conclusion to draw from the fact that the scope of possibility is
wider than the scope of sensibility is that, where there is no apparent contradiction, we are simply unable to determine the possibility of anything beyond experience. The only forces, for example, of whose possibility we are assured are those
which have been given in experience. The general mistake here is to predicate
generally by means of sensitive cognition about an object of reason, that is, to
generalize from the sensible case to the intelligible. For example, we must not
attempt to apply the concept of force to supersensible objects of the intellect.
This is to conflate the conditions of possibility for the sensible and the intelligible.
The possibility of forces does not depend on freedom from contradiction alone,
but also on peculiarly sensible conditions.
This restriction on metaphysical speculation is much more in keeping with
Kants pronouncements since the Prize Essay, in particular, with Dreams of a spiritseer, in which he attacks the claims of Emmanuel Swedenborg. In that work, he
advises that philosophy subject its own procedure to judgement and have knowledge not only of the objects themselves but also of their relation to the human
understanding. As a result of such reflection,
its frontiers will contract in size and its boundary stones will be securely fixed. And those
boundary stones will never again permit inquiry to leave the realm which is its home, and
cross the boundary to range abroad. [2:36970]
Eventually we will be convinced that such phantoms of knowledge lie wholly

beyond the horizon of man. Kant again appeals to the example of cause or force:
It is impossible for reason ever to understand how something can be a cause, or have a
force; such relations can only be derived from experience. For our rule of reason only
governs the drawing of comparisons in respect of identity and contradiction. If something is
a cause, then something is posited by something else; there is not, however, any connection
between the two things here which is based on agreement. Similarly, if I refuse to regard
that same something as a cause, no contradiction will ever arise, for there is no contradiction in supposing that, if something is posited, something else is cancelled. It follows from
this that if the fundamental concepts of things as causes, of powers and of actions are not
derived from experience, then they are wholly arbitrary, and they admit of neither proof
nor refutation. [2:370]
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Kant expresses the same point in the letter to Mendelssohn from 1766, already
cited above. What these examples of metaphysical flights of fancy reveal is how
far one can go in philosophical fabrications, completely unhindered, where there
are no data [10:73]. Because we can have no experience of the forces of spiritual
substances, one is led to ask whether it is intrinsically possible to determine these
powers of spiritual substances by means of a priori rational judgements. But Kant
is certain that this is impossible, and thus that if these powers are not given in
experience, they can only be invented:
But this invention, an heuristic fiction or hypothesis, can never even be proved to be possible, and it is a mere delusion to argue from the mere fact of its conceivability (which has
its plausibility only because no impossibility can be derived from the concept either). [ibid.]
Again, though, this restriction on metaphysical speculation is limited. It rules out

