The Aporia of Inner Sense: The Self-Knowledge of Reason and the Critique of Metaphysics in Kant 9789004182707, 9789004186750, 9789004215573

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The Aporia of Inner Sense

Critical Studies in German Idealism Series Editor

Paul G. Cobben Advisory Board

simon critchley – vittorio hösle – garth green klaus vieweg – michael quante – ludwig siep rózsa erzsébet – martin moors – paul cruysberghs timo slootweg – francesca menegoni

VOLUME 3

The Aporia of Inner Sense The Self-Knowledge of Reason and the Critique of Metaphysics in Kant

By

Garth W. Green

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2010

This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Green, Garth. W. The aporia of inner sense : the self-knowledge of reason and the critique of metaphysics in Kant / by Garth W. Green. p. cm. – (Critical studies in German idealism ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-90-04-18270-7 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724-1804. Kritik der reinen Vernunft. 2. Self-knowledge, Theory of. I. Title. II. Series. B2779.G73 2010 121–dc22 2010013404

ISSN 1878-9986 ISBN 978 90 04 18270 7 Copyright 2010 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Volume Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Chapter One. Introduction: An Aporia of Inner Sense? . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter Two. The Self-Knowledge of Reason: The Transcendental Topic and The Atopicality of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I. Critique of Pure Reason: A General Introduction to The Self-Knowledge of Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . II. The Intuitive Aspect of Cognition (Materialiter sic Dicta) . . . . i. The Passivity of our Knowledge (Per Modum Recipientis) . ii. The Transcendental Determination of Space (Situs corporis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. The Transcendental Determination of Time (Situs temporis) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta) . . . . . i. Form and Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii. Self-consciousness and Self-cognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . a. A First Attempt at Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . b. A Second Attempt at Deduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii. An Analytic of (Synthetic) Principles; Axioms, Anticipations, Analogies, and the Amplification of Inner Intuition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iv. A Problematic Idealism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v. Seelenlehre, Weltwissenschaft, Gotteserkenntnis . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

29 29 45 45 54 60 93 93 113 113 132

172 191 223

Chapter Three. Conclusion: The Antinomy Between Theory of Knowledge and Critique of Metaphysics in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291 Chapter Four. Appendix: The Aporia of Inner Sense and The Vom Inneren Sinne Fragment: A Principle for the Development of Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 309

vi

contents

Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to record here my gratitude for the support that made it possible for me to complete this work. For the Flemish Community Fellowship, the Bourse Chateaubriand, and the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici Dissertation Fellowship, I am appreciative of material support. But I am also appreciative of the opportunity to utilize the excellent collections of the libraries of the Institute for Philosophy at the University of Leuven and the Bibliotheque Nationale de France, and for the encouragement that followed from exposure to the great representatives of these countries’ traditions of Kantforschung (de Vleeschauwer in Belgium; Nabert and Lachièze-Rey in France, and Mathieu in Italy, for example). I would not have been able to write this book, which departs in certain important respects from traditional assumptions and directions in Anglophone interpretation, without such an extended exposure to their contributions and influence. I am indebted also to my advising professors; Ray L. Hart, my Doktorvater; Stanley Rosen, who first taught me how, if not what, to think; William Desmond, for his support and for his example; and Xavier Tilliette, S.J., for his encouragement of, and conviction in, a thesis still inarticulate, and for his insistence on the value of recording this research before pursuing its implications. I would like to dedicate this work to my Mother and Father (without whom, not), and to Giulia (without whom, naught else).

VOLUME FOREWORD

This book is the first systematic account in English of Kant’s doctrine of time as the form of inner sense. It is beyond doubt that this book deserves a place in the Critical Studies in German Idealism series. The doctrine is not only central in Kant’s theoretical philosophy, but the way in which it is critically discussed also does justice to all nuances of the Kantian argumentation. In its reception, the aporetic character of the doctrine has been acknowledged (to begin with by Kant himself), although many interpreters have tried to reason away the importance of the aporia. Precisely the controversial status of the doctrine, however, has inspired new generations of philosophers, not only within the tradition of German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling, Hegel), but also outside it (Husserl, Heidegger). This study shows that reflection on the doctrine remains challenging and promising for contemporary philosophy. Paul Cobben, Series Editor Tilburg University, The Netherlands

chapter one INTRODUCTION: AN APORIA OF INNER SENSE?

Research for this book was undertaken in earnest in  in an attempt to defend Kant—and specifically Kant’s doctrine of time as the form of inner sense—from critique. This critique appeared to me all the more damaging insofar as it originated in Kant’s first readers and critics and, while never becoming standard, persisted throughout the subsequent history of scholarship. Perhaps most damagingly, its principal exponents recently—Paton in English, de Vleeschauwer and Lachièze-Rey in French, Mathieu in Italian—were among the most important Kant scholars of their generations, while contemporary scholars with few exceptions simply had declined to engage either the intricacies of the doctrine or its interpretation, effectively allowing such critiques to stand by passing over them and Kant’s doctrine itself in silence. Four full years of research dedicated to this theme tempered my initial and perhaps uncritical enthusiasm for Kant’s doctrine of selfconsciousness and the role of the doctrine of inner intuition therein. I began to value comprehension over defense, understanding over apology. I further began to see the doctrine as a principle for Kant’s development of his theoretical philosophy, and as forming the principal problemcontext identified and resolved by Fichte (and Schelling), and hence as a principle for the development of Classical German Idealism as such. This more general significance of the theme replaced that more limited and defensive scholarly intention with which the work began. The task of understanding the course of the history of theoretical philosophy overcame in significance the task of defending the ipsissima verba, the every “letter,” of Kant’s first Critique. The work as eventually produced here does not bear, at least apparently, the marks of this origin. It proposes an interpretation that is in some sense also a critique, rather than an interpretation that is in every sense a defense. Nonetheless, its critical exegesis, from its first to its last pages, remains committed above all to the task of comprehending Kant’s doctrine of time as form of inner sense, its essence and functions. As a progressively more precise focus on the doctrine appears to me to offer

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both the most direct, and the least traveled, way or path to an understanding of the most general structure and development of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, I have allowed myself to bracket more traditional preoccupations. I can only hope that this sustained focus on this single element in the architectonic of reason will result in a more thoroughgoing recognition of its centrality, and importance, to more widely discussed elements of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Though I have devoted the majority of these pages to Kant’s exposition as it appears in the first and second editions of the Critique of Pure Reason—in which the doctrine is both most fully articulated and most integral to Kant’s argumentative intentions—I have not neglected to engage secondary source materials. These I have cited exhaustively (and addressed exhaustingly), in order that the reader be exposed to the perhaps surprising extent of concern over Kant’s doctrine, expressed in a variety of interpretive traditions and languages over more than one hundred years of modern Kant scholarship. Through engagements of these primary and secondary sources, I will suggest, and, I hope, confirm, that this doctrine is significant not only for its centrality within Kant’s architectonic of human cognition, but for its problematic character. This doctrine, admittedly, is peripheral to contemporary Anglophone scholarship; I recognize and will suggest throughout this work that it is as peripheral today as it was central to Kant across the ’s, to the early Kant-critiques of Fichte and Schelling,1 to the (radically different) Kantinterpretations of Husserl and Heidegger,2 and to Kantforschung in Germany until Heidegger, and in France and Italy to this day.3 This scholarly history was encouraging and important to me, as I attempted first to advance an apologetic account of Kant’s doctrine that was successful not because it evaded, but because it addressed and resolved, the intricacies of Kant’s doctrine. It became more important still to me as I have sought for concordance on a question essential both to Kant’s theoretical philosophy and critique of metaphysics and theology. 1

I have begun to explicate Fichte’s early critique of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense in “Fichte’s Critique of Kant,” in Idealistic Studies :  (December ), pp. –. 2 I have explored Husserl’s surprisingly detailed, critical reception of Kant’s doctrine of time as form of inner sense and inner time-consciousness more generally in “SelfConsciousness and Temporality; Fichte and Husserl,” forthcoming in Fichte-Studien Supplementa, Violetta Waibel, ed. (Rodopi, ). 3 I have explicated Michel Henry’s self-consciously “Fichtean” critique of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense in “Una fenomenologia trascendentale, Un’epistemologia fichtiana: L’eredità fenomenologica di Fichte in Husserl e Henry,” in L’eredità contemporanea della filosofia trascendentale (Editrice Università di Padova, ).

introduction



This essay, then, is devoted to Kant’s doctrine of inner sense; an element, I will suggest, central to Kant’s architectonic of human cognition and integral to the widest intentions of Kant’s philosophy. The thesis animating this essay is that Kant’s doctrine of inner intuition is aporetic, and contains within itself an unresolved—and on its own, original terms unresolvable—tension. The defense of this thesis will proceed exegetically by means of an engagement of Kant’s first systematic exposition of the doctrine—depicted famously by Weldon as “an essential” and yet unexplained “ingredient in Kant’s philosophy”4—as this appears in the Critique of Pure Reason. A close reading of this text will allow us to determine both the character and the function of the doctrine of inner intuition; both what it ‘is,’ and what it ‘does,’ both its formal place or position within the architectonic structure of the faculty of cognition, and its functional role within the dynamic activity or employment of this faculty. Throughout the essay—the first systematic account in English of Kant’s doctrine—I integrate received scholarly intimations and estimations of the doctrine of inner sense, in order to confirm the progress of the exegesis. In this way, I hope to contribute to achieved scholarly comprehension of Kant’s doctrine, its functions within Kant’s first Critique, and its role within the development of Kant’s theoretical philosophy.5 While nothing 4

T.D. Weldon, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Clarendon, Oxford, ), p. . I have not been able to include herein exegesis of the doctrine as it appears either in the third Critique (particularly its first Introduction of ) or in the Opus postumum. To these texts, and in this same thematic context, I hope to return in future publications. Nonetheless, in an Appendix, I have included a brief treatment of Kant’s Vom Inneren Sinne fragment. I do so in order to evince Kant’s own recognition of the problematic aspects of the doctrine as set out in the first Critique. In this way, the identification of the aporia of inner sense will be shown to be not an extrinsic interpretive imposition upon transcendental idealism, but an internal representation of the structure and dynamics intrinsic thereto, equal to Kant’s own mature understanding and estimation of the doctrine and its effects upon transcendental idealism generally. In a second volume, I will show how Fichte’s earliest philosophical writings in, for example, the (unpublished) Meditationen über Elementarphilosophie and (published) Aenesidemus Rezension and Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre in Rücksicht das theoretische Vermögen can be contextualized and properly understood as critical engagements, and resolutions, of the problematic aspects of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense. I will also suggest that these early texts of Fichte’s (a) cannot be understood thoroughly otherwise, (b) provide a thematic introduction to such later texts as the Tatsachen des Bewußtseins (in which Fichte’s concern with Kant’s doctrine becomes explicit again), and a key to (c) the character of Fichte’s philosophy of religion, as contained within this latter text and those of the mature, Berlin period works more generally (including the Wissenschaftslehre  and the Staatslehre ). Due to the complexity of Kant’s exposition of inner sense in the first Critique, and the only increasingly and indeed labyrinthine complexity that surrounds the doctrine in later texts, I have not attempted even to intimate the full significance of this 5

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chapter one

can be decided in an introduction, I would like now to introduce, even if only cursorily, the basic claims and contents of each chapter, and to situate my analysis with regard to prominent analyses of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense. The first section within Part One (“General Introduction”), then, begins from Kant’s intention to “set down the bounds of our knowledge as well as its entire internal structure,” in a “transcendental topic” of the cognitive faculty (B xxiii). Kant’s articulation, to this end, of the “complete and stable architectonic of all the components which constitute this structure” is set out progressively (A , B ). Kant’s doctrine of inner sense cannot be understood without first comprehending its place and function within the general structure of human cognition; for this reason, an enumeration and exposition of the elements or components of the faculty of cognition must precede any more precise consideration of the doctrine of inner sense as such. Kant’s articulation of these components reveals the “two sources” of human cognition, intuition and intellection, or sensibility and understanding. On this general contextual basis, the subsequent section (“Materialiter sic dicta”) follows Kant’s progressive determination of the faculty of intuition from its most general to its most specific features. Its first part (“Per modum recipientis”) determines the formal character and functional contribution of the faculty of intuition within the dynamic act of human cognition. An exegesis of the Aesthetic will articulate this contribution through an exposition of the principal theses of the Aesthetic and its “doctrine of sensibility” [Sinnenlehre]. Exegesis will reveal a priority thesis, indicative of the priority of intuition and its receptivity to intellection and its spontaneity in any synthetic cognition; “we have no concepts of understanding and hence no elements whatever for objectual cognition except insofar as an intuition can be given corresponding to these concepts” (B xxv). This exegesis will also reveal Kant’s general claim to an ideality thesis, by which the faculty of intuition will contribute the “characters” [Merkmale, Exponenten] of spatiality and temporality to the full constitution of our experience. Third, exegesis will uncover a heterogeneity thesis; the Aesthetic will reveal “two pure forms of sensible intuition,” independent in formal structure (A , B ). thematic to the development of post-Kantian theoretical philosophy. The latter desiderata in any case cannot be determined in advance but must be unfolded gradually, across equally close readings of the reception-history of the doctrine, both in transcendental and in phenomenological philosophy.

introduction



The second part (“Situs corporis”) of this section follows Kant’s exposition of the first of these two forms of sensible intuition; “space is the form of outer sense.” The characters [Merkmale] that further articulate spatial form will be asserted on this basis. From this formal structure follow the capacities and incapacities of outer sense, as well as the range or sphere of its possible employment. It is, for example, only through such characters and “only in space that shape, magnitude, and mutual relation are determined or determinable” (A , B ). The third part of this section (“Situs temporis”) treats of Kant’s exposition of the formal structure of our second form of sensible intuition; “time is the form of inner sense” (A , B ). Upon the basis of the heterogeneity thesis, according to which “time cannot be intuited outwardly, any more than space can be intuited as something within us,” Kant will further differentiate both the characters and capacities of the forms of intuition (A , B ). The inconstant rather than constant character of time—“a mere flux, chaos” of perpetual succession—qua form of inner intuition, will thus be claimed (A , B –; B ). Time, as form of inner sense, is “the sole form of our inner intuition, has nothing abiding and therefore yields knowledge only of the succession of determinations,” and “not of any object that can thereby be determined” (A ). From this inconstancy, then, Kant will extend his claim to the “indeterminacy” of the temporal “manifold of inner sense” (A , B ). Only, again, in the spatiality of outer sense is “shape, magnitude, and mutual relation determined or determinable” (A , B ). By means of this divisio in the character and capacities of outer sense and inner sense, Kant hoped not only to “secure” the conditions for cognition in outer intuition, but also to “limit” these conditions, by means of their exclusion from the formal “manifold” and sphere of inner intuition. Upon the basis of the first and second sections, the third section will set out not only Kant’s (a) positive or constructive intention to secure the conditions required for intuitive cognition, but also (b) the negative or critical intention to “bound” or restrict the range of such cognition. The “limits and scope” of the “valid use” of the cognitive faculty will thus be asserted (B ). Only outer sense will “possess a fixed or abiding element which supply a substratum as a basis for transitory determinations,” and thereby generate the conditions required for synthetic cognition (A ). On this exegetical basis, the first of two aspects of the aporia of inner sense will be articulated. This first, formal aspect of the aporia consists in this formal heterogeneity of inner sense from the sphere of outer intuition and the conditions that it alone

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chapter one

possesses. These conditions allow outer sense to yield genuinely synthetic cognition, whereas the absence of these conditions disallows the same representative capacity to the pure temporality of inner sense. Kant’s identification of outer intuition with the sciences of body, geometry and physics [Körperlehren], and inner intuition with the pretended “sciences” of rational psychology and rational theology [Seelenlehren], will be set out in this context. The subsequent principal section (“Idealiter sic dicta”) within Part One characterizes not the intuitive, but the intellective, contribution to cognition. The five sections thereof are dedicated to the principal relevant sections of the Analytic (i–iii) and the Dialectic (iv–v) respectively. The possibility, range, and status of the intellective contribution to cognition are determined progressively in each section. Kant’s attempt (a) to secure, positively, the possibility of synthetic cognition in a Deduction and (b) to assign, negatively, the impossibility or limits of such cognition in a Dialectic, will then be articulated. Both are shown to be based upon, and unintelligible except in terms of, the heterogeneity thesis of the Aesthetic. In the third and fourth sections, Kant’s exposition of inner sense as possessed of a “limiting condition,” by which cognition is restricted to outer intuition, is depicted. In this section, the restrictions or constraints originally put upon inner sense in the Aesthetic are further determined. By means of these constraints, Kant will claim, against Seelenlehren, that intellective and merely formal “self-consciousness is far from yielding [the conditions required for] self-cognition” in inner intuition (A ). Through exegesis, however, the necessity of also attributing a positive role to inner intuition in all synthetic cognition, both subjective and objective, is uncovered; it is “in fact through these latter principles [of the possible presentations of inner sense] that the principles of mathematics and of general dynamics acquire one and all their possibility” (A , B ). In this way, the “limiting condition” or Restriktionslehre that Kant would place upon inner intuition—as articulated first in the Aesthetic and applied in the Dialectic—is seen to possess consequences not only for Seelenlehren, but for Kant’s own attempt in the Analytic to achieve a transcendental topic of the formal possibility for synthetic cognition. These consequences concern both the subjective synthesis of mathematics and the objective synthesis of physics, and experience; each appears to require the capacity of inner sense to yield the conditions denied to inner sense in order that Kant advance his critical argumentation. This third part, then, isolates not only a first, formal aspect of the doctrine of inner sense, but also a second, functional aspect of the doc-

introduction



trine, within the ordo cognscendi. The denial of the conditions of determinacy and determinability to inner intuition is intrinsic to the architectonic of human cognition, and provides integral formal justification to central critical or negative argumentative intentions. These critical positions (first, against rational psychology and rational theology as Seelenlehren, and, second, against the problematic idealism of the secondedition Refutation of Idealism) require the indeterminacy of inner intuition. Constructively, however, it is only “by means of this [inner] intuition that we encompass within” or take up into, “our power of presentation all outer intuitions” (A , B ). In this dynamic activity, a determinate spatial object of outer sense is to be transposed through the indeterminate temporal form of inner sense, in order to be “taken up into” the intellective functions of the understanding. It will be shown that the heterogeneity thesis disallows this “transposition” (or, in the terms of the Opus Postumum,6 the “transition” [transitus] within, or “procession” [processus] through, the “grades” [Grade] of cognitive activity both subjective and objective). It will be shown that only an intuitive unity of the characters [Exponenten] of sensibility, time and space—as would contradict the heterogeneity thesis—can satisfy the requirement for a synthetic cognition of a determinate object, sensible in origin, individuated in intuition, and thereby definitive of the passivity of our intuition, or, in Heidegger’s phrase, the finitude of our cognition [intuitus derivativus]. Only through a possible interdependence of time and space as forms of intuition, it will be argued, rather than through their independence or formal heterogeneity, could this “transposition” be accepted as unproblematic. Only on this basis could an object of intuition be given to the understanding, and only as an object of intuition, rather than of intellection, can the spatial and temporal Exponenten of sensibility contribute to a possible synthetic cognition of a “materium dabile” or object as given. And only the complete “transcendental topic” of the formal structure of the cognitive faculty could validate Kant’s claim to have articulated the conditions for the possibility of genuinely synthetic cognition, rather than a merely analytic or intellectual relation among concepts. This intrinsic tension, then—between the formal demands of the (a) critical or negative intention of transcendental idealism, which requires the independence of the forms of intuition as asserted in the heterogeneity thesis, and the (b) constructive or positive intentions of

6

Ak, , .

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chapter one

transcendental idealism, which requires the interdependence and interdetermination of space and time within inner sense—will be examined throughout the exegesis to follow. Most generally; while for the positive argumentation of the Analytic, inner intuition must yield an “Inbegiff aller Vorstellungen,” for the negative argumentation of the Dialectic inner intuition must yield only an inconstant and aspatial, and hence indeterminate, manifold. While this work must necessarily appear to present its results only argumentatively, subsequent exegesis, including that of the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, will demonstrate this problematic to be not imposed upon Kant’s texts, but genuinely representative of their internal dynamic, which was even for Kant to become the guiding thread for his subsequent development of transcendental idealism. In other words, I wish to claim that there obtains an intrinsic tension within Kant’s architectonic of pure reason, an instability that can be traced to a particular element within that structure—the doctrine of time as form of inner sense. This tension can be named by distinguishing the positive and the negative (or ‘amplified’ and ‘restrictive,’ respectively) exigencies of the doctrine. Thus, in the Transcendental Analytic, Kant will set out his account of the nature and order of cognition. There, Kant will depict the function of intuition in the order of cognition, and the way in which intuitions could be “subsumed under” concepts. This order of cognition proceeds, paradigmatically, from outer sense, the realm of objects of our common experience, to inner sense, in which the discrete data of the five senses appear together ‘before the mind,’ in order to then be transposed to the activity of the intellect. Kant will write that it is only then, and “by means of this [inner] intuition,” that we encompass within or “take up into our faculty of representation all outer intuitions” (A , B ). As Kant puts the point; “all cognitions are nothing for us and are of no concern to us whatever if they cannot be taken up into consciousness” (A ). For this reason, inner intuition obtains as an Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen an “inclusive, universal representation.” The inclusiveness, or universality, of inner sense is necessary—within the Transcendental Analytic— in order that we accomplish an “[intellectual] representation of our [intuitive] presentation” (A ), or, in less technical terms, a formal concept of a material object. For this reason, Kant in the first-Edition Deduction will “amplify” inner sense in three steps. We will examine each in detail below. First (A –), in the “Synthesis of Apprehension,” Kant will argue for a spatio-temporal unity in inner sense, in order that inner sense be able to contain within it the outer object as intuited originally

introduction



in outer sense. He will assert that, “regardless of the place of origin of our presentations, as modifications of the mind they yet belong to inner sense” (A ). Second, in the “Synthesis of Reproduction” (A –A), Kant will argue for a constancy in inner sense. Kant will recognize that “if I always lost from my thoughts the preceding presentations . . . and did not reproduce them” in a constant series, there “could never arise a whole presentation” (A ). This constancy across time, Kant writes, must “amount to a determination of inner sense” (A ). Kant will build in this way to a third ‘synthesis’ or moment, a “synthesis of recognition” (A ). In the latter (A –), Kant will combine these claims to (spatio-temporal) unity and (temporal) continuity in order to argue for the conceptual determinability of inner sense. Kant thus will build gradually toward “that unity that only consciousness can impart” to inner intuition, in order that the order of cognition be consummated. Inner intuition, in other terms, must be amplified with the characteristics of spatiality, constancy, and conceptual determinability in order that it perform its function within the order of cognition. Only then can inner sense serve its integral role within Kant’s account of the nature of cognition, as “the formal a priori condition of all appearances universally.” Only then can inner sense serve as an Inbegriff, such that “any progress of perception, no matter what the objects may be” is “nothing but an expansion . . . of inner sense” (A , B ). But I will also show that Kant also advanced a negative, or restrictive, and contravening, construal of inner intuition. In the third major division of the work, the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant argued that inner sense cannot include, but rather excludes, these same characteristics and capacities. In the Paralogisms, for example, we read that inner sense cannot contain spatiality and its conditions. Kant writes that; “in us,” in inner sense, “there does not occur any relation of place, or motion, or shape, or any determination of space at all” (A ). In the same context, Kant asserted that inner sense possesses only an inconstant and indeterminate succession (B ); “in inner intuition we have nothing permanent at all” and in fact only a “mere flux, chaos” (B xl, A , B –; B ). For this reason, Kant asserts, inner intuition “yields absolutely no [conditions required for] cognition.” Inner intuition yields “knowledge only of the succession of determinations,” and “not of any object that can thereby be determined [conceptually]” (A ). Thus, the spatio-temporal unity, the constancy, and the conceptual determinability of inner intuition that Kant required for his account of the nature of cognition Kant also denies to inner intuition in his account of the limits of cognition, advanced

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in order to negate the possibility of rational-psychological and rationaltheological doctrine of the soul as Seelenlehren.7 Kant hoped to secure “safe passage” to the transcendental determination of the nature and limits of cognition, then, through a strait too narrow for the requirements of Seelenlehre. But the restrictions that Kant asserts would negate not only the formal conditions required for rational psychology, but also those conditions required for Kant’s account of the proper function of the order of cognition. In this tension, or antinomy, lies the significance of this theme both for Kant’s theoretical philosophy and for Kant’s critique of metaphysics and theology as Seelenlehren. This exegesis will establish the doctrine of inner sense in its proper centrality within the architectonic structure of human cognition, as its “punctum flexus contrarii” (Ak. , ) or node and point of greatest tension.8 In an Appendix dedicated to the recently discovered Vom Inneren Sinne fragment (“Das Ich als Gegenstand des inneren Sinnes”), the unresolved elements of the same doctrine will be shown to function as both the principle and problem-context for Kant’s subsequent development of his doctrine of knowledge. The argumentation of the paralogisms of the first Critique and the cosmological antinomy will in this way provide a transition to the fragment’s central concept of “cosmological apperception.” This fragment attests to Kant’s continuing (though unpublished) concern with the intrinsic tension between the constructive and criti7 It is to this end that Kant asserts that “the thinking I, the soul (a name for the transcendental object of inner sense)” must not have “any use whatever extending to actual objects, and hence cannot expand in the least our cognition” (A ). In this way, Kant hoped to make impossible rational psychological and rational theological pretensions to a cognition of the soul as an object of experience and an object of inner sense. Kant wrote (A –, B ) of an ascending series or “progressus” from the first transcendental idea of the “unity of the thinking subject,” and its theoretical expression in a “doctrine of the soul,” to the latter transcendental idea [of God]. Kant worries over the apparently natural and unproblematic character of this scala Iacob, which “proceeds from the cognition of oneself (the soul) . . . to [the cognition of] the original being.” Its trajectory proposes “so natural an advance that it seems similar to reason’s logical progression from premises to conclusion” (A , B ). This “Platonic soaring,” and its itinerary from physics to philosophy to theology, would instantiate or enshrine theology at the level of “our speculative power of reason” (B  note). Against this theoretical possibility, Kant asserts that inner sense must not allow for any “objective use” whatever (A , B ). For this reason, Seelenlehre and Gotteserkenntnis are said to “surpass the boundary of all experience.” All such principles must necessarily remain “problematic” and unprovable (A , B ). In other words, this apparently merely technical point regarding an apparently scholastic principle, that of inner sense, is instead essential both to Kant’s theory of knowledge, and to Kant’s critique of metaphysics and theology. 8 Ak, , .

introduction

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cal intentions of transcendental idealism, and the manner in which the contravening requirements of each are concentrated within the aporetic doctrine of inner sense. While scholarly attention to, and concern with, the form and function of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense was most intense throughout the earliest decades of the nineteenth-century, many recent accounts have also indicated its centrality and salience to the widest intentions of transcendental idealism. De Vleeschauwer had already admitted that “it goes without saying that the deductions of the existence of the ‘I’ ” as an object of inner sense “could never satisfy us, even in the context of critical philosophy. They raise a series of questions to which the text was not able to answer, and to which Kant likely had been too embarrassed to answer.”9 Weldon had warned that “the doctrine of inner sense is therefore essential to [Kant’s] view, if it is to get beyond generalities.” Indeed, “detailed consideration of it is essential if he is to be treated seriously.”10 Weldon also notes, however, that any such serious or advanced understanding of Kant’s philosophy is not without cost; “difficulties begin to multiply as soon as the distinction between space as the form of outer sense and time as the form of inner sense is taken seriously.” Weldon instructed his generation of scholars that “very little consideration is needed to reveal the embarrassments to which the distinction gives rise.” Importantly, Weldon traced the differences in manner and matter of exposition between the first and second editions of the first Critique to the doctrine of inner sense, noting that “the additions introduced in B . . . are designed very largely to elucidate difficulties in the doctrine of inner sense,” precisely those “which had already given rise to serious criticism” amongst Kant’s first readers.11 Paton, too, would announce in the conclusion to his ample discussion of the aporia that “a fuller working out of his doctrine is urgently required.”12 It is hoped that this recovery of long-ignored or misunderstood scholarly accounts of Kant’s doctrine will provide a stimulus to redirect scholarly attention to the doctrine, to its role in securing both constructive and critical argumentation essential to transcendental 9 H.J. De Vleeschauwer, La déduction transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant (Paris, ), v. II, p. . 10 T.D. Weldon, Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Oxford, Clarendon Press, ), pp. –. 11 ibid, . 12 H.J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience (London: Allen and Unwin, ), v. II, p. .

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idealism, and to its salience in the development of both Kant’s philosophy and post-Kantian philosophy. As important, however, is the attainment of the critical sympathy represented by these accounts, by means of which an intractable problem in Kant’s special metaphysical doctrine of inner intuition is not allowed to impugn the great value of the general metaphysical doctrine of transcendental idealism as such, or discourage conviction in the possibility or importance of its intentions. The salience of the doctrine of time as the form of inner sense, and more specifically the heterogeneity thesis, has been recognized recently by several interpreters. There is, in the doctrine of time as form of inner sense, something undoubtedly “scolastique”, as Benoist has put it. But this same scholar suggests that in “la question de la dissymétrie du temps et de l’espace,” here named the heterogeneity thesis, there nonetheless “demeure certainement le point de passage obligé de toute interprétation globale de la Critique de la raison pure, car y est en jeu le sens même de l’objectivité.”13 Pippin, for example, has suggested that Kant’s doctrine of inner intuition a priori “involves much more than a technical clarification of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense.”14 For Pippin, “it should be stressed that some very important, foundational elements in his whole theory here receive a crucial test.” For upon this doctrine rest “the most important results of Kant’s argument in the Critique,” and “from this flows,” i.a., “the entire criticism of the metaphysical tradition.”15 In Kant’s 13 Jocelyn Benoist, Kant et les limites de la Synthèse: Le sujet sensible (Paris, PUF, ), p. . 14 Robert Pippin, Kant’s Theory of Form (New Haven, Yale University Press, ), p. . 15 In indicating the role of the doctrine of inner sense in Kant’s “critique of metaphysics” in the subtitle to this work, I intend not what I have termed elsewhere (in “The Future of the Past: Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and The Unfolding of Modern Philosophy of Religion,” forthcoming) Kant’s “first” or most influential critique of theology (see A , B , note )—that of Erkenntnis Gottes. For an admirable presentation of this argumentation, as contained in the Ideal of Pure Reason, the reader may see the expert and balanced views of Allen Wood in Kant’s Rational Theology (Cornell University Press, London, ). I intend instead Kant’s “second” critique of metaphysics and theology as Seelenlehren, deemed dialectical in the Paralogisms on the basis of the doctrine of inner sense. I differentiate, in other words, the anti-Aristotelian and anti-Thomistic argumentation of the Ideal of Pure Reason from the anti-Platonic and anti-Augustinian argumentation contained in the Paralogisms and directed against, e.g., Malebranche, and his ‘Cartesian Augustinianism.’ In other words, one should not suppose that there is a ‘single’ argument in the Dialectic, advanced by means of the doctrine of inner sense, against ‘the metaphysical tradition,’ since only the proof-structure of the argument in the Paralogisms against Leibniz and Malebranche requires inner intuition. Kant’s critique of Gotteslehre in the Ideal of Pure Reason, instead, stands or falls independently of inner sense and any

introduction

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“dark theory of ‘inner’ sense,” Pippin rightly intimates, is contained the full range of tensions definitive of transcendental idealism.16 Baumanns for this reason juxtaposes Kant’s various and variant construals of inner intuition, naming these the “coordination” (Koordination) thesis, the “disjunction” (Disjunktion) thesis, and the “subsumption” (Subsumption) thesis, and denounces the “Unklarheit über Koordination oder Subsumption des äußeren Sinnes” to inner sense. For this reason, Baumanns will consider Kant’s depictions of the character and capacities of time as form of inner intuition to be a “principal problem (Hauptproblem)” of transcendental idealism, which requires no less than the “systematische Klärung des Verhältnisses von innerer und äußerer Erfahrung.”17 Nonetheless, in spite of such important indications, much Kant scholarship has continued to evade engagement of this central doctrine. It is precisely for this reason that Ferrarin, in Italy, has identified “the general task that transcendental philosophy must undertake” as the “comprehensive analysis of the relation between spontaneity and form, and thereby between inner sense and space.” This investigation is, for Ferrarin, not only “of crucial importance,” as historiography, but “at the same time a surprisingly fruitful notion” in itself, in its genuine philosophical content.18 In terms of the history of philosophy, indeed, “German Idealism

problem therewith. We will return to the theme of the relation between Seelenlehre and Gotteslehre, and the “kinship” (A , B ) between them as forms of “metaphysics,” below. 16 Ibid, –. 17 For Baumanns’ attempt at this ‘systematic clarification,’ see pp. – (XI... Die transzendentale Topik der Reflexionsbegriffe) and pp. – (XII. Die Paralogismen der spekulativen Psychologie) of Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” (Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ). See also pp. –. Baumanns treats inner sense as a universal representation, “das Medium aller synthetischen Urteile,” and as an Inbegriff, “darin alle unsere Vorstellungen enthalten sind,” on p. . 18 Pippin, in Kant’s Theory of Form (New Haven, Yale University Press, ), hopes similarly for an explication of “how much and for what reasons this kind of issue in particular . . . became the issue most problematic for the philosophers greatly influenced by Kant.” For “Kant’s lack of success in defending it clearly, is just what Fichte, for all his obscurity, saw clearly in raising the problem of the ‘deduction’ of the ‘nicht-Ich’ from the ‘Ich’ . . . ” Pippin “would venture to say that this issue above all . . . is one of the best ways to view the entire complex of problems in the philosophic movement known as German Idealism” (ibid, ). Neither Pippin nor Ferrarin nor any other in English has fully justified this programmatic claim. Since Paton had issued the same proclamation, noted above, the systematic and definitive comprehension of Kant’s doctrine of time as the form of inner sense has remained a desideratum.

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could find a seminal and paradigmatic theme for some of its guiding theses at a theoretical level.”19 I hope to set out the basis for the demonstration of this claim in the body of this essay.20 Ferrarin himself credits Heidegger with revealing the centrality and importance of Kant’s doctrine of time to the history of scholarship; “Heidegger deserves the credit for drawing attention to the central role of time . . . in Kant’s philosophy.”21 19 Alfredo Ferrarin, “Kant on the Exhibition of a Concept in Intuition,” Kant-Studien  (), pp. –, . 20 While further congruence could be adduced, such concordance is best issued in the context of exegesis, on points of precise concern and particular interest. I should note, however, that if prominent scholarly results may need to be amalgamated, none of the aporetic aspects of the doctrine of inner sense remains undiagnosed; both the precise character and the problematic centrality of Kant’s doctrine has been identified and isolated. This essay intends through its review of scholarly sources to coordinate disparate and often poorly disseminated research, in order to contextualize specialized results and systematize important, though partial, representations of the problematic. For in spite of the authority and prominence of several of such accounts, the aporetic centrality of the doctrine of inner sense has resisted general understanding. This constant reference to both Kant’s own exposition and scholarly exposition thereof will allow the exegesis to follow to claim, as Moreau has requested, “a deeper comprehension of the Transcendental Aesthetic,” and its effects upon the widest intentions of Kant’s philosophy, a “more precise analysis of the relations between outer sense and inner sense” “Le temps, la succession et le sens interne,” in Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses, Gerhard Funke, ed. (Berlin, de Gruyter, , p. ). 21 Ferrarin, ibid, –. Works such as Weisz’s Kants Lehre von Raum und Zeit (Leipzig ) and Lasswitz’s Die Lehre Kants von der transzendentalen Idealität des Raumes und der Zeit (Berlin ), were among the first modern, full-length scholarly accounts to systematically situate the doctrine, generated a scholarly tradition throughout the early twentieth-century. They were quickly followed, however, by Emil Arnoldt’s Kants transzendentale Idealität des Raumes und der Zeit: Für Kant, gegen Trendelenburg (Gesammelte Schriften, v. II, Berlin, ), which proposed an important early defense of Kant’s doctrine. Reininger’s important  work, Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinne und seine Theorie der Erfahrung, while acknowledging the centrality of the doctrine of inner sense, inspired a series of apologetic works; Knothe’s  Erlangen Dissertation, Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinn und ihre Auffassung bei Reininger and Radamaker’s  Marburg Dissertation, Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinne in der KdrV both advanced Reininger’s hermeneutic intention. Van Biéma (L’espace et le temps chez Leibniz et chez Kant [Dissertation, Paris, ]), advanced an understanding of the pre-critical context of the doctrine of inner sense, as well as its problematic formulation in the first Critique. Haering also accomplished important work on the pre-critical philosophy in Der Duisburg’sche Nachlass und Kants Kritizismus um  from ], while Monzel too helped to establish in the context of German language scholarship the pre-critical context for the doctrine in his  Kant-Studien article “Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinn und der Zeitbegriff im Duisburg’schen Nachlass.” He also confronted the problematic character of the doctrine of inner sense in Die Lehre vom inneren Sinn bei Kant: Eine auf entwicklungsgeschichte und kritische Untersuchungen gegründete Darstellung from . Heinemann reviewed this scholarly trajectory in his Der Aufbau von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft und das Problem der Zeit, which was based on his  Marburg Dissertation, Das Zeitproblem

introduction

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Actually, German scholarship prior to Heidegger had already focused on the doctrine of time as form of inner sense, and indeed on the heterogeneity thesis.22 But the spirit of revision that notoriously animates Heidegger’s account animates more recent, Anglophone treatments of the doctrine as well. I would suggest that, since an apologetic interpretive stance on the doctrine represents the dominant and standard position within Anglophone interpretation, a cursory review of the two principal forms of apology is still more important than the brief indications of concordance noted above. A first general type of account has acknowledged the problematic character of the doctrine of inner sense only in the service of a general defense of Kant’s philosophy. By means of this strategy, difficulties with und der Aufbau der Kantischen Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Krönig approached the problem of Kant’s late formulations of self-consciousness in “Das Problem der Selbstsetzung in seiner Entwicklung von Kant bis Fichte mit besonderer Berücksichtigung von J.S. Beck” in his Hamburg Dissertation of , as did Lüpsen in his  Marburg Dissertation “Die systematische Bedeutung des Problems der Selbstsetzung in Kants opus postumum.” Without wishing to neglect the contribution of Adickes (in Kants Lehre von der doppelten Affektion unseres Ich als Schluessel zu seiner Erkenntnistheorie from ), it must be said that with Nabert (‘L’expérience interne chez Kant,’ Revue de metaphysique et de morale , ) the aporia is explicated most insightfully, and with Lachièze-Rey (L’Idealisme kantien [Paris, Vrin, ]) it is explicated most articulately and systematically, in a way that establishes the basic character of French interpretation to this day. Please see the footnotes of the following exegesis for my engagement of these contributions, and the bibliography for a more precise citation. 22 Heidegger’s Phänomenologische Interpretation of Kant’s doctrine of time appears to have eclipsed the influence of earlier works on the problematic character of the doctrine of inner sense. His depiction of Kant’s doctrine as “the most radical understanding of time, unachieved either before Kant or after Kant” and as a “great metaphysical advance” nonetheless and famously required a “more original explication of the concept of time” by Heidegger himself. Of course, Heidegger intends to expose not what Kant explicitly did say but rather what he “should have said” (GA  ; KPM XVII). This provides adequate motive for dealing with Heidegger separately, differently, and with reserve, of course. See, e.g., Phaenomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Part I, Ch. II, Section  (Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt am Main, ). After suggesting that “Heidegger deserves the credit for drawing attention to the central role of time . . . in Kant’s philosophy,” Ferrarin continues; “one of the main problems with his interpretation, however “is that it cannot account for the eccentricity of mathematical schematism and for the notion of construction,” precisely because it systematically evades the heterogeneity thesis (see “Mathematical Synthesis, Intuition, and Productive Imagination in Kant,” in The Sovereignty of Construction: Essays in the Thought of David R. Lachterman, –). Thus, “Heidegger’s phenomenological reading of Kant’s notion of subjectivity never focuses on the relation between the originary temporality and its existence and representability in space—in images, signs, symbols, and figures . . . in his comment on the schema of substance—the only example from the Analytic of Principles he exceptionally stops to illustrate in  (§ )—Heidegger does not stress that time

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and within the doctrine are not explained but rather explained away, apologetically. This defensive strategy will be illustrated by means of an important account from a past generation, that of H.W. Cassirer. A second prominent apologetic strategy has consisted in a general defense of Kant’s philosophy only by means of a refusal to acknowledge the doctrine of inner sense, and proceeds by means of its explicit negation or rejection, and hence an implicit reconstruction or revision of a central element of Kant’s philosophy. H.W. Cassirer’s work is representative of the first manner of apology. Cassirer initiates his account by admitting that “even the most fervent admirers of Kant, have, generally speaking, been ready to agree that there were great difficulties in the Transcendental Aesthetic” pertinent to the heterogeneity thesis.23 In fact, Cassirer “finds the majority of Kant’s remarks in the Aesthetic so unconvincing that my original plan to ignore it altogether was discarded with a good deal of reluctance.” Cassirer’s disinclination toward the doctrine had to be tempered nonetheless with the recognition of its centrality to Kant’s architectonic of human cognition; for “unless a Kantian expositor was prepared to take up a definite attitude towards the opinions expressed by Kant early in the Critique, he [is] hardly in a position to give an intelligible account of . . . Kant’s doctrine of the understanding propounded in the Transcendental Analytic,” itself contextualized by and founded upon the heterogeneity doctrine first expounded in the Aesthetic.24 Against “the criticism certain contemporary philosophers have made, that Kant’s theory of space and time must be considered untenable”— presumably the trenchant criticisms of Ward and Caird, which will be introduced in their proper complexity in our exegesis—Cassirer will

as lasting presence is defined by appeal to the permanence of a reality in space,” defined as heterogenous to the pure succession of inner sense. This obfuscation, though brilliant, appears to have discouraged further advances in critical, scholarly understanding of the heterogeneity thesis, definitive of Kant’s doctrine of time as the form of inner sense. For Ferrarin as for Benoist, the heterogeneity thesis is “le grand impensé de la lecture heideggerienne” (Benoist, ibid, ). For analysis of the way in which (a) “ ‘temporal’ has a distinctive sense for Heideger that is rather remote from Heidegger’s characterizations of the pure intuition of time” (), (b) “Kant’s account of self-affection is diametrically opposed to the interpretation given it by Heidegger” (), and (c) “Heidegger’s claim that the predicates of time and apperception coincide in the KrV is directly denied by Kant,” see Daniel Dahlstrom, “Heidegger’s Kantian Turn,” Review of Metaphysics, v. xlv, n.  (Dec. ), pp. –. 23 Kant’s First Critique (London, Muirhead Library, ). 24 Ibid, .

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insist that “there is a good deal of truth in what Kant has to say about the general character of the intuitive element in knowledge.” In order to bring out this truth, Cassirer will shift, in his unwilling account of the Aesthetic, from a refusal to treat of the heterogeneity thesis, to an engagement of the ideality thesis and the passivity thesis, introduced above. This “general character of human knowledge” as claimed by Kant’s doctrine of intuition and as understood by Cassirer will consist merely in the claim that our faculty of sensibility “is essentially passive.” This underdetermination of Kant’s doctrine of intuition causes Cassirer to read over the heterogeneity in form between inner intuition and outer intuition, and attend only to “a distinction between what [Kant] terms sensible intuition, on the one hand, and on the other, intellectual operations which he considers never to be wholly passive.”25 Cassirer, then, only records the second, derivative heterogeneity in origin between a passive “sensible intuition” as such and the spontaneity of our intellect.26 While “Kant was quite right in insisting upon a sharp distinction between sensible intuition, on the one hand, and understanding, or consciousness proper, on the other,” yet the fact that “Kant’s account of space and time rests upon unsound principles” is evaded.27 At this point, however, interpretation moves from exegesis to apology, and from apology to reconstruction; Cassirer’s hermeneutic consists of the maxim that, “whenever there were difficulties of interpretation, I have sought to remove them.”28 Cassirer’s hope to improve upon Kant’s doctrine simply by removing its intrinsic elements is not unproblematic, either in principle or in implication. For the heterogeneity thesis, and the incapacities of inner intuition which Kant infers from it, are central, for example, to the refutation of rational psychology in the Dialectic. And yet, to Cassirer, “the argument of the Aesthetic appears to me, in a good many respects, incapable of defense,” precisely because for the “great difficulties even in his 25

Ibid,  ff. See also p. . Reconstrued apologetically in this way, Cassirer is able to assure his reader that “my own view of Kant’s analysis is that he is right in most of what he has to say” (). All else will be deemed inessential, and a crucial element in Kant’s Sinnenlehre will be displaced or disregarded. In this way, Cassirer formulates his own Methodenlehre or governing method that will be applicable to a wide range of interpreters on other points quite distinct; “I have made the most strenuous efforts to make at least some sort of sense of Kant’s most difficult argument” (). First among the “corrections and modifications I have recommended” (), toward the end of improving upon the doctrine which had claimed his fidelity, are those pertinent to the heterogeneity in form between inner intuition and outer intuition. 27 Ibid, . 28 Ibid, . 26

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central contention, namely, that space and time are to be regarded as a priori forms of intuition.”29 And yet, Cassirer asserts, or will hope, that “there is nothing seriously wrong with Kant’s general view of sensible intuition, and that it is perfectly possible to state his position in unobjectional terms” as long as heterogeneity is evaded. Thus, Kant’s depiction of the “essential character of all sensible awareness” is contained already in “the two fundamental characteristics of (a) receptiveness and passivity and (b) directness and immediacy.” And “whatever doubts we may feel about the rest of his theory,” i.e., the heterogeneity thesis, “there would seem to be no good grounds for finding fault with Kant’s general account of sensation.”30 Cassirer cannot, of course, completely ignore the heterogeneity thesis. Cassirer will enumerate a series of Kant’s assertions of the atemporality of outer sense, and the aspatiality of inner sense, including that “time cannot be intuited outwardly and more than space can be intuited as something within us” from A , B . In summary conclusion, however, Cassirer will only offer that “the passages quoted give rise to certain difficulties which it would be unprofitable to discuss . . . ” Thus, we need not “enquire into his reasons for holding . . . that spatial predicates are applicable to certain phenomena but not to others.”31 Of such assertions of heterogeneity, “it is on reflection impossible to attach much importance to the various statements Kant makes, with a view to indicating the way in which space and time are distinguished from one another.” In order “to render his general position at all defensible, the statements he makes about space and time must have considerable modifications imposed upon them.”32 Cassirer will resolve instead to “consider what he has to say about those properties which space and time share in common,” an intention which, predictably, returns the reader to the same general ideality and passivity thesis deemed amenable to apology.33 Regarding any direct confrontation with the heterogeneity thesis, Cassirer admits that “I have disregarded space” as the form of outer sense “because of the complication that Kant wishes to restrict its applicability to a particular class among sensible phenomena.” Cassirer does not further consider the necessity of the hetero-

29 30 31 32 33

Ibid, –. Ibid, . Ibid, –. Ibid . Ibid, .

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geneity thesis to Kant’s critical attempt to “limit” the bounds of synthetic cognition in the Dialectic against rational psychology and rational theology as “doctrines of the soul” [Seelenlehre].34 With this perhaps convenient evasion, Cassirer will conclude that “the expository part of our enquiry into Kant’s theory of space and time has now been brought to a close,” hardly having begun. Nonetheless, Cassirer admits that it remains “a source of considerable irritation to the contemporary student of the Critique to find Kant so ready to speak of different faculties of knowledge, and to watch him splitting up the human mind into heterogeneous powers.”35 Cassirer, in no way uniquely, will hope that this heterogeneity will remain no more than an irritation. If the doctrine of inner sense were indeed peripheral in Kant’s account of the nature and limits of human cognition, Cassirer’s strategy would be both justified and appropriate. I hope to show in what follows, however, that it is essential, and that segregating it from our understanding of Kant’s theoretical philosophy in the name of an apologetic understanding actually engenders misunderstanding.36 34

Ibid, . On p. , Cassirer admits that, “however, it gradually dawned upon me that there was in fact an indissoluble connection between the doctrine advocated in the Dialectic and the various arguments Kant propounds in the Aesthetic and Analytic . . . I was obliged to concern myself with the whole of the First Critique, even those parts of which I had always been mortally afraid . . . ” 35 Ibid, , –. 36 The centrality of inner intuition within the architectonic, and its importance to the arguments against Seelenlehre, disallows this policy of dismissal. In Ch. XI (‘Kant’s Treatment of the Metaphysical Theory of the Self ’), Cassirer asserts that “it would be a waste of time to worry ourselves about particular points of Kant’s exposition, since the theory of mind he seeks to refute is completely out of date, so that no present day philosopher will be prepared to attach much importance to it.” But of course the “theory of mind” Kant had addressed in the refutations of rational psychology and rational theology is only out of date because of Kant’s argument, which begs the question of its veracity or legitimacy. Again, however, “the main trend of Kant’s criticism . . . will be grasped easily enough, even though” or as long as “no special attention be paid to the way in which it is applied in detail” (). Cassirer notes important differences in Kant’s argumentation in the  and  editions, but attributes the disparity only to the “extremely longwinded” character of the former. Cassirer so abstracts from the precise character of the argument that its very point—of attributing the conditions for synthetic a priori cognition to outer sense and not to inner sense—escapes him; “all [Kant] means is to assert that selfknowledge and knowledge of external objects are on precisely the same footing, insofar as what becomes known manifests itself by way of being given” (–). Of course, the manifold of inner sense is not on “equal footing” epistemically with the manifold of outer sense, any more than “the science of the soul” [Seelenlehre] is on equal footing with the “sciences of body,” geometry and physics as Körperlehre. The underdetermination of the heterogeneity doctrine can be shown in this way to be of distinct advantage to apology, but only a distinct disadvantage to understanding. This underdetermination of, or refusal to

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While Cassirer’s account is not universally authoritative, it may yet serve as an introduction to argumentative and apologetic strategies advanced by a majority of (English-language) interpreters who have engaged Kant’s doctrine of inner sense. The general intention of Cassirer’s strategy has become normative. Falkenstein for this reason decries “a deplorable tendency on the part of many Kant scholars to use the principle of charity unscrupulously to interpret away anything . . . on the assumption that . . . [Kant] . . . could not possibly have had an incoherent . . . or false thought.” Although the point is put no doubt too sharply, the impression that Falkenstein records is nonetheless, on the question of inner sense and on the part of a few interpreters, difficult to resist.37

countenance, the heterogeneity thesis is, then, detrimental to an accurate understanding of the basic structural features of the Critique (the relation between the Aesthetic and Analytic, as well as the Aesthetic and Dialectic). Such an apology for Kant’s doctrine, sustained only by an insistence on a general, appreciative reading, has been made in the legitimate name of an affirmative scholarly understanding. I will argue, however, that such refusals to engage Kant’s “most central” doctrine in its intrinsic complexity obscures both the architectonic structure of, and dynamic movement within, the act of human cognition in the first Critique, and any basis for our comprehension of the principle for the development of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. The continued centrality of the doctrine to Kant’s philosophy will be brought out through a reading of Kant’s Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, in which I will suggest, even if not definitively prove, the continued and unresolved significance of the doctrine of time as form of inner sense in Kant’s later writings. In future publications, I will argue that this thematic context can illuminate a series of texts that have remained equally dark or resistant to interpretation. These include Kant’s own Opus postumum, but include also Fichte’s early Kant critiques, as expressed in, e.g., the Meditations and Aenesidemus Rezension. It will be shown that the scope and significance of these doctrines, and thus transcendental philosophy as such, will only become evident when their proper thematic context—the problem to which each was written as a response and resolution—is clarified. The comprehension of the doctrine of inner sense in the first Critique, I would suggest, is thus a precondition for further scholarly advances in the understanding of the theoretical philosophy of transcendental idealism. 37 L. Falkenstein, Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ), pp. –. With Falkenstein, Benoist specifies in particular “commentateurs anglo-saxons” for their silence, and criticizes “la tendance générale des interprètes que d’essayer de ‘sauver’ le sens interne” () at the expense of the letter and spirit of Kant’s own exposition. Citing “la question classique de ce qu’on a pu appeler le ‘privilège du temps’ dans la Critique de la raison pure” (), Benoist argues, as has French scholarship since Lachièze-Rey, that one “assurément faut-il creuser plus avant” () toward its systematic comprehension. Benoist identifies in particular Paton, for his infamous suggestion that Kant’s doctrine suffers most from mere infelicity in expression (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, v. II, ) and Kemp Smith’s (Commentary , ) mere intimations of complexities and problems left intentionally unexplored. (See Gendlin for a similar criticism of Kemp Smith in ‘Time’s Dependence on Space,’ in Kant and Phenomenology, –.) Similarly, Ferrarin has also criticized more recent

introduction

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A second and apologetic strategy may be viewed, instead, as explicitly and intentionally rather than implicitly and unintentionally revisionary. This strategy shares the apologetic intention of the first defensive strategy, but shares little with standard forms of scholarly exegesis and norms of understanding. Such apologetic or defensive accounts of Kant’s philosophy have been predicated on the explicit dismissal or negation of the heterogeneity thesis, in spite of its evident centrality to the architectonic and necessity to Kant’s critical intentions. The account of Waxman is illustrative of this second tendency. On the recognition of the problematic heterogeneity in intuition, Waxman, with Longuenesse on this point, has suggested that we reconstitute or “recognize Kant’s transcendentally ideal time as wholly a product of imagination,” rather than as pertaining to sensibility and our form of inner sense.38 This revision is to be performed in order that “the pure synthesis correlates of apprehension—reproduction—recognition are constitutive of time rather than presupposing it” as found in inner sense and subject to its ‘limiting condition.’39 Waxman has attempted this reconstruction on the premise that on the “standard view” of the priority of intuition to intellection, “the Kantian attempt to subordinate appearances to the categories . . . especially subjective succession” in inner sense, would otherwise be “so much smoke and mirrors.”40 Unreconstructed, the “keystone” that is the “transcendental schematism . . . becomes a complete farce, since there clearly is nothing imagination can do ex post facto to bring a presynthetic subjective succession of appearances” of inner sense “under the categories.”41 Waxman admits the necessity, on critical principles, of denying the conditions for the possibility of a categorial determination of an object to the manifold of inner sense. Waxman also admits, however, the problematic implication for Kant’s positive or constructive argumentation. It is this latter prominent English-language interpretations of the Sinnenlehre (ibid, ) precisely since each “misunderstands the centrality of the notion of time.” In each case, “inner sense is not thematic.” For Ferrarin, “none . . . realizes that [with] time as inner sense mathematics” and the possibility of its subjective synthesis “stands or falls,” as does, indeed, the objective synthesis of experience and physics as such. This essay will restrict itself, however, to an exegetical adjudication of Kant’s own contravening claims regarding the form and function—both positive or constructive and negative or critical—of inner intuition a priori, adducing scholarly contributions for their importance or influence where relevant. 38 See Kant’s Model of the Mind (New York, Oxford University Press, ), p. . 39 Ibid, . 40 Ibid, . 41 Ibid, .

