First Part: Transcendental Aesthetic
I. Definitions
a. Representation: designates an object in its determination by the subject; being the subjective action of forming the object at that level. Includes intuitions, concepts, and ideas. The understanding processes representations. Also: “presentation.”
b. Concept/conception: active representations, by means of which our understanding enables us to think. Concepts serve as “rules” (by conformity with the categories) which allow us to perceive general relations between representations.
c. Intuition: passive representations, by means of which our sensibility enables us to have sensations. Intuitions (requiring appearances to be given in Space and Time) allow us to perceive particular relations between representations (limiting empirical knowledge to sensible realm). Is in immediate relation to objects; a means for all thought.
d. An exposition is metaphysical if it argues from first principles a priori; it is transcendental if it argues for synthetic a priori judgments which follow from the preceding exposition.
II. Introductory
a. sensibility: “the capacity for receiving representations (receptivity) through the mode in which we are affected by objects.” By means of sensibility, objects are given to the subject (thus arising intuitions, “that to which all through relates by means of signs”). Thus, sensation is the effect of an object upon the faculty of representation (affection); this renders us with empirical intuition, of which the undetermined object is called the phenomenon
i. matter: that of the phenomenon which corresponds to the sensation
ii. form: that which effects (such) that the content of the phenomenon can be arranged under certain relations.
c. the matter of the phenomenon given a posteriori. The form must “lie ready a priori for them in the mind”; and must be regarded separately from all sensation (affection).
d. Pure representation (transcendental): “[a] representation wherein nothing is not with that belongs to sensation.” Hence, “we find in the mind (a priori) the pure form of sensuous intuitions in general,” wherein the phenomenonal world is arranged under certain relations. Pure intuition is the pure form of sensibility (Space and Time, which are “principles of knowledge a priori“).
i. Extension and shape, which belong to pure intuition, existing a priori in the mind as a form of sensibility, and without any “real object of sensation,” are the transcendental conditions of sensibility.
III. Section I. – Of Space
a. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception: in order that I may represent sensations in Space, the “representation of space must already exist as a foundation.” Hence, “space is not a [concept] which has been derived from outward experiences,” but external experience is itself only possible through [the said] antecedent representation [of Space].” Space is a necessary representation (form of pure intuition) a priori, which “serves as a foundation of all external intuitions,” – it is “the condition of the possibility of phenomenon.” Space is represented as an “infinite given quantity,” hence not a concept, but a pure intuition a priori.
b. Transcendental Exposition of the Conception of Space:
i. [Euclidean] geometry is a synthetic science a priori, meaning the mind has a “formal capacity” for it; or the “subject’s being affected by objects,” and thereby representations or intuitions thereof, are a form of the external sense. I.e., the necessity of geometric inference is possible only if its truth is found a priori in intuition.
ii. For geometry to determine the “properties of space synthetically, and yet a priori,” it must be originally intuition, for from a concept [its analysis],” only what is contained within it [would be analytic knowledge, or tautological, which is not the case]. The intuitions of geometry are “united with the consciousness of their necessity,” and therefore geometry is the form of the external sense.
c. Conclusions from the Foregoing Conceptions:
i. Space doesn’t represent any content (matter, accident, property) of objects as things-in-themselves (nor their relationships to each other).
ii. Space is the form of all phenomenon of external sensation, or the subjective condition of the sensibility which makes external intuition possible.
1. Hence sensibility is a pure intuition a priori, containing principles of objects prior to experience.
iii. The predicate of Space only applies to objects insofar as they manifest (are objects of sensibility). The constant form of receptivity is sensibility and is a necessary condition of all relations in which objects can be intuited as existing without a subject).
1. Conditions of sensibility: possibility of existence of phenomenon; not of the thing-in-itself,” since “space contains all which can appear to us externally…but not all things-in-themselves.”
2. There is an empirical reality of space with regards to all possible external experience, although it must be known through its transcendental ideality (i.e., “it is nothing as soon as we withdraw the condition upon which the possibility of all experience depends.”
