Classics in the History of Psychology

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DICTIONARY OF
PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

JAMES MARK BALDWIN (1901)

Definitions Ka - Kz

Posted June 2001


Kames, Lord: see HOME, HENRY.


Kant, Immanuel. (1724-1804.) Born, lived, and died at Königsberg. Studied theology, philosophy, and mathematics in the University at Königsberg. Engaged as private tutor, 1746-55. Became doctor of philosophy and Docent in the University in 1755, and professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. In 1797 his age compelled him to retire. See the following topics; also IDEALISM, EPISTEMOLOGY, and PHILOSOPHY.


Kantian Philosophy: see KANT'S TERMINOLOGY.


Kantian Terminology: see KANT'S TERMINOLOGY.


Kantianism (or Kantism): Ger. Kantianismus; Fr. Kantianisme; Ital. Kantismo, Kantianismo. The philosophy which holds to the distinctive doctrines of Immanuel Kant. See KANT'S TERMINOLOGY, and the principal philosophical topics generally.

The features of Kant's philosophy, which have given name to later thought as Kantian, are mainly (1) the critical method, which consists in a 'criticism' of reason (Vernunftsvermögen) with a view to discovering the a priori elements in knowledge; (2) the doctrine of a priori mental forms, which, as a theory of knowledge, is characterized as formalism; (3) the resulting antithesis between the 'phenomenal,' or that world of things or appearances to which these forms are applied, and the 'noumenal,' or that world of things in themselves, the transcendental thought-postulates, to which the forms do not apply, and which (4) are consequently unknowable; this is the agnostic element in Kantianism, especially as developed with reference to the ideas of reason -- 'God, Freedom, and Immortality of the Soul' -- and in the theory of the antinomies or contradictions which reason falls into in applying the category of infinity; (5) the recognition of the validity of the ideas of reason as postulates of the moral life (practical reason). These features at least should be included in Kantianism, though any one of them would justify the use of the adjective Kantian.

Literature: see CRITICISM, and BIBLIOG. A, 'Kant'; in English, especially the works by STIRLING, CAIRD, and WATSON; for German citations see EISLER, Wörterb. d. philos. Begriffe, in locis; a study of Kant's Psychology has been made by BUCHNER, Monog. Suppl. (No. 4) to the Psychol. Rev.; a Kant Bibliography is by ADICKES, Monog. Suppl., i, to the Philos. Rev. (J.M.B.)


Kantism: see KANTIANISM.


Kant's Terminology (in relation to the Kantian Philosophy).

(1) At the outset of the history of philosophical terminology, amongst the Greeks, the problem of the thinker was to adapt his native language to the novel business of expressing philosophical ideas. The word and the conception then often came into existence together. The power of mere tradition was at its minimum. Creation was relatively free. At the outset, however, of the efforts of modern philosophers to discuss their problems in the vernacular tongues, the situation was wholly different. An elaborate, and in fact often extremely difficult terminology, the result of several successive great movements of human thought -- the terminology of Scholasticism -- stood in the way of novelty in expression. The modern thinker sometimes, like Locke, endeavoured to escape altogether from this tradition, and was then driven, by this very effort, into a certain disorganization of technical language, which, upon occasion, gave to his terms a capricious seeming, without freeing them altogether from the influence of the past. Locke's struggles with the term Substance furnish an instance of the resulting inconveniences. Or again, like Meister Eckhart, or in another way and time, like Wolff, one might make a systematic effort to find translations for a great number of terms of scholastic origin. The result varied according to the genius of the thinker. But in any such case this latter procedure was at least guided by a definite principle. New terms arose, to be sure, side by side with the old. But the process attempted to win a certain unity and continuity.

(2) In the case of Kant, however, the situation is still far more complex and problematic than that present at the outset of modern philosophy. Comparable though he is, in originality of conception, with the great thinkers of antiquity, Kant cannot, like a Plato or an Aristotle, freely invent terms, in his own vernacular, to meet his new needs. He must appeal to tradition; and in so far he is like his modern predecessors. On the other hand, he is not content to translate scholastic, nor yet simply to accept Wolffian, terminology. Nor yet is he, like Locke, in a conscious revolt against the traditions of language which all the while bind him. He wishes to reform without unnecessary transformation. He intends to select and to adapt for his own purpose. But since he cannot select and adapt with the freedom of an ancient Greek, and since the originality of his ideas equally forbids him to remain content with what he finds, in the way of means of expression, he is led to efforts at reform which follow no one principle, and which seldom seem wholly to satisfy even himself. His training and his method often appear to us to savour of pedantry. Yet as a fact, he loves his meanings so much better than his words, that he is impatient with merely terminological researches; and he has an imperfect acquaintance with the history either of thought or of usage. Moreover, while the terms used by his contemporaries and immediate predecessors are known to him in great masses, his thoughts are still far richer than his vocabulary, and at the critical stages of his mental evolution they develop much faster than his most elaborate displays of terminological skill can follow them. In consequence, there are extended passages in Kant's works, e.g. in the 'Deduction of the Categories' in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, where the terminology alters in the course of the same discussion. Such changes are doubtless often due to Kant's habit of making up his longer works out of fragments, which were written down at various times, and afterwards collected and ordered. But the result, as we find it in Kant's printed text, is often baffling enough. His usage in such cases seems to be in a sort of Heraclitean flux, so that we do not twice step into the same river of expression while we wander in search of the thought.

(3) A thorough history of Kant's terminology is still to be written. Much of importance is already to be found in the authoritative, but too diffuse, Commentar zu Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, by Professor Hans Vaihinger, of which two volumes have so far appeared (i, Stuttgart, 1881; ii, 1892). But the most important portions of the Kritik and of its terminology still await their treatment in Vaihinger's work. Paulsen, in his admirable volume, Immanuel Kant, sein Leben und seine Lehre (Frommann's Klassiker der Philosophie, Stuttgart, 1898), has discussed (especially 144-55) a number of Kant's most characteristic and important concepts and expressions. Adickes, in his edition of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Berlin, 1889), has introduced into his crisply written notes a large number of explanations of Kantian expressions. The general historical relations of the Kantian terminology are treated by Eucken, Geschichte der philosophischen Terminologie (139-50). The psychological vocabulary of Kant, with especial reference to its relations to the Ethics, is extensively and carefully expounded by Alfred Hegler, Die Psychologie in Kant's Ethik (Freiburg, 1891). The fullest of all collections of Kant's terms and expressions is Mellin's Encyclopädisches Wörterbuch der kritischen Philosophie, oder Versuch einer fasslichen und vollständigen Erklärung der in Kant's kritischen und dogmatischen Schriften enthaltenen Begriffe und Sätze (Züllichau and Leipzig, 1797). Mellin, who also published other contributions to the terminological comprehension of Kant, here undertakes what is to be at once an encyclopedia of Kant's doctrine, and an exposition of the sense of his expressions and ideas. The result, however, is rather a thesaurus of Kantian statements than any thorough explanation of their forms and meanings. Mellin is a harmonizer, who smooths over difficulties as skilfully as Vaihinger, in his commentary, emphasizes or even magnifies them. Mellin's book is published in six volumes (having eleven parts). Krug's Philosophisches Lexikon contains also the Kantian vocabulary, but without the modern effort at a philological treatment of the Kantian usage. The recent Wörterbuch der philosophischen Begriffe und Ausdrücke, by Eisler (Berlin, 1899), so far as it has yet appeared, contains much valuable material for comparing Kant's usage with that of his predecessors. The monographic literature upon Kant furnishes an immense number of discussions of Kant's terms, -- discussions which are, however, generally found only in subordination to some more general expository or critical interest. No attempt can here be made at any bibliographical analysis of this literature with reference to its bearings upon Kantian terminology. The original materials upon which Kant's own selection of his terms is based are to be found in the Latin and German works of Wolff; in the textbooks of Baumgarten, whose Metaphysica (which reached its seventh edition in 1779) was long Kant's favourite textbook in that subject; and finally in the general literature, philosophical and psychological, of Kant's day. In following the evolution of Kant's thought, upon the basis of these contemporary influences, one has constantly to deal, of course, with terminological questions, which accordingly find their place in the important monographic treatises of Benno Erdmann (Kant's Kriticismus in der ersten und in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Leipzig, 1878), and of Adickes (Kant-Studien, Kiel and Leipzig, 1895) -- treatises which we may select from this whole literature for especial mention in this connection. The student of Kant's language should pay due attention to Jäsche's edition of Kant's Logik (published in the eighth volume of the chronological edition of Kant's works, by Hartenstein, 1868, 1-141); and, in regard to Kant's psychological terminology, should also consult his Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht, published in 1798. Kant's own formal definitions of his terms are seldom to be accepted as final; nor are his reports of the historical or of the current usage of a term, such for instance as a priori, to be regarded as authoritative. Kant was once for all no historian of thought or of usage; and his resolutions as to the use of his own terms are merely expressions of a present and serious effort, which may or may not prove permanently efficacious, to use a particular device for clarifying and organizing his ideas. In general, he is a great lover of analysis; so that while, like Aristotle and the Scholastics, he makes systematic use of the method of distinctions for the sake of explaining or removing the contradictions of thought and opinion, he is much more radical than any of his predecessors in the distinctions that he draws, and his world largely consists of definable barriers and chasms. Kant loves, meanwhile, synthesis, but is never as successful in this direction as in the other (see the excellent observations of Eucken, op. cit., 143-5). One synthetic aspect of his systematic undertakings he especially emphasizes, namely, the ideal of an exhaustive enumeration of all the provinces of reality, and of all the problems of thought, which come within his scope. Many of the devices of his terminology have to do with the pursuit of this ideal. Thus the table of categories is the outcome of an effort, whose development occupied several years, to obtain a complete table of the fundamental conceptions of the understanding. Associated with this table is a list, equally intended to be complete, which enumerates the a priori principles of the understanding; and so on. In order to obtain such formal completeness, Kant sometimes is led to arbitrary inventions, whereby a scheme is filled out, in a way whose importance is clear only to himself. The methods of Kant's work while he was engaged in the construction of his doctrine and of its various expressions can best be studied in the Reflexionen, edited by Professor Benno Erdmann, and in the Lose Blätter aus Kant's Nachlass, edited by Rudolf Reicke. The Reflexionen are notes made by Kant in connection with his lectures upon Baumgarten's Metaphysik. The Lose Blätter contains a great variety of fragmentary notes made upon various occasions. The terminology used in these notes is by no means always in agreement with that known through Kant's published works.