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recognition that lies at the basis of Waxman’s revision. Waxman states clearly that “unless Kantian imagination can reach all the way down to the appearances (perceptions) themselves and lay claim to the flux of inner sense, his entire attempt to surmount the challenge of Humean skepticism will be brought to nought.”42 Waxman states clearly that “as I interpret him, the distinction between outer and inner does not even exist at the level of sense . . . ,” as for Waxman “they [intuitions] are neither inner, nor outer, nor anything else” because intuition is already intellectual.43 Waxman makes equally clear the necessity of this revision; the (inner) consciousness of (outer) consciousness, or “noticing what we are noticing would be impossible since, in the absence of a formal representation of manifoldness whereby clearly perceived sensations can manifest themselves to inner sense as they do to outer, there could be no intuitive (sensible) awareness of the noticing to which to attend.” Waxman will even suggest that while “spatial intuition . . . might conceivably still occur, psychological phenomena would be nonexistent: our spontaneity would have no corresponding sensible actuality,” or could not be exhibited in inner intuition and as synthetic. Indeed, “we would thus find ourselves excluded from the very phenomenal domain—the inner world—we ourselves bring forth.”44 Waxman admits that “it is one thing to show that Kant should not, or could not, hold such or such, and quite another to show that he did not.”45 Waxman is willing to suggest explicitly the thesis that the vast majority of interpretations have left implicit; “we must ignore the breach between the inner and outer, regard it as sealed, and so treat all perceived affection and action as one.”46 But with such a directive, his 42

With this comment, exegesis is no longer in the service of understanding, but rather in the service of defense and reconstruction. Waxman’s effort of reconstruction implies the most radical of revisions; “time first comes upon the scene” not in Aesthetic and as a sensible form but “with the action only of reproductive imagination (as its a priori form)” (). Again on p. ; “only the entire threefold synthesis will be sufficient to yield time as form of inner sense . . . [the] status [of inner sense] as a full-fledged objective principle of appearances (= form of inner sense) presupposes the categories” and their applicability, since “time as form of inner sense must be the form of all appearances, including the objects of outer sense.” (). Waxman’s imperative would bring coherence into Kant’s doctrine only by eliminating its central features; for clearly, exegesis has no right to claim that inner sense pertains to imagination rather than intuition, or that the categories are applicable to the pure succession within the manifold of inner intuition. 43 Ibid, –. 44 Ibid, . 45 Ibid, . 46 Ibid, .

introduction

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interpretation has abandoned exegesis, and both the letter and spirit of Kant’s philosophy. Waxman is forced not only to ignore or negate the heterogeneity thesis, but also openly to contradict Kant’s claims that (a) “intuition precedes intellection” (A –), and that (b) the “conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given precede the conditions under which these objects are thought” (A , B ). Waxman nonetheless attempts to assert the priority of intellection to intuition, and hence intellectualizes appearances; “apprehension involves a formal representation identifiable with neither space nor time, but which—as their evolutionary ancestor, so to speak—makes possible their emergence in the combinative synthesis of reproductive imagination (of which they are the pure forms).”47 Waxman recognizes that “nothing comparable [is] offered in any other interpretation,” precisely because Waxman’s is not an interpretation but a most radical revision. Waxman notes that his revision is novel precisely because “the need to do so is not recognized.”48 Within this essay, the need to do so has been recognized (it is further recorded that it was originally recognized by Kant himself in the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment). Waxman’s interpretation evinces a clear apprehension of the problematic implications, and even the intractibility, of the heterogeneity thesis, and the aspatiality and indeterminacy of time as form of inner sense. However, Waxman’s attempt to secure “the genuinely absolute, universal applicability of the categories to appearances that Kant was seeking” is purchased at the cost of utterly negating the doctrine that was to be saved.49 For Kant did not, and could not, seek to secure the applicability of the categories to the manifold of inner sense, but rather their inapplicability, in order to advance a critique of metaphysical “doctrines of the soul.” It is not without irony that to Kant would be attributed—in the spirit of apology—the “intellectualization of appearances” against which Kant had directed the Leibniz-critique. Waxman’s reconstruction, however penetrating, has “closed the breach between the sensible phenomena of inner and outer sense” only by closing off any possibility for an accurate apprehension and estimation of (a) Kant’s doctrine, (b) Kant’s philosophical development, and (c) post-Kantian philosophy, insofar as it recognizes this point.50 47 48 49 50

Ibid, . Ibid, . Ibid, . Ibid, . See notes –, above.



chapter one

The identification and exposition of the theme of inner intuition, then, requires an engagement or confrontation both with Kant’s texts and with several of its influential interpretations. But if the interpretation to follow is not already a defense, nor is it already a critique. The interpretation to follow is conducted in the manner of an exegesis in order that Kant’s doctrine take shape before us, by means of Kant’s own expositions of the form of inner sense and its functions in the dynamics of human cognition. In placing our exegesis as first receptive and not as first spontaneously or on its own initiative apologetic or critical, we follow Kant’s own hermeneutic strictures. Kant distinguished three possible means of approach or engagements of transcendental idealism; dogmatic, skeptical, and critical. Skeptical objections attack the method of proof for a given proposition, in order to “annul entirely” all legitimate claim to “judgment upon its object.” Dogmatic objections attack the given proposition itself, by illegitimately “pretending to a greater insight into the purported object of demonstration.” Neither critiques are legitimate; both are external. In order to adequate the following exegesis to the principles of transcendental philosophy, both will be avoided. The following account does not presuppose externally—either dogmatically or skeptically—“a greater insight into the character of the object’s nature,” but proceeds internally and critically through exegesis (A ). A critical objection may assert legitimately “not that the doctrine is incorrect, but that it is groundless.” An analysis of the structure, scope, and significance of the doctrine of, e.g., inner sense, might, then, “leave the proposition untouched in regard to its merit and challenge only the proof,” or the content of its various expositions and the argumentative contexts to which it responds. If an analysis of the assumptions and implications of the doctrine of inner sense should uncover cause for critique, this will, legitimately, “not assert that the doctrine is incorrect, but that it is groundless.” Such critique does not address quid facti the intuitive plausibility or popularity of a doctrine. Such critique investigates quid juris the formal character and the internal function of that doctrine within its architectonic context. This method of engagement allows properly critical objections, if necessary, “to demonstrate that something null,” or internally contradictory, functions within the legitimate context of the more general theory. Critical objections locate this internal contradiction by both tracing its provenance to a particular doctrine, and by isolating the role of that doctrine within the wider architectonic of the theory. Critical objections also

introduction

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ascertain whether such a ‘groundless’ doctrine “is being assumed for the sake of an assertion,” or wider argumentative positions. These positions may also, then, be subject to critique. The discovery of such an internal instability would, in this case, allow a critical objection to “topple the theory . . . by withdrawing the theory’s alleged foundation.” Such instabilities or intrinsic contradictions in the ground or foundation for claimed argumentative positions may be exposed “without seeking to establish anything else,” upon a pretended and undemonstrated claim to superior insight (A ). Instead, a ‘topic’ of the specific doctrine or general theory may be advanced, by which the aporetic aspects of the doctrine are articulated, and the problematic implications for the wider theory are evinced. If wider effects are not to be found, critical objections restrict their attention to the intrinsic formal character of the problematic doctrine, and its more proximate or local assumptions and implications. To this end, this exegesis is animated by an intention to provide such a ‘topic,’ of both the form and the function of inner intuition in the first Critique. This essay, then, is dedicated in its entirety to an exegetical exposition of the structure and significance of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense in this, its first, authoritative form.51 This method of presentation will allow our analysis

51 For purposes of exposition, treatments of the relevant the pre-critical works, and their trajectory, have not been included. Particularly significant for our theme are; () the Inquiry (Ak , –) of , in which “the true method of metaphysics” was grounded still in “certain inner experience, an immediate and self-evident inner consciousness,” in which one presents to oneself “the characteristic marks which may be found with certainty in any concept” (ibid, ). This conception is interrupted in () the Dreams essay of  (Ak , –), in which the motivation for Kant’s negative construal of inner intuition and its capacities—against Swedenborg’s “fanatical intuition” (ibid, ) into the nature of the “spiritual world” on the basis of his “inner sense” (ibid, )—is clearly in evidence. Kant therefore projects “a science of the limits of human reason” (ibid, ; italics added). In () the Dissertation (Ak , –) of , inner intuition again functions as an Inbegriff, in order to yield “the subjective condition necessary for the coordination of all sensible phenomena in terms of a fixed law,” the “absolutely first formal principle of the sensible world,” inclusive of “all possible objects of the senses” (§ ). Whereas time is “an absolutely first formal principle of the sensible world” for “all things sensible” (: ), space functions there to “coordinate everything that is sensed externally (omnia omnino externe sensa; :), and is “an absolutely first formal principle of the sensible world” for “all things which are externally sensible (omnia omnino externe sensibilia). Both, together, “constitute the underlying foundations upon which the understanding rests.” Each, individually, possesses a proper sphere; space “concerns the intuition of an object,” while time “concerns [the mind’s] representative state.” But time “more

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chapter one

to avoid either the dogmatic or the skeptical means of presentation. Our analysis will grow organically out of our exegesis, and will not extend

nearly approaches a universal and rational concept, for it embraces in its relations absolutely all things, namely, space itself and, in addition, the accidents not included within spatial relations, such as the thoughts of the mind” (: –). The importance of this shifting character and function within “the form of the [sensible] world” (: ) is found not only within theory of cognition, but in its implications for rational psychology and rational theology. In the Dissertation, this universal inclusiveness of inner sense still allows Kant to deem “fully acceptable” Leibniz’s thesis (both metaphysical and theological) of a pre-established harmony (: ) and Malebranche’s occasionalism; “his [Malebranche’s] view, namely that we intuit all things in God, is very close indeed to the one expounded here,” states Kant in the Scholium to Section  (: ). For Kant in , “the human mind is only affected by external things, and the world exposed to its view, lying open before it to infinity, insofar as the mind itself, together with all other things, is sustained by the same infinite force of one being” (: ). In other words, “the mind only senses external things in virtue of the presence of the same common sustaining cause,” a “cause of the universe” which is “inwardly present to all things” (: ). But this theological thesis is of less immediate importance for our present purposes than is the construal of time as form of inner sense which founds it and makes it possible; “the possibility of all changes, insofar as sensibly cognized, is to be found in the concept of time,” which itself “presupposes the continued duration [perduribilitatem] of a subject.” This perdurance of the subject is understood metaphysically rather than critically, even after the “great light” of —by means of an amplified rather than restrictive acceptation of inner sense (ibid). In the Reflexionen from – and the Duisburg Nachlass (–), the heterogeneity thesis becomes more pronounced, as the argumentative intentions that necessitate the heterogeneity thesis themselves become more pronounced. The most salient Reflexionen in this pre-Critical period are; R , , , –, , . See also R , , –, , , , . Other important early Reflexionen include , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . For example, in R  we read that “all must be given in a whole, in time, which contains all within itself,” in Position im inneren Sinn ueberhaupt. Similarly, we read in R  that “the subjective condition [time] must necessarily be sufficient for all such positions (Positionen),” since “nature, the whole of the phenomenal world, “must find itself according to all such relations, wholly in inner sense.” Nature must “find itself entirely in inner sense,” since otherwise “sensation could not be represented as my own.” Instead, in R , we read that “one cannot attribute the predicates of space to that which one knows only in inner experience (this is why the soul [Seele] is a spirit [Geist]).” The problem-context for this variance between aspatial and a spatialized time as form of inner sense is given in R , in which Kant asks “. What is the Object? In what consists the relation of a determination of the soul (Seele) to something else?” In order to address this question satisfactorily, we must establish both identity and difference within the relation between the mind and its objects; “What is the ground of their concordance?” or identity, Kant continues to ask, and “How do we distinguish what belongs to the object and what to the subject?” For similar treatment of this doctrine within these texts with reference to these citations see, e.g., Peter Baumanns, Kants Philosophie Der Erkenntnis (Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, )

introduction



past what is warranted by the text(s), so as to derive from its own efforts what it could not from the text itself.52 In this way, we will establish the central, and problematic, position of the doctrine of inner sense within the transcendental determination of the nature—and limits—of synthetic a priori judgment. (Only then, and only briefly, will I attempt to intimate Kant’s own recognition of the aporia of inner sense, in order to establish the latter as a principle for Kant’s subsequent development of his theoretical philosophy.) I dedicate this entire presentation to this single task in order that the basis for further investigations of inner sense (as a locus for the systematic interpenetration of philosophy of knowledge and philosophy of religion—both in the transcendental idealism of Kant, Fichte, and Schelling and in the transcendental phenomenology of Michel Henry)—be as thoroughly constructed and as firmly established as possible. Having delimited the character of the exegesis to follow, as well as its intention and aim, we may now turn to Kant’s exposition of the general metaphysical context for the doctrine of inner sense in the Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason.  ff.; Vittorio Mathieu L’Opus Postumum di Kant (Bibliopolis, Napoli, ),  ff.; Jean Nabert “L’expérience interne chez Kant,” Revue de metaphysique et de morale , , pp. –, p.  ff. 52 In other words, the following exposition may be criticized as () purely exegetical, and thus “dogmatic,” a mere repetition of, Kant’s own, or, oppositely () too strongly guided by a critical, or “skeptical,” interpretive intention. It is my conviction that only the closest readings are capable of entering the narrow pathway into Kant’s architectonic, and resolving with textual evidence the mere (and mutually exclusive or antinomial) preference of the external or skeptical critic and the internal but uncritical or dogmatic apologist respectively. One may hope, however, to combine the virtues of each hermeneutic style (both the fidelity and rigor of the first and the independence of the second) within a properly critical and exegetical engagement. Once inside its labyrinthine structures by means of this method, I isolate the doctrine of time as form of inner sense, and identify its centrality to both the positive argumentation of the Analytic (its role in establishing the conditions for synthetic cognition) and to the negative argumentation of the Dialectic (its role in disestablishing those conditions, or in establishing their limits). In this way, I identify an incongruity in the doctrine of inner sense itself—“the most central and least developed” element of the architectonic of human cognition, according to Mohr—that itself reveals a basic structural instability in the architectonic of pure reason itself. The identification of the precise character of this internal tension cannot be expected of either a dogmatic apologist or a skeptical critic. The implications of this tension, both for Kant’s philosophy and for the development of transcendental idealism, will be invisible to both as well. Only by occupying this middle position through close and patient exegesis can this hermeneutical antinomy be resolved and progress in comprehension achieved. I can hope only through subsequent publications to demonstrate the fruitfulness or productivity of this original decision, by tracing out () the critical reception of Kant’s doctrine of time as form of inner sense in classical German Idealism (Fichte, Schelling) and phenomenology (Husserl, Henry), and () the wider theoretical implications of this reception history.

chapter two THE SELF-KNOWLEDGE OF REASON: THE TRANSCENDENTAL TOPIC AND THE ATOPICALITY OF TIME

I. Critique of Pure Reason: A General Introduction to The Self-Knowledge of Reason A systematic transcendental topic such as the present one will make it difficult to miss the place where each concept properly belongs, and at the same time will make it easy to notice any place that is still empty. Critique of Pure Reason; A, B

Kant announced his epochal call to the “supremely difficult task” of the self-cognition of reason (Selbsterkenntnis der menschlichen Vernunft) in the first-edition Preface to the Critique of Pure Reason. This investigation would “deal solely with reason itself and its pure thinking,” in order “to gain its comprehensive acquaintance.” For this task, Kant suggests, “I need not search far from myself.” From “within myself,” the structure, scope, and status of this self-cognition may be “articulated completely and systematically.” The results of this Selbsterkenntnis will be both certain and distinct; “opinions will be in no sense permitted,” and “hypothesis will be contraband.” The pure a priori cognition Kant intends must admit of only “absolutely necessary” propositions. Such propositions will serve as “the standard and exemplar of all apodeictic certainty,” providing the index, as it were, and standard, for all claims to knowledge (A xvi).1 Kant contrasts the satisfaction that thus issues from this trascendental self-critique of reason to the dissatisfaction and necessary incompleteness that issues from an inherited metaphysical (or theological) “program.” In its analysis of our experience, this “most common” program “ascends ever higher, to more remote conditions” as it traces the possibility conditions for physics to philosophy, and the possibility conditions 1 For Gilles Deleuze, this act, in which “reason takes itself as its own end,” and object, in an “immanent critique,” is “the essential principle of the transcendental method.” See Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ) (translated from La Philosophie Critique de Kant, PUF, ), p. .

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for philosophy to theology (A viii). Such a program, Kant recounts, proceeds from objects of experience to the subject of experience or soul, and from “the simple nature of the soul” to “the necessity of a first beginning of the world” (A xiv). Once there “it finds itself compelled to resort to principles that go beyond all possible use in experience” and for that reason “plunges into darkness and contradiction.” This darkness and dissatisfaction, this “realm of endless conflicts,” from which Kant’s call to self-knowledge is to liberate us, is “metaphysics” (A viii). This metaphysical compulsion Kant arrests by means of “a determination of the sources, range, and bounds of reason.” This will allow Kant to both identify and eliminate “the errors that had thus far set reason . . . at variance with itself ” (A xii). Kant thus proclaims that he has “discovered the locus [Punkt] of reason’s discord [Mißverstand] with itself.” This discovery is not without cost for the “most common program,” however (A xii). Kant’s transcendental determination of reason, positively, assures us that “there should not be a single metaphysical problem that has not been solved here, or for whose solution the key has not at least been provided.”2 Kant is able to claim this finality since he “has not evaded reason’s questions, by pleading the incapacity of human reason,” but has rather “made a complete specification” of precisely these capacities, in principle and for the first time. Kant’s transcendental determination of reason warns us, however, negatively, “of the destruction of the most highly extolled and cherished delusions,” those of these cursorily adumbrated metaphysical and theological programs or itineraries (A xiii). Kant also announces that a “transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding” will be of consummate importance to the results and status of this novel self-cognition of reason. The accomplishment of this deduction, Kant asserts, “cost me the greatest effort.” Its plan, the idea by which its exposition is ordered, consists of “two aspects.” The first aspect concerns the objects of pure understanding as a faculty of concepts, which “pertain to my purpose essentially.” The second aspect con2 Indeed, Kant will even assert in this Preface that “pure reason is so perfect a unity that if its principle were insufficient for the solution of even a single one of all the questions assigned to reason by its own nature, then we ought to abandon its principle,” or reject it. For then, “we could not fully rely on its being adequate to any of the remaining questions either” (A xiii). The solidity of the ground for claiming such completeness and certainty even after the aforementioned admission of discordance—between the self-evidence attained in the depiction of the pure concepts of the understanding in an “Analytic” and that attained in the depiction of the pure intuitions in an “Aesthetic”—will be treated throughout the following exegesis.

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cerns the faculty underlying the pure concepts, the “pure intuitions” (A xvi). While Kant will assert that this “latter exposition is of great importance to my principal purpose,” he will also assert that “it does not pertain to it essentially.” For this reason, Kant qualifies the claim to apodeictic certainty made above. Kant expresses the hope that “should this subjective deduction have failed to produce full conviction,” it will still be possible to hope that “the objective deduction, with which I am concerned above all, will still acquire its full force” (A xvii). Kant systematizes this internal instability in status within the self-critique of reason, between an essential topic of pure intellective concepts and an inessential and less forceful doctrine of pure intuitions, throughout the Preface. An introductory review of its general claims may prove helpful. The requirement that the results of the self-critique of reason attain to certainty and certitude contextualizes a comment upon the proofstructure of the first Critique. Kant introduces a distinction between clarity and distinctness. The concept of clarity, inherited from Leibniz, indicates an idea or concept, in its differentiation from all other ideas; distinctness instead pertains to the same idea insofar as each of its elements or characteristics may be enumerated.3 Distinctness may be taken either logically or aesthetically; a logical criterion of distinctness is discursive, and conceptual. An aesthetic criterion is intuitive. The former is gained through the understanding. The latter is obtained through the faculty of intuition, through sensibility. Only in the latter is distinctness, and with it certainty and certitude, displayed in concreto. Only in this exhibition may the individuated unity of a given object and its immediate relation to the cognitive faculty be made manifest (A xviii).4 Of the first, Kant claims 3 For Kant’s most thorough treatment of these notions, the reader may consult the Logik (Ak, , –), and the Anthropologie (Ak, , –). 4 For Kant’s definition of exhibition in concreto, in distinction from in abstracto, see also the Inquiry Concerning the Clarity of the Principles of Natural Theology and Ethics of  (Ak, , , § ); “signs used in philosophy . . . can neither show, in their composition, the parts of the concepts out of which the whole idea indicated by the word consists, nor . . . in their combinations, the relation among philosophical concepts. Thus, in all reflection . . . one must have the matter itself before one’s eyes; one is obliged to conceive the universal abstractly, without being able to avail oneself of the important capability of handling the individual symbols themselves, instead of the universal concepts of objects. If the geometer wishes to demonstrate that space is infinitely divisible, he . . . recognizes, with consummate certainty from his symbol, that this division must procede without end.” Contrarily, the philosopher who procedes independently of such intuitive clarity, “rather must consider the universal in abstracto,” dispossessed of the immediately self-evident quality and characters of intuition.

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“a sufficient proof.” But this very accomplishment, Kant submits, was equally “the incidental cause of my inability to comply with the demand for intuitive distinctness.” Just as Kant expressed dissatisfaction with the “subjective deduction,” so Kant reports that “as my work progressed, I was almost constantly undecided about what to do about intuitive distinctness” (A xviii). The “magnitude of the task” and the “multitude of topics” as well as the author’s aversion to “a dry, scholastic manner,” disallowed an adequate intuitive distinctness. Nonetheless, Kant asserts, intuitive distinctness should not be required by “genuine experts.” The “popular point of view” that the exhibition in concreto of the understanding’s principles might have won would only have “distracted from the work as a whole.” Indeed, Kant intimates, such an exhibition in concreto might have uncovered “consequences running counter to my purposes” (A xix). In spite of this internal division, or even instability, between the certainty claimed for each of the two fundamental elements of the self-critique of reason, Kant concludes this first-Edition Preface with the claim to have produced a work of metaphysics “unique among the sciences for its legitimate expectation of completeness,” unique in particular in that it and it alone “will leave to our descendants nothing more than the task of arranging everything in the didactic manner,” without the ability or need “to increase the content [of the Critique] in the least” (A xx). The paradigm for this standard of completeness, Kant continues in the considerably expanded and more complex second-Edition Preface, obtains in logic. Logic “has not advanced a single step” since Aristotle, precisely for not having needed to. Logic is “closed and completed” within itself (B viii). Logic owes its perfection, however, to its limitation, as it is insulated from the vicissitudes of the particular sciences by its purely formal character (B ix). Abstraction made from all objects of cognition and their individual character, the understanding, in logic, “deals with nothing more than itself and its form,” through its “proof of the formal rules of all thought.” While the logical self-examination of reason will form a “propaedeutic” to all sciences, it must remain, precisely for this formality, at the “vestibule” of each. Experience, and the experiment definitive of the empirical sciences, presuppose and are formally structured by logic. Neither, however, are fully constituted through logic alone. Logic is necessary but not sufficient for knowledge. For the acquisition of knowledge, and the full constitution of experimental science, “we must look to the sciences properly so called,” in their “objective” and not merely formal-logical character. Only

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by “employing [intuitive] principles that underlie its judgments,” reason proceeds “according to constant laws” in its examination of nature. Only as both intellective and intuitive may our experiments and our experience attain the coherence in terms of which alone appearances can count as laws, universal and necessary in character, while yet retaining their legitimate claim to objective reference and validity (B xiii).5 This formal aspect of intuition is to contribute to the a priori possibility of an object as an object of the senses. And yet, the objective knowledge of experience and experiment is not possessed only of intuitive, but also of cognitive, elements. As is logic, intuition is necessary but not sufficient for the full constitution of objective cognition. While intuition provides a basis for cognition, “if these intuitions are to become cognitions, I cannot remain with them but must refer them as presentations” to the understanding, in order to “determine this object thereby” (B xvii). The structuration of experience made possible by the self-critique of reason will reveal the means by which such intuitions obtain in an essential formal and functional interdependence with the logico-formal concepts of the understanding. Only through the understanding are these immediate intuitions determined to objective and conceptual universality. And only through the demonstration of the nature and limits of such a unity between intuition and understanding will the cognitive elements requisite to the determination of objective cognition be attained. Such a demonstrated synthetic unity of intuition and understanding will constitute the transcendental possibility of experience (as objective

5 Such objects may be theoretical or practical. In both, genuinely a priori elements are to obtain. In the first, cognition determines the object and its concept, “which must be supplied from without it,” through intuition. In the second, the task of reason is to “make actual” the concept in moral-practical activity, since this concept cannot be “given” as an actuality in intuition and for theoretical cognition. This concept must instead be “realized” (upon having been shown in at least its possibility) within moral-practical activity. In the former, cognition is constitutive; in the latter, regulative. The first type of cognition, the determination of which is the central task of a critique of pure reason, is evident in two sciences capable of determining their objects a priori; mathematics and physics (B xi–xv). Kant will take each, methodologically, as a standard to which transcendental philosophy will aspire, and which it will “imitate” (B xvi). Kant will take each as normative in proceding “with regard to our intuition of objects.” Kant will take as a maxim or presumption “the possibility that objects (as object of the senses) conform to the character of our power of intuition” (B xvi–xvii). Logically and epistemically prior to the actual intuition of a given object in experience, the formal structure through which such actual intuition is ordered obtains. The character of this a priori intuition, then, will be of both central and primary importance to the self-critique of pure reason.

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self-cognition) and experiment (as objective cognition). The primacy or priority of intuition obtains, with regard to the activity by which intuitions are thereupon “referred to” or “brought to” the understanding, in each and every act of achieved cognition.6 Kant specifies the character of the critical philosophy thus introduced as “a complete revolution” and a criterion by which all prior philosophy as metaphysics must be judged. This revolution will be conducted, however, upon the authority and under the tutelage of “the geometricians,” in their a priori science of space, and “the investigators of nature,” in their science of physics. This revolution, as contained in the self-critique of reason, will propose but “a treatise on method,” and “not a system of science itself.” However, even as critical rather than immediately doctrinal, the critique “sets down the entire outline of metaphysics, including the bounds of this science as well as its entire internal structure” (B xxiii). By ascertaining the structure of cognition and the principles upon which this is based, we may anticipate or ascertain in advance the entire range of possible and legitimate cognition. The anticipatory articulation of this structure will yield its formal essence in advance of any particular, individuated content encountered in one or another employment of cognition. We can do so by deducing, demonstrating and describing the formal structure and functional, dynamic interactions within any possible cognition. This will yield the structure employed in all actual cognition, the bounds and limits of which will be “set down in advance,” in “an entirely separate, self-subsistent unity,” as if in a logic. Such a unity obtains “as in an organic body,” in which “each member exists for the sake of all the others,” and “all exist for the sake of each.” This intrinsic interdependence of elements within this structure (tota in toto et tota in singulis partibus, as it were) requires that “no principle can safely be taken in one reference unless we have also investigated it in its thoroughgoing reference to our entire pure use of reason” (B xxiii).7 6

Methodologically, this primacy is but an experiment (versuchen) and an “assumption.” This methodological assumption is to be made both for its “better concordance with the demand for objectual cognition a priori,” and for its allowing us to “ascertain the qualities of these objects,” transcendentally, “before they are given to us” in an actual empirical intuition (B xvi). The importance for this assumption of a possible anticipation of actual intuition a priori will be introduced below. The importance of the doctrine of a priori intuition itself, however, to the self-cognition and self-critique of reason a priori, will already be clear. 7 The reader may compare the Preface to the Prolegomena; “pure reason is such an isolated domain, within itself so thoroughly connected, that no part of it can be

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Transcendental philosophy is, then, unique among the sciences. Transcendental philosophy will articulate not only the formal essence of the structure or Gliederbau (Bxxxvii) of the cognitive faculty, but the functional relations within this structure, to which any possibly legitimate act of experiential or experimental cognition must conform. The strictest demands not only may but must be put upon this investigation. For in order to set down in advance the entire outline for a system of metaphysics, the critique of the possibility thereof “can and ought to enumerate completely and on its own” the entirety of this formal structure. This structuration will evince equally its possible sphere of activity or proper scope, “the entire realm of the cognitions possible for it.” This task will “enable metaphysics to complete its work.” Once consummated and legitimated through self-critique, metaphysics may proceed to a doctrinal system of science. And yet, as a “fundamental science” responsible for determining the possibility and validity of all derivative sciences, transcendental self-cognition “is obliged to achieve completeness; nil actum reputans, si quid superesset agendum” (B xxiv). Kant next expounds, for the remainder of the second-Edition Introduction, the most general principles on and through which such certainty is to be established architectonically. The principal element in Kant’s exposition is the doctrine of the forms of intuition. Kant will “prove, in the analytic part of the critique, that space and time are our only forms of sensible intuition.” These sensible forms serve as “conditions of the existence of objects as appearances,” as objects of experience and knowledge rather than merely logical objects, ‘mere concepts’ (Bxxv). The primacy of this doctrine is asserted first in relation to its priority within the act of cognition; “we have no concepts of understanding and hence no elements whatever for objectual cognition except insofar as an intuition can be given corresponding to these concepts.” Kant intends to use this claim—to the necessity, priority, and universality of space and time as forms of intuition—in order to establish the further claim that “we cannot cognize any object as a thing-in-itself, but can cognize such objects only insofar as objects of sensible intuition” (ibid). Such objects will be encroached upon without disturbing all the rest, nor adjusted without having previously determined for each part its place and influence on all the others; for, since there is nothing outside pure reason that corrects our judgments within it, the validity and use of each part depends on the relation in which it stands to the others within reason itself . . . ” See AA IV, –, Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics, trans. Gary Hatfield, in Kant; Theoretical Philosophy after , Allison and Heath, eds. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ).

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termed appearances, and will be structured in accordance with the formal character of our sensibility, given in and through the forms or formal structure of intuition a priori, space and time. This limitation or restriction of cognition to possible objects of intuition, while negative, yields a positive result. For “from this it follows that any possible cognition of reason is to be restricted to objects of experience,” defined as objects of possible intuition. Kant will reserve, of course, the right to a secondary objectivity, an objectivity not grounded in intuition but in intellection or thought as purely formal and subjective. Kant will insist that “we must be able at least to think, even if not cognize, the same objects also as things in themselves,” independently of intuition. The principle governing the merely formal thought of an object is not actuality, reality, or the conditions of an object of intuition as given in sensibility, but logical possibility. Such possibility will be governed not by the laws of intuition, but only the purely formal law of non-contradiction. Only intuition will yield the content of any object insofar as this object may claim the status of an appearance, structured in accordance with the formal characters of cognition as given in pure intuition (B xxvii).8 The distinction between genuine cognition and mere consciousness is grounded in the intuitability reserved to the former. The distinction between an object of experience and an object as a thing-in-itself will allow the latter to serve as a supplement to the universality of the law of objective cognition and natural science. Within the Preface, Kant treats of this distinction only cursorily and with introductory brevity. Natural necessity, or mechanism, pertains to sensibility or intuition, and the objects thereof. Kant protests, however, that this mechanism would range over all objects universally unless the logical possibility of objects, not as intuited but as things-in-themselves, were not reserved by and for critique.

8 The formal character and structure of our a priori forms of intuition are articulated through its “analytic predicates,” “modes,” or “characters” (Merkmale). Many of Kant’s most important reflections upon the analytic predicates or modes evident within cognition and self-cognition occur in the Logik. Of Merkmale one may see the universal definition at Ak, IX, –; “a characteristic mark is that in a thing which constitutes a part of the knowledge of that thing . . . accordingly, all our concepts are characteristic marks and all thinking is simply representing by means of characteristic marks.” Thus, a concept both has and is (a) characteristic mark(s); “the characteristic mark of a characteristic mark is also the characteristic mark of the thing itself (Ak, IX, ). Importantly, “that which conflicts with a characteristic mark conflicts with the thing itself.” Oppositely, “the opposite of a characteristic mark is opposed to the thing itself (Ak, IX, ).

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This restriction upon the universality of intuition is first significant for Kant in its application to the thematic of self-consciousness. Without this distinction, one could not assert “without manifest contradiction of the human soul that its will is free, and yet is subject to natural necessity, i.e., not free” (ibid). One must, in order to avoid this contradiction, avoid “taking the soul in the same sense in the two propositions.” The distinction between an object as appearance and as thing-in-itself will, then, be understood initially as a distinction of modality. The first concept of appearance indexes the actuality of intuition; the second concept indicates the mere possibility of a thought governed only by the logical law of non-contradiction. This differentiation of the senses of the concept of objectivity—as an actual object of intuition and as a possible object of thought—receives its principal and paradigmatic application to the subject of self-consciousness. The laws of mechanism, which as laws cannot but be universal, range only over objects of cognition. Only those objects capable of being intuited, and so becoming actual objects of experience, will be submitted to the universal law of mechanism. Thus, “the principle of causality applies only to objects in the first sense, insofar as objects of experience.” Such objects—which must yet retain their identity across this apparently absolute distinction—“are not subject to that principle when taken in the second sense” (B xxvii). In this way, “no contradiction will arise when we think the same will” both () “as appearance (in its visible effects) as conforming necessarily to natural law and to that extent not free,” and yet () “as belonging to a thing-in-itself, not subject to that law, and hence as free” (B xxvii). As an object of intuition, each is to himself an object amongst other objects, and therefore subject to natural necessity. As an object of thought, one is for oneself not determined, but is instead determining and free, both epistemically and ethically.9 9

The laws of cognition apply equally to self-cognition. Kant specifies the first application of this divisio in the apprehension of “my soul” as such. In first-person selfconsciousness, Kant asserts, “I cannot cognize my soul through speculative reason (let alone empirical observation).” Thus, “I cannot cognize freedom as the property of a being to which I attribute effects in the world of sense” (B xxviii). Intuitive cognition is to be differentiated in principle from intellective consciousness. While both acts are possessed of a priori elements, and hence a claim to universality, the threat of the internal selfcontradiction between freedom and nature requires the restriction of the range or scope of each act. This restriction is enforced through the intuition—intellection distinction. Each type of cognitive activity must possess its universality and necessity within its proper sphere, different in kind and distinct in principle from the other. In this way, epistemic spontaneity and ethical freedom may be made independent of the otherwise universal law

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Kant’s introductory exposition is not without characteristic tensions. Kant’s intention, however, is clear. The critical distinction between freedom and necessity, supported by the epistemic distinction between thought or mere consciousness and cognition, must be rigorously drawn and enforced on principle. One must, in order to account for experience and experiment, not only include freedom and spontaneity within the explanans of transcendental philosophy, but insulate freedom from necessity therein. This division will secure the derivation of freedom and necessity from distinct principles. The conditions for the apprehension of each have been distinguished. Each, therefore, may be granted its integral sphere of application. Only this independence allows each to obtain autonomously within its domain, without the mutual contradiction of a possible interdependence. The opposing predicates of a subject, as obtain in freedom and necessity, are not contradictory to the degree that this independence can be legislated through the assignment, to each, of a distinct sphere of application and distinct manner of apprehension.10 of mechanism. The properties of “determining” (epistemically spontaneous and ethically autonomous) and “determined” (subject to the laws of mechanism) are thus not contradictory, even when predicated of the same subject in first-person self-consciousness; the conditions for their apprehension and assertion are distinct in principle. This distinction will be secured through the divisio between an object as cognized, which is first an object intuited, and an object as thing-in-itself, as neither cognized nor cognizable but yet capable of being thought. On the basis of this distinction, Kant has set out the general lineaments for the demonstration of the impossibility of a first-order contradiction between freedom and necessity within the act of self-consciousness. And yet, the ground for the attribution of unity within self-cognition—across the distinction thus enforced formally and in principle, between oneself as object of intuition and oneself as subject of thought, or between oneself as determining and spontaneous and oneself as determined—remains to be accomplished. 10 The possible unity of freedom and necessity, or consciousness and cognition, requires that this independence give way (whether through intuition or intellection) to interdetermination. In a phrase that we will encounter again in the third Critique, Kant will stipulate that if “the property of a being [as free]” is to be equally that “to which I attribute effects in the sensible world,”—if each is to be for himself both free (as transcendental subject) and subject to necessity (as an empirical object, as embodied)— independence must give way to interdependence. The property of “freedom” is to pertain not to objective cognition but to a thing-in-itself—in this case, the transcendental subject of first-person self-consciousness. This freedom must be independent of the character and principles of objective cognition. This freedom must therefore be independent of the character and principles of intuition. Thus, “the freedom of my soul cannot be cognized as the property of a being to which I attribute effects in the sensible world” (B xxviii). Into this, one’s own characteristic freedom, Kant asserts, “I do not possess any further insight.” By this “transcendental topic,” roughly sketched as it is in the Introduction, Kant may claim to have shown that “freedom does not contradict itself and hence can at least be thought.” Freedom is self-contradictory not internally, and as thought, but only in an

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While impossible to intuit and thereby cognize directly as actual, the determinations of epistemic spontaneity and ethical freedom will be possible for a logico-formal consciousness; this restriction on theoretical and objective cognition, will open, as it were, a path to a practical, moral consciousness. For while one cannot cognize one’s own freedom, “if the critical distinction between two manners of presentation (sensible and intellectual) be made, I can still think my own freedom” (B xxviii). In this way, both “extreme limits” of self-consciousness, the self-determining subject and the determined object of intuition, may be integrated within a unified self-consciousness. This presentation, if applied logically and subjectively, will “contain, at least, no contradiction.” For “the distinction between the sensible and intellectual manners of presentation” allows us to “restrict accordingly the pure concepts of the understanding and hence also the principles that flow from them.” In this way, “moral science maintains its own place, as does natural science.” For this is required only that an essential, “intrinsic” knowledge or cognition be denied, and the formal characters for the structuration of experience by “pure intuition,” or sensibility, acknowledged and articulated. No singular structuration of reason’s activity, then, will be possible. The rejection of the consciousness—cognition distinction would necessarily institute the universality of the laws of sensibility or intuition. This reduction would in effect reduce possible thought to actual cognition, and this last to its intuitive or sensible conditions. No cognition of this freedom, of natura naturans as opposed to natura naturata, then, is either necessary or possible; any such submission to cognition and the laws of intuition would “force freedom and with it morality to give way to the mechanism of nature” (B xxix). The critical delineation of the scope and character of theoretical cognition is not merely negative. A positive result or “benefit” can be gained asserted internal relation to mechanism, a contradiction resolved through the restriction of their respective spheres of application and principles (B xxix). It will, then, not be only within cognition, but through the distinction between cognition and consciousness, that the self-critique of reason will proceed. This distinction provides the context for derivative distinctions between, objective and subjective domains of application, and between determinate and indeterminate, constitutive and regulative principles and propositions, each of which will articulate the structure of human cognition and be explicated below. Any pronouncement upon this problem of the mutual requirement of interdependence and independence would be premature. The importance of this problem, however, to the widest intentions of transcendental philosophy, is evident. The central role that the distinction between consciousness and cognition, and hence the doctrine of pure intuition, plays in its effectuation is already becoming clear.

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in regard to (a) “the concept of God,” and (b) “the simplicity of the soul,” which Kant “shall however for the sake of brevity omit” from his introductory discussion (B xxix). This benefit for critique requires that such concepts “must be taken and excluded from the realm of theoretical cognition,” or “speculative reason in its pretentions to transcendent insight” (B xxx).11 Only upon establishing the formal impossibility of a theoretical application of cognition, or knowledge (Wissen), structured by intuition and its laws, may the critical strictures against rational theology (a) and rational psychology (b) be grounded or justified.12 Upon this exigence, the formal conditions for objective determination of the “object of inner sense,” or pure (inner) intuition a priori, “the soul”—as object of a theoretical or rational psychology—will be disallowed formally and in principle. In this way, Kant, hopes to “leave to posterity a metaphysics purified by critique,” by advancing the cognitive principles that “narrow” the “sphere of cognitions proper to it [cognition or knowledge]” (B xxiii).13 Only this imposition of an impossibility for theoretical self-cognition can generate of itself, Kant argues, the pos-

11 Jacques Havet, in Kant et le problème du temps (Gallimard, Paris, ), analyzed at length the negative role of the forms of intuition and specifically inner intuition in this, Kant’s Restriktionslehre, his attempt to “fonder ainsi la pratique sur les ruines de la théorie” (). For Havet, “c’est ignorance de l’individu relativement à son être véritable qui lui permet . . . d’avoir quelque mérite à se faire membre d’un règne des fins . . . ” (ibid,  ff.). 12 In Soggetto e mondo; Studi su Kant (Marsilio Editori, Venezia, ), La Rocca suggests that it is on the basis of intuitive marks or Merkmale that cognition can be differentiated from consciousness, or “the mere play of representations within the soul” had described such intraconceptual relations at R  (Ak , ). Kant in this context will differentiate “intuitive marks” from purely intellectual “discursive marks” (R , Ak XVI –). Kant will also write of intuitus partialis v. conceptus partialis in the Reflexionen, Partialbegriffe v. Partialanschauungen in the Logik Dohna-Wundlacken, and nota identitatis [Merkmale, Kennzeichen] v. nota diversitatis [Unterscheidungszeichen] in the Logik Busolt [Ak , ]). See also R  (): “Wir kennen einen jeden Gegenstand nur durch Prädikate . . . ” (Ak :). For La Rocca, “sono le note intuitive alla base della possibilità di sintesi percettiva.” With reference to R  (Ak XVI ), La Rocca reasons that “per mezzo di note, l’intelletto scompone (löset auf) le intuizioni e le compone (setzt sie zusammen)” (–). In accordance with the priority of intuition to intellection just noted, La Rocca insists rightly that Kant is concerned with “un livello nel quale i concetti empirici ancora non sono intervenuti” within the ordo cognoscendi (). For La Rocca, the Restriktionslehre requires that not only does the doctrine of intuition and the doctrine of Merkmale provide the first rules for synthetic cognition, but provides its incontrovertible basis (as Kant himself will assert against Leibniz); “il concetto . . . fonda il suo valore cognitivo su una graduale composizione di note” of intuition, by means of which objects for a possible synthesis can, or cannot, be given. 13 Kant “cannot assume God, freedom, and immortality” to pertain to the merely “practical use of my reason” as he desires unless he first “deprives speculative reason of its

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sibility of a practical or moral self-determination, in which rather narrowed sphere the theological doctrine of the soul will be reinstated. This proof, in spite of Kant’s avowed “lack of insight,” will first be effected formally. Kant will assign or enumerate the “characters” of intuition (see notes , , and  in this section), in order that the “inestimable advantage” of “a proof in the Socratic manner of the opponents’ ignorance” be effected.14 To this end, intuition will be distinguished not only from intellection, but from itself, internally. “Inner intuition” will be differentiated from “outer intuition.” The determinacy of the “object of rational psychology” (and with it any metaphysical or theological Seelenlehre) in inner sense will be disallowed. Kant will institute a necessary indeterminacy by disallowing the conditions required for the appearance of an individuated object of intuition, “the soul,” within the “manifold of inner sense” or

pretensions to transcendental insight” or the conditions of knowledge. Kant therefore and famously “had to annul knowledge” or the claim and conditions thereto by metaphysics and theology “in order to make room for faith” (B xxx). 14 In his most sophisticated analysis of the doctrine of Merkmale, La Rocca—to whom I refer repeatedly in this section—recognizes both the positive and negative function that the doctrine fulfills. He recuperates a pre-critical reflection (R ; Ak XVI ) in order to evince this positive contribution. Merkmale contribute, positively, “ciò di una cosa (an einem Dinge) di cui io sono cosciente.” La Rocca also shows how, negatively, Kant recuperates Meier’s usage of the doctrine of Merkmale in the Vernunftlehre; unclear and indistinct cognition is defined as a privation of genuine cognition by means of the doctrine of Merkmale. Unfulfilled cognition or Unwissenheit is defined by means of an absence of sufficient marks (ibid, ). (For Meier, see Vernunftlehre §  and also R. Pozzo, Georg Friedrich Meiers ‘Vernunftlehre.’ Eine historisch-systematische Untersuchung [FrommannHolzboog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt ], p. ). La Rocca’s analysis focuses on the role of Merkmale in establishing the possibility and range of possible intuitions, and hence synthetic judgments. Thus the doctrine of Merkmale, as an element within the doctrine of intuition, makes the first and principal contribution to the structuration of experience and the laws of appearance. This basis for the individuality and unity of the object of synthetic cognition is “il risultato di un insieme di marche intuitive” (citing R , Ak , ). For La Rocca, with close reference to R  (Ak , ), “questo significa anche fare di quella nota . . . un Erkenntnisgrund,” a foundation for the possibility—or impossibility—of cognition; “la generalizzazione di una nota intuitiva è anche la specificazione di una procedura più generale, quella di riconoscimento categoriale di un oggetto in quanto tale” (ibid, ). The Merkmale thus offer “regoli di apprensioni” (ibid, ), rules which allow or disallow “tipi cognitivi distinti”—various forms, spheres, and types of judgments—and a principal for our comprehension of Kant’s conception of the act of judgment. The Merkmale allow Kant’s doctrine of intuition to “restrict” the sphere of possible synthetic cognition, and provide the basis for the intuitive contribution to genuine cognition. See Soggetto e mondo (ibid). For a complementary treatment of “synthetisches Merkmal” see R  (Ak , –).

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sphere of inner intuition. But while Kant would announce this doctrine of the pure intuitions already in the Preface, his full exposition and its exegesis must await the Aesthetic. Kant moves toward the conclusion of the second-Edition Introduction by explicating not the intrinsic content of the critical philosophy, but its extrinsic relation to the competing systems offered by “the schools.” Kant will claim that the schools of rational psychology and theology (only Wolff is named at B xxxvii), are guilty, “on points of universal human concern,” of claiming “a higher and more extensive insight” into the sources and limits of cognitive and conative experience than is possible. To such false claims to knowledge, Kant will “annul knowledge in order to make room for faith.” This faith is not a scandal to philosophy but an antidote to a deleterious dogmatism in metaphysics, which Kant identifies as itself “the true source of all lack of faith” (B xxx). In opposition to this Schulphilosophie, transcendental critique is not only to be eternally valid in itself, so as to disallow in principle all amendment, but is to “cut off at the very root” both “idealism and skepticism,” and “materialism, fatalism, atheism, freethinking lack of faith, fanaticism, and superstition” (B xxxiv). In this rather varied and extended list of competing positions, Kant opposes critical philosophy to the dogmatism of “the schools.” Schulphilosophie is identified through a common, though obviously varied and widespread, failure to “inquire into the manner and right by which reason arrives” at the concepts and principles it employs. This criticism requires “reason’s prior critique of its own ability” in a transcendental self-critique. This self-critique will establish the range and scope of its possible application, and the character and status of its applications (as theoretical or practical, intuitive or intellective) (B xxxv). Kant also determines his Selbsterkenntnis der menschlichen Vernunft not only negatively, in its polemical oppositions, but positively. He does so by specifying the relation between the first and second editions. The critique of pure reason is to be eternally valid universally, representative of the structure of all possible cognition, “the nature of a pure speculative reason” (B xxxvii). Reviewing the reception of the first-edition, Kant will record in  that any alterations as might be found within the Critique of Pure Reason concern only “difficulties and obscurity from which many misinterpretations may have arisen.” These difficulties in understanding cannot arise from any but a superficial obscurity. One can, Kant attests, “easily dig up apparent contradictions if we tear individual passages from their contexts and compare them with one another” (B xliv). Kant will

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suggest that while “such seeming contradictions cast an unfavorable light on the work,” they are instead “quite easily resolved by someone who has gained command of the idea as a whole,” or the spirit as opposed to the letter of the work in one or another expression. In , Kant is able to assert that “I have not found anything to change in the propositions themselves and in the bases adduced for proof,” nor indeed “in the form and completeness of the plan” as placed before the public in  (B xxxvii). This plan or structure requires, as above, an organic unity, wherein “everything is there for the sake of each member, and each individual member is there for the sake of all,” each placed within a “transcendental topic” of the necessary and universal structure of cognitive activity. This standard of demonstration, adequate to the strictest measure of philosophical cognition, requires that “even the slightest defect, whether an error or omission, must inevitably betray itself.” This allows Kant to hope that “the system will continue to show itself in its unchangeable state.” For “any attempt to alter even the smallest part immediately gives rise to contradictions, not merely in the system but in human reason in general” (B xxxviii). Kant nonetheless admits to certain infelicities of exposition, disclaiming thereby the manner rather than the matter of the first-Edition. Foremost among these is “the misunderstanding concerning the Aesthetic, especially the concept of time.” Kant also identifies “the misinterpretation of the paralogisms advanced against rational psychology,” in which this doctrine of time as form of inner sense was employed in Kant’s Restriktionslehre. Kant makes a genuine exception, however, upon a single thematic; “only one of my alterations could I call properly an addition,” though “even it concerns only the kind of proof I offer” (B xl, note). Kant attempts, then, to amend one of these infelicities—which, as do nearly all the second-Edition amendments, concerns the doctrine of pure intuitions15—by adding a clarification or “addition.”

15

Cf., Weldon; “the additions introduced in [the] B [Edition] . . . are designed very largely to elucidate difficulties in the doctrine of inner sense which had already given rise to serious criticism” amongst Kant’s first readers (). See also Washburn; “it is the problem of inner sense alone that provides a systematic interpretation of the second edition. Of the many issues that are dealt with in the second edition, the problem of inner sense (and its relation to outer sense) utterly predominates. It is the only one that is discussed throughout the second edition, in virtually all of its passages and sections . . ..” (“Did Kant Have a Theory of Self-Knowledge?,” p. , note). Beiser, with regard to the relation between the first and second editions, notes that “before the second edition went to press, Kant inserted an elaborate emendation into his new preface, where he completely

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Before advancing from Kant’s propaedeutic and contextual remarks to the Aesthetic, it is important to note the character of this addition. Kant offers in conclusion of this second-Edition Introduction an exposition of “a new refutation of psychological idealism.” This consists in “a strict proof (also, I believe, the only possible proof) of the objective reality of outer intuition.” This idealism, “a scandal for philosophy and human reason in general,” consists in the supposed necessity of “accepting merely on faith the existence of external objects.” Such external—given, spatial, extended—objects “provide us with all the material we possess for cognitions, even for those of our inner sense.” Should the reality of the external world be undemonstrable, faith would become a constitutive principle for the entirety of human cognition, reducing even the natural sciences to the status of a belief, a hope, or a conjecture. Extended exegesis of the particular character of this proof, given only at B , and its pertinence to what will be named the aporia of inner sense, must follow Kant’s own exposition. It is enough, in introduction, to have isolated the importance of our investigation into the doctrine of a priori intuition. The form and function of the doctrine of the pure intuitions may only be thoroughly determined, in their genuine complexity, by following Kant’s expositions throughout both the first and second editions. But the importance of this doctrine to the widest intentions of transcendental idealism, and hence its exegesis, is already evident. This importance lies not first in the specific content of the doctrine, but in both the metaphysical and in the transcendental context for the doctrine. This metaphysical context has been exposed in an introductory and most general manner in the Preface. The transcendental context is more throughly and satisfactorily given in Kant’s exposition of the character of “synthetic a priori judgment.”16 Before advancing to the Aesthetic, in which the doctrine itself is first exposed, this second contextual element may now be helpfully adduced. recast his whole argument (B xxxix–xli).” Beiser also records the presence of the doctrine of inner sense in each of “the texts Kant would soon revise or delete,” which include “the Aesthetic and the Critique of the Fourth Paralogism” (ibid, ). 16 The standard loci for analyses of inner sense in the first Critique, each to be reviewed and analyzed in turn, are found (a) in the expositions of space and time in §§ – of the Aesthetic, (b) in three amendments added by Kant in the second-Edition at B xl, § , at B , and B , and (c) in the Paralogisms chapter. But even within the Analytic, the first-edition Deduction and the second-edition Refutation of Idealism are of equal if not greater concern to this essay. I hope to show that the salience of (and variance in) these particular paragraphs and chapters can only be evaluated on the basis of a more general comprehension of the transcendental topic of human cognition as such, and thereupon

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II. The Intuitive Aspect of Cognition (Materialiter sic Dicta) Now, the question is no longer about the soul’s communion with other known substances outside us that are different in kind, but merely about the connection of the presentations of inner sense with the modifications of our outer sensibility, and how these presentations and modifications may be connected among one another according to constant laws, so as to cohere in an experience. Critique of Pure Reason; A 

i. The Passivity of our Knowledge (Per Modum Recipientis) All human cognition, Kant asserts in opening the second-Edition, begins with experience; only the “stirring of our sensibility” may “rouse our cognitive faculty” (B ). Experience, conceived transcendentally, is “the first product of our understanding,” an accomplishment won “by working on the raw material offered by sensibility” (A ). While the material of sensibility is necessary to the constitution of experience, however, such material is not sufficient for our comprehension of our experience. For this reason, “reason is stimulated more than satisfied” by the a posteriori and empirical, or sensible elements of empirical experience (A ). It is instead only through those a priori elements of our cognitive faculty that order such elements that our experience, and its coherence, is possible. Only if the impressions of sensibility, presented in intuition as ‘this, here, now’ are structured according to lawful regularities, such as the determinations ‘universally,’ ‘always,’ and ‘necessarily,’ can the diversity of sensible experience possess its actual coherence and uniformity, or ‘lawfulness.’ Thus the cognition that “arises with” empirical experience does not “arise from” empirical experience without an irreducible remainder; it arises equally from the transcendental conditions in terms of which such empirical experience is possible and lawful in the first place. The transcendental determination of the structure of this cognition is first directed not to any particular act of the cognitive faculty, within experience, but to the ground or basis that makes such experience possible, to “those that occur absolutely independently of all experience” (B ). Kant here issues a set of distinctions that we should review, even if only

the () central, and () problematic role(s) of inner intuition therein. Only once “one has gained command of the idea of the whole,” in Kant’s phrase from B xliv can one then begin to take “individual passages” in order to “compare [and contrast] them with others” regarding the character and capacities of inner intuition.

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cursorily, in order to provide context for our own investigation. Kant seeks first to differentiate a priori from a posteriori elements of cognition, and to distinguish pure or impure elements of that cognition as well; “we call a priori cognitions pure,” he suggests, “if nothing empirical whatsoever is mixed in with them.” For example; the proposition “every change has its cause” is a priori insofar as universal, and yet impure, since “change is a concept that can be obtained only from [within] experience” (B ). Kant’s intention lies in finding “a characteristic by which we can safely distinguish pure from empirical cognition,” so as to derive a condition for the possibility of experience from the character of that experience itself. ‘Necessity’ will provide this characteristic for the identification of the a priori character of a proposition or element of cognition. Kant further specifies that if such a necessary proposition is itself derived (only) from a necessary proposition, it may be termed an “absolutely a priori judgment.” Universality, differentiated similarly into comparative and true or strict universality, will yield the “a priori lawfulness” of a proposition. Such lawfulness disallows any exception. This proposition will not be derived from empirical experience, then, but will be applied to that experience as its condition. For example; “all bodies possess weight,” while universal, is empirical, and is thus possessed of only comparative or empirical universality. Genuinely a priori judgment is evinced instead in such propositions as “all change must possess a cause,” which does not rely in the same way upon any empirical property. We can see, then, that taken together necessity and universality constitute two complementary and essential characteristics of a priori judgment (B ). An a priori origin is not, however, to be attributed only to cognition as such, but also to certain concepts. For example, the ‘dissection’ or analysis of the concept of “body” results in the elimination of all empirical elements, such as color, hardness, and weight. The formal element of the space it occupies will remain, however, after such a dissection or elimination of empirical elements or characteristics. Similarly, “if from the concept of any object whatever, corporeal or incorporeal,” one omits through dissection “all elements taught by experience,” still one “cannot eliminate from the concept the property through which the object is thought either as substance or as belonging to substance.”17 We can begin to see in a preliminary way that from an analysis of elements found within (explicit) experience, we can derive the (implicit) first cognitive 17 A derivative distinction is drawn here at B  between the determination of an object as such, and the determination of an object as a substance. Only the latter includes

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foundations of its possible lawfulness or coherence, as have already been found in the presentations of spatiality and substance (B ). Kant differentiates clearly the a priori and necessary form of the intellective contribution to experience from the a priori and necessary form of the intuitive contribution to experience in this context. Any such proposition or judgment, taken intellectually, possesses “the relation of a subject to a predicate” (A , B ). This formal character or structure of intellection, as characterized by the subject-predicate form or relation, contrasts to intuition, which possesses an immediate rather than discursive relation to the object apprehended. Anticipating the Aesthetic, one can already see that only such an immediate, intuitive relation yields the object of cognition in its unity and individuated identity toward a possible synthetic cognition. This relation between subject and predicate, Kant continues, may be internal or external; “either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as something covertly contained in this concept A,” or “B, though connected with the concept A, lies outside it.” The first judgment is analytic; the second, synthetic. The former is characterized by the identity of subject and predicate; in such judgments, the predicate may be elucidated from the subject, or articulated from within its sphere of containment through dissection. The latter is characterized not by elucidation or dissection but by ‘amplification.’ Synthetic judgments, instead, “add to the concept of the subject a predicate that had not been thought in that concept,” and could not for this reason have been derived therefrom (A , B ). Kant again provides an instance in concreto; “if I say “all bodies are extended,” then this is an analytic judgment.” In this judgment, “I do not need to go outside the concept that I connect with “body” in order to find that extension is connected with it.” Extension is contained analytically within the concept of “body,” and can be located through the dissection of this concept “by becoming conscious of the manifold [of elements] that I always think in it,” within its sphere. All experiential judgment is synthetic rather than analytic (B ). Experiential judgment consists in the interrelation of intellection and intuition (A , B ). Such synthetic judgments require, in addition to a formal and discursive concept of the understanding, “something else necessarily the property of permanence. This initial restriction upon the range or sphere of application of the concept of substance to outer intuition, however, can only be explicated below and may for now be bracketed.

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(X) on which the understanding relies in order to cognize that the predicate belongs to that concept” (A ). Kant specifies that “I can begin by cognizing the concept of body analytically through the [intellectual] characteristics of extension, impenetrability, shape, etc.” But synthetic judgments of experience, as opposed to merely analytic relations among concepts, require that “I expand my cognition” (A ). For “experience is the X that lies outside concept A and makes possible a synthesis of the predicate B of heaviness with the concept A.” Experience requires objective cognition, and is constituted through intuition, rather than through a purely formal consciousness in concepts. Both elements of cognition, intuitive and intellective, “belong to each other, though only contingently as parts of a whole.” This whole is named “experience.” Experience is defined as “a synthetic combination of intuitions” (ibid). The precise character of these intuitions, or forms of intuition, which are to be combined synthetically, will occupy us below. In any application to intuition, intellection transcends its character as analytic, as a merely logical relation among concepts, and becomes synthetic. Intellection, in a specific interrelation and interdependence with intuition, is first treated as proposing a “mathematical” synthesis. Just as all experiential judgment is synthetic, “mathematical judgments are one and all synthetic.” But the analytic or synthetic character of mathematics is less significant to the understanding of the doctrine of pure intuition than is Kant’s claim that synthetic a priori judgment—the widest general metaphysical intention of the critical philosophy—requires a priori intuition.18 Without this imposition of a priori intuition, without its interde18 Kant’s exposition of the a priori elements of experience is only propaedeutic; “more significant still” is that cognition which “leaves the realm of all possible experience.” In such judgments, “no corresponding object can be given in experience at all” (B ). For such cognition, experience “cannot provide us with any guide or correction.” Such cognition—its provenance, possibility, and possible range or sphere—provides the problem-context for metaphysics. The thematics definitive of metaphysics are “God,” or Gotteslehre and “freedom, and immortality,” or the characteristics of the human soul found in a Seelenlehre. Kant repeats his claim that metaphysics has proceded upon the presumption that reason is capable of such cognition. Importantly, the sphere of such pretended cognition ensures that either confirmation or refutation by experience is impossible; “once we are beyond the sphere of experience, we are assured of not being refuted by experience” (A , B ). Only “clear contradiction can impede progress,” and even this offers only a logical guide or correction. However, the investigation of cognition independently of all possible experience is not necessarily dogmatic; “mathematics provides us with a splendid example of how much can be achieved independently of experience in a priori cognition.” Interestingly, this comparison of mathematics and metaphysics is marked equally by contrast, for the dogmatic character of the latter, and for the genuinely

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pendence with intellection in cognitive activity, a priori judgment is but logical, a mere relation among concepts, unfit for mathematics or metaphysics, experience or experiment. Kant claims that “a certain mystery lies concealed here,” and that “only by solving it can we make secure and reliable progress in the boundless realm of understanding’s pure cognition” (A ).19 Transcendental philosophy must, Kant asserts, “uncover the ground on which synthetic a priori judgments are possible.” It is in this thematic context that Kant formulates and advances “The General Problem of Pure Reason,” which consists in the question; “how are synthetic judgments possible a priori?” This question is first introduced in §  of the second-Edition Introduction (B ). The address of this question, as a transcendental and general metaphysical question concerning the legitimate scope, range, and limits of the cognitive faculty itself, will “at the same time” provide the key to the special metaphysical questions into the possibility conditions of mathematics, pure natural science, and metaphysics respectively. In other words, Kant’s transcendental topic and ars characteristica will imply, and make possible, his division of the sciences. Now, transcendental philosophy does not inquire into the question of whether each is possible, since their actuality is expressed in these disciplines themselves; it is instead the formal conditions for their possibility that concerns transcendental philosophy. The cognitive conditions which make possible the universality and necessity expressed in each, and the limits and boundaries of their possible extension, must, and can only be, determined transcendentally. intuitive character of the former; “mathematics deals with objects and cognitions only to the extent that they can be exhibited in intuition,” in spite of being itself independent of experience. This is possible because “mathematical intuition can itself be given a priori” (A , B ). The reason why Kant may claim that mathematicss (and specifically arithmetic) can—while metaphysics cannot—admit of an exhibition in intuition will occupy us throughout the following exegesis. 19 In response, Kant first adduces elementary arithmetical operations. Kant turns to mathematics, however, only for its capacity to evince the role of a priori intuition in synthetic judgment; “arithmetic propositions are always synthetic” (B ). For “no matter how much we twist and turn our concepts” in such operations, “we can never find the sum by merely dissecting our concepts, i.e., without availing ourselves of intuition.” Geometrical judgments, too, are understood as universally synthetic; here, too, “we must avail ourselves of intuition; only by means of it is synthesis possible.” Indeed, even exceptions, such as a=a or (a+b)a, prove the rule, insofar as “these principles, although they hold according to mere concepts, are admitted in mathematics only because they can be exhibited in intuition” (B ). The distinction between an “application,” and an “exhibition,” in intuition will be explicated below.

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Only from the result of the inquiry into the possibility-conditions for mathematics and metaphysics themselves, within the faculty of cognition itself, will the determination quid juris of reason’s legitimate possibility and the range of its “valid use” be established (B ).20 The effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the execution of the transcendental method will be evident in its result. Either “critique of pure reason [will] lead necessarily to science,” as may be hoped in advance, or it will lead, as has dogmatic philosophy, to “ungrounded assertions that can always be opposed by other assertions equally plausible, and hence to skepticism” (B ). Transcendental philosophy must take the form of a self-critique of pure reason, since “reason is the faculty which provides us with the principles of a priori cognition.” Pure reason is the faculty which “contains the principles for objectual cognition a priori” (A , B ). This critique must attain to the status of an organon, in which “the sum of those principles by which all pure a priori cognition can be acquired and actualized.” The actual application of such an organon would result in a system of pure reason. But first, one must secure the possibility of such a system of pure reason, and its limits. This preliminary investigation is to “judge pure reason, its sources and its bounds,” in order to offer a propaedeutic to the proposed system of pure reason. With this precise scope and task

20 Ewing notes in his Commentary that “the Critique may be said to have had two main aims; “() in the Aesthetic and the Analytic, to provide a philosophical basis for physical science” in outer sense and “() in the Dialectic, “to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” by denying a philosophical basis to the “sciences” of rational psychology and rational theology in inner sense. The first aim Ewing conceives as constructive. The second aim Ewing conceives as critical. The second aim is effected by means of the denial of the determinability conditions to inner intuition that were attributed exclusively to outer intuition; “ ‘transcendental’ refers to the necessary conditions of our experience . . . Kant claims to give transcendental proofs, meaning proofs which proceed by showing that if the principle he proved were not true of an object we could not ‘experience’ that object” (ibid, ). Both, constructive and critical intentions, Ewing notes, are founded upon or set up by theses originally grounded in the doctrine of intuition in the Aesthetic (A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, London, Methuen, , p. ). Ewing also recognizes their interrelation; “the two main purposes rest on each other . . .” The “Analytic answers the question—how are [such judgments] possible in natural science,” while “the Dialectic shows that they are not possible in metaphysics and explains how they came to be wrongly thought possible there,” by offering a clarifying and competing ars characteristica or architectonic. The belief that God and the soul “can either be proved or disproved by metaphysics rests on the assumption that we can apply indiscriminately [i.e., in metaphysical investigations] to reality the categories such as causality, which we apply to the objects of science,” which according to the Dialectic cannot receive “application in metaphysics and for a Seelenlehre through inner sense analogous to a Körperlehre of outer sense” (; see also p. ).

