The A Priori in Human Knowledge: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Lonergan’s Insight*

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORS: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS OF THE PROVINCE OF ST. JosEPH Publishers: The Thomist Press, Washington, D. C. 20017 VoL. XL APRIL, 1976 No. 2 THE A PRIORI IN HUMAN KNOWLEDGE: KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON AND LONERGAN'S INSIGHT* 1. Kant's reasons for his quest of the a priori. KANT'S WORK is indissolubly bound up with two notions : that of the transcendental as a method of analysis and that of the a priori as the result of such an analysis. In the following pages we propose to study that second notion as it appears in the Critique of Pure Reason,1 * I am very much indebted to the Reverend Frederick E. Crowe, S. J., of Regis College, Toronto, for having gone through my manuscript improving the style and clarifying a number of passages. The present paper offers some key insights already treated more thoroughly in a detailed study of Kant's writings in my book: Das Apriori in der menschlichen Erkenntnis. Eine Studie iiber [(ants Kritik der reinen Vernunft und Lonergans Insight, Meisenheim am Gian (A. Hain) 1971. 1 Kritik der reinen Vernunft, abbreviated in this article as KRV, and referred to according to the original pagination of the first (A) and second (B) editions. References will be frequent, and so will be given in the text rather than in footnotes . The English translation will be that of Norman Kemp Smith, except for minor changes and the addition of emphases. 179 180 GIOVANNI SALA though this will often lead us to touch on the first notion as well. Our aim is to set forth as detailed an analysis as the limits of the present paper will allow. Without entering into the history of the composition of the KRV, let us simply say that because of what Norman Kemp Smith calls "the tentative character of Kant's conclusions " 2 it would be an extremely long and difficult task to establish the stages through which Kant's thought evolved and to document the philosophical positions to be found in this Critique. Our purpose is rather to clarify the basic epistemological lines of the KRV in their various aspects , in their tensions, and in what seems to us to be their common direction. The epistemology of Lonergan will not be the direct object of analysis in this paper; rather it will be presupposed and used to supply the key to our reading of the KRV, as will be evident enough to those of our readers who are familiar with lnsight.8 2 Norman Kemp Smith, A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'. New York, 196~, p. 561. •Bernard J. F. Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, London & New York, 1957. References to this volume will also be given in the text rather than in footnotes, with emphases added in some cases. Perhaps the relation o~ Kant and Lonergan in this study should be clarified. Directly the article is a study of Kant; it is, however, a critical study, a critique of a critique. Now a critique proceeds from horizons, presuppositions, premisses, positions, which are those of the critic himself. Thus, Kant's own critique of pure reason proceeded from his position on the relation of understanding to the empirical, and from the presuppositions that lay behind that position. Similarly, our critique of Kant proceeds from presuppositions held by the author, and those presuppositions are derived from the cognitional theory of Lonergan's Insight. However, we judged it legitimate to omit a detailed presentation of Lonergan here; surely we are not mistaken in thinking, after nearly twenty years and so many general presentations of Lonergan's thought, that we can take the basic ideas of Insight to be familiar. There may indeed be a question about some of its particular ideas, whether they have been superseded by Lonergan's later work, but that would have to be proved in each case. In fact, Lonergan gives his own recent views on Insight in the paper, " Insight Revisited" (A Second Collection, London, 1974), and though he indicates some ideas that have undergone revision in his thinking of the last twenty years...