Page:The World as Will and Idea - Schopenhauer, tr. Haldane and Kemp - Volume 2.djvu/115

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CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.
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syllogism. Nor for this in itself is any special violence necessary. For the hypothetical judgment has its form from the principle of sufficient reason, and not the cosmological alone but all those so-called Ideas really have their origin in the inconsiderate and unrestricted application of that principle, and the laying aside of it at pleasure. For, in accordance with that principle, the mere dependence of an object upon another is ever sought for, till finally the exhaustion of the imagination puts an end to the journey; and thus it is lost sight of that every object, and indeed the whole chain of objects and the principle of sufficient reason itself, stand in a far closer and greater dependence, the dependence upon the knowing subject, for whose objects alone, i.e., ideas, that principle is valid, for their mere position in space and time is determined by it. Thus, since the form of knowledge from which here merely the cosmological Ideas are derived, the principle of sufficient reason, is the source of all subtle hypostases, in this case no sophisms need be resorted to; but so much the more is sophistry required in order to classify those Ideas according to the four titles of the categories.

(1.) The cosmological Ideas with regard to time and space, thus of the limits of the world in both, are boldly regarded as determined through the category of quantity, with which they clearly have nothing in common, except the accidental denotation in logic of the extent of the concept of the subject in the judgment by the word quantity, a pictorial expression instead of which some other might just as well have been chosen. But for Kant's love of symmetry this is enough. He takes advantage of the fortunate accident of this nomenclature, and links to it the transcendent dogmas of the world's extension.

(2.) Yet more boldly does Kant link to quality, i.e., the affirmation or negation in a judgment, the transcendent Ideas concerning matter; a procedure which has not even an accidental similarity of words as a basis. For it is just