Письмо Ламберта Канту от 13.10. 1770: (Bd. 10, s. 103-110)




Dear sir,

Your letter and also your dissertation concerning the sensible and intellectual world gave me great pleasure, especially because I regard the latter as a sample of how metaphysics and ethics could be improved. I hope very much that your new position may occasion more of such essays, since you have not decided to publish it separately.

You remind me of my suggestion of five years ago, of a possible future collaboration. I wrote to Mr. Holland 1 about it at that time, and would have written to some other scholars, too, had not the book catalogs shown me that belles-lettres are displacing everything else. I think that the fad is passing, however, and that people are ready to take up the serious disciplines once more. I have already heard from some people who never read anything but poems, novels, and literary things at the universities that, when they had to get down to business, they found themselves in an entirely new country and had to start their studies all over again. These people are in a position to know what needs to be done at the universities.

In the meantime I planned to write some little treatises myself, to invite the collaboration of some scholars with similar views, andthus to create a private society where all those things that tend to ruin public learned societies would be avoided. The actual members would have been a small number of selected philosophers, who would, however, have had to be at home in physics and mathematics as well, since in my view an authentic metaphysician is like a man who lacks one of his senses, as the blind lack sight.... The members would have expressed their opinions on difficult matters in the form of questions, or in such a manner that room would have been left for rejoinders and objections....

But I turn now to your excellent dissertation, since you particularly wanted to have my thoughts about it. If I have correctly understood the matter, certain propositions are basic, and these are, briefly, as follows:

The first main thesis is that human knowledge, by virtue of being knowledge and by virtue of having its own form, is divided in accordance with the old phaenomenon and noumenon distinction and, accordingly, arises out of two entirely different and, so to speak, heterogeneous sources, so that what stems from the one source can never be derived from the other. Knowledge that comes from the senses thus is and remains sensible, just as knowledge that comes from the understanding remains peculiar to the understanding.

My thoughts on this proposition have to do mainly with the question of universality, namely, to what extent these two ways of knowing are so completely separated that they never come together. If this is to be shown a priori, it must be deduced from the nature of the senses and of the understanding. But since we first have to become acquainted with these a posteriori, it will depend on the classification and enumeration of [their] objects [obiecte].

This seems also to be the path you take in the third section. In this sense it seems to me quite correct to say that truths that integrally involve space and location [Ort] are of an entirely different sort from those that must be regarded as eternal and immutable. I merely mentioned this in my Alethiology, No. 81.87 in Lambert's Neues Organon (1764)], for it is not so easy to give the reason why truths integrally involve time and location in this way and in no other, even though the question is extremely important.

But there I was talking only of existing things. The truths of geometry and chronometry, however, involve time and location essentially, not merely accidentally; and in so far as the concepts of space and time are eternal, the truths of geometry and chronometry belong to the class of eternal, immutable truths also.

Now you ask whether these truths are sensuous? I can very well grant that they are. The difficulty seems to lie in the concepts of time and location and could be expressed without reference to this question. The first four statements in your No. 14 seem to me quite correct; and it is especially good that you insist on the true concept of continuity, which metaphysics seems to have completely forgotten, since people wanted to bring it in as the idea of a set of connected simple entities [Complexus Entium Simplicium] and therefore had to alter the concept. The difficulty actually lies in the fifth statement. You do not offer the statement, time is the subjective condition [Tempus est subiectiva conditio], and so on, as a definition. It is nevertheless supposed to indicate something peculiar and essential to time. Time is undeniably a conditio sine qua non and belongs therefore to the representation of every sensible object and of every object integrally involving time and location. Time is also particularly necessary in order that any human being have such representations. It is also a pure intuition [Intuitus purus], not a substance, not a mere relation. It is distinct [siedifferiert] from duration [dauer] in the way location is distinct from space. It is a particular determination of duration. Moreover, it is not an accident that perishes along with substances, and so on. These propositions are all correct. They lead to no definition, and the best definition will always be that time is time, since we do not want to involve ourselves in logical circularity by defining it in terms of its relations to things that are in time. Time is a more determinate concept than duration, and for that reason, too, it leads to more negative propositions. For example, whatever is in time has some duration [dauert]. But the reverse does not hold, in so far as one demands a beginning and an end for "being in time." Eternity is not in time, since its duration is absolute. Any substance that has absolute duration is likewise not in time. Everything that exists has duration, but not everything is in time, and so on. With a concept as clear as that of time, we do not lack propositions. The trouble seems to lie only in the fact that one must simply think time and duration and not define them. All changes are bound to time and are inconceivable without time. changes are real, then time is real, whatever it may be. If time is unreal, then no change can be real. I think, though, that even an idealist must grant at least that changes really exist and occur in his representations, for example, their beginning and ending. Thus time cannot be regarded as something unreal. It is not a substance, and so on, but a finite determination of duration, and like duration, it is somehow real in whatever this reality may consist. If this cannot be identified without danger of confusion, by means of the words we use for other things, it will either require the introduction of a new primitive term or it will have to remain unnamed. The reality of time and of space seems to have something so simple and peculiar about it that it can only be thought and not defined. Duration appears to be inseparable from existence. Whatever exists has a duration that is either absolute or of a certain span, and conversely, whatever has duration must necessarily, while it lasts, exist. Existing things that do not have absolute duration are temporally ordered, in so far as they begin, continue, change, cease, and so on. Since I cannot deny reality to changes, until somebody teaches me otherwise, I also cannot say that time (and this is true of space as well) is only a helpful device for human representations. And as for the colloquial phrases in use that involve the notion of time, it is always well to notice the ambiguities that the word "time" has in them. For example,

A long time is an interval of time or of two moments [intervallum temporis vel duorum momentorum j and means "a definite duration." At this or that time, and so on, is either a definite moment, as in astronomy, the time of setting, of rising [tempus immersionis, emersionis], and so on, or a smaller or larger interval preceding or following a moment, an indefinite duration or point in time, and so on.

