Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

On the Concept of Truth 7
a confusion, and one which gave rise to even greater mistakes, and which, finally, led
to complete philosophical chaos. I do believe that I learned a great deal from Kant; I
learned, however, not what he wanted to teach me, but, above all, how seductive for the
philosophical public, and how deceptive, is the fame which the history of philosophy has
tied to names. Every man who has made history must have had a powerful personality; but
in any particular case the question will remain whether the influence of the personality was
beneficial or disastrous, and whether we do well to make him our ideal and our master.
20. But there are other things which make us suspect Windelband’s historical accuracy.
How so? Did not Kant teach that there were things in themselves which remain theoretically
unknowable for us? Did he not believe that God belonged to these things in themselves—
and that this belief was grounded in a practical motive and was undemonstrable only from
a theoretical point of view? Did he not believe that he had established a limitation of our
knowledge when he said that, since our intuitions are purely sensuous and not intellectual
(as they might be for for some other being) we could have knowledge of appearance only?
Need I say again that the opposite of what Windelband reports has been maintained most
emphatically by everyone who knows Kant, as well as by Kant himself?
21. Must we not doubt the views of an author (apparently compelled to make innovations
and piquant assertions) who reports Kant’s main doctrines in so inventive a manner? And
when he comes to Kant’s conception of truth, should we not suspect him of entertaining us
with a fairy-tale? We may ask whether he is not presenting his own brilliant doctrine in the
name of Kant. And were we to accept this doctrine, we should not count even Kant among
the Kantians, and we should have to classify philosophers, not as Socratics and Kantians,
but as Socratics and Windelbandians.
22. The Critique of Pure Reason is before us; since Windelband himself says that he has
considered this work exclusively, we shall appeal to it for a decision.
And now listen, and be amazed at the way a German historian of philosophy is capable
of offering a German philosopher to the public—that philosopher, moreover, whom he
declares to be the greatest, and who, in any case, is nowadays most celebrated.
a) Where, according to Kant, is truth in its primary sense to be found? Windelband says:
In all regions of mental activity; not only in thinking, but also in volition, and the like.
But what does Kant himself say? In the Second Division of the Transcendental Logic,
which he calls “Transcendental Dialectic”, we read on the very first page: “Truth or illusion
is not in the object, in so far as it is intuited, but in the judgement about it, in so far as
it is thought. It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err—not because they
always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all. Truth and error, therefore, and
consequently also illusion as leading to error, are only to be found in the judgement, i.e.,
only in the relation of the object to our understanding. In any knowledge which completely
accords with the laws of understanding there is no error.”*
* Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, New York 1933, p. 297.