Kant showed that the laws which rule in experience are not to be applied to derive existence itself, their validity being only relative
Kant showed that the laws which rule in existence, that is, in experience in general, with inviolable necessity are not to be applied in order to derive and explain existence itself, so that their validity is after all only a relative one, beginning only after the world of experience is already posited and present, and consequently these laws cannot be our guiding thread when we go about explaining the existence of the world and of ourselves.
Er zeigte, daß die Gesetze, welche im Daseyn, d.h. in der Erfahrung überhaupt, mit unverbrüchlicher Nothwendigkeit herrschen, nicht anzuwenden sind, um das Daseyn selbst abzuleiten und zu erklären, daß also die Gültigkeit derselben doch nur eine relative ist, d.h. erst anhebt, nachdem das Daseyn, die Erfahrungswelt überhaupt, schon gesetzt und vorhanden ist; daß folglich diese Gesetze nicht unser Leitfaden seyn können, wann wir an die Erklärung des Daseyns der Welt und unserer selbst gehn.
He showed that the laws which rule in existence, that is, in experience in general, with inviolable necessity, are not to be applied in order to derive and explain existence itself, that hence the validity of these is after all only a relative one, that is, begins only after existence, the world of experience in general, is already posited and present; that consequently these laws cannot be our guiding thread when we go about the explanation of the existence of the world and of ourselves.
The first of the four stored sentences at ZA II 516; »Er« is Kant, named in the sentences before, and the statement says so. The sentence reports what Kant showed, and »zeigte« asserts what is shown: Schopenhauer puts the result forward as true, not as Kant's opinion. The laws are identified in the next sentence as those »nach welchen die Erscheinungen an einander geknüpft sind«, time, space, causality and inference, the principle of sufficient reason; the statement keeps the first sentence's own words for them. The link shares_premise_with is set to c-kant-understanding-principles-only-for-experience, Kant's A 236 / B 295, where all that the understanding draws from itself serves »zu keinem andern Behuf, als lediglich zum Erfahrungsgebrauch« and its principles are »nur das reine Schema zur möglichen Erfahrung«; the comparison x-thing-in-itself names the pair under the premise that the laws governing experience are not to be applied beyond it, and says what the link rests on: Kant's subject is what the understanding draws from itself, Schopenhauer's the laws that rule in experience, time, space, causality and inference, and the identification of the two is a step the map takes, supported by the Kant claim's second passage, Prolegomena § 57, where Kant says of »Zeit, Raum und alle Verstandesbegriffe« that they have »keinen andern Gebrauch ..., als blos Erfahrung möglich zu machen« (4:350.27–33), and by the paragraph's last sentence, where Kant showed those laws conditioned by the subject's mode of cognition (c-schopenhauer-kant-showed-laws-and-world-conditioned-by-subjects-mode-of-cognition). A reader who holds the two subjects distinct may dispute the link. The statement differs from § 19's (c-schopenhauer-causality-never-leads-beyond-representation), which is Schopenhauer's own doctrine of the law of causality; this one is his report of Kant.
Shares premise with
- c-kant-understanding-principles-only-for-experienceEverything the understanding draws from itself serves only for use in experience