Subreption (, "the act of stealing", from ''surripere'', "to take away secretly"; ) is a legal concept in Roman law, in the

canon law of the Catholic Church The canon law of the Catholic Church ("canon law" comes from Latin ') is "how the Church organizes and governs herself". It is the system A system is a group of interacting or interrelated elements that act according to a set of rules to form a ...

, and in the Scots law, as well as a philosophical concept.

Etymology

The term "subreption" originates from Roman law; it was "a

late Roman Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effe ...

juridical term describing the introduction of

false evidence False evidence, fabricated evidence, forged evidence, fake evidence or tainted evidence is information created or obtained illegally in order to sway the verdict in a court case. Falsified evidence could be created by either side in a case (i ...

into a legal proceeding".

Philosophy

German philosophy German philosophy, here taken to mean either (1) philosophy in the German language or (2) philosophy by Germans, has been extremely diverse, and central to both the analytic and continental traditions in philosophy for centuries, from Gottfried W ...

, the concept of subreption was used by Christian Wolff and Immanuel Kant.

Christian Wolff and other German philosophers

During the early modern period in Europe, the meaning of "subreption" changed. " iters began to speak of the error of subreption in a more general sense, as opposed to the ncient Romanlegal concept of a crime of subreption. Among the German rationalist philosophers who continued to circulate, refine, and redefine the term in the eighteenth century, Christian Wolff stands out as particularly significant for Kant's interest in subreption. Wolff defines the ''vitium subreptionis'' as a confusion of 'knowing' (''erkennen'') with 'experiencing' (''erfahren''), which we commit whenever we think ourselves to be experiencing something that is merely a product of the intellect. This was the main meaning attached to the term as it was adopted into general scholarly usage in Germany by the middle of the eighteenth century."

Kant

Kant adopted the term "subreption" in his early work. According to Kant in his

Inaugural dissertation A doctorate (from Latin ''docere'', "to teach"), doctor's degree (from Latin ''doctor'', "teacher"), or doctoral degree is an academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism ''li ...

, " en we attach a

predicate Predicate or predication may refer to: * Predicate (grammar), in linguistics * Predication (philosophy) * several closely related uses in mathematics and formal logic: **Predicate (mathematical logic) **Propositional function **Finitary relation, o ...

involving sensible conditions to a concept of the understanding, we must bear in mind that it merely denotes conditions 'in the absence of which a given concept would not be sensitively cognizable'. If we deceive ourselves into thinking the predication has some objective force (that is, that it has anything to say about the conditions of possibility of the object itself), we cross over into subreption. For Kant, the error of subreption is the conflation of a 'sensitive condition, under which alone the intuition of an object is possible' and 'a condition of the possibility itself of the object. In the same dissertation, an example of subreption for Kant is the

axiom An axiom, postulate, or assumption is a statement that is taken to be true, to serve as a premise or starting point for further reasoning and arguments. The word comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning 'that which is thought worthy or f ...

"every actual multiplicity can be given numerically, and thus every magnitude is finite"; Kant considers this axiom to be subreptive because the concept of time is introduced surreptitiously as the "means for giving form to the concept of the predicate". This axiom implies the infinity is impossible in itself. Kant argues infinity is not impossible in itself but that infinity is only impossible to imagine for the human mind because the mind relies on sensitive conditions.

Catholic canon law

In the

subreption Subreption (, "the act of stealing", from ''surripere'', "to take away secretly"; ) is a legal concept in Roman law, in the canon law of the Catholic Church, and in the Scots law, as well as a philosophical concept. Etymology The term "subreption ...

has a specific meaning. Subreption in Catholic Canon law is "a concealment of the pertinent facts in a petition, as fordispensation or favor, that in certain cases nullifies the grant", "the obtainment of a dispensation or gift by concealment of the truth".

Scots law

In Scots law, subreption is "the obtainment of a dispensation or gift by concealment of the truth"

References

Roman law Age of Enlightenment