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well-defined, transcendental philosophy will “not concern itself directly with objects, but rather with our way of cognizing objects,” to the degree that “this cognition is possible a priori” (A , B ). In the transcendental self-critique of reason, we will seek not to cultivate, but only to correct, cognition. We will take, as our object, “not the nature of objects, which are inexhaustible, but the understanding that makes judgments about the nature of objects” (A , B ). This selfcritique will be capable of determining in advance the a priori elements— both intellective and intuitive—of any particular employment of cognition within experience. This architectonic structure, once articulated into its elements and internal relations or dynamics, will yield a topic not only of the nature but also of the limits of human cognition. This topic will provide us with an intellectual topography, a division of the legitimate from the illegitimate sciences according to a priori cognitive principles. This formal structure of cognition “cannot be hidden from us, since we need not search for it outside the understanding” in the inexhaustible range of its application. Secure for its obtaining within the understanding itself, this investigation will result in a “complete and stable architectonic of all the components which constitute this edifice” (A , B ). The exhibition of this architectonic structure will be made first in a Doctrine of Elements, and second in a Doctrine of Method. In these, the “two sources” of human cognition, intellection and intuition, or understanding and sensibility, will be set out. Through the former, objects are thought, or determined in their universality and conceptual, discursive character as objects of cognition. This determination may obtain, however, only if such objects are first given to us through intuition and sensibility, in which we possess an immediate rather than discursive and conceptual relation to a given object, in its individuality and unity. These “two stems,” may “perhaps arise out of a common root,” though this is “unknown to us” (A , B ). The critical or transcendental possibility for this unity must still be assigned, problematically if not assertorically. Isolating intuition, Kant conjectures that “if sensibility were to contain a priori presentations constituting the condition under which objects are given to us,” it would “to that extent belong to transcendental philosophy,” and find its rightful place within a transcendental topic of human cognition. For in all synthetic cognition a certain order of priority obtains; “the conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given precede the conditions under which these objects are thought” (ibid). We must, then, ascertain whether intuition may be established as () obtaining a priori, () united to intellection, and () yielding judgments both

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synthetic and a priori.21 The structure of our sensibility, and its place in the architectonic of human cognition, will be exposed in a transcendental aesthetic, or Sinnenlehre (A , B ). The possibility of this unknown or undetermined unity of sensibility and understanding should not, dogmatically, be presumed; nonetheless, the proper function of each faculty can be set out in advance. It is “through sensibility that objects are given to us,” and, in accordance with the priority of intuition to intellection, then “through understanding that they are thought” (A , B).22 It is intuition “by which cognition refers to objects directly (unmittelbar),” and intuition “at which all thought aims as a means” to its own fulfillment in an act of genuine cognition.23 Intu21 For La Rocca (Soggetto e mondo; Studi su Kant (Marsilio Editori, Venezia, )), this “processo empirico pre-giudiziale” is a “passaggio dalle intuizioni ai concetti” in order that “la generica concettualizzazione data dalle categorie subentra il concetto empirico particolare” (ibid, ). In this way, the Merkmale of intuition—apparently a merely scholastic artifice or engagement—receives a paramount significance; “concettualizzazione sembra derivare di una nota intuitiva,” in the sense that “la nota intuitiva offre il contenuto, a patto di generalizzarsi (di assumere la forma del concetto).” Thus this processus in cognition results in a “processo di produzione” according to which “materia specifica che potrà dare luogo a concetti empirici” is received in intuition and incorporated into the faculty of concepts (ibid, ). Most generally, one can say with La Rocca that the importance of this passage lies in its claim that the pure concepts “consentono una lettura dei fenomeni anzitutto attraverso l’emergenza sintetica di note intuitive.” More specifically, one can then say that “questo può fondare il riferimento a una x, il correlato del ‘questo’ deittico,” as individuated in intuition, “che a sua volta può consentire il giudizio ‘x è a,’ ovvero la formazione o uso potenziale di una nota concettuale . . . ,” on the basis of the intuitive note. For La Rocca’s excellent, and virtually unique, “fenomenologia del processo conoscitivo che deve condurre a giudizi sintetici,” see p. . For this processus, and the description of the “act of reflection that we exercise as soon as we’ve received impressions from the senses,” see Metaphysik L (Ak , –). 22 La Rocca (ibid) begins his treatment of the analytic predicates, “i Merkmale, le ‘note’ che rendono possibile sia la predicazione empirica sia lo stesso riferimento intuitivo,” with the claim that they are “il primo passo in una descrizione del processo conoscitivo che segua il decorso effettivo del giudicare empirico” (). La Rocca notes that the most replete treatment of this theme is found not in the first Critique, where it is present but not fully explicit, but in the unpublished writings; “come la maggior parte delle analisi del processo conoscitivo che Kant sviluppa, questa teoria è rintracciabile sopratutto nel LogikCorpus, ovvero nelle Reflexionen e nelle Vorlesungen . . . ” La Rocca analyzes first R  (Ak , ); “we know objects only by means of characters . . .” Thus for La Rocca “le note costituiscono dunque . . . la prima componente della conoscenza.” See also Kants Werke v. IX, Logik, §viii for an extended treatment of Kant’s “Begriff eines Merkmals überhaupt,” pp. –. See p.  for the role of the Merkmale in Kant’s determination of the “Grades” (Grade) of cognition, from intuition to reflective judgment, of from percipere through noscere and cognoscere to the fully determined comprehendere. 23 Benoist (Kant et les limites de la Synthèse: Le sujet sensible, Paris, PUF, ) discusses the unique and necessary contribution of intuition—of our passive relation

the passivity of our knowledge



ition obtains only, however, upon an object’s being given to us. This intuitive relation to objects in sensibility requires, and is variously described as, our passive relation to such objects, our capacity for receiving sensation, and our disposition to being affected by such objects. Most importantly for the doctrine of the pure intuitions, however, is Kant’s most general claim that cognition requires sensibility, and that in sensibility we are passively related to the given object of apprehension; “all thought must, by means of certain characters (Merkmale), refer ultimately to intuition” (A , B ). The result for cognition yielded by sensibility is named sensation (A , B ). Sensation is conceived as “the effect of an object on our capacity for presentation.” The matter of sensation obtains empirically. The form for sensation “in which alone sensations can be ordered and placed” obtains, qua formal, a priori. This form “must be capable of being examined apart from all sensation.” Independent of any individuated matter of sensation, the form for sensation is pure, the “form of sensible intuition as such.” This pure form of sensibility is “also called pure intuition.” Pure intuition is that by which empirical intuition is structured, that form in which “everything manifold in experience is intuited in certain relations.” Pure intuition will be “located in the mind a priori” as an a priori element of the cognitive faculty (ibid). Pure intuition yields neither the characters of sensation—impenetrability, hardness, color—nor the characters of the concepts of pure understanding—such as the concept of “substance,” already named. Pure intuition possess its own intrinsic characters, its own power to order and place sensations a priori according to certain Merkmale. The structure provided by such Merkmale allows the form for sensation to be investigated “in the mind a priori, prior to any reception of a matter of sensation,” even if there is “no actual object of the senses or of sensation” (A , B ). These formal characters are initially named only glancingly and incompletely as “extension and shape.” Only these characteristics are fully articulated, we will possess a “science of all principles of a priori sensibility.” This science is named Aesthetic. Aesthetic is to be prius not only in the act of cognition, but also in its transcendental explication (A , B ). Aesthetic is to articulate the conditions of synthetic a priori judgment (through which such judgment is to be accomplished). Aesthetic does not yet contain the conditions for synthetic a priori judgment (in which to objects in their unity, individuality, and immediacy—to the act of cognition as the contribution of a ‘subjectum unum, individuum, singulare’ on pp. –, –, and .



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such judgment is to obtain as already accomplished and attained). In the Aesthetic, Kant will “isolate sensibility,” by (a) “separating from sensibility everything that the understanding thinks through concepts,” and (b) “segregating from sensibility everything that belongs to sensation.” This twofold separation will yield the intrinsic structure and characters of pure intuition; “nothing will remain but pure intuition” as the a priori “form of appearances.” Importantly, pure intuition will also be subject to a division, itself both formal and principled. Aesthetic will reveal “two pure forms of sensible intuition.” The formal characters of these two forms of intuition—we possess no third form of sensible intuition, nor any nonsensible intuition—will be found in space and time respectively (A , B ). Having articulated the general metaphysical and transcendental context for the doctrine of the pure intuitions, the content of this doctrine may now be set out. II. The Intuitive Aspect of Cognition (Materialiter sic Dicta) How is it that an outer intuition, that precedes the objects themselves, and in which the concepts of these objects can be determined a priori, can be presented before the mind? Critique of Pure Reason, B 

ii. The Transcendental Determination of Space (Situs corporis) Kant begins his Aesthetic, or scientia intuitiva, with a “metaphysical exposition of the concept of space” (A , B ). This metaphysical aspect of the science of intuition examines the properties and character of the sensible forms by which we order and place the objects of empirical sensation. The object of this science will be that “property of our mind” through which objects can appear as spatial (A , B ).24 This property is termed outer sense, and it is “by means of this that we present objects as 24 Spatial form is articulated in the Neuer Lehrbegriff der Bewegung und Ruhe through the predicates of place (Ort) and position (Lage), through which determinations substances may be thought to be “bound together in a nexu externo of mutual interaction” (Ak, I, .–). Already in the Disssertation of , the analytic predicates of spatial form were named as limitum, terminus, and cancellus (Ak, II, –). The Merkmale attributed to pure outer intuition across the critical works are, also, limit, boundary, and position (Limit, Grenzen, Posten, and also Schränken). Grenzen and Schränken are distinguished in the first Critique at A , B , and at Prolegomena § . In the important Conclusion to the Prolegomena (§ ), Kant explicates the predicate of a boundary as follows; “bounds (in extended beings) always presuppose a space existing outside a certain definite place and enclosing it.” Limits “do not require this, but are mere negations which affect a quantity so far as it is not absolutely complete.” For Position, see also Reflexion

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

outside us,” and as standing over against the cognitive faculty as a possible object of apprehension.25 In this presentation of external objects as außer uns, “we present them one and all in space,” in a coordinate system or spatial manifold of external relations. Furthermore, Kant asserts, outer sense alone is able to contain within it such spatial dynamics as ‘outside us.’ Importantly, only in space “is shape, magnitude, and mutual relation determined or determinable” (A , B ). Outer sense, or the capacity to receive and represent objects as externally related to the cognitive faculty in a manifold of spatial relations, is contrasted to inner sense. It is “by means of inner sense that the mind intuits itself, or its inner state.” While outer sense reveals its objects as substances in external relations, inner sense will reveal no such determinate intuition of its respective object; “inner sense provides no intuition of the soul itself as an object.” For reasons already intimated, the objectivity of the soul, or the appearance of the soul as a determined object within an act of synthetic cognition, is to be disallowed. If the object of inner sense is problematic, however, the form of inner sense is comparatively clear; “there is a determinate form under which alone we can intuit the soul’s inner state” (A , B ). The soul’s inner state, and the entire range of its possible attributes (Bestimmungen), “is presented in relations of time.” The relation between inner sense and outer sense is reciprocal, then, insofar as heterogenous; “time cannot be intuited outwardly, any more than space can be intuited as something within us.” Inner intuition is bereft of the attributes or characters of the spatial manifold of outer sense, just as outer intuition, qua spatial, is as such bereft of the temporal succession by which we may order and place our intuition of the mind. In this formal distinction between space as form of outer sense and time as form of inner sense (and, specifically, in the formal aspatiality of time) obtains what could be termed the heterogeneity thesis. Both inner sense and outer sense are, as elements of our intuitive faculty, responsible for our relation to given sensible objects, either an extended substance (outer sense) or a mental state (inner sense). This relation is not characterized by the discursive universality of the concepts . Kant’s exposition relies upon such precedents, just as the determinations of shape and location rely upon the notion of extension, which itself relies upon the more abstract universal or fundamental Merkmale of Limit, Grenzen, Schränken. 25 This Gegenständlichkeit or “standing over against us” of an intuited object, possible only in space, is treated in important early Reflexionen on the forms of intuition, including: , , , , , , , , , , , , , and ; see particularly , .



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of the understanding, but is direct or immediate, and yields such objects in their unity and individual identity.26 Added to the principal distinction between understanding and intuition, then, a distinction within intuition will obtain, between inner intuition and outer intuition. The relation between inner intuition and outer intuition will be established through the formal distinction between time and space, and the “characters” definitive of each.27 These characters, in turn, will establish the representative “capacity” of each form. In the metaphysical exposition, Kant addresses not only the formal characters, but also the essential nature, of space and time. Kant’s exposition is metaphysical insofar as it “contains what exhibits the concept as given a priori” (A , B ). To this end, Kant will attempt an expositio of the concept of space, “clear if not comprehensive,” which will yield the “presentation of what belongs to a concept.” This presentation will allow for the depiction of the structural relations which order, and in which we place, any object of outer intuition, or object of experience. Kant begins by arguing that space is not, and cannot be, an empirical concept, merely “abstracted from outer experiences.” The empirical con26

Reuter (Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe [Königshausen & Neumann, Wurzburg, ]) discusses the characteristics of intuition as opposed to intellection in terms of the “immediacy thesis” and “the individuality thesis” on p.  ff. Reuter will speak of the difference between “in quo” (or the appearance of an object ‘in’ intuition) as opposed to “sub quo” (or the appearance of an object ‘under’ a universal concept as an instance thereof), in this context. The fundamental distinction remains that between “singularis (Anschauung) v. generalis (Begriff),” respectively. Reuter will ground his subsequent account of the “Irreduzibilität von Rezeptivität und Spontaneität” on this basis; see p.  ff. 27 See n. , above. Kant intends an exposition of what “clearly belongs to each [intuitive] concept,” through a transcendental ars characteristica. For Kant’s description of his own philosophy as “similar to Leibniz’s ars universalis characteristica combinatoria,” see the letter to Beck of  September . This intention has often been interpretered, however, with precious little fidelity or precision. Falkenstein (Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, ]) will even claim that “in themselves our intuitions in space and time are neither distinct nor unified . . . Each of us only ever has one intuition. This intuition occurs over time (the length of our lifespan) and is constantly growing. It also is spread out over space. Both the space and the time of the one intuition are unbounded (in the sense that they have no discernable outer rim). All plurality of intuitions arises from acts of mind, delimiting and bounding the space and time of the one intuition. And all unity of intuitions arises from acts of mind as well, bringing the manifold matters arrayed in different portions of the space and time of the one intuition to a unity under concepts. Though Kant never says that we ever have one intuition . . . the thesis does have a great deal of affinity with what he does have to say about the unboundedness and whole/part priority of space and time in the Metaphysical Expositions” (pp. –, note ). Kant indeed “never says” anything of the sort.

the transcendental determination of space



cept of outer experiences already assumes the a priori form of outer sense, and hence space. Only by means of this a priori form may the ordering of relata (as “outer”) evident within experience be achieved. The a priori presentation of space “must already ground (zum Grunde liegen) certain sensations in order for these to be referred to as ‘outside me.’ ” Only as “outside me” may sensations appear “in a location in space different than that location at which I am.” Equally, the same presentation must obtain a priori “in order that I present sensations as outside and alongside (Eroerterung) one another.” This allows sensations to appear as both individuated and differentiated; “not only as different but as being in different locations” (A , B ). It is “only by means of the concept of space” that “outer [empirical] experience is possible,” and only by means of pure outer intuition that the concept of space is itself possible. Space, then, “underlies (zum Grunde liegt) all outer intuitions” (A , B ). Space, as the form for outer intuition, is possessed of its proper or intrinsic structure or characters (Merkmale). These characters articulate the spatial manifold, and disallow the appearance of an “empty space.” Thus far, these relata which make space replete, or articulate, space as form of intuition consist only in the Eroerterung, or the Stellen definitive of intuitive cognition most generally, the positing of the elements of cognition in relations of mutual externality within a spatial manifold. Additionally, pure intuition is “not a discursive or universal concept of objects as such,” composed internally of subject and predicate, and hence a multiplicity. Neither does the pure intuition of space “contain presentations under it,” as would a concept, but instead “in it,” or within itself.28 The space of outer intuition is thus singular and ubiquitous; “we can present only one space,” and “when we speak of spaces,” in the plural, “we mean by that only parts of one and the same singular space” (A , B ). In intuition, the parts of space, whether spaces or places or elements placed therein, do not precede the whole as in a discursive concept, as “constituents from which space can be assembled.”29 28

See n. , above, for Reuter’s discussion (Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe [Königshausen & Neumann ]) of the distinction between the “in quo” relation between the form of intuition and its object as opposed to the “sub quo” relation of a concept to its object. 29 Guyer discerns “five claims about space and time” from A – and B –, which “collectively are supposed to ground the further conclusions in which the transcendental ideality of space and time are asserted” from A –, –/B –, –. Guyer suggests that “the first two arguments in each of these sets are supposed to establish that space and time are the pure, and therefore a priori forms of intuition, that all data for judgment are given only as representations of states of affairs in space and/or



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As an all-encompassing intuitive unity, space must precede any determination of a place or an element as situated therein. Any such locus is parasitic upon, or derived from, the unitary space of outer intuition. Space is “essentially one.” The “manifold in it” as well as “the universal concept of spaces as such” are each mere limitations (Einschraenkungen) of a wider space. As importantly, space is “simultaneous (Zugleich), ad infinitum.” There is no temporal succession in space, taken as an a priori element of our sensibility. To succession, space is related only heterogenously, as an infinite or all-encompassing extensionality, and as atemporal. Only as possessed of this all-encompassing universality can pure outer intuition incorporate and ground “the apodeictic certainty of all geometrical principles” (A , B ). In §  of the Aesthetic, Kant complements the “Metaphysical Exposition” of spatial form with a “Transcendental Exposition.”30 This exposition is to articulate spatial form not as it is in itself but instead in its possible relations with other elements of the cognitive faculty, or as “a principle that permits insight into the possibility of other synthetic a priori cognitions.” These extensions or applications each “flow from” the concept of space and its characters (Merkmale). Geometry, Kant begins, “is the science which determines the properties of space synthetically and yet

time.” Guyer suggests that “the third argument in each set is supposed to show that the “apodictic certainty of all geometrical propositions” (A ) and an allegedly parallel body of “apodictic principles concerning the relations of time” (A ). Both are to be shown to “entail a priori knowedge of the properties of space and time themselves.” Thus, “the last two arguments in each set are supposed to show that we have a priori knowledge of the uniqueness of space and time themselves, or that our representations of space and time are pure intuitions as well as pure forms of intuition, representations of two extraordinary particulars as well as forms for the representation of all more ordinary particulars” (). Guyer’s notes () that, due to the heterogeneity thesis, Kant’s exposition of time “proceeds only by parallels (only strained) to the example of space.” In spite of this recognition, and the recognition that “it is time rather than space which is foremost in Kant’s thought,” Guyer claims that “the derivative nature of the theory of time in the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ does mean that I can focus my exposition of Kant’s arguments there on the case of space, as indeed most commentators do” but as this analysis will not (). 30 Massimo Barale, in Kant e il Metodo della Filosofia (ETS Editrice, Pisa, ), considers “the demonstration of the ideality and intuitive character of space and time as the first and indispensable step in the demonstration of the possibility of synthetic a priori judgments,” which demonstration “coincides precisely with the very program of a critique of pure reason” most generally (). For Barale’s treatment of the metaphysical exposition, see –. For Barale’s treatment of the transcendental exposition, see pp. –. For Barale’s analysis, see pp. –.

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

a priori.” Space, then, affords the synthetic science of geometry. For this reason, space cannot be a mere concept, but must be a form of intuition, for, as we have seen, “from a mere concept one cannot obtain propositions that go beyond the concept” (B ). As an a priori science, geometry is not grounded in sensible, but only in pure (outer) intuition. With this assertion, Kant concludes his expositions, metaphysical and transcendental, of space.31 Kant remarks that these expositions have shown that “space represents no property of any thing in itself,” as would “adhere to objects themselves and would remain even if we abstracted from all subjective conditions of intuition” (A , B ). Through the doctrine of intuition, Kant claims to have demonstrated the impossibility, for human cognition, of a thing-in-itself.32 It is “only from the human standpoint that we can speak of space, extended beings, etc.” The predicates or characteristics of space are “to be ascribed to objects only as they appear to us” as objects of outer sense. Space, Kant concludes, is the “subjective condition of our sensibility.” Spatiality first reveals neither the condition of objects, nor a concept of objects, but the structure of our sensibility, and hence our possible experience. This subjective condition is itself revealed in the transcendental self-critique of reason, and its Aesthetic, as “nothing but the form of all appearances of outer sense,” and “the subjective condition of sensibility in which alone outer intuition is possible for us.”

31

Guyer discusses the distinction between the “metaphysical” and “transcendental” expositions in Claims of Knowledge, pp. –. Guyer argues that the “fourth and fifth arguments” (see note  above) in the Aesthetic “are intended to show that space and time are pure intuitions rather than pure concepts—that is, that instead of being characteristics of indeterminate extension they are actually particulars which are, however, represented a priori.” Guyer notes that this distinction implies that “concepts do not specify the scope of their own application,” while “that is precisely the role of intuition,” to both secure and to limit the sphere of their application (). 32 Fischer (Kant und seine Lehre, ) stressed the importance of this exposition to the widest intentions of Kant’s philosophy; it is “simply erroneous that the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding constitute ‘the most central element of the KrV,’ as if the other divisions, the Transcendental Aesthetic in particular, were of lesser importance and were in a final analysis inessential . . . the experience Kant undertook to deduce is the necessary and universal cognition of appearances, which for this reason presupposes their existence. The Transcendental Aesthetic instructs us how such appearances arise, and for this reason constitutes the necessary and indispensable basis of the Transcendental Analytic, and a division of equal importance” (). Similarly, for Havet (Kant et le problème du temps [Gallimard, Paris, ]), “tout l’édifice de la Critique repose sur l’Esthétique, puisqu’elle seule, en établissant le caractère intuitif a priori de l’espace et du temps, nous fait sortir du domaine des concepts . . . ” ().



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As a condition of sensibility, intuition reveals our receptivity, our “capacity for being affected.” This receptivity reveals to us our immediate relation to objects of outer sense in their individuality and unity, and the essential finitude of our cognition (A , B ). This form, and the “constancy” thereof, is “a necessary condition of all relations in which objects are intuited as outside us” (A , B ). In spatial intuition, partes posterior sunt. In the concept of space, pars toto anterior est. The unity and ubiquity of space must pertain to intuition rather than concept, must obtain as originally unlimited. As such, space is a transcendentally ideal element of our cognitive faculty, and yet empirically real, as objectively and universally valid of sense-objects. It is only through pure intuition that empirical cognition is possible. Kant’s exposition is not without certain unclarities (the simultaneous ubiquity of the space of outer sense is, as just exposed, an element within the cognitive faculty, the apprehension of which is ordered by the aspatial form of inner sense and its temporality, for example). But the structure and significance of space as form of outer intuition and as an element in our cognitive faculty is, in its basic claims, clear. Kant will now examine, in a Metaphysical Exposition of the Concept of Time, precisely our ‘second form of pure intuition,’ the temporal form of inner sense, its structure and its scope. II. The Intuitive Aspect of Cognition (Materialiter sic Dicta) In space there are none but outer relations; in inner sense, none but inner ones: the absolute is lacking. –A , B , Working Copy, A Edition (Erdmann entry CXLVIII).

iii. The Transcendental Determination of Time (Situs temporis) Kant’s metaphysical exposition of time begins identically to that of space. Time, Kant asserts, cannot be “an empirical concept abstracted from experience,” but instead makes that experience possible. There can be no empirical experience that does not already make use of the a priori presentation of time (A , B ). Like space, time as the pure form of outer intuition cannot appear as “empty,” for its formal structure contains the “characters” (Merkmale) which articulate time. These characters allow the ideality of inner intuition to contribute to the a priori structuration of experience (A , B ). Further, and importantly, time would be given a priori not only as the form of our inner intuition, but in and through the form of inner intuition, by means of which it may be apprehended and

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

its structure determined transcendentally. Only once itself apprehended and determined may pure intuition serve the self-critique of reason as “the ground for the possibility of apodeictic principles about temporal relations” (A , B ). In this acceptation, the exposition of time proceeds precisely as did the exposition of space. Thus, Kant next discusses the a priori status of time, and the manner in which it provides a basis for “apodeictic principles about relations of time,” or, perhaps better, relations in time. Just as in the exposition of space, time is originally and as pure intuition “unlimited,” an all-encompassing unity. The “limitations [put] on this single underlying time,” through which time is determined or made determinate, are moments, or “times,” within this single time (A , B ). Kant next asserts that time as form of inner sense, analogously to space as form of outer sense, makes possible a body of synthetic a priori cognitions, as found in “the general theory of motion” (B ).33 Time, in other words, according to B , possesses within itself the characteristics and capacities necessary for synthetic a priori cognition, the conditions which allow it to meet, with outer, spatial intuition, the standard and 33

In Space and Incongruence (Reidel, Dordrecht, , ) Buroker suspects that “Kant’s division of natural science into physics and psychology,” as intimated in the Preface, contains a “problem” for the assignation of motion as the science of time. For “oddly enough,” Kant’s “requirement that the concepts of science must be constructed, or presented in a priori intuition, [will] preclude the possibility of a metaphysics of thinking nature, or rational psychology” in inner sense. Buroker reviews the Metaphysical Foundations, and its claim that “the necessary construction is possible only through geometry” and by means of spatial form, while “the form of inner sense is time, which has only one dimension [such that] the concepts of rational psychology cannot be given a geometrical construction. Therefore rational psychology as a science is impossible.” For Buroker, “the problem is that this is hard to square with Kant’s theory of construction in the Critique, in which he claims that algebra, for example, is subject to symbolic . . . construction” in inner sense. Buroker “wonders why this is not enough to ensure psychology [as rational science synthetic by means of inner sense] the mathematical foundation appropriate for a science.” This tension, as we will see, obtains not only between Metaphysical Foundations and the first Critique, but within the first Critique. Buroker intimates this origin of this difficulty; “the distinction between inner and outer sense is itself problematic. When Kant . . . introduces it in the Aesthetic, nothing seems more reasonable than dividing objects of knowledge into those other than the subject and the subject itself. Space is the form of sensibility appropriate to the first group, whereas time is the form of intuition for the subject’s own states. But this simple distinction does not survive long. The argument in the Analytic is based on the fact that all representations are subject to time . . ..” (italics added). Moreover, “Kant’s argument in the Refutation of Idealism,” which we will review below, “suggests that the theory of sensibility is considerably more complex” still, and problematic (). Buroker does not further investigate her insight into this possible tension.



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demands of knowledge.34 Time, again analogously to space, “does not attach to objects” in themselves, such that time “would remain if one abstracted from all subjective conditions of our intuition” (A , B ). Time, in other words, pertains to the form of our experience and the character of our faculty of cognition. The universality and a priori status of this form (as transcendentally ideal) speaks equally and necessarily of all possible objects of experience (as empirically real). The objects of our experience, rather than revealing only a dead external nature, reveal for us our own engagement of and contribution to that objectivity, and thus serve as an element in our self-consciousness. Time, like space, cannot itself be actual in the sense that the objects it orders are actual. Nonetheless, and for this reason, time may be affirmed as “nothing but the subjective condition according to which alone” such ordering may be accomplished. This ordering is, in accord with the heterogeneity thesis and now disanalogously to space, “nothing but the form of inner sense,” by which “we intuit ourselves and our inner state” (A , B ).35 34 See also A , B ; “time and space are accordingly two sources of cognition. From these sources we can draw a priori different synthetic cognitions, as is shown above all by the splendid example that pure mathematics provides in regard to our cognitions of space and its relations. For time and space, taken together, are pure forms of all sensible intuition and thereby make possible synthetic a priori propositions.” This attribution of the conditions for synthetic a priori cognition to time will be seen, in the exegesis to follow, to be atopical (i.e., Kant will also deny that these conditions obtain). Similarly, in §  of the Prolegomena, Kant claims that “pure mechanics can form its concepts of motion only by means of the representation of time” (Ak, IV, ), while in §  of the Prolegomena (), Kant appears to deny, rather than to attribute, such synthetic conditions to inner intuition, and to make impossible, rather than possible, a science thereby. Kant depicts the advantage gained, regarding the ‘object of inner sense,’ by means of this latter, negative construal of inner sense. Kant comments on his refutation of materialism, and hence rational psychology, as follows; “the thinking self (the soul) substance . . . the ultimate subject of thinking . . . remains quite empty and inconsequential,” provided that “permanence—the quality which renders the concept of substances in experience fruitful—cannot be proved of it.” This disallowance of permanence and hence determinacy in inner intuition “serves well as a regulative principle totally to destroy all materialistic explanations of inner phenomena of the soul” as object of inner sense (see also § , Ak V ). Kant’s dominant intention for the ars characteristica of inner intuition is for Havet not to secure the conditions for a science in inner sense but to “dénoncer la fausse science qui réalise le moi transcendantal et lui applique les catégories qui nous représentant un objet en général . . . ” in a Seelenlehre. (Kant et le problème du temps [Gallimard, Paris, ], ). We will return to this possible tension below. 35 Just as space was exposed as internally articulate or manifold by means of the relation between space and the localized spaces, regions, places and elements placed therein, time will be exposed as manifold by means of an internal distinction between time qua unity, which by definition lies above any perception, and time qua successive, that temporal series in which inner perception can obtain. In accordance with the

the transcendental determination of time



Isomorphism is arrested here, however. When Kant attempts to determine this underlying time, or move from these apodeictic principles about time to the “subjective conditions of our intuition of it,” transcendentally, relations in time are exposed oppositely to those of or in space. Whereas the spatial manifold is three-dimensional, the temporal manifold is one-dimensional; “time has only one dimension.” Whereas “different spaces are not sequential but simultaneous,” in the case of time “different times are not simultaneous but sequential” (A , B ). The Merkmale of temporality or characteristics of temporal form are yet exposed as “simultaneity (Zugleichsein)” and “succession (Folge)” (A , B).36 Kant’s exposition of temporal form also begins, at this point of its exposition, to exhibit less clarity than does his exposition of spatial form (A , B ). As is well-known, Kant reworked and expanded the exposition of time in the second-Edition. He did so for the same reason he issued his revision to the first edition Preface, in order to respond to concerns “from men of insight [who] raise quite unanimously an objection” regarding his ‘doctrine of time’ as form of inner sense (A ). We need proceed no further than A , B  in order to come to recognize a reason for concern. In the second-Edition, in a “General Comment” on the same exposition of time, Kant will assert that time as form of inner sense possesses the characteristics, or “formal conditions,” of “succession, simultaneity, and of what is simultaneous with succession (the permanent)” (B ). Kant appears to have added, then, permanence heterogeneity thesis expressed in the exposition of space, from space only spaces, and from time only times or moments, can be derived. See also A , B ; space is composed only of spaces, or places. Time is composed only of times. Kant confirms this heterogeneity throughout the Reflexionen; “inner determinations are not in space” (R , cf. R ). By implication, “not everything which is in time is also in space, e.g., my representations” (R ). Thus, “one cannot attribute the predicates of space to that which one knows only in inner experience (this is why the soul [Seele] is a spirit [Geist])” and thus a determining subject, rather than merely a determined object (R ). 36 Paton (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, v. II, p. ) observes, rightly, that the successiveness in inner sense does not imply the successiveness of inner sense. Such successiveness “does not affect time itself, but only appearances in time.” That is, time as such is absolute unity, and legitimately possessed of all temporal predicates; “only in time can appearances be conceived as permanent, successive, and simultaneous” (see pp. –; § , “In what Sense is Apprehension Successive?”). Within the manifold of inner sense, as established by its Merkmale, this successiveness obtains within the (selfsame, constant) form that is inner intuition, qua element of the cognitive faculty. Paton will record that since “Kant believed that permanent substances are to be found only in space” (), the predicate of permanence cannot be shared; “permanence is not quite on the same footing as succession (nacheinander) and simultaneity (zugleich),” since its appearance is restricted to outer sense (–).



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to succession and simultaneity. But we have already seen that Kant has already taken away (in the second-edition Preface) what he would add. At B xl–xli, Kant had written that “nothing permanent can be found within me, and can be found only in something outside me” and in outer sense. Kant’s amendments in the second-Edition appear to exacerbate rather than resolve the ambiguity in his initial exposition of temporal form. ‘Succession’ is consistently attributed to time as form of inner sense throughout the first Critique.37 ‘Simultaneity’ appears, problematically, in this inital exposition of inner intuition in the Aesthetic. ‘Permanence’ is not attributed to inner intuition in its first exposition at A , B , but is attributed to inner intuition in the second-Edition addition; there, we read that time as form of inner sense “already contains” succession, simultaneity, and permanence (B ).38 However, permanence has already been denied to inner intuition in the second edition Preface and, with simultaneity, will be denied to inner intuition consistently and on principle throughout the Critique and for the variety of motives that we will review below.39 In fact and as just noted, we have already come upon 37

For example, at B , Kant will assert that in inner sense, there obtains only a “mere flux, chaos,” not constant but inconstant. For denials of simultaneity to time, see already A , B –; “the manifold of inner sense . . . of which time is nothing but the form, constitutes a series of one dimension, the parts of which are always successive.” Kant will assert throughout his work published and unpublished that “in respect of succession there is no permanence” (Ak, , ). See also R  (Ak , –); “inner sense can contain nothing but the temporal relation of our representations,” which will imply that “spatiality is necessary for a single representation of temporal succession because it is the only way in which simultaneity can be represented” (R ). We will uncover the motive for this pure successiveness thesis in our review of the critique of rational psychology and the Refutation of Idealism, below. 38 Guyer notes Kant’s equivocation on the modes of time in Claims of Knowledge, –. Exegeting A , B , Guyer notes the congruence with the exposition of the Aesthetic; time can contain relations of succession and simultaneity. He also notes that Kant claims that “simultaneity and succession are the only relations in time (A , B ),” i.e., that no permanence or duration can obtain within time as form of inner sense. He also notes “there is an apparent conflict here,” since “Kant sometimes suggests that succession is the only purely temporal relation; see A , B )” (ibid). 39 Baumanns (Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ [Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ]) attributes succession (Nacheinander) to time and juxtaposition (Nebeneinander) to space as their respective Grundqualitäten, with simultaneity (Zugleichsein) and perdurance (Dauer) restricted to the “räumliche Symbolierung” of outer sense ( n.). Exegeting R , Guyer acknowledges similarly that “spatiality is necessary for a single representation of temporal succession because it is the only way in which coexistence [Zugleichsein] can be represented . . . endurance is then implied simply because space itself . . . is permament” (). For a review of the basic claims of Kant and the Claims of Knowledge on these points, see Baumanns, –.

the transcendental determination of time



Kant’s insistence, in the addition to the second-Edition Preface, that “permanence” cannot be attributed to inner intuition, and in fact must be denied to it, in order to deny to inner sense the conditions that would allow it to yield synthetic conditions of its ‘object,’ the ground of cognition or the soul. Only upon such a denial, we read, could the spontaneity of cognition be ‘derived from principles’ distinct from and opposed to the passivity of the object of cognition.40 While the following exegesis will resist all reliance upon extraneous interpretations of Kant’s own texts, in order to focus its analysis on Kant’s own exposition of the doctrine of time, we may note here for purposes of exposition De Vleeschauwer’s concern that “Kant is inconsistent on the number of dimensions that one must attribute to time.” For De Vleeschauwer, Kant’s doctrine of time risks ambiguity, since “the one-dimensionality of time is sometimes . . . but not always, affirmed.” While, “on occasion, Kant affirms that time possesses two dimensions,” Kant “still more frequently [affirms] three dimensions”—as would appear necessary, phenomenologically, to provide the basis for the appearance of a world within the subjective life and activity of the mind in, for example, memory and anticipation. This “same hesitation,” according to De Vleeschauwer, “manifests itself regarding the modes of time.” I hope to show, in the following exegesis, that this ‘inconsistency’ regarding the character of time as form of inner sense is essential to Kant’s 40 On the provenance of simultaneity, see, e.g., Baum (“Kant on Cosmological Apperception” International Philosophical Quarterly , pp. –); “permanence, as thus implied in simultaneity, can be ascribed only to something in space whose parts all coexist . . . for only of it can it be said that its duration is simultaneous with that of other entities in the world . . . no representations existing in time can be said to exist simultaneously with bodies in space or in the world” (). For Ernst Cassirer, “as long as we abandon ourselves simply to the stream of sensations and impressions” in inner sense, “there is for us no simultaneity . . . because what we apprehend is just something flowing and successive” (Kant’s Life and Thought [New Haven, Yale, ], p. ). Similarly, Chenet, in his magisterial L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale, differentiates () time as such, determined metaphysically as a pure unity, and the ground of such temporal determinations as before and after, simultaneity, and permanence, and () time qua inner sense, which must yield only a mere succession (Zeitfolge). For Chenet, “L’Esthétique n’enseigne rien d’autre que la successivité des parties de temps.” Chenet also specifies the argumentative intention of the successiveness thesis; “L’Esthétique ne peut servir à fonder la thèse suivant laquelle ‘dans ce que nous appelons l’âme, tout est dans un continuel écoulement et il n’y a rien de permanent’ (A ).” The absence of the possibility of permanence in the form of inner sense will be necessary in order to disallow the presence of a permanent object of inner sense; “il ne se trouve absolument pas d’intuition permanente dans le sens interne (B )—ce qui entraîne l’impossibilité de toute science de l’objet du sens interne” or Seelenlehre ().

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determination of the nature and limits of human cognition. This will allow us, with De Vleeschauwer, to “conclude, without hesitation, that this ambivalence is not an empty game, but a necessity, required by the most general lineaments of the critical philosophy.”41 I would like to suggest, then, that the question of the Merkmale of time as form of inner sense obtains as the first relevant unclarity or ambiguity within Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic. For the purposes of our inquiry, however, I would like to suggest that a second and still more important ambiguity regarding the formal character of time as form of inner sense obtains within Kant’s exposition in the Transcendental Aesthetic. The latter concerns not formal relations in time, but formal relations between time and space. Time, as form of inner sense, “determines . . . the way in which the manifold is [placed] together in the mind” for objects that appear as

41 La déduction transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant (Paris, –), v. , – . Kant will suggest at B  that “what underlies this whole difficulty”—regarding “time . . . as formal condition for the way in which we place [presentations] in the mind”—is the problem of “how a subject can inwardly intuit himself.” However, Kant’s recognition is followed by a defense; Kant will continue to assert that “this difficulty is shared by every theory.” But we shall see that this further problem of self-affection itself points, in turn, to more fundamental structures and dynamics unique to Kant’s own ‘self-critique of reason.’ The (a) heterogeneity thesis, (b) internal variance within Kant’s expositions of time qua form of inner sense, and (c) tensions within the wider transcendental positions it would support within the self-cognition of reason, are not “shared by every theory,” but are particularly, even uniquely, Kant’s own. In §  (Inner Sense and the Phenomenal Self) of Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, Paton repeats Kant’s assertion that “the only difficulty is to understand how a thinking subject can have an inner sensuous intuition of itself. This we cannot explain, but it is simply a fact, and so is a difficulty common to every theory” (). (Regarding this claim of a universal rather than Kant’s particular difficulty, La Rocca comments skeptically; “È difficile non notare già qui, checchè ne dica Kant, una difficoltà” [ibid, ]). For Paton, “Kant’s conclusion is obvious enough on his premises.” However, Paton admits that “the details of the way in which the mind affects itself, I am sorry to say, still elude me, though I have no doubt that he is trying to say something of real importance.” For this reason, Paton’s assurance that “the general direction of his thought is clear enough,” even if not convincing (). Paton recognizes that his “examination of inner sense rests primarily on passages added in the second edition.” This imbalance is not unimportant, and is “due to the fact that in the first edition this problem was treated chiefly in the [negative context of the] Paralogisms.” In that context, Kant had asserted the restrictive character of inner sense, and its inability to represent the spatial form of objects. Paton admits that the second edition doctrine had been transformed; “in the second edition Kant was attempting to dispel misunderstandings of his theory, and felt obliged to articulate more fully his doctrine of inner sense and its relation to permanent substances in space.” Paton turns away from this variance between the two editions; “here I can only register my opinion that both these doctrines [inner sense and outer sense] are essential to the Critical Philosophy . . . ”

the transcendental determination of time



obtaining within consciousness. This capacity of inner sense is analogous to outer sense, which determines the conditions for the possibility of (intuitive, synthetic) appearance within its own sphere. Outer sense provides the structuration for, in the terms of A , B , those “sensations [which are] to be referred to something outside me (i.e., something in a location in space other than the location in which I am).”42 The cognitive functions that make replete our ‘inner state,’ the life and flow of our mental processes, are not, phenomenologically, evident within the res extensa of outer sense; one cannot establish an intuitive relation to the concept of an external object, or a judgment on the essence of an external object, as one can the external object itself. Nor, transcendentally, could one legitimately claim a position, nebeneinander, for a concept, idea, or judgment (where, exactly, would one place the idea of a mathematical relation, or indicate deictically the location of a concept or judgment?). And of course such concepts and judgments cannot and should not be comprehensible by means of the causal relations of and in outer intuition. Time, as the form for inner intuition, again disanalogously to space, “cannot be a determination of outer appearances.” To it, Kant asserts, “pertains neither shape nor position” (A , B ).43 Time is restricted in scope to the determination “of the relation of presentations in our inner state” (A , B ).44 42 Chenet (ibid) records that, with regard to Kant’s positive argumentation, “l’intention de Kant est de faire jouer au temps un rôle comparable à celui que joue l’espace, de prouver que, de même que seul le concept transcendental d’espace (comme forme de l’intuition externe) fait comprendre la possibilité de la géometrie comme science a priori objective, seul le concept transcendental de temps fait comprendre la possibilité de la théorie générale du mouvement comme science synthétique a priori.” Chenet notes that “on doit sans doute accorder qu’il existe des propriétés a priori du temps.” However, “autre chose est d’y voir . . . des propositions synthétiques” given Kant’s assertions of the necessary ‘onedimensionality’ of time (). Chenet notes that, to this asserted homogeneity and parallelism, “les objections ne manque pas . . .,” given the presence of the heterogeneity thesis and its necessary implications (). 43 The heterogeneity of inner sense from spatiality disallows its possession of derivative characters and capacities: inner intuition “cannot yield empirical location; I am myself an object of my outer intuition in space and without this could not know my place in the world.” See, i.a., Reflexionen zur Metaphysik, , and also  (Ak, , ). Importantly, an object cannot be distinguished from others and identified as itself, individuated, unless it occupies space (A , B ). It should be noted, however, that The Aporia of Inner Sense is not first concerned with empirical qualities or properties of bodies— extension, place, impenetrability, materiality, shape—but with the predicates or formal character of pure outer intuition—limit, boundary, position—and their possible presence within the manifold of inner sense. 44 Chenet (ibid) treats Kant’s negative assertions that (i) “le temps ne peut pas être une détermination des phénomènes externes,” that (ii) “le temps ne peut être une détermination

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Just as the apparent thesis of an isomorphism ended above in a thesis regarding the apparent parallelism between inner and outer sense, so here parallelism will be arrested, and will yield to an inclusiveness thesis. Kant will assert first that “all relations of time can be expressed by means of outer intuition.” On this construal, the reciprocal-heterogeneity thesis would be denied and the inclusive universality of spatial intuition affirmed; spatial intuition would obtain as a formal Inbegriff or encompassing representation.45 This thesis is apparently contravened, however, by the immediately succeeding claim regarding space, that it “is limited as a priori condition to just outer appearances” and restricted from the appearances of our inner state (A , B ). Kant next records, again at A , that it is instead time that obtains as “the formal a priori condition of all appearances universally,” inclusively of space. Inner intuition, on this latter construal, would necessarily be inclusive, rather than exclusive, of the spatial relations of outer sense.46 des phénomènes extérieurs,” that (iii) “le temps ne peut pas être intuitionné extérieurement,” and that time (iv) “n’appartient ni à une figure ni à une position” on p. . For Monzel’s early discussion of the reasons that “eine Parallelstellung von Raum und Zeit sei dann unmöglich,” on the “Basis des Anschauungscharakters,” and the “Zeitcharakters” that establish the “Zeitform des inneren Sinnes” as distinct in character and capacity from outer sense, see “Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinn und der Zeitbegriff im Duisburg’schen Nachlass,” Kant-Studien, Bd. , , pp. –. 45 Havet focuses in his work on the Merkmale of time as closely as La Rocca focused on the Merkmale of intuition more generally. Havet first considers the centrality of time (“le temps joue un rôle central dans la philosophie de Kant”) and to the tension within the doctrine of time. For Havet, “son idéalité, parallèle à celle de l’espace” is depicted both according to . “sa pauvreté et son interiorité” in its aspatiality and . according to its role as Inbegriff, “dans toute constitution d’objet” (). Time then possesses a “usage fondamental” according to which it “se révèle comme le médiateur universel” and a “usage dialectique” according to its mere inconstancy and indeterminacy. For this tension, it “apparaît comme une réalité équivoque qui ne peut remplir des fonctions si diverses qu’en vertu de l’ambiguïté de sa définition” (). According to the first, inner intuition is “la condition de possibilité de toute conscience empirique” () while according to the second it possesses instead a negative function. Havet is led to an analysis of the Nachlass, since “la Critique laisse sans réponse toutes ces questions” (). 46 On this construal, space is incorporated within the temporality of inner sense. Time would become a “universal representation” (Inbegriff ), inclusive of spatial form. Space, on this construal, is denied its own intrinsic temporality, and restricted in its scope and sphere; “space is the pure form of all outer appearances,” and “as such is limited as a priori condition to only outer appearances.” Kant will assert at A , however, that “the presentation of myself as thinking subject is referred merely to inner sense, whereas presentations designating extended beings are referred also to outer sense” [italics added]. In this way, the spatiality of outer sense would become “universal representation.” Because of such equivocations, one may rightly worry that Kant’s doctrine of time, as the form of inner sense, is atopical. Moreau advances this concern, perhaps aggressively, in “Le

the transcendental determination of time



On this basis, of the inclusion of space within time, Kant asserts that “all presentations, whether or not they possess outer objects, do yet in themselves as determinations of the mind belong to our inner state.” This “inner state obtains under the formal condition of inner intuition, hence time” (A , B ).47 In this assertion and acceptation, time appears as a “universal representation” or Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen, inclusive of spatial form. This universalization of time requires the possible interdependence of the sensible forms. This interdependence is a precondition for the incorporation of space within time, and yet requires not heterogeneity but homogeneity. In this way, the heterogeneity thesis—which insofar as problematic means herein the aspatiality of time as form of inner sense—would be denied in order that the inclusive universality of temporal intuition may be affirmed. This ambiguity has afflicted Kant’s exposition, apparently, from the opening paragraphs of the exposition of time.48 temps, la succession et le sens interne” (Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses [Ed. Gerhard Funke; Berlin, de Gruyter, ]), notes that “l’Esthétique transcendentale a propagé l’usage de traiter l’espace et le temps comme des représentations analogues.” Their “correspondance réciproque,” Moreau admits, breaks down almost immediately; while Kant will assert in §  of the Aesthetic that “le temps n’est-il ‘rien d’autre’ que la forme du sens interne, c’est-à-dire de l’intuition de nous-même et de notre état intérieur,” Kant will also assert, already in §  of the Aesthetic, that “le temps est la condition a priori de tous les phénomènes en général.” Already in the earliest sections of the (second edition) Aesthetic, Moreau notes this atopicality of time, its status as both aspatial, or exclusive of spatial relations, and inclusive of all representations of both space and time (see also ). This last relation Moreau conceives as a “considération qui fait rentrer le sens externe dans le sens interne,” in spite of the claim to independence (). 47 For Washburn (“Did Kant Have a Theory of Self-Knowledge?,” ibid), the problematic aspects of the doctrine of inner sense have apparently been “previously unknown” to Kant’s principal English-language interpreters (). Washburn privileges the problem of self-knowledge, the “knowledge of the empirical self or ego, i.e., the self as it appears in time, the form of inner sense.” He insists upon the universal significance of the doctrine; “self-knowledge is not an isolated issue for Kant. Anyone who would write on his theory of self-knowledge as if it were a special topic in epistemology is bound to be on the wrong track . . .” (). Washburn claims a universal significance for the doctrine since “the very nature of our sensibility divides all objects of human experience into two mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive domains, viz., outer and inner sense.” This “allows an a priori division of nature into the two domains of outer and inner sense” (). For Washburn, Kant “vacillates in his usage of the concepts of time and of inner sense. He often refers to inner sense as the domain of human sensibility in general, containing all representations whatsoever.” Washburn continues; “however, he just as frequently refers to inner sense as the limited domain of time alone, excluding all spatial representations . . .” (, note). 48 For Havet, for reasons that we will review throughout the following exegesis, this is the “ambiguïté qui tout au long de la Critique de la Raison Pure pèse sur la notion de temps . . .” (ibid, ).

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Any systematic significance that this concern with the apparently varied and variant relations between time as form of inner sense and space as form of outer sense might possess is yet invisible. No basis for the assertion of any such significance has yet been established. But such equivocations regarding the formal structure, characters, and relations of outer sense and inner sense are of evident importance to these first moments in the structuration, the “transcendental topic” or architectonic, of human cognition. An intimation of the possible significance of such an atopicality can be felt in Kant’s following claim. Kant will assert a functional thesis on the basis of the formal thesis regarding the inclusion of space within time. On the basis of his construal of time as a formal Inbegriff, Kant will assert that it is “by means of this [inner] intuition that we encompass within (in . . . befassen),” and take up into, “our power of representation all outer intuitions” (A , B ).49 Taken formally and in accordance only with the metaphysical exposition of the Transcendental Aesthetic, this assertion indicates (and assumes) the thesis of the universality of time and its incorporation of outer intuition. Taken functionally or dynamically, however, and in accordance with the transcendental exposition, this claim indicates the ordo cognoscendi or order of cognition of the synthetic activity or power of our faculty of cognition, and the manner in which this order will be determined.50 49 Chenet, in L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Lille, ) depicts the exclusion of space from the time of inner sense in light of the constructive or positive function of the doctrine at; “Malgré les formules où les concepts de sens et d’intuition internes semblent désigner une sphère spécifique de l’expérience (excluant l’expérience externe) . . ., opposée à la sensibilité externe, le ‘sens interne’ ne fonctionne pas en réalité conformément à sa définition. Il n’est pas ‘la forme de l’intuition interne’ ou, s’il est, c’est dans la mesure où l’on entend par là ‘la condition subjective sous laquelle peuvent trouver place en nous toutes les intuitions,’ donc externes ou internes” (). Thus, while “si, dans l’Esthétique, Kant parle du sens interne plutôt comme . . . opposée à sa ‘direction’ externe,” nonetheless, “dans l’Analytique transcendentale comme la sensibilité in général face à l’entendement qui la détermine, comme l’Inbegriff aller unseren Vorstellungen” (). 50 This amplified construal of inner intuition supports Kant’s second-Edition addition in § , the “Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time.” There, Kant presents conclusions upon the concept of time in a manner analogous to the exposition of space in § . But here, Kant claims that in the first-edition, and “for the sake of brevity,” he “inserted within a metaphysical exposition” of axioms of time “an element that is instead transcendental.” This aspect of Kant’s exposition concerned the topicality of the predicates of simultaneity and succession, and their role in synthetic cognition. Kant requests that “an addition be allowed,” by which “the concept of change,” taken spatially as “change of place” be accepted as “possible only through and in the presentation of time.” Kant

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While this “order” or “process” (processus) of and in cognition cannot be determined fully in the context of Kant’s Aesthetic, even at this early stage of our investigation an important result has been achieved. Formally, Kant’s ambivalence regarding the independence or interdependence of the forms of intuition has been established. Further, and functionally, it has been established that objects first given to our outer sense must be “transposed” to, and through, inner sense. For only then can such an object be “given to the understanding” or presented to our “power of representation.” Inner sense must be capable of performing this positive role in order that the proper function, the synthetic activity of the cognitive faculty itself, be possible. While the full comprehension of this ordo cognoscendi or processus within any synthetic act of cognition cannot yet be achieved, its importance may already be apparent. This positive exigence is reflected in a second-edition addition to the Aesthetic, contained in the General Comment of § . There, Kant claims that “the proper material” of inner sense is that of outer sense, or the five outer senses; “this condition applies to inner intuition, [that] . . . the proper material in it, with which we occupy our mind, consists in presentations of the outer senses” (A , B ).51 This construal of the incorporation of the materium dabile of outer sense within the manifold of time as form of inner sense, however, assumes not the heterogeneity

adds in  that motion, conceived as the change of an object’s place across time, is to be understood as interdetermined with and in time. This addition appears to echo the amplified account of inner sense in the second-Edition Preface, and its formal “relation of identity (identisch),” rather than heterogeneity, between inner sense and outer sense. But this addition identifies directly the objects of empirical experience. In this addition, Kant acknowledges that if this presentation of motion as change of place “were not [contained in] (inner) a priori intuition,” then “no concept whatever could make comprehensible the possibility of change” as “a combination in one and the same object” of “contradictory predicates” across places and times (B –). Only this amplification and spatialization of inner intuition allows it to “explain the possibility of all synthetic a priori cognition set forth by the general theory of motion” (ibid). 51 It may be helpful to anticipate the passages in which such assertions of homogeneity, or interdependence, will give way again in the Dialectic to the heterogeneity thesis, upon the exigence of the critical rather than constructive argument presented in that context. One may anticipate that “among outer experiences we can never encounter thinking beings as such . . . ” (A ), that, “all external relation and therefore all composition of substances is possible only in space” (A , B ), that “space cannot make evident a thinking being” (A ), and that “through no outer experience, but solely through self-consciousness, can I have the least presentation of a thinking being” (A , B). Within outer sense alone obtain “extension, impenetrability, cohesion, motion,” which themselves “neither are nor contain thoughts, feelings, desire, or resolution” as does inner sense (A ).

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or exclusiveness thesis, but the homogeneity or inclusiveness thesis, and the capacity of inner intuition to exhibit spatial form.52 When Kant next asserts (at B ) that “the form of this [inner] intuition . . . determines the way in which the manifold is [placed] together in the mind,” it is clear that Kant is relying not upon the thesis of the incapacity of inner intuition (its aspatiality) but upon the thesis of its amplified capacity (its inclusiveness). Kant recognizes that “what underlies this difficulty is this; how can a subject inwardly intuit himself?” (B ). But Kant’s recognition of this difficulty provides us with an occasion to retreat from this more focused address and adopt a more general stance with regard to the problem. In the Elucidation that is common to both editions (§  in B) and that precedes Kant’s formulation of this question, Kant defends his account against the “unanimous objection” raised by “men of insight” (Mendellsohn, Schulze, Eberhard, as mentioned above)53 against the thesis of the ideality of inner intuition. He 52

Exegeting the General Comment to the Aesthetic (La déduction transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant, v. III, ), De Vleeschauwer, in terms similar to those used here, suggests that “cette reprise du problème montre déjà que, si la thèse exposée dans l’Esthétique est satisfaisante d’un point de vue critique, elle ne l’est pas d’un point de vue constructif . . . ” This “problème urgent” with the necessary conditions for the appearance of oneself qua object of inner sense (or, “le moi comme objet de connaître”) for De Vleeschauwer “n’a pas encore reçu une solution satisfaisante.” For this distinction, De Vleeschauwer is one of few who may claim to have articulated “les conditions spéciales requises pour comprendre le problème du sens interne” (ibid, v. III, ). While De Vleeschauwer contributes to scholarly understanding of this problem throughout his magnum opus, and particularly in v. III, the general character of his understanding can perhaps be best learned from § ,  (“L’ application des catégories au sens interne”). We will return to this important scholarly resource for the understanding of the tension between the ‘critical’ and ‘constructive’ intentions of the first Critique, and their respective demands upon inner intuition, throughout the following exegesis. 53 Lambert’s critique of Kant’s thesis of the ideality of time and space as pure intuitions as expressed in the grosse Licht of  and recorded in the Dissertation of  is found in his letter to Kant of October  (Ak , –). Mendellsohn’s critique is found in his letter to Kant of  December  (Ak , –). Neither critique need be further exposed. Each is external and indeed dogmatic for identifying the ideality of intuition for critique, rather than accepting this general transcendental principle of ideality and identifying only the formal character of this ideality and functional relations thereby possible. Nonetheless, a brief record of Mendellsohn’s letter may prove informative. In his letter to Kant of  December , he identified the internal connection between (a) the ideality thesis, (b) the heterogeneity thesis, (c) the aspatiality of time, and thereby (d) the problem of self-consciousness. Mendellsohn there criticized Kant’s doctrine by defending Leibniz’s; “time is according to Leibniz a phenomenon, and like all appearances has something subjective and something objective in it. The subjective element is continuity, thereby represented; the objective element is succession, of changes, that are consequences equidistant from a ground.” One could almost say that Kant reverses this

the transcendental determination of time



does so by means of a genetic comprehension of such misguided objections; each results from a “problematic” or “psychological” idealism.54 For Kant, it is the false privilege accorded unreflectively to first-person self-consciousness, to “the object of inner sense (the actuality of myself and my state)” that causes this objection to be “raised so unanimously.” By this implicit acceptance of the privileged epistemic status of the appearance of oneself and one’s representations, each is forced to accept the consequence that the “external object might be a mere illusion,” while “the object of inner sense” and with it its form, time, is alone “undeniably something actual.” On this merely subjectivistic (mis)conception of experience, the reality and the actuality of external objects is “incapable of strict proof,” while the object of inner sense is “immediately evident through [first-person self-] consciousness” (A , B ). On the basis of the general and unproblematic thesis of the ideality of intuition, Kant insists on the impossibility of such a privileged locus. Both forms of intuition “still belong only to appearance.” The simultaneous actuality and ideality of the sensible forms may be confirmed on this basis. Each contains both the form for a possible experience and the form of our actual experience. Time, then, achieves actuality as “the actual form of our inner intuition,” through which an intuitive and ideal relation to objects as appearances obtains (A , B ). In inner sense, “I have, actually, presentations provenance; continuity will pertain to outer sense, mere succession to inner sense, and superiority in cognition will be given from metaphysics (and its “common program”) to physics on this basis. 54 In v.  of La Déduction Transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant, De Vleeschauwer notes that the “position du problème par Kant” in the second edition “à des échos de polémiques autour de son ouvrage, car, chaque fois qu’il introduit le sens interne, Kant ne manque pas de rappeler combien on a trouvé paradoxale cette thèse de l’affection du moi par lui-même” (). De Vleeschauwer provides an informative review of the criticisms of the doctrine of inner sense by Kant’s first readers in v. , p. ; “tout le monde devait s’étonner de l’exposition de la forme temporelle,” while “Kant s’étonne de ce qu’on trouve de difficultés si grandes dans l’affection du moi . . . ” Nabert (“L’Expérience Interne chez Kant,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, ), also notes that “on trouve dans la deuxième édition maints indices attestant que Kant se proposait, en reprenant la théorie de sens interne, de répondre à des difficultés ou à des questions qui lui avaient été proposées . . . D’une manière générale, et sans entrer dans l’histoire des deux éditions, il convient de remarquer qu’un bon nombre des changements apportés par Kant dans la deuxième édition concernent, directement ou indirectement, le problème du moi et de l’expérience interne” (). Ward (A Study of Kant, Garland, New York, , pp. –, and –) perhaps too sharply, holds that “in his first-Edition, Kant . . . proceded entirely oblivious of the antithetic position which his doctrine of inner sense involved,” while this antithetical doctrine of inner sense accounts for “the changes he was led to make in his second edition.”