(4) Kant never lived to write the sort of encyclopedic statement of a system of philosophy which he himself desired to produce. His most important works, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, and the Kritik der Urtheilskraft, constitute, in his own opinion, merely introductory discussions, indispensable, but needing in their turn to be followed by a reconstruction of doctrine made in the light of these critical researches. In general, Kant conceives philosophy as the sum total of what he terms reine Vernunfterkenntniss aus Begriffen -- an expression most easily translated as 'conceptual knowledge gained through pure reason alone.' The two antitheses which define philosophy are (1) the contrast with mathematics, and (2) the contrast with empirical science. Mathematics makes use of ideas of pure reason, but does so only by the intermediation of the process of construction, whereby Kant means any process such as gets expressed in a diagram or figure, when the diagram or figure is intended as the visible embodiment of a rational conception. Philosophy is not thus dependent upon a voluntary construction of its objects in sensuous form. It conceives them in their purity, and reflects upon their meanings and their connections. In contrast to empirical science, philosophy uses no empirical data, as such, amongst its presuppositions. This latter contrast in Kant's definition of philosophy was, in its origin, Wolffian, and the whole tendency of Kant's own thought is to deprive it of much of its positive meaning; since, as Kant in the end discovers, there is no theoretical knowledge aus reiner Vernunft except the knowledge of the necessary structure which must belong to the whole realm of experience. In consequence, a better name for Kant's theoretical philosophy would be the Theory of Experience; and this name, whose accuracy is implied by many of Kant's expressions, has been actually adopted by some modern Kantians (e.g. Cohen). Philosophy in general is divided into the great divisions, Theoretical and Practical. Another, and coordinate, division of philosophy is that into its critical or preparatory portion, called Transcendentalphilosophie, and its systematic portion, called Metaphysik. The Transcendentalphilosophie has to deal with the sources and scope of our rational knowledge. Metaphysik has to set forth the sum total of our purely rational, i.e. non-empirical knowledge, concerning both the objects of theory (God, Nature, the Soul) and the objects of rational choice as such, or of freedom (Duty, the Moral Law, the Absolute Good). It is the Transcendentalphilosphie which Kant has most fully developed. On Kant's division of philosophy, one may consult his own essay Ueber Philosophie überhaupt (1794) in Hartenstein's edition (1868), vi. 373; also, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Methodenlehre, 3tes Hauptstück. On the contrast between mathematics and philosophy, see the Methodenlehre, 1tes Hauptstück, 2nd ed. of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, 751. [As is now customary in citations from Kant, the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, is here to be cited after the pages of the second edition; while in case of difference between the editions, the paging of the first edition is to be cited for passages that occur only in that edition. Other Kantian works are to be cited after the Hartenstein edition of 1868.] One may compare, upon the same topic, Mellin's articles Encyclopädie, Metaphysik, Transcendentalphilosophie; and Paulsen, op. cit., 108 ff. Kant is by no means quite uniform in his account of these main divisions of philosophy.

(5) All further classifications of Kant's doctrines and conceptions are greatly influenced by his psychological conceptions. 'We can,' he says (Werke, vi. 379), 'reduce all the powers of the human mind to three: -- Intellect (Erkenntnissvermögen); Feeling (das Gefühl der Lust und Unlust, a power always to be defined in terms of this contrast of pleasure and pain); and Will (das Begehrungsvermögen, or the power whereby mental states come to be viewed as the causes of the existence of objects).' The Erkenntnissvermögen itself is first divided into a passive aspect, the Sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), the lower portion of the Erkenntnissvermögen; and an active aspect, the intellectuelles Erkenntnissvermögen, whose general activity is called Denken (Anthropologie, Werke, vii. 451). For this latter, the higher portion of the Erkenntnissvermögen, or the intellect proper, the words Verstand and Vernunft are upon occasion used almost interchangeably, both of them in a broader or more inclusive sense (e.g. Verstand in the Anthropologie, loc. cit.; Vernunft in the title of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft, where it also even includes the a priori aspect of the Sinnlichkeit). In more exact usage, however, the Verstand is only one of three special divisions of the oberes Erkenntnissvermögen. The three are Verstand, Urtheilskraft, and Vernunft. The Verstand, in this more special sense, is the power that forms concepts (Begriffe), or that knows, or furnishes, or applies the rules of the formal constitution of conceptual objects. The Verstand also is the power to apprehend the unity which gets expressed in our judgments. And in this sense the Verstand can even be called (Krit. d. reinen Vernunft, 2nd ed., 94) the Vermögen zu urtheilen. But as distinct from the Verstand, the Urtheilskraft proper is the power to find what cases fall under given concepts, or the power to 'subsume under rules.' And the Vernunft, in contrast with both of these powers, is the power to systematize into unity, and by means of inclusive principles, the less inclusive rules of the Verstand (Krit. d. reinenVernunft, 2nd ed., 359). Thus the Vernunft is the power which conceives God, the Universe, and the Moral Law. Yet while Kant makes these distinctions, or related ones, repeatedly, he remains in his usage consistent with no one of them (cf. Vaihinger, Commentar, i. 123, 166, 454 note, and in many other passages). Permanent only is the tendency to define the Verstand as the power of thought in so far as it is expressed in single acts of judgment or of conception, and the Vernunft as the systematizing tendency of thought in its search for all embracing unities; while the Urtheilskraft, standing between the two former powers, does excellent service to Kant in completing the schematism of his accounts of intellectual processes, by taking charge of whatever the two other powers may seem to have neglected. That the three powers of the higher Erkenntnissvermögen have a peculiarly apt one-to-one relation, in their turn, to the three general powers of the mind (in that our objective knowledge of reality is properly to be limited to the field of the empirically applied Verstand, while the principles for the free self-determination of the Will belong to the Vernunft, and the Urtheilskraft is of especial service in expressing the definable aspect of the values present to the Gefühl), -- all this is a characteristic thesis which Kant expounds in the essay on Philosophie überhaupt, and which enables him to explain the title of his Kritik der Urtheilskraft -- the treatise wherein Kant's doctrine of the Beautiful, and his Teleology, are both contained (see the cited essay, Werke, vi. 402 f.).

