It iollows from this position that there can be no knowledge 

 of things outside possible experience, that is sense-experience. 

 The categories of the understanding are empty when there is no 

 content provided by sensibility, and so, knowledge of the super- 

 sensuous is a contradiction in terms. All knowledge implies the 

 sense-content with the pure forms of space and time and likewise 

 the categories of the understanding. In this way, Kant deprives 

 speculative reason of its pretensions to transcendent insights, 

 showing that a knowledge of the transcendent would be inherently 

 inconsistent. But the work of the Konigsberg philosopher does 

 not end here. He sees that an account of knowledge such as he 

 has given is not a completely adequate account of all man's ex- 

 perience. In his Dialectic, Kant, recalling the work of the great 

 Greek philosopher, says, " Plato knew very well that our faculty 

 of knowledge was filled with a much higher craving than merely 

 to spell out phenomena according to a synthetical unity, and 

 thus to read and understand them as experience. He knew that 

 our reason, if left to itself, tries to soar up to knowledge to which 

 no object that experience may give can ever correspond; but 

 which nevertheless is real, and by no means a mere cobweb of the 

 brain". 1 



This "higher craving" manifests itself especially in the prac- 

 tical or moral realm, and, because of the demands of the Practical 

 Reason, there are posited or affirmed certain Ideas of the Reason. 

 Here, Kant adopts the Platonic term and insists most strenuously 

 that these Ideas must not be confused with the concepts of the 

 understanding. To do that, leads to the endeavour to know that 

 which, on the Kantian basis, it is impossible to know. It is to 

 commit the mistake of rationalism, which, in its psychology, 

 cosmology and theology has been led into error and inconsistency 

 by just such an attempt. The Ideas of Reason are such that they 

 can never be denied by theoretical knowledge, and experience, 

 especially in its practical aspect, demands that such Ideas be 

 posited as completions of actual human knowledge and human 

 morals. 



Knowledge, from the standpoint of the critique of Pure Reason, 

 becomes entangled in inevitable antinomies if it attempts to trans- 

 cend the limits set by Sensibility. And so, as Kant said, he "had 



1 The Critique of Pure Reason, Max Muller's Edn. Pp. 255-6. 



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