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of time and of my determinations in time.” Kant will grant to such arguments or conceptions that “changes are thus actual,” upon the proof offered by “the variation in our presentations” themselves.55 Kant suggests that when we “take account of the form of intuition . . . in the subject to whom such objects appear,” we see that both time and space offer appearances, according to the limited and determinate character of our intuition, rather than privileged data, independently of the receptive character of our intuition (A , B ). When we take account of the subjective character of appearance, Kant suggests, we are able to see that, “even if one were to deny all outer appearances and the changes they exhibit,” as would a psychological idealist, it is still “by means of this [inner] intuition” that we encompass within or “take up into our faculty of representation all outer intuitions” (A , B ). Here, however, one can see that Kant’s argument requires not only the ideality thesis of intuition generally, but also the inclusiveness thesis as pertained to inner intuition. The purportedly privileged sphere of inner intuition in this way can be seen to yield not only () a subjective reflection of the limited character of our intuition, but indeed () the data of outer intuition. In other words, when we take account of the experience which obtains by means of and according to the forms of intuition, we see that “the proper material in it [inner sense], with which we occupy our minds, consists in the presentations of the outer senses” (B ). We see, in other words, that the sphere of inner sense, purportedly privileged, yields, (a) according to form, a determinate form of intuition which yields appearances rather than objects independently of our intuition, and (b) according to matter, the purportedly merely illusory data of outer sense. This internal presence of the matter of empirical sensation within inner sense affords Kant this “critique of psychological idealism.” This argument assumes, of course, a formal homogeneity in intuition, and the possibility of an appearance of such empirical and extended matter within inner intuition. This argument also assumes the effectivity of the “transposition” (transitus) of the object of outer intuition to the temporal manifold of inner intuition.56 The formal basis or justification for this effectivity remains, for us, problematic at this early stage of our exegesis. 55 Van Cleve, following Guyer, notes that Kant claims to, but does not, “grant the whole argument” given by Lambert and Mendellsohn on the reality of inner sense. For analysis, see Problems from Kant (New York, Oxford University Press, ), p.  ff. 56 For discussion of the theme of the ‘transposition’ of an object “moyennant sens interne,” see Bourgeois, “Cogito kantien et cogito fichtéen,” Les Cahiers de Philosophie, Numéro Hors Sérié , pp. –,  ff.

the transcendental determination of time



Generally, however, it can be said—whether one takes a precise view of Kant’s doctrine of the character of inner sense, or a more general view of Kant’s basic intentions—that the apparently scholastic question of the Merkmale of a priori inner intuition has been revealed as central. This has been shown in two argumentative or problem-contexts, in (a) the constructive intention of transcendental idealism, to demonstrate the possibility for synthetic a priori judgment, and to (b) the critical intention of transcendental idealism, to demonstrate the impossibility of synthetic a priori judgment in inner intuition, as requisite (already) to psychological idealism (as well as the non-doctrinal “fanaticism and superstition” of B xxxiv). This general comment regarding the phenomenal character of all intuition yields an additional conclusion, to the exhaustiveness of the Aesthetic and its power to serve as an organon, which “cannot contain more than these two elements, i.e., space and time,” as just exposed. Kant suggests that “all other concepts belonging to sensibility presuppose something empirical,” or pertain to experience as already constituted (A , B ). In fact, “even the concept of motion, which unites the two components” of space and time, and evinces their unity within external experience, cannot function as a possibility-condition. For motion obtains only within experience and by means of the already empirical “perception of some existent,” and thus cannot possess the genuine “necessity and absolute universality” of the a priori forms of intuition as elements of the faculty of cognition (A , B ). The theses identified thus far, from the ideality and passivity theses to the heterogeneity thesis, pertain first to the a priori and unalterable form, rather than the contingent matter, of experience, to its formal possibility-conditions before its material actuality. The unification provided by motion, within the perception of actual experience, is merely empirical; “motion presupposes the perception of something movable.” This perception itself presupposes (dogmatically and quid facti) rather than demonstrates (transcendentally and quid juris) its formal conditions, those conditions according to which it is possible. For this reason, Kant continues, the Aesthetic “cannot include among its a priori data the concept of change” (A , B ). The transcendental determination of the possibility of experience, in other words, must confine itself to the formal conditions for the possibility of experience as obtain within the faculty of cognition. We cannot presume, dogmatically, to determine its a priori possibility by gesturing to such a posteriori and experiential dynamics, as already accomplished and

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thereby self-justifying or self-certifying. Transcendental aesthetic must not presuppose and quid facti describe the cognitive conditions for such actual employments (or take the obvious spatio-temporal character of our experience as well-grounded), but rather must deduce these formal conditions and dynamics, according to the nature, and the limits of our faculty of cognition and by assigning the point of origin or provenance of each such presentation and lived dynamic. Without the contribution of this subjective character of our a priori sensibility, as condition for the possibility of experience, “the entire character of objects and all their relations in space and time would vanish.”57 If we, in determining this possibility, would abstract from this essential element of human cognition and experience (itself inner uns as an element of the faculty of cognition),58 we would thereby destroy the essential con57 Guyer reviews Kant’s suggestion that the very possibility of synthetic a priori judgments rests upon strict adherence to the Restriktionslehre; only “if the object (as object of the senses) must necessarily conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition” does Kant “have no difficulty in conceiving” the possibility of our synthetic cognition (B xvii) (ibid, ). Guyer dedicates several fine pages to the heterogeneity thesis (“in all its unfortunate glory,” and in order that his reader “fully appreciate just how confused Kant’s thesis of the transcendental ideality of time really is,” on p.  ff. Van Cleve, in Problems from Kant (New York, Oxford University Press, , p. ), will ask nonetheless; “Kant assumed that space was a mere form of intuition, that is, was only our way of viewing appearances. But why could it not be both a form of intuition and a form of things as they are in themselves? That is the neglected alternative.” But space and time must be “nothing but” forms of intuition rather than “both/and” in Van Cleve’s sense for reasons just set out and given by Ewing, in his Commentary; “if space were independently real, the necessity of geometry would be lost, because then spatial objects would merely happen to conform to our intuitions and not necessarily do so” a priori (–). So, too, would the claim to universality be threatened; Ewing cites B –. 58 As appearances, space and time “cannot exist in themselves,” but “can only exist in us” and for us (A , B ). Kant does not introduce, in this context, the apparently problematic requirement that the spatiality of outer sense, while pertaining to outer intuition, must be exhibited, and its spatial characters articulated, as an “element of the cognitive faculty” within inner sense. Upon the dominant—if not, as we see here, univocal— exposition of the doctrine of intuition, inner sense must exclude the appearance of such spatial characters formally and in principle. For this reason, assertions of the universality of time are in unstable relation with assertions of the universality of space, both of which are in unstable relation to the thesis asserting their mutual heterogeneity. In Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ (Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ) Baumanns has attended to this question (also that of A , B ), of “wie in einem denkenden Subjekt überhaupt, äußere Anschauung, nämlich die des Raumes (einer Erfüllung desselben Gestalt und Bewegung) möglich sei.” Baumanns recognizes that the resolution to this question would require the “Zusammenstimmung der inneren Erfahrung, der Selbsterfahrung der denkenden Natur mit der äußeren Erfahrung” in an “Innen-Außen-Union” as would violate the heterogeneity thesis and the expressed limits of our inner intuition (). Bau-

the transcendental determination of time



dition of the same experience (A , B ). Further, if we seek to degrade the essential element of human cognition offered by pure intuition, by conceiving sensibility “as nothing but the confused [intellectual] presentation of objects,” we would fail to comprehend the priority and unique function of sensibility in the act of cognition. We would fail thereby to identify the intrinsic structure and characters of sensibility a priori, its Merkmale, through which experience is constituted, or intuited, structured, placed, and ordered. We would thus remain unable to determine the possibility, nature, and limits of judgments both synthetic and a priori, obtaining in this way and for the first time the satisfaction promised at A viii. This satisfaction was to result, uniquely from a transcendental Selbsterkenntnis and was to supererogate the dissatisfaction that had accrued to the “most common [metaphysical and theological] programs” that Kant had inherited.59 Only sensibility, then, determined transcendentally, can provide to understanding’s synthetic activity the actual matter of cognition, its (a posteriori) sensible referent according to its (a priori) sensible form, in its individuality, unity, and identity, as well as its immediate relation to the cognitive faculty. Cognition thus is relational; neither the subjective

manns also recognizes that this integration risks introducing the conditions required for a “körperliches commercium” (), and thus a “denkende Ich [als] Korrelatum.” Such a Korrelatum would implicitly contain the formal conditions necessary for the “Möglichkeit der Objektivation des Seele” (). We will return to this question below. 59 In order to eliminate all misunderstanding, Chenet reminds his reader (ibid, – ) that Kant’s ars characteristica here does not intend to deny any of the temporal or spatial modes or dynamics of our experience, but instead to assign their provenance, and the implications of that provenance; “Kant ne nie pas que les phénomènes externes soient des phénomènes temporels, mais simplement que la représentation de temps joue quelque rôle que que ce soit dans la représentation de l’extériorité comme telle; elle n’est pas au fondement de la représentation du “neben- und außer einander.” This heterogeneity or independence, which yields the conditions of synthesis (according to which a synthetic act of the understanding is necessary), must clearly be synthesized in order to yield an object of intuition for and within experience, and hence the conditions for synthesis (in which synthetic cognition would obtain as accomplished and realized). I do not subject to critique the actuality of this synthesis quid facti, or its necessity, which is presupposed, but only Kant’s determination of its formal possibility quid juris. Concern instead lies, given the heterogeneity in intuition, with (a) the formal possibility for such a synthesis, and (b) whether, functionally, such a synthesis could yield an object possessed of the properties or characters sufficient to the demands of experience defined transcendentally. As will be set out below, only as intuited and as intuitive (rather than as a product of the understanding) can a formal object of consciousness become an object of synthetic cognition, as individuated, as determinate in a first-order cognition, as constitutive for experience, and as related to the cognitive faculty immediately in its unity and identity.

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character of our intuition nor the existence of the object to which we are passively related can be eliminated from the determination of the character of our experience. One could well argue that ‘experience’ is wider in scope and significance than is objective cognition, but such an argument is external, dogmatic, and in any case not our intention. We instead are intent to follow and to understand according to both its letter and spirit, Kant’s own argument, and to derive from within it a perhaps hidden significance. For Kant and for this exegesis, it remains the case that if sensibility is not recognized as an independent source of material for cognition, possessed of its own laws, but is thought to be merely a species of representation, the very doctrine of sensibility will be, literally, “empty and useless” to the legitimation a priori of experience as synthetic a priori judgment (A , B ). Without the proper function of its Sinnenlehre, transcendental philosophy would reduce to a general and pure logic, an examination of merely analytic relations among discursive concepts. Upon competing intellectualistic (mis)conceptions, cognition could only be affirmed as “merely logical.” As formal and subjective, this distinction could not inscribe the “content” or matter of a presentation, which can be gained only in and through intuition properly conceived. Thus, “the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff,” for example, has “imposed an entirely aberrant conception” of the “nature and origin of our cognitions” upon the investigation of reason (A , B ). The veracity of Kant’s Leibniz-critique is of less concern to our concern than is Kant’s assertion that the distinction between intuition and understanding “can only be transcendental.” This distinction between intuition or sensibility and intellection or understanding is not one of degree, it seems, but of kind, a distinction “in their origin and content.”60 Kant does not intend to achieve a mere “exposition,” by means of such claims, but rather an “organon” for his theoretical philosophy as such. Transcendental aesthetic “should not merely gain favor as a plau60 Here at A , B , Kant indicates that the formal heterogeneity between inner intuition and outer intuition is mirrored and repeated in a second heterogeneity, in origin and function, between intuition as such and understanding. Sensibility “does not merely fail to provide us with a distinct cognition of the character of objects in themselves,” but instead “provides us with none whatever.” The discursive understanding achieves a universal conceptual comprehension of the object in its universality. Sensibility, absolute prius within any act of synthetic cognition, whether subjective or objective, inscribes for cognition its individuated content in its unity and immediacy. Kant’s replete exposition of the intellectual element of and in cognition will occupy us below.

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sible hypothesis,” but should “be certain and indubitable.” This status— recalling Kant’s avowed concern in the Introduction with the limited degree of “intuitive clarity” achieved in the Sinnenlehre—is required “of any theory that is to serve as an organon” (A , B ). Such certitude must be won for each element of the critical philosophy, from the most basic “foundational stones” of the edifice to the ultimate reach of the critique in the ideas and ideals of pure reason itself. As a “foundation stone” within the architectonic of human cognition, the doctrine of the pure intuitions is evinced again as central to Kant’s intentions both critical and constructive. One of the most basic elements of Kant’s Sinnenlehre is Kant’s claim to have established thereby that cognition “contains nothing but relations.” Inner intuition contains such relations as may be “placed within the mind” (B ). In this positing (setzen) by the mind of the mind’s own contents, these contents, the relations among representations, are not only posited by the mind but posited (Gesetzt) in the mind. The form of inner intuition, Kant determines, “can be nothing but the way in which the mind is affected by its own activity.” Affection, as a form of passivity, is thus defined as a “positing of its presentations” (ibid). By this positing or Setzen, “the mind is affected by itself,” or achieves awareness of its own contents. These contents are representations, mental states rather than material substances. As such, this last construal of the object of inner sense—not as the singular soul but as the mind’s manifest concepts and judgments—stand in a still uncertain relation to Kant’s prior claim that the content of inner sense consists in presentations of outer sense.61 This opposition between self-affection and objectual affection allows Kant an advance in clarity in the exposition of inner intuition. Kant will set inner intuition not only against outer intuition and its sphere but, within its own sphere, to understanding.62 The self-affection of and in 61

Barale, in Kant e il Metodo della Filosofia (ETS Editrice, Pisa, ) finds in his otherwise affirmative account that Kant’s treatment of the status of inner sense as a universal representation (at A –) is “ambiguous.” Barale had followed Kant’s indications of its indeterminate status, and now finds innner sense elevated to “the formal condition in and according to which all representations must be ordered, unified, and related.” Barale specifies the ambiguity; “there are two, radically different interpretations of the original nature of [inner sense], and of the form in which this is apprehended.” Barale also finds “ambiguous” the “manner in which this distinction [heterogeneity] relates to time,” which appears alternately as both universal a priori representation to which all representations must be subsumed, and the mere form for an indeterminate empirical intuition (). 62 Reuter (ibid, § , “Inneres und Äußeres”), also draws attention to B –, and Kant’s varying assertions of the relations between inner and outer sense on p.  ff. See

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inner intuition is not a Selbsttaetigkeit, but the receptivity of the mind to the representations which are its products. Kant contrasts this selfaffection in intuition to the self-activity of the apperceptive concept of the “I,” inserted in the Aesthetic only here, and not to be treated in any detail until the Transcendental Logic. If this distinction—between the activity of apperception, evinced in the formal self-consciousness represented in the concept of the “I,” and the passivity of self-affection, evinced in the mind’s self-affection of its representations in inner intuition—did not obtain, “then inner intuition would be intellectual [intuition]” (B ). The intuition that cognition possesses of itself is not, then, intellectual, or purely self-active. Such activity or spontaneity requires inner sense as the intuitive manifold in which such activity can be (passively) apprehended. This manifold allows for the claim to the receptivity of our cognition universally, including our self-cognition. This manifold, structured temporally, yields only appearance, in spite of the immediate relation to its object, and hence no “intellectual intuition” or intuitus originarius. The spontaneous self-consciousness of the understanding “requires the inner perception of the manifold given in the subject beforehand,” in accordance with its form (B ). By means of this intuitive, and hence individual and temporal, rather than merely intellectual, self-relation, our cognitive characteristics and accomplishments are revealed for us and to us as appearances within the context of a finite experience. In pure inner intuition, sensibility is dependent upon understanding as a faculty of concepts, just as, reciprocally, intuition limits the understanding by establishing the formal structure for any synthetic activity or apprehension thereof. As such, inner sense here proposes only an application of the general metaphysical rule of sensible cognition to the special metaphysical thematic of self-consciousness.63 The form of this intuition “determines also Havet, for whom Kant’s standard thesis is heterogeneity, and more particularly the aspatiality of time; “phénomènes internes sont donnés dans une temporalité non spatiale” since “le propre du temps est de refuser la spatialité” (ibid, ). Havet also notes, however, the contravening assertion that time functions as an Inbegriff ; “faire du temps la condition immédiate des phénomènes en général, externes comme internes, c’eût été déjà atteindre l’un des buts visés par Kant . . .” (). This contrast allows Havet to identify “l’ambiguïté de la notion de temps” as form of inner sense (), which consists in the fact that time as form of inner sense “possède une double nature; il est le temps encore intérieur qui définit l’immédiateté de la représentation; il est le temps objectif et déterminé de l’expérience totale” (). 63 For Havet, this determination of the priority of intuition to intellection in the ordo cognoscendi is crucial to Kant’s claim that the laws of intuition are capable of revealing

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the manner in which the manifold is posited together in the mind,” and “lies at the basis beforehand in the mind.” Only through pure inner intuition can Kant claim that, even in this case of the mind’s immediate selfintuition, “the faculty does not intuit itself as it would if it were presented directly and self-actively” (B ). For this reason, inner intuition is, with outer intuition, an intuitus derivativus, dependent upon, rather than creative of, any possible formal object or mental state it may be given. In an intimation of the discussion of the relation of priority between synthetic and analytic unity in the Deductions, Kant will suggest that the “self-consciousness as expressed in the I” must wait upon “the mind’s self-affection.” Apperceptive unity presupposes the possibility of a determinate inner intuition of mental contents: “only in this way can the mind produce an intuition of itself.” Only for the receptivity of the manifold of inner intuition may actio and passio here obtain together within a common or single subject of selfconsciousness (B ).64 This dialectic of activity and passivity, however, is of less importance to this essay than are the “signs” (Kennzeichen), “characteristics” (Bezeichnungen), and through these the “qualities” (Beschaffenheiten) Kant would attribute to inner intuition and its temporality. Kant’s claim to an “inner perception” and a determinate manifold (Mannigfaltigkeit) in inner intuition—phenomenologically necessary, it would seem, to any depiction of consciousness—requires the problematic both the nature and the limits of valid cognition. Only if intuition is prior to intellection and its synthetic capacity can it contribute to the Restriktionslehre. The passive reception of an object of intuition “n’est pas se constituant dans et par un acte . . . mais elle est toujours déjà nécessairement constituée” according to the laws of intuition. () As we will see, for this reason “présenter la synthèse intellectuelle et la synthèse figurée comme produisant par elle-mêmes une vérité objective . . . n’est-ce pas contredire à l’affirmation répétée qu’il n’y a de connaissance que des phénomènes,” as given according to the laws of intuition? In abstraction from the latter, “il nous permet seulement, à condition de ne pas nous contredire, de penser la possibilité logique d’une chose, non sa possibilité réelle” (). 64 With Falkenstein, Rousset emphasizes the role of the doctrine of the pure intuitions in the definition of the finitude of our human understanding; for his discussion of “an understanding which would furnish the manifold of intuition” and thus “have no need of a particular act of synthesis of a diversity toward the unity of consciousness, as does human understanding,” see ibid,  ff. (see particularly the discussion of the Trieftrunk letter of  Dec.  (Ak, , )). Rousset will acknowledge, as Falkenstein will not, the distinction within intuition between inner sense and outer sense; “une analyse . . . rigoreuse l’oblige le plus souvent à distinguer entre les deux cas.” While “le temps reste encore la simple forme de la succession subjective de nos représentations . . . l’espace ne peut être saisi comme une forme de la seule conscience de soi, ni encore moins de l’activité pensante du sujet . . . ” ().

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predicates, previously disclaimed, of simultaneity and permanence. Only the full range of these “characters”—which, we have seen have not been exposed without some ambivalence—would allow for the “self-position” (Selbstsetzen) of the mind’s contents as determinate objects of “inner perception” or intuitive cognition. Kant concludes his General Comment, and with it the Aesthetic, with a final determination of inner intuition. Inner intuition is neither conceptual, nor discursive, nor original (urspruenglich). In this, sensibility gains its specific difference from understanding. Only in the activity of the understanding will the original spontaneity of our cognitive faculty be made manifest. Only the understanding will offer the principle for the spontaneity of our concepts which, if synthetic, will possess a relation to intuition (A , B ). In the Aesthetic, then, the conditions of synthesis, by which synthesis is necessary, were articulated. These conditions were established in part by means of the heterogeneity thesis, by which time as the form of inner sense is distinguished from space as the form of outer sense. Heterogeneity in intuition allowed the respective spheres of inner intuition and outer intuition to be distinguished formally and in principle. This heterogeneity will afford Kant a constructive and a critical result. Constructively, inner intuition and outer intuition respectively have been shown to possess the ideal or formal structure which will allow sensibility to contribute to the a priori structuration of experience, taken as synthetic a priori judgment. Critically, heterogeneity will allow Kant to disallow the objective and synthetic cognition of “the object of inner sense” required for materialism and spiritualism, and indeed rational psychology, as first mentioned in the Preface.65 Kant will also establish, in this 65 Ameriks (Kant’s Theory of Mind [Clarendon Press, Oxford, ]) acknowledges, though inconsistently, both the positive or constructive and the negative or critical “results” Kant claimed by means of his doctrine of inner sense. First, “an emphasis on spatiality,” rather than an indeterminate temporality, “gave him a nice way to respond to certain kinds of extreme skepticism and dogmatism.” The heterogeneity thesis put “the ultimate being of our self wholly beyond our theoretical determination.” This “leaves a place open for the practical hopes Kant wanted to encourage” (). Yet Ameriks will also suggest that “the soul, like all phenomena, should be thought of a (sic) subject to the general principles that are to be understood as applying irrespectively of whether one is dealing with objects of outer or mere inner sense.” This positive exigence noted by Ameriks results in the assertion of a “perfect psycho-physical parallelism” (). Indeed, Ameriks will claim that “the easiest way to try to save Kant from inconsistency here is to ascribe to him the view that strictly speaking (phenomenally) only spatial things are substantial, and so inner changes that prima facie do not seem to be instances of the Analogies would turn out to be so after all.” This constructive argument would result

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incapacity of inner intuition, its dependence upon outer intuition. This dependence will afford priority to outer intuition in any dynamic act of cognition, and will provide formal justification for the second edition refutation of idealism, even as it stands in uncertain relation to Kant’s assertions, set out above, of the priority and universality of inner sense.66 For this reason, it is important to identify the analogy between inner intuition and outer intuition as forms of intuition and as belonging to sensibility, in contrast to the understanding. In this consists the ideality thesis, by which sensibility may contribute its intuitive functions to the a priori structuration of experience. Only by means of intuition can consciousness, understood as consisting in an analytic relation among concepts, become cognition, understood as synthetic and a priori judgment. But it is equally important to identify (b) the disanalogy between inner intuition and outer intuition.67 In this distinction consists the

in a “thoroughly spatial framework.” Ameriks admits that “this approach . . . was never worked out in detail by Kant himself, and . . . appears to be in tension with his stress on “scientific immaterialism,” as well as his attempt to restrict the possibility of synthetic cognition through inner sense (). Given this critical argumentation, and in the context of treating time, qua form of inner sense, as a “shapeless flux,” (A ), Ameriks recognizes that such a claim would negate any possibility that inner sense could be taken as “Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen.” Thus, Ameriks will recognize also that “such a claim appears both ungrounded and not in line with Kant’s beliefs.” Ameriks rightly acknowledges that this equivocation “is not a minor issue” (–). 66 This claim will be discussed below in the context of our exegesis of Kant’s Refutation of Idealism. Here I may simply note the concordance offered by Chenet in L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Lille, ) on the importance of the restrictive construal of inner intuition as an inconstant and indeterminate Wechsel der Bestimmungen to Kant’s wider argumentative intentions. For Chenet (ibid), “la thèse de l’incessant changement de notre état interne, de l’existence successive de nous-mêmes en différents états (B )” will be that claim “sur quoi Kant fonds, en B, sa réfutation de l’idéalisme” (). 67 The distinct theses of ideality and heterogeneity are often conflated. Beiser, for example, in German Idealism: The Struggle against Subjectivism: –, construes the forms of intuition as “separate but equal” (). Beiser underdetermines the heterogeneity thesis, in order to address “the relationship between inner consciousness and spatial order” as a relation of priority. Priority, however, already assumes formal interdependence. Thus, with the Kant of ; “spatial order is the transcendental condition of inner awareness and as such constitutive of our awareness of ourselves in time” (). Indeed, “Kant’s aim was to establish that our inner consciousness conforms to the conditions for the experience of objects in space” (). Beiser does not—in this context; Beiser’s analysis as we will see is both extended and multivalent—identify the problematic implication of such an isomorphism between outer sense and inner sense, which would imply the equal legitimacy of Körperlehre and Seelenlehre. Indeed, here Beiser appears to ignore the heterogeneity thesis in claiming that “substance . . . shows our inner consciousness is connected according to the same rules that apply to spatial objects” (). As the

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heterogeneity thesis.68 Only by means of the heterogeneity thesis may the spheres of inner intuition and outer intuition represent, under distinct principles and in distinct spheres, a spontaneous faculty of cognition and a passive reception of extended material objects respectively.69 The “difficulty” that results from this final distinction or thesis within the Aesthetic, however, is contextualized by the most general character of Kant’s doctrine of intuition as such. For purposes of review and clarity, I would like to review those most basic and general theses of the Aesthetic. Kant first exposed () the ideality thesis (B xxvi); “we can have no cognition of any object except insofar as the object conforms to the character

Refutation of Idealism will argue, and as Beiser will recognize, it is precisely because inner sense cannot yield such determinability conditions that the priority of outer sense can be maintained. Again, however, dependence assumes interdependence, which is itself problematic, given Kant’s assertion of and reliance upon the independence (or heterogeneity) thesis. 68 Baumanns (Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ [Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ]) treats what is here termed the interdependence thesis as the “coordination” (Koordination) thesis, the independence or heterogeneity thesis as a “disjunction” (Disjunktion) thesis, and the dependence thesis as the “subsumption” (Subsumption) thesis. Baumanns denounces the “Unklarheit über Koordination oder Subsumption des äußeren Sinnes” to inner sense—even before the Disjunktion thesis is added in the Refutation of Idealism. See pp. –. Baumanns notes that the “coordination thesis” is integral to the demonstration of the possibility of a synthetic unity of apperception. Thus, “der Basissatz der Widerlegung hängt an der genannten ersten Voraussetzung, sofern er diese Überlegung eröffnet: Das Bewußtsein überhaupt verlangt die apperzeptionskategoriale Regelung des Bewußtseins in der Zeit zur inneren Erfahrung, das Bewußtsein in der Zeit ist insofern mit dem Bewußtsein der Möglichkeit der empirischen Zeitbestimmung notwendig verbunden” (ibid, ). Benoist has concentrated her account instead upon what Baumanns termed the “disjunction thesis.” For Benoist, the “rélation dissymétrique” between time (as form of inner sense) and space can only be understood as “extrêmement problématique” (ibid, ). 69 Compare R  (Ak , ); “only in space can we posit a permanent; in time there obtains only an incessant flux. The determination of the existence of a thing in time in such an impermanence is impossible without connecting to such an intuition also a permanence . . .” For discussion of the claim that “time does not provide the permanence required for the self-cognition of the I qua thinking, as sensible and as objective” see Bernard Bourgeois, “Cogito kantien et cogito fichtéen,” Fichte-Studien Numéro Hors Serie, p.  ff. For Havet’s extended treatment of the Merkmale of inner intuition, and his conclusion that “la temporalité pure refuse la permanence,” see ibid, . Havet anticipates A  in this context and argues that inner intuition “ne peut fournir dans l’intuition aucun prédicat permettant de poser sa permanence . . . ” (ibid, ). Thus Havet focuses on its “caractères extrêmement rudimentaires” and insists that “elle n’a qu’une seule dimension, elle n’a pas . . . de simultanéité réelle que l’espace prête à la temporalité de l’objet . . . ” (ibid, ).

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of our sensible intuition, i.e., an appearance.” Kant next expressed () the individuality, or immediacy thesis; “intuition is that faculty by which cognition can refer to objects directly (unmittelbar)” (A , B ). Through sensibility, we are related to objects as individuals in concreto rather than through universal and discursive concepts in abstracto. The concepts of the understanding are thus only mediately related to objects. Intuition yields for cognition an immediate relation to objects in their individuality and unity. The merely formal “concepts of the understanding” are (in the order of cognition or ordo cognoscendi) derivative, and will be determined as “mediate (intellectual) representations of an immediate (intuitive) presentation” (ibid). Kant next exposed () the priority thesis; “the conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given precede the conditions under which these objects are thought” (A , B ). Kant indeed will assert at B  that “the manifold for the intuition must be given prior to any activity of the understanding, and independently of it.”70 This manifold, he will clarify, “in order to be turned into a cognition, must then

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Benoist (Kant et les Limites de la Synthèse: Le sujet sensible) insists upon the priority of intuition to intellection. Benoist warns of accounts (such as that of Waxman, or Longuenesse) that “privilégie l’intervention de la synthèse (déjà) au niveau même de l’intuition,” effectively intellectualizing appearances (). Benoist cites R , which amplifies the doctrine that “the first faculty of the human soul and the condition of all others is sensibility, by which the soul perceives representations as effects of the presence of the object, and does not produce them . . .” (). See particularly the following sections; I.  (“La critique kantienne de l’idée d’âme: le sujet perdu), I. , (“Première lecture du sens interne: le sujet comme objet”), II.  (“Pourquoi il n’y a pas de géométrie du temps”), II. (“La sensation introuvable: retour sur le ‘sens interne’) and II. (“Le double sens de l’affection: le sujet sensible). De Vleeschauwer (ibid, –) is also attentive to the requirements for the claim to the finitude of our intellect which “ne crée pas spontanément la multiplicité intuitive . . . qu’il doit la trouver dans la sensibilité” according to its “limiting condition.” It is not only that “les données sensibles tirent leur origine de la sensibilité,” but that the understanding can only “les incorporer en lui-même” on the basis of this, “la nature passive,” and priority, of “des représentations intuitives” (). The elimination of the “condition of sensibility” may appear advantageous to apology. But (a) this diagnosis comports not to understanding but to reconstruction, and (b) the question of a transitus would be not answered but would be made irrelevant and impossible, if intuition were already intellectualized. Additionally, any possible content of cognition would necessarily already be a representation “in us.” The priority of outer sense to imagination, asserted in the Refutation of Idealism, would be impossible. Thus Kant’s assertion that “intuition precedes intellection” at A –, and the claim at B  that “the manifold for the intuition must be given still prior to the understanding’s synthesis, and independently of it.” Longuenesse, with Waxman, instead dismisses the priority thesis as “the common view” ().

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be gone over, run through, taken up, and combined in a certain manner” (A , B ).71 Importantly, this synthetic activity of the understanding (as a Durchlaufen der Mannigfaltigkeit, Zusammennehmung desselben) assumes and requires the prior and unproblematic givenness of an object, and thus the integrity of the doctrine of intuition. This formal heterogeneity in intuition, for the priority of intuition over concept in the dynamic act of human cognition, must be resolved before the heterogeneity between intuition as such (qua sensibility) and concept (qua understanding) in the ordo cognoscendi can be addressed or even asserted. Kant next asserted () the passivity thesis, on the character of our intuition as an intuitus derivativus. Famously, Kant argues that we “have no concepts of understanding and hence no elements whatever for objectual cognition except insofar as an intuition can be given corresponding to these concepts”—per modum recipientis, in the term used in the Opus postumum (B xxv). Kant will remind the reader of the interdependence of these fundamental theses in concluding the General Comment to the second edition addition to the Aesthetic. Here, we can see the ideality, priority, and passivity theses each represented together in a general statement of the role of intuition in the act of cognition. Kant writes; “our kind of intuition,” and hence our capacity for synthetic knowledge, knowledge of the world and of experience, “is dependent on the existence of the object and hence is possible only by the object’s affecting the subject’s capacity to represent” (B ). Each of these claims I will accept as unproblematic.

71 Kant will amplify this dynamic at Loses Blatt B  (Ak , ); “all appearances are nothing for us unless they are taken up into consciousness” and thereby subsumed to a discursive concept of the understanding. In this “processus,” Nabert indicates “quelque supériorité que possèdent les intuitions externes quant à leur détermination plus aisée par les categories de la relation, elles doivent cependant entrer dans le sens interne pour être soumises aux lois de l’entendement” (“L’expérience interne chez Kant,” in Revue de metaphysique et de morale , , pp. –, p. ). Paton (Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience (London: Allen and Unwin, ), v. II. ), with reference to A , B  as well, is especially attentive to this ordo cognoscendi. First, “the manifold must be originally be given to outer sense.” It is only on being transposed through inner sense that we may be “aware of it before our minds.” Only if so transposed is it “given to inner sense as well” (). In Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinn und Seine Theorie der Erfahrung (Wein, ), Reininger treats the “Processe” of “Assimilation” and as a “Subordination des äußeren unter den inneren Sinn” at . For Reininger’s depiction of the ordo cognoscendi, by which “Durch die Coordination mit der inneren Wahrnehmung ist die äußere Erscheinung auch der Anschauungsform des inneren Sinnes zugeordnet . . . ” before being transposed to the understanding, see pp. –, –.

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It is in this context, however, that Kant advanced () the heterogeneity thesis. As we have seen, Kant distinguished two forms of intuition, and defined each according to their distinct formal structure; “space is the form of outer sense, while time is the form of inner sense.”72 Further, “while space is the pure form for all outer appearances, it is also limited to only outer appearances” (ibid). The heterogeneity thesis, which is no less important than are the aforementioned theses in Kant’s determination of the nature and limits of cognition, allows Kant to determine the capacities of outer sense, and the range or sphere of its employment; we discovered that “only in space can I present the relations of objects as outside and alongside (Erörterung) one another, as distinct and in different empirical locations” (A , B ).73 Through the assertion of the aspatiality of time as form of inner sense, then, Kant will establish in particular the distinct capacities of outer

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Kant asserts (A , B ) that because “inner intuition yields no shape,” or spatial characteristics, we must, in attempting to describe the transcendental properties of time as form of inner sense, “make up for this deficiency by way of analogy.” Kant’s admittedly deficient image or analogy, by means of which we are to ‘figure’ time, is to be found in the spatial image of a line; in order to conceive of the characteristics of time as form of inner sense, we are “to present time as a sequence through a line progressing ad infinitum.” The analogy is deficient for Kant due to the fact that “the parts of the line are simultaneous whereas the parts of time are always sequential.” Allison is one of many to note regarding the image of the line that “it does not follow from the fact that I cannot represent time except by drawing a line that the line itself is to be thought of as temporal.” Rightly and importantly, Allison notes that “indeed, Kant’s claim is that we arrive at the representation of time by attending to the successive nature of the act of drawing or generating the line in the imagination. Even here, therefore, time is connected with the act” in inner sense “and not with the thing” as an object of outer sense.” For Allison, “if we consider a line simply as something given or intuited, we are not able to arrive at any conception of temporality or temporal properties” (). Thus, the image of the line presumes and restates rather than removes the heterogeneity thesis at the level of a priori intuitive form. Rousset, too, indicates the ambiguity in the demand that we construct temporal succession from the spatial figure of a line, in remarking that “ce n’est enfin que dans l’espace, où la diversité est simultanée, et non dans le temps, où il est successive, que nous pouvons trouver quelque chose qui corresponde à la liaison et à l’unification du divers conçues dans la catégorie” (). For Kant’s repeated assertions of the image of the line as deficient and as only the “external (äusserlich) figurative representation of time,” see B  below. 73 An important, though derivative, Exponent, then, will pertain unequivocally only to outer sense. It is impossible to distinguish one object from others unless that object be located in space. Individuation, then, attributed to sensibility rather than the discursive understanding, must be restricted further to outer sense; for Kant’s application of this claim, see A , B . See also R  (Ak , ); “prior to [any imagining of outer objects] we are to ourselves object of outer sense, for otherwise we would not be able to perceive our location in the world and intuit ourselves in relation to other things.”

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intuition and the distinct incapacity of inner sense. By means of this original aspatiality, inner intuition was made subject to a “limiting condition” which restricted the range of possible representations or dynamics which might obtain therein (B ).74 Such a “limiting condition” was already found in Kant’s assertion of (a) the inconstancy rather than constancy of inner sense. By means of this assertion, and our comparing or contrasting it to Kant’s assertion of alternate construals of the temporal characteristics of inner intuition, we have already glimpsed the atopicality of the Merkmale of inner intuition. Already in the comparison of the first exposition of the Aesthetic with the additions to the second edition Preface, we have seen grounds for De Vleeschauwer’s diagnosis of a “hesitancy” and perhaps better a tension or conflict, on Kant’s part regarding the attribution of constancy and simultaneity and succession to inner sense. But we will see that Kant’s intention to ‘limit’ the extent or scope of synthetic cognition (not to mention the Refutation of Idealism) will require that inner sense contain only the “mere flux, chaos” of a perpetual succession (B xl, A , B – ; B ). This condition, we will see, will also yield the claim to its (b) indeterminacy rather than determinacy. Time, “the sole form of our inner intuition, has nothing abiding and therefore yields knowledge only of the succession of determinations,” and “not of any object that can thereby be determined” (A ).75

74 Thus, “one cannot attribute the predicates of space to that which one knows only in inner experience (this is why the soul [Seele] is a spirit [Geist])” (R ). Inner sense cannot contain spatiality, its “characters,” and its dynamics, within its pure temporality because, if time were homogenous to outer appearances, the scientific cognition to be established within the sphere of outer cognition would obtain equally within the sphere of inner sense, and allow for synthetic cognition within its manifold. If time were homogenous to outer appearances, and the conditions and characters of externality applicable equally within inner sense, the widest argumentative exigences of the critical philosophy would be left without formal justification. This homogeneity would allow for a science of “the object of inner sense, the soul,” as a determinate object of synthetic cognition or rational psychology. Such synthetic cognition would be sufficient for a scientific cognition of “the object of inner sense,” as required equally by Seelenlehren—as we saw in our exegesis of the first edition Preface—and by materialism—as we saw in our exegesis of the second edition Preface. 75 Distinctions in “characters” or formal predicates imply further differences in possible representative capacities; “the soul in transcendental apperception is substantia nuomenon, hence it possesses no permanence in time, since this belongs only to objects in space” (R ). Universally, “the representation of something outside us could never come to be thought” insofar as we are “conscious of our representations only as inner determinations

the transcendental determination of time



From this indeterminacy was derived the (c) inefficacy of inner intuition. For “only in space and hence in outer sense is shape, magnitude, and mutual relation determined or determinable” (A , B ). Further, we will discover, “only outer sense possesses a fixed or abiding element which supplies a substratum as a basis for transitory determinations,”76 and thereby possesses the required basis for the applicability of the pure concepts or categories, themselves conditions for synthetic cognition or knowledge (A ). Only within the “sphere” (Sphäre) of outer sense, then, will obtain the conditions required for synthetic cognition. In this way, the conditions necessary for the “valid use” of synthetic cognition will be affirmed of the sciences of outer sense, the Körperlehren of

[of] . . . inner sense.” This inner sense “we yet carefully distinguish from outer sense,” in order to retain the former from both external and empirical predicates and properties (R ; Ak, , ). Heterogeneity is thus also asserted methodologically, in order that “no empirical laws of corporeal appearances mix with the explanations of what belongs to inner sense.” The sphere of application of the inner sensory manifold must remain restricted to the exhibition of our mental states, and disallow formally and in principle the exhibition of our passivity toward material substance and natural laws within its sphere (see, e.g., A , B ). For the necessary simultaneity and extension of spatial form, and the necessarily unextended and purely successive character of temporal form, see also Rousset, La Doctrine Kantienne de l’Objectivité (Paris, Vrin, ),  ff. For the argumentative application of the inconstancy thesis in the Refutation of Idealism, according to which “the determination of one’s temporal position” in inner sense “depends upon something permanent which is not in me, and consequently can be only in something outside me,” in outer sense, see Ameriks, Kant’s Theory of Mind (Clarendon Press, Oxford, ) p. . For an excellent treatment of the Reflexionen (R –, –, –, and ) in this thematic context, see Paul Guyer, “Kant’s Intention in the Refutation of Idealism,” The Philosophical Review, xcii, , –. 76 The second important Exponent of “constancy,” assigned to outer sense unequivocally, will be denied to inner sense on principle at, for example, A , B ; “selfconsciousness according to . . . inner perception is merely empirical and always changing.” The empirical “object of inner sense” or inner perception is not only inconstant, but indeterminate; “no fixed and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner appearances.” The necessity by which this assertion must be taken as authoritative will only become clear in the Paralogisms of the Dialectic. The atopicality of inner sense is evident if one contrasts directly these assertions with those encountered in the Analytic. There, Kant will refer (in the second Analogy of Experience) to “the order and steady coherence that is found a priori in the form of inner intuition (i.e., time),” in which “all perceptions would have to have their position.” Both predicates of constancy and determinate positionality are, according to the heterogeneity thesis, to be attributed instead only to the manifold of outer intuition (e.g., A , B ), and appear to be disallowed necessarily by the limitations of the form of inner sense. I anticipate this tension, as obtains between the account of inner intuition in the Analytic and in the Dialectic, already in an exegesis of the Aesthetic, only in order to retain in view the origin and fundamental significance of the tension already discovered.

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geometry and physics, while the Seelenlehren of and in inner sense, whether in a rational psychology or a rational theology, will be shown to be invalid, and indeed impossible (B ).77 These fundamental claims of the Aesthetic—as the organon for Kant’s theoretical philosophy as such—will not, on pain of falling into a dogmatic or skeptical presentation, either be rejected, or reformulated in accordance with eccentric interpretive intentions, constructive or critical. An exegetical exposition of Kant’s depiction of time, however intricate, must follow Kant’s own progressive development(s) of time as form of inner sense, its character and capacities. Only this approach will allow for a clear comprehension of the role(s) of inner intuition in the theoretical philosophy.78 Already, we have uncovered the fact that (though not yet the way in which) Kant will found his attempt to ‘determine’ positively the ‘nature’ of cognition by means of the theses of the inclusiveness of space within time as form of inner sense. And already, we have uncovered the fact that (though not yet the way in which) Kant will found his

77 Baumanns (Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ (Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann )) discusses the Sphäre der inneren Erfahrung, as both exclusive of, and inclusive of, spatial form, at pp. –, and places the constructive construal of inner sense in this context. Baumanns cites A , B , and the positive function of inner sense in the dynamic act of synthetic cognition, in which it “takes up within itself ” the object of outer sense: “alle äußeren Erscheinungen sind im Raume, und nach den Verhältnissen des Raumes a priori bestimmt, so kann ich aus dem Prinzip des inneren Sinnes ganz allgemein sagen: alle Erscheinungen überhaupt, d.i. alle Gegenstände der Sinne, sind in der Zeit, und stehen notwendigerweise in Verhältnissen der Zeit” (). Baumanns also identifies the negative constraint upon the attempt to introduce a priori determinacy-conditions within inner intuition; the conditions required in order that time as the form of inner sense perform its positive function are those which would allow for a cognition of “die ‘Seele selbst’ als Objekt.” 78 Chenet (L’ Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale [Paris, Presses Universitaires de Lille, ]) also signals the continual salience of both the original passivity thesis and the heterogeneity thesis of the Aesthetic, throughout the Analytic and Dialectic. For Chenet, “c’est toute la Logique transcendentale qui repose sur l’Esthétique . . . l’Analytique repose sur l’acquis de l’Esthétique, elle n’est pas un nouveau commencement de la Critique de la raison pure, une ‘science des règles de l’entendement en général’ laquelle déterminerait les limites de l’usage objectif des concepts,” for all analytic use of the understanding, “tout comme l’Esthétique déterminait celles de la forme pure de l’intuition sensible ()” which govern all possible synthetic cognition. Chenet thus insists rightly against Longuenesse’s assertion of the priority of imagination to intuition that “sans doute faut-il placer au début de la philosophie transcendentale que les conditions sous lesquelles les objects sont données précèdent celles sous lesquelles ils sont pensées et comprendre que les objects ne peuvent être données que s’ils affectent—‘de l’extérieur’—la sensibilité” ().

the transcendental determination of time



attempt to ‘limit’ the scope of cognition by means of the theses of the aspatiality and mere successiveness of inner sense, in a second construal of inner intuition.79 This focus on the character and capacities of inner sense is, admittedly, only one of several possible foci or orienting concepts for our exegesis. Nonetheless, we may also hope to have identified a theme that, in its elaboration(s) in the Analytic and Dialectic, will confirm the centrality that we have afforded it thus far in our exegesis.80 In any case, only an internal critique of the form of inner sense (that is, as it were, receptive to the letter of Kant’s texts before advancing construals of their more

79 For Kant’s distinction between the “positive intention” of the critical philosophy, to demonstrate the possibility for synthetic a priori judgment, and the “negative intention,” by which the categories are limited in the sphere of their applicability to sensible outer intuition, see Ak, VIII, . Reuter (ibid, pp. , ) also differentiates Kant’s polemische Intention from Kant’s positive Funktionsbestimmung. I will argue that these intentions required contravening construals of the doctrine of inner sense, in which doctrine the tension, or even contradiction, between these requirements remains unresolved. Sturma, in Kant über Selbstbewußtsein: Zum Zusammenhang von Erkenntniskritik und Theorie des Selbstbewußtseins (Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlag, ), presents the doctrine of inner sense as “nicht eindeutig” for this reason (). In his treatment of the self-consciousness— self-cognition distinction, Sturma is attentive to both the question of status and the question of scope or sphere. Sturma first considers inner intuition, and “die Form desselben a priori, die Zeit,” in terms of the universality thesis; “all mentalen Akte . . . als Modifikationen des Gemüts zum Inneren Sinne.” Sturma notes the importance of the formal character of inner intuition as a “Strukturprinzips mentaler Zustände” (). Sturma also notes, however, the equal salience of the heterogeneity thesis, and the resultant inability of inner intuition to inscribe spatial form and content. This “aporetisch Theoriesituation” results from the aspatial temporality of inner sense; “Diese Strukturierung oder Formierung ist eine Bedingung der Möglichkeit der kognitiven Erfassung von Gegenständen äußerer Reflexion” (; see also –, –). Sturma notes the “intrikaten konzeptualen Problemen” involved in this tension. We will return throughout this work to Sturma’s construal of the “aporetisch Theoriesituation” of Kant’s contravening demands on inner sense. 80 Similarly, Lachièze-Rey begins his magisterial work, L’idéalisme kantien (Paris, Vrin, ) with a suspicion. In Kant’s first expositions of inner sense, “la terminologie peut apparaître inconciliable avec elle-même” (). This concern led Lachièze-Rey to “limite notre travail à la reconstitution interne d’un groupe déterminé d’opérations.” The paucity of precedents for this investigation mandated “un examen minutieux” of the heterogeneity thesis; “c’est ainsi que nous avons négligé le détail de ce qui appartient à la doctrine des catégories, depuis l’inventaire des formes de jugement.” For Lachièze-Rey, “les résultats essentiels du criticisme ne dépendent pas en effet, à notre avis, de l’exactitude plus ou moins grande de cette partie du système, d’ailleurs, a été la plus étudiée et la plus discutée.” Lachièze-Rey instead directed his account to the long ignored problematic of the “moi empirique et du monde extérieur,” or the heterogeneity within intuition (ibid). The same thematic focus, if not in each case with the same results, will be maintained throughout this essay.

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general significance), could reveal in requisite detail both the intracacies within Kant’s doctrine of inner sense itself, and the complexities within its subsequent elaboration(s) in the remaining principal sections of the first Critique.81 We already have sacrified to a certain degree the ideal of a fluid presentation in order to retain the perpetual proximity to Kant’s texts necessary to the exegesis of their detail. A tolerance of this detail, or intracacy, and its exegetical reproduction, even to the point of an apparent scholasticism, will only become more necessary, as we travel further into the labyrinthine complexity of Kant’s doctrine of time. But to refer on the basis of the Aesthetic alone to such future engagements of Kant’s full determination of the nature and limits of human cognition is to anticipate. Only the first ‘boundary stones’ of Kant’s transcendental self-critique of reason have been set in the Aesthetic, as an organon. The exhibition of the character of the intuitive elements of our cognition is complete. Kant will now exhibit the character of the intellective element of cognition, through its provenance in the understanding. To this faculty of concepts Kant turns immediately in the Transcendental Logic. Kant begins the second division of the first Critique by contextualizing the range and scope of transcendental logic, limited within experience by sensibility. In this second Division, the conditions of synthesis (in terms of which the synthetic activity of consciousness becomes necessary) are to yield to the conditions for synthesis (in terms of which such activity becomes possible). To this transition we may now turn.

81

E.g., Peter Rohs, in Transzendentale Ästhetik (Verlag Anton Hain, Meisenheim am Glan, ) recognizes that “Kant unterscheidet äußeren und inneren Sinn,” and that from this distinction develops “die Kantische Problematik des inneren Sinnes und der Zeit.” Rohs worries that according to the letter of Kant’s account, time can contain “keine Bestimmung äußerer Erscheinungen” or their characteristics, “einer Gestalt, oder Lage, etc.” Rohs thus elects to rewrite Kant’s exposition; “Das Argument dafür, daß die Zeit keine Bestimmung äußerer Erscheinungen sei, ist gewiß nicht richtig.” Rohs endorses a second, inclusive construal of inner intuition; “Im übringen werden äußere Ereignisse in zeitlicher Ordnung apprehendiert, und insofern ist Zeit eine Bestimmung äußerer Erscheinungen oder eine Form des äußeren Sinnes.” Rohs dubious clarity may allow Kant to claim inner intuition as a synthetic Inbegriff. Rohs also advances an investigation of the “formale Beschaffenheit” of the forms of intuition, and yet sets his analysis always in the context of an apologetic exegesis, designed to confirm B ; “Die Zeit ist die formale Bedingung apriori aller Erscheinungen überhaupt” (p. ). Rohs ignores the implications of this construal; this immediate spatialization of time would make impossible, for example, Kant’s argument in the Refutation of Idealism.

form and function



III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta) We have, within us, presentations of which we can also become conscious. But no matter how accurate and punctilious this consciousness may be, they still remain forever only presentations; i.e., inner determinations of our mind in this or that time relation. How is it, then, that we posit an object for these presentations; how is it that in addition to the subjective reality that they have as modifications (of the mind), we also attribute to them some type of objective reality? Critique of Pure Reason; A , B

i. Form and Function In the Transcendental Logic, Kant retains the universal priority of intuition within the act of human cognition. Of the two fundamental sources for cognition, “the first lies in our receptivity to impressions,” and has been set out in the Transcendental Aesthetic. The second source “lies in our ability to cognize an object” as a Gegenstand, “in a representation” and “through the spontaneity of concepts” (A , B ). As above, it is through our receptivity that an object may be given, and by means of this spontaneity that an object may be thought. Only this origin in intuition allows for “the relation of that representation” to sensibility, without which such representations amount to “only a determination of the mind.” We shall see that this interdependence will require, and be attributed to, time. As Kant will put the point; it is “in time that I necessarily present the synthetic unity of the manifold” (B ). The centrality (and problematicity) of inner sense obtains within the universal theoretical context of the conditions for the possibility of synthetic cognition as such. Any act of synthetic judgment, Kant repeats, requires both the formal and the functional interdependence of these two basic elements of the cognitive faculty; “neither concepts without corresponding intuition . . . nor intuition without concepts can yield cognition” (A , B ). Neither property “is to be privileged.” For just as “thoughts without content are empty,” so “intuitions without concepts are blind.”82 82 Ferrarin, in “Mathematical Synthesis, Intuition, and Productive Imagination in Kant,” begins his analysis by reviewing the basic claims necessary to establish the “finitude” of our intellect; the pure concepts of the understanding must “descend into the forms of sensibility” and be restricted to the limiting conditions thereof in order to “acquire an objective existence” (). Thus, “intuition accounts first of all for the

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In introducing the Transcendental Logic, Kant stresses not the formal but only their functional qualities, and this only negatively; receptivity and spontaneity “cannot exchange their functions.” It is “only from their union that cognition can arise” (A , B ). Intuition must remain passive, and understanding active or spontaneous, even in its dependence upon the original receptivity of intuition. The task of transcendental philosophy lies in the demonstration of the universal conditions requisite to this formal interdependence and functional interaction among the faculties, necessary to any act of synthetic judgment. In order to demonstrate this functional interdependence, two contexts or dynamics can be highlighted. First, it is necessary that we “make our concepts sensible.” This is accomplished by “adding an object to concepts in intuition.” This addition is to result in the synthetic “exhibition” of concepts in intuition. It is, in a second moment, equally necessary that we “make our intuitions understandable,” by “bringing them under concepts.” This latter act is termed the “subsumption” of intuitions to concepts. Both acts, of exhibition and subsumption, are necessary to the transcendental demonstration of the interdependence of intuition and intellection in any act of synthetic cognition.83 The formal conditions for this interaction and activity must also be deduced. Kant first announces not (a) the principles for the satisfaction of this task, but (b) the method by which such principles will be adduced. synthetic genesis of concepts.” For “a synthetic judgment is not a formal, discursive relation betwen the subject and its predicate, but the activity of exhibiting in intuition the real belonging of a property to its object” (A –, B –). Thus, “we have to be clear about the notion of intuition if we want to understand Kant’s theories of mathematics, construction, and synthesis.” Intuition provides that “sensible medium in which we apprehend or exhibit concepts, which are thereby filled with meaning” or sense. To the degree that they would achieve a synthetic status, pure concepts are necessarily responsive to “limitations of space and time” (). For “neither transcendental philosophy nor any science can have a demonstrative development and an ostensive production of their objects in intuition” (). Ferrarin perceives “an essential difference between this production of an a priori manifold [in mathematics] and the synthesis of a given manifold in perception” as is required for judgments of experience. The latter “are closely tied to the further difference between intuitions and characters” or Merkmale (). Ferrarin laments that “Kant never took the trouble to explain any further his definition, or the relation . . . between time and space in mathematical schematism” or to clarify its ambiguities. For this reason, “it is not surprising that this subject” of the relation between time and space “is among the most misunderstood of his whole philosophy . . .” (). See also notes , , and  below. 83 For a thorough determination of the complementary activity of the construction of concepts, and its role in the constitution of synthetic a priori judgment, see the Metaphysical Foundations; Ak , –.

form and function



Intent “not to be led to conflate their respective contributions,” Kant insists upon the necessity of “carefully separating and distinguishing sensibility and understanding,” in an Aesthetic and a Logic. In this way, the respective contributions of each faculty to the fully constituted act of cognition may be made articulate. Only then will the principles for the possibility and extent of their union be set out.84 General logic will “abstract from all content of cognition,” or from “all reference of cognition to its object.” General logic will yield only the formal structure of the understanding, as the Aesthetic yielded the formal structure of pure intuition (A , B ). General logic, however, will “examine only the logical form” evident “in the relation cognitions possess to one another.” A division parallel to that in the Aesthetic obtains in the distinction between pure logic and transcendental logic. General logic remains merely formal, and excludes any possible empirical, objective content or reference. Transcendental logic does not exclude, but 84

Kant’s concern with logic is “not scholastic” but is instead “transcendental” (A , B ). It is advanced here in order to determine the contribution of logic to the topic of the dynamic act of human cognition in its empirical use. Universal or elementary logic is conceived as specifying the laws which govern any possible thought as such. Such a universal logic is distinguished from a special metaphysical employment of logic, which establishes an organon for one or another science, governing objects only within a restricted range. From general logic follows a derivative distinction between pure general logic and applied general logic. Kant insists that in general logic, one abstracts from “all empirical conditions under which we exercise our understanding.” These conditions include “the influence of the senses, the play of the imagination, the laws of memory, the force of habit, inclination,” and prejudice (A , B ). It is not with thought as already applied, and thought with which we are thereafter acquainted, with “achieved thought,” that logic is concerned, but with thinking as an, and in its, activity. Kant will specify that pure, general logic is “concerned with nothing but a priori principles,” and offers “a canon of understanding and of reason” just as the Aesthetic offered of intuition. General but impure logic will contribute “the rules of the understanding as employed in accordance with subjective empirical conditions” of its employment (A , B ). As both general and pure, logic “possesses no empirical principles.” By “taking nothing from psychology,” general, pure logic does not contain the conditions for its synthetic application to empirical intuition. Only in applied logic is “a presentation of the understanding and of the rules governing its necessary use in concreto,” in any employment “under contingent conditions attaching to the subject,” to be attempted or attained (A , B ). In Claims of Knowledge (–), Guyer will argue that Kant here underestimates the role of inner sense, which must “concern not [only] the psychological process by which the temporal succession of data is given, but the epistemic conditions under which the occurrence of such a succession can be recognized.” For this reason, Guyer claims that “psychological conditions of knowledge are blissfully absent from Kant’s entire discussion of the principle of empirical knowledge.” Guyer traces the manner in which inner sense is necessarily “ingredient in both the possibility of () a synthesis of apprehension and () a synthesis of recognition” in Urteil and Beurteilung ().

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incorporates, the content of cognition, and is capable thereby of “dealing with the origin of our [synthetic] cognition of objects” as well (A , B ). Philosophical inquiry, Kant stipulates, is not transcendental merely by concerning itself with a priori cognition. Such inquiry must establish in particular “that a priori cognition whereby we cognize that, and how, certain presentations (intuitions or concepts) are applied, or possible, a priori.” Thus, “neither space nor any a priori geometric determination of it is transcendental” in the sense demanded. Rather, a transcendental determination is to be found only in the “cognition that these presentations are not in the least empirical in origin.” Only by determining the contribution of the form of intuition to synthetic a priori judgment does transcendental philosophy demonstrate its proper and definitive sphere of concern. Only in the possible “reference a priori to objects of experience” is spatiality, for instance, of central importance to transcendental philosophy. As such, space is neither a merely logical nor an empirical designation, but the pure a priori form for all outer intuition. As such, it is necessary, but not sufficient, to the full constitution of human cognition. Only once subsumed to a concept will any such intuition both (a) provide for the possibility, and (b) result in the actuality, of synthetic a priori cognition, the genuine object of transcendental inquiry. This series of distinctions allows Kant a conclusion, or at least expectation; “we shall anticipate, then, the possibility that there are concepts referring a priori to objects” (A , B ). This possibility will lie exclusively neither in pure nor in sensible intuition, nor in the acts of pure thought treated in general logic. This possibility instead requires the interdependence of each element of our cognitive faculty. This possibility will be assessed in a “transcendental self-critique of reason,” or Vernunfterkenntnis, and will “determine the origin, range, and objective validity of such rational cognitions” (A , B ). In §IV, Kant differentiates transcendental logic into two sections, an “Analytic” and “Dialectic” (A , B ). Dialectic is juxtaposed to analytic in the Transcendental Logic just as synthetic was juxtaposed to analytic in the Aesthetic. Methodologically, Kant reasserts the requirement that transcendental logic isolate understanding, as the Aesthetic isolated sensibility. Logic must restrict itself to the characters and status of a cognition the origin and provenance of which lies in the understanding. Importantly, Kant also reasserts that “the use of this in pure cognition rests on the condition that objects to which it can be applied are given to us in intu-

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ition” (A , B ). The lexical priority of intuition to concept restricts the possible synthetic use of the understanding just as the heterogeneity in intuition limits the possible scope or sphere of any such employment.85 Without this intuitive origin, Kant claims unequivocally, “all cognition lacks objects, and thus remains completely empty.” Indeed, this restriction upon our intellect is to remain normative for transcendental philosophy on pain of a “subreptical axiom” (vitium subreptionis). Disavowing the perpetual presence and priority of intuition, “the understanding runs the risk that, by idly engaging in subtle reasoning (Vernuenfteleien), it will put the merely formal principles of pure understanding to a material use” (A , B ). It is not, Kant states clearly, by “pure understanding alone that we venture to judge,” or “determine anything synthetically about objects.” Only as yielded through, and exhibited within, a priori intuition may the concepts of the understanding be granted a material or empirical use. In fact, we “misuse transcendental analytic if we accept it as the organon of a universal and unlimited use” (A , B ). Only the Aesthetic can pretend to the status of an organon, for while intellectual functions consummate intuitive form in generating synthetic cognition, such intellectual functions cannot violate the nature and limits of such intuitive form. Any intellectual function not structured by and in accordance with intuitive form will either remain analytic, or become dialectical; “if with pure understanding alone we venture to judge” without recognition of the priority and limits of our intuition “ . . . anything synthetically about objects” this judgment “would then be dialectical” (A , B ). The term “dialectic” indicates the danger of “subtle reasoning” or subreption. This danger requires that “the second division of transcendental logic must consist in a critique of this dialectical illusion,” by which the analytic use of concepts illegitimately incorporates an objective synthesis of and in intuition. The immediate relation to a sensible object, in its identity and unity rather than merely possible and conceptual universality, obtains only in intuition, and can only be claimed for cognition or self-cognition according to its laws.

85 In Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), Guyuer adduces R , in which Kant enumerates the requirements necessary in order that “appearance become experience.” It is not that, formally, “in space and time, all data are to be revealed,” but that, functionally the “subordination of every particular” or intuitive content “under the universal” concept “is the condition of possibility for associating a given representation with others by means of an act” ().

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While Aesthetic can hope only for the status of an organon, logic may hope to achieve (even as critique rather than doctrine) the status of a system (A , B ). The logical structure of the understanding “is a selfsubsistent unity, sufficient unto itself, that cannot be augmented by supplementing it with extrinsic additions.” Transcendental logic—as the second of two “basic sources” of human cognition—will yield the concepts, and the principles, of pure understanding. These principles will be investigated according to their origin; “we shall trace the pure concepts [of the understanding] all the way to their first seeds and predispositions in the human understanding.” We will do so by “locating them [transcendentally] at their birthplace” or the point of origin and genesis for such concepts. This origin or provenance will be found “in the understanding” (A , B ). While a priori intuition was established through its formality or formal structure, the a priori concepts of the understanding is to be established by means of their functionality or productive activity. By function, Kant indicates “the unity of the act of arranging various presentations under a common presentation” (A , B ). In contrast to intuition, the understanding will be exposed positively as discursive and universal, and as conceptual rather than intuitive (A , B ).86 The activity of the understanding, in the entire range of its possible functions and applications, “can be reduced to judgment” or “the capacity to judge” (A , B ). Universally, Kant claims, “all judgments are functions of unity within our presentations,” or functions through which unity within our presentations, their combination, is attained. In this activity, the understanding does not refer directly to any object. Only in intuition is this objectual relation direct, or immediate (unmittelbar). Only in and through pure intuition is this relation both synthetic and a priori. This extension of the priority thesis into the determination of the functional character of the act of judgment should be reinforced and reiterated.