(6) In general, this psychological terminology of Kant, while of the most constant use as a means of determining the divisions of his work, and the trend of his various researches, is of a bewildering complexity and changeableness. The bewildering effect is, however, due not so much to the mere changes themselves, as to the fact that Kant repeatedly makes much of the importance and exactness of distinctions amongst the various mental powers and processes, while he himself is the first soon to alter or to ignore these very distinctions. Of considerable and very baffling importance, in Kant's psychological vocabulary, is the term Gemüth, used on the whole very much as recent English writers employ the term Mind. In general, this word is evidently felt by Kant to be relatively presuppositionless, and he so expresses himself, vi. 458. Thus the term seems not to imply any decision as to the problems of rational psychology, or as to the various aspects of the ego; so that, as Hegler well points out (Psychol. in Kant's Ethik, 52), this term takes the place of the more metaphysically coloured term Seele, where Kant has to speak of the empirical processes wherein the various mental powers co-operate, and so get their concrete expression. Yet, as the Gemüth can 'affect itself' and thereby produce the phenomena of the innerer Sinn, and has a life that evidently goes beyond what is directly revealed by consciousness (Eisler, s. v., seems incorrectly to identify Bewusstsein and Gemüth in Kant's usage), the precise implications of the term become puzzling whenever we have to deal with the problem as to the sense in which the a priori principles are original, or are innate (in so far as they are in any sense innate) in the Gemüth. The manifold uses of the term Gemüth have been well collected by Hegler (loc. cit.).

(7) There remain two psychological terms of Kant which cannot be passed over without some mention even in the most general sketch. These terms are inner Sinn and Einbildungskraft. The innerer Sinn is a term in very general use in the psychology of the 18th century. In origin it dates back to the Aristotelian-Scholastic doctrine of the sensus communis; but its 18th-century form was largely due to Locke's well-known passage upon 'the notice that the mind takes of its own operations.' As the term had to compete, in its pre-Kantian history, with the Leibnitzian term Apperception (also used by Kant), and with still other terms for the general nature of consciousness, its place remained indefinite. In Kant's usage it is rendered perplexing because of its relations, as a passive power, to the intimately associated active processes of consciousness with which it is bound up. In a very few passages (of which two are given by Hegler, op. cit., 54), the inner sense even appears as itself active -- even as thinking and judging. In this sense it would assume the functions of the Verstand. In general, however, it is a capacity, within the mind or the ego, to receive, passively, the influence of the active understanding or Einbildungskraft, and so to get presented the more or less organized facts of the inner life. Like the outer sense, it presents to us phenomenal and not ultimate reality, and does not show us the ego in itself, but only the self as empirical. Its form is time, just as space is the form of the outer sense. But the parallel between inner and outer sense proves to be hopelessly incomplete, and the term is an unhappy and superfluous one despite its frequent use. The Einbildungskraft plays a more important part. It occupies, in Kant's doctrine, the place of an essentially mediating principle. In all the history of philosophy (and also of theology) the principles that may be called in general the mediators have played an important part. The Logos in Stoic and Alexandrine philosophy; the Pneuma in later ancient psychology and theology; the Nous and the Soul in the doctrine of Plotinus; the attributes of the substance in Spinoza, and the infinite modes in the same system; the so-called Platonic ideas as interpreted by Schopenhauer for the purposes of his own system: -- all these are examples of such mediating concepts. In terminology the names of these mediators are always confessedly more or less ambiguous. The ambiguity goes along with the synthetic tendency which gives rise to these conceptions, and this ambiguity constitutes at once the convenience and the defect of such terms. In depth of implication they are superior to the more sharply defined and abstract terms that name the opposed and extreme principles which the mediators are to bring into unity. But this depth is purchased by vagueness. The mediators suggest the actual life of things better than do the comparatively dead extremes; but they have the disadvantages of their very concreteness. The Einbildungskraft is such a mediator. It has many functions, reproductive and productive. The former are the more familiar; the latter are the more important, since it is through them that the data of sense are brought into synthesis, and the Verstandesbegriffe or forms of the understanding -- the categories -- get applied to experience. The Einbildungskraft, as productive, is at once sensuous and intelligent. It is the minister of the Verstand, and is in fact the Verstand in action, so that in places it seems to make the very concept of the Verstand itself superfluous. Its functions are more or less antecedent to, and apart from, our actual consciousness. We are aware, from moment to moment, rather of the results than of the original synthetic processes of the Einbildungskraft. In our practical life the same power has also its important place. The stress laid upon the Einbildungskraft in its distinction from the rest of the higher Erkenntnissvermögen thus threatens to destroy the finality of the usual threefold division of the latter; but Kant is preserved from admitting this consequence because of the intimate relations which the Einbildungskraft all the while establishes with its neighbours. See upon this term Anthropologie, vii. 495-7; Krit. d. reinen Vernunft (1st ed.), 103 ff., especially 119, where the Einbildungskraft is brought into relation to Verstand and Apperception (2nd ed.), 151 ff. One may also consult Hegler (op. cit., 143 ff.); Adickes in the notes to the deductions of the two editions of the Kritik; and E.F. Buchner, A Study of Kant's Psychology (Monog. Suppl., No. 4, to the Psychol. Rev.), 114-17. See also Paulsen, op. cit., 175.

(8) Between Kant's psychological and his epistemological terminology stand the important terms Apperception and Einheit der Apperception, the general names for the active unity of consciousness, a principle whose tendency is expressed by the fact that, in view of the presence of this apperception, or in view of the unity of apperception, every conscious state is capable of being viewed as mine, or as, in its form, the product of my activity. In its most explicit form, Apperception is identical with self-consciousness, since when I know my states definitely, I know them as my own. But one can speak of apperception when the Ich denke is viewed merely as the possible accompaniment of every conscious state. The idea of the self, the consciousness that it is I who think this, may be either clear or obscure at any moment; but, says Kant (1st ed., 117 note): 'The possibility of the logical form of all knowledge necessarily depends upon its relation to this apperception as a capacity' (Vermögen). So too, in the 2nd ed., 131-2, he uses the often quoted expression: 'Das Ich denke muss alle meine Vorstellungen begleiten können.' This Ich denke, however, must be an act of spontaneity, opposed in nature to the passivity of sense. Through the work of the Einbildungskraft, which applies the forms of the Verstand to the data of sense, I come to be thus able to say, Ich denke. The one original act of referring all to the self is at the basis of the entire process, and the result expresses the meaning of this act, which is at first a latent or subconscious act, in conscious form. The term Apperception comes to Kant from Leibnitz. Descartes had earlier employed the corresponding verb.

(9) The special terminology of the theory of knowledge in the Krit. d. reinen Vernunft is so complex, and the interdependence of the various terms is so intimate, that no complete account of this terminology could be given without a lengthy exposition of the whole system. One must confine the following statement to a very few important points; and in general, the remainder of this article must be devoted merely to specimens of Kant's terminology.

(10) Kant's theory of knowledge, as is well known, maintains that the internal process of applying the forms of the understanding to the facts of sense introduces into our whole conceptual world that conformity to law which the earlier rationalistic theories of knowledge had supposed to be the revelation of an absolute external truth, but which Kant views as no revelation of anything absolute. While our experience has to conform to law, and is known in advance to be thus subject to necessary principles, the lawful connectedness of our experience is due to the unity of apperception, to the synthetic work of the Einbildungskraft, to the activity of the Verstand, to the spontaneity of our thought (Denken) in general, and not to our knowledge of any absolute or external truth. All these expressions dwell, as we have now seen, upon various aspects of what is, for Kant, the same great fact. It is the intellect that weaves the unity of its own world. Meanwhile, the intellect, or the Einbildungskraft in particular, is indeed produktiv but not creative (schöpferisch). It needs, namely, material for its weaving, and without such given material it can do nothing. This material is furnished to it by the Sinnlichkeit. The latter, although passive, has its FORMS. These are usually called the forms of the Anschauung, i.e. of perception. They are space and time; and these forms (especially the latter form, time) predetermine what schemes, or general types of objects (Schemata), the Einbildungskraft can weave, when it applies the forms of the Verstand to the facts of sense. Thus there are two types of forms, or of characteristic conditions of knowledge, which are determined for us by the original nature of our sort of intelligence: viz. the forms of the Verstand and the forms of the Sinnlichkeit or of the Anschauung. The forms of the Anschauung Kant considers in the first division of the critical analysis of our knowledge in the Kritik. This division is called the Aesthetik, as being the doctrine of sense. The forms of the Verstand are studied in the Analytik, whose name Kant derives from the known terminology of the Aristotelian Logic.

