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.Understanding accordingly limits sensibility, without at the same time enlarging its own field.While,moreover, it forbids sensibility to apply its forms and modes to things in themselves and restricts it to thesphere of phenomena, it cogitates an object in itself, only, however, as a transcendental object, which is thecause of a phenomenon (consequently not itself a phenomenon), and which cannot be thought either as aquantity or as reality, or as substance (because these conceptions always require sensuous forms in which todetermine an object)- an object, therefore, of which we are quite unable to say whether it can be met with inourselves or out of us, whether it would be annihilated together with sensibility, or, if this were taken away,would continue to exist.If we wish to call this object a noumenon, because the representation of it isnon-sensuous, we are at liberty to do so.But as we can apply to it none of the conceptions of ourCHAPTER III Of the Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena.116 The Critique of Pure Reasonunderstanding, the representation is for us quite void, and is available only for the indication of the limits ofour sensuous intuition, thereby leaving at the same time an empty space, which we are competent to fill bythe aid neither of possible experience, nor of the pure understanding.The critique of the pure understanding, accordingly, does not permit us to create for ourselves a new field ofobjects beyond those which are presented to us as phenomena, and to stray into intelligible worlds; nay, itdoes not even allow us to endeavour to form so much as a conception of them.The specious error whichleads to this- and which is a perfectly excusable one- lies in the fact that the employment of theunderstanding, contrary to its proper purpose and destination, is made transcendental, and objects, that is,possible intuitions, are made to regulate themselves according to conceptions, instead of the conceptionsarranging themselves according to the intuitions, on which alone their own objective validity rests.Now thereason of this again is that apperception, and with it thought, antecedes all possible determinate arrangementof representations.Accordingly we think something in general and determine it on the one hand sensuously,but, on the other, distinguish the general and in abstracto represented object from this particular mode ofintuiting it.In this case there remains a mode of determining the object by mere thought, which is really but alogical form without content, which, however, seems to us to be a mode of the existence of the object in itself(noumenon), without regard to intuition which is limited to our senses.Before ending this transcendental analytic, we must make an addition, which, although in itself of noparticular importance, seems to be necessary to the completeness of the system.The highest conception, withwhich a transcendental philosophy commonly begins, is the division into possible and impossible.But as alldivision presupposes a divided conception, a still higher one must exist, and this is the conception of anobject in general- problematically understood and without its being decided whether it is something ornothing.As the categories are the only conceptions which apply to objects in general, the distinguishing of anobject, whether it is something or nothing, must proceed according to the order and direction of thecategories.1.To the categories of quantity, that is, the conceptions of all, many, and one, the conception whichannihilates all, that is, the conception of none, is opposed.And thus the object of a conception, to which nointuition can be found to correspond, is = nothing.That is, it is a conception without an object (ens rationis),like noumena, which cannot be considered possible in the sphere of reality, though they must not therefore beheld to be impossible- or like certain new fundamental forces in matter, the existence of which is cogitablewithout contradiction, though, as examples from experience are not forthcoming, they must not be regardedas possible.2.Reality is something; negation is nothing, that is, a conception of the absence of an object, as cold, ashadow (nihil privativum).3.The mere form of intuition, without substance, is in itself no object, but the merely formal condition of anobject (as phenomenon), as pure space and pure time.These are certainly something, as forms of intuition,but are not themselves objects which are intuited (ens imaginarium).4.The object of a conception which is self-contradictory, is nothing, because the conception is nothing- isimpossible, as a figure composed of two straight lines (nihil negativum).The table of this division of the conception of nothing (the corresponding division of the conception ofsomething does not require special description) must therefore be arranged as follows:NOTHINGASCHAPTER III Of the Ground of the Division of all Objects into Phenomena and Noumena.117 The Critique of Pure Reason1As Empty Conceptionwithout object,ens rationis2 3Empty object of Empty intuitiona conception, without object,nihil privativum ens imaginarium4Empty objectwithout conception,nihil negativumWe see that the ens rationis is distinguished from the nihil negativum or pure nothing by the considerationthat the former must not be reckoned among possibilities, because it is a mere fiction- though notself-contradictory, while the latter is completely opposed to all possibility, inasmuch as the conceptionannihilates itself.Both, however, are empty conceptions
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