86 In judgment, a representation possesses a direct relation to either another representation, or an intuition. Two types of cognition are thus indicated. The former is merely formal, and consists in an “act of consciousness.” The latter, instead, is genuinely objective and proposes an “act of cognition.” In both cases, judgment is discursive, and consists in “a concept that encompasses and holds of many presentations.” In its universality, judgment rests upon and assumes the relation of the cognitive faculty to the individuality of the object, which can be gained only through intuition. For example, in the judgment that “all bodies are divisible,” “divisibility” cannot contain immediately an individual intuition. Any such concept, qua representation, is mediate, and holds of the entire range of

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Judgment relies upon intuition. Accepted architectonically, this would be to say that judgment rests upon the given (dabile) matter of sensation for its noematic correlate. Accepted dynamically, this would be to say that judgment waits upon the “transposition,” or transitus, by which such a given object is delivered from external empirical sensation to the understanding. Judgment cannot itself yield a (immediate) presentation of an object. Judgment instead consists only (mediately) in a “[intellective] presentation of a [intuitive] presentation” (A , B ).87 Through such a presentation, judgment may cognize, and then recognize, a content synthetically, determining it to objectivity through the imposition of the universal concepts of the understanding. The paradigmatic activity of the understanding consists in the accomplishment of “cognition through concepts.”88 But the synthetic status of such concepts is possible only for the perpetually prior presence of a manifold of a priori intuition, which yields the “given object” (materium dabile) in its unity, identity, and individuality, and particular formal character as spatial and temporal.89 Whereas intuitions “rest on our being

possibly divisible objects contained, e.g., in the concept of “body.” This concept of body refers not to a body individuated through intuition, but any body as such, and receives its reference, or referent, only through this relation to intuition. 87 For Deleuze, “the important thing in representation is the prefix: re-presentation implies an active taking up of that which is presented,” while “what presents itself is not only empirical diversity in space and time, but pure intuition (space and time) themselves,” a priori qua forms of intuition. Knowledge, then is “the synthesis [in representation] of what is presented.” See Gilles Deleuze, Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ) (translated from La Philosophie Critique de Kant, PUF, ), p. . 88 Benoist (ibid) sets out clearly the manner in which inner intuition both cannot be “assujettie au concept” (), and yet must be amenable to such subsumption, which is no less than a “présupposé prédicatif ” for synthetic cognition (). Benoist notes the ultimately critical or negative position of the first Critique doctrine of inner sense; “dans la Dialectique,” Kant will “combattre . . . l’usage métaphysique c’est-à-dire ontologique” of any such determination of the “object of inner sense” as dialectical. Kant will instead, through the asserted incapacity of inner intuition, insist upon “la signification logique de terme ‘sujet’ qui permet de le purger de l’investissement ontologique” required for Seelenlehre. Only this negative construal of inner sense will ground Kant’s “critique radicale du concept d’âme,” which will thus be “relégué au rang des illusions fondatrices de la métaphysique,” precisely that of “l’idée d’un sujet comme sujet donné” in inner sense (). 89 According to Longuenesse (Kant and the Capacity to Judge (Princeton, Princeton University Press, )), time and space as such are not even to be attributed to sensibility; “we no more find time in inner sense than we find space in outer sense. The intuition of time, in which we perceive the successive character of the production of a figure, is, just like the intuition of space, generated originally by the synthesis speciosa” (). Longuenesse intellectualizes appearances. (Longuenesse provides a summary review of

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affected,” or reflect our passive “receptivity to impressions,” intellectual concepts reflect the “spontaneity of our thought” (A , B ). But such spontaneity is not possible in the context of synthetic activity except as an exercise upon such passively received data; “by function I intend the act of arranging various presentations under one common presentation” (A , B ). Judgment is mediate, because dependent upon the immediate relation between cognition and object established only in intuition and by means of our sensibility. Judgment is not only dependent upon such data, but is restricted in the sphere of its activity by that which is given and as it is given. Such intellectual functions “arrange” that which is given according to rules of identity and unity, but always and only according to the forms of intuition. It is for this reason that Kant wrote above of judgments as mediate (intellectual) presentations of immediate (intuitive) presentations; “for instead of cognizing the object by means of an immediate presentation” alone, “we do so by means of a higher [mediate] presentation, comprising both this immediate [intuitive] presentation and several other presentations” (A , B ). Only thus do we “thereby draw many possible cognitions together into one” or into a unity of presentation or concept. Only thus do we cognize synthetically by means of an intuitus derivativus. This “division” (divisio) between the characters and functions of intuition and intellection is necessary, Kant suggests, in order that the respective contributions of intuition and intellection to cognition be accurately appre-

the necessary steps in her methodical transition in “From Time in the Transcendental Aesthetic to Time in the Analogies of Experience” on pp. –). For Longuenesse, the synthetic activity of the understanding is “exercised on the pure (spatiotemporal) form of the manifold according to the rules provided by the categories,” and “produces the sensible forms in which the appearances turn out to conform to the categories” (). Longuenesse ignores Kant’s claims that “self-consciousness is far from being selfcognition,” and that the “spatiotemporal manifold” is possessed of an internal distinction which disallows the universal application of the categories. Longuenesse would bracket Kant’s claim that “the conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given precede the conditions under which these objects are thought” (A , B ). Longuenesse’s reconstruction is perspicuous; her construal of the Kant’s doctrine is certainly both necessary and sufficient for the “re-establishment,” in Paton’s sense, of the first Critique. However, this reconstruction ignores entirely two theses definitive of Kant’s Sinnenlehre; (a) the priority of intuition over intellection, and (b) the heterogeneity in form within intuition, between inner sense and outer sense. If the prior thesis is not maintained, the claim to the finitude of our intellect is without justification. If the second thesis is not retained, the refutation of rational psychology, e.g., could not be maintained. I will argue that Longuenesse’s strategy, more importantly still, obscures the reasons for Kant’s development of the theoretical philosophy throughout the ’s.

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hended. This division will thus allow for a systematic result. By its means, merely formal, “analytic” uses of consciousness will be distinguished both from genuine, “synthetic” uses of cognition, and from invalid, “dialectical” uses of cognition. The latter, of course, falsely presume and require a unity in our presentations that is instead impossible. In this way, then, dialectical employments of cognition can be identified, classified, and hence disallowed. We will examine this implication of the self-knowledge of pure reason below. This introduction of the dependence of the understanding and judgment upon the deliverance of the materium of cognition in and through intuition allows for a precision not previously possible. In the Aesthetic, the doctrine of the pure intuitions was exposed in an ars characteristica.90 This revealed not only a heterogeneity in origin between sensibility and understanding, but a heterogeneity in form within sensibility. The structure and “characters” definitive of inner intuition and outer intuition provided the basis for a distinction between the spheres and capacities of each sensible form. We have examined in particular the asserted aspatiality of time, and Kant’s claim that spatiality does not pertain to the form of inner sense. The conditions required in order that “the soul” appear as a synthetic object of inner intuition were denied to the inner sensory manifold, for reasons first expressed in the second-edition Preface. These conditions for synthetic cognition instead obtained only within the “steady and orderly coherence” of the manifold of outer intuition. This capacity for objective, synthetic cognition accrued to the sphere of outer sense for its possession of the conditions and predicates—limit, boundary, position— necessary for the synthetic appearance of a determinate object. In this formal heterogeneity consists the first aspect of the aporetic doctrine of inner sense. This aspect concerns the formal condition of determinacy or indeterminacy in inner intuition. This aspect names a tension intrinsic to transcendental philosophy. Transcendental philosophy appears to require of inner intuition a priori both (a) determinability (and hence formal homogeneity with the characters of outer intuition) as must obtain for the construction and exhibition of synthetic concepts a

90 For Kant’s description of his own philosophy as “similar to Leibniz’s ars universalis characteristica combinatoria,” see the letter to Beck of  September . I have benefited from L.W. Beck’s discussion of the motives for, requirements of, and importance of Leibniz’s attempts at an ars characteristica in Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., ), pp. –.

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priori, and (b) indeterminability, in order to disallow the conditions requisite for rational psychology of “the object of inner sense” or rational theology as Seelenlehre.91 The exegesis of this wider significance of the aporia of inner sense, however, can only be given following Kant’s own exposition in the Dialectic. A second aspect of the doctrine of inner sense, however, may now be explicated more fully. This second, functional aspect of the aporia consists in the conditions required that a materium dabile originally present within outer sense be brought through the heterogenous manifold of inner sense and its pure temporality, wherein alone it may be presented to, or “gone over and run through,” by the understanding. The second aspect of the aporia concerns the dynamic act of cognition in its objective and empirical use. This movement is depicted by Kant as a process, in which an object of outer sense or materium dabile is “taken up into” inner intuition. Only then can the faculty of cognition “take [this materium] to” conceptual determination in the act of judgment. Kant indicates this problem in addressing “our mode of inwardly intuiting ourselves—the mode in terms of which we likewise take up into our faculty of representations all outer intuitions”—at A , B .92 The first aspect of the aporia does not concern this dynamic act of cognition in its empirical and objective use. The first aspect of the aporia concerns at most the subjective act of recognition, which begins not from outer sense but from the sphere of inner sense itself.93 This first aspect concerns not the transitus of a matter of sensation from outer sense to 91 For a brief but helpful review of the basic claims of the Seelenlehren of Wolff, Crusius, and Tetens, see Gary Hatfield, “Empirical, Rational, and Transcendental Psychology; Psychology as Science and as Philosophy,” in the Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), –. 92 Kant will amplify this dynamic at Loses Blatt B  (Ak  ); “all appearances are nothing for us unless they are taken up into consciousness” and thereby subsumed to a discursive concept of the understanding. On this “processus,” see Nabert; “quelque supériorité que possèdent les intuitions externes quant à leur détermination plus aisée par les categories de la relation, elles doivent cependant entrer dans le sens interne pour être soumises aux lois de l’entendement” (“L’expérience interne chez Kant,” in Revue de metaphysique et de morale , , pp. –, p. ). 93 Lachièze-Rey (L’Idealisme kantien [Paris, Vrin, ], ), perhaps too quickly, concludes that since “Kant . . . nous refuse . . . catégoriquement de trouver dans le moi l’élément de permanence cherché,” both the subjective and objective series are thwarted; “interprétées en toute rigeur,” the heterogeneity and inconstancy theses “conduiraient donc à l’impossibilité radicale de la constitution d’une série subjective,” which implies that “il est impossible to transformer directement cette série subjective en série objective, parce qu’on ne surait passer de l’une à l’autre sans faire intervenir les phénomènes du sens externe,” which would contradict the major, the heterogeneity thesis (–).

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inner sense, but the formal problem of the determinability conditions within inner sense, as is required, e.g., for the mathematical construction and exhibition of concepts.94 The first aspect concerns not synthetic and objective, but synthetic and subjective, cognition, the subjective synthesis. Its scope is restricted to the architectonic or structural elements of the faculty of cognition. The second aspect instead concerns these same elements in their functional interdependence and interrelation within the dynamic act of human cognition in its empirical and objective use. The first aspect of the aporia will also be termed the formal aspect of the aporia, while the second will be named as the functional aspect of the aporia.95 The first aspect pertains to our ability to recognize synthetic a priori judgments as accomplished and as already obtaining in a determinate inner sensory manifold. The second, functional aspect of the aporia instead concerns the possibility of synthetic a priori judgment in its widest possible transcendental significance, in judgments of experience. The second aspect—in the terms of Kant’s own depiction of the aporia of

94 Regarding the conflict between the constructive and the critical uses of the doctrine of inner sense, Ferrarin admits that “it is not easy to accomodate the necessity to treat time as the object of synthesis—which is indispensable to make sense of Kant’s letter and of his whole idea of the syntheticity of arithmetic—with the necessity to leave time in itself unaffected by our synthesis” (ibid, ). Ferrarin nonetheless resolves to put forth “the most plausible interpretation I can give . . .,” in spite of this evident contradiction (). The attempt at scholarly understanding is essential, but this attempt, if first directed to apology, risks in Guyer’s phrase “overstepping any conceivable bounds of historical interpretation and becoming assistance rather than interpretation” (Claims of Knowledge, ). Ferrarin admits this difficulty when he states that for a plausible or apologetic interpretation, “what I need here is what Hegel called the first presupposition of voluntary intelligence, attention” (). But a Hegelian concept cannot resolve, on behalf of Kant, a Kantian problem. I would suggest instead that (a) such apology is self-defeating, (b) only a critical understanding can articulate the aporetic complexity of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense, and—to anticipate further publications—that (c) this critical understanding alone will be able to trace out Kant’s development of the doctrine to the Opus postumum. 95 Kant distinguishes mathematical or subjective and dynamical or objective syntheses similarly at A , B . Formal synthesis requires that determinability obtain in the manifold of inner intuition. This same requirement characterizes the dynamical and functional or objective synthesis. The dynamical synthesis, however, begins from outer intuition rather than from inner intuition. The functional or objective synthesis, then, adds the requirement of a transitus of the materium dabile of outer intuition through the inner intuitive manifold, wherein it may be “run through and gone over” by the understanding (Durchlaufen and Zusammennehmen) and determined intellectively. Kant indicates the centrality of inner intuition to both; it is “in fact through these latter principles [of the possible presentations of inner sense] that the principles of mathematics and of general dynamics acquire one and all their possibility” (A , B ).

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inner sense in the Opus postumum—addresses the question “how a given object [dabile] becomes an object of cognition [cogitabile],” or appearance, in a determinative judgment. The first aspect addresses the question of “how an object of cognition [cogitabile] itself becomes (reflectively) an object of thought [cogitata],” or the “phenomenon of the phenomenon” in the “consciousness of consciousness.”96 This latter, second-order or reflective problem of exhibition obtains whether the “cogitabile” was first given [dabile] objectively through outer intuition, or subjectively through inner intuition.97 A final anticipation of the structure, significance, and scope of the aporia of inner sense may prove helpful. The formal aspect of the aporia is prior to and determines the context for the functional aspect of the aporia. Correlatively, the functional aspect of the aporia contains the ultimate significance of the formal aspect. The formal aspect concerns the question; “how are synthetic propositions in mathematics possible?” The functional aspect concerns the question; “how are synthetic propositions in experience and experiment (physics) possible?” The first aspect of the aporia follows from the mutual exclusivity or heterogeneity of the analytic predicates or modes of inner sense and outer sense. This implies directly the aspatiality, and hence instability and indeterminacy, of the manifold of inner intuition.98 The second aspect 96

For Kant’s employment of these terms, see Ak , . The formal aspect must be resolved in order that concepts generated from the understanding may be constructed and exhibited in inner intuition. The functional aspect must be resolved in order that the materium dabile generated from outer intuition be “taken up into” the faculty of cognition. Both aspects extend to the extremes of the cognitive faculty and converge in a priori inner intuition. Regarding the subjective synthesis, Nabert (ibid, ) notes that all knowledge requires that “concepts puissent être construits dans l’intuition a priori.” For “la connaissance rationelle par construction de concepts” requires that one be able to “représenter a priori l’intuition qui lui correspond.” However, “il ne peut donc y avoir de premiers principes métaphysiques de la nature pensante, parce qu’il n’y a pas de concept qui se laisse construire a priori dans l’intuition pure interne, le temps” (). 98 According to Longuenesse (Kant and the Capacity to Judge (Princeton, Princeton University Press, )), the doctrine of inner sense advances not a heterogeneity thesis, but a universality thesis, and provides the “possible unity between time considered as a necessary condition of mathematical thought and time as a condition of the coordination of outer sensations” (–). Longuenesse will even suggest that “the two aspects of time”—independent of spatial form and interdependent with spatial form—“were properly unified once time was defined as the form of inner sense” in the große Licht of  (). Longuenesse will elsewhere acknowledge that time and space must remain heterogenous. Time, “as the sensible condition of mathematical operations,” and the inner intuitions which obtain therein, “cannot be outer sensations,” since otherwise 97

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of the aporia instead implies the architectonic in its entirety, not only as a formal structure but in the interdependence and harmony of its elements or faculties. For this reason, the functional aspect of the aporia in particular is not visible in the Transcendental Aesthetic alone, but can only be appreciated after an extended engagement with the various synthetic principles articulated in the Transcendental Logic, and with the restrictions upon the scope and status of such synthetic principles that are instituted in the Dialectic. Further anticipation, however, cannot provide for greater clarity in advance of the exegesis of Kant’s own exposition, which we may now rejoin. The activity of the understanding, in the entire range of its possible synthetic functions and applications, “can be reduced to judgment” (A , B ). In judgment and through its complete exhibition, we will find “all the functions [of unity] of the understanding” (A , B ). Whereas general logic determines intellectual functions “in abstraction from all content of a judgment,” so as to isolate only “the mere form of understanding” (A , B ), transcendental logic is to have “lying before it, a manifold of a priori sensibility” (A , B ). It is Aesthetic that accomplishes this, by “providing transcendental logic with this manifold,” which thus functions as “the material for the pure concepts of the understanding.” Without this materium provided by the aesthetic, “transcendental logic would be without content,” or empty, undistinguishable from general logic (A , B ).99

“mathematics would be empirical cognition” (). Yet, for reasons to be reviewed below, Longuenesse evades a confrontation with the heterogeneity thesis throughout her important work. 99 R  (Ak  ) offers confirmation; “the senses contribute the material for all of our representations.” From this point of origin, “the series of cognitive faculties and their contributions can be enumerated; “. the figurative faculty (Bildungskraft) imaginatio . . . . the faculty of . . . differentiation (Unterscheidungskraft), iudicium discretivum, . the faculty of connecting representations not immediately with their object, but by means of a representation, the act of designation.” For La Rocca, too, “dove non c’è involutio non c’è un processo.” In the case that an intuition cannot be ‘taken up into’ or ‘incorporated’ into the faculty of concepts, there is a case of ‘failed’ or ‘unfulfilled’ cognition (). In other words, “le regole di apprensione dell’ oggetto garantiscono l’oggettività del processo conoscitivo” (). Thus the most important question must be; “come avviene un tale processo, il riferimento originario di un concetto all’intuizione, che è al contempo il sorgere di un concetto empirico?” () La Rocca treats this processus as one of generalization, in which the individuated intuitive materium dabile is submitted to the universal concepts of the understanding in graduated steps (from intuition to imagination to intellection), in order that formal concepts be shown as genuinely synthetic. Thus, for La Rocca (with reference to R ; Ak  ) this process obtains “attraverso una graduale

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Space and time, Kant repeats, “belong to our mind’s receptivity,” and “contain the manifold of pure a priori intuition” by which pure concepts may contain a synthetic content, and by which logic may become transcendental in significance. A priori intuition, though necessary to judgment, is not thereby sufficient for judgment, however. The “spontaneity of our thought requires that this manifold, in order to be transformed into cognition, must first be gone through, taken up, and combined in a certain manner” (ibid). This internally complex act, Kant adds, “I call synthesis.” The synthesis traced to “the spontaneity of our thought,” Kant repeats, is originally dependent on intuition for the transposition of the object of outer sense through the temporal manifold of inner sense. Without this functional transposition of the object of outer sense, through the inner sensory and purely temporal manifold of inner sense, the synthetic activity of the understanding cannot obtain.100 Only upon this transposition [transitus] may any such object be “gone through, taken up, and combined” by the understanding. The problematic possibility of even the deduction of the objectivity of the pure concepts waits upon and requires this transitus.101 discriminazione e selezione delle note: dall’attenzione, che le registra, alla comparazione, che indaga i loro rapporti, alla riflessione, che indaga i modi di connessione con la coscienza, all’astrazione, che conclude il processo . . . ” 100 Paton (ibid, ), too, is attentive to this ordo cognoscendi. First, “the manifold must be originally be given to outer sense.” It is only on being transposed through inner sense that we may be “aware of it before our minds.” Only if so transposed is it “given to inner sense as well” (). And yet, Paton claims; “on this point Kant gives us, so far as I know, no clear statment.” This criticism is incorrect. Kant actually gives us two clear statements. The first requires the inclusion of the object of outer sense in inner sense. The second disallows the inclusion of the object of outer sense in inner sense. To be aware of a determined object, “I must take up, run through, reproduce, and hold together . . . the manifold” of intuitive relations that are to be determined to objectivity by the understanding. With this processus, Paton admits, “there are many difficulties” (). For time belongs to inner sense, and not to the understanding; its material is or must be “given to thought and imagination, not created by them.” Indeed, “the synthetic activity of thought and imagination is itself successive,” and so “clearly presupposes time” and the indeterminacy and inconstancy of inner sense (). Paton will strategically evade pursuing his analysis, with a turn of phrase that Allison will adopt; “in this again there are difficulties of which Kant gives no detailed discussion.” The following exegesis intends to show that Kant instead gave detailed discussions of these difficulties throughout the ’s. Through exegesis, I hope to show further that Kant’s late and radical revisions are not defections from, but rectifications of, precisely these difficulties. 101 Lachièze-Rey (ibid) juxtaposes Kant’s antinomic claims regarding the determinability of inner intuition similarly. Kant is recorded as asserting () a “parallélisme entre l’objet du sens externe et celui du sens interne” (), in order “poser l’adéquation nécessaire de l’acte et de son contenu” (). Kant also () “nous présente souvent sa critique comme une

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A priori intuition is central to the transcendental architectonic of human cognition, for its structuration of sensibility a priori. But pure intuition is also prius in the order of cognition it structures. An aporia within intuition, which is lexically prior to the understanding within all synthetic cognition, will leave no aspect of Kant’s transcendental topic unaffected. Kant insists upon this lexical priority; in § , ‘On The Pure Concepts of Understanding, or Categories,’ he repeats that “before any [intellectual] representations can obtain, [intuitive] presentations must be given” (A , B ). The “first [element] that we must be given a priori in order to cognize any object is the manifold of pure intuition,” while, only then, “the second [element] is the synthesis of this manifold by the imagination,” while only then “the third [element] is the concepts which give unity to this pure synthesis” (A , B ; italics mine). By synthesis, Kant intends “the act of putting different presentations together with one another, of comprising their manifoldness in one cognition” (A , B ). Kant insists that “before any analysis of representation can obtain, these presentations must first be given.” As we have seen ever since we first turned to the Transcendental Logic, “as concerns content, no concepts can originate analytically,” within the understanding. The synthesis of this intuitive manifold, through which empirical presentations are given, “first gives rise to cognition.” In this synthesis, “elements for cognition are gathered together and united in order to form a certain content.” Cognition, then, originates with and in the act of the synthesis of the heterogenous spheres and elements of intuition. The transcendental determination of the possibility, character, scope, and status of this synthesis will account for “the first origin of cognition itself.” Through this activity, the conditions of synthesis are to yield to the conditions for synthesis. Through this activity, the necessity announced in the former is to be fulfilled in the actuality announced in the latter. Kant has asserted the requirement that pure intuition obtain as prius in any act of cognition. This assertion does not of itself, however, yield the claim that pure intuition in either form allows of any such synthetic unity. A demand is not a deduction.102 The assignment of this functional démonstration de l’impossibilité de convertir la représentation ‘je pense’ en intuition ou de la compléter par une intuition” (). Unlike Benoist, who privileged the negative exigence required for the Dialectic, for Lachièze-Rey, “l’essential de cette critique doit être cherché plus haut,” in the constructive exigence of the Analytic and the deduction of the categories. 102 The distinction between a “demand” and a “deduction” echoes Kant’s own distinction in the Prolegomena between an analytic method and a synthetic method (Preface, Ak,

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possibility depends upon the formal capacity of inner sense and its form, time, to admit the “object of outer sense” within the pure temporality of its manifold. The formal heterogeneity in intuition disallows the unproblematic assertion of this possibility, or indeed its confident assumption. In the pure concepts of the understanding, or categories, “understanding thinks something in the manifold of intuition, i.e., thinks an object of intuition” (A , B ). The division of the categories (into quantity, quality, relation and modality) concerns the aporia of inner sense less than the formal preconditions and possibility of the employment of the categories (their application to intuition) as such. The possibility of this synthesis of (and “in”) intuition, Kant adverts, “has been generated systematically from a common principle, viz., our ability to judge” (A , B –). However, judgment has been shown to presuppose, rather than provide for, the “transposition” [transitus] of the matter of sensation in outer sense through the temporality of inner intuition. Such intellectual functions are posterior within the order of cognition to the forms of, and limitations of, intuition, and must assume their character and capacities. The formal distinction within the faculty of intuition cannot, apparently, remain one of heterogeneity.103 , ). Cursorily, two possible methods of proof are open to transcendental philosophy. The first is synthetic. The second is analytic. The first was followed in the first Critique. The second was followed in the Prolegomena. The first progresses from (empirical) heterogeneity in intuition to (transcendental) unity in apperception, from the “bottom, up.” The second begins from unity in apperception, and procedes “from the top, down.” In proceding from transcendental unity, the “analytic method” of the Prolegomena assumes unity, and cannot demonstrate the necessary validity of this unity. Only the method of the first Critique can possess any demonstrative force, or justify a claim to a “deduction of,” rather than a mere “demand for,” synthetic unity of mental contents. For discussion, see Ewing, Commentary, p. . 103 The contribution to cognition of each faculty, both intuitive and intellective, and each form of intuition, must be united within and obtain “in the same actus.” This presupposition or dependence of judgment upon intuition is evident in Kant’s claim that “the modes of pure sensibility (quando, ubi, situs, prius, simul) as well as motus” are to be segregated from the understanding in principle, as “not belonging at all in this register of the understanding’s original concepts” but properly to sensibility as a priori (A , B ). Kant clarified this point at Prolegomena § . Upon it rests the claim of transcendental philosophy to the independent assignation of the possibility of metaphysics. Aristotle “collected ten pure elementary concepts under the name of categories.” But “this rhapsody must be considered and commended as a mere hint for future inquirers, not as a systematically worked out idea.” Kant attests that after a “long reflection on the pure elements of human knowledge” as formal and a priori, “I at last succeeded in distinguishing with certainty and in separating the pure elementary concepts of sensibility (space and time) from those of the understanding.” This divisio yielded the analytic predicates or characters of time and space as pure intuitions, and

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In order to bring systematic unity into our cognition, a deduction quid juris rather than a mere assertion quid facti of this possibility must be achieved. An assignment of the a priori possibility (rather than the experiential and experiential facticity) of the objectivity of our concepts must be accomplished. This objectivity cannot be claimed to actually obtain within experience, in a phenomenology, but must be demonstrated to obtain necessarily, prior to any such experience, in a deduction. Only then may we avoid committing that proof to a contingent and a posteriori status, by relying upon elements characteristic of the experience which must instead be legitimated (A , B ). Transcendental deduction, in this way, distinguishes itself from empirical deduction (A , B ). This divisio reveals again the conditions of synthesis, by which the synthetic activity of the understanding is necessary.104 Kant will now attempt to demonstrate the conditions for synthesis, by which objective cognition and self-cognition are shown to be both formally possible and indeed actual within experience. To the character and status of each intended synthesis of the forms of intuition and their respective spheres, as set out in a “deduction of the objectivity of the pure concepts of the understanding,” we may now turn. The limitations upon the structure and scope of the manifold of inner intuition were first indicated in the Transcendental Aesthetic. These limitations, intimated intermittently throughout the transcendental deductions, restrict the capacity of the manifold of inner intuition to yield the conditions required for synthetic a priori judgment (both subjective and objective). This restriction is most clearly and consistently indicated in the Transcendental Dialectic. While Kant’s dominant intention in the transcendental philosophy in its specific difference from metaphysics. The “seventh, eight, and ninth categories had to be excluded from the old list” of the classical categories. The conceptual marks of “time, place, and position [Quando, Ubi, and Situs]” were excluded, and attributed instead to time as pure inner intuition, and space as pure outer intuition, respectively. Thus, Kant was able to set out the a priori contribution of sensibility to the a priori anticipation and constitution of experience. The doctrine of pure intuition and its heterogeneity thesis can thus be seen as central even to the Aristotlecritique. 104 This distinction repeats the heterogeneity thesis explicated above. Kant explicated this distinction at R . Kant wrote that “all that which is simultaneous [pertains] to a whole (in which the parts determine themselves reciprocally).” The subjective synthesis and its subordinatio disallows the mereological part-whole relation of dynamical judgments, just as the simultaneity of outer intuition is repugnant or heterogenous to the pure succession of inner sense. This formal distinction is required in order that the epistemic distinction between dynamic judgments and mathematical judgments be grounded formally and in principle.

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deductions is to effect the constructive intention of transcendental idealism, through securing the “objectivity of the pure concepts of the understanding,” important indications revelant to the formal and functional aspects of the aporia of inner sense may nonetheless be found. This essay must necessarily restrict its own scope to include only the most important critical constraints upon the manifold of inner sense relevant to either its formal character and its functional role in the constitution of the synthetic a priori judgments of experience and experiment. The principle guiding the deduction is found in the requirement that “[a priori] concepts must be cognized (erkannt) as a priori conditions for the possibility of experience.” Methodologically, the transcendental deduction will “ascend from singular perceptions to universal concepts.” This ascending movement must not begin from sensible intuition, “physiologically.” Such a method would allow only for the determination of a quaestio facti and a synthesis post factum. This ascending movement will begin instead transcendentally, “in order to exhibit a provenance quite different than can be declared from within experience” (A , B ). While the path of deduction will travel away from the limitations of intuition, it cannot renounce, but must approximate, the immediate selfevidence characteristic of intuition. Kant illustrates this requirement by discussing geometry’s “use of nothing but a priori cognitions.” In its pure synthetic cognition, geometry “follows its course securely without needing to ask of philosophy a certificate of the pure and legitimate lineage of geometry’s basic concept of space” (A , B ). All geometric cognition “is immediately evident, because based on a priori intuition.” No further justification for intuition is either necessary or possible. Only intuition may inscribe for cognition the certainty of an immediate relation to an object in its unity and identity. Importantly, this evidence obtains within “only the external world of [outer] sense.” No such objective certainty can obtain, then, through inner sense.105 The 105 Regarding the subjective or mathematical synthesis through inner sense, Ferrarin (“Mathematical Synthesis, Intuition, and Productive Imagination in Kant,” ibid) has written that “[with] time as inner sense, mathematics stands or falls.” But even while interpreting Kant’s direct claim that “time cannot picture any of the characteristics of space” (), Ferrarin subsumes exegesis to revision; “I do not believe we can keep the two totally apart” (). Thus, for Ferrarin, “time is never a pure one-dimensional medium of succession,” aspatial or inconstant in character (). For Ferrarin, however, “time . . . has an inherent connection . . . with space.” As we will see, however, it is precisely this thesis that Kant (at least at turns) has advanced and relied upon. The first, formal aspect of the aporia, pertinent to a mathematical synthesis or construction of concepts in the manifold of inner intuition, is nowhere clearer than in the challenging R . Kant recognizes

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manifold of inner sense excludes, formally, the conditions required for the appearance of the spatial form of the object. No science, or body of synthetic propositions, analogous to the geometry and physics of outer relations, is claimed here on behalf of inner intuition.106 Kant reports having had “little difficulty” in demonstrating this immediacy thesis, that space and time, as pure forms of sensibility, refer immediately and necessarily to objects. Nor did the demonstration that “they make possible, independently of experience, a synthetic cognition of objects” (contributing the conditions of rather than the conditions for synthesis) present difficulty. Nor indeed did the depiction of “how it is only by means of such pure forms of sensibility that an object can appear to us,” as individual and actual, present difficulty (A , B ). Only with the pure concepts of the understanding does “the inescapable requirement of a transcendental deduction originate.” This requirement implies further “a difficulty unknown in the realm of sensibility.” This difficulty is twofold, and concerns () “how subjective conditions of thought could have objective validity,” and () how this can be demonstrated in a “consciousness of the identity of function” whereby such a synthesis is achieved, rather than demanded as an article of faith in a pre-established harmony (ibid). This requirement consists “not only in these concepts themselves, but also in their relation to space” and to pure (outer) intuition. The pure concepts of the understanding “arouse suspicion concerning their objective validity and the limits of their use” (A , B –). The concepts of the understanding must be set out in their possibly synthetic “that, if I make myself an object, space is not in me but is (nonetheless) in the formal subjective condition of the empirical consciousness of myself, that is, in time.” He also recognizes that “[this] proves that something outside me, that is, something which I must represent in a manner other than myself, is connected with the empirical consciousness of myself ” in inner sense. Thus, “this [temporal self-consciousness] is at the same time the consciousness of an external relation without which I could not empirically determine my own existence.” At R , Kant will admit straightforwardly that “we need space in order to construct [construieren] time, and therefore determine the latter by means of the former” (Ak, , ). 106 The priority and privilege of pure outer intuition over inner intuition is repeated in the priority of outer intuition over concepts. The categories of the understanding “do not at all present to us the conditions according to which objects are given in intuition” in their immediate identity and unity. In the context of the Deduction, indications of the indeterminacy, inconstancy, and aspatiality of inner sense have been highlighted by P.F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Methuen, ), pp. –, and Baum, Deduktion und Beweis in Kants Transzendentalphilosophie: Untersuchungen zur “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” (Königstein: Athenaeum Verlag, ), pp. –.

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relation to intuition. It is not only as conceptual, logical, or analytic that the pure concepts arouse suspicion regarding their possible objectivity. The pure concepts are particularly problematic, instead, in their possible relation to pure intuition. The pure concepts of the understanding “also make ambiguous the concept of space,” as they “tend to employ this beyond the conditions of sensible [outer] intuition.” For this reason, “a transcendental deduction of this concept is needed” (A , B ). The deduction is to fulfill the constructive task of delimiting the range of the legitimate employment of the concept of space and its characters (limit, boundary, position). But the deduction is also to fulfill the critical task of deducing, within this legitimate sphere, the possibility and provenance of this “concept” or intuitive presentation of space.107 Kant identifies this task as integral to the refutation of both spiritualism (Schwaermerei) and skepticism (A , B ). This second task, of “refutation,” will be effected still more clearly and forcefully in the Transcendental Dialectic. The task for the deduction lies in “determining whether we cannot provide for human reason safe passage between these two extremes.” This will be accomplished, Kant suggests, by assigning to reason “determinate boundaries,” or limitations in its possible use, “which yet keep open to it the entire realm of its appropriate activity.”108 This realm will be (a) 107 Lachièze-Rey (ibid, ) sets out the double exigence met by Kant’s doctrine; “l’argumentation kantienne comprend une partie positive et une partie négative” (). The latter, “negative” part, “a pour but de montrer que le moi [in inner sense] n’est pas susceptible de fournir l’élément de permanence cherché” (). This, for Lachièze-Rey is “de beaucoup la plus importante et la plus développée,” and obtains as the dominant direction of Kant’s doctrine. Its intention is reached “d’abord la forme de l’intuition interne, c’est-à-dire la forme temporelle,” as “incompatible avec le permanent.” This absence of a central condition or “corrélatif indispensable” for a determinate synthetic cognition is advanced toward the end of “combattant la psychologie rationelle, qui prétend déterminer l’existence et la nature du moi” by means of an inner intuition (; see also –). On in this way “la psychologie rationnelle est obligée de renoncer . . . [et] abandonner la méthode synthétique pour la méthode analytique” (). Lachièze-Rey also articulates the former, “positive” aspect of the doctrine of inner sense, which requires “la solidarité, l’homogénéité, la continuité” between inner sense and outer sense, and its being identisch verbunden with outer sense (see, e.g., –). Only this interdependence will allow Kant to attain to an intuitive representation of “l’unité de moi” not merely intellectual, not “quelque chose en général” but individuated in intuition (–). 108 Lachièze-Rey reviews assertions of the heterogeneity thesis from the Aesthetic and the Dialectic, and juxtaposes these to Kant’s contrary assertions in the Analytic, on p. . Lachièze-Rey concludes that “Kant, tout en insistant sur la nécessité de faire intervenir l’espace et sur le parti qu’on peut tirer de cette nécessité pour prouver que le moi ne se connaît dans le sens interne que comme phénomène, entend conserver à chacune des intuitions son caractère irréductible.” This “irreducibility,” or heterogeneity “s’oppose à l’absorption

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enforced through formal restrictions in the character or structure of that reason, (b) determined in a “transcendental topic,” and (c) legislated by transcendental philosophy (A , B ). This twofold task of both securing and limiting evinces a definitive tension within transcendental idealism. This tension obtains between the demands of construction and the demands of critique, the requirements for Kant’s constructive and critical intentions. We will see, however, that Kant’s doctrine of inner intuition concentrates within itself these contravening demands, as it is asked to respond to the demands of each. Kant’s variant construals of the character and capacities of inner sense represent and reflect both of these wider argumentative intentions, which themselves are coextensive with Kant’s theoretical philosophy as such.

III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta) ii. Self-consciousness and Self-cognition a. A First Attempt at Deduction Kant anticipates the difficulty of this task, equally critical and doctrinal, by exhorting the reader to “see in advance the inevitable difficulty of providing such a deduction.” Otherwise, one might “complain of obscurity when in fact the matter itself is deeply shrouded.” Kant begins the first-Edition Deduction, nonetheless, with a reiteration of a claim already revealed. He begins by asserting, as an impossibility, “that a concept should be produced completely a priori and yet refer to an object,” without an application to intuition. In this case, as above, “the concept would possess no content, since no intuition would correspond thereto.” Intuition, Kant claims, “makes up the realm, or the entire object, of possible experience” (A ). The pure concepts of the understanding, or categories, are thus both dependent upon intuition, pure and sensible, and derivative of intuition du temps dans l’espace aussi bien qu’à la réduction de l’espace au temps,” and renders impossible the constructive demand Kant would make of inner intuition in the Analytic. Independence or “irreducibility” must be retained, according to Lachièze-Rey, for the following reason. If the conditions of outer sense obtain within inner sense, each “seraient avec lui dans un rapport de causalité,” as would violate the claim, or hope, of the Preface, since the conditions required for a categorial determination of inner sense would also obtain thereby ().

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in the dynamic order of human cognition. The categories of the understanding, however, also “express universally, and sufficiently, a formal and objective condition of experience,” just as sensibility expresses the intuitive condition for synthetic cognition and experience. The categories for this reason require “the examination of the subjective sources” in which they obtain, and out of which they arise, in order that their possibility and limits may be assessed (A ). For the individuated intuitions of our sensibility “can make cognition possible only when combined with spontaneity.” The possibility, limits, and extent of this possible combination, both in its status and scope, will occupy both the Deduction and the Dialectic.109 Any synthetic activity of the understanding assumes both the “manifoldness” of intuition as such and the particular formal character of each intuitive manifold; “every intuition is to contain a manifold” (A ). And “in order for this manifold” to “be susceptible of becoming a unity of intuition,” it must be “synthetically united across this heterogeneity” between the sensible forms. It will fall not to intuition but to intellection to “go through and gather together (Durchlaufen . . . und . . . Zusammennehmung)” this heterogeneity. For “intuition can never bring this manifold back as a manifold, and as contained moreover in one presentation, unless a synthesis occurs by this act” (A ). There does obtain, however, an obscurity in Kant’s account that appeared in the first-Edition only to be eliminated in the second-Edition. In his exposition of the “subjective sources” of experience thus far, Kant has relied upon a conception of the “two sources” of human cognition, intuition and intellection. These “two stems,” (A , B ) have provided the constant source of and framework for Kant’s analysis, and will continue to articulate the first Critique as such through the Dialectic. But here (A ), in the first-edition, Kant asserted that “there are three sources (capacities or powers of the soul)” that “contain the possibility of all experience, and 109 Guyer (ibid) follows Bennett, who, in Kant’s Analytic, has done as much as any English-language interpreter to stress the importance of A  as a “restrictive condition” on the scope and significance of the Deduction; see pp. – of Guyer’s Claims of Knowledge. Guyer notes with regard to §  of the second-Edition Deduction (B ) that “the I think must be able to accompany all my representations, for otherwise something would be represented within me that could not even be thought.” Guyer infers that “any conditions . . . to be satisfied for the consciousness of individual representations . . . as one’s own will have to be included among the conditions of synthesis,” including those of inner sense (). Guyer here repeats Melnick’s recognition of a “full propriety” thesis in the second-Edition. Guyer will admit, however, as Melnick will not, that, given the heterogeneity thesis, “this apparently obvious inference is far from innocuous” (ibid).

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cannot be derived from any other power of the mind; sense, imagination, and apperception.” This conception of three original sources is in uncertain relation to the “two stems” structuration that has dominated Kant’s analysis thus far. With them, Kant asserted respecetively three functions of unity; () in sense obtains “the a priori synopsis of the manifold;” () through imagination obtains “the synthesis of this manifold,” and () by means of apperception obtains “the unity of this synthesis through original apperception.” The basis for the first claim is yet uncertain, since Kant has insisted thus far that synthesis is required of intellectual functions (as the ‘second source’ for cognition) because of the manifoldness of intuition, and that synthesis never occurs by means of sensibility. The second synthesis surprises, for the assertion of imagination as an independent and fundamental faculty or source of cognition. But these “three original sources,” however variant from Kant’s exposition thus far, introduce the three syntheses of the first-Edition Deduction. While this essay is concerned primarily with Kant’s doctrine of inner intuition, its most amplified account or appearance is to be found within this “subjective” deduction, to which we will therefore attend as closely as possible. Abstracting from the question of the enumeration of the fundamental elements of cognition, we are able to follow what is for us, and appears to be for Kant in , of fundamental importance in the transcendental determination of the nature and limits of cognition. Kant here (A ) initiates the first-edition deduction with the claim that “regardless of the place of origin of our presentations, as modifications of the mind they yet belong to inner sense.”110 The question of the character of inner intuition 110

Benoist, in Kant et les Limites de la Synthèse, asserts that this absence of the conditions for self-cognition implies that “le sujet n’a plus sa place,” or remains atopical, in the transcendental determination of the possibility of self-cognition. The indeterminacy of inner sense, through which alone “on a le sujet comme objet du sens interne,” implies that the subject cannot appear as an object of inner intuition qua cogitans. Benoist builds upon the analyses and results of Lachièze-Rey (cited at , ), Nabert (cited at , –, –, , – etc), and Henry (cited at ,  et passim), and is able to refer to this problem as “l’aporie classique” for this reason. Benoist also advances our understanding of this aporia, by emphasizing the “statut de l’Esthétique transcendantale dans l’édifice critique” (). Only in the Aesthetic, Benoist suggests, can the “problème critique de la donation de l’objet” and “les conditions sous lesquelles l’objet peut-être donné” be determined (–). For Benoist, this attention to the Sinnenlehre of the Aesthetic uncovers first the thesis of the “passivité originaire” of our sensibility. The “priorité ‘épistémologique’ du sens interne” () over the understanding and its functions in the order of cognition is “le fond de la difficulté” (see also –, , ) that we encounter in the first-Edition Deduction and its attempt at ‘amplifying’ the form of inner sense.

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appears, in initiating a review of the Deduction, as central as it did in our review of the Aesthetic. Kant begins his explication of the nature of synthetic cognition in the Deduction, then, not with the heterogeneity or exclusiveness thesis but with the inclusiveness thesis. For cognition, Kant asserts, “is a whole, consisting of compared and connected presentations” (A ). That whole, he suggests, obtains within inner intuition. Indeed, “whether produced through the influence of external things or through inner causes,” and whether such presentations are pure or empirical in status, all cognition as such “belongs to inner sense.” Inner sense is the form according to which, and the sphere in which, all cognitive activity as such must be effected and exhibited. As importantly, Kant asserts. “all our cognitions are subject ultimately to the formal condition of inner sense, to time” (A ) and must obtain within it. In its temporality “they must one and all be ordered, connected, and brought into relations” (A ). The temporality of inner sense, then, incorporates both spatiality and the conditions that define it. Only upon this formal universality can the functional and synthetic activity of ‘ordering and connecting’ the data of intuition be thought to obtain. Kant remarks that “in order for this [intuitive] manifold to become unity of intuition . . . it must be gone through and gathered together” in an act termed a “synthesis of apprehension.” This act is “aimed directly at intuition.” It is not, of course, itself intuitive, since “intuition can never bring this manifold about as a manifold, and as contained moreover in one presentation, unless a synthesis occurs in this process,” a synthesis which as an act, and as above, cannot be attributed to our sensibility (A–). But if the provenance of this synthetic act is not precisely determined, its directionality or intention, its terminus ad quem, is; syntheses intends the “manifold that sensibility offers in its original receptivity” (A ). The formal conditions required in order that inner intuition, here as an Inbegriff, yield the possibility for such synthetic activity within its manifold, however, seem not to obtain unproblematically or without a certain antinomy.111 111 On inner sense as an Inbegriff, see Baumanns (Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ [Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ]), who treats Kant’s treatment of inner sense as universal representation, “das Medium aller synthetischen Urteile . . . darin alle unsere Vorstellungen enthalten sind,” (A , B ) on p. . Benoist (ibid) also set out the conflict between this “universality” of time as form of inner sense and its asserted aspatiality, at ibid,  ff. Chenet returns repeatedly, as does Guyer, to A  and A ; “le

a first attempt at deduction

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Kant worries that “if each singular presentation were entirely foreign to, or isolated from, every other presentation and separated from it, there would never arise anything like cognition.” In doing so, he appears to indicate a separation or division, a heterogeneity (A ). By naming together the temporal succession of a “sequence of impressions” and “the [mereological] unity of a presentation as contained in one instant,” Kant appears to name in particular that heterogeneity between time and space, and to specify that the unity to be gained by means of this first synthesis is a unity of time and space, a unity not only ‘in intuition’ but within, or between, the forms of intuition. Kant next treats the second synthetic act, which is announced at A . Having explicated, or asserted, that in sense obtains “the a priori synopsis of the manifold” in intuition, Kant will now explicate the manner in which, through imagination, “the synthesis of this manifold” obtains in imagination. The distinction in the directionality or intention of the synthesis is important. For unlike a synthesis in and for intuition, the second synthesis does not pertain to apprehension but rather to “reproduction.” Thus, the second synthesis does not intend empirical intuition directly, and the manner in which a passive apprehension thereof may be possible according to the laws of sensibility, but instead intends the conditions for a reproduction of that apprehension within the sphere of inner sense. The imaginative synthesis thus does not concern the presence of a given and passively received object, but obtains “even without the object’s being present” in an act of memory, for example.112 Rather than a synthesis of

sens externe, dont l’intuition est l’espace . . . n’est lui-même autre chose qu’un mode intérieur de representation [eine innere Vorstellungsart] où s’enchaînent les unes aux autres certaines perceptions.” As Chenet notes, “cette explication pose bien des problèmes” (), given the contravening claim that inner sense is a universal representation or Inbegriff. The incapacity of inner sense to yield spatial form or relations, even while the spatiality of outer sense can yield the temporal quality of permanence through the application of the categories, implies that “le parallélisme de l’espace et du temps dans l’Esthétique est remis en cause, sinon contredit . . . ” (). Reininger, on this same basis, identified an apparent “paralogism” in Kant’s doctrine; () “Alle Vorstellungen sind (in transzendentale Bedeutung) in uns; () Alles, was (in empirischer Bedeutung) in uns ist, wird unter der Form der Zeit vorgestellt; () Folglich sind alle Erscheinungen überhaupt in der Zeit und stehen nothwendigerweise im Verhältnisse der Zeit,” taken as exclusive of spatial characters and properties and as “purely subjective.” See Reininger, Kants Lehre vom inneren Sinn und seine Theorie der Erfahrung, , p. . 112 For confirmation, see the Anthropology (Ak , ), where the imagination “brings back to the mind an empirical intuition that we have had before.” In this way, the imagination recollects objects already collected, “when the object is not present” as an object of intuition. Importantly, this does not mean that the imagination is creative, or

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the successiveness of time and the absolute unity of space (A ), Kant’s second synthesis proposes a synthesis within the successiveness of time, a synthesis capable of bringing an orderly sequence to its “mere flux, chaos” of perpetual succession (as Kant asserted at B xl, A , B –, and will again at B ).113 Again, in the second synthesis, the heterogeneity thesis and its implications obtain as the problem-context, without which the progression in Kant’s deduction is atopical, literally, without place or purpose. Kant begins his exposition of the second synthesis by indicating those contingent or empirical laws of association according to which, over time, “presentations that have often followed or accompanied one another will finally associate, and enter into connection, with one another” (A ). This “law of reproduction,” however, “presupposes that appearances themselves are actually subject to such a rule.,” i.e., that even such a contingent reproduction is possible. Kant asks us to imagine that “cinnabar were now red, then black, now light, then heavy” or that “a human being were changed now and then into this and then that animal shape.” In the case of such irregularities in identity across time, “my empirical imagination could not even get the opportunity, when presenting red color, to come to think of heavy cinnabar.” The possibility for this reproduction is proved by its actuality; the conditions for this possibility must now be given; “there must be something that itself makes possible this reproduction of appearances” and “capable of producing a presentation of sense that was never before given to our power of sense; rather, we can always show [the previous, intuitive origin of] its material.” Imagination must be traced back to intuition, the unique function of which it cannot replace. 113 For Kemp Smith, the entire subjective deduction is charged with the addition of simultaneity to succession; “the consciousness of time is . . . the starting point [of the first-Edition Deduction]. For Kemp Smith, “the argument can best be expounded by reference to a single concrete example—say, our experience of a series of contents . . . in succession to one another.” Clearly, “in order that such an experience may be possible the successive members of the series must be held together simultaneously before the mind. Obviously, if the earlier members dropped out of consciousness [the latter] could not be apprehended as having followed upon them.” There must be () “a synthesis of apprehension of the successive items,” since “such consciousness is only possible insofar as these earlier contents are reproduced in an image. But there must also be () must be a synthesis of apprehension, since the latter is “conditioned by synthesis of reproduction in imagination.” Both, importantly, obtain within the sphere and according to the conditions of inner sense (Commentary ). For Guyer, too, “the temporality of consciousness . . . Kant claimed to be the premise of the deduction even in his first exposition,” even if “Kant seemed to ignore it” by amplifying its successiveness “in all that followed (A)” (ibid, ).

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that obtains “a priori” and provides “a basis for their synthetic unity,” identity across time, or constancy. The condition that will thus “underlie the possibility of experience.” The activity of reproduction will be termed the “pure transcendental synthesis of imagination” (A –). Importantly, Kant notes that the ‘steady order and coherence’ that thereby characterizes our presentations identity or constancy across time “amounts to a determination of inner sense” (A ). Thus, the second synthesis envisages the resolution of inconstancy to constancy in the succession of inner sense, just as the first synthesis envisaged the resolution of the independent relation between outer sense and inner sense to interdepedence. Kant clarifies the significance of the thought-experiments regarding identity across time just given, and specifies their context in inner intuition; “if I always lost from my thoughts the preceding presentations . . . and did not reproduce them” in a constant series, then “there could never arise a whole presentation” (A ). This second synthesis, as the effect of the imagination, pertains not to the external presence of the empirical object of intuition, but rather to the re-presentation of such an object within the sphere of inner intuition. Although its status is in principle distinct from the first synthesis, its necessary connection to the first synthesis is clear; the second synthesis provides for the possibility of the recognition of that which was originally cognized according to the first synthesis. According to the second synthesis, the successiveness of the time of inner intuition is made constant in order to generate the possibility of recognition, the re-identification of an object across time. This second synthesis is “linked inseparably” with its precedent, with the synthesis of apprehension, because the materium dabile that appears subsequently within inner intuition in an act of recognition must be given originally in the first synthesis of apprehension (A ). Equally, one can say with Kant that the first synthesis is “linked inseparably” with its derivative activity. This inseparable connection need not be understood only lexically, insofar as cognition is a precondition for recognition, but can be understood also with regard to the unity of experience that both syntheses together make possible, insofar as the coherence of experience is no less recollected than collected, no less reflected than experienced directly. The contravening claims Kant will make with regard to inner sense, which render his use of inner sense in this constructive context problematic, will be exposed below. Already, though, I would suggest that one can recognize the risk run by apologetic attempts at saving Kant’s doctrine of

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inner sense (by refusing to countenance Kant’s claims regarding its aspatiality and inconstancy) as reviewed in our Introduction. To deny this aspect of Kant’s Sinnenlehre, however problematic it may be, is to deny the basis for understanding, at the very least, the first-edition Deduction. Kant’s determination of the Grade of knowledge in the first-edition Deduction builds in this way from a synthesis of apprehension to a synthesis in imagination, and from this second synthesis to a third; the synthesis of recognition in or through concepts (A ). Though abandoned for a quite different proof-structure in the second-Edition, this first attempt at a deduction possesses an exemplary clarity in its exposition of the progressus within cognitive activity according to which synthetic judgment is possible. This first attempt at a deduction is at least as important as will be the second, for our purposes, for its illustration of the necessary and positive role of inner intuition therein. The role or function of inner intuition in the ordo cognoscendi is still further amplified in the third synthesis. In a preliminary note, Kant “prepares the reader” for a “complete insight” into the significance of his deduction. He does so by specifying its principle; “as modifications of the mind, all [presentations] belong to inner sense” (A ). The aspatiality of inner sense, as we’ve seen, provided the problem-context for the first synthesis, just as the inconstancy of inner sense provided the problemcontext for the second synthesis. Only upon the second synthesis can one say that a content may be “united in one presentation . . . intuited little by little, and then also reproduced” (A ).114 In this way, Kant begins his exposition of the third synthesis, we may build gradually toward “that unity that only consciousness can impart” to inner intuition as inclusive representation. Kant makes clear that, in the third synthesis, “we deal only with the manifold of our presentations.” In the third synthesis, we are concerned 114

Havet begins his analysis of the first-Edition Deduction (“extrêmement obscure”) by noting that “le propre de la Déduction subjective est d’être placée d’emblée sous le signe du temps: la question qui va présider à tous ses développements est la suivante: comment des représentations qui sont toujours données comme successives peuvent-elles constituer une connaissance?” Beginning from the pure successiveness of inner intuition, “elle s’appuie sur les caractères du temps pour démontrer la succession absolue des Erscheinungen” (). This requires an amplification of the ars characteristica; “il ne saurait y avoir d’appréhension simultanée. La simultanéité . . . requiert l’intervention de l’espace” and its conditions, which must be introduced into the “succession,” the “flux des représentations” of inner sense. However, for Havet, “nous sommes seulement assurés qu’un acte de synthèse est nécessaire” and not that it is possible, given Kant’s exposition of the character and capacity of inner intuition (ibid, ).

a first attempt at deduction

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only with “the formal unity of consciousness” that must obtain if we are to “bring about the synthetic unity of the manifold” or attain to synthetic cognition of an object (A ). As above, the conditions for the possibility of this accomplishment are of principal concern; the possibility of such cognition is proved already by its actuality, and we are to seek instead for the necessary conditions for such a possibility. Kant notes, as he had done in the exposition of the second synthesis, that “this [synthetic unity of the manifold] is impossible unless the [inner] intuition was able to be produced according to a rule through a function of synthesis” (A ).115 In other words, the synthetic application of concepts in an act of recognition is only possible if the formal character of our faculty of intuition allows for such a functional application. Only on this intuitive basis can (a) “a function of synthesis make the reproduction of the manifold necessary” and then (b) “make possible [the application of] a concept in which this manifold is united” (A ). In this way, in the third synthesis, we see consummated the cumulative effect, or at least effort, of the three syntheses taken together. Whereas unity replaced disunity in intuition in the first synthesis, and whereas continuity replaced discontinuity in the second synthesis, the third synthesis will contribute an intellectual consciousness (Begriff ) or conceptuality of that unity and continuity. Inner intuition will be omnimodo determinatio, amplified according to its one-dimensionality, its determinability, and its capacity to yield synthetic conditions. This unity, Kant continues, is nevertheless to be “limited to conditions that make possible the unity of apperception” (A –). Recalling perhaps the necessity that a deduction retain a critical as well as a constructive function, or ‘bound’

115 Guyer Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ) clarifies the problematic relation betwen this amplified account of inner intuition (as spatialized, constant, determinate) in the A-Deduction and the construal of inner intuition necessary for the Refutation of Idealism, which we will review below. Guyer recalls that “transcendental idealism was to refute skeptical idealism (see A –) by showing that appearances were ‘one and all’ representations only.” Guyer writes; “objects with spatial form had to be reduced to what are ontologically merely states of the self, in order to render them safe from doubt.” Further, Guyer continues, “all representations . . . are to be regarded as themselves enjoying only momentary rather than enduring existence . . .,” in order that “the empirical self [be] presented only by means of such transitory representations,” in order “that determinations about its temporal structure can be based only on determinations about their (objects) temporal relations,” so that, in turn, it “is not itself available as a permanent object of perception” (). It is not for our purposes necessary to resolve, but only to identify, this tension in Kant’s construals of inner intuition.

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as well as ‘open up’ a sphere of synthetic judgment, Kant specifies that “a concept can be a rule for intuitions” only under certain preconditions (ibid). Kant, however, does not identify that precondition with and in inner intuition, as he did in beginning his first-Edition Deduction. In the context of the third synthesis, he will define his precondition over against inner intuition. As could be expected, Kant will retain the thesis of our original passivity. Concepts can be a rule for intuition only “when appearances are given to us,” or upon the reception of sensible matter for cognition. Further, a concept can serve as a rule for cognition only toward the “necessary reproduction of the manifold [of appearances; second synthesis] and hence the synthetic unity in our consciousness of these appearances” in inner intuition (A ). But Kant is searching for “a transcendental basis for the unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of all our intuitions” (A ). The basis for a synthesis of all intuitions as such cannot be found in intuition, or even the form of intuition, itself. So while Kant retains the thesis of the passivity of our cognition, he will identify the transcendental basis for “all objects of experience” not in inner intuition, even as an Inbegriff, but in “transcendental apperception” (A ). Kant does not retract from inner intuition its status as an Inbegriff. His intent rather is to identify an intellectual principle in the third synthesis to complement and consummate the universal intuitive principle offered by time as form of inner sense in the first and second syntheses. Kant identifies transcendental apperception as that “without which it would be impossible to think any object for our intuitions” (A ).116 While 116 In Über die Divergenz, Ingeborg Heidemann recognizes the presence of two theses; (a) a “Parallelität von Raum und Zeit” and a (b) “Divergenz von Raum und Zeit” (–). She further recognizes the importance of this tension, both in Kant’s theoretical philosophy and “in der gesamten Kantinterpretation,” which is thereby forced into the “subtile Unterscheidungen” between a “phänomenologische Zeit, psychologische Zeit, gegenständliche Zeit,” etc. in order to account for Kant’s apparently problematic doctrine. But Heidemann quickly resolves this tension by abandoning the “Disjunktion” thesis, and on a narrow textual basis. Heidemann cites B , and the requirement that “‘Vorstellungen äußerer Sinne’ die den ‘eigentlichen Stoff ’ der inneren Anschauung ausmachen, mit denen wir ‘unser Gemüt besetzen’ ” (), and the requirement that inner intuition function as the “universal Form allen Vorstellens” and “die Form des Bewußtseins überhaupt” (). She then suggests each of these characterizations would be impossible if inner sense disallowed formally “die Erfüllung der Zeit mit Vorstellungen äußerer Gegebenheiten” (). Only “mit diesem Setzen in die Zeit, mit dem Bewußtwerden, werden die Vorstellungen äußerer Sinne nun erst zum eigentlichen Stoff der Erkenntnis, nun erst können sie verbunden werden” () Thus “Divergenz” must be resolved to “Parallelität” (). Once this “resultierende Parallelität” is endorsed, the positive capacity of inner intuition as an “Inbe-

a first attempt at deduction



transcendental apperception, in the context of this third synthesis, is purely intellectual, and concerns only the possibility for the recognition in a concept what had been previously apprehended and reproduced, Kant’s exposition of apperception and its relation to inner intuition is essential to our comprehension of both the nature and limits of cognition, and the nature and limits of inner intuition itself.117 Kant identifies this apperceptive principle as an “original condition” for the synthesis of recognition in a concept. He does so by juxtaposing this transcendental condition or formal principle to “inner perception,” taken as an empirical act or event. Inner perception is conceived as “consciousness of oneself in terms of the determinations of one’s state” (A ). But inner perception in inner sense, unlike time, taken as an Inbegriff, is “merely empirical and always changing.” In fact, in a reassertion of the inconstancy thesis, inner perception “gives us no constant or enduring (stehendes oder bleibendes) self in the flow of inner griff alles Inhaltseins” can be established. But the claim made at B is not unproblematic merely for being reasserted. Just as Heidemann treated only those passages in which Kant asserted the inclusiveness thesis, so one could treat only those passages in which Kant asserted the exclusiveness thesis. On that equally narrow basis, one could derive the precisely opposite thesis of a “Divergenz” with equal right. It is not the scholar’s vocation or task to elect one of these theses and dismiss the other, but to recognize the tension between the two theses and to identify the reasons for which such a tension arose (e.g., in the doubled ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ intentions of critical idealism). 117 For Deleuze (Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties [University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ]; translated from [La Philosophie Critique de Kant, PUF, ]), the task of the first Deduction is to answer the question of “how the given which is presented in experience is necessarily subject to the same principles as those which govern, a priori, our representations” and their transcendental unity. In other words, how can the empirical diversity of space and time obtain and be represented within a synthetic unity of consciousness? For Deleuze, “the principle of the necessary subjection of what is given in space and time” to this synthetic and apperceptive unity must be set out (). The central question of transcendental philosophy, then, is; how does this obtain? For Deleuze, this synthesis concerns “both apprehension and reproduction,” in a processus, since “consciousness [as] the belonging of representations to a single consciousness within which they must be linked” must contain within itself “a necessary relation to an object” (). Thus, “the problem is resolved in outline as follows: () all phenomena are in space and time; () the a priori synthesis of the imagination bears a priori on space and time themselves; () phenomena are therefore necessarily subject to the transcendental unity of this synthesis and to the categories which represent it a priori.” If each proposition is demonstrated, then the deduction will “constitute the laws to which all phenomena are subject from the point of view of their form, in order that they ‘form’ a sensible Nature in general” in spite of the heterogeneity of space and time (). However, and importantly, “we should not confuse synthesis and schema in the imagination.” For “schema presupposes synthesis,” and the capacity of inner sense to contain spatial form and content within it ().