(11) The most general terms which express the central thoughts of the resulting theory of knowledge can be brought together by means of a series of theses. As Kant teaches: -- (a) We can know only phenomena (Erscheinungen), not things in themselves (Dinge an sich), or Noumena. (b) But we can know, a priori or aus reiner Vernunft, that the Erscheinungen are subject to universal and necessary laws (Regeln), so that a priori Grundsätze, upon which all empirical science depends, are possible, and can be exhaustively stated, on the basis of a complete enumeration of all the categories or the understanding or of the fundamental concepts or Begriffe. (c) In view of this limitation and accompanying necessity to be found in the world of our knowledge, the field of human insight can be defined as Erfahrung. Erfahrung constitutes, in a sense, one whole; for although empirical facts are countless, and although the brute data of sense are not controlled by the understanding, the order of the realm of experience is due to the categories, and the Einheit der möglichen Erfahrung, or unity of possible experience, is assured in advance, by virtue of the relation of all special facts of experience to the Ich denke or to the original unity of Apperception. (d) The knowledge of this whole theory is, for Kant, a transcendental knowledge. Applied to the interpretation of the problems of philosophy, it frees us from the Antinomien with which human thought has thus far been beset. It rids us from bondage to the necessary illusions, the Dialectic of the Vernunft; and so at once sets the due limits to our knowledge, and assures us of the sovereignty of rationality within the sphere that is open to our science. Hereby the possibility (Möglichkeit) of experience, of science, and of synthetic judgments a priori, is established.

(12) All the terms thus named are of central importance for Kant; and many of them are difficult. We may begin here with one of the most famous and puzzling of the list -- the adjective transcendental. The word had in scholastic terminology its established usage, which is very different from the Kantian usage. It was an adjective applied to those predicates which the scholastic doctrine regarded as transcending in generality even the Aristotelian categories themselves. These transcendentals were unity, truth, and goodness, together with thing and something. But the term transcendentals referred solely to the high degree of generality of these predicates, and had no relation to the possibility of our knowing them, or to the conditions of our knowledge of them. In Baumgarten's Metaphysica (§§ 72-123), while these same predicates, unum, verum, bonum, are treated upon the basis of the scholastic tradition, stress is laid upon the fact that, in every being, these predicates are in some sense present of necessity; and unum transcendentaliter is translated, in Baumgarten's note (§ 73), by the German phrase wesentlich eins, while veritas transcendentalis (§ 89) is translated in the note by nothwendige metaphysische Wahrheit. The twofold character of the epithet transcendental, as thus known to Kant in former usage, appeared to him to warrant an analogous, but novel usage. For transcendental had thus been (a) no direct predicate of any object, but a predicate technically applied to certain predicates, viz., as we have seen, to the predicates unum, verum, bonum. (b) It had also (in Baumgarten's usage) come to imply a certain necessity and universality about these predicates themselves. Having once proposed to himself the problem of a theory of necessary knowledge, or of knowledge valid in advance of all experience, Kant needed a predicate to characterize the type of knowledge which should constitute this new theory. He chose transcendental, and declared (Krit. d. reinen Vernunft, 2nd ed., 25) that by tarnscendentale Erkenntniss he intended (a) to mean not any kind of knowledge of objects, but a knowledge concerned with a particular type of knowledge (Erkenntnissart), viz. of that type of knowledge which (b) his new theory of the necessary principles of the understanding was to embody. This new usage thus imitated, for the purposes of Kant's theory, both of the aspects of Baumgarten's former usage.

(13) But the meaning of transcendental as theoretical knowledge about the necessary principles of all knowledge about objects never remains steadfast in Kant's usage, just because he had so long lectured upon Baumgarten's text, and because the old usage entered into all sorts of curious psychological complications, in his own mind, with the ideas associated with his new enterprise. The term is otherwise explained in the Krit. d. reinen Vernunft, 352-3. It is otherwise used in a fashion which Adickes calls weitherzig (see his note to p. 25 of the 2nd ed. of the Krit. d. reinen Vernunft, and which Vaihinger declares to constitute the 'most difficult terminological problem' in Kant, and even in 'all modern philosophy' (Commentar, i. 467). The term is often confused with transcendent, and then means going beyond, or transcending, the limits of human knowledge. Of the other meanings, no complete account has yet been published by any student. They must be made out from the context, each time afresh.

(14) Our necessary knowledge about the world of experience is founded upon a priori principles. The term here used has its origin in the well-known Aristotelian distinction between what is prior in nature and what is prior for us. In modern thought, ever since the scholastic period, the Aristotelian distinction had been familiar; and the special expressions a priori and a posteriori, used as adjective phrases qualifying especially the noun demonstration, had been employed since the later scholasticism. To know or demonstrate a priori is, in this sense, to know through causes or principles, as opposed to a knowledge gained wholly through the particular facts of experience. Kant gives the term a new and more special meaning. Knowledge a priori is for him knowledge in advance of all experience, and hence is a knowledge of the content of any of the necessary concepts or principles of thought. These necessary principles are themselves a priori, because they are independent of experience.

(15) But by virtue of this knowledge, which we get through the a priori principles, we become acquainted with phenomena, and not with Noumena, with Erscheinungen, and not with Dinge an sich. The terms here used have become extremely familiar in recent literature. Their Kantian usage still suggests, however, many topics of controversy. The phrase an sich goes back to the well-known Greek usage, in both Plato and Aristotle, according to which anything that truly exists, or that truly is known, exists or is known kaq auto, i.e. per se or in se (cf. Aristotle, Met., VII. 4. 1029 b). Kant's relative novelty in usage lies in the fact that in speaking of the Ding an sich he emphasizes the thing in itself, not in an abstract contrast to other things in general, or to its relations to such other things, but in a contrast with knowledge only. This contrast of the thing in itself with the thing's seeming or appearance was indeed not new; but Kant expressly emphasizes it as against all other aspects of the an sich. The Ding an sich then is the thing as it exists independently of and apart from all knowledge. The principal problems as to the Ding an sich are: (a) whether Kant really assumes its existence as a positive fact; (b) how he conceives that existence; and (c) how he reconciles such affirmation of the thing's existence an sich with the theory of the subjectivity of all our knowledge. While a discussion of these problems belongs elsewhere, there can be no doubt that Kant does assume the independent reality of Dinge an sich as a positive fact, and does not make any serious attempt to demonstrate that reality. The correlate of the Ding an sich is the Erscheinung, to which, however, Kant attributes not mere existence in our private and isolated experience from moment to moment, but a certain secondary type of reality, or of objectivity, due to the fact that the Erscheinung follows universal laws, which are equally valid for all men. An Erscheinung is no mere Schein; it is a fact for all of us men, -- a verifiable content of possible experience.

(16) In addition to the term Ding an sich, Kant uses for the objects of the metempirical realm two other terms: Noumenon and transcendentaler Gegenstand. The former of these terms comes to Kant from his own dogmatic period (cf. his Inaugural Dissertation, Werke, ii. 403). It is the relic of the stage when he still opposed to the phenomenal world the world of true Being, knowable, in abstraction from all sensuous facts, through the pure intellect. A Noumenon is a reality such as one would know who could seize ultimate truth through his understanding alone, without the aid of sense. As a positive concept, this is wholly rejected by Kant in his critical period. Viewed negatively, the concept of the Noumenon as the object which we (who are bound to sense whenever we seek to win any positive knowledge) do not know and cannot know, -- this Noumenon becomes, in denotation, identical with the Ding an sich; but the two concepts have a different origin. The Ding an sich is a concept expressing a selbstverständliche Voraussetzung (see Benno Erdmann's work before cited, Kant's Kriticismus), viz. the presumption that phenomena somewhat independently real must correspond. The Noumenon is a concept reached by first conceiving an object of the pure intellect, and by then observing that such an object must for ever lie beyond our ken, since what we know is a phenomenal world, where sense-facts are subject to the a priori laws of the Verstand.