You will gather easily enough how I conceive location [Ort] and space [Raum], Ignoring the ambiguities of the words, I propose the analogy,

Time: Duration = Location: Space

The analogy is quite precise, except that space has three dimensions, duration only one, and besides this each of these concepts has something peculiar to it. Space, like duration, has absolute but also finite determinations. Space, like duration, has a reality peculiar to it, which we cannot explain or define by means of words that are used for other things, at least not without danger of being misleading. It is something simple and must be thought. The whole intellectual world [Gedankenwelt] is non-spatial; it does, however, have a counterpart [Simulachrum ] of space, which is easily distinguishable from physical space. Perhaps this bears a still closer resemblance to it than merely a metaphoric one.

The theological difficulties that, especially since the time of Leibniz and Clarke,5 have made the theory of space a thorny problem have so far not confused me. I owe ail my success to my preference for leaving undetermined various topics that are impervious to clarification. Besides, I did not want to peer at the succeeding parts of metaphysics when working on ontology. I won't complain if people want to regard time and space as mere pictures and appearances. For, in addition to the fact that constant appearance is for us truth, though the foundations are never discovered or only at some future time; it is also useful in ontology to take up concepts borrowed from appearance, since the theory must finally be applied to phenomena again. For that is also how the astronomer begins, with the phenomenon; deriving his theory of the construction of the world from phenomena, he applies it again to phenomena and their predictions in his Ephemerides' [star calendars], In metaphysics, where the problem of appearance is so essential, the method of the astronomer will surely be the safest. The metaphysician can take everything to be appearance, separate the empty from the real appearance, and draw true conclusions from the latter. If he is successful, he shall have few contradictions arising from the principles and win much favor. It.only seems necessary to have time and patience.

I shall be brief here in regard to the fifth section. I would regard it as very important if you could find a way of showing more deeply the ground and origin of truths integrally involving space and time. As far as this section is concerned with method, however, I would say here what I said about time. For if changes, and therefore also time and duration, are something real, it seems to follow that the proposed division in section five must have other, and in part more narrow, intentions; and according to these, the classification might also be different. This occurred to me in Nos. 25-26. In regard to N o. 27, the ' whatever exists, exists in some place and at some time" [Ouicquid est, est alicubi et aliquando], is partly in error and partly ambiguous, if it is supposed to mean located at a time and in a place [in tempore et in loco]. Whatever has absolute duration is not in time [in tempore], and the intellectual world is only "located in" [in loco] the aforementioned counterpart [Simulachri] of space or in the "place" [loco] of intellectual space [Gedankenraums].

What you say in No. 28, and in the note on pages 2-3 concerning the mathematical infinite, that it has been ruined by the definitions in metaphysics and that something else has been substituted for it, has my full approval. In regard to the "being and not being at the same time" [Simul esse et non esse] mentioned in No. 28, I think that a counterpart of time [Simulachrum temporis] exists in the intellectual world as well, and the phrase "at the same time" [Simul] is therefore used in a different sense when it occurs in the proofs of absolute truths that are not tied to time and place. I should think that the counterpart of space and time [,Simulacrum spatii et temporis] in the intellectual world could also be considered in the theory you have in mind. It is an imitation of actual space and actual dme and can readily be distinguished from them. Our symbolic knowledge is a thing halfway between sensing and actual pure thinking. If we proceed correcdy in the delineation of the simples and in the manner of our synthesizing, we thereby get reliable rules for constructing signs of things that are so highly synthesized that we need not review them again and can nevertheless be sure that the sign represents the truth. No one has yet formed himself a clear representation of all the members of an infinite series, and no one is going to do so in the future. But we are able to do arithmetic with such series, to give their sum, and so on, by virtue of the laws of symbolic knowledge. We thus extend ourselves far beyond the borders of our actual [wirklichen] thinking. The sign V — 1 represents an unthinkable non-thing. And yet it can be used very well in finding theorems. What are usually regarded as specimens of the pure understanding can be viewed most of the time as specimens of symbolic knowledge. This is what I said in No. 122 of my Phaenomenology with reference to question No. no. 8 And I have nothing against your making the claim quite general, in No. 10.

But I shall stop here and let you make whatever use you wish of what I have said. Please examine carefully the sentences I have underlined and, if you have dme, let me know what you think of them. Never mind the postage. Till now I have not been able to deny all reality to time and space, or to consider them mere images and appearance. I think that every change would then have to be mere appearance too. And this would contradict one of my main principles (No. 54, Phaenomenology). If changes have reality, then I must grant it to time as well. Changes follow one another, begin, continue, cease, and so on, and all these expressions are temporal. If you can instruct me otherwise, I shall not expect to lose much. Time and space will be real appearances, and their foundation is an existent something that truly conforms to time and space just as precisely and constandy as the laws of geometry are precise and constant. The language of appearance will thus serve our purposes just as precisely as the unknown "true" language. I must say, though, that an appearance that absolutely never deceives us could well be something more than mere appearance....



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