86 – Interpretation: reading and taking notes
The next problem is the plethora of terms Kant uses. I cannot
be sure about the relationship between knowledge and experience
until I am clearer about the meanings of each. It seems from the first
paragraph that ‘faculty of knowledge’, ‘understanding’ and ‘pure
knowledge’ (in the subheading) are very similar in meaning, if not
synonyms. None of the commentators helps here, though Kemp Smith
uses the ‘pure reason’ of the book’s title. The meaning of ‘experience’
is much harder to pin down. Throughout the extract Kant uses a
variety of terms which seem to be equated with experience of one
kind or another: ‘objects affecting our senses’, ‘raw material of the
sensible impressions’, ‘knowledge of objects’, ‘empirical knowledge’,
‘impressions of the senses’. Ewing is helpful. His footnote quotes a
later page of Kemp Smith’s Commentary, which reduces ‘experience’
to just two interpretations: ‘the raw material (the impressions) of
sense’ and ‘product of sense and understanding’. It is difficult to see,
as Kemp Smith points out in his own footnote, how experience can
be both. But at least we can understand that experience is associated
with our sensation of the external world, whereas knowledge has a
component (‘pure knowledge’) that it ‘supplies from itself’ or that, as
Luchte says, resides ‘in the consciousness of the subject’. I think I can
now construe Kant’s meaning. My own note on the passage may go
thus:
Kant is attempting to clarify the relative contributions of our experience
of objects in the world and a pure ‘faculty of knowledge’,
uncontaminated (as it were) by experience, to our knowledge as a whole.
Kant’s assumption: we can’t have knowledge without first
having had experience to ‘occasion’ it or bring it to life.
Kant’s argument: but to say that e. precedes k. in time is not to
say that e. causes k. to arise (Ewing), because e. itself may be partly
supplied by the pure faculty of k. or ‘understanding’ within us. One part
of e. – ‘raw material’ in the outside world acting on our senses – is the
part that precedes knowledge. ‘Empirical experience’, by contrast, is the
‘product’ (Kemp Smith, quoted by Ewing) of our independent
understanding (pure k.) acting on the raw material of sense impressions,
and in this sense ‘arises from’ pure knowledge. The pure k. he calls
The next problem is the plethora of terms Kant uses. I cannot
be sure about the relationship between knowledge and experience
until I am clearer about the meanings of each. It seems from the first
paragraph that ‘faculty of knowledge’, ‘understanding’ and ‘pure
knowledge’ (in the subheading) are very similar in meaning, if not
synonyms. None of the commentators helps here, though Kemp Smith
uses the ‘pure reason’ of the book’s title. The meaning of ‘experience’
is much harder to pin down. Throughout the extract Kant uses a
variety of terms which seem to be equated with experience of one
kind or another: ‘objects affecting our senses’, ‘raw material of the
sensible impressions’, ‘knowledge of objects’, ‘empirical knowledge’,
‘impressions of the senses’. Ewing is helpful. His footnote quotes a
later page of Kemp Smith’s Commentary, which reduces ‘experience’
to just two interpretations: ‘the raw material (the impressions) of
sense’ and ‘product of sense and understanding’. It is difficult to see,
as Kemp Smith points out in his own footnote, how experience can
be both. But at least we can understand that experience is associated
with our sensation of the external world, whereas knowledge has a
component (‘pure knowledge’) that it ‘supplies from itself’ or that, as
Luchte says, resides ‘in the consciousness of the subject’. I think I can
now construe Kant’s meaning. My own note on the passage may go
thus:
Kant is attempting to clarify the relative contributions of our experience
of objects in the world and a pure ‘faculty of knowledge’,
uncontaminated (as it were) by experience, to our knowledge as a whole.
Kant’s assumption: we can’t have knowledge without first
having had experience to ‘occasion’ it or bring it to life.
Kant’s argument: but to say that e. precedes k. in time is not to
say that e. causes k. to arise (Ewing), because e. itself may be partly
supplied by the pure faculty of k. or ‘understanding’ within us. One part
of e. – ‘raw material’ in the outside world acting on our senses – is the
part that precedes knowledge. ‘Empirical experience’, by contrast, is the
‘product’ (Kemp Smith, quoted by Ewing) of our independent
understanding (pure k.) acting on the raw material of sense impressions,
and in this sense ‘arises from’ pure knowledge. The pure k. he calls