(17) The transcendentaler Gegenstand is a concept of still a different origin. The Verstand refers all content of sense to an object. This is the very nature of the Verstand. Hereby it accomplishes its task of conceiving the facts of sense as in unity. But any object once conceived, through an intellectual synthesis of sense-data, e.g. this house, this stone, remains, as an object present to our experience, still but a Vorstellung, i.e. a particular idea, or content of our consciousness. So soon as we view this Vorstellung as such, we are again led to seek for its object; and so on. The limit of this process of referring the contents of experience to still further objects as their basis is given by the concept of an Etwas = x, whereof we can only say that it is an Etwas, a something in general. This is the transcendentaler Gegenstand, the object that I am trying to know through every particular act of my empirical knowledge. This object, the permanently sought beyond of my empirical search for truth, can never be presented in experience. I therefore can only define it as beyond every experience. It is the law of my consciousness thus to seek for, but never to find, the ultimate correlate of my own conscious activity, namely, the final object that I am trying to know. While the Noumenon, then, as such, is first positively conceived as the object of the pure intellect, and is thereafter found to be nothing knowable to us, the transcendentaler Gegenstand, as such, is first conceived as that which would finally determine, and if present would satisfy, my empirical search for the truth of my own objects. The latter, then, is der gänzlich unbestimmte Gedanke von Etwas überhaupt, or der Gegenstand einer sinnlichen Anschauung überhaupt. Since it can never be found within experience, but is driven, through the essential endlessness of the search, beyond all experience, the transcendentaler Gegenstand comes at last to denote, once more, the absolute beyond, for which the Ding an sich was the first name.

(18) The three terms then, with different origin and connotation, come, in most passages where they are used, to denote the same object, the inaccessible reality. See Krit. d. reinen Vernunft, 1st ed., 109, and the section 'Von dem Grunde der Unterscheidung aller Gegenstände überhaupt in Phenomena und Noumena,' in both editions. Compare the Doctor-Dissertation of Rudolf Lehmann, Kant's Lehre vom Ding an sich (Berlin, 1878); Cohen's discussion in Kant's Theorie der Erfahrung (2nd ed., Berlin, 1885), 501 ff.; and the accounts of Benno Erdmann (op. cit.) and Paulsen (pp. 153-5 of his op. cit.).

(19) The realm of our actual knowledge is Erfahrung. Here again we have a word of ambiguous meaning. In general it is used in two senses: (1) as the sum total of facts so far as they are determined not by necessary principles, but by the immediate data of sense; (2) as the sum total of facts in so far as they are determined to unity by the application of the principles of the Understanding, and are so brought under the unity of apperception. In the first sense, Erfahrung is the source of knowledge in so far as it is not a priori. In the second sense, Erfahrung is a realm of possible perceptions, all of which are woven into unity by their universal and synthetic relations to the self.

(20) The judgments which we can make, in advance, concerning all objects of possible experience, are synthetic judgments a priori. Such judgments are opposed, as synthetic, to analytic judgments. The latter judgments express in their predicates nothing but what was already contained in the explicit or known meaning of their subjects; e.g. Every triangle has three angles. But a synthetic judgment passes beyond the direct meaning of its subject to bring this meaning into unity with that of a new predicate; e.g. Every change has a cause. That such synthetic judgment a priori can be made regarding the whole constitution of our experience is Kant's principal thesis in his Deduction of the Categories. The categories themselves (by no means identical either in name or in character with the original Categories of Aristotle, despite some points of agreement) are the fundamental concepts a priori of the Verstand, the forms in conformity with which the Einbildungskaft weaves into unity the data of sense. The list of the categories can be given exhaustively, as Kant thinks, and upon this basis an equally exhaustive list of the Grundsätze of the understanding, the principles or basal synthetic judgments a priori, can be drawn up.

(21) The Analytik of Kant's Kritik is devoted to the development of this theory of Erfahrung. The Dialektik is devoted to an examination of the inevitable claims and efforts of the Vernunft, our organ of principles, to transcend all experience by attempting to weave the provisional unities of the Verstand into absolute unities. These efforts of the Vernunft are as necessary as they are doomed to failure. We cannot primarily avoid the illusions of reason, but we can detect them. In doing so we deal, first, with the Antinomien or necessary conflicts between contradictory propositions, to which the Vernunft is led. We solve these contradictions by showing that they are due to our tendency to view as absolutely true of things in themselves, principles which apply only to phenomena. The later discussions of the Dialektik lead to the problems of Rational Psychology and of Rational Theology. But henceforth, in the Krit. d. reinen Vernunft, while the terminology remains intricate enough, it is oftener in touch with that of the older metaphysic; and one who has proceeded so far has grappled with the most serious of the terminological difficulties of the Kritik.

(22) The foregoing must serve merely as specimens of some of the most famous of Kant's terms, and as instances of the general principles regarding the nature and growth of his usage which have been discussed in the early portion of this article. No space can here be given to the terminology of the later works of Kant, except in so far as the foregoing discussions already give guidance.

GLOSSARY.

[The numbers refer to the paragraphs of this article.]

A priori, 14.
Aesthetik, 10.
Analytic Judgments, 20.
Analytik, 10, 21.
Anschauung, 10; see also TERMINOLOGY (German).
Antinomien, 21.
Apperception, 8, 11.
Begriff, 5, 7, 11.
Categorien, 7, 11.
Denken, 5, 10.
Dialektik, 11, 21.
Ding an sich, 11, 15; in relation to Noumenon and to transcendentaler Gegenstand, 16-18.
Einbildungskraft, 7; produktive, 10.
Einheit der Apperception, 8; Einheit der möglichen Erfahrung, 11.
Erfahrung, 11, 19.
Erkenntnissvermögen, 5.
Erscheinung, 11, 15.
Forms of Sense and Understanding, 10.
Gefühl, 5.
Gemüth, 6.
Grundsätze a priori, 11.
Ich denke, 8, 11.
Innerer Sinn, 6, 7.
Intellect, 10.
Kritik der reinen Vernunft, general character of terminology, 9; terminology of its principal theories, 10-21.
Metaphysik, 4.
Möglichkeit der Erfahrung, 11.
Noumenon, 11, 16-18.
Oberes Erkenntnissvermögen, 5.
Phenomena, 11.
Philosophie in general, 4.
Praktische Philosophie, 4.
Produktive Einbildungskraft, 10.
Regeln, 5, 11.
Schein, 15.
Schemata, 10.
Seele, 6.
Sinnlichkeit in general, 5. See also 10.
Synthetische Urtheile, 11, 20.
Theoretische Philosophie, 4.
Transcendent, 13.
Transcendental, 11-13.
Transcendentaler Gegenstand, 17, 18.
Transcendentalphilosophie, 17, 18.
Urtheilskraft, 5.
Vernunft, 5, 21.
Vernunfterkenntniss, 4.
Verstand, 5, 17. (J.R.)


Karma [Sansk. Karman, from Kar, to do or create]. In Hindu philosophy, the principle of individual existence by virtue of which the sum of moral desert in the life of one sentient being becomes the germ which develops another in whose destiny it is a predetermining factor.

Whether the Brahmistic metaphysic of the Vedanta or the more negative conceptions which underlie Buddhism be regarded as the truer expression of Hindu thought, it is still true that in the phenomenal world of causation and change the only persistent feature is the process of metempsychosis, which is an endless re-creation of the world in obedience to moral necessity. The source of this necessity is Karma, which is the seed out of which a new life emerges. A man dies but leaves his Karma, the sum of his moral desert, which necessitates another life as the bearer of its retribution. The process is unending, but the motive of it is Karma exerting the pressure of a moral destiny that is imperishable and inexorable. The only escape from this fatality is through the suppression of Karma itself, which can be attained only by travelling the Hindu road of salvation. The suppression of Karma means freedom from the necessity of existence and absorption into Nirvana, which is either Brahm, the universal life, or nothingness. See ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY (India).

Literature: DEUSSEN, Die Sûtras des Vedanta (Leipzig, 1887); Appendix to his Metaphysics; and art. Buddhism, in Encyc. Brit. (9th ed.); Buddhism, in Oriental Religions Series (ed. by Max Müller). (A.T.O.)


Karyokinesis [Gr. karuon, a nut, + kinhsiV, movement]: Ger. (the same); Fr. cariocinèse; Ital. cariocinesi. Indirect nuclear division, involving the formation of a spireme or nuclear thread, its segmentation into CHROMOSOMES (q.v.), and the splitting of the chromosomes.

A term suggested by Schleicher in 1878; equivalent to the mitosis of Flemming (1882). See MITOSIS.

Literature: SCHLEICHER, Die Knorpelzelltheilung; FLEMMING, Zellsubstanz. (C.LL.M.)


Karyoplasm [Gr. karuon, a nut, + plasma, a thing formed]: Ger. Zellkernsubstanz; Fr. carioplasme; Ital. carioplasma. The nuclear, as opposed to the cytoplasmic, substance of the cell.