the attribution of sensible conditions to concepts of the understandingin this
case, the attribution of forces to immaterial substances. True to his word, Kant is
only concerned with ruling out metaphysical axioms and concepts which bear the
taint of sensibility. There is still of course the prospect for pure intellectual cognition: Kant allows for a real use of the understanding by means of which concepts
and axioms are given. But it is precisely this spontaneity of the understanding which
leads to the fabrication of mere castles in the air. Kants injunction against
subreptive axioms eliminates some of these fabricationsthose arrived at by attributing sensible predicates to intelligible conceptsit does not rule out the free
combination of intelligible predicates and intelligible concepts. Does it, for example, rule out the concept of a slumbering monad? This brings us back to the
comparison of mathematics and metaphysics. What light is shed on this comparison by the Inaugural Dissertation?
5.
T H E C O M PA R I S O N O F M AT H E M AT I C S
A N D M E TA P H Y S I C S R E V I S I T E D
Kant contrasts all the sciences of which the principles are given intuitively, i.e.,
natural science and mathematics, with metaphysics. Whereas in the first case, use
gives the method, in metaphysics method precedes all science [2:411].21 Because the fundamental concepts of things and of relations, as well as the axioms
of pure philosophy are given by the pure understanding and are not intuitions,
they are not immune to error. It seems then that the role of sensibility is now the
key feature distinguishing the method of mathematics from that of metaphysics.
The nature of this role is spelled out somewhat in section 3 of the Inaugural
Dissertation, On the principles of the form of the sensible world, and in particular in 15 on space. Kant begins this section by arguing that, first, the concept of
space is not abstracted from outer sensation (A), and secondly, that it is a singular
representation and not an abstract common concept (B). He concludes from
these two features that (C) the concept of space is thus a pure intuition. In addition,
however, this pure intuition can easily be seen in the axioms of geometry, and in
21
This foreshadows Kants remark at A711/B739 of the Critique of Pure Reason where he says that
mathematics and natural science are not in need of a critique of reason because intuition keeps
reason to a visible track.
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any mental construction of postulates, even of problems [2:402]. There are two
things to note about this. First, as was the case with the argument for the necessity
of the principles of the sensible world, the role of space in geometry is not part of
Kants argument for the claim that space is a pure intuition, for he takes this to be
established by points A and B. He seems rather to take it as additional support for
the claim; this will be important later. The second thing to note, of course, is that
this notion of pure intuition is clearly meant to fill the epistemological gap left
over from the Prize Essay with regard to the indemonstrable propositions of geometry and the nature of geometrical evidence:
That space does not have more than three dimensions, that between two points there is
only one straight line, that from a given point on a plane surface a circle can be described
with a given straight line, etc.none of these things can be derived from some universal
concept of space; they can only be apprehended concretely, so to speak, in space itself . . .
Hence geometry employs principles which are not only indubitable and discursive, but
which also fall under the gaze of the mind. [2:4023]
Not only are the principles of geometry intuitively evident, however, the evidence
in demonstrations, where evidence is the clarity of certain cognition insofar as it is
likened to sensory cognition is greatest in geometry; indeed it is the only evidence there is in the pure sciences, and it is the paradigm and the means of all
evidence in the other sciences. Geometry is the paradigm of evidence because of
the degree of clarity of its certain cognitions. It is the means of all evidence in other
sciences because it contains within itself the very form of all sensory intuition:
consequently, nothing can be clear and distinct in things perceived by outer sense
unless it is by means of this same intuition which is contemplated in geometry
[2:403].
This claim about the nature of evidence in geometry was also used, as we saw
earlier, to support Kants contention that the sensitive is not merely that which is
more confusedly cognized, as opposed to the clarity of that which belongs to the
understanding [2:394]. And indeed, he appeals to this distinction again here:
. . . geometry does not demonstrate its own universal propositions by thinking an object
through a universal concept, as happens in the case of what is rational; it does so, rather, by
placing it before the eyes by means of a singular intuition, as happens in the case of what is
sensitive. [2:404]
It is therefore in the first instance this claim about the clarity of sensitive cognition that allows Kant to account for the superior evidence of geometry. Remember that the nature of evidence in mathematics was one of the distinguishing
features of mathematics which Kant singled out in the Prize Essay.
So we can begin to see how this newly-isolated faculty of sensibility answers
some of the questions raised by Kants account of the mathematical method in
the Prize Essay. We have the elements of an answer to the question of what distinguishes the invention of a mathematical concept from the invention of a slumbering monad. Kant has shown in the Inaugural Dissertation how the spontaneity
of the understanding in mathematics is constrained by the principles of sensibility:
those principles, at least with regard to space, are the indemonstrable propositions of geometry, and we apprehend them concretely in space itself. It is this
which explains the privileged position of geometry as the paradigm of all evidence.
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But this only serves to highlight the remaining question: what constrains the
real use of the understanding? If indeed we can have any purely intellectual knowledgeand Kant thinks in the Inaugural Dissertation that we canthen there
ought to be analogous principles governing that. But on this, Kant has very little
to say. Whereas he has provided some epistemological account of the principles
of sensibility in section 3, the corresponding section 4 on the principles of the
intelligible world provides no such account. (Perhaps this is why Kant suggests to
Lambert that section 4 can be scanned without careful consideration!) So it is
clear that the method of mathematics is appropriate to mathematics because of
the constraining role of sensibility, but that this constraint is inappropriate in the case
of metaphysics. How then do we come by the axioms and principles of metaphysics?
The same letter to Lambert makes it clear that Kants goal in the Inaugural
Dissertation with regard to metaphysics was the negative one of preventing the
infection of intelligible concepts with the taint of sensibility:
The most universal laws of sensibility play an unjustifiably large role in metaphysics, where,
after all, it is merely concepts and principles (Grundstze) of pure reason that are at issue. A
quite special, though purely negative science, general phenomenology, seems to me to be
presupposed by metaphysics. In it the principles of sensibility, their validity and their limitations, would be determined, so that these principles could not be confusedly applied to
objects of pure reason, as has heretofore almost always happened. For space and time, and
the axioms for considering all things under these conditions, are, with respect to empirical
knowledge and all objects of sense, very real; they are actually the conditions of all appearances, and of all empirical judgements. But extremely mistaken conclusions emerge if we
apply the basic concepts of sensibility to something that is not at all an object of sense, that
is, something thought through a universal or a pure concept of the understanding as a
thing or substance in general, and so on. [10:98]
Thus Kant has answered only half of the question left from the analysis of method
in the Prize Essay. The sharp distinction between sensibility and intellect provides
the elements for an epistemological grounding for the method of mathematics,
but at the same time, he has not articulated analogous constraints on metaphysical speculation by the intellect. This is something that Kant comes to recognize in
the famous letter to Herz of 1772, where he begins to talk about the nature and
limits of metaphysics.
Kant begins by explaining to Herz that, in looking over his project on the
limits of sense and reason, he noticed that he still lacked something essential,
