Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 56:223 (Jul 1899)
Article: Kant’s Theory Of The “Forms Of Thought”
Author: James B. Peterson

BSac 56:223 (July 1899) p. 440

Kant’s Theory Of The “Forms Of Thought”

James B. Peterson

Among the philosophers of modern Europe, Immanuel Kant has held a conspicuous place. It is now more than a century since his philosophy was given to the world, and the popularity which it speedily attained in the land of its birth has continued to the present day; and, though it has never been equally popular elsewhere, it has long been recognized as one of the leading systems of modern thought. Kant himself believed that he had wrought a revolution in philosophy comparable to that of Copernicus in astronomy; and his admirers have used even stronger expressions to indicate their estimate of the value of his work. Professor Max Müller, in the preface to his translation of the “Critique of Pure Reason,” gives some of these expressions, a few of which may be cited here. Goethe declared that “on reading Kant we feel like stepping into a lighted room”; Fichte believed that “Kant’s philosophy wall in time overshadow the whole human race”; and Schopenhauer pronounced the “Critique of Pure Reason” “the highest achievement of human reflection.”1 Still more enthusiastic is the estimate given by Professor Ludwig Noire at the close of the sketch of the history of philosophy which he contributed to the first edition of Professor Müller’s trans-

BSac 56:223 (July 1899) p. 441

lation: “It is therefore not too much to say that Kant is the greatest philosophical genius that has ever dwelt upon earth, and the ‘Critique of Pure Reason’ the highest achievement of human wisdom.”2

Whether these estimates of Kant’s work are correct or not is the question I now propose to consider. For this purpose, however, it will not be necessary to review his whole system nor even the whole of his principal work, the “Critique of Pure Reason”; for his philosophy, far more than that of any other thinker, depends on one fundamental doctrine, our acceptance or rejection of which will determine our attitude towards the whole system. I allude, of course, to his theory of the “forms of thought.”

First of all, however, we must be sure that we understand the doctrine itself; for Kant’s disciples have often accused his opponents of misunderstanding him, and no man has the right to criticise a doctrine that he misunderstands. It must be said, though, that Kant himself is largely to blame for such misunderstanding of his doctrines as may have occurred; for not only is his thought often confused and obscure, but his mode of expression aggravates the difficulty of understanding him. The “Critique of Pure Reason,” in truth, is written in the...