A term due to Flemming (1882). In the same year Strasburger introduced the term nucleoplasm for the same substance.

Literature: FLEMMING, Zellsubstanz; STRASBURGER, Ueber den Theilungsvorgang der Zellkerne. (C.LL.M.)


Katabolism [Gr. kata, down, + ballein, to cast]: Ger. Katabolismus; Fr. catabolisme; Ital. catabolismo. The distinctive METABOLISM (q.v.) whereby complex organic substances break down into less complex forms with concomitant liberation of energy.

A term introduced by Gaskell in 1886. Cf. ANABOLISM. (C.LL.M.)


Katatonia [Gr. kata, down, + teinein, to stretch tightly]: Ger. Katatonie, Spannungsirrsinn; Fr. catatonie; Ital. catatonia. A mental disorder with marked neuro-muscular symptoms, described by Kahlbaum in 1874.

Although not admitted by all writers as a distinct disorder, but only as the presence of a group of symptoms in cases of mental stupor or of circular insanity, &c., yet clinically, as well as theoretically, the term has been recognized in recent literature (cf. Kraepelin, Psychiatrie, 441 ff.).

In typical cases the disease shows at first a condition of depression, melancholia, and distress; which condition is at times preceded by a period of nervousness, unsettlement, headache, languor, desire for solitude, and the like. With the depression are apt to occur hallucinations and illusions, mostly connected with the self-accusations and distress of the patient. The depression gives place to, or is at times replaced by, a condition of excitement and agitation, of wild, senseless actions and exciting hallucinations; and it is in this stage that the more distinctive symptoms of katatonia are observed. There is an abeyance or absence of movements, even movements of respiration and of the eyelids being much less frequent. A fixed attitude, and often an uncomfortable one, is rigidly maintained. As soon as passive movements of the patient's limbs are attempted the antagonistic muscles contract energetically; this symptom is termed negativism. If this is slight or is overcome, then the patient's limbs may be set in any posture, however unusual or uncomfortable (flexibilitas cerea). The rigid immobility is often interrupted by repetitions of simple stereotyped movements (Bewegungsstereotypie). Quite characteristic in many cases is the presence at times of suggestibility, particularly of movement and attitudes and the automatic repetition of peculiar actions or words, along with an obstinate resistance to movement at other times. There is often mutism or complete absence of speech or refusal of food, although not always from purely psychical cause. The disease may terminate in stupor and dementia.

Literature: KAHLBAUM, Die Katatonie; art. Katatonia, in Tuke's Dict. of Psychol. Med.; PH. CHASLIN, La Confusion mentale primitive (1895); SÉGLAS, Troubles du Language. (J.J.- P.J.-L.M.)

The term is also used (Ger. katatonischer Zustand; Fr. catatonie; Ital. catatonismo) by Arndt, Schüle, Morselli, and other alienists to indicate this neuro-muscular condition as a symptom of various mental diseases, e.g. stupidity, amentia, hysteria, &c.

Literature: ARNDT, Lehrb, d. Psychiat.; SCHÜLE, Klin. Psychiat.; MORSELLI, Semej. malat. ment. (E.M.)


Keller, Helen: see BRIDGMAN, LAURA.


Kenosis and Kenotism [Gr. kenoV, empty]: Ger. Kenosis, Kenotismus; Fr. kénose; Ital. chenosi, chenotismo. That theory of the dual nature of Jesus Christ which represents his divinity as adapting itself by an act of self-emptying or self-limiting to the conditions of a developing human experience.

The doctrine of the kenosis is a modern revival of the ancient controversies over the nature of Jesus Christ. It arose in the 17th century out of a controversy between the theologians of Giessen and Tübingen, the former maintaining that during his earthly career Jesus actually divested himself of his divine attributes, while the Tübingen group held that these attributes were present but concealed from view. The controversy dealt with a profound mystery in a way that developed no new insight.

Literature: Herzog's Real-Encyc., vii. 511 f., xiv. 786; DORNER, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, and Amer. Presb. Rev. (July, 1861), 651; McClintock and Strong's Cyclopedia, art. Kenosis. (A.T.O.)


Kierkegaard, Sören. (1813-55.) Born and educated at Copenhagen; his special branches were philosophy and theology. In 1841-2 he visited Germany; after his return he lived in retirement at Copenhagen, engaged in philosophical writing. As a thinker he is related to Hamann, Jean Paul, Feuerbach, and Trendelenburg.


Kinaesthetic (1) Memory and (2) Equivalent: Ger. (1) Bewegungvorstellung, kinaesthetischesBild, (2) kinaesthetisches Aequivalent; Fr. (1) image kinesthésique, image motrice (in use, but inexact -- L.M.), (2) équivalent kinesthésique; Ital. (1) immagine cinesica (or di movimento), (2) equivalente cinestesico. (1) All images which represent movements of the body, whether the original sensations were immediate or remote in the sense given under KINAESTHETIC SENSATION (1).

(2) Any mental content of the kinaesthetic order which is adequate to secure the voluntary performance of a movement. Suggested by Baldwin, as cited below.

Kinaesthetic sensations and images go to make up kinaesthetic equivalents. The term 'equivalents' is recommended to sum up the formulation that unless a kinaesthetic content, 'equivalent' to a movement, be reinstated in consciousness, the voluntary performance of that movement is impossible. In other words, a movement must be thought of before there can be a volition to perform it, and, according to this formulation, thought of in kinaesthetic terms, i.e. of earlier experiences of movement. In particular, the term is useful (a) in connection with the theory of the child's or others' acquisition of voluntary movements, i.e. by getting 'kinaesthetic equivalents'; (b) in connection with the pathology of will and attention when the equivalents are disturbed or destroyed; (c) with the analysis of particular motor functions, in determining just what elements the equivalents involve. As illustrating these three classes of cases, we may cite (a) the child's acquisition of the equivalents of vocal utterance; (b) the cases in which certain of the kinaesthetic images are gone, and the patient can only perform a movement when he sees the limb (depending on visual sensational equivalents); and (c) such analysis of equivalents as those cited under HANDWRITING (q.v.). The use of the term, moreover, does not prejudice the discussion of the facts.

Literature: see the indications given under KINAESTHETIC SENSATION. Of special importance are JAMES, Princ. of Psychol., ii. chap. xxvi; PICK, Die sogenannte 'Conscience Musculaire,' Zeitsch. f. Psychol., iv (1892), 161 ff.; JANET, Automatisme psychol.; BALDWIN, Story of the Mind, 16 ff. See also the textbooks of psychology on Voluntary Movement. (J.M.B., G.F.S.)


Kinaesthetic Sensation [Gr. kinein, to move, + aisqhsiV, perception]: Ger. kinaesthetische Empfindung, (b) Bewegungsempfindung; Fr. sensation kinesthésique (or motrice), (b) de mouvement; Ital. sensazione cinestetica (or cinesica -- E.M.), (b) di movimento. Any sensation which informs us of the movement of the body or of a part of it.

Here belong sensations (a) other than those from the moving member, such as those of sight, hearing, &c., of the movement, as well as (b) -- and to these the adjective 'kinaesthetic' is sometimes restricted -- the sensations from the member actually in movement: a group of muscular and other sensation qualities.

The words 'kinaesthesis' and 'kinaesthetic' were first used by Bastian (Brain as Organ of Mind, 543). He speaks of the sense of movement, or kinaesthesis, as 'a separate endowment of a complex kind, whereby we are made acquainted with the position and movement of our limbs, whereby we judge of "weight" and "resistance," and by means of which the brain also derives much unconscious guidance in the performance of movements generally, but especially in those of the automatic type.' (E.B.T., J.M.B.)

James has distinguished (a) and (b) as 'resident' (b) and 'remote' (a) effects of movement (Princ. of Psychol., 488, 491, 493). This is useful, since it allows free analysis of the entire set of sensations involved. It is accordingly better to follow James's preference (now expressed here) for 'keeping the word a generic one.' Its advantage appears in the discussion of the KINAESTHETIC MEMORY AND EQUIVALENT (q.v.).

Literature: generally the same as for INNERVATION SENSATION, and EFFORT (q.v.); see also BIBLIOG. G, 2, d, e. (J.M.B.)


Kind [AS. cynd, nature, from cynde, natural; same root as Gr. genoV, Lat. genus]: Ger. Art (the word 'kind' is also used to translate Ger. Gattung, for which see HEGEL'S TERMINOLOGY); Fr. genre; Ital. genere, specie. Before 'class' acquired its logical signification in Queen Anne's reign, kind was sometimes used for any collection of objects having a common and peculiar general character, simple or complex.