something that in my long metaphysical studies, I, as well as others, had failed to pay attention to and that, in fact, constitutes the key to the whole secret of hitherto still obscure
metaphysics. [10:130]
This, of course, is the question of the ground of the relation of that in us which
we call representation to the object. It is easy to see how a representation both
has an object and conforms with that object when the representation is just the
way in which the subject is affected by the object. So the passive sensible representations have an understandable relation to objectsthat is, the relation of effect to
cause. Similarly, if the objects were created by our representations (as when divine
cognitions are conceived as the archetypes of all things), the conformity of the
objects to the representations is trivial. But the pure concepts of the understanding are neither caused by objects nor bring objects into being.
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The question, then, is what guarantees that the concepts of the understanding
correspond to any object whatsoever. Recall Kants objection in the Prize Essay to
the use of the synthetic method in philosophy. If we tried to come up with a
definition of time by the arbitrary combination of concepts, it would just be a
happy coincidence if the resulting concept were the same as the idea of time
which is given to us. Kants account of metaphysics in the Inaugural Dissertation
faces a version of the same problem. Without a positive account of the faculty of
intellect and how it comes by its representations, the source of its concepts, there
is no guarantee that those representations represent anything at all. This is how
Kant sees the problem:
In my dissertation, I was content to explain the nature of intellectual representations in a
merely negative way, namely, to state that they were not modifications of the soul brought
about by the object. However, I silently passed over the further question of how a representation that refers to an object without being in any way affected by it can be possible. I had
said: The sensuous representations present things as they appear, the intellectual representations present them as they are. But by what means are these things given to us, if not
by the way in which they affect us? And if such intellectual representations depend on our
inner activity, whence comes the agreement that they are supposed to have with objects
objects that are nevertheless not possibly produced thereby? And the axioms of pure reason concerning these objectshow do they agree with these objects, since the agreement
has not been reached with the aid of experience? [10:131]
What I want to suggest in conclusion is that the problem that Kant sets for himself
in the letter to Herz is parallel to the problem that his account of the method of
mathematics in the Prize Essay faced. For what he described was the arbitrary
combination of concepts constrained only by certain fundamental propositions.
These concepts and propositions could not have been reached with the aid of
experience because that would make mathematics merely empirical. But without
an explanation of the means by which these things are given to us (and in the
case of mathematics, these representations do, in some sense, depend on our
inner activity), we are left with the question of whence comes the agreement
that they are supposed to have with objects. How can the mathematical method
described in the Prize Essay result in mathematical truths applicable to objects,
and not mere useful fictions?
As we have seen, the answer to this question requires that we limit the spontaneity of the understanding in its formation of mathematical concepts and explain
how the principles constraining that formation can be known a priori.22 In other
words, I want to suggest that Kants comparison of the methods of mathematics
and metaphysics in the Prize Essay required for its philosophical justification the
distinction between the receptive faculty of sensibility and the active faculty of the
understanding in the Inaugural Dissertation. Only by means of this distinction
could he account for the privileged epistemological position which he bestowed
on mathematics by showing how the mathematical method results in genuine
knowledge in mathematics but only dogmatic fancies in metaphysics. So by the
22
Although Kant does not explicitly describe the intellect as spontaneous in the Inaugural
Dissertation, it is clearly opposed to the receptive faculty of sensibility. For interesting reflections on
this issue, see Alison Laywine, Kants Early Metaphysics and the Origins of the Critical Philosophy (Atascadero,
CA: Ridgeview Publishing Co., 1993), 105, n.11.
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time of the letter to Herz, Kant thinks that he has an answer to this question in the
case of mathematics, but as he himself acknowledged to Herz, this leaves open
the question of the status of metaphysics:
But in the case of relationships involving qualitiesas to how my understanding may form
for itself concepts of things completely a priori, with which concepts the things must necessarily agree, and as to how my understanding may formulate real principles concerning the
possibility of such concepts, with which principles experience must be in exact agreement
and which nevertheless are independent of experiencethis question, of how the faculty
of the understanding achieves this conformity with the things themselves, is still left in a
state of obscurity. [10:132]
The problem which has vexed Kant since the Prize Essay is the problem of the
objective reality of our representations. With the distinction between the faculty of
sensibility and the faculty of understanding, Kant is finally in a position to account for the objective reality of mathematical concepts and to provide an epistemological grounding for his account of the method of mathematics by locating
the origins and validity of our knowledge of mathematics, not in the divine
understanding, but in the law-governedness of the faculty of intuition itself. He
undertakes this task in the Critique of Pure Reason. I hope to have shown here that
reflections on mathematics played no small part in the development of these crucial Critical issues. This, I think, comes out clearly in the following passage from
the Introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason where Kant suggests that mathematics is, in one respect, the source of metaphysical illusion, but in another respect,
provides us with the clue to the avoidance of such illusion.
Now it does indeed seem natural that, as soon as we have left the ground of experience, we
should, through careful inquiries, assure ourselves as to the foundations of any building
that we propose to erect, not making use of any knowledge that we possess without first
determining whence it has come, and not trusting to principles without knowing their
origin. It is natural, that is to say, that the question should first be considered, how the
understanding can arrive at all this knowledge a priori, and what extent, validity and worth
it may have . . . . on the contrary, nothing is more natural and more intelligible than the
fact that this inquiry has been so long neglected. For one part of this knowledge, the mathematical, has long been of established reliability, and so gives rise to a favorable presumption as regards the other part, which may yet be of quite different nature. Besides, once we
are outside the circle of experience, we can be sure of not being contradicted by experience.
The charm of extending our knowledge is so great that nothing short of encountering a
direct contradiction can suffice to arrest us in our course; and this can be avoided if we are
careful in our fabrications. Mathematics gives us a shining example of how far, independently of experience, we can progress in a priori knowledge. It does indeed occupy itself
with objects and with knowledge solely in so far as they allow of being exhibited in intuition. But this circumstance is easily overlooked, since this intuition can itself be given a
priori, and is therefore hardly distinguished from a bare and pure concept. Misled by such
a proof of the power of reason, the demand for the extension of knowledge recognizes no
limits. . . . [A45/B89]
What this shows is the philosophical importance, for Kant, of determining the
source and origin of our knowledge of mathematics, despite the established reliability of the science. Once we have done this, we realize that metaphysics is of a
quite different nature. Thus when Plato left the world of the senses, as setting
too narrow limits to the understanding, and ventured out beyond it on the wings
of the ideas, in the empty space of the understanding, he met no resistance that
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might, as it were, serve as a support on which he could take a stand. Had he

