Franz Brentano_The True and the Evident.pdf

8
The True and the Evident
No further word, I daresay, need be spent on the first question, viz. the question where,
according to Kant, truth is to be found.
b) And now, what is this truth which Kant says is to be found solely in judgement?
Does he part from the ancients and no longer understand by it the correspondence of
judgement with its object? We heard
Windelband’s remarks on this topic: let us also hear what Kant has to say.
“What is truth?” he asks in the Introduction to the Transcendental Logic, Chap. III, p.
93, and he answers: “The nominal definition of truth, that it is the agreement of knowledge
with its object, is assumed as granted; the question asked is as to what is the general and
sure criterion of the truth of any and every knowledge.”
What indeed does Kant teach here? Perhaps that it is false to say, as was said at one
time, that truth is the correspondence of a judgement with its object? On the contrary, he
presupposes this as generally known, and certainly in the familiar sense. But let us hear
what follows immediately (p. 94): “If truth consists in the agreement of knowledge with
its object, that object must thereby be distinguished from other objects; for knowledge
is false if it does not agree with the object to which it is related, even though it contains
something which may be valid of other objects.” Windelband says that Kant had altered
the traditional definition, at least as far as its meaning is concerned, by understanding
something different by object, namely a rule of the mind. But doesn’t this passage indicate
that Kant is explicitly rejecting Windelband’s imputation?
On Windelband’s interpretation, what would be the meaning of the expression: “even
though it contains something which may be valid of other objects”? Of other rules? Of
rules perhaps that are valid for another mind? Who is tolerant enough to stand for such
tricks of interpretation?—But Kant has not yet finished. He continues by talking just about
rules, distinguishing them from objects (p. 94). “Now a general criterion of truth must be
such as would be valid in each and every instance of knowledge, however their objects may
vary. It is obvious, however, that such a criterion [being general] cannot take account of the
[varying] content of knowledge (relation to its [specific] object). But since truth concerns
just this very content, it is quite impossible, and indeed absurd, to ask for a general test of
the truth of such content. A sufficient and at the same time general criterion of truth cannot
possibly be given. Since we have already entitled the content of knowledge its matter,
we must be prepared to recognize that of the truth of knowledge, so far as its matter is
concerned, no general criterion can be demanded. Such a criterion would by its very nature
be self-contradictory”, and he continues in the same vein to the passage containing the
words, “however uninstructed we may be with regard to its content” (p. 96).
After this decisive evidence, no one, surely, would require additional confirmation. Nor
would we have time to cite it all. Let me therefore simply append one or two passages
indicating that Kant does not think of the object as being that which, in the manner of a
rule, guides and influences the function of thinking.
“All presentations have, as presentations, their object, and can themselves in turn become
objects of other presentations. Appearances are the sole objects which can be given to us
immediately, and that in them which relates immediately to the object is called intuition.
But these appearances are not things in themselves; they are only presentations, which in
turn have their object—an object which cannot itself be intuited by us, and which may,
therefore, be named the non-empirical, that is transcendental object=x.