Thus, in Blundevile's Arte of Logicke, we read: 'Genus is a general kind which may be spoken of many things differing in special kind.' At other times, and more accurately, it was restricted to the species, or narrowest recognized class, or that which was supposed to be derived from one stock. Thus Wilson's Rule of Reason (1551) has: 'Genus is a general woorde, vnder the whiche diuerse kindes or sortes of thinges are comprehended.'

But before persons who picked their words had become ready to use 'class' as a mere logical extension, they had begun to avoid 'kind,' except when the emphasis of attention was placed upon the logical depth rather than the breadth. Watts's Logick (1724) illustrates this. This last is the ordinary popular sense of the word to-day; so that 'of this kind,' 'of this nature,' 'of this character' are interchangeable phrases. J. S. Mill, however, in his System of Logic, Bk. I. chap. vii. § 4, erected the word into a technical term of logic, at the same time introducing the term 'real kind.' His meaning, so far as it was determinate, was that classes are of two orders, the first comprising those which, over and above the characters which are involved in their definitions and which serve to delimit their extension, have, at most, but a limited number of others, and those following as 'consequences, under laws of nature,' of the defining characters; and the second, the real kinds, comprising those each of which has innumerable common properties independent of one another. As instances of real kinds, he mentions the class of animals and the class of sulphur; as an instance of a kind not real, the class of white things. It is important for the understanding of Mill's thought here, as throughout his work, to note that when he talks of 'properties,' he has in mind, mainly, characters interesting to us. Otherwise, it would not be true that all white things have few properties in common. By a 'law of nature' he means any absolute uniformity; so that it is hardly enough to assert that if all white things had any property P, this would be a 'consequence, under a law of nature,' of their whiteness; for it would be itself an absolute and ultimate uniformity. Mill says that if the common properties of a class thus follow from a small number of primary characters 'which, as the phrase is, account for all the rest,' it is not a real kind. He does not remark that the man of science is bent upon ultimately thus accounting for each and every property that he studies. The following definition might be proposed: Any class which, in addition to its defining character, has another that is of permanent interest and is common and peculiar to its members, is destined to be conserved in that ultimate conception of the universe at which we aim, and is accordingly to be called 'real.' (C.S.P.)


Kind (in biology) [AS. cynd, from cyn, family]. Another term for SPECIES (q.v.), as in the phrase 'each after his kind' (Gen. i. 21 ff.). See also CLASSIFICATION (in biology).

The term has been extended to apply to various groupings analogous to biological species, and has been used in sociology in the phrase CONSCIOUSNESS OF KIND (q.v.). (J.M.B.)


Kind and Degree: for the foreign equivalents see the separate topics. A distinction applied to differences or transformations according as they are (degree) or are not (kind) stated entirely in terms of QUANTITY (q.v.).

The distinction, as popularly used, covers many ambiguities and confusions. (J.M.B.)


Kindergarten [Ger. Kinder, children, + Garten, garden]: Ger. jardin de petits enfants; Ital. giardino d' infanzia. A school for very young children, in which play is utilized as an instrument of instruction in the facts of nature and the customs and ideals of society.

According to Froebel, its founder, the object is as follows: -- 'It shall receive children before the school age, give them employment suited to their nature, strengthen their bodies, exercise their senses, employ the waking mind, make them acquainted judiciously with nature and society, cultivate especially the heart and temper, and lead them to the foundation of all living -- to unity with themselves.'

Literature: FROEBEL, Educ. of Man; BOWEN, Froebel and Educ. by Self-activity. (C.DE.G.)


Kinesis (1) and (2) Metakinesis [Gr. kinein, to move, meta, beyond]: not in use in Fr. and Ger.; Ital. cinesi and metacinesi (suggested -- E.M.). (1) Physical movement as characterizing the material world; and (2) its supposed correlative or accompanying aspect which is psychical or quasi-psychical. Cf. MIND DUST THEORY.

Terms of the DOUBLE ASPECT THEORY (q.v.), introduced by Lloyd Morgan, for the two aspects in the case of physical changes in which the psychic aspect is not apparent. A metakinesis is assumed, according to the requirements of the theory, to accompany the kinesis. See Lloyd Morgan, Animal Life and Intelligence (1891), and cf. K. Pearson, Grammar of Science (2nd ed., 1900), 339 ff. (J.M.B., C.LL.M.)


Kinesodic [Gr. kinhsiV, movement, + odoV, road]: Ger. impulsleitend, kinesodisch (see note on Ger. equiv. for AESTHESODIC); Fr. kinésodique; Ital. cinesiodico. Originative rather than receptive; said of tracts and centres which convey or give origin to centrifugal impulses. Cf. AESTHESODIC. More inclusive than 'motor' in the same connections, and not implying that the impulse necessarily issues in muscular contraction. Stimuli which produce or regulate secretion, digestion, and the like, or even inhibitory impulses, may be kinesodic. (H.H.)


Kinetic [Gr. kinein, to move]: Ger. kinetisch; Fr. cinétique; Ital. cinetico. Relating to or growing out of motion, especially motion as an element of energy.

Kinetic theory of gases: the theory that air and other gases are formed of disconnected molecules in rapid motion and constantly colliding; that their heat is only the energy of these molecules due to their motion, and that their elasticity is only apparent, and is really due to the collisions of the molecules against the sides of the containing vessel.

Kinetic energy: see ENERGY. (S.N.)


Kinetics: Ger. Kinetik; Fr. cinématique; Ital. (teoria) cinetica, cinematica. The science of the motion of bodies as produced by the forces acting upon them, especially the particular forms which this science assumes when based upon the relations of kinetic energy to energy of position.

Introduced by Maxwell as a substitute for the term dynamics in the former limited sense of that word, the actual sense being now extended so as to include the general laws of force action. (S.N.)


Kingdom and Sub-kingdom (in biology): see CLASSIFICATION (in biology).


Kinship [AS. cyn, kin]: Ger. Verwandtschaft; Fr. parenté, consanguinité; Ital. consanguineità. Blood-relationship.

The word kin belongs to a group of derivatives from roots that originally meant womb. In a series of essays collected in The Chances of Death and other Studies in Evolution, Karl Pearson has traced the history of these words in detail. The weight of evidence from all sources now shows that kinship was by every part of the human race originally traced through the mother. Cf. MATRIARCHATE.

Literature: McLENNAN, Kinship in Ancient Greece and other essays collected in Stud. in Ancient Hist. (1st and 2nd series); ROBERTSON SMITH, Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia; LEWIS H. MORGAN, Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity. (F.H.G.)


Knee-jerk or Patellar Reflex: Ger. Kniephänomen, Patellarreflex; Fr. réflexe patellaire, or rotulien; Ital. reflesso patellare (or rotuleo). A tendon reflex: a sudden straightening of the knee-joint caused by contraction of the quadriceps femoris muscle. It is usually evoked by tapping the patellar tendon (front knee region) while the lower leg hangs freely suspended from the knee.

It is abolished by destruction of the motor roots supplying this muscle, by destruction of the sensory root of the corresponding area (the fifth lumbar root in man), and by the destruction of the descending paths from the cerebellum and mid-brain, or by any cause, such as shock, which reduces the nervous tone of the reflex centre in the spinal cord. It is exaggerated by destruction of the pyramidal or cortico-spinal tract, showing that the cerebrum normally exerts an inhibitory influence upon the reflex centres. It is extensively employed clinically as a sign of various physiological and pathological conditions of the nervous system, this being one of the most convenient tests of the nervous tonicity of the reflex mechanism. It has also been found of psychological interest as reflecting alterations of attention, stages of fatigue, &c., being locally convenient for experimentation.

The patellar reflex is sometimes followed by a 'crossed adductor jerk.' The ordinary patellar reflex follows about 1/8 sec. after the stimulus, and this is followed after a similar interval by a twitching of the other leg produced by the adductor muscles.

Abolition of the patellar reflex has frequently been described as a result of cerebellar lesions, though this view has been recently actively combated on the ground that such injuries never produce this effect unless accompanied by destruction of the 'reflex bundle of the patellar reflex' in the oblongata.