examined the source and origin of mathematical knowledge, however, he would
have seen that there, the free flight of ideas confronts the resistance of intuition,
and only thereby allows us to progress in a priori knowledge.23
23
Im very grateful to Alison Laywine, Ofra Rechter, Lisa Shabel, and Daniel Sutherland for
extremely fruitful discussions of the topic of this paper, and to the referees for detailed and helpful
comments.
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Inaugural Dissertation

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K A N T S I N A U G U R A L D I S S E R ATAT I O N

Metaphysics, Mathematics and

of 1770, Kant introduces the distinction between the

* Emily Carson is Assistant Professor at McGill University

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

nation of concepts in mathematics lead to flights of fancy in that discipline as

1.1. The Mathematicians vs. the Metaphysicians

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Geometrical body is nothing but simple extension. It has no determinate and

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Finally, there is the imaginary realm of geometrical extension, which is abstracted

1.2 Mathematics and Metaphysics in the Prize Essay 7

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN SENSIBILITY AND INTELLECT

On the other hand, he continues,

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

We conceive the composition of a whole by means of the concept of composition in

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

So Kant distinguishes the faculties by means of their relations to objects, not by

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

Most of Kants discussion of the relation of sensible cognition to intellectual

Cf. n.10 above.

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

phenomenal appearances. An indirect argument for this is that if it did, Kant

THE SCIENCE OF SENSORY THINGS

In addition, we can have representations of the form of sensory cognition even if

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

From this he concludes that

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

This presumably applies to Kants own physical monadology.

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

ment of possibility is not open to the human understanding. But it is a mistake to

Because force is the relation of a substance to something else, the possibility of a

Eventually we will be convinced that such phantoms of knowledge lie wholly

Again, though, this restriction on metaphysical speculation is limited. It rules out

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY

might, as it were, serve as a support on which he could take a stand. Had he

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