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appearances” (A ). This inconstant “flow of apperances”—which “is usually called inner sense” is entitled “empirical apperception” and is juxtaposed to transcendental apperception. Importantly, the latter is defined not through ‘constancy’ as opposed to ‘inconstancy,’ but as ‘transcendental’ as opposed to ‘empirical.’ Kant requires here “a condition that is to validate a transcendental presupposition,” i.e., account for the universal necessity of the synthesis of recognition in a concept (A ). This condition must therefore “precede all experience” in order that it “make experience itself possible.” This condition must legislate the intellectual conditions that enforce the “unity of consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions.” This formal principle (and its status as precedent) is necessarily intellectual rather than intuitive—in spite of the lexical priority of inner intuition and the intended cumulative effect of the three syntheses—insofar as it is intended to make possible an intellectual rather than intuitive contribution to cognition. There is and can be no question of function violating form in this first Deduction (as Kant will make clear again at A ). Function instead is to complement form, as each is to contribute to the full constitution of experience, understood as synthetic cognition. Understanding cannot intuit, and sensibility cannot think. Only a synthesis of intuition can receive the materium dabile (and can only as a unity across the heterogeneity between outer sense and inner sense). Only a synthesis of the imagination can generate the constancy in inner intuition necessary to reproduction. And only the third synthesis of recognition can contribute the intellectual conditions by means of which concepts can be applied to or exhibited synthetically in intuition; “apperception lies a priori at the basis of all concepts, just as the manifoldness of space and time lies a priori at the basis of the intuitions of sensibility” (A –).118

118 Havet reconstructs the progress within the subjective deduction as follows. Kant begins on the hypothesis that “toute appréhension est successive,” which implies that the mind must “reproduire, afin de les mettre en rapport,” its objects, in order that they be “données comme successives dans la synthèse de l’appréhension, acquérir une sorte de coexistence qui définit la conscience, par opposition à l’univers objectif, où toute coexistence est simultanéité.” Thus the first deduction attempts an amplification of time, on the basis of the heterogeneity and pure successiveness theses; “la synthèse reproductive—c’est par lui que l’esprit confèrera aux données matérielles leur caractère de régularité et d’associabilité” (). The synthesis of recognition in a concept builds upon this novel determinability and determinacy of inner intuition; “la recognition n’est qutre que la conscience de l’unité du moi dans ses fonctions synthétiques” in order to “constituer en terme identique de cette

a first attempt at deduction



The principle of apperception replies to the exigence by which “this unity of consciousness would be impossible” if the mind, in its cognition of the manifold of intuition, “could not become conscious of the identity of function.” By means of this function, the intellect determines the manifold to unity by means of a concept (A ).119 By means of this function, the activity of the intellect “synthetically combines the manifold in one cognition.” Only, it appears, upon the transcendental (secondorder) determination of this (first-order) act of conceptual formation and determination can the claim to its deduction to its secured. This final requirement concerns less the intellectual determination of the manifold of intuition, as was the case in the second synthesis, than in an intellectual self-determination. The intellect does not here conceptualize the manifold of intuition, but rather conceptualizes itself; it is to an ‘identity of [intellectual] function,’ its own, rather than to ‘[an intuitive] form’ that it is directed. Kant clarifies this point in the penultimate paragraph of the third synthesis. The principle of apperception indicates that intellectual function by which the mind “thinks its own identity” by “having present to it the identity of its act.” This act, or activity, is that by which it “subjects all synthesis of apprehension . . . to a transcendental unity” according to a priori laws (A ). Apperception, then, responds not to the first requirement of the deduction—to bring independence in intuition to interdependence. Nor does it respond to the second requirement of the deduction— to bring inconstancy to constancy in the succession of inner intuition.

serie,” first rendered congruent, then constant, and then conscious. As Havet concludes “il apparaît déjà que sa temporalité n’est point celle dont les caractères ont été étudiés . . . dans l’Esthétique . . . ” () 119 The first aspect of the aporia consists in the former assumption of the determinability of inner sense. The second aspect of the aporia consists in the latter condition of the problematic transitus, functionally prior to all synthetic activity of the understanding. A third condition consists in the requirement that (c) the “consciousness of this synthesis” or the “identity of function” by which such synthesis is accomplished, must obtain. Only if the grounds for the apprehension of such a synthetic principle can be demonstrated can this principle of self-consciousness itself be legitimately adduced and assigned a place within the transcendental topic of the cognitive faculty. This unity of and in consciousness “would be impossible if the mind, in cognizing the manifold, could not become conscious of the identity of function whereby it synthetically combines the manifold in one cognition” (A ). This (second-order, transcendental) consciousness must necessarily both conform to and obtain within the indeterminate manifold of inner intuition. Not only does the original synthesis of the manifold of intuition remain to be accomplished, but so too does the possibility that this synthesis be apprehended as synthesized, as representative of a unity.

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Transcendental apperception responds to the need to both conceptualize this intuitive and hence synthetic manifold, and to the need to conceptualize itself, to capture conceptually the character and effectivity of its own activity.120 Nor, apparently, could we claim our right to advance, transcendentally, the principle of apperception, as required in the context of the third synthesis, if the mind could not “think its own identity” or become conscious of the “identity of its act.” By this clear consciousness alone are we justified—according to the Preface—in claiming a deduction of the conditions for the possibility of experience. This second application of the apperceptive principle, announced in the third synthesis—a self-application in the sense of a self-consciousness or consciousness of consciousness—is advanced apparently in order that Kant avoid “evading reason’s questions” regarding its first principles “by pleading the incapacity of human reason” (A xii). Only in this “identity of function,” it seems, can the Gliederbau that is the nature of our cognition, be secured.121

120

Guyer helpfully distinguishes (ibid, –, with reference to the Herz letters) “between the conditions for the mere occurrence of a multiplicity of representations” as obtain in an unsynthesized manifold of inner sense and “the conditions for recognizing that one has such data” which cannot obtain in the unsynthesized manifold of inner sense. Guyer intimates that the conditions necessary for the critical argument contravene the conditions necessary for the constructive argument, necessary to the “knowledge of myself (as object of inner sense)” on p. . According to Kant’s argument, then, “if the mind did not have present to it the identity of its act” by which the ‘empirical synthesis of apprehension’ is subjected to a transcendental unity, then the “mind could not possibly think its own identity in the manifoldness of its presentations” (A ). Further, as we will see, only “because I combine a manifold of given presentations in one consciousness” is it “possible for me to present the identity of the consciousness in these presentations” (B ). These conditions must each be met if the claim to a formal and functional unity in cognition is to be legitimated. Kant will soon claim that “this synthetic unity of the manifold of appearances according to rules . . . cannot occur outside us, but can exist only in our sensibility” (A ). Such synthetic unity “in our sensibility,” would have to be exhibited, toward its inclusion within a transcendental topic, in or in accordance with inner intuition, and so according to its indeterminacy. Any claim to the synthesis of this manifold, then, can apparently be deduced in second-order transcendental self-cognition only problematically; the claim to its effectivity assumes the (exhibition of its) proof. Such a synthetic act apparently assumes what is to be accomplished. 121 Kant’s indication of the (objectifying) structure of intellectual activity, by which the mind can grasp itself in its own activity, is cursory. The formal structure of the mind’s intellectual consciousness, which takes an object only by losing itself as the basis for such a “consciousness of,” or taking of an object, is no doubt more complex and difficult than Kant here recognizes. But the problem of the self-alienation of intellectual consciousness (the systematic elusiveness of the ground of cognition that is visible only in its result, or product) is of less immediate concern to our analysis than is Kant’s depiction of

a first attempt at deduction



In §  (A –) and on the basis of this exposition of the cumulative effect of the three syntheses, Kant is now prepared to “put forth systematically” the elements just enumerated. Kant begins by repeating the triune conception of the sources of cognition—in spite of having relied upon a “two source” thesis in the Transcendental Aesthetic and Transcendental Logic, and in spite of having named apperception as the single Radikalvermögen at A . These “three subjective sources” are identified again as sense, imagination, and apperception. Each, Kant repeats, though transcendental and a priori as elements of the cognitive faculty, “can be considered as empirical in their application to given appearances” (A ). In their application to sensible objects, once given, such principles allow the faculty of cognition (first) to “present apperances empirically in perception,” (second) to “represent those appearances in association,” and (third) to “recognize those appearances in an empirical consciousness” respectively. Again, Kant repeats that a principle obtains for the inclusion of this series of cognitive accomplishments; “all perception is based, a priori, on pure intuition, on time the form of inner intuition” (A ). Inner intuition again appears as an Inbegriff. Kant places inner intuition as the synthetic or intuitive basis underlying this series of synthetic moments or functions. (Its function in Kant’s argument is overdetermined, of course; for the first and second synthesis rely upon a constual of inner sense as aspatial and inconstant, in order then to resolve such incapacity to a capacity.) In the ordo cognoscendi, as has been anticipated, “all cognitions are nothing for us and are of no concern to us whatever if they cannot be taken up into consciousness” (A ). Inner intuition provides the principle for intuitive unity that apperception provides toward an intellectual determination of that intuitive unity, and hence a synthetic unity in our cognition. But the intuitive unity that this principle gains from inner intuition as an Inbegriff yields only the sensible conditions for a synthetic unity of our cognition; “if we wish to pursue the inner basis of this connection of presentations” through to its intellectual element, we will have to complement the resolution in the first two syntheses with that announced in the third synthesis. In addition to intuitive conditions, intellectual conditions must be secured; “solely through consciousness is cognition possible” (A ). For such the role of inner intuition is the constitution of transcendental apperception, and can be deferred without cost to those subsequent contexts (in the development of Classical German Idealism) in which its engagement is more fruitful.



chapter two

“[intuitive] presentations present something in me only inasmuch as together, with all others, they belong to one consciousness” (A ) or are united by means of a concept in recognition. This third principle Kant will understand as “the transcendental principle of the unity of whatever is manifold in our presentations (and hence also in intuition)” (A – ). This inclusive unity, which obtains within inner intuition or “in a subject” is “synthetic.” It is thus “pure apperception [which] provides us with a principle of the synthetic unity of the manifold in all possible intuition.” This synthetic relation with intuition not only incorporates inner intuition but does so paradigmatically (A ). In fact, at A , Kant will claim that this principle of apperceptive unity is itself “pure understanding,” which effects its activity by means of “the categories, i.e., the pure concepts of understanding” (see also A ). In this way, inner intuition as an Inbegriff yields the conditions that allow it to submit to categorial determination, and thus a unity of and in its sphere, cognition itself. In the first-Edition Deduction, Kant both relies upon and builds upon the amplified construal of time in the Aesthetic.122 The synthetic unity of consciousness that results from Kant’s first attempt at a Deduction, though, a unity of and in inner intuition, is in uncertain relation, if not contradiction, with the restrictive construal of time as form of inner 122

Rademaker (Kants Lehre vom innern Sinn in der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ (KantStudien )), recognizes both the “Dichotomie der Sinnlichkeit,” i.e., the aspatiality of time, and the status of inner sense as the “Höhepunkt” of the architectonic of cognition insofar as Inbegriff. In this latter acceptation, “Die Urteile sind innere Bestimmungen und bestimmen die Form des inneren Sinnes . . . Die inneren Bestimmungen bestimmen also durch die Zeit die gesamte Anschauung,” i.e., “auch den Raum . . . ” (). This forces an analysis of the “formale Charakter des inneren Sinnes,” and the question “Wie es empirische Bestimmungen des inneren Sinnes gibt?” The question concerns no less than “die Möglichkeit der transzendentalen Einheit der Apperzeption,” insofar as synthetic (). Rademaker resolves the tension with which he started, between exclusion and inclusion, into two forms of inclusion. For Rademaker, “Der innere Sinn vermittelt die Anwendung der Kategorien auf die Gegenstände der Erfahrung, er ist das ‘Medium aller synthetischen Urteile,’ und ist somit eine Bedingung der Möglichkeit der Erfahrung von elementarer Bedeutung.” However, “der innere Sinn in der Kritik eine doppelte Betrachtung zulässt.” This “double vision” does not incorporate Kant’s negative intention, however, but only two versions of the positive intention. Inner sense will thus be identified in two positive roles, “als das Medium der Selbsterkenntnis,” and “als das Medium aller synthetischen Urteile oder als Bedingung der Möglichkeit der Erfahrung überhaupt” (). Rademaker resolves heterogeneity into a formal coordination (between inner and outer sense) and a functional subordination (of outer sense to inner sense) as the precondition for Kant’s assertion that “die Realität der äusseren Sinnes mit der des inneren, zur Möglichkeit einer Erfahrung überhaupt, notwendig verbunden” (). For the Erkenntnisprozess, see  ff.

a first attempt at deduction



sense that Kant had intimated in the Aesthetic and will advance again in the Dialectic. Already, however, we can see in Kant’s determination of the nature and limits of cognition both () the centrality of time as form of inner sense, and () the tension that resides within it, as both an inconstant, aspatial manifold, indeterminate in order that Seelenlehre be negated, and as spatial, constant, and an Inbegriff, in order that unity of and in consciousness be synthetic. This tension, it would seem, is intrinsic to the first-Edition Deduction. In it, Kant has proceded “from the bottom upward” by means of a demonstrative, synthetic method (A ). He has deduced rather than merely demanded the intuitive and intellective conditions according to which alone a synthetic unity in our cognition is possible. The order of cognition definitive of experience provided also the order of Kant’s proof. Kant began “from the empirical,” with “what is first given to us,” i.e., appearance, in order to trace the manner in which this original passivity is transformed into judgments of experience. This “appearance is combined with consciousness” not by declaration but by means of a complex and cumulative process. It is the ascending process of this Deduction that affords its claim to follow a synthetic method to a synthetic result. Kant then reviewed the manner in which “different perceptions, encountered in the mind sporadically and individually” are “given a combination that in sense alone they cannot have” (A ). This allowed Kant to isolate “an active power to synthesize this manifoldness, in us.” This power was first determined as imagination, by which apprehension and reproduction are first made possible. The imagination was “to bring the manifold of intuition to an image,” which required that it “must beforehand take the impressions up into its activity.” This required that heterogeneity across the forms of intuition yield to homogeneity or interdeterminacy, and that the inconstancy of inner intuition in particular yield instead a constancy or coherence. Only then was a complementary, but purely intellectual, principle of apperception adduced in order that a “constant and enduring I” of apperception underlie the intellectual application of categories in the way that time provided the basis in intuition and hence experience for this synthetic unity of cognition. In this way, “all consciousness belongs to an all-encompassing pure apperception just as all sensible intuition belongs . . . to a pure inner intuition, to time” (A ).123 123 Dietmar Heidemann, in his “Innerer und äußerer Sinn,” identifies this “zentral” character of “Die epistemologische Funktion von innerem und äußerem Sinn” ()



chapter two

Again, there is no question of function violating form, but rather of form (intuition) and function (intellection) obtaining and functioning together in the unity of cognition. In this way, “pure understanding, through the categories, is the law of the synthetic unity of all appearances” (A ). The categories are able to serve toward the lawfulness of our experience because, and only because, inner intuition serves as an Inbegriff —not inconstant and aspatial, excluded from this unity of synthetic principles, but ingredient within them and to them. We will see that this categorial determination of inner sense is problematic, precisely because Kant’s depiction of the character and capacities of inner sense is problematic.124

However, Heidemann wishes only to identify the positive “Rolle des inneren und äußeren Sinnes in der Kantischen Theorie der Konstitution empirischen Selbstbewusstseins,” and thus identifies the relation between “inneren und äußeren Sinn als quasi gleichberechtigte Vorstellungsvermögen einander beiordnet” (). The “Kohärenz von innerem und äußerem Sinn,” given their epistemological function, requires such an “Interdependenz” thesis (see also ). Following Reininger and Mohr, Heidemann lays claim to the “Universalität des inneren Sinnes,” ( note ) in order to secure the right to claim a “Koordination” between, and a “Subordination” of, inner and outer sense. Like Reininger, Heidemann reasons on a narrow textual basis, and simply advances Kant’s amplificative depictions of inner intuition as if their assertion were sufficient for their justification; “von den Gegenständen des äußeren Sinnes haben wir ‘den ganzen Stoff zu Erkenntnissen selbst für unseren inneren Sinn (B xxxix Anm.)’ ”. Heidemann also suggests (always and only from the amendments to the second-Edition of the first Critique) that “Nach Kant ‘ist der Realität des äußeren Sinnes mit der des inneren, zur Möglichkeit einer Erfahrung überhaupt, notwendig verbunden (B xli Anm.)’.” Heidemann does not inquire into possible conflicts between this amplified acceptation of inner intuition and the restrictive exposition Kant gave at, e.g., A . 124 According to Havet, the “trois synthèses nous exposent le travail, l’acte originaire par lequel, mis en présence des données empiriques, il les unifie en une connaissance et constitue ainsi véritablement l’expérience,” by attributing the characters of constancy and determinability to inner intuition (). Whether this attribution can be rendered congruent to the demand for inconstancy and indeterminability remains in question. Havet worries that on the heterogeneity thesis, or “soumettre à un temps dont on a dans l’Esthétique exhibé les caractères a priori,” Kant “ne nous offre donc aucun véritable solution,” since the amplification of the Analytic advances “une simple constatation” that “le caractére toujours successif ” of time can be made determinate both with respect to the ars characteristica of the Aesthetic and the Restriktionslehre of the Dialectic (). In the latter, “il ne saurait y avoir le moindre parallélisme entre les représentations du sens externe et celles du sens interne: en effet le sens interne n’a pas d’objet, pas de contenu propre.” This “contradiction flagrante” with the demands of the first-Edition Deduction leads for Havet to the new difficulty of the merely analytic status of the resultant principle of apperception (ibid, ). Havet sees this tension manifest in these simultaneous positive and negative construals of the form of inner sense and as contextual for “les précisions de ” and the second-Edition Deduction.

a second attempt at deduction



Just as Kant has required the spatialization of time as form of inner sense toward the possibility of experience, so he will require for competing theoretical intentions the necessary and in principle impossibility of such a spatialization of inner sense. We have seen already the basis for this impending argumentation in the Aesthetic; “while space is the pure form for all outer appearances, it is also limited,” a priori and according to form “to only outer appearances” (A , B ). Kant will rely upon a construal of inner sense according to which the resolution within inner sense of inconstancy to constancy is impossible; as we will see, “all change, in order even to be itself perceived as change, presupposes something permanent in intuition, but in inner sense no permanent intuition is to be met with” (B ). And as Kant would need to deny both this interdependence in the forms of intuition and this constancy within inner intuition to the Seelenlehrer, so too will Kant need to deny to inner intuition the status of an inclusive representation for the sake of experience; for within experience, he will assert that “I never arrive at a systematic unity of all appearances of inner sense” (A , B ). The proof-structure of the second-Edition Deduction, we will now see, evades this tension—one could almost say, antinomy—in the status of inner intuition by beginning not with intuition and its empirical conditions, “from the bottom up,” in order to deduce the conditions in intuition that would allow for a synthetic unity in cognition, but rather from the principle of apperception itself. Methodologically, this leaves in doubt the claim that deduction must “ascend from singular perceptions to universal concepts” (A ), in accordance with a synthetic method, as Kant did in his first attempt at deduction (see note  above). But we will see that, whereas the first Deduction is revealing or important for our concern for what it asserted of inner sense, Kant’s second attempt at deduction is as important for what it does not say, or attempts to avoid asserting, regarding inner intuition.125 125 In v.  of La Déduction Transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant, De Vleeschauwer explores Kant’s second-edition revisions to inner intuition similarly, and finds “Kant, déjà originairement insatisfait” by the character of and response to the doctrine of time, which was “trop étendue pour être parfaitement claire et convaincante, n’eut que trop d’occasions pour pousuivre inlassablement l’amélioration des parties consacrées au moi.” Kant “a travaillé sans répit à la réorganisation de sa doctrine, qui constitue une des révélations essentielles de la seconde édition” (v. II, –). De Vleeschauwer will even admit that “lorsque nous voulons dire uniquement que les idées kantiennes ne se sont constituées en doctrine systématique que lors de la révision de la Critique, nous exprimons fidèlement une situation de fait. Le sens interne suivait, en , avec une assurance tranquille, l’aventure critique du sens externe; il ne répresentait aucun problème spècial,



chapter two III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta)

ii. Self-consciousness and Self-cognition b. A Second Attempt at Deduction Kant initiates his second-Edition Deduction (in § ), as he did in , by asserting that “presentations given in an intuition” indicate “nothing but receptivity.” Intuitive presentations indicate “nothing but the manner of the subject’s affection.” The coniuncto of the elements revealed through our passivity can be synthetically combined “never through the senses, nor as contained in the pure form of sensible intuition,” but only through the spontaneity of the understanding (B –). Already in the first-edition, Kant had formulated the point clearly; “sensibility gives us forms (of intuition),” through which we are receptive, “while understanding gives us rules” or functions, through which we may actively synthesize their manifoldness (A ). In the second-Edition deduction, Kant retains this thesis of the priority of intuition; “presentation given prior to all thought is called intuition” (B ). The “combination” or coniuncto of this immediate given matter of intuition “is an act of spontaneity,” achieved by the “power of representation.” The provenance of this act “must be named as the understanding,” Kant clarifies, “in order that it be distinguished from sensibility” (B ). The () possibility of this coniunctio, for its assumption or presumption of a “transposition” of a spatial object through a purely temporal manifold, has already been shown to be problematic. As Kant recognizes, “a category already presupposes combination,” precisely because the application of the categories presupposes the integrity of the ordo cognoscendi and the applicability of the categories (B ).126 Transcendentally, “the concept et cela nous explique le caractère purement occasionnel de toutes les apparitions du sens interne à la surface des discussions. C’est l’accueil du public qui a révélé le vrai problème qu’il recouvre et c’est la nouvelle déduction qui est le centre autour duquel se polarise l’élaboration de la doctrine du sens interne, appelée à répondre aux objections.” For De Vleeschauwer, “le problème fondamental” and “toute la difficulté, consiste à comprendre comment le sujet peut être affecté par lui-même” as object of inner sense (). 126 It is precisely because “a category already presupposes combination” that Kant warns that “we must therefore search for this unity still further up,” presumably ‘higher’ than the intuition-imagination-intellection schema of the first deduction (B ). But of course “higher up” means still further removed, or estranged, from intuition and its conditions, which calls into question the bearing or relevance of this second-Edition to the laws of intuition as conditions for the possibility of experience. The identification

a second attempt at deduction



of combination carries with it, besides the concept of the manifold and of its synthesis, also the [requirement of the] manifold’s unity” (B ). Only a unity within intuition (and a constancy in the form thereof) allows for the applicability of the pure concepts. This formal possibility, () the status of such an intellective rather than intuitive synthesis (its sufficiency for genuinely synthetic cognition), and its () scope, as inclusive or exclusive of inner intuition, will now be treated in an exegesis of the secondEdition Deduction. This combinatory spontaneity of the understanding, Kant continues, “I call pure apperception” and also “original apperception,” in order that it be distinguished from “empirical apperception,” or inner sense. In apperceptive self-consciousness, “the presentation ‘I think’ is produced.” This apperceptive presentation “must be capable of accompanying all other presentations.” With regard to their successiveness it will remain “one and the same throughout all consciousness” (B ). As such, it cannot be subject to time, or the experience of succession, and “cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility” (B ). But the apperceptive principle, as announced in the “I think,” is not differentiated from empirical apperception, or inner sense, only through its perdurance. The former, unlike the latter, is also said to contain “nothing manifold” or intuitive. This non-manifoldness, or non-intuitive simplicity, will allow Kant, apparently, to avoid the amplified account of inner intuition advanced in the first-Edition Deduction. Kant apparently will be able to resolve inner intuition to inconstancy and indeterminacy, and thus will be able to deny to Seelenlehre the conditions necessary for a synthetic apprehension of ‘the object of inner sense,’ the soul as substance. But this non-manifoldness would also, apparently, restrict the principle of apperception to a non-intuitive and thus logical and formal status.127 and examination of the doctrine of the pure intuitions undertaken here does not consist merely in an external critique of this claim quid facti. Clearly, if experience, defined as objective cognition, is to be possible, then such diversity must be subsumed under a unity in which () the temporal and spatial properties of an object may appear together omnimodo determinatio, and () the possibility of experience be determined quid juris in accordance therewith. This essay attempts only to articulate the manner of Kant’s formalization of this requirement, in order to assess its internal coherence and thereby assign its own possibility. Not the necessity of this synthesis, but only its formal possibility given Kant’s achieved topic, is subjected to critique. 127 For Nabert (“L’expérience interne chez Kant,” in Revue de metaphysique et de morale , , pp. –), too, analytic unity can be extended to synthetic unity only if inner intuition is incorporated; “le problème revient . . . à savoir quelles sont les conditions de la connaissance de nous-mêmes comme objet.” Nabert realizes that “la conscience de notre



chapter two

The “I think,” according to this second attempt at deduction, as the supreme principle for all use of the understanding, indicates a principle, distinct, or estranged, from intuition. By or through it, that which is manifold in intuition is to be resolved to unity in pure apperception. It itself, however, qua principle, obtains as a non-manifold, non-intuitive “identical self,” universal and formal rather than individuated in and through intuition.128 Intuition must be heterogenous to, or distinct from, this presentation; “only in intuition, which is distinct from the presentation of the I, can a manifold be given” (B ). This clarity is won, however, only by means of a construal of inner intuition not as a synthetic Inbegriff, but as “intrinsically (an sich) sporadic and without any reference to the subject’s identity” (B ). The apperceptive principle declares, according to Kant’s exposition, that “everything manifold in [this sporadic, inconstant] intuition has a necessary reference” to the apperceptive principle. The former, for this reason, “must be distinguished from the latter,” and its “subjective unity of consciousness.” This subjective unity is “a determination of inner sense.” Again, whereas the “transcendental unity of self-consciousness” is both identical in the sense of non-manifold, it is also identical in the sense of self-same across time, or “one and the same in all consciousness.” existence dans le temps est identique à la conscience du changement de nos représentations . . . soumises à la forme du sens interne.” Thus, “il faut chercher l’élément permanent par rapport auquel la succession de nos états internes peut être connue ou déterminé. However, “en nous-mêmes, nous ne trouvons rien de permanent, sauf la représentation intellectelle ‘Je’ qui ne contient pas le moindre prédicat d’intuition pouvant en qualité de permanent servir de corrélatif à la détermination du temps dans le sens interne,” which jeopardizes any claim to a synthetic unity among our representations (; see also  note). Kant’s own worries about the possibility of an inner experience are no less revealing. See for example R : “the difficulty [with regard to inner experience] concerns only how the subject could itself institute experience. It must not merely perceive sensations in itself, but rather excite [erregen] and connect them synthetically, consequently affecting itself ” (Ak, , –). We will return to such later () Reflexionen below; it is sufficient at present to indicate the thematic context in which Kant’s later revisions obtain. 128 For an important and thorough discussion of this issue of indeterminate (and determinate) self-consciousness, both empirical and transcendental, see Becker, Selbstbewusstsein und Erfahrung [Freiburg, Verlag Karl Alber, ] p.  ff.). Guyer (ibid, p.  ff.) notes Kant’s recognition of this intellectual self-consciousness—intuitive self-cognition distinction in the Reflexionen (e.g., R , Ak , ). Guyer investigates the derivative distinction between the universal “transcendental consciousness of the self ” and the individuated “empirical consciousness of myself.” Thus, Kant will also distinguish at R  “() the transcendental consciousness of my existence in general, () my existence in time, thus only in relation to me own representations insofar as I determine myself through them, and () the knowledge of myself as a being determined in time. This is empirical knowledge.”

a second attempt at deduction



And again, on both predicates or characteristics Kant issues grounds for distinction rather than unity; inner intuition is “intrinsically sporadic” or inconstant, and is “without any reference to the subject’s identity” (B ).129 In this latter, subjective unity, only the conditions of synthesis, obtain. Rather than function, and obtain, as an inclusive representation, inner intuition in the second-Edition offers only “the manifold of intuition for such combination (Verbindung) as given empirically.” In the former, transcendental unity, this Verbindung is not only to be declared necessary but to be demonstrated to be both possible, and actual, and not only as a logical possibility but as a real possibility.130 Inner intuition is now defined over against the inclusive representation that is apperception in each of its characteristics; passive, empirical, sensible, manifold, inconstant. Kant recognizes that the synthetic status of apperception cannot be gained by means of a declaration or demand, but only by means of 129

If one is inclined still to deny or bracket Kant’s assertion of this restrictive onedimensional succession, Guyer also cites Kant’s hand-written notes to his own copy of the first edition (R LXXXIII [Ak , ]) at ibid, ; “the perception of duration is not possible through the perception of determinations succeeding one another and of the relation of their series to time, also not through the relation to the determination of another series, wherein the first occupies a region of time [Zeitraum]; rather [it is possible] through something the existence of which is not a series of successions, but which includes this in itself as its determinations; consequently [it is possible] per durabilitatem of substance. This proof, like all synthetic proofs, is proved only from the possibility of perception. Where the perception cannot be perceived apart from its alterations, it holds, but where I cannot perceive it except through these alterations themselves, it does not hold. I can estimate its duration and in general the time of its alteration only through outer things, as I, since I think, think my own existence; my permanence is not proved thereby.” We will return to this theme both in our treatment of the Refutation of Idealism, and in our exegesis of the Vom Inneren Sinne Fragment, below. 130 Kant exposes clearly the necessity of this original apperceptive synthesis; Kant’s intention to establish this synthesis as both formally possible and functionally actual is no less clear. The problem-context for this claim in the heterogeneity thesis is equally patent; “the synthetic unity of the manifold of intuitions, as given a priori, is the basis of the identity itself of apperception” (B ). The means to this claim of unity, however, assumes the possibility of the transitus of the extended object of outer sense through the manifold of inner sense definitive of the objective synthesis. As Kant had put the point in the Aesthetic, “it is by means of [inner] intuition that we encompass within our power of presentation all outer intuition” (A , B ). Guyer contrasts the “analytic unity of consciousness” which “belongs to all general concepts as such,” intellectually, to the “synthetic unity of consciousness” which includes and requires a determinate (inner) intuition, individuated in each case, in “Placing Myself in Time: Kant’s Third Paralogism,” Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (Ed. Gerhard Funke; Berlin, de Gruyter, ), p. .



chapter two

a deduction. Kant recognizes that such a deduction must incorporate rather than exclude or ignore the intuitive conditions by means of which a formal (analytic) principle may yet yield experience. As Kant puts the point here; “analytic unity of apperception is possible only under the presupposition of some synthetic unity of apperception” (B ). This apperceptive principle must not be part of the “common program,” of course, must not in other words obtain as a theological principle, above ourselves and undemonstrable, but must be situated “in the same subject in whom this manifold is found” and thus, at least according to the first edition, within the sphere of inner intuition (B , italics mine). But if apperception obtains (problematically) within the sphere of inner intuition, apperception is (unproblematically) neither intuitive nor imaginative. In the novel proof-structure of the second-Edition Deduction, inner sense appears to possess a certain atopicality, a variant role and status. Kant defines “the transcendental unity of apperception” as “the unity whereby everything manifold given in an intuition” is to be “united in a concept of the object” (B ).131 However, Kant specified the manner in which such an intuitive manifold could progressively be united in a concept throughout the first-Edition Deduction. He has yet to begin such a specification here. Kant employs instead a language of demand rather than proof, as he was able to use in the first deduction. Kant asserts that the unity of apperception “must be capable of accompanying all of my representations.” We read that such manifold presentations “must conform necessarily to the condition under which they could stand together in one universal self-consciousness” (B ; italics added). Again at B , Kant will repeat that this unity of and in consciousness, “must be thought in [or as a] synthetic unity (even if only a possible

131

This analytic self-consciousness—synthetic self-cognition distinction, and the possible inclusion of inner intuition within the unity of apperception, Sturma terms the “Bestimmungsproblematik” (ibid, ). Sturma also returns in this context to Kant’s own assertion (Deduction § ) that “Ich der transzendentalen Synthesis des Mannigfaltigen der Vorstellungen mir bewußt bin, daß ich bin, was ein Denken und nicht ein Anschauen ist” (). On p. , Sturma will insist, on the basis of the critical argumentation of the Aesthetic and the heterogeneity thesis, that “Das ‘cogito-Argument’ ist in seiner erkenntniskritischen Version nichts anders als die Formel der Regel der Identität,” analytic rather than genuinely synthetic. Similarly, T.K. Swing argued against Kant’s alleged transformation of a set of “formal” to “material” principles, constitutive and intuitive rather than merely regulative and intellectual in Kant’s Transcendental Logic (New Haven, Yale University Press, ),  ff.

a second attempt at deduction

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one).”132 Presently, then, Kant has secured a possible unity, by means of a necessarily formal principle, but has not secured an actual unity, by means of a descent into—or better, ascent from—the laws of intuition.133 Further, he has done so only with the rhetoric of a demand rather than the language of deduction and proof. Indeed, Kant appears to admit at B  that this deduction cannot yet claim any “consciousness of the synthesis of presentations” since “it still presupposes that synthesis.”

132 The analytic unity of apperception, then, concerns not objectual cognition in its empirical employment and dynamic use, but only the reflective consciousness of a concept as such; “the analytic unity of consciousness attaches to all concepts that are, and inasmuch as they are, common.” By this Kant intends “that, for example, in thinking red as such, I present a predicate that can be found (as a characteristic) in one or another [red] object” (B , note). But such an exhibition of characteristics and comparison of individual objects must presumably utilize the manifold for the construction and exhibition of concepts—inner intuition. Further, we know that only upon the imposition of an objective and synthetic unity may determinability within the manifold of inner intuition be accomplished. Only “when we have brought about synthetic unity in the manifold of intuition,” Kant began A , may we claim that “we thereby cognize the object.” Without that “unity of consciousness in the synthesis of the manifold of all our intuitions,” it “would be impossible to think any object for our intuitions” (A ). The conditions whereby the characters of, e.g., red objects, may be determinable and determined for an analytic unity within consciousness (or a subjective synthesis) must be introduced through an synthetic (and objective) synthesis. This dependence of analytic unity upon synthetic unity obtains whether this concept is then to be reproduced, recognized, constructed, or exhibited. Only therein may concepts appear as such and be exhibited to the understanding. Only then can a conceptus communis, possessed of the characters of both inner intuition and outer intuition (the mutual co-presence of which alone can yield determinate, objective cognition of a spatio-temporal object) be accomplished. But while all cognition must begin from intuition, the dynamics of a merely mathematical construction of concepts that begins from inner intuition is distinct in determinate respects from cognition that begins from outer intuition and proposes, e.g., an objective, empirical use of the understanding. 133 Similarly, Guyer (ibid) does “not mean to deny that Kant offers such a [synthetic] notion of transcendental synthesis; indeed, such a notion is required by his ultimate theory of time-determination” and inner intuition a priori. However, Guyer continues, “it is crucial to see that in his exposition of the transcendental deduction he derives the existence of a priori rules for self-consciousness from an independent guarantee that all of one’s representations can be combined in the representation of a single self regardless of their empirical content.” However, “the very existence and validity of such rules is itself derived from the postulation of an a priori, “transcendental” synthesis of all of the self ’s representations” as subsumed to the inconstant flux of inner sense (). Inner sense cannot submit to synthetic unity for reasons that will become clear only in the Dialectic. Guyer states that “if this were interpreted as a merely analytical proposition, as Kant indeed suggests . . . then it would merely express a conditional necessity that if self-consciousness is to occur, then there had better be some connection discerned or created among the several representations. It would not imply . . . that there must be any synthesis . . . that can be performed on any given mental states” ().



chapter two

Of course, it remains true that, “should such synthetic unity not obtain, I would have a self as many-colored and varied as I have presentations of which I am consciousness.” But the statement of this problem-context for the deduction does not itself satisfy the requirements of the deduction. Importantly, Kant admits that “it is true that this principle of the necessary unity of apperception is merely identical and hence an analytic proposition.” Kant also recognizes that pure apperception qua principle merely “declares as necessary a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition” (B ).134 This declaration of the purportedly synthetic status of apperception merely demands rather than deduces its conclusion, precisely because in the second-Edition Kant has—thus far—evaded securing the intuitive (and, precisely, inner intuitive) conditions by means of which apperception could become synthetic. This synthesis, if formally possible by means of apperception, could only be actual—temporal, experiential—by means of intuition and according to its a priori laws. Only, then, if (a) the formal structure of inner intuition will admit of the determinability required for subjective synthetic cognition, in spite of its pure temporality, can logical possibility be transformed into real possibility. As Kant had put this in the first-edition exposition, all synthetic functions of the understanding “presuppose necessarily that appearances,” contained in the inner intuitive manifold, “can be so reproduced” in accordance with the demand for synthetic cognition (both as determinately spatial objects of inner sense and in a constant series). A second condition consists in the requirement that (b) the object of outer intuition can, functionally, be “brought to” the understanding dynamically through inner sense to the understanding, in spite of the aspatiality of inner sense. Only after this transitus, through the a priori manifold of inner intuition, can the question of the objectivity of the categories be introduced, the possibility of a unity of consciousness assessed, and its basis and status articulated. In the assignment of each of its principal positive characters, then, apperceptive self-consciousness is defined negatively, over against the empirical self-consciousness of and in inner sense.135 In this way, the 134 This apparent extension of an analytic principle to a synthetic status or claim is universally recognized to be problematic. See, e.g., Strawson, Bounds of Sense, –; Henrich, Identität –, Guyer, Claims, –. Benoist treats of this extension from an analytic to a synthetic unity of apperception in the context of, and with reference to the role of, inner sense in Kant et les Limites de la Synthèse: Le sujet sensible, pp. –. 135 According to Havet, the proof-structure of the second deduction, which abjured the way of intuition, can result only in the “introduction d’une synthèse purement intellectuelle”

a second attempt at deduction



heterogeneity thesis continues to provide a clue for Kant’s development of the deductions, as it will provide a context for Kant’s development of the Dialectic. This contrast is continued in Kant’s subsequent exposition. As in the first Deduction, this synthetic coniuncto of B  “cannot by any means be borrowed from objects by means of perception and only then be taken up into the understanding” (B ). The unity of consciousness must obtain a priori, intrinsically, in order that such perception be possible in the first place. But unlike the first Deduction, Kant occludes or transforms here the role of the imagination. In the order of cognition, it is now the understanding that is responsible for the transitus, for “bringing the manifold of given intuitions under the unity of apperception” (B – ). Further, once this transposition of the intuitive manifold is ‘brought under’ apperceptive unity, the combination itself is “performed solely by the understanding” (B ). What is presented as manifold in intuition is subjected to unity by means of conceptual determination by the understanding. But whereas the first deduction determined the manner in which this processus could obtain—which resulted in the amplification of inner intuition to an Inbegriff in the “Correct and Only Possible Deduction of the Pure Categories” of A —this second Deduction has simply declared that it must be the case, altering sufficiently the elements within this architectonic that its relation to the first is unclear. If this proof-structure may allow for the claim to a formal possibility, it cannot, apparently, on Kant’s own principles, allow for an actuality without the incorporation of the laws of intuition and the specification of their nature and limits.136

and cannot in abandoning the proof-structure of the first deduction and its inclusion and amplification of inner intuition, satisfy the demand for a synthetic principle of apperception (–). For Havet, “comme le montrera le paragraphe , elle ne concerne ni le moi en soi, ni le moi phénomène,” and thus, “on ait à poser la question de ses rapports avec le temps, puisque l’exposé fait abstraction de caractère successif de l’appréhension” as would have been necessary in order to deduce a synthetic relation. Havet suggests that Kant in this way brings the positive argumentation of the Analytic in accord with the negative argumentation of the Dialectic, but thus loses his claim to a synthetic unity, since “conformément à la doctrine des Paralogismes, elle ne saurait avoir un sens ontologique” (–). This “interprétation formaliste” of the second Deduction for Havet “ne saurait constituer les objets particuliers de l’experience” individuated in intuition, “mais seulement l’objet en général” taken formally (). 136 Regarding the analytic—synthetic status of the apperceptive principle, Guyer (ibid) argues that “whether such a conclusion [to a unity of apperception] follows from any



chapter two

In the second-Edition Deduction, the mind’s self-identity, across its internal heterogeneity between its intrinsic noetic and extrinsic noematic correlates, must be attained through the function of apperception, rather than in always already accomplished in the form of inner intuition. The condition of synthesis (the heterogeneity in intuition), implies, then, perhaps more clearly than in the first-Edition, a relation of priority within apperception itself. That relation obtains between a prior, synthetic unity inclusive of intuition and an analytic unity that is independent of intuition and its laws. It is also clear that if analysis rests upon synthesis, then intellectual principles, in order to attain a synthetic status or result, rest upon intuitive principles. However, at B , Kant will continue to charge inner sense with the task of offering “the empirically given manifold of intuition for such [objective] combination.” In this, inner sense is reduced to an empirical rather than transcendental status, and to fulfilling the conditions of synthesis rather than the conditions for synthesis. Subjective unity—Kant has differentiated “subjective unity” as a “determination of inner sense”

[formal] concept of the self may be questionable; much more questionable, as we shall see, is whether Kant in fact restricts himself to a purely analytic interpretation of his proposition.” Guyer, rightly, does not question the necessity of such a principle and the coherence in cognition it requires. Guyer does question Kant’s right to claim the universal categorial synthesis of all possible intuition; “What is the condition required if several representations are to belong to consciousness of a single self?” and “Why should we assume that there is any such condition?” or that it has been secured by Kant’s topic? Guyer argues through exegesis, taking B  as a major; “all the manifold of intuition should be subject to conditions of the original synthetic unity of apperception.” Guyer next adduces B ; “without this [subjection] nothing can be thought or cognized . . . since given representations . . . would not be grasped together in a single self-consciousness” (). Upon the basis of his preceding account of “time-determination,” Guyer is able to conclude that “it is precisely at this point that Kant’s attempt to exploit the Archimedean point of apperception collapses,” since Kant “just uses first the concept of an object and then the concept of objective judgment to provide the necessary conditions of apperception itself.” Thus, “the progress of the whole new deduction [is] circular,” since “it sets out to derive the conditions for knowledge of objects from the conditions of self-consciousness,” when it was the “limiting condition” of this self-consciousness through inner sense that first necessitated the deduction, and stood in need of synthesis. Thus, at , Guyer will argue that the “subjective unity of self-consciousness” as a “determination of inner sense” is not a demonstrated conclusion but a “fiat,” since Kant does not demonstrate but rather dismisses the question of whether I can become empirically conscious of the manifold as simultaneous or successive” (B , Guyer p. ). For this reason, Guyer will conclude that, upon the heterogeneity thesis, “the assumption that we have a priori knowledge of the identity of the self can only seem deeply questionable” (), as is the applicability of the principle to inner sense, by means of a claim to “the ubiquitous validity of transcendental apperception” ().

a second attempt at deduction

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from “objective unity” as original apperception at B —thus obtains now as an “empirical unity of consciousness,” which is, qua empirical “entirely contingent.”137 This contingent and subjective status is juxtaposed to the transcendental and necessary unity of pure apperception. Thus, Kant reverses the order of reasons. While intellection had been dependent upon intuition insofar as analytic unity waited upon synthetic unity, now “empirical unity of apperception” or inner sense “is only derived from the original unity,” and itself possesses “only subjective validity” and “given [empirical] conditions in concreto” (B ). But it seems that inner intuition is thus derivative of the synthetic unity of apperception, while that synthetic unity qua synthetic must itself be derived from inner intuition. The following definition is consistent; “transcendental unity of apperception is that unity whereby everything manifold given in an intuition is united in a concept of the object” (B ). This concept of the object will now yield an “objective unity” and this will be both juxtaposed and taken as prior to “the merely subjective unity” of inner sense. But this occludes the necessary and prior role of inner sense in the ordo cognoscendi, in bringing the materium dabile to the pure concepts of the understanding, by which alone such synthetic objectivity can obtain.138 As in the case of the second-Edition Preface (with its footnote at B xli), and the secondEdition ‘amendments’ to the Aesthetic (with its ‘doctrine of time’), it seems that Kant’s revisions of the first-Edition Deduction, too, have made the doctrine of time as form of inner sense more complex but not more clearly intelligible. Kant would appear to have () reversed the order of priority between the objective and the subjective unity, such that he can () assert the derivation of the subjective from the objective, without having secured the subjective conditions by means of which that objective status is possible. Upon this transformation in the order of priority and derivation, 137 Just as the “synthetic unity of apperception” is prior to the “analytic unity of apperception,” the functional aspect of the aporia would be “prior” to the formal aspect of the aporia. On the priority of synthetic to analytic unity, see Wolfgang Becker, Selbstbewußtsein und Erfahrung (Freiburg, Verlag Karl Alber, ), p.  ff. 138 For Lachièze-Rey, this demand cannot on established grounds be met. The analytic unity of apperception cannot in principle be extended to a synthetic unity, since “l’aperception empirique y est assimilée au sens interne, et le sens interne à son tour n’y apparaît pas sous la forme de l’unité synthétique d’un divers,” since it excluded the possible (objective) application of the categories. This exclusion is for Lachièze-Rey “une singulière confusion,” since “le sens interne est tout à fait insuffisant pour remplir ce rôle parce qu’il ne peut donner aucun moi stable et permanent dans ce flux de phénomènes intérieures” ().



chapter two

Kant can assert in the second-Edition that “every intuition must be subject to [the synthetic unity of consciousness] in order to become an object for me,” not unlike he did in beginning the first-Edition exposition. But the significance of this proposition in  is no longer the same, for now “the synthetic unity of consciousness is an objective condition of all cognition,” where objective implies intellectual, apperceptive, non-intuitive, and independence of the Inbegriff that is, or was, inner intuition. Kant admits that “although this last proposition makes the synthetic unity [of consciousness] a condition of all thought, it is itself analytic” (B ). But if it, as analytic, “announces as necessary” (B ) a synthetic relation between the form of inner intuition and pure apperception, it has not secured but has in fact abandoned that derivation, its proof. This conditional imperative at B  and in the context of the exposition of  remains a command or a demand rather than a deduction. At this point in the Deduction (and, one might suggest, for this reason), Kant inserts in §  a Comment. Therein, he suggests that he has thus far accomplished only “the beginning of a deduction” (B ). This accomplishment consists principally in the legitimation of the claim that “the categories are independent of sensibility and arise in the understanding alone.”139 This independence, however, given our thematic concern, invites rather than resolves questions, particularly regarding the possibil139 Nonetheless, the current apologetic strategy adopted explicitly by both Longuenesse and Waxman (and implicitly by many) implies the attribution of intuitive elements of cognition to intellective elements. Longuenesse, for example, will declare (ibid,  note) that “I give unprecedented importance . . . to the idea that we generate our own representations of objective temporal determination by discursive-imaginative acts of the mind.” This is a problem rather than a resolution. This is “unprecedented” because impossible, should we retain the claim to the “finitude of our cognition” and the (Kantian) thesis of the priority of our intuition in general and inner intuition particularly. In Allison’s account, interpretation is admittedly already defense; in Longuenesse’s, interpretation is already reconstruction. Longuenesse takes “temporal relations as themselves products of figurative synthesis according to the relations of causality and community,” in spite of the evident origin of time in intuition and the inapplicability of these categories to inner sense (). For Longuenesse, “the a priori synthesis that generates space and time as a priori intuitions also generates the conformity of the manifold of empirical intuitions to the categories,” indiscriminately across inner sense and outer sense. This interpretation both intellectualizes appearances and ignores the “limiting-condition” of inner sense, which (in Kant) excludes the conditions necessary for the applicability of the categories (). Longuenesse’s bracketing of the heterogeneity thesis is not without important effect; she is led, for example, to collapse the distinction between intellective self-consciousness and intuitive self-cognition; “the ‘unity of self-consciousness’ as the unity of the discursive conatus and the unity of self-consciousness as the consciousness of an individuality located in time, are one and the same” (). No attention whatever is directed to the heterogeneity within intuition which disallows Longuenesse’s

a second attempt at deduction



ity that such an intellectual principle independent of sensibility could be given a synthetic status, by means of the intuitive conditions necessary in order that sensible material be given under such a principle. Indeed, Kant addresses precisely this concern in the next sentence; “I must still abstract in this deduction from the way in which the manifold for an empirical intuition is given.”140 This problem-context, as obtains in the question of the means by which an external empirical intuition can be given to the understanding in a processus of cognition, is not a peripheral problem, but is rather the principal and constant problem of the first-Edition Deduction, and has thus far, in the second-Edition, only been bracketed. Kant has admittedly “taken account only of the unity that the understanding contributes to the intuition by means of the category.” In other words, Kant has assumed the applicability of the category to the form of inner intuition, and thus deduced or demanded conditions not “from the bottom up” synthetically but rather “from the top down” according to an analytic method not of deduction but rather description. Kant announces his intention to provide for such a deduction of intuitive conditions, of “the way in which the empirical intuition is given in sensibility” (B –). But Kant claims that this has already been indicated in the problematic § , in which it was claimed that “the category prescribes the intuition’s unity to the manifold of a given intuition as such,” in spite of the evident limitations in form that disallowed

subreptical application of the categories of substance and causality to both forms of intuition (p.  ff.). The heterogeneity thesis is systematically underdetermined, in order that Kant’s constructive intentions be presented as unproblematically realized. 140 Havet notes that “tout ce qui précède le paragraphe  ne forme que ‘le commencement d’une déduction des concepts purs de l’entendement’” and suggests that the reason lies in Kant’s decision to “faire abstraction de la manière dont est donné le diveres pour une intuition empirique et ne regarder que l’unité que l’entendement y ajoute . . .” (ibid, ) For Havet, “cette déduction, en examinant d’abord l’unité intellectuelle en elle-même, manifestait la prétention de l’arracher à tout contact avec la sensibilité et à toute contamination par les formes de celle-ci, en particulier par le temps.” Indeed, “lorsqu’il veut donner un example” in concreto “il est bien obligé de chercher dans notre intuition, il fait abstraction de tout ce qui relève de cette intuition . . . il évite de parler de l’imagination, il n’invoque ni le sens interne ni sa forme a priori: le temps” (ibid, ). For this reason, “la suppression de la Déduction subjective posait le problème de la jonction de la réceptivité sensible et de l’unification intellectuelle” () and hence the synthetic character of apperceptive unity. Most clearly, “la position de cette synthèse purement intellectuelle n’offrait pas seulement l’intérêt de fonder l’usage des catégories . . . puisqu’il y est fait abstraction de la forme du sens interne” (ibid, ).



chapter two

precisely such an intellectual and categorial determination of inner intuition.141 Kant also admits that “from one point I could not abstract” in this second attempt at a deduction. Although the manner in which an object can be given was not addressed, Kant claims that “the fact that the manifold for the intuition must still be given prior to the understanding’s synthesis, and independently of it,” was not occluded. It is only, he repeats, “how it is given that remains undetermined here” (B ; italics added). The manner of givenness Kant indicates appears, here at B –, to be a theme of some general significance. For in this context, Kant’s construal of the scope of his deduction and the principle of apperception revealed therein appears to be importantly restricted. Kant now claims that “the categories are only rules for an understanding whose entire power consists in thought,” which, as such and judged transcedentally, is analytic or merely formal in significance (B ). The categories concern only that “synthesis of the manifold that has, in intuition” and according to its laws, “been given to it from elsewhere.” In this way, Kant’s strategic

141

Allison, in Idealism and Freedom (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ), also notes this hesitation between the analytic or synthetic character of the unity of apperception. See ch. , “Apperception and Analyticity in the B-Deduction,” p.  ff. Allison admits () that “in the first part of the B-Deduction, where the account of apperception is developed, Kant explicitly abstracts from the nature of human sensibility, that is, from its spatio-temporal form.” Allison cites B , and writes that “by abstracting from the whole question of the relation of thought and its conditions to human sensibility and its a priori forms, Kant is also abstracting from the very conditions required to ground synthetic judgments.” Kant’s argument, then, “can neither ground a synthetic judgment nor establish a ‘real use’ for the categories” (). Allison also intimates the restriction to which Kant is subject; “this is the feature of the principle of apperception emphasized in the Paralogisms, where, at least in the second-Edition, Kant’s concern is to point out that . . . the logical subject of thought . . . ” understood as “the sole text of rational psychology” is “not to be confused with synthetic propositions about a real thinking subject or substance” (). Allison does not further investigate this apparently problematic tension. Allison notes also, conversely, that “in the B-Deduction, the focus is on the converse of the above principle: that the identity of the ‘I think’ entails the synthetic unity of its representations.” Nonetheless, Allison will attempt defense, and hope that “although this further complicates the situation, we shall see that it does not really affect the analyticity of the principle . . .” (). Havet instead treats this non-intuitive proofstructure of the deduction as the “omission flagrante et apparemment intentionelle du caractère de l’appréhension” as expressed in the first edition deduction. This first deduction for Havet is omitted in favor of a deduction which “se place d’emblée dans l’unité de l’aperception, c’est-à-dire à ce sommet que nous n’avions atteint en  qu’au terme d’une longue analyse” () This “synthèse intellectuelle” Havet criticizes under the name of “le formalisme kantien,” itself contained in a proof-structure closer to a mere demand ().

a second attempt at deduction



decision in the second-Edition to begin “from the top” in a descent rather than procede “from the bottom” in an ascending series of conditions can be seen to carry a real risk. The proof-structure of Kant’s second deduction has presupposed the question that appeared most pressing in . That question concerned the characteristics of the form of inner intuition as an Inbegriff. It appeared there that inner intuition required an amplification, () in order that it contain within it the materium dabile of outer sense, in order to () then transpose such an object to the understanding. But this amplification (in a primary spatialization, a secondary resolution to constancy, and a tertiary determination by means of concepts) appeared to attribute to inner intuition the same characteristics required by Seelenelehre, those characteristics that would allow for a synthetic determination of inner intuition toward the ‘science or knowledge of inner sense’ about which Kant had already warned in the Introduction. In the same Introduction, we recall, Kant insisted that the self-critique of reason offered satisfaction to the analysis of the form of cognition, as opposed to the “common program” of metaphysics and theology, precisely for its complete determination of the questions that arise in this theoretical sphere regarding the nature and limits of knowledge. Here at B – and in this thematic context, however, Kant apparently will plead the unanswerability of his question(s); “why our understanding has this peculiarity, that it brings about unity of apperception only by means of the categories,” and only in this way, or “why we have just these and no other functions in judging,” or “why time and space are the only forms of our possible intuition . . . no further reason can be given” (B ). One may wonder whether the tension that accompanied the first-Edition Deduction of the conditions in inner intuition that allowed the understanding to ‘bring about unity of apperception’ in the way there specified does not in some way underlie this appeal to unanswerability. By abandoning the proof-structure of the first-Edition, Kant pulled back from the amplified construal of inner intuition, as an Inbegriff that alone yielded the determinability-conditions necessary for its proper and necessary function in the ordo cognoscendi. Kant then, in a second attempt at deduction, insisted upon attributing to inner intuition a reduced role, and indeed a necessarily restricted role, for its mere inconstancy. Kant then divided sharply between intuition and intellection, and held in reserve the dynamic mediating role of imagination (both “active” [A ] and “sensible” [A ]) in “taking up” the data of intuition to the understanding). But by doing so, he apparently was forced to



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abandon the definitive task of the first deduction, to articulate the conditions in an ascending series necessary in order that unity of apperception be synthetic.142 His procedure in the second-Edition indeed seems to not only leave unanswered but to make unanswerable this central question of 143 At this point and in §  of the deduction, Kant returns to, and orients his analysis by means of, a basic formulation of the passivity thesis. Only “our sensible and empirical intuition,” as formed by pure intuition, “can provide sense and reference (Sinn und Bedeutung)” for our cognition, Kant reminds his reader (B ). In this restrictive condition upon the understanding, of course, consists the finitude of our cognition. In this restriction consists the salience, indeed centrality, of the theme of the passivity of our intuition. As Kant will suggest at A , “the pure category is insufficient for a synthetic a priori principle,” since “the categories possess meaning only in reference to the unity of intuitions in space and time” (B ). Whether revealed to the faculty of cognition through affection (so as to yield objectual cognition), or through self-

142 In Kant’s Theory of Form, Pippin notes that Kant “abstracted from the manner in which some intuition is given,” and asserts that (a) “the ‘unity’ of a manifold intuited has been presupposed.” For Pippin, “another crucial part of Kant’s proof is that there is no knowledge of any kind ‘outside’ of these limits.” This “extension lays the groundwork for the critique of pure reason itself, the Transcendental Dialectic.” Kant must also, according to Pippin, “specify the ‘range within which’ unitary intuitions can be found” []). The problem is not insignificant, since the claim to the identity of the object across the formal outer intuition—inner intuition distinction is as necessary as its justification is unclear. Only by this identity within intuition could “one be thought analytically through the other,” both forms appearing together in a “complete determination” (B , note). The synthetic functions of the understanding are “not just transcendental, but purely intellectual only” if applied to the manifold of inner sense (B ). Purely intellective syntheses assume first that “there lies within us as an a priori condition a certain form of sensible intuition.” Purely intellective syntheses also assume that this certain form of sensible intuition is amenable to being “determined in accordance with the synthetic unity of apperception,” not according to the analytic method of the Prolegomena (Preface, Ak , ), but demonstrably, according to the synthetic method of the first Critique. This doctrine alone will allow “the categories, as mere forms of thought, to acquire objective reality, or applicability to objects possibly given to us in intuition.” The success of the Deduction in either form assumes the resolution of the heterogeneity thesis. 143 The hiatus in systemato thus created is the result of the fundamental tension between the amplified account of inner intuition necessary for the transcendental determination of the ordo cognoscendi and the restrictive account necessary for the critique of Seelenlehre. I hope to suggest in further publications that it provides the thematic context not only for the second-Edition Deduction, however, but also for Kant’s development of his theoretical philosophy through to the Opus postumum, and for the development of transcendental idealism in Fichte’s early critiques of Kant.

a second attempt at deduction

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affection (so as to yield the objective self-cognition of oneself qua object), the object of cognition without this unity within intuition remains logical and subjective rather than objective, its status regulative rather than constitutive.144 For “by itself, understanding cognizes nothing whatever, but only combines and orders the material for cognition.” Only intuition can provide intellection with sense and reference. Only through intuition can “the direct presentation through sensation be presented as actual” (B ). Only as an actual object of intuition can the individuality and unity of an object in its presence be revealed for cognition. Without the prior integrity of the Sinnenlehre, there “would obtain nothing, and could obtain nothing, to which my thought could be applied.” For “no cognition at all of anything whatever would be possible by means of ” the spontaneous act of synthesis (B ). In § , Kant extends this apagogic language of dependence in order to assert that “beyond the bounds” of our sensibility, cognition is “capable of presenting nothing whatever.” Without their contribution and the characters for cognition they contain, we possess but “empty concepts of objects” as opposed to a genuine cognition thereof, “concepts through which we cannot judge at all whether or not these objects are so much as possible” (B ). Through its possession of certain Exponenten—most basically, the passive and immediate relation to, and individuality and unity of, a sensible object—sensibility is not merely a confused form of representation, but makes possible, and structures, synthetic a priori judgment. Sensibility, then, as defined over against the understanding, contributes these characters and the synthetic extension they make possible toward the 144

From these formal distinctions follow distinctions in the status of judgments— whether subjective or objective, determinate, regulative or constitutive, real, logical, etc.—that are themselves determined in a type of transcendental topic. The locus classicus for the constitutive-regulative distinction, and indeed upon the consciousness-cognition distinction, remains Windelband (Vom System der Kategorien, Tübingen, , p.  ff. and Prinzipien der Logik, pp. –). Windelband, writing apologetically, is less than observant of the heterogeneity thesis, and its demand that the categories, particularly that of substantiality, not apply to its manifold. Windelband even claimed isomorphism, by means of an unproblematic second “Reihen” and an “intimen Analogien” between the forms and contents of inner sense and outer sense. Reuter (Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe, Konigshausen & Neumann, Wurzburg, ) has recently subjected Windelband’s perhaps facile “Übergang vom ‘Denken’ zum ‘Erkennen’” to trenchant critique; see p.  ff. Reuter recognizes that “Seine Charakterisierung der ‘synthetischen Einheit des Mannifaltigen’ als ‘Fundamentaltatsache der inneren Erfahrung (H.v.m.)” implies a form of “naiven Erkenntnisrealismus” for its underdetermination of the conditions necessary for the Leibniz-critique (). See also ibid, .

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full synthetic constitution of the object.145 As such, a non-intuitive consciousness would appear only “through all the predicates that are already contained” in the understanding, independently of its essential relation to pure intuition. The enumeration of these predicates, Kant continues, would have to be made negatively. Estranged from sensible intuition and its characters or predicates, the object could be presented only as “not extended or in space,” as possessed of “a duration that is not a time, that no change (succession of determinations in time) is to be found in it, et cetera” (B ). Upon this exclusion of the predicates or characters of intuition, there is “no possibility of there being an object for my pure concept of understanding.” Kant insists that “the principal point here is that to such a something not even one single category could be applied” (B ). But in this same context a more fundamental and determinative theme can be identified. Kant determined the nature and limits of ‘our sensible and empirical intuition’ not only qua intuition or sensibility as such, but also by means of the distinction within sensibility that was grounded in the respective Merkmale of the two forms of intuition, space and time, in the ars characteristica of the Sinnenlehre. It is precisely for this reason that the determination of the nature and limits of inner intuition is essential to the transcedental self-critique of reason. Only upon the unequivocal determination of the nature and limits of inner intuition can the nature 145 Kant discusses the “construction” of concepts in a priori intuition at A , B . The formal conditions of experience, governed only by logical rather than sensible laws, “is far from sufficient for the concept’s having objective reality.” For example, no logical contradiction is to be found in “the concept of a figure enclosed by two straight lines.” For “the concepts of two straight lines and of their meeting contain no negation of the figure.” Real possibility, however, and the determination of its impossibility (or actuality) “rests not on the concept in itself, but on its construction in space.’ Actuality, or real possibility, and with it actual impossibility, can only be determined a priori in pure intuition. The construction of concepts in a priori intuition itself rests upon “the conditions of space and of its determination’ (A , B ). Construction is defined functionally as that act by which “the concept is provided with an object.” Concepts give “only the form of an object.” Such a mere form “would still remain forever only a product of imagination” (A , B ). The connection of the concept of an object, e.g., a triangle, with its real possibility or objectivity “is solely this, that space is a formal a priori condition of outer experiences.” Importantly, the activity by which we construct a triangle within the manifold of a priori outer intuition “is entirely the same synthesis that we perform in apprehending an appearance in order to frame an experiential concept of it.” The “character of existence,” and the “character of actuality” are “never found in the object’s mere concept” (A – , B –). It is instead “perception that provides the material for the concept,” and pure outer intuition that provides the a priori formal characters for the structuration and appearance of this material.