Literature: H. P. BOWDITCH, The Reinforcement and Inhibition of the Knee-jerk, Boston Med. and Surg. J., cxviii. 542 (1888); H. P. BOWDITCH and J. W. WARREN, The Knee-jerk and its Physiological Modifications, J. of Physiol., xi. 25-64; C. EISEN, Studien über das Verhalten der Reflexe bei gesundem und Krankem Nervensystem, Inaug. -Diss., Erlangen (1897); C. FÉRÉ, Note sur les Réflexes tendineux du Genou, et en particulier sur la Contraction réflexe successive, C. R. Soc. de Biol., Paris, 9e sér., i. 530 (1899); A. VAN GEHUCHTEN, Le Mécanisme des Mouvements réflexes, J. de Neurol. et d'Hypnol. (1897); W. R. GOWERS, A Study of the so-called Tendon-reflex Phenomena, Med. -Chir. J., London, 1xii. 269-305 (1879); An Address introductory to a Discussion on the Diagnostic Value of the so-called 'Tendon-reflexes,' Lancet, London, ii. 839-42 (1885); A. JARISCH and E. SCHIFF, Untersuchungen über das Kniephänomen, Med. Jahrb., Wien, 261-308 (1882); W. P. LOMBARD, The Variations of the Normal Knee-jerk, and their Relation to the Activity of the Central Nervous System, Amer. J. of Psychol., i. 5-71 (1887) also trans. in Arch. f. Physiol., Leipzig, Suppl. -Bd. (1889); On the Nature of the Knee-jerk, J. of Physiol., x. 122-48 (1889); MARIE, Le Bulletin Médical, Paris, Apr. 15, 1894 ('Crossed Knee-jerk'); H. NETTER, Zur Geschichte der Lehre vom Kniephänomen bei Geisteskranken, Inaug. -Diss., Freiburg i. B. (1897); NONNE, Patellarreflex bei Kleinhirnerkrankung, Neurol. Centralbl. (1897), 285; C. S. SHERRINGTON, Brit. Med. J., March 12, 1892; Lancet, London, May 6, 1893; P. STEWART, Experimental Observations on the Crossed Adductor Jerk, J. of Physiol., xxii. Nos. 1 and 2 (1897); T. ZIEHEN, Corresp. -Bl. d. allg. ärztl. Ver. v. Thüringen, Weimar, xviii. 1-8 (1889); SEPPILLI, Riv. di Fren., 1887. (H.H.)


Knowledge [Lat. gnoscere]: Ger. Erkenntniss; Fr. connaissance; Ital. conoscenza. (1) The cognitive aspect of consciousness in general.

From this point of view it has been proposed to distinguish two kinds of knowledge, named respectively 'knowledge of acquaintance' and 'knowledge about,' corresponding to gnwnai and eidenai, noscere and scire, Kennen and Wissen, connaître and savoir. 'To know may mean either to perceive or apprehend, or to understand or comprehend.' Knowledge in the first sense is only recognition; knowledge in the latter sense is the result of intellectual comparison, and is embodied in a judgment. Thus a blind man, who cannot know light in the first sense, can know about light in the second (Ward, art. Psychology in Encyc. Brit., 9th ed., 49). The terms 'knowledge of acquaintance' and 'knowledge about' are due to John Grote (Exploratio Philosophica, 60). The distinction is elaborated by James (Princ. of Psychol., i. 221).

(2) Knowledge is also used in contrast to the form of mere opinion sometimes called belief. In this application it signifies certitude based on adequate objective grounds. There may be belief or subjective certitude without adequate objective foundation. Yet, strictly speaking, this distinction is not psychological.

(3) Knowledge is further used for 'what is known' as such. Thus we may speak of chemistry as a 'body of knowledge.'

For literature see the psychologies; on the questions as to the origin, meaning, and validity of knowledge, see EPISTEMOLOGY. (G.F.S.- J.M.B.)


Knowledge (in logic). This word is used in logic in two senses: (1) as a synonym for COGNITION (q.v.), and (2), and more usefully, to signify a perfect cognition, that is, a cognition fulfilling three conditions: first, that it holds for true a proposition that really is true; second, that it is perfectly self-satisfied and free from the uneasiness of doubt; third, that some character of this satisfaction is such that it would be logically impossible that this character should ever belong to satisfaction in a proposition not true.

Knowledge is divided, firstly, according to whatever classification of the sciences is adopted. Thus, Kantians distinguish formal and material knowledge. See SCIENCE. Secondly, knowledge is divided according to the different ways in which it is attained, as into immediate and mediate knowledge. See IMMEDIACY AND MEDIACY (logical). Immediate knowledge is a cognition, or objective modification of consciousness, which is borne in upon a man with such resistless force as to constitute a guarantee that it (or a representation of it) will remain permanent in the development of human cognition. Such knowledge is, if its existence be granted, either borne in through an avenue of sense, external or internal, as a percept of an individual, or springs up within the mind as a first principle of reason or as a mystical revelation. Mediate knowledge is that for which there is some guarantee behind itself, although, no matter how far criticism be carried, simple evidency, or direct insistency, of something has to be relied upon. The external guarantee rests ultimately either upon authority, i.e. testimony, or upon observation. In either case mediate knowledge is attained by REASONING, which see for further divisions. It is only necessary to mention here that the Aristotelians distinguished knowledge oti, or of the facts themselves, and knowledge dioti, or of the rational connection of facts, the knowledge of the how and why (cf. the preceding topic). They did not distinguish between the how and the why, because they held that knowledge dioti is solely produced by SYLLOGISM (q.v.) in its greatest perfection, as demonstration. The term empirical knowledge is applied to knowledge, mediate or immediate, which rests upon percepts; while the terms philosophical and rational knowledge are applied to knowledge, mediate or immediate, which rests chiefly or wholly upon conclusions or revelations of reason. Thirdly, knowledge is divided, according to the character of the immediate object, into apprehensive and judicative knowledge, the former being of a percept, image, or Vorstellung, the latter of the existence or non-existence of a fact. Fourthly, knowledge is divided, according to the manner in which it is in the mind, into actual, virtual, and habitual knowledge. See Scotus, Opus Oxoniense, lib. I. dist. iii. quest. 2, paragraph beginning 'Loquendo igitur.' Fifthly, knowledge is divided, according to its end, into speculative and practical. (C.S.P., C.L.F.)


Knowledge (theory of): see EPISTEMOLOGY, and GNOSIOLOGY.


Knutzen, Martin. (1713-51.) A mathematician in Königsberg; a teacher of Immanuel Kant.


Koran [Arab. Quran, Qoran, book]: Ger. Koran; Fr. Coran; Ital. Corano. The sacred book of Islam, claimed to have been communicated to the Prophet directly by Allah, and containing the religious and moral system of the Mohammedan religion.

The Koran was composed by Mohammed at intervals during his prophetic career. Its materials are largely derived from Hebrew, Christian, and Arabian traditions, but these are fused into a homogeneous product by the powerful genius of the Prophet. It is comprised of 114 suras or chapters, which were collected and given their present form by Zaid, an amanuensis of the Prophet, under the direction of the Kaliph Abubekr. The Koran is creed, code, and cult combined. The central religious doctrines of the Koran are its monotheistic conception of God and its doctrine of unconditional predestination. It contains a very high and pure system of morality. Cf. ORIENTAL PHILOSOPHY (India).

Literature: NÖLDEKE, Gesch. des Qorans (1860); MUIHR and R. B. SMITH, Lives of Mohammed; KUENEN, Hibbert Lectures; WEIL, Einleitung in den Koran (2nd ed., 1878); GARCIA DE TASSY, L'Islamisme d'après le Coran (1874); SEYD AMED, Essays (1871); TOY, Johnson's Univl. Cyc., art. Koran. (A.T.O.)


Kratylus. A pupil of the sophist Protagoras, who adhered to the teachings of the Ephesian philosopher Heraclitus in Athens. Plato was his pupil, and, later, honoured him with the dialogue Kratylus.


Krause, Karl Christian Friedrich. (1781-1832.) German philosopher, educated at Jena. Privat-docent in Jena 1802, and in Berlin 1814. He died when about to habilitate in Munich. He developed a system called panentheism, 'All in God.'


Kritias.  A pupil of Socrates, who later became one of the thirty tyrants, an adherent to the school of the Sophists, and the opponent of Socrates.


Krug, Wilhelm Traugott. (1770-1842.) German philosopher, educated in theology and philosophy at Wittenberg. Professor of philosophy in Frankfort-on-the-Oder, in Königsberg (1805), and in Leipzig (1809).


Kymograph: see LABORATORY AND APPARATUS, II (general).