There are two different ways in which transcendental can be understood. On the one hand, we can claim the transcendentiality is the transcendent; something which exists outside the sphere of all possible cognitions – something not able to be given in empirical consciousness. On the other, the transcendental is that which lies at the ground of another thing, something without which it cannot be thought, given, or experienced. This type of the transcendent is what Kant is approaching in the Critique of Pure Reason – that without which we could not have the experiences – the phenomenal experiences – which we have. So when he speaks of a “transcendental unity of apperception,” it is clear why this is synonymous with a “primitive” unity. The unity of our manifold is a unity of possibilities, not of the content given through sense, but of a unity of the formal conditions of the sense of all objects. So, when he speaks of the transcendent, Kant is more grounded than would appear. For although the manifold can be considered as a “virtual” space, the conditions of it are the borders, boundaries, and delimitations, beyond which nothing can occur to us. The identification of an a priori action or faculty is then a concept which we synthesize from a series, disparate parts, and unity transcendentally – the unity is extant beforehand. We don’t unify it, but its unity is a necessary precondition. We identify it in unity.
This allows him to write, for instance, that:
It is by means of the transcendental unity of apperception that all the manifold given in an intuition is united into a conception of the object. On this account it is called objective, and must be distinguished from the subjective unity of consciousness, which is a determination of the internal sense, by means of which the said manifold in intuition is given emiprically to be so united.
The internal sense is, of course, Time. By means of conjoining different events occurring in time, which means affecting these events by our filtration of them – in order to be understood – , we make, of our will and volition, our imagination, a determinate representation of ourselves to ourselves. But his representation of ourselves differs from the transcendental unity of apperception, for my empirical perceiving of myself differs from the foundation of this possible cognition. This foundation, contrary to the empirical, the phenomenal world of sense, is:
“the pure form of intuition in time, merely as an intuition, which contains a given manifold, is subject to the original unity of consciousness, and that solely by means of the necessary relation of the manifold in intuition to the I think, consequently by means of the pure synthesis of the understanding, which lies a priori at the foundation of all empirical synthesis.
It’s interesting, in this sense, that Kant disparages the analysis of concepts as “empirical.” In fact, his rationalist roots, which up until now were expressed only in the form of these transcendental arguments, takes on a dogmatic stance. The determinations made “in concreto” are subject to error – “One person connects the notion conveyed in a word with one thing, another with another thing…[and that which] is given by experience [is not] necessarily and universally valid.” Similarly, these empirical effects of consciousness, effects of error, are listed elsewhere as memories, misrepresentations, illusions of judgments. But most importantly, I think, is that our living-in-the-world is the source of error, while only its possibility is the source of absolutely true concepts. It appears to be a kind of Platonic inversion – there are no longer transcendent forms, but transcendental foundations, and these grounds are purer than the life they make possible.