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and limits of cognition itself be determined, and the distinction between valid claims to knowledge and necessarily invalid claims to knowledge (“mere forms of thought without objective reality”) be substantiated. We will see that both elements of this doubled thematic context, as obtain in the ideality thesis and heterogeneity thesis taken together, are necessary in order to understand Kant’s development of the deduction in § . In § , Kant continues to insist upon this essential dependence of the understanding, in naming “the [pure] concepts [of the understanding]” as a “mere form of thought, through which as yet no determinate object is cognized.” In beginning, Kant abstracts from the question of the particular character and limitation of our inner intuition, by treating only “objects of intuition as such, undetermined with regard to whether this is ours or some other” (B ) in order to attend to that activity of the understanding that is “not transcendental, but purely intellectual only” (B ). In this purely analytic context, Kant introduces, or reintroduces, inner intuition. Kant suggests that “nonetheless, there lies at the basis in us a priori a certain form of sensible intuition,” which will be named as inner intuition, and which is to allow this analytic relation among formal principles and concepts to attain to a synthetic status. Kant here depicts this form of intuition as yielding, formally, “the receptivity of our capacity to present,” and as offering, dynamically or functionally, “the manifold of given presentations” to the understanding (B ). This presupposes, of course, the amplified account of inner intuition and its capacities.146 In

146

In addition to the formal heterogeneity between time qua form of inner sense and space qua form of outer sense and their characters (e.g., ), Moreau, in “Le temps, la succession et le sens interne” (Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses [Ed. Gerhard Funke; Berlin, de Gruyter, ]), notes a second “disparité,” that of the representative capacities of each form of intuition. Between “l’espace et le temps, la forme du sens externe et celle du sens interne, nous découvrons ainsi une disaparité, sur laquelle reposera la construction complexe de l’Analytique transcendentale” (). For Moreau, the “unidimensionalité” of time as form of inner sense renders problematic “l’inclusion des phénomènes extérieurs dans la représentation” in the dynamic order of human cognition. Any object of outer intuition must be “taken up” into inner sense in order to be “gone over and run through” by the understanding. This ordo cognoscendi alone “appartient à l’esprit et les rend présents au sens interne,” and yet “fait de cette distinction [heterogeneity] un problème” (). Most importantly for Moreau, the pure succession of inner sense disallows the applicability of the categories, which can alone “permettent la liaison objective des phénomènes dans l’unité de l’aperception.” For “on ne saurait faire application du concept de substance en l’absence d’un donné permanent” ().

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particular, Kant seems to advance without argument the claim that “hence the understanding can . . . determine inner sense in accordance with the synthetic unity of apperception” (B ). There is no question here of denying the necessity of a synthetic unity of apperception. Nor is there any question here of denying to Kant the claim to this synthetic unity. Nor will there by any question of denying to Kant the claim that he will make in the Dialectic, that inner intuition cannot contain any such synthetic relation. There is no question of disallowing Kant either of his theoretical intentions, but rather of identifying both, and on that basis identifying the doubled (and indeed antinomic) role that inner intuition plays in the proof of each. We will see that by means of this exegetical method, we can identify, internally, the necessity that Kant reformulate this central element in the architectonic, in accord either with either the positive or the negative intention of transcendental idealism. The task of an exegetical account of the aporia of inner sense lies instead with the () articulation of Kant’s most general intentions, positive and negative, the () placing of Kant’s doctrine of inner intuition therein, the () tracing of the tension to which Kant’s doctrine—as ingredient in both argumentative intentions—is exposed, by means of the () exposition of those arguments and passages in which Kant’s variant (positive or amplified and negative or restrictive) claims are advanced. Only in this way and by means of inner intuition thus construed does Kant claim that “thereby, the categories, though themselves mere forms of thought, acquire objective reality” (B ). This synthesis of the categories and inner intuition is now, in the second-Edition, termed by Kant a synthesis speciosa or “figurative synthesis.” Kant defines the figurative synthesis first negatively; it is distinguished from a categorial synthesis of the understanding or synthesis intellectualis. Kant would claim, however, that both the figurative and the intellectual or categorial syntheses are both transcendental. Both offer a “basis for other a priori cognition” (B ). The particularly figurative synthesis, then, would make possible a priori cognition in and by means of inner intuition. Kant first moves to identify the origin of the figurative synthesis in the imagination rather than the categories. As in the first-Edition Deduction, imagination, unlike intuition, yields for cognition an object in its absence rather than its presence. Further, “the synthesis of imagination is an exercise of spontaneity, which is determinative, rather than merely determinable, as is sense” (B –). These distinctions between imagination and intuition disallow to imagination the capability unique to

a second attempt at deduction

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intuition, the contribution that only sensibility can make to the constitution of synthetic judgment—its providing of a materium dabile in its presence, unity, and immediate relation to the cognitive faculty. But in fact Kant does not here intend to subject the figurative synthesis to such a claim. The figurative synthesis does not concern objects of empirical intuition, but rather the subjective and a priori character of the form of intuition, and specifically inner intuition. This synthesis is to “determine a priori sense according to its form in accordance with the unity of apperception” (B ). Kant intends to accomplish, by means of this synthesis, an ordering of the elements within the faculty of cognition, and the adequation of inner intuition to the demands of knowledge. This synthesis, Kant continues, “is an act of the understanding upon sensibility.” This synthetic application to sensibility is, importantly, “the understanding’s first application.” But it is not only the first application, but lexically prior to all others as, “at the same time, the basis of all its other applications,” the condition for the possibility of all synthetic condition for being the agent of inner sense’s amplification. Kant thus would correct the first-Edition exposition of imagination as a principle for the reproduction of apperances given in intuition and according to the laws of intuition. Kant would utilize the figurative synthesis of the imagination to determine the form of inner sense in order that it be resolved from indeterminacy to determinacy, and thus contribute to the ordo cognoscendi. Kant thus “distinguishes [the productive imagination] from the reproductive imagination,” as exposed in the first-edition, which will—as will inner sense—be reconstrued in this second-edition as “subject to merely empirical laws” and status, as indeed “belonging not in transcendental philosophy but in psychology” (B ).147 147

In Claims of Knowledge (p.  ff.), Guyer explains that “to make determinate judgments about the temporal succession of subjective states at all, which is presupposed even by empirical knowledge that my continuing self actually has a manifold of representations, I must link those representations in some way to objects in space,” which are possessed of objective succession and “which are capable of both continued existence and yet determinate changes. Only thus can I determine that my present state actually represents a ‘sequence of one impression upon another.’ Yet to make such connections requires precisely that I make judgments about the continued existence of objects regarded as distinct from mere modifications of inner sense and judge the changes of such objects. What can this be but to apply the concepts of inherence and subsistence to things regarded as objects in a strong sense and to apply to such objects the further dynamic categories of causality and dependence and perhaps even reciprocity of action? Although the



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In this way, §  moves from the (a) recognition of the necessary role of inner intuition in the act of synthetic cognition (B ), to the (b) figurative synthesis, which ‘figures’ post hoc the aspatial form of inner sense (B ). He does so in order that inner sense () ‘be determined in terms of its form’ (B ), and () ‘be determined in accordance with the categories,’ or admit of a categorial determination (B ). Inner intuition moves with it not from an inconstant manifold to an Inbegriff as in the first-edition, but from an extra-categorial limitation upon the categories to a form of intuition implicit in the order of cognition and the activity of the categories. As above, there is no question of arresting the development of Kant’s amplificatory claims regarding inner intuition.148 We may, however, regard this last amplification with a certain detachment, since we will soon turn to Kant’s denial that such conditions can obtain within the form of inner intuition. We will soon see, that is, that () while Kant grounded the “remarkable fact” that “from mere categories no synthetic propositions can be formed,” on the basis of the general doctrine of intuition, Kant grounded, on the specific doctrine of inner intuition, the () “even more remarkable” fact that “we need not merely intuitions, but indeed always outer intuition” in order to form synthetic propositions.

second-edition text of the deduction asserts such connections, it hardly argues them . . . ” (). Thus Guyer’s conclusion; “given the little that was accomplished by all of the explicit tactics of the transcendental deduction of the ’s, what Kant should have done next was demonstrate that the categories are the only means by which determinate judgments can be made about even the intuitions of inner sense” (). Guyer has advanced with great clarity the necessity for precisely this application; the necessity that this application not obtain—in order that the anti-rationalist argument of the Dialectic be sustained—is less in evidence throughout Guyer’s magisterial work. His vast scholarship and penetrating analysis have been encouraging in my formulation of this essay. 148 Paton, in Kant’s Metaphysics of Experience (London: Allen and Unwin, ), v. II, expresses preference for the universality thesis, that time incorporates space within itself as universal form of representation; “taken thus, Kant’s doctrine seems to me to be true.” The heterogeneity thesis, however, presents problems; “the most difficult part of Kant’s doctrine is his account of the way in which the self is affected by itself from within,” in inner sense. For “it is here that the complications begin” (). Paton stipulates that () “the self in its direct awareness of its own thinkings and knowing—it is not the place here to consider its feelings and volitions—must be passive, though it must also have, in the act of thinking itself, an active conceptual awareness, however obscure, of the necessary unity of form and thought’ as contained in inner sense. Second, or () “the manifold or content of our thought must be given to a mind” through inner sense, “which receives it passively and perceives it immediately.” This immediacy gives our thought a direct relation to an individual object and ensures that “our awareness of what we think and know is not a creating of what we think and know.” Both () and () are unproblematic on the universality thesis, and problematic on the heterogeneity thesis.

a second attempt at deduction

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For “in order to give as [an object] something permanent,” he will record at B , we require the stability and positionality of and in the manifold of outer sense. Kant does recognize here “something paradoxical” in the doctrine of inner sense. Kant suggests that “this is the place to clarify” an ambiguity that for Kant can be traced to “the exposition of the form of inner sense (§ ),” in (the first-edition of) the Transcendental Aesthetic. Kant does not admit, however, to the genuinely critical problem of the conditions for the possibility of an exhibition of the spatial form of outer intuition in an aspatial inner intuition. Nor does Kant admit to discordances between the first or second-edition expositions of the doctrine of pure intuition, or indeed any aspect, formal or functional, of the aporetic doctrine of inner sense.149 Kant does admit, however, that inner intuition implies the problem of our “intuiting ourselves only as we are inwardly affected.” This to Kant “appears contradictory, since we would then have to relate to ourselves as passive” and as intuited while also performing the activity of intuiting. This containment, within inner intuition, of both the activity of affecting and the receptivity to affection would require that the contradictory predicates of actio or spontaneity and passio or passivity be assigned to the same subject. Kant explains by distinguishing, and “carefully differentiates” inner sense from apperception. Inner sense is to be a principle of passivity, while the latter is to serve as a principle of activity; only together will self-affection be constituted. In the appearance of an object in inner sense, the apparently paradoxical demand that each in her own case be both the active, determining subject and the passive, determined 149

Kant acknowledges only the dogmatic and skeptical critique of the reality, as opposed to ideality, of inner sense. Kant’s admission of paradox is restricted to a response to the first criticisms of the ideality thesis by Mendellsohn and Schulze. Kant avoids the consciousness of succession—succession of consciousness distinction, according to which the (denied) reality of time or temporal change appears even in the assertion of its ideality, in a successive consciousness—the consciousness of succession (as ideal) would already imply the succession of consciousness itself (as real). The problem of the succession of consciousness has only been raised by Kant in the context of the dogmatic critique of the reality of time. Our critique directs itself not to the supposed reality of time, but to the asserted character of its “ideality,” and the problem of the consciousness of simultaneity in a consciousness itself successive, since this simultaneity can only be taken from outer sense, and since it is precisely this interdetermination that is in question and to be proven. The distinct conditions required for a pure succession in consciousness and a consciousness of that succession is in any case evident. For the canonical treatment of this consciousness of succession problem, see Buchdahl, Kant and the Dynamics of Reason: Essays on the Structure of Kant’s Philosophy (Blackwell, Oxford, ).

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object of the appearance, is made. But while not without interest, this limited acknowledgment of the aporetic character of the doctrine of inner sense restricts the possible significance of Kant’s admission of paradox throughout § . In order to respond to this paradox, Kant will distinguish in particular the principle of activity and the principle of passivity within any act of self-consciousness. The understanding, “considered in itself,” is “nothing but the unity of the understanding’s own act.” This act obtains “apart from sensibility” and in essential dependence thereupon, not only formally, for the referent of a possible objectivity, but for its revelation as well, its functional deliverance to the understanding (B ).150 It must not fall to the understanding to “take up into itself ” the object of synthetic intuition, since this order of cognition would in effect propose a closed circle, and in effect a problematic and privatistic or merely subjective idealism. This distinction must be enforced, then, in principle. The understanding cannot be thought “to combine the manifold of its own intuition” but instead must be thought to be given this intuition from without and by means of the faculty of intuition. Having made this familiar distinction between the passivity of inner sense or empirical apperception and the a priori spontaneity of transcendental apperception, Kant will claim that this “paradox” thus “involves neither more nor less difficulty than does the question as to how I can be an object to myself at all, viz., an object of intuition and of inner perception.” Kant apparently wishes to bracket the specific difference of inner intuition, its indeterminacy, and treat inner sense as but a derivative 150 As first seen in the Introduction, the assertion that “the I who thinks is distinct from the I that intuits itself ” is necessary to insulate spontaneity from a submission to natural laws of intuitive cognition. And yet, this “I” is yet to be demonstrated in an integral unity, across the distinction between intuition and intellection, and between the heterogenous spheres of intuition. In spite of this principled distinction, the subject of self-cognition must “yet remain the same, by being the same subject.” Kant recognizes that this distinction implies the problem whereby “how I as intelligence and thinking subject, cognize myself as an object that is thought also as I am given to myself in intuition” (B ). But this intuition is itself internally divided, between that inner intuition whereby I am conscious of my representations as cogitata, and that outer intuition whereby I am conscious of myself as a substance and as cogitatum within an outer sensory manifold. Kant would consider both questions only insofar as each indicates the dogmatic and skeptical problem of the appearance—thing-in-itself distinction. It is not, however, upon the axis of the ideality thesis, but upon that of the heterogeneity thesis, that the problematic claim to a possible unity in self-cognition turns. One could almost say that the concepts of (a) intuition and mechanism, and those of (b) inner intuition and time, are ‘too close’ in Wittgenstein’s sense.

a second attempt at deduction

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application of the general metaphysical rule whereby all intuition yields only appearance. Inner intuition is not analogous to outer intuition, however, in its representational capacities. In his admission of paradox, then, Kant retreats from the heterogeneity thesis to the more general ideality thesis. We are to concede that “as far as inner intuition is concerned, our own [I qua] subject is cognized by us only as appearance and not as it is in itself ” (B ). Kant’s argumentative intention to establish the ideality thesis is patent. But Kant’s ideality thesis is only the first element in his exposition of his doctrine of inner sense. The heterogeneity thesis is no less intrinsic to that exposition, and represents its genuine “paradox.”151 Kant returns to the firm ground offered by the priority thesis, and the dependence of the understanding on the priority of intuition; “the understanding is not itself a power of intuitions.” Indeed, “even if an intuition were already given in sensibility,” unproblematically, still “the understanding cannot take it up into itself in order to combine the manifold” (B ). However, while the understanding may perhaps not perform the function of such a ‘mediating principle,’ the understanding is responsible for the “determination of inner sense” (B ). Thus, a principle of activity—traced in its origin back to the understanding but located in the “transcendental synthesis of the imagination”—is “to affect inner sense,” and its receptivity (B ). This self-affection of inner sense, however, will not be considered in  as a self-affection in inner sense, as an Inbegriff. Kant attributes the “synthetic influence of understanding on

151 Sturma (ibid) reviews Kant’s assertions of a determinate self-cognition in inner sense at B , as implying “Die Position des Individuums in Raum und Zeit,” within inner intuition. This, problematically, presumes the possibility of “einer bestimmten Zeitstelle in der Welt” (). Sturma recognizes that “im Selbstbewußtsein” as opposed to objective outer cognition by means of the categories, “eine konzeptuale Differenzierung vorzunehmen,” which implies that “der Referent von Selbstbewußtsein ist noch nicht identifizierbar mit dem Subjekt des Denkens als einem möglichen Gegenstand der Erfahrung” or in synthetic cognition. Such isomorphism between the object of outer sense and the object of inner sense would violate the strictures set out in the Paralogismenkapitel (; see particularly –). Sturma’s own analysis reveals that while the “logischen Selbstbewußtsein” of the “Ich denke als Intelligenz” may be taken as demonstrated, empirical self-cognition of oneself as object, “mit der Position des Subjekts des Selbstbewußtseins in Raum und Zeit” (, also ) cannot be accepted as unproblematic. While the grounds for the “Exzentrizität des Selbstbewußtseins” remain unclear, only this objective determination of oneself qua determining rather then merely determined object of outer sense can justify for Sturma Kant’s claim to the concept of a Person, as a unity of spontaneity and receptivity, the “Individuum erkennend auf sich als eine bestimmte Person” ().

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inner sense” to the figurative synthesis of the imagination, apparently in order to differentiate the types of ‘influence’ or ‘affection’ (B ) inner sense can be expected to yield. While the synthetic unity of apperception obtains by means of a determination of inner sense, Kant will attempt to argue that “apperception and its synthetic unity is far from being the same as inner sense” (B ). Kant will attempt to argue that the synthesis of the understanding here named “applies itself to the manifold of intuitions as such.” For our purposes, the most important claim within this dense paragraph consists in the apparent but not unequivocal assertion of a categorial determination of inner sense. Understanding, “under the name of the categories,” is to accomplish “the synthetic influence of understanding on inner sense,” which for our purposes can be reversed so as to assert a reception by inner sense of a categorial and synthetic determination of the understanding. It is this amplified account of the form of inner sense—in uncertain relation of course to the restricted construal we have also intimated—that provides for Kant’s positive account of the nature of human cognition throughout the Analytic. We will see that the question about whether we have a categorial determination in inner sense as an Inbegriff or of inner sense as a determinate form of intuition is derivative of the more fundamental question of whether inner intuition is determinable synthetically at all. This latter question provides a means of approach to the most basic tension in the first Critique doctrine of the nature and limits of our knowledge, and will first become visible for our exegesis in the Refutation of Idealism. Kant then moves to explain the necessity of this figurative synthesis, or figuration, of inner sense. Although his explication of this necessity presupposes rather than resolves the aporia of inner sense, our constant concern throughout this exegesis, Kant’s account at B  is not without importance. And although we have already advanced both contexts in which this need for a figuration or spatialization of time as form of inner sense—in the subjective and objective syntheses respectively—we would do well to pause over this aspect of Kant’s exposition of the character of inner sense. It is now clear that only in the unity of intellection and intuition is cognition possible. It is no less clear that this unity presupposes the possibility of an interdependence of the forms of intuition, and, specifically, the spatialization of time qua form of inner sense. We could not “present the three dimensions of space without positing,” through our spontaneity, “three lines perpendicularly to one another from the same point” in intu-

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ition. Nor could we even “think a line without drawing it in thought,” or “think a circle,” or any figure, “without describing it.” Each of these figurations requires not only the conditions of sensibility, but the interdependence rather than independence of the temporality of thinking and the spatiality of the intuited object, whether in pure or sensible intuition.152 Only through a unity not only between intellection and intuition, but within the forms of intuition, is the determination of inner sense (and of ourselves qua thinking) possible; “time we cannot present except in drawing a straight line.” The figurative synthesis is fundamental to Kant’s architectonic to the degree that the need for a spatialization of the time of inner sense, the figuration of the indeterminate manifold of inner intuition, is necessary to both the objective ordo cognoscendi and the subjective construction and exhibition of concepts. Thus, in , Kant retains for imagination a propaedeutic role in ‘determining’ or ‘figuring’ inner sense in order that it be capable of submitting to a categorial determination, as imagination did in the second synthesis of reproduction in . Determinate (inner) intuition, Kant had asserted at B , “is only possible through . . . the figurative synthesis.” The “image of the (spatial) figure of a line” is understood by Kant to be the “external (äusserlich) figurative representation of time” (B ).153 152 Pippin (ibid) comments critically upon Kant’s apparent attempt to derive a synthetic from an analytic principle at p.  ff. See also pp. –, –. Pippin recognizes () that this problematic extension is not unrelated to the doctrine of inner sense. Pippin conceives of the inclusiveness thesis as the “comprehensiveness problem,” and depicts the “a priori applicability of the categories” to the manifold and contents of inner sense as “causing serious problems.” Pippin cites B  in particular (see pp. –). For Pippin, this problem “involves much more than a technical clarification of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense. It should be stressed that some very important, foundational elements in his whole theory here receive a crucial test.” Upon this doctrine rest “the most important results of Kant’s argument in the Critique,” and “from this flows the entire criticism of the metaphysical tradition” (). Pippin suggests that in the “dark theory of ‘inner’ sense,” is contained the full range of tensions definitive of transcendental idealism. Pippin suggests that “it is in this context that the problem of comprehensiveness arises . . . Can it be shown in concreto that awareness of the unity of mental states is subject to the same conditions as all awareness?” Pippin further suggests that “Kant raises this issue as a problem because he is aware that, prima facie, this does not seem to be the case . . .” (). Pippin thus will decide that Kant’s “case for comprehensiveness is unsuccessful” (). Pippin continues his discussion of this “neglected feature” of the architectonic on p. . 153 For Ferrarin (“Mathematical Synthesis, Intuition, and Productive Imagination in Kant,” ibid), “what is called a “defective” or external figuration of time [in the image of the line] . . . is not just an auxiliary or dispensable representation. Rather, it is the very possibility of determining time in intuition . . .” For Ferrarin, “the representation of time in space can hardly be a theoretically irrelevant corollary of the determination

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Such a spatial figuration of time would imply apparently the interdependence of the temporality of inner intuition and the spatiality of outer intuition, both in the first-order act of drawing a line (in outer intuition), and in the second-order act of recognizing such a spatial figure as drawn or accomplished (in inner intuition). Only through both interpenetrations would ‘drawing a line in thought’ be possible and effective.154 In this, the demand, and indeed presumption, that the line as spatial can represent time and that time can be recognized in the line must be compared not to our actual experience of such interpenetration quid facti but to Kant’s assertions of their independence. In this internal accepta-

of inner sense,” for while “space can represent both its figures and the order of time, time cannot picture any of the characteristics of space.” Ferrarin recognizes that “holding fast to the distinctness and dissociation between the two moments of inner sense and space runs against the implications of schematism as Kant presents it,” and indeed all of Kant’s constructive intentions (). Ferrarin admits—as clearly as have any in Englishlanguage scholarship—that “Kant oscillates in his statements” on the formal character of inner sense. Kant asserted that “time is real only as a representation of myself qua object, and this in turn only as an external intuition. However, this time, qua identical with my inner sense or with my consciousness, taken in isolation would be empty and indescribable. It cannot be determined otherwise than in a concrete exhibition. The category of quantity can be predicated of inner sense only by means of an external intuition, as Kant writes at B ” (). The time of inner sense “needs a spatial stage,” just as we must admit Kant’s constant insistence that “time cannot picture any of the characteristics of space.” Ferrarin admits that “the life of my consciousness and external appearances can” for the indeterminacy of temporal intuition only “be imaged in an ideal or real space.” Ferrarin will thus grant the notion of a “continuum of inner sense” () and outer sense, their interpénétration. But he cannot ignore that “the relation between a temporal schema and a spatial image is, however, more essential” to experience “than Kant argues,” in advancing the heterogeneity thesis (). He also recognizes that, functionally, “progressive apprehension and comprehension in a totality” as defines experiential judgment “requires simultaneity in addition to succession. And simultaneity (the coexistence of a plurality of nows) is possible only if we think time already in a mental space,” in which the geometrical figure of a line could appear. But this again requires the denial or negation of the Kantian heterogeneity doctrine we were attempting to interpret and understand. 154 Nabert treats Kant’s claim to an “analogy” between inner sense and outer sense through the image of drawing a line in thought on – of Expérience Interne chez Kant. After reviewing Kant’s claim to “l’impossibilité de trouver dans l’intuition interne une figure,” Nabert asserts that Kant’s claim to the depiction of an ‘analogy’ is strained; “la détermination la plus pauvre du sens interne comporte un mouvement, non pas le mouvement d’un objet dans l’espace, mais un acte par lequel nous décrivons un espace pour convertir en une intuition le divers pur de la forme sensible” (). Thus, when “nous considérons non pas l’espace décrit, mais l’acte du sujet qui décrit, ce que nous trouvons tout d’abord, c’est le concept de la succession.” Nabert attends closely to the distinction between “un espace donné” and the “mouvement qui construit espace” ().

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tion, Kant’s assertion is not unproblematic; one need only recall the claim in the Aesthetic to the impossibility of deriving any temporal characters from the simultaneous manifold of outer intuition as such.155 Kant asserts, then, that we cannot represent time except in or by means of the spatial figure of a line. Kant had also asserted, however (A , B ), that the parts of the line are simultaneous while those of time are successive.156 This is not a ground of unity but of distinction. Indeed, Kant is led to differentiate the line as a spatial figure and as accomplished from the drawing of the line as an activity and in its accomplishment. This act, distinct from its product, is that through which () “we first determine successively inner sense” in first-order consciousness and, in a second-order consciousness, () “thereby attend to the succession of this determination in inner sense” (B ). Kant draws a distinction, implied

155

Böhme (Zeit und Zahl, Klostermann, Frankfurt, , p. ), exposed the surreptitious assumption of interdependence in Kant’s treatment of “drawing a line in thought.” Chenet (ibid, –), too, insists on this “précision capitale” since “ce que représente le temps, c’est moins la linéarité que le tracé lui-même de la ligne.” With reference to B  and B , Chenet recognizes that “ce n’est donc pas simplement par une ligne prolongée statique que nous nous représentons le temps; ce n’est pas la ligne géométrique, statique qui représente le temps, mais la ligne dynamiquement engendrée, le mouvement par lequel la ligne est décrite.” Chenet also recognizes that this “précision . . . crée d’ailleurs un problème” (). Chenet identifies “la lecture commune” of this passage as suggesting “une nouvelle preuve de la nature intuitive du temps soulignent son homogénéité avec l’espace (le temps est parfaitement figurable dans l’intuition externe).” Chenet traces this reading to Cohen (Kommentar, ), while himself following a second tradition, which we might trace to Lachièze-Rey and De Vleeschauwer. The latter recognizes “une démonstration de sa nature d’intuition interne insistent au contraire sur l’hétérogénéité radicale du temps, sur le caractère très lointain de son analogie avec l’espace,” precisely for the “onedimensionality” of time asserted in this same passage ( n. ). 156 Lachièze-Rey treats of the image of the line at , and juxtaposes Kant’s claim to both () “irréductibilité,” which implies “l’impossibilité de passer d’une condition [or sensible form] à l’autre par voie de dérivation et de combinaison imaginatives” (), and () “homogénéité (), as is required for the interdependence of spatial extension and and temporal succession. Lachièze-Rey notes that even in the image of the line, a principle of distinction dominates. Thus, “les parties de la première sont simultanées tandis que les parties de la second sont toujours successives” (). Lachièze-Rey further records Kant’s claim to the necessity of both independence and interdependence, both with regard to () “la nécessité de la liaison des deux formes sensibles, l’espace et le temps, dans la liaison des objets de notre intuition” (), and with regard to the contravening necessity by which () “l’espace est intrinsèquement hétérogène au temps dans son essence” (). Lachièze-Rey’s analysis returns repeatedly to the original heterogeneity thesis of the Aesthetic; “l’espace utilisé pour représenter le temps n’offre pas toutes les caractéristics que de l’espace comme intuition de sens” ().

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necessarily by the heterogeneity thesis, between the line as a spatial figure and the inner, temporal act of “drawing a line in thought.”157 Even in this context, then, Kant retains the heterogeneity thesis. Kant would direct our attention not to an accomplished description of external motion, but the motion of, and in, a subject in the act of describing, or drawing (B ). Kant understands motion in this context as “the articulation of a space . . . of the manifold in outer intuition as such” (B , note; italics added). We are to “abstract from this manifold” of outer, spatial intuition and “attend merely to the act whereby we determine inner sense according to its form” of succession. This form remains temporal, and is asserted again in its heterogeneity and independence, even where its interdependence appears so clearly as necessary. Kant’s “analogy” evinces the persistence rather than the resolution of the heterogeneity thesis.158 The reason for Kant’s reassertion of the heterogeneity thesis is given immediately. Kant claims that this formal heterogeneity in our sensible forms requires that we “seek the determinations of durations of time, or

157 In her analysis of drawing a line in thought at B  in Kant and the Capacity to Judge, Longuenesse ignores this distinction; “the understanding produces the intuition of space only insofar as it affects inner sense with this production. It thereby also produces the intuition of time as the form in which it intuits its own act (of producing the spatial intuition). There would be no intuition of time were it not for the act of producing a figure in space. Both intuitions are the result of one and the same act of self-affection” (). Longuenesse grants to Kant’s image of drawing a line in thought the demonstration or depiction of the “interdependence of space and time.” The heterogeneity thesis is completely lost from view. 158 With regard to this “analogy” of the figuration of time by a line, De Vleeschauwer writes; “Kant défend la collaboration nécessaire de la ligne (ou en généralisant l’exemple, de l’espace) dans la répresentation du temps. Il confirme par là une doctrine maintes fois exposée, parce qu’elle est intimement liée avec des thèses fondamentales du criticisme.” De Vleeschauwer recognizes that “malgré leur connexion intime, il faut distinguer un intérêt double dans l’appel à la ligne. Tout d’abord, la ligne est invoquée simplement comme figurative ou symbole spatial externe du temps. Dans cette attribution, elle est analogue au temps, en ce qu’elle symbolise un cours ou une série infinie à dimension unique, sans perdre de vue, toutefois, cette différence notable que la ligne présente une diversité simultanée, et le temps une diversité successive . . . Alors, en produisant successivement une multiplicité spatiale a priori, nous affectons le sujet passif, nous lui conférons une matière, et nous constituons par cette opération la matière nécessaire á la représentation de la succession. Le rôle figuratif est désigné par l’emploi de termes tels que figuration ou image du temps” which for this reason remains external thereto. De Vleeschauwer concludes; “la figuration du temps par la ligne n’est donc pas la plus importante doctrine. Le symbolisme, avons-nous vu, n’est pas parfait, parce qu’il faut traduire le successif par le simultané . . . L’analogie qui se base sur la dimension unique est loin d’être aussi assurée . . . ” (La déduction transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant, v. III,  ff.).

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time-positions, for all inner perceptions, in those features of outer things as changeable” (B ). We must have recourse to outer intuition, because duration and positionality were precisely those Merkmale denied to the manifold of inner intuition.159 This heterogeneity in form is intrinsic to Kant’s argument regarding the heterogeneity in origin between sensibility and understanding. We were directed to “abstract from this manifold [of outer sense] and attend merely to the act whereby we determine inner sense according to its form” only propaedeutically or to a further end (B ). Kant suggests that in the evident distinction between the mere succession involved in the act of determining inner sense, and the product of a spatial figure, we can see further that “by no means does the understanding already find in inner sense a combination of the manifold.” Instead, by discovering the aspatiality of inner sense, we are then prepared to understand that “the understanding produces it inasmuch as the understanding affects that [inner] sense” (B ). The indeterminacy of inner intuition, then, offers itself as an invitation to comprehend the efficacy of the necessary synthetic activity of the understanding. The barrenness of the former indicates already the necessary effectivity of the latter. But it would seem that in establishing the conditions of synthesis in the formal aspatiality of inner sense, Kant has made problematic the conditions for synthesis in the spatialization (and hence categorial determination) of inner sense. While the necessity thereof is not in doubt, the possibility thereof is doubtful to the degree that function follows form. From this parallelism, if not isomorphism, Kant would claim the universal ideality of intuition, and hence all cognition (B ). The ‘paradox’ of inner sense thus “involves neither more 159 In Space, Time, and Thought in Kant (Kluwer, Dordrecht, ), Melnick introduced the “full propriety” thesis as follows. Melnick admitted that the doctrine of inner sense underlies the majority of second-edition amendments; “the emphasis of the B reworking of the Aesthetic seems to be on time in particular” (). But with specific attention to §§ – of the B-Deduction, itself “the reworking of A –A  [in the A] deduction,” Melnick suggested that the reworking centered on “self-knowledge, or bringing the manifold, according to the special mode in which it is given in inner intuition, to combination or apperception.” In the B-Edition, this “combination” will obtain with regard to both inner sense and outer sense, or “without us or within us.” This allows Melnick his claim to a “full propreity of sensible intuition” across the heterogeneity of forms and domain in the B-Edition, since “there is no such talk of two manifolds in the eighth paragraph of A –.” Melnick suggests that “these differences between A – A  and §§ – of the B-Edition indicate Kant’s recognition that this “full propriety” is required to experience most generally, “the fulness of space and time.” Melnick does not investigate the assumptions and implications of this not minor amendment.

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nor less difficulty than does the question as to how I can be an object to myself at all” insofar as both forms of intuition can and do submit to a categorial determination of their unsynthesized manifold (B ). The aporia of inner sense is not resolved thereby, however, but is only reasserted. Indeed, Kant claims that on this basis, “it can easily be established” that “space is but a pure form of the appearances of the outer senses” and time “not an object of outer intuition at all.” Time, Kant asserts, “cannot be presented in ourselves except under the image of a line” and only “insofar as we draw that line” in a successive and thus inner sensory and temporal manifold. Indeed, this drawing of a line, Kant now asserts, does not evince interdependence, but independence, for in the exhibition of time, we make articulate its “one-dimensionality” (B ).160 Importantly, Kant assumes the independence or heterogeneity in the manifolds of intuition that affords him the claim that duration and positionality obtain only in outer sense. Kant also, however, presumes the formal interdependence whereby this independence could be reconciled functionally to interdependence or homogeneity, in order that we be able to “draw a line in thought.”161 Indeed, Kant will conclude this inconclu160 In discussing the figure of the line and the aspatial succession of inner sense, Paton states that “Kant is attempting, whether successfully or not, to connect our concept of time with that of space; and even the mere attempt was, I imagine, an advance on the accepted views of his own period.” Paton does not cite any allegedly inferior contemporary views. Paton insists that “it is, however, clear enough that . . . the appearances given to inner sense are the same as the appearances given to outer sense. All appearances, so far as we are conscious of them, or at least so far as we are conscious of them as present to our minds, are apperances to inner sense—even a line or a circle or another geometerical figure . . . ” (). For this reason, Paton “cannot think that Kant is nearly so confused or so obscure on this side of his doctrine as is commonly alleged.” Although Paton cites no texts in order to ground his affirmation, his critique clearly is directed against the insufficiently affirmative accounts of Kemp Smith, Adickes, and Caird (see p. , v. II). Paton adds that “I believe that, as much as his account requires expansion and modification, he is at least dealing with a very real problem, and he is right in saying that all our ideas, whatever their origin, may be regarded as modifications of the mind, and so as belonging to inner sense” (). Paton closes his discussion by stating that nevertheless, “Kant’s doctrine requires a much fuller working out than it has received,” and that Paton himself attempted (). Indeed, Paton records, “I think it is true that a fuller working out of his doctrine is urgently required. But the alleged muddle seems to me largely the invention of critics, who too often continue to repeat charges which rest on little or no evidence . . .” (ibid, –). I hope to provide herein the full account requested by Paton, and, with it, the evidence necessary for judging for ourselves the degree to which this doctrine presents a ‘very real problem’ for Kant’s theoretical philosophy. 161 Chenet terms Kant’s equivocation upon the object and proper content of inner sense “paralogistic” (). Such determinationes oppositae have indicated for many an ambi-

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sive thought-experiment with the claim that; “determinations of inner sense must thus be arranged by us as appearances in time in precisely the same way as the determinations of the outer senses are arranged by us in space” (B ).162 While we are familiar with this language of demand

guity in Kant’s general concept of Anschauung. Cramer thus differentiates Vorstellung, das Vorgestellte, and das Vorstellen, in Monade, p. . Cramer insists (following Husserl and Heidegger) upon differentiating the actus animi and the intentional object of the act. While important, this critique directs analysis immediately to reconstruction rather than understanding; the operative and salient distinction is not phenomenological but transcendental, and is derivative of the heterogeneity thesis and its division of spheres, formal characters, and range of application for these concepts of Vorstellung and das Vorgestellte. Reuter, similarly, in Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe, discusses “der Reflexion Probleme” as that by which apparently “nicht in uno et eodum actu das von ihr Intendierte und die Intention des von ihr Intendierten erfassen.” Reuter views (with Henrich and Frank and others) as common to both Descartes and Kant “das philosphische Projekt der Moderne,” in both cases “in deren Zentrum der Begriff des Subjekts” and the Selbstreferenz and Selbstreflexion thereof. Reuter also recognizes the ground for this difference, and directs attention to the Strukturdifferenz between external reflection and internal reflection. Reuter identifies the reason or necessity that inner intuition must remain indeterminate, in order to advance the refutations of rational psychology. Precisely this exigence, rather than any general phenomenological concern with the concept of “intuition,” required the “skizzierte Unterscheidung von intentio recta (cognition)” of outer sense “und intentio obliqua (reflexio)” in inner sense (). Pippin, in Kant’s Theory of Form (New Haven, Yale University Press, , p. ), also makes the point that “we have to note that intuition (Anschauung) . . . can mean either the act of intuiting (Anschauen), or that intuited (das Angeschauete). Pippin here follows Schrader’s “The Transcendental Ideality and Empirical Reality of Kant’s Space and Time,” Review of Metaphysics  (): . 162 Ameriks’ often-cited investigation of the doctrine of inner sense is apologetic. Ameriks suggests indeed that “even the best of Kant’s recent interpreters (e.g., Strawson, Bennett, Wolff, Walker) have much exaggerated the weakness of Kant’s doctrine of the ideality of self-knowledge” (). To the end of defense, Ameriks begins with Kant’s well-known depiction of “the secret power” of the soul “whereby judgment is possible.” This is, of course, “nothing other than the faculty of inner sense, that is, of making one’s own representations the object of one’s thoughts” (). Ameriks suggests that while “Kant’s definition of inner sense undergoes considerable revisions over time,” Kant holds consistently that “inner sense [is] that form of consciousness which is laid bare when one abstracts from all that is ‘outer’ in consciousness.” Ameriks protests that this is “a very ambiguous characterization.” For Ameriks, the ambiguity is contained in the following; “such ‘outer consciousness’ might mean [a] spatial as opposed to non-spatial consciousness, but it could also mean [b] direct as opposed to reflexive consciousness, or [c] the content of our representations as opposed to the acts of representing.” To address this three-fold possibility, Ameriks will articulate [a] the independent stream theory, [b] the reflection theory, [c] the act theory. Ameriks suggests that “these theories have never been systematically compared, although the importance of determining exactly what Kant meant by ‘inner sense’ is surely obvious for any attempt to understand and evaluate Kant’s mature theory of self-knowledge.” Ameriks rejects the first construal, in spite of textual evidence advanced in his own treatment, as “unduly restrictive” (). Ameriks notes that nonetheless “various interpreters have in effect ascribed such a belief to Kant.” Ameriks

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(inner sense ‘must’ be . . . ), the precise meaning of the locution ‘formal character of appearances in time’ may now be quite unfamiliar or uncertain, as Kant’s depiction of time as form of inner sense has vacillated between a maximal inclusiveness and a real restriction. This uncertainty regarding the scope and status of inner intuition effects §  as well. While clear in itself, and in its restrictive account of inner sense, the relation of this construal in §  to competing construals (e.g., in the first-Edition Deduction), remains quite unclear. In apparent distinction from outer sense (and its materium dabile), inner sense is now to yield only a restricted (self-) representation. This self-consciousness “is a thought, not an intuition” (B ). Self-cognition, like cognition generally and as opposed to mere formal self-consciousness, would require that one be able to apply to the manifold of inner intuition “the categories, which constitute the thought of an object as such through the combination of the manifold in one apperception” (B ). Only in this impossible application of the categories could inner sense yield inner perception, modelled upon outer sense and outer perception. Self-intuition and selfcognition for this reason would “require a determinate intuition whereby this manifold is given” (B ). Self-cognition, however, “can only occur in conformity with the form of inner sense and according to the particular way in which the manifold that I combine is given in inner intuition.”163 Kant would subject here, and again, the effectivity of synthesis to the constraining conditions given by the particular structure of each form of intuition, taken respectively or individually. While outer intuition unproblematically allows for the conditions for synthetic cognition, the inconstancy and indeterminacy of inner intuition disallow such condirejects the thesis on the ground that “this is in tension with Kant’s basic doctrine that all representations belong to inner sense,” inclusive of outer, spatial intuitive representations, and indeed with Kant’s claim at B  that “all our perception . . . must be in effect subject to a comprehensive unification by the intellect and hence to apperception and reflection” (; see also ). Ameriks presumes, of course, that infelicity must be attributed to interpreters and cannot be attributed to Kant. 163 For Havet, the problem of the ordo cognoscendi is a problem of subsumption, specifically, the subsumption of the external substantial materium dabile to inner intuition. In the second-edition Deduction, then, as opposed to the first, “on n’explique pas comment la matière empirique se prête à ses formes.” The second-edition deduction “rend cette subsomption inintelligible, car on ne saisit plus le rapport entre un système de principes et la manière dont le divers se donne en fait de la conscience.” In fact, “dire que nécessairement le divers est reçu dans les formes déjà catégorialement déterminées de l’intuition a priori, c’est profiter d’une assimilation abusive” between the condition of outer intuition, which allow for a categorial determination, and those of inner intuition, which explicitly do not (ibid, –).

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tions. For self-cognition, as a possible instance of the laws and conditions of cognition generally, would require “not only the consciousness of myself or the fact that I think myself,” but “also an intuition of the manifold in me whereby I determine this thought.” Yet, Kant claims, within the sphere of inner sense, “I exist as an intelligence,” not even as quod sum but as quod cogitans. Although we are only two pages from Kant’s claim at B  that “determinations of inner sense must thus be arranged by us as appearances in time in precisely the same way as the determinations of the outer senses are arranged by us in space,” we are far removed indeed from that claim conceptually. Now, Kant will claim that the content of this consciousness could be constituted only as “the consciousness only of its power of combination.” As Kant had put the point at A , “consciousness of oneself is far from being cognition of oneself.”164 Here at B , Kant will assert, similarly; “hence consciousness of oneself is far from being a cognition of oneself, regardless of the categories” (B ). Self-cognition, as a species of cognition, would require both “the consciousness of myself ” and “an intuition 164

In his third volume (La déduction transcendentale dans l’œuvre de Kant [Paris, ]), De Vleeschauwer is especially clear on this point. For “dans ces conditions,” according to which the conditions for the applicability of the categories is denied to inner sense, “l’apperception ne peut faire fonction d’une connaissance réelle” (). The “moi d’aperception est l’unité de la pensée, c’est-à-dire une forme à (sic) priori à laquelle tout contenu matériel fait défaut. Dès lors, la connaissance du moi doit être celle du moi en tant que chose en soi ou en tant que phénomène et, comme la première est absolument impossible, il nous reste à examiner la possibilité d’une connaissance du moi comme phénomène” of inner sense (). De Vleeschauwer notes that on the widest possible principles of transcendental idealism, “le moi du sens interne est un objet de connaissance, c’est-à-dire une diversité de predicats accessibles dans la perception interne” (). The predicates available to an inner perception, however, had also been enumerated by means of the Aesthetic doctrine of the form of inner sense as a “limiting condition.” De Vleeschauwer on this basis will ask himself; “quelle connaissance pouvons-nous revendiquer quant à ce moi-sujet?,” qua thinking and as displayed in inner sense, rather than the I qua object, qua determined materium of outer sense? He admits that “nous ne connaissons le moi comme object dans ses déterminations ontologiques; nous ne le connaissons comme objet que dans les déterminations phénoménalistes du sens interne.” He will also suggest that “il va sans dire que les déductions de l’existence du moi ne peuvent nous satisfaire, même dans le cadre du criticisme. Elles donnent lieu à une série de questions auxquelles le texte n’a pu répondre et auxquelles Kant, peut-être, aurait été bien emarrassé de répondre.” De Vleeschauwer can only confirm previous scholars’ consternation; “Erdmann en a soulevé les trois principales et nous ne saurions mieux faire que de les répéter fidèlement.” First, “comment faut-il concevoir que la fonction logique de judgment assertorique, qui n’est pas encore une catégorie, puisse nous garantir l’existence du moi comme un être?” Second, “de quelle nature est le réel de la pensée qui n’est ni phénomène, ni noumène, puisqu’il n’y a pas de tiers élément entre ces deux? Qu’est au fond, cette perception indéterminée, par laquelle le moi serait donnée comme un être?”

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of the manifold in me whereby I determine this thought” (B ). What then, and again, can be said of the character and capacities of this manifold “in me”? This manifold, unlike outer sense, yields a restricted objectivity. By means of it, I am and can be conscious “only of the power” or activity “of combination.” Any synthetic claim requires a determinate intuition, of course, and “the manfold to be combined . . . is subject to a limiting condition, which is called inner sense.” Inner sense—in accordance with the heterogeneity thesis—“can make combination intuitable only in terms of time-relations” (B ).165 Such time-relations disallow any claim to the apprehension of “the same subject” in any act of self-cognition, for the pure successiveness characteristic of the temporal manifold of inner sense.166 The necessity of this restrictive construal of the doctrine of inner 165 Ernst Cassirer (Kant’s Life and Thought [New Haven, Yale, ]), exegeting A – B , suggests that; “all substances, insofar as they can be perceived to coexist in space, [are] in thoroughgoing reciprocity.” For Cassirer, this implies that it is “only possible to objectify succession by linking the elements by a causal rule, in a sequence regarded as necessary,” which means that “the objectivity of coexistence [Zugleichsein] can only be assured when the two factors . . . stand in a dynamic relation” in outer sense. Since the pure concept of causality cannot be applied to the pure succession of inner sense, or “as long as we abandon ourselves simply to the stream of sensations and impressions” in inner sense, “there is for us no simultaneity . . . because what we apprehend is just something flowing and successive” (). Thus the ‘indeterminacy’ of inner intuition; “there is no longer any world of empirical forms for us if we abstract from the pure intuition of space, as there is no “nature” made up of physical things except through the understanding’s fundamental principle of causality.” Anticipating the application of this heterogeneity thesis in the Dialectic, Cassirer apologetically allows Kant this claim without argument (). Bernard Bourgeois (“Cogito kantien et cogito fichtéen,” Fichte-Studien Numéro Hors Série) also examines the possibility of “la intuition empirique déterminé du Moi,” given that “le temps lui-même ne fournit pas la permanence requise d’abord pour la saisie même de l’identité a soi d’un moi sensible objectif . . . ” (). For Bourgeois, this inconstancy implies that self-consciousness cannot become self-cognition, and that any Selbstanschauung must remain “indéterminé en son contenu” (), and universal rather than individuated. 166 Aquila (Matter in Mind: A Study of Kant’s Transcendental Deduction, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, , particularly ch. , § , “The Problem of Inner Sense”) notes the differences both in manner and matter of exposition across the first and second editions, and states that “the second edition Critique limits the awareness of “spontaneous” activities to a purely conceptual sort of apprehension, thereby excluding its presence from a manifold of intuition (B ).” In spite of this indeterminacy of inner intuition, Aquila also recognizes Kant’s depiction of inner sense as universally inclusive of all cognition; indeed, “at one point Kant in fact characterizes inner sense as the Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen [at A , B ]” (). Aquila’s concern is motivated by his reading of A , B  and B ; “consciousness of self according to the determinations of our states in inner perceptions is merely empirical and always changing. No fixed and abiding self can present itself in this flux of inner appearances.” Aquila also adduces A , in

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sense will only be apparent in the critique of rational psychology and the refutation of materialism. The problematic character of the grounds for these critical argumentative positions is, however, already patent. While inner sense is to provide the ideality of inner intuition by providing its formal characters a priori, inner sense is not to provide those characters as would be sufficient for self-cognition. The heterogeneity thesis, and the indeterminacy of inner intuition, Kant apparently here sees not as aporetic, but as a desideratum, in anticipation of the application of this doctrine in the Paralogisms section. While Kant’s various and variant assertions of, and demands upon, the character and capacities of inner sense in these most complex final sections of the second-Edition Deduction discourage hope for an immediate or crystalline comprehension of his doctrine, it is for this reason more, rather than less, important that we follow his account closely. We must do so not in spite of its labyrinthine redirections, but precisely because of such redirections, and misdirections, in order to allow them to articulate and shed light upon the entirety of the architectonic structure Kant has erected, and the way in which inner intuition is found somehow at its center and somehow, problematically, at each of its extremes. To the degree to which we proceed into the darker details of Kant’s expositions, we must also retain in view, and orient ourselves by, our most general indications of the basic argumentative intentions, positive and negative, those that guide Kant’s expositions of inner intuition. These latter, general indications will allow us to retain a sense of equilibrium or equanimity, even as Kant apparently continues to shift the “border-posts” (in the language of the third Critique) that define his doctrine during our investigation itself. Kant begins §  of the B-Edition Deduction by asserting no such restriction upon inner intuition, but rather a demand upon its possible positive use. In § , the penultimate section of the Deduction and the last before Kant’s review of its essential results, Kant instead wishes to

which Kant asserts that “time, the sole form of our inner intuition, has nothing abiding, and therefore yields knowledge only of the change of determinations, not of any object that can be thereby determined.” Aquila insists, however, on “continuing to abstract from this problem” (). Aquila () will even claim isomorphism; “for Kant the ‘determining’ of outer intuition always is a determining of inner sense.” Aquila will do so on the basis of Kant’s claim that “the representations of the outer senses constitute the proper material with which we occupy our mind.” For Aquila, “this claim is so important that, given that the objects of outer intuition are themselves conceded to be mere appearances, Kant offers it as sufficient to establish the ideality of the objects of inner intuition.” But the assertion of the ideality thesis does not answer the question of the heterogeneity thesis.

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ascertain “how it is possible, through categories, to cognize a priori whatever objects our senses may encounter” (B ). Kant does not immediately specify whether such objects include those of inner sense. And indeed, his exposition concerns first “not the form of their intuition” at all, but rather “the laws of their combination” (B ). The problemcontext for §  is issued clearly; “without the suitability of the categories, one fails to see how everything that our senses may encounter would be subject to a priori laws . . . ” (B ). In order to deduce the combinatory laws for sensible objects, Kant first, and expectedly, will specify the forms which order our reception of such objects. As lexically prior to any intellectual determination, it is “the [intuitive] forms to which the synthesis of apprehension of the manifold of appearance must always conform.” Indeed, “that synthesis itself can take place only according to this form.”167 In § , Kant recognized “something paradoxical” in the doctrine of inner sense, which Kant traced to “the exposition of the form of inner sense” in §  of the Aesthetic. Now in § , Kant will not only clarify but will advance past the Sinnenlehre as set out in the organon of the first Critique. Space and time, Kant will now argue, once themselves “presented a priori,” are not only “forms of sensible intuition,” but “themselves intuitions” (B ). The forms of intuition are to allow for the presentation of objects in their immediate unity and spatio-temporal identity. But the forms of intuition are also to allow for the presentation of themselves in their own intrinsic character. Each must submit to a transcendental apprehension, toward their inclusion within the transcendental topic of human cognition.

167 A review and clarification of the two syntheses, subjective and objective, and the two aspects of the aporia which describe them, the formal and functional aspects respectvely, may be helpful. Spatial intuition and its conditions () must be contained within time as form of inner sense for both syntheses, and yet () cannot be introduced therein, without (as Kant will express this in the Paralogisms) “violating the limits of our [inner] sensibility.” This analytic unity of consciousness, a subjective rather than objective unity, and the “intrinsically sporadic” indeterminacy and inconstancy in inner intuition, represents the first, formal aspect of the aporia of inner sense (B ). This problem follows from the original heterogeneity thesis of the Aesthetic and its depiction of the indeterminacy of inner intuition. It is only upon the introduction of the theme of the objective unity of consciousness that the second, functional aspect of the aporia becomes manifest. This second aspect of the aporia isolates the preconditions for a synthetic unity in cognition, insofar as its objective correlate can only be given for the objective synthesis of cognition in and through the functional transitus of a given, external object (materium dabile) from outer intuition to inner intuition, and thereupon to the understanding.

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But it is not clear that Kant intends such a presentation of the forms of intuition. The title of the section indicated not a second-order examination of the forms of intuition but a specification of the ‘universally possible use of the pure concepts’ by means of those forms. Kant specifies his concern by differentiating “form of intuition” from “formal intuition” (B ). Kant suggests that while “form of intuition gives us merely a manifold,” formal intuition instead “gives us unity of presentation.” Now, Kant had claimed that the manifoldness of intuition was precisely a manifoldness within unity, an intuitive unity in quo rather than a discursive unity sub quo.168 Thus the apparent task of formal intuition might well have been thought already accomplished by the exposition of the Aesthetic.169 Kant now suggests, in , that “in the Transcendental Aesthetic, I had merely included this unity with sensibility” in order that it be shown to “precede any concept” (B ). Kant will still insist that “this unity of a priori intuition still belongs to space and time, and not to the concept of understanding.” But this orthodox claim is belied (and followed) by Kant’s suggestion that “this unity in fact presupposes a synthesis, and this synthesis does not belong to the senses.”170 This amendment belies 168 See Reuter (Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe [Königshausen & Nuemann ]), p. , for discussion of the “immediacy thesis” and “the individuality thesis” in this light. 169 Ewing follows Paton in his discussion of the form of intuition/formal intuition distinction. For Ewing, “this necessary unity (of space and time as forms of intuition) was treated in the Aesthetic as if it belonged to space and time in their own right, but space and time, as pure intuitions, possess unity only because they presuppose a synthesis which does not belong to sense at all. Unity is therefore given along with the pure intuitions of space and time, but it is not given in these intuitions” (ibid, ). Thus, Ewing will conclude that such an intellectual synthesis, and “the categories of substance, causality, and community are necessary conditions of the unity of time and space” themselves. Ewing also recognizes that “the category of substance cannot be applied to the appearance self because it has no absolutely permanent element. One would expect indeed that, since knowledge of the phenomenal self presupposes a synthesis, it would involve all the categories, but Kant hesitates to apply to the phenomenal self either substance or community, and there are passages in which he seems to deny that it is subject to any categories” (). In this way, Ewing returns to the original problematic status of a unity of space and time, which must, and yet cannot, obtain in inner intuition. Reuter (ibid) discusses the form of intuitionformal intuition distinction in the context of his treatment of the aspatiality of inner sense, and expresses concern that a unity in intuition through a formal intuition implies the fallacy of “Subreption” on Kant’s own part (; for the definition of “subreption,” see our exegesis of A , below). 170 For discussion of the form of intuition/formal intuition distinction, see Buchdahl, Metaphysics, pp. – and Waxman, Model, pp. –. Benoist treats this problematic origin of formal intuition (as an intuitive “intuition de l’intuition” or as already intellective), at ibid, pp. –. Lachièze-Rey treats of Kant’s “incertitude et hésitation”

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Kant’s virtually constant repetition of the priority thesis, and leaves in some doubt the origin and status of Kant’s second-Edition concept of a formal intuition. With the conception of a formal intuition Kant hopes to depict the means by which, and way in which, “space and time are first given as intuitions” themselves, and thus to and for the cognitive faculty as such, by means of an intellectual determination of the form of intuition. It is for this reason, apparently, that Kant wishes to claim that the unity of formal intuition is given ‘with’ and not ‘in’ the form of intuition itself. While the intellectual determination of the object of intuition utilizes the form of intuition, the intellectual inspection of the form of intuition itself results in a ‘formal intuition.’ This appears to be the grounds for Kant’s conclusion that “this synthetic unity can be none other than the unity of the combination, conforming to the categories but applied to our sensible intuition, of the manifold of a [single] given intuition as such” (B ). Formal intuition would seem to secure not a unity between forms of intuition but a unity across the internal distinctions within each form of intuition. In formal intuition, Kant asserts, space, for example, “taken as object,” rather than the form for the appearance of any object, “contains more than the mere form of intuition.” Space, taken as itself an object, contains also the “combination of [its] given manifold.” This combination, as generated from within intuition in an intuition of (the form of) intuition, is to yield “an intuitive presentation.” But the scope and status of this unity of presentation are far from clear. The motivation for asserting such a unity is quite clear. Kant announced in the title of the section, the need to demonstrate that “the categories are conditions of the possibility of experience and hence hold a priori for all objects of experience” (B ). This universal relation between the understanding and intuition is specified to inner intuition at B , where Kant suggests that “in time I necessarily present synthetic unity of the manifold.” But the manner in which this synthetic unity is specified to time is startling, and does not admit of the apparently clear resolution just given to the novel concept of formal intuition.

on the intellective or intuitive character of formal intuition on pp. –, –. Lachièze-Rey also notes the contravening argumentative contexts for this point; “ce divers [d’intuition] dépourvu d’une unité pour soi,” for critical purposes “doit bien cependant posséder une unité en soi” for constructive purposes (). For further treatment of this problem, see Lachièze-Rey, ibid, pp. –, –.

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Kant claims that when perceiving a change of state of an object across a temporal series, in an “appearance [that] is inner intuition,” I “lay time [qua unity] at its basis” (B ). In fact, “without this unity, the relation [of moments in time] could not be given determinately (as regards a temporal sequence)” in an intuition. Discrete moments of time must all pertain to a single underlying time. But Kant attributes here neither constancy alone, nor only a general categorial determination of inner sense, as he has throughout the deductions, but rather determines with precision the manner in which inner intuition is and can be determined categorically. Here Kant elects to illustrate the categorial determination of inner sense by means of the same individual category of cause that Kant had intended to deny to inner intuition in the second-Edition Preface. There, Kant was concerned that the spontaneity of the ‘object of inner sense, the soul’ not be reduced to the laws of mechanism, and in order that Seelenlehre be made impossible in principle. Here, Kant will claim that “through this category of cause, when applied to my sensibility, everything that happens is, in terms of its relation, determined by me in time as such” and hence in inner intuition. As above, it is “in time that I necessarily present synthetic unity of the manifold” (B ). It is clear, however, that this assertion would provide the basis not only for a Kategorienlehre, as intended, but also for a Seelenlehre, as unintended. Was not transcendental critique to “cut off at the very root” not only “idealism and skepticism,” but also “materialism and fanaticism” by denying the conditions for synthesis, and hence for knowledge, to inner intuition (B xxxiv)? Has this same transcendental critique not been forced into a series of revisions across the second-Edition to return to this question of the Merkmale of inner intuition? Should the discovery of the basic tension that defines Kant’s doctrine of inner intuition not lead to further examination of the effects of such a tension upon the widest argumentative intentions of the first Critique? The reason why this vacillation in Kant’s construal of the character and capacities of inner intuition runs through the Deductions has been made clear. As above, the task for the deduction lies in “determining whether we cannot provide for human reason safe passage between two extremes” by assigning to reason “determinate boundaries,” or limitations in its possible use, “which yet keep open to it the entire realm of its appropriate activity” (A , B ). At its highest and concluding point in § , Kant appears to open to cognition the realm of its appropriate activity only by dissolving the ‘restrictive condition’ on inner sense that could assign limits to the sphere of its legitimate activity.

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Interestingly, Kant seeks to “keep my readers from being troubled prematurely by the worrisome detrimental consequences of this proposition” in a footnote to his concluding remarks in § . He reminds his reader that “intuition is required only for cognizing” and that “if intuition is lacking, the thought of the object can otherwise still have its true and useful consequences for the subject’s use of reason” in moral-practical self-determination. But the claim in this context to “the determination of the subject” independently of intuitive conditions in inner sense— and thus in an autonomously non-theoretical and moral philosophy, in which “intuition is lacking”—seems open to not only skeptical but even properly critical doubt. These final comments from the last section of the second-edition Deduction (B ) bring to conclusion Book I of the Critique of Pure Reason.

