Appendix 34. - (372)
[Kant's categories and his concept of truth]
In Transcendental Analytic, bk. 1, c. 1, section 3, Kant claims that the Scholastic maxim: quodlibet ens est unum, verum et bonum [every ens is one, true and good] is already comprised in his categories of unity, plurality and totality:
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These claimed transcendental predicates are, in fact, nothing but logical requisites and criteria of all cognition of objects, and they employ, as the basis for this cognition, the categories of quantity, namely, unity, plurality, and totality. But these must be taken as material conditions, that is, as belonging to the possibility of things themselves. They [the Scholastics] employed them merely in a formal signification, as belonging to the logical requisites of all cognition, and yet most unguardedly changed these criteria of thought into properties of objects, as things in themselves. |
In this passage, one can see, as Kant admits, that his categories are not pure forms but have matter associated with them.
He was prevented from making a correct division between the form and the matter of thought by his having taken the objects of thought (in general) as purely subjective things, and thus confused them with the modes of the thinking ens. Having accepted the objects of thought as emanations of thought itself and nothing more, he confused what pertained to the modes of thought with forms of thought. Leibniz was led astray in the same way when, having drawn from the depth of the spirit both knowledge of universals and that of real entities, he mingled and confused the realm of abstractions with that of reality (cf. 296-299). But Kant went further and made one thing of the objects of thought and the forms of thought. He not only wanted every item of knowledge to issue from our spirit, as Leibniz did, but also the world, at least to a great extent.
Moreover, he miserably claims that the concept of truth consists in plurality. This is so, he says, because 'the more true deductions we have from a given concept, the more criteria we have of its objective reality' (Transcendental Analytic, bk. 1, c. 1, section 3), as though the criteria of truth were the same as truth, or plurality could not also be found among false consequences. Plurality is a kind of cupboard without contents, whereas truth determines and fixes a quality of the contents. For example, in the midst of a number of false judgments, truth determines the one which is true. Similarly, the attempt to reduce what is good to totality is pathetic quibbling, as though the idea of a whole offered also the idea of the goodness of this whole. Even if this were the case, the two ideas of all and good would still be as distinct as two entia of reason. It would not be right to confuse them and make them one.