Section 1: THE IDEAL IN GENERAL (p. 485)

• Ideas are further removed from objective reality than are categories.
  • No appearances can be found to represent them in concreto.
  • They contain a completeness which empirical knowledge cannot attain.
• Ideals are further removed from objective reality than ideas.
  • They are ideas, not merely in concreto but in individuo.
  • Determinable or even determined by the idea alone.
  • Similar to Plato's idea of the divine understanding.
  • They have practical power as regulative principles.
  • They form the basis of the possible perfection of certain actions.
  • They serve as archetypes for the complete determination of the copy.
  • Although they do not have objective reality, they are not figments of the brain. They supply reason with a standard by providing it with a concept of that which is entirely complete in its kind.
• Products of the imagination are different. They are a mere set of particular qualities, determined by no assignable rule. They may be called ideals of sensibility.
• Reason, in its ideal, aims at complete determination in accordance with a priori rules.
  • It thinks for itself an object which it regards as completely determinable in accordance with principles.
    • The conditions of determination are not found in experience so the concept is transcendent.
  Section 2: THE TRANSCENDENTAL IDEAL (p. 487)
  • Every concept is, in respect of what is not contained in it, undetermined.
  • Every concept is subject to the principle of determinability which is: of every two contradictorily opposed predicates only one can belong to a concept.
  • Every thing is subject to the principle of complete determination which is: if all possible predicates of things be taken together with their contradictory opposites, then one of each pair must belong to it.
    • This principle calls for considering each thing in its relation to the two contradictory predicates and in its relation to the sum-total of all predicates possible.
    • It concerns the content, not merely the logical form.
    • It contains a transcendental presupposition: it presupposes the material for all possibility which is regarded as containing a priori the data for the particular possibility of each and every thing.
    • It implies that to know a thing completely, we must know every possible predicate.
    • The principle can never be exhibited in concreto.
  • Although this idea of the sum-total of all possibility is undetermined in respect of the predicates which may constitute it, it does define itself as a concept that is completely determined a priori.
    • It thus becomes the concept of an individual object which is completely determined through the mere idea.
    • May be entitled an ideal of pure reason.
  • Transcendental Affirmation: reality, the concept in itself expresses being.
  • Transcendental Negation: non-being.
    • Logical negation does not refer to a concept, but only to its relation to another concept in judgment.
    • All concepts of negations are derivative, it is the realities that contain the data
  • Omnitudo Realitatis: the transcendental substrate employed by reason in the complete determination of things. "The All"
    • The concept of what possesses all reality is just the concept of a thing in itself as completely determined.
  • Ens realissimum: the concept of an individual being.
    • It is a transcendental ideal which serves as basis for the complete determination that necessarily belongs to all that exists.
    • It is the only true ideal of which reason is capable, because only in this one case is a concept of a thing (a concept which is itself universal) completely determined in and through itself, and known as the representation of an individual.
  • The logical determination of a concept by reason is based on the disjunctive syllogism.
    • Major premiss contains a logical division (either-or).
    • Minor premiss limits this sphere to a certain part.
    • Conclusion determines the concept by means of this part.
  • The universal concept of a reality in general cannot be divided a priori.
    • Without experience we do not know any determinate kinds of reality.
  • The transcendental major premiss is the representation of the sum-total of all reality.
    • Contains all predicates within itself, not under itself.
    • Complete determination of any thing rests on limitation of this total reality.
  • Reason does not presuppose the existence of a being that corresponds to this ideal, only the idea of such a being.
  • All possibility of things must therefore be regarded as derivative except the possibility of that which includes in itself all reality.
    • The latter possibility must be regarded as original.
  • Primordial Being: name for the object of the ideal of reason.
    • Present to us only in and through reason.
    • We are without knowledge of the existence of such a being.
    • Must be thought of as simple because it cannot be thought as consisting of a number of things. Things presuppose it, they cannot constitute it.
    • aka: the highest being, the being of all beings.
  • The supreme reality must condition the possibility of all things as their ground, not as their sum.
    • The derivation of all other possibility cannot be regarded as a limitation of the supreme reality.
  • How does it happen that reason regards the possibility of things as derived from one fundamental possibility?
    1. The possibility of the objects of the senses is a relation of those objects to our thought.
    2. Matter must be given, or it could not even be thought.
    3. Now, an object of the senses can be completely determined only when it is compared with all the predicates possible.
    4. Since that which constitutes the thing itself must be given in experience, the possibility of all objects of the senses must be presupposed as given in one whole.
       THEREFORE: Nothing is an object for us unless it presupposes the sum of all empirical reality as the condition of its possibility.
  • Now owing to a natural illusion, we regard this principle which applies only to objects of the senses, as being a principle which must be valid of things in general.
  • If we proceed to hypostatise this idea of the sum of all reality, we shall be able to determine the primordial being through the mere concept of the highest reality, as a being that is one, all-sufficient, eternal, etc.
    • This is the concept of God taken in the transcendental sense.
    • It is also an ideal of pure reason and the object of a transcendental theology.

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