3. The intuition of space affords us synthetical a priori knowledge [of geometry], but no other subjective representations; other representations belong to the “subjective nature of the mode of sensuous perception [sensation].”
a. Sensations do not give a priori cognition, but are changes in the subject (affections) as the object + sensuous perception.
4. Nothing intuited in space is a thing-in-itself, since space is not the form which belongs as a property to things. Outward objects are representations of our sensibility, where the form is space. Nobody can experience the thing-in-itself.
IV. Section II. – Of Time
a. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception
i. Time is not an empirical conception, but the a priori foundation thereof. No empirical time could be conceived (coexistence, succession) if time did not exist a priori as its foundation (antecedent to it).
ii. “Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all our intuitions [or is the pure form of all sensuous intuition].” We cannot think (understand) phenomenon outside of time. As such, it is a pure intuition a priori.
iii. On the necessary a priority of time is founded synthetic a priori principles of succession and time (as geometry of space), which cannot be derived from experience (or they would not be a priori, but a posteriori.
iv. “The infinity of time signifies nothing more than that every determined quantity of time is possible [only if] on time [lies] at the foundation.” A concept of time [for/of/in an object] must have an immediate intuition at its basis, for conceptions are only partial representations, and cannot provide the (a) complete representation of time.
b. Transcendental Exposition of the Conception of Time: all representations of things (conceptions of change, motion, place) are possible only in and through the representation of time. If time were not an internal intuition a priori, no conception could render comprehensible the possibility of change.
i. Kant defines change as “a conjunction of contradictorily opposed predicates in one and the same object.” Time, therefore, renders two contradictory statements of properties (determinations, predicates) in one thing, one after the other.
ii. In contrast to empirical sensations, which cannot be false or contradictory as such, time renders possible the affirmation of one and another thing in “empirical contradiction” with one another.
c. Conclusions from the Following Conceptions:
i. (a) There is not something which subsists of itself. If this were the case, then time would be something real, but without “presenting to any power of perception any real object,” which is absurd. (b) Time doesn’t “inhere in things as an objective determination,” for it would then be antecedent to things (-in-themselves as their condition), not discerned or intuited by means of synthetic a priori propositions. (c) Time is the subjective condition under which an intuition takes place, represented prior to objects, and thus a priori.
ii. Time is (nothing more than) the internal sense, or that of the intuitions of the self and an internal state, and is thus not a determination of outward phenomenon. It determines the relations of representations internally.
iii. Time is the immediate condition of all internal, and therefore the mediate condition of all external, phenomenon. Thus “all phenomena in general, that is, all objects of the senses, are in time [and in] relations of time.” Thus time is the formal condition a priori of all phenomenon.
1. Space is merely the pure form of external intuitions (of phenomena); but belongs to our internal state (as all representations, as determinations of the mind), and is thus subject to time.
iv. The objectivity of time is in its relationship to phenomenon, not to things-in-themselves; for independent of our mind it is nothing, but valid for all possible experience: it is not applicable, epistemologically, to things outside phenomenon.
1. Therefore, “all things, that is, objects of sensuous intuitions, are in time.” Only then can it [time] have universality a priori as well as objective reality.
2. Time has “objective validity in reference to all objects which can ever be presented to our senses,” but time has no claim to absolute reality as a property inhering in objects (or as a “condition of the thing”).
v. Time cannot subsist or inhere in things-in-themselves, and “we can find [an] objective reality as is itself empirical,” that is, in regard to objects as phenomenon.
V. Addendum and General Remarks
a. Elucidations: the external and internal sense are both of the “genus phenomenon,” meaning: (1) the objected considered as a thing-in-itself, without regards the mode of intuiting it (space, time), is problematic (epistemologically); (2) the form of our intuition of an object must not be sought in the thing-in-itself (metaphysical or absolute reality), but in the subject to which it appears – “which form of intuition nevertheless belongs…to the phenomenal object.”
i. Time/space are two sources of knowledge from which various a priori synthetical cognitions can be drawn. Pure mathematics being this cognition of space and/in its relations (but is applicable to objects only as phenomenon). Note the consequences the denial of knowledge or intuitions of transcendental (absolute) realities has on a metaphysics of God (or metaphysics of any kind!).
ii. The Transcendental Aesthetic can contain only space and time, since all other concepts (even motion = unity of space and time) relating to sensibility presuppose something (an object which is) empirical.
1. The Aesthetic cannot “number the conception of change among its data a priori,” since time, but only something in time, can change. To acquire the concept of change presupposed the perception of something changing (in time).
b. General Remarks on Transcendental Aesthetic
i. “[T]he representation in intuition of a body,” including ours, “contains nothing which would belong to an object considered as a thing-in-itself.” that is, it can contain no content for cognition. The phenomenon or appearance of something, and the mode in which we are affected by that appearance, are the only means by which we can gain content for cognition. Only our subjectivity determines the form of the object as a phenomenon.
ii. Space gives us synthetic a priori propositions of “apodictic certainty,” e.g., of geometry, which are given through intuitions and conceptions as such.
1. Empirical Propositions are synthetic a posteriori, of experience, and therefore cannot be necessary or universal.
2. Conceptions/intuitions (and propositions synthetic) a priori are given (constructed) by the object in intuition.
a. (1) In the subject, there exists a faculty of intuition a priori; (2) this subjective condition (in respect to form) is the universal condition a priori under which the object of external intuition is itself possible; (3) the geometric object fulfills (e.ii.2) a priori, else it couldn’t be necessary (is a synthetic a priori proposition deriving from the pure intuition of space).
b. “If…[space and time] were not a mere form of the intuition, which contains conditions a priori, …you could not construct any synthetical proposition regarding external objects.”
3. All in our cognition that belongs to intuitions contains nothing more than relations. These relations are: extension, motion, laws of motion. Therefore, through the sensibility, nothing but “mere representations of relations are given,” including the relation of the object to the subject.
a. Time contains relations of: succession, coexistence, permanence.
b. Form of intuition = nothing but relations. that is, “the mode in which the mind is affected by its own activity…its presenting to itself representations, [and] consequently the mode in which the mind is affected by itself; that is…an internal sense in respect to…form.”
c. Apperception: consciousness of self as the “simple representation of the Ego.” We have an internal perception of the representations previously given in us
d. If self-consciousness apprehends mental contents, it must affect them to produce an intuition of itself (in time).
iii. Phenomenon are actually given insofar as some property depends on the mode of intuition of the subject in the relation of the object to the subject. Hence all sensuous intuitions are ideal.
c. Summary
i. “We are in possession of pure a priori intuitions of space and time,” in which we find (when “in a judgment a priori we pass out beyond the given conception”) something which is not discoverable in that conception, but is found a priori in the intuition which corresponds to the conception, and can be united synthetically with it. Sphere of validity is phenomenal.
ii. Recapitulation:
1. All intuition is a representation of phenomenon; and the objects (and relations) of our intuition are not in-themselves (things-in-themselves).
2. If the subject is removed (the subjective constitution of our senses), then space and time, and the phenomena and relations in them, disappear. Phenomena only exist in the subject.
3. The nature of objects as things-in-themselves, without reference to the receptivity of sensibility, is unknown to the subject, since we know only (them only in) our mode of perceiving them.
4. Space and time are pure forms of intuition, antecedent to perception, and a priori (hence “pure intuition”).
5. Sensation = matter in cognition a posteriori = empirical intuition. Only form (pure intuition) pertains absolutely and necessarily to our sensibility, whatever our sensations may be.
A few phrases from the definitions were borrowed, maimed, and generally made more unclear than in the original, from here. Otherwise, the following is an outline of the first of two transcendental doctrines in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, the Transcendental Aesthetic, the outline of which follows.