III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta) iii. An Analytic of (Synthetic) Principles; Axioms, Anticipations, Analogies, and the Amplification of Inner Intuition Thus far, we have reviewed the progress of Kant’s argument through his “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements,” those elements with which Kant constructed his “architectonic” and “topic” of human cognition. We have reviewed this process through the lens of the principal theses of the “organon” of the Critique, the Transcendental Aesthetic, and more precisely its doctrine of inner intuition or time as the form of inner sense. The latter may now be seen as central not only to our analysis but to the structure and aims of Kant’s Critique as such. The Aesthetic, we saw, the first Part of the Doctrine of Elements, was divided internally into two basic sections, a division that followed from a basic distinction between our two forms of intuition, between space as form of outer sense and time as form of inner sense. The second Part of the Doctrine of Elements, the Transcendental Logic, functioned in this context as an Introduction to the first major Division of the work, the Transcendental Analytic. The Analytic itself is divided into two basic sections. These were termed () an Analytic of Concepts, and () an Analytic of Principles. The former, through the deductions of the pure concepts of the understanding, just treated, functions as “a canon for the understanding” (A , B ). The latter instead will function as “a canon for the power of judgment (Urteilskraft)” by providing an account

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of “the application of concepts of the understanding to appearances” (see also B , above). The latter will allow for, and open up to, a distinction between the “logic of truth” found in the Analytic’s determination of the nature and dynamics of valid judgment, and a “logic of illusion” as found in the Dialectic’s determination of the impossibility of those judgments of metaphysics and theology. The latter will “expand cognition beyond the bounds of possible experience,” through “illusory assertions” impossible given the nature and limits of our cognitive faculty (A –, B – ).171 This Analytic of Principles will contain, then, principles which regulate our capacity to judge. Kant enumerates these principles as follows. First and principally, Kant depicts the Schematism of the Pure Concepts of the Understanding (from A –, B –); this principle concerns itself with “the sensible condition under which alone pure concepts of understanding can be used” (A , B ). In this context, Kant will provide a “Systematic Presentation of All Synthetic Principles of Pure Understanding,” which are entitled respectively () Axioms (of Intuition; A –, B –), () Anticipations (of Perception; A –, B–), () Analogies (of Experience; A –, B–), and () Postulates (of Empirical Thought as such; A – B –). In each, Kant informs us already at A , B , “I have in mind only the principles of pure understanding as related to inner sense.” Most generally, in the Synthetic Principles of the Transcendental Analytic, Kant is concerned with securing the possibility of synthetic judgment. More specifically, as Kant specifies in introducing the “Supreme Principle of All Synthetic Judgments,” the synthetic principles “concern the medium of all synthetic judgments,” the “sole inclusive representation (Inbegriff) that contains all our presentations” i.e., “inner sense and its a priori form, time” (A , B ). These Synthetic Principles present an amplification of inner sense that we have already witnessed in the Deductions. Nonetheless, a review of the basic features of their 171 In fact, we need not wait for the Dialectic for a reminder of the limitations to which Kant will subject inner intuition. In the second-Edition, Kant inserted a Refutation of Idealism (B –), as a conclusion to this Analytic of Principles. The aim of the Refutation, in the words of Kant’s conclusion thereto, is to indicate “the limits of the possibility of self-cognition from mere inner consciousness” (B ). This secondEdition addition will provide for us an occasion to reflect upon the final, consummating moments of Kant’s amplification of inner intuition in the Analytic, and to anticipate the negative restrictions upon inner intuition that Kant will institute most thoroughly in the Paralogisms (A –, B –).

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cumulative determination of inner intuition will be profitable both in order to understand the widest intentions of Kant’s amplificative argument in the Analytic, and to advance our own argument regarding that amplificative argument and its aporiai. Kant begins the Analytic of Principles upon an already familiar basis. Kant differentiates general from transcendental logic. The former “abstracts from all content of cognition” whether pure or empirical and “deals merely with the form of thought (discursive cognition) as such.” General logic, then, consists only in the dissection “of the acts of reason into their moments” as analytic relations among concepts (A , B ). Transcendental logic, however, is to incorporate “the determinate content of pure a priori cognition.” This incorporation of the synthetic content of cognition occasions, and requires, the “exposition of the universal but sufficient criteria (Kennzeichen),” which yield, or do not yield, “the conditions under which objects can be given in harmony with concepts.” Without this incorporation, “these concepts would be without any content” (A , B ). Kant’s “doctrine of the power of judgment” begins with a depiction of the ordo cognoscendi, that process in which “an object is subsumed under a concept,” or ‘brought to’ and ‘taken up by’ the understanding. This processus requires that “the presentation of the object must be homogenous with the concept,” since “the concept must contain what is presented in the object that is to be subsumed under it” (A , B ). Only on this condition can an object ‘be contained under’ a concept, and only in this way can a concept ‘contain’ and ‘range over’ its instances synthetically. Kant repeats the basic questions for the doctrine of the schematism, and for the doctrine of judgment; () “how” in an interdependence between, and movement from, intuition to intelletion, “can an intuition be subsumed under a category?” Reciprocally, “how,” in an interdependence between, and movement from, intellection to intuition, “can a category be applied to appearances?” (italics added). Just as the discovery of the pure concepts of the understanding in relation to intuition at A , B  “required a transcendental deduction” of the nature and limits of their interaction, so Kant here will suggest that “this question”—regarding the subsumption of intuition to intellection and the application of intellection to intuition—“necessitates a transcendental doctrine of the power of judgment” (A , B ). Kant responds with the claim that “there must be something third,” which though independent of either may yet secure the interdependence of both. This third element within the faculty of cognition “must be homogenous with the

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category” and also “with the appearance,” so as to provide for the unity of their difference, their own synthesis. This principle of mediation or punctum flexus contrarii must be “pure” in order to account for the possibility of a priori cognition, and must be “both intellectual and sensible” in itself in order to “make possible the application of the category to the appearance” or the subsumption of the appearance to the category. Kant names this mediating principle a “schema,” but explicates this principle with reference to, and even as a function of, time as form of inner intuition. For time, Kant continues, “as the formal condition for the manifold of inner sense,” is no less and as such the formal condition “for the connection of all presentations” (italics added). As the condition for the order and connection of all presentations as such, inner intuition (or “transcendental time-determination”) is “homogenous with the category, insofar as the time-determination is universal” (A , B ; italics added). In its acceptation as an Inbegriff, inner intuition contains, and provides the form for the subjective exhibition of all concepts, as such. Equally, the determination of time “is homogenous with appearance insofar as every empirical presentation of the manifold contains time” or is temporal, objectively. Inner intuition, and only inner intuition, provides for this inclusive representation or Inbegriff, that alone allows for the transcendental determination of the question of the Schematism, the question of “how” subsumption and application of concepts to intuition (and vice versa) are possible. Kant recognizes this centrality and significance of inner intuition. He repeats that “pure concepts,” insofar as they would be thought to be able to determine “objects as given to us” synthetically, must contain both “the function of understanding implicit in the category,” and equally the “formal conditions of sensibility (and of inner sense, specifically)” (A , B ). The latter offers, both to the transcendental topic and to transcendental determination of the ordo cognoscendi, “the universal condition under which alone the category can be applied to any object” (A , B ). But if this principle is “a product of the imagination” (importantly, one that remains “a secret art residing in the depths of the soul,” and thus does not meet the requirement of a “consciousness of its identity of function”), its productivity requires an amplified account of the character of inner sense. For its productivity “concerns the determination of inner sense as such, according to conditions of that sense’s form (time)” (A , B ). In spite of the importance of this amplification to his widest argumentative intentions, Kant excuses himself from “a dry and tedious

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dissection of what is required for transcendental schemata” so described. Kant instead intends merely “to exhibit them according to the order of the categories” (italics added). Importantly, we will see in our review of the Dialectic (most clearly at A ) that this incorporation of inner intuition and its conditions within the categorial and synthetic process of cognition—in a categorial determination of inner sense—can be set over against a necessary exclusion of inner intuition and its conditions from this same categorial and synthetic process of cognition.172 The very qualities of spatiotemporality, constancy, and determinability through which Kant characterizes inner intuition throughout the Analytic are precisely those that Kant will demand must not be thought to characterize inner intuition in the Paralogisms. This tension within Kant’s construal of the laws of inner intuition is far from “a dry and tedious” or “merely scholastic” theme, insofar as its significance extends throughout the extent of Kant’s theoretical philosophy as such, and its dual attempt to secure as well as limit the conditions for synthetic judgment. In his subsequent exposition of the Schematism, Kant will attempt to secure a series of amplificative claims regarding inner intuition. Kant

172

Famously, Strawson (The Bounds of Sense, ) considers there to be “four great dualities” in “Kant’s theory of the nature of human experience.” They are; “[a] the duality of appearances and of things as they are in themselves; [b] of intuitions and concepts; [c] of the a priori and the empirical; [d] of the inner and the outer.” He traces each to “the first major section of the work, the Transcendental Aesthetic.” The last ‘duality,’ however, and the doctrine that “space and time are forms of intuition,” generally, Strawson hopes to keep “in a fairly low key,” or de-emphasize (). In a sentence placed immediately after his review of Kant’s claim that “time is nothing but the form of inner sense,” Strawson thus simply accepts that “temporally ordered states of consciousness include perceptions of spatially ordered things.” () Strawson acknowledges that “space and time, bodies and states of consciousness, are not really on the same footing at all.” Although Kant insists that “all things in space and time are equally appearances,” Strawson recognizes that “the doctrine [of ideality] has a quite different force in respect of these two classes of things.” () Strawson also notes () that “this aspect of transcendnetal idealism comes decisively to the fore at certain points where the doctrine is being worked very hard, as it notably is in the solution to the first and second antinomies.” Outside of the Dialectic, however, “it recedes into the background at just the points where the doctrine itself is playing no very active role.” Nonetheless, Strawson hopes that “we shall often be able to ignore it [this discrepancy] altogether” (). Strawson returns however unwillingly to this “disastrous model” () for self-cognition (in “The Thing-in-itself and Appearances in Inner Sense”). There, Strawson treats this—“one of the obscurest points of all” in the Kantian philosophy ()—without having given the doctrine of inner and outer sense the centrality that it would apparently warrant as one of the ‘four great dualities’ of Kant’s theory of human experience.

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claims first to secure its determinability and indeed its determinacy; “now every sensation has a degree or magnitude whereby it can, in regard to the presentation of an object, fill the same time—i.e., the form of inner sense” (A , B ). This amplification of the representative capacity of inner sense at an instant is followed by its capacity to yield “a continuous and uniform production,” or even reproduction, “of that reality in time” or across times (A , B ). Thus, the Schematism possesses, with regard to inner sense, a function not dissimilar from that of the firstEdition Deduction: in both cases, the amplification of the character and capacity of inner sense is to yield claims to its determinability and continuity. Kant suggests that the “schema of substance is,” or represents, “the permanence of the real in time” (A , B ). In fact, at A , B , Kant will stipulate that “the proposition that substance is permanent is tautological,” virtually equating the two terms or elements. In other words, the schema of substance represents that which endures or perdures while all else changes, the immutable within the mutable. Such a relation obtains within time as well, between the immutability of time as such and the modes of time. The schema of substance, though, yields, as time as such does not, the presentation of the real in time, and therefore its objective determinability. It is “only by reference to substance” understood as the representation or schema of permanence in the series of appearances, that “succession (Folge) and simultaneity (Zugleichsein) can be determined in terms of time” and as modes of a single time (ibid). Thus, these two modes of time as first enumerated in the Aesthetic only obtain if permanence ‘underlies’ and articulates them. Permanence underlies these modes of time only if its schema is applicable to, and applied within, time as form of inner sense. For our purposes, this equation of substance with permanence is less important than the attribution of both substance and permanence to inner intuition. The intracacies of Kant’s argument here are less important for our purposes than their implication. Kant’s general characterization of the schematism suggests that “the schemata are nothing but a priori determinations of time according to rules.” These determinations or amplifications proceed “following the order of the categories.” The categories have progressively determined inner intuition; from its () possession of a magnitude which allowed for “the successive apprehension of an object” (A , B ), to its () possession of quality, depicted as the “filling of time” with an objective content or appearance, to its () possession of relationality by means of the schema of substance. This full

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categorial determination of inner sense yields an amplified “time-series, time-content, time-order, and time-sum-total in regard to all possible objects” (A , B ). It is not surprising, then, to learn that “the transcendental synthesis of imagination comes down to nothing other than the unity in inner sense of all the manifold of intuition” (ibid). This synthetic activity of the imagination upon inner sense yields not only, however, a synthesis of reproduction, but further implies a synthesis of recognition. The effective activity of the imagination “comes down to,” in the sense of securing, “the unity of apperception as a function corresponding to inner sense (a receptivity).” In other words, if it is true that “the schemata of sensibility are what first realize the categories,” they do so only by means of an amplification (amplifizieren) of time as form of inner intuition as that manifold on and in, and to which the categories can be applied (A , B ). The importance of this amplification in the context of the Analytic is patent. For “if one omitted from the concept of substance the sensible determination of permanence, it would signify nothing more than something that can be thought as a subject” analytically.173 Shorn of their schemata, “the categories . . . present no object.” Sense and reference “is gained through sensibility,” which alone, by means of the schemata, “realizes the understanding” and makes experience possible (A , B ).174 173 Guyer (ibid) addresses Kant’s demand for both independence and interdependence as follows; the connection between “time-determination” and spatial form is “inadequately defended.” For “when in the ‘Transcendental Aesthetic’ Kant illustrates the reproduction of intuitions in a synthetic operation or addition by reference to such spatial objects,” within the successive series of inner intuition at B , “we may be inclined to let it pass; but when he asserts that only spatial representation can represent temporal succession, we may wonder . . .” Further, “on the other hand, Kant’s connection may be too strong: Would it not make the succession of inner states determinable only by assigning all of them distinct spatial positions?” Guyer asks; “would this not mean that we could prove that we know external objects at all only by proving that we know only external objects and no nonspatial feeling, thoughts, and so forth?” Guyer adduces in this context Kant’s contravening commitment to heterogeneity; “ “not everything which is in time is also in space, e.g., my representations” (R , Ak , ). Guyer adds that “what would seem most damaging [is that] Kant’s argument appears to be circular. It holds that a succession of time can be known only if spatial coexistence can be recognized, but adds that spatial coexistence itself can be recognized only through a series of representations ‘backward and forward.’ Yet surely recognition that one is having such a series presupposes that one can recognize temporal ordering independently of spatial relation” (). 174 In his treatment of “the supreme principle of all synthetic judgments,” Kant specifies still more closely the functional role of inner intuition within this general process (A – , B –). Analytic judgment, as above, “keeps to the given concept, in order to

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This amplification, necessary for the positive function of the Analytic, requires the categorial determination of the form of inner sense, the conditions for which Kant has actualized progressively throughout the Gang des Denkens of the Analytic. But if this progressive result, this construal of inner intuition as an categorially determinable Inbegriff, is essential to Kant’s account of the nature of valid cognition in the Analytic, we will see that a contravening constural of inner intuition also obtains. The latter construal of inner intuition, as () necessarily denuded of spatiality and its conditions, () inconstant rather than constant, and as () indeterminable categorially, will be equally essential to Kant’s account of the impossibility of rational psychology and rational theology as Seelenlehren in the Dialectic. Presently, however, Kant will continue to prosecute his progressive determination of inner intuition and its proper function within the dynamics of cognition. Introducing the Axioms of Intuition, Kant reminds his reader that “I have in mind . . . only the principles of pure understanding as related to inner sense,” by means of which alone synthetic judgment, whether subjective or objective, becomes possible. Thus, in the Axioms, Kant argues that “the essential form of all intuition” is found only in the “synthesis of spaces and times,” and that only this synthesis, or spatio-temporal unity within inner intuition “makes possible the apprehension of appearance, hence all outer experience, hence all cognition of the objects of that experience” (A , B ). Kant amplifies inner sense, similarly and in a complementary manner, in the Anticipations, as well. There, we read that inner sense can conestablish something about it” or its intrinsic character. Synthetic judgment requires that “I go outside the given concept,” in order to “consider, in relation with this concept, something quite different than was thought in it.” This reference to what lies outside a given concept implies that synthetic judgment “is never a relation either of identity or of contradiction” as govern logical relations. While non-contradiction governs all analytic and logical cognition, time governs all synthetic and transcendental or objective cognition. In the latter, contradictory predicates (e.g., fluidity and solidity) attach to a common subject, under the condition that this possession not obtain simultaneously (zugleich) but only as successive. The medium of all synthetic judgments as such is time; “there is only one Inbegriff that contains all our presentations: viz., inner sense, and its a priori form, time.” This exegesis of the doctrine of inner sense is not an extrinsic imposition upon Kant’s philosophy, or an overemphasis of a merely empirical, adventitious appendage to the scholastic artiface of Kant’s architectonic. It is rather an exposition of “une des doctrines kantiennes les moins élaborées et pourtant les plus centrales,” in Mohr’s estimation in his “Thesen uber Zeitbewusstsein und innere Erfahrung,” through which Kant’s intention to both constructively determine and critically limit the scope of synthetic a priori cognition was effected.

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tain the conditions necessary to an “empirical consciousness.” For even if we “abstract from the extensive magnitude of appearance” and attend only to the form of inner sense itself, we will note the integral and intrinsic capacity of its form. According to the Anticipations, inner intuition “can present in one moment,” or at any instant, “a synthesis of uniform ascent” from the matter of sense as a materium dabile to “given empirical consciousness” itself (A , B ). This “uniform ascent” is termed a “continuity” in inner sense. Kant employs the expression of a “flowing magnitude,” since “the synthesis of productive imagination is a progression in time, and continuity of time is designated by the term ‘flowing’ (flowing by)” (A , B ). Time appears here as a “quanta continua,” and its moments indicate not a mere flux but an “Einschränkung” of time, a limitation and determination of time-positions, a position or positionality in the time of inner sense (A , B ). The Analogies of Experience present still more clearly the centrality and salience of Kant’s amplification of time across the Analytic—just as the Paralogisms will present most clearly the necessity of a negation and elimination of any such amplification.175 The Grundsatz or principle governing the Analogies, as Kant put this in the first-Edition, is that “all appearances . . . are subject a priori to rules governing the determination of their relation to one another in the unity of time” (A ). Kant names “three modes of time” as permanence (Beharrlichkeit), succession 175 In the context of his investigation of the third analogy, Guyer (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge [Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, ]), states that “all three analogies are ultimately interdependent. And they show that deterinations of temporal relation and spatial position are intimately linked: The determination of change presupposes that of endurance, which in turn requires knowledge of spatial positions; but knowledge of spatial position, in turn, requires knowledge of interactions, which are themselves temporal relations among spatially distinct objects. The determination of the apparently simplest temporal relations actually requires an indivisible network of relations of space, time, and natural law, indeed at least the regulative ideal of a fully determinate system of nature.” Guyer recognizes that “of course, all of this has thus far been argued on the supposition that we are entitled to make claims about the temporal relations of objective states of affairs as opposed to merely subjective ones. Would the entire edifice of enduring substances governed by natural laws that has just been aerected collapse if that assumption” as is indeed problematic upon the heterogeneity thesis, “were omitted from its foundation? For Guyer, “all three principles [the three analogies] function together to make possible what is essentialy the single decision whether successive representations represent change or coexistence [= Zugleichsein] among the states of empirical objects. This is just to say that all three analogies together function to provide the necessary conditions for deciding whether change or succession in representations—all that we are ever given, or passively apprehend—represents change or stability in the objective realm, in what is represented, at all” ().

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(Folge), and simultaneity (Zugleichsein). To each there will correspond a “rule,” such that the Three Analogies will consist of “three rules governing all time-relations of appearances.” These laws “precede experience and make it possible in the first place” by means of their determination and amplification of inner sense. Collectively, they make inner sense replete, in order that it contribute its necessary function to the possibility of synthetic judgment, subjective and objective. To the three modes of time, then, correspond three Analogies of Experience. To the first mode of time, permanence, there corresponds the first analogy, which is designed to secure and amplify permanence by means of the concept of magnitude. To the second mode of time, succession, there corresponds the second analogy, which amplifies succession by means of the concept of causality. With the third mode of time, simultaneity, Kant associates the concept, or category, of community. But any appreciation of the intracacies of Kant’s argumentation within each analogy must be contextualized by an appreciation of the intention that animates them and the function that they are to perform in the economy of the work as a whole. Kant then specifies “the general principle of all three analogies” in a manner relevant to our own purposes as well. Kant intends through each, and by means of all, taken together, to secure “the necessary unity of apperception in all possible empirical consciousness.” Kant specifies, in terms closer to our own, that empirical consciousness here denotes “perception at every time,” construed so as to yield “the synthetic unity of all appearances as regards their relation to time” (B ). Time, of course, cannot be taken independently of inner sense; “original apperception refers to inner sense (the sum of all presentations),” and “most specifically, it refers a priori to the form of inner sense” (B ). The scope of time, and thus inner sense, within the Synthetic Principles is as encompassing as it was in the first-Edition Deduction; within its purview Kant includes “whatever is to belong to my cognition and hence is to be able to become an object for me” (B ).176 176 Interpreting R , Guyer highlights Kant’s claim that “if something is apprehended, it is taken up into the functions of apperception. I am, I think, thoughts are within me” (Claims of Knowledge, ). Guyer draws “further lessons . . . from the texts of the mid’s” for his analysis of the first Critique. Kant’s “transcendental theory of experience of  and ” shows “no distinction between a more general theory of the categories and a more specific theory of time-determination.” The categorial determination of sensibility incorporates both inner sense and outer sense, as is required for synthetic cognition which moves from outer sense to inner sense before the materium is “taken up” into

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This understanding of the dynamic and functional importance of inner sense can be restated. If a cognition is to possess a claim to objective reality, or “refer to an object and have in that object its reference and sense,” all intellective determination waits upon intuition. Universally, “the object must be capable of being given” (A , B ). Without this deliverance of the object, as intuited, to imagination and intellection, “concepts are empty.” Without this deliverance, propositions that would be synthetic, “entirely impossible a priori,” since they would be shorn of “any object in which the synthetic unity of their concepts can establish objective reality” (A , B ). Such a synthetic object can only be “given to us in the modification of our sensibility.” These conditions are given generally, in the “formal and pure condition of sensibility to which the concept of understanding is restricted in its use.” These conditions are also given to us, more precisely, according to “the [restrictive] formal conditions of sensibility (of inner sense, specifically)” (A , B ). Inner intuition and its temporality, Kant claims, yields “the universal condition under which alone the category can,” or cannot, “be applied to any object.” These introductory comments evince both the importance of inner intuition and the positive task of the synthetic principles generally. In this context, Kant begins the exposition of the First Analogy. Its principle, named in the edition of  as a “principle of permanence,” is as follows; “all appearances contain the permanent (i.e., substance) as the object itself, and the mutable as its mere determination” (A ). Kant employs the schema or concept of substance in order to indicate that which is determined, the objective correlate that makes possible our reference to and determination of objects. The claim that “the mutable is its [substance’s] mere determination” implies that substance is to indicate the permanent correlate that allows such transformations, transcendentally, to be transformations of an single object. One could almost say that substance is a temporal term, insofar as substance functions as that

the understanding. Thus, Guyer anticipates skeptically the heterogeneity doctrine of the first Critique; “Kant’s published justification for calling the principles of time-determination ‘analogies’ ” to outer sense “is not only strained but incomplete” (; italics added). While “Kant’s transcendental theory of experience of – was virtually identical with his attempt to show that the objective validity of the concepts of substance, causation, and interaction is necessary to time-determinations,” these categories were excluded from the sphere and manifold of inner sense in  and thereafter upon the argumentative exigences of the refutation of rational psychology.

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which perdures (bleiben), a constant element which subtends necessarily any recognition of an object as having been, or as becoming. This principle is most significant for our purposes, however, for Kant’s elaboration thereof. Just as “all appearances” contain substantiality as objective permanence, so “all appearances” are contained by time; “all appearances are in time.” In the second-Edition, Kant adds that “all appearances are solely in time.” Time is to be understood, of course, as “the permanent form of inner intuition” (B ). The permanence of inner intuition functions, then, as the subjective correlate for the objective permanence offered by the schema of substance. Just as all appearances are “in time,” so too all modes of time are “in time.” As he did originally at A , B  in the Aesthetic, Kant names two modes of time; “succession” (Folge) and “simultaneity” (Zugleichsein). In the firstEdition, Kant associated the former with a “time-series,” and the latter with a “time-range.” In both editions, however, time is, precisely, “that in which, and as determinations of which, succession and simultaneity can be presented” (A , B ). Each is possible only as a “relation in time,” and is possible only as a “modification of,” and “in,” the “permanent.” Without this form of intuition and its permanence, Kant will repeat at A , B , “there is no time relation” and hence no synthetic relation to objects. In his proof of this principle, Kant shifts from an analysis of appearance and the permanent element that must characterize it, to an analysis of apprehension. From within this dynamic, the subjective correlate of permanence (found in inner intuition), and the objective correlate of permanance (found in the schema of substance), will both be derived. Our apprehension of apperances, understood as the act of apprehending cognitively a given content, Kant continues, “is always successive.” For this reason, “through apprehension alone we can never determine whether this manifold considered as an object of experience is simultaneous or sequential.” Successiveness, again, implies “an existence always vanishing and starting,” which “never possesses the least magnitude” or duration but only a Folge or time-sequence (A , B).177 A correlate that perdures and that offers itself as a constant and a standard by means of which to evaluate the relative succession and simultaneity of objects is required. Both () “time-relations” [either succession or 177 For a distinction between the “permanent form of intuition” or “permanent intuition” and “the ‘intuition of a permanent’ needed for . . . determination,” see Ameriks, Kant’s Theory of Mind (Clarendon Press, Oxford, ), p. .

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simultaneity], and the () experience we in fact possess “are possible only in the permanent.” Permanence is here understood as a “substratum of the empirical presentation of time,” just as was substance in the empirical presentation of objects. It is only through the character of permanence that “sequential existence in different parts of a time-series acquires a magnitude, called a duration” (A , B ). If mere successiveness must follow from duration, and duration from permanence, it is only because each obtains as a mode of time as such. And if Kant can incorporate time in his account of the ‘permanence of substance’ and hence the possibility of synthetic cognition, it is only because “time is nothing but the form of inner sense” and inner sense is an Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen. In this way, Kant concludes, “permanence in appearances” can traced both to the subjective correlate of inner intuition and to the objective correlate of the permanence of substance. As such, permanence obtains as “the condition for the possibility of all synthetic unity of perceptions, i.e., the possibility of experience” (A , B ). For our purposes, we can conclude on the basis of this exegesis to at least two certain results of the First Analogy. The first is found in Kant’s intention to prove that “the permanent makes possible the presentation of a transition from one state to another” in objects (A , B ). The second is found in the implication that “the unity of time, the identity of the substratum” that subtends all variation, must be attributed to and obtain within inner intuition (A , B ). We can anticipate the significance for our purposes of the Second Analogy by stating in advance its conclusion; “all increase of empirical cognition and any progress of perception, no matter what the objects may be, whether appearances or pure intuitions, is nothing but an expansion of the determination of inner sense” (A , B ; italics added). The Second Analogy, by means of its account of this ‘expansive determination,’ is to yield the “principle of temporal succession (Zeitfolge) according to the law of causality,” the determination of time, according to causeeffect relations. Whereas Kant amended the proof-structure of the firstEdition Deduction so as to evade the amplification of inner intuition he had effected in , Kant retained precisely such an amplified account of inner intuition in the second-Edition Synthetic Principles. How, then, does he secure this Fortschritt or Fortgang, and build toward this conclusion? Kant first reviews the progress made in the First Analogy. There, he suggests, it was established that appearances in temporal succession are only transformations of substance, “the successive being and not-

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being of the determinations of substance, which itself is permanent” (A , B ). When we perceive that such appearances succeed one another, Kant now continues, we “connect two perceptions in time” (A , B ). This synthetic activity of connection is the work of imagination rather than intuition, although the imagination must of course “determine inner sense in regard to time-relation” if its activity is to become synthetic and claim a relation of time. By means of such a connection, two times are brought together, “such that either the one or the other state precedes in time.” In this activity, we see mirrored the fact that “my imagination places one state before and the other after,” but cannot conclude from this subjective activity to an objective state of affairs. We cannot see mirrored in our subjective activity any necessity that “one state precedes the other in the object” (A , B ). Such an objective state of affairs could only be produced by means of a pure concept of the understanding and the relation of cause and effect in particular, such that by means of this concept we could “determine as necessary which of the states must be placed before and which after,” according to a rule. As in the case of the First Analogy, the points of transition within Kant’s argument are of less importance for our purposes than is the conclusion to that argument and its implications for the character and capacities of inner sense. Our task is to indicate the vicissitudes of Kant’s doctrine of time through a comprehension of the distinct, and indeed variant, argumentative ends to which Kant submits the doctrine in the first Critique, in order to then be able to record his continuing difficulty resolving its internal tensions. Presently it is enough to note Kant’s attribution of relations of causality to inner intuition. On the requirement that subjective succession must be transformed into an objective succession by means of pure concepts, Kant will now assert precisely such a categorial, and in fact, causal, determination of inner sense; “experience itself, empirical cognition of appearances, is possible only inasmuch as we subject the succession (Folge) of appearances, and hence all change, to the law of causality” (A , B ). Kant specifies immediately the context for the attribution of this law of causality; to the dynamics of apprehension and to the form of inner sense. As we know, apprehension as such “is always successive.” But whether this succession within the subjective act of apprehension is mirrored by an objective succession, a succession “in the object,” is a “second point for reflection,” i.e., is not answered by the mere subjective presence of a temporal series. Within the act of apprehension, “appearances, taken

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as presentations, are simultaneously objects of consciousness.” As such, they are inseparable from, and already an element within, that process by which they are apprehended, “by [means of] the taking up into the synthesis of imagination” and by means of its “production,” or reproduction, “in the mind successively” (A , B ). In order to secure a temporal succession that is “in the object,” or objective rather than merely subjective, we must find “a rule whereby it may be distinguished from other [subjective] apprehensions” (A , B ). The complex and subtle argumentation with which Kant differentiates subjective and objective succession (A –, B –) is less significant for our purposes than is his assertion of its implication for the character and capacities of inner intuition.178 First and most clearly, Kant asserts that it is “only through the necessity of a certain order in the time-relation of our presentations that objective signification is conferred upon them” (A –, B ). Second, Kant traces this necessity, as may be expected, to inner sense. Kant concludes to an “order and steady coherence found a priori in the form of inner intuition (time), in which all [such] presentation have their position,” a positionality within time objectively determined by means of causal relations through the understanding. Third, Kant depicts the range of schema or concepts that now obtain within inner intuition and its temporality; “causality leads to the concept of action; action leads to the concept of force, and thereby to the concept of substance” (A , B ).

178 At R , Kant will address the subjective succession—objective succession distinction by asking; “how do we recognize the simultaneity of things, since all our representations succeed one another in apprehension? By means of the fact that we can represent the manifold in such a case both forward and backward. Now since in inner sense everything is successive, and nothing can be taken backward, the ground of the possibility of the latter must lie in the relation of representations to something outside us, and indeed something which is not in turn just inner representation, that is, form of apperarance,” reducible to the sphere and structure of inner intuition. Thus, “the representation of something which endures must pertain to that which contains the ground of time-determination, but not in respect of succession, for in that there is no permanence; consequently, only in that which is simultaneous must that which endures lie . . .” (Ak , ). See also R , (Ak , ); “the simultaneity of A and B cannot even be represented without something which endures, for all apprehension is really successive. But insofar as the succession can take place not only forward from A to B but also (as often as I want) backward from B to A, it is necessary that A endure [fortdaure]. The sense-representations A and B must therefore have a ground other than in inner sense, but yet in some sense, therefore in outer sense; therefore there must be objects of outer sense (and as far as dreaming is concerned, this object, which causes the illusion of the presence of several outer objects, is the body itself)” (Ak, , ).

an analytic of (synthetic) principles

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Perhaps surprisingly, Kant would “leave a detailed exposition of these concepts to a future system of pure reason,” deferring perhaps the systematic investigation of the relations amongst these concepts and their inherence within the temporality of inner sense. But for our purposes the essential claims of the Second Analogy have already been expressed. Inner intuition now contains within it not only “a subjective play of my imaginings,” but “the relation of cause to effect as the condition of the objective validity of our empirical judgments” (A , B ). So thoroughly determined is the manifold of inner intuition that the distinction in principle between the laws of nature and the laws of freedom (which required the necessary indeterminability of inner intuition) as set out in the Preface seem forgotten; “all increase of empirical cognition and any progress of perception—no matter what the objects may be, whether appearances or pure intuitions—is nothing but an expansion of the determination of inner sense,” which thus contains each of the schema and concepts noted (A, B ). Kant’s amplification of the form of inner intuition is nearly complete. To the spatio-temporal unity, continuity, and conceptual determinability that Kant had asserted in first-Edition Deduction, Kant has added in the Synthetic Principles, for example, a deduction of the possibility of subsumption in the Schematism (A , B ) and a depiction of the conditions for the ‘uniform ascent’ of the Axioms of Perception (A , B ).179

179

In the context of his investigation of the Third Analogy, Guyer (ibid) states that “all three analogies are ultimately interdependent. And they show that determinations of temporal relation and spatial position are intimately linked: the determination of change presupposes that of endurance, which in turn requires knowledge of spatial positions; but knowledge of spatial position, in turn, requires knowledge of interactions, which are themselves temporal relations among spatially distinct objects. The determination of the apparently simplest temporal relations actually requires an indivisible network of relations of space, time, and natural law, indeed at least the regulative ideal of a fully determinate system of nature.” Guyer does not, however, set out the heterogeneity thesis as the context for this argumentative exigence. Guyer does state that “of course, all of this has thus far been argued on the supposition that we are entitled to make claims about the temporal relations of objective states of affairs as opposed to merely subjective ones. Would the entire edifice of enduring substances governed by natural laws that has just been erected collapse if that assumption” as is indeed problematic upon the heterogeneity thesis, “were omitted from its foundation?” For Guyer, “all three principles [the three analogies] function together to make possible what is essentialy the single decision whether successive representations represent change or coexistence [= Zugleichsein] among the states of empirical objects. This is just to say that all three analogies together

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In the third of the Three Analogies, Kant would now add—to the Principle of Permanence as Determined in the First Analogy and the Principle of Succession as determined in the Second Analogy—the Principle of Simultaneity. Each of these synthetic principles is important for our purposes less for the detail of its argument than for the Merkmale each would add to the character and capacities of inner intuition. We have seen that the first synthesis amplifies successiveness in inner sense through the permanence of substance, and that the second synthesis amplifies the merely subjective character of inner sense by means of the objective relation of causality. Similarly, in the third synthesis, the mode of time, as form of inner sense, that is simultaneity will be amplified by means of the “law” of interaction (Wechselwirkung). The principle governing Kant’s exposition of the Third Analogy is, in the Edition of , as follows; “all substances insofar as simultaneous stand in thoroughgoing community (mutual interaction).” Kant specifies clearly the realm of application of this principle in his conclusion. There, identifies as his explanandum the act of “determining the existence of appearances in time” insofar as time is understood as containing within it “a sum of all existence (i.e., as simultaneous)” (A , B ). Just as permanence functioned as a standard for the evaluation of relative succession, so simultaneity “is necessary in order that perceptions can succeed one another reciprocally” (B ). One can recognize immediately and as unproblematic Kant’s intentions in the Third Analogy. He argues that simultaneity cannot be derived from, or “cannot occur in, the temporal succession of appearances” as such. Simultaneity requires a wechselseitig, a reciprocity in time; the determination of the simultaneity of two appearances implies the possibility of a comparison between two objects.180 Thus simultaneity itself requires “a concept of understanding of reciprocal succession” (B ). But Kant intends to secure not only the determination of simultaneity, the existence of two objects of appearance at the same time, but also the “relation of community or interaction” between those objects. It is this

function to provide the necessary conditions for deciding whether change or succession in representations—all that we are ever given, or passively apprehend—represents change or stability in the objective realm, in what is represented, at all” (). 180 As Kant puts this point at B ; “thus I can carry on my perception either first with the moon and thereafter with the earth or, vice versa, first with the earth and then with the moon. And because the perceptions of these objects can succeed each other reciprocally, I say that the objects exist simultaneously.”

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

latter interaction, rather than their mere co-existence, that is definitive of the dynamics of our actual experience of objects. Thus, “the simultaneity of substances in space cannot be cognized in experience except under the presupposition that they interact with one another” (B ). In this interaction and its supposition of a mutual influence, “one substance contains determinations whose basis is contained in the other substance.” This “dynamical community” of substances at a time, which “stand in thoroughgoing community of interaction” to one another, is necessary and prior to the recognition of a “locational community (communio spatii)” (A , B ). In this way, Kant would derive “the continuous influence in all positions of space that alone can lead our sense from one object to another.” This continuous influence or continuum formarum, in the terms of the third Critique, will provide for that unity of space that allows for the determination of places as points within space, which itself allows for the positioning or positing of objects as occupying a place within space, and interacting reciprocally on this basis.181 Most importantly for our purposes, these transcendental determinations of simultaneity, community, mutual interaction, and spatial location are each to obtain “in our mind as appearances contained in a possible experience” (A , B ). To obtain “in our mind, as appearances” and in a synthetic “community (communio) of apperception” is to obtain in inner intuition in its acceptation as an Inbegriff. Only then, Kant suggests in language reminiscent of the first-Edition Deduction, “will succession, present as [in perception at the level of] apprehension” be able

181 For Guyer, “the fundamental scientific as well as metaphysical significance of the third analogy is hardly made plain by Kant’s brief exposition of his argument. In particular, the role of this analogy in the determinations of spatial position essential for physical theory is not brought out in the statement of its principle in the first edition of the Critique. This statement of the ‘Principle of Coexistence’ or ‘Simultaneity’, in accord with the program of the schematism and indeed of Kant’s underlying theory of time-determination, emphasizes only the temporal: “ ‘All substances, so far as they are simultaneous, stand in thoroughgoing community (that is, interaction) with one another’ (A ).” For Guyer, “space enters into the formulation of the principle only in the second edition: ‘All substances, so far as they can be perceived to be simultaneous in space, are in thoroughgoing interaction’ (B ).” (Claims of Knowledge, ); Guyer notes the reason for the amendment; “all representations as such are successive” insofar as subsumed to the impermanence of inner intuition. We “can only confirm judgments that represented objects coexist on the basis of knowledge that they interact,” which category of interaction is denied to the manifold of inner intuition. Thus; “the task of the third analogy is to explain how we can be justified in judging that states of affairs coexist, on the basis of our necessarily successive perceptions of them” (ibid, ).

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to yield () “simultaneity,” () “a real community (commercium) of substances,” and thus a () “composite (compositum reale)” which contains real relations of “inherence (Inhärenz), consequence (Konsequenz), and composition (Komposition).” In this way, Kant concludes, the three analogies function as “principles for the determination of the existence of appearances in time.” These three analogies obtain as amplifications or determinations of the “three modes of time.” Whereas Kant had relied upon an account of two modes of time in the Aesthetic, Kant now claims time as form of inner sense includes “duration,” understood as “time qua magnitude, the magnitude of existence,” “succession,” understood as “sequentiality as a relation in time,” and “simultaneity,” understood as “the relation in time as a sum of all existence,” or ‘at the same time.’ But the amplification of time requires not only the intra-temporal determination of constancy or duration, but the extra-temporal determination of spatiality, as well—its form, determinability-conditions, and representative relations. Thus, Kant will name “the rule of understanding through which alone the existence of appearances can acquire synthetic unity in terms of time-relations” as that which “determines for each appearance its position in time” (A , B ). The analogies, on this basis, “exhibit the unity of nature, the coherence of all appearances, under certain indices (Exponenten).” These indices “express nothing but the relation of time to the unity of apperception (insofar as time comprises all existence),” or obtains as an Inbegriff, (A , B ). Most generally, the analogies indicate the necessity that “all appearances reside and must reside in one nature,” understood transcendentally as a synthetic rather than a merely analytic or intraconceptual containment. Importantly, “without this a priori unity, no unity of experience, and hence also no determination of objects in experience, would be possible” (ibid). This most amplified account of the character and capacities of inner intuition appears essential to Kant’s positive determination of the possibility of synthetic judgment, and hence experience, in the Analogies. One might recall here, however, Kant’s doubled intention, announced in the Preface, to provide both a positive demonstration of the applicability conditions for the understanding to sensibility, and a negative critique of the necessary inapplicability of the categories to inner intuition in the case of the “darkness and contradictions” of the “metaphysician” and “theologian” (A viii). Kant intended to chart a “safe passage between two extremes” in the Deductions. Kant will not only determine, positively,

a problematic idealism



the nature of cognition in an Analytic, but will bound, delimit, or restrict its range, so as to disallow any “doctrine of the soul” or Seelenlehre. The argumentative application of the asserted “limiting condition” on inner sense was made, in the A-Edition, in the Transcendental Dialectic. In the B-Edition, Kant anticipated this application, and made use of the heterogeneity thesis and the incapacity of inner intuition already in a “Refutation of Idealism.” To it, having comprehended thoroughly the demands of Kant’s positive argumentation upon his doctrine of inner intuition, we may now turn.

III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta) iv. A Problematic Idealism In , Kant added a Refutation of Idealism at this point of his exposition of the Synthetic Principles (B –). By means of its exegesis, I will show that the tension between an amplified and a restrictive account of inner intuition obtains not only between the Analytic and the Dialectic (and in particular, the Paralogisms) as such, but within the secondEdition Analytic as well. We shall see that while Kant intends his Refutation of Idealism to serve, within the economy of the second-Edition, as a principle of transition from the positive argumentation of the Analytic to the crititical or negative argumentation of the Dialectic (which begins already at A , B ). But we will see that the Refutation does not provide for such a transition, or an adequation between their respective argumentative intentions and construals of inner sense, and in fact adds a level of complexity rather than a resolution to the question of their possible congruence or unity. The Refutation, in other words, contains a radical reconstrual of the character and capacities of inner intuition as thus far exposed. This reconstrual can be signaled in advance by means of an anticipation of Kant’s conclusion (B ). There, Kant reviewed his progress in the Analytic with two summary statements. The first, though named by Kant as “remarkable,” is unsurprising; synthetic cognition requires not only “the mere category,” but also “an intuition by which to display the objective reality of the pure concept” (B ). But in clear tension with the amplificative account of inner intuition Kant has given—first in the first-Edition Deduction, and thereafter in the Schematism, the Axioms, the Anticipations, and the Analogies—Kant will follow this

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general claim with a specific indication of inner sense. Kant finds it “even more remarkable” that “in order to understand the objective reality of the categories, we need not merely intuitions but indeed always outer intuitions” (B ). Although we will return to these passages below, we may intimate Kant’s basis for asserting this striking incapacity. Inner intuition, Kant will now insist, cannot admit of any categorial determination. This for three reasons. Kant first asserts () its aspatiality; “we need an intuition in space (an intuition of matter)” (B ). Kant then asserts () its inconstancy; “in inner sense no permanent intuition is to be met with” (B ). On this basis, Kant asserts () its indeterminability, by any of the concepts of relation—either “substance” (B ), “causality” (B ), “community” (B ), or “magnitude” (B ). In the roughly fifteen intervening pages, then, Kant has transformed inner intuition from an Inbegriff to an aspatial, inconstant, and indeterminable manifold. Inner intuition, then, even before we reach the Paralogisms, has been fundamentally reconstituted in  and in the Refutation of Idealism. To its Introduction we now turn. Within the Refutation, two types of idealism, Cartesian and Berkeleyan, are identified. Each is individuated for its particular construal, or misconstrual, of the nature of, and our relation to, space. Cartesian, or “problematic,” idealism, according to Kant, “declares the existence of objects in space outside us,” and hence in outer intuition, “doubtful and unprovable.” For proposing outer objects and our cognition thereof as indemonstrabilia, this form of idealism would also find application, perhaps, in Leibniz’s theological thesis of a pre-established harmony, or Jacobi’s “scandalous” and “enthusiastic” faith in the reality of the external world. Cartesian idealism, in any case, as understood by Kant, consists in “only one undoubted empirical assertion, viz., I am.” Berkeleyan or dogmatic idealism, instead, “declares space, [and] with it all things to which space attaches as inseparable condition,” to be as such or “false and impossible,” and hence “declares objects in space to be mere imaginings” (B ). Cartesian (“problematic”) idealism, instead, “asserts nothing about this, but only alleges that we are unable to prove by immediate experience,” and hence in intuition, “an existence apart from our own.” In this doubt, at least, problematic idealism is “reasonable,” and “thoroughly in accord with a philosophical manner of thought.” Kant may concord with problematic idealism to this degree insofar as it “permits no decisive judgment before sufficient proof has been found.” Kant will now attempt, in accord with this skeptical but reasonable expectation,

a problematic idealism



to offer such a proof. Kant will “establish that regarding outer objects we possess not merely imagination but also experience” (B ).182 The proof of the reality of the external world will be made through a claim to the immediacy of our relation thereto, in outer intuition. This proof will begin with the thesis that the Cartesian cogito, revealed through inner intuition, “is possible only on the presupposition of outer experience” (B ). It will be noted that an assertion of a relation of presupposition or priority between two elements is not thereby a proof of the possibility of either element or their relation itself. In this proof, Kant apparently will superpose a dependence thesis (of inner experience upon outer experience) upon the independence thesis claimed in the heterogeneity thesis.183 Kant’s proof procedes as follows. Kant begins his proof with the theorem that “the mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own existence proves,” or already

182 Deleuze recognizes (provocatively, though rather externally) that Kant “rejects the idea of a pre-established harmony between subject and object,” and “substitutes the principle of a necessary submission of the object to the subject itself.” Deleuze worries, however, that “in this way the problem is merely shifted,” or presupposed. Deleuze suggests that “the Critique, too, demands a principle of the accord, as a genesis of common sense?,” and the commonality, the inclusiveness, of inner sense. Deleuze asks; “does Kant not once again come up with the idea of harmony, simply transposed to the level of faculties of the subject which differ in nature?” See Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ) (translated from La Philosophie Critique de Kant, PUF, ), p. . 183 In his often-cited article “The Priority of Inner Sense” (Kant-Studien , –), Robinson notes that “determination of temporal order requires, in addition to causality (and perhaps reciprocity), substance.” However, he notes, “substance can only be determined in outer sense.” In accordance with his hermeneutic intentions, Robinson approaches this apologetically; “hence at least one necessary condition of the intelligibility of inner-sense objects—determinable temporal order—derives from outer sense. And this alone would be sufficient to establish the priority of outer sense over intentional inner sense (with respect at least to temporal sequence).” But the fundamental question concerns not relative priority, or dependence, but the very possibility of dependence, given Kant’s assertion of independence, or heterogeneity. Although Robinson assumes the possibility of an “indirect” application of the categories to inner sense, he recognizes that Kant “has not answered the charge of arbitariness,” or given a convincing ground for the determinability of inner sense. However, in order to meet constructive exigences, Robinson insists that “inner sense must indeed be differentiable and not purely rhapsodic . . . ” (). Robinson admits that while “application of the categories has as its immediate goal the determination of outer sensory objects . . . it determines them by determining their representations, and it is upon these representations that inner sense as appearance reflects” (pp. –). Robinson leaves undetermined the negative or critical requirements that inner sense not yield such conditions.

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contains, “the existence of objects in space outside me.”184 Kant begins, in his proof, from the apparently innocuous claim that (a) “I am conscious of my existence as determined in time.” Such temporal self-consciousness, again innocuously, (b) “presupposes something permanent in perception.”185 Clearly, in self-consciousness—as in all consciousness—we require the “order and steady coherence” of a determinable series of representational contents. This permanent element, however, less innocuously, (c) “cannot be something within me, precisely because my existence can be determined in time only by this permanent something.”186 184 Guyer notes (Claims of Knowledge, ) that the claim of B , that “the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me,” implies either (a) the abandonment of the heterogeneity thesis and the adoption of a single form of intuition (e.g., R ; Ak , ) or (b) the inclusion of spatiality within time as form of inner sense, which would disallow the refutation of rational psychology. Thus, Guyer will conclude that Kant’s “refutation of idealism and thus his entire transcendental theory of experience” actually “implies precisely the opposite” of B  (). Guyer () recalls B , where Kant asked; “how can there reside in the mind an outer intuition, which precedes the objects themselves and in which the concept of the latter can be determined a priori? Obviously not otherwise than insofar as it has its seat only in the subject . . . therefore only as the form of outer sense in general.” Guyer notes that Kant’s claim to the exhibition of spatial form “in us,” which is presented “as if it were unproblematic,” is “far from obvious” (). 185 For a longer review of such unpublished assertions of the heterogeneity thesis, see Guyer, ibid, –, where the claims to heterogeneity in the Aesthetic and Dialectic are reinforced with the unpublished materials from the Reflexionen (including R  and R ). On p. , Guyer adduces further materials that might make Kant’s claims to the interdetermination of inner sense and outer sense “seem arbitrary” (). Guyer adduces three instances of the dependence thesis. First, R  (from ); “since time cannot be externally perceived in things, insofar as it is only a determination of inner sense, so we can determine ourselves in time only insofar as we stand in relation to outer things and consider ourselves therein.” Second, R  from ; “we are first object of outer sense to ourselves, for otherwise we could not perceive our place in the world and thus intuit ourselves in relation to outer things.” Third, from the same Reflexion; “I am myself an object of outer intuition and without that could not know my position in the world” (Ak, , ). On this basis, Guyer will worry that “this corollary of Kant’s refutation might appear to undermine it” (). The dependence thesis requires the assertion of the incapacity of inner sense that disallows the claim to the “relation of identity” between inner sense and outer sense. In R  (from ), Kant asserts that since “I cannot think of space as in me,” the form for this self-determination of the subject must be time. And yet, “if only the form of time were found in our intuition, we would not be able to represent any space (an existence outside us)” (Ak , –). For Guyer, “as a consequence . . . the epistemological function of spatial objects would also be impossible” (). Guyer cites Kant’s admission that “empirical consciousness as the determination of my existence in time would be caught in a circle and presuppose itself—but would obviously be impossible, since even the representation of that which endures would be lacking” (ibid). 186 In his exegesis of the Refutation of Idealism, Aquila (ibid) finds that “first and without explanation the so-called proof of the thesis,” at B –, merely asserts that

a problematic idealism



Inner sense is derivative of, because dependent upon, outer sense.187 For this element of permanence “is possible only through a thing outside me.” Permanence cannot be obtained “through the mere presentation of a thing outside me.”188 Such a merely formal representation would beg the question, apparently, of the objectivity of the representation, in spite of the Third Analogy, and would itself obtain within the impermanence of inner intuition. Kant will then claim that, “hence, determination of my existence in time,” as obtains in inner intuition and is required for the performance resultant in the Cartesian cogito, “is connected necessarily with consciousness of the possibility of this time-determination.” This possibility lies, uniquely, in outer sense. In other words, inner sense is dependent upon outer sense. And outer sense, taken as the form of outer intuition, is itself dependent upon the actual outer intuition of a materium dabile. This outer object is to be taken as prior even to the merely formal outer imagination or “mere presentation” of an external world. This priority of (empirical) content to transcendental (a priori) form is not unproblematic, but will not be further subject to critique here. Kant prosecutes the argument of the Refutation in two distinct manners. First, Kant states that “things outside me are conditions of “self-consciousness presupposes the consciousness of something concretely existing as a permanent in intuition.” Aquila notes that in order for such a permanence to be ‘taken up into’ inner sense, the latter would have to contain within itself the formal conditions required for a determination of permanence. Thus, Aquila juxtaposes this claim to the permanence of inner sense with Kant’s claim that “no permanent is available in ‘inner’ intuition” (). 187 Guyer (ibid) begins his analysis of the Refutation with the suggestion that “the thesis that will finally save philosophy from scandal (B xl) is the bold claim that ‘the mere, but empirically determined consciousness of my own existence’ proves the existence of objects in space outside me.” Guyer also states that “the argument for this thesis is supposed to turn on the equally bold claims that (a) ‘all time-determination presupposes something permanent in perception’ and that (b) ‘perception of this permanent is possible only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing outside me,’ ” as subsumed with all representations to the sphere and pure succession of inner intuition. Guyer notes that this two-part second-Edition claim to both the spatiality and temporal constancy or permanence of inner sense (or temporal self-consciousness) raises “two serious problems of interpretation.” For Guyer, “in spite of the stress Kant places on the contrast between a ‘thing outside me’ and a ‘mere representation’ it is not obvious what this contrast means’ ” (ibid). 188 In the Metaphysical Foundations (Ak  § , ), Kant asserted that “in one way only can my intuition anticipate the actuality of the object and propose an a priori cognition.” This condition obtains only “if my intuition contains nothing but the form of sensibility which, in me as subject, precedes all the actual impression through which I am affected by objects.” This priority of the form for outer intuition (itself “in me”) can be contrasted to the assertion of the priority of time over space at B  of the Aesthetic.

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time-determination.” Second, Kant states that “the consciousness of my own existence is simultaneously a direct consequence of the existence of other things outside me.” The first conclusion requires a relation of priority. The second, stronger conclusion to simultaneity requires a relation of homogeneity. The importance of the second claim to homogeneity will become clearer in the exegesis to follow. But already we can see distinct dynamics present within the Refutation; that of () a privileged status, that of () priority, that of () dependence, and that of () formal homogeneity or independence.189 In his Comments, Kant amplifies his Refutation. In it, Kant depicts himself playing “the same game that idealism played.” Kant will “now play this game against idealism,” and “with the greater justice.” Idealism, Kant adverts, inferred that “the only direct immediate experience is inner experience.” Idealism, Kant continues, conceives outer experience as indirect, and the reality of outer objects as inferential. Since determinate outer objects and relations are known only in and through their representation, idealism takes representation as prior, and privileged (B ).

189 Analyzing the difficulties involved in the evident differences in Kant’s exposition of inner sense across the two editions, Washburn (“Did Kant Have a Theory of SelfKnowledge?,” ibid) adduces an important letter to Schütz (Ak , ). For Washburn, the “Schütz letter is of interest to us not only because it announces Kant’s intention to write an appendix to MAN on Seelenlehre, but also because it suggests that he was already experiencing some difficulty with that project. He blames the delay on an injured hand that somehow prevented him from writing the appendix. His hand healed but the appendix remained unwritten, for it was his plan for the science of inner sense that had sustained the irremediable injury. Kant must have attempted to execute the metaphysical and mathematical constructions of the concepts of the empirical self only to find that neither is possible” (). For Washburn, “there is no way to explain this startling admission except as a result of an unsuccessful attempt to perform the metaphysical construction of the concept of the empirical self ” (). It seems, though, that Kant’s surprise did not concern his personal inability to construct a Seelenlehre, for his purpose in developing that doctrine from the Duisburgschen Nachlass through to the first-Edition was to disallow—to the rational psychologist—the formal conditions required for such a construction. It is for this reason that “the domain of inner sense fails to meet the a priori conditions of the understanding.” Washburn is correct, however, that “Kant was unwilling to rest content with the position of MAN” at with his formulations of inner sense in the ’s. For Washburn, again correctly, “somehow the domain of inner sense had to be back within the critical fold,” or be given a constructive as well as purely critical significance. In the second-Edition amendments, “inner sense is subject to the a priori conditions of knowledge.” Washburn does not indicate a still greater complexity; while Kant is amplifying inner sense for the second-Edition, in accordance with Washburn’s uni-directional analysis from the indeterminacy of inner sense to its determinacy, Kant was also exacting radical critical restrictions upon the capacity of inner sense, in this Refutation (ibid, ).

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Problematic idealism, Kant argues instead, would require our possession of only an inner sense, “and no outer sense but merely outer imagination” (B , note). This reduction of sensibility to imagination would collapse the distinction between outer sense as intuitive and outer imagination as subjective. Kant insists that “in order for us even to imagine something—i.e., exhibit it to sense in intuition—as external, we must already have an outer sense.” Only as originally revealed specifically in outer intuition can a concept receive its noematic correlate, and hence its intrinsic synthetic possibility. Only as originally revealed in outer intuition can an object appear as external and as determinable, given the purely internal and temporal relations revealed in inner intuition. Kant’s proof requires, first, a contrast between outer sense and outer imagination. The “receptivity” of outer intuition is to be distinguished from “the spontaneity that characterizes all imagining.” Cognition will not tolerate the reduction (in either function or status) of intuition to imagination; “this would annul our very power of intuition.” The object (materium dabile) of intuition may be “determined by the imagination” only in and through intuition, and the immediate relation to objects it originally provides (B ).190 The proof also requires, however, a contrast between outer intuition and inner intuition. The priority of the for-

190 Allison (ibid) notes on p.  the “incapacity of the imagination, either of itself or with the assistance of inner sense, to produce the representation of space or of things in space.” Allison also notes that “behind this assertion lies the doctrine of the total heterogeneity of inner and outer sense, from which Kant infers the incapacity of the former to produce the data of the latter.” This same argumentation will be applied in the refutation of rational psychology, but it is no less crucial to Kant’s establishing the dependence thesis (of inner sense upon outer sense) crucial to this Refutation of Idealism. The formal conditions required to institute this thesis are not without problematic implication, however, recognized if not retained by Allison and discussed herein in the Introduction. See also Manfred Baum, who in “Kant on Cosmological Apperception” (International Philosophical Quarterly , pp. –), considers the reasons for which “imagination or any other inner power of representation could not produce such an object ‘space’ from the resources of inner sense, i.e., from time” without violating the nature and limits of our inner intuition (). Lachièze-Rey also identifies this problem of assumption through an examination of the Reflexionen. The imagination cannot offer a synthetic principle to the heterogeneity in intuition, for as a element of the cognitive faculty, any such principle would always already pertain to inner sense; “the imagination is but an inner sensible determination . . . ” (R ; Ak , ; see also R – and R –). See also Lachièze-Rey, ibid,  and , where R  [Ak , ] is adduced; “the imagination is impossible where no corresponding object can be given” through and by means of inner sense. See also R  and ; “we possess two types of intuition; the sensible intuition by which the object can be represented as present, and the imagination, capable of yielding the object in its absence.”

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mer is emphasized; “we have proved that outer experience is in fact direct, and that only by means of it can there be inner experience” (B ).191 The “consciousness of our own existence,” understood as a subjective and merely intellectual determination, is not, however, dependent upon outer intuition. Transcendental self-consciousness is not, per impossibile, derivative of, or derivable from, outer empirical objects. Only this retention of the priority of intellectual form over fully constituted experience can generate the possibility of its a priori examination, independently of and prior to such constituted experience. This self-consciousness retains its status as lexically prior to actual empirical experience. Insofar as this analytic self-consciousness would become cognition, however—the “determination of that existence [of one’s own existence] in time,” in pure inner intuition-dependence reappears. Kant relies here upon the consciousness—cognition distinction. The “I am” (cogito qua cogitans) of Cartesian idealism, which “expresses the consciousness that can accompany all thinking,” is said to “include immediately the existence of a subject,” analytically. Taken as an intellective determination, “I am,” Kant announces, “is not yet a cognition of that subject,” and does not of itself, qua representation, amount to “empirical cognition, i.e., experience.” Experience must necessarily include not only intellective consciousness, but a synthetic relation to intuition, “here, specifically inner intuition, in regard to which—time—the subject must be determined.” The possibility of this inclusion, Kant states, presumes or “requires external objects.” Kant would secure the priority of outer sense to inner sense, without sacrificing the priority of transcendental form to empirical (outer) content. Again, however, inner intuition is atopical, not for the priority of outer sense to inner sense in the ordo cognoscendi, but for the formal characteristics through which we assign to inner sense its proper capacities and incapacities. 191

Tuschling (Kant’s Transcendental Deductions (Stanford, Stanford University Press, ) suggests that the “basic ambiguity in the Refutation of Idealism” is as follows. Tuschling cites B ; “the mere, but empirically determined consciousness of my own existence proves the existence of objects in space outside me.” Tuschling then adduces Kant’s claim that the temporal self-consciousness, just equated with spatial self-cognition, is inconstant and insufficient for synthetic cognition, and “in order to leave no doubt, he adds that perception of what subsists (what determines my existence in time empirically) is ‘possible only through a thing outside me, not through the mere representation of a thing outside me.’ ” One is, according to Tuschling, “tempted to object that this ‘thing,’ which is supposed to be distinct from the mere representation of a thing, is—from the transcendental viewpoint—itself nothing but a representation,” and hence ‘in us’ or subsumed to inner intuition ().

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The “dependence” of inner sense on outer sense first requires a possible “interdependence.” Similarly, the concept of an inner experience requires that the spheres of application of outer sense and inner sense must not be independent or heterogenous, but interdependent. If one is “first object to oneself ” in outer sense, inner intuition at least must be able to take up the (prior) datum of outer intuition into itself, and into its temporality.192 This reliance of inner sense upon outer sense issues in the claim that “consequently, inner experience,” assuming its possibility, “is itself only indirect and is possible only through outer experience” (B ). However, the requirement that inner intuition possess the formal structure by which it could take up external objects within itself, while necessary to Kant’s argumentation here in the Refutation, is not thereby unproblematic, and would appear to be impossible, given the formal and in principle heterogeneity between time qua form of intuition and space qua form for external objects. Kant’s proof would require the possible containment of the designation “outside me” within inner intuition, which can admit of such a designation only in violation of the heterogeneity thesis, and with it the essential requirement for the critique of

192 Chenet (L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale [Paris, Presses Universitaires de Lille, ]), depicts the notion of a “sphere” of inner sense in light of the constructive or positive function of the doctrine; “Malgré les formules où les concepts de sens et d’intuition internes semblent désigner une sphère spécifique de l’expérience (excluant l’expérience externe), une ‘direction’ originale de la sensibilité opposée à la sensibilité externe, le ‘sens interne’ ne fonctionne pas en réalité conformément à sa définition. Il n’est pas ‘la forme de l’intuition interne’ ou, s’il est, c’est dans la mesure où l’on entend par là ‘la condition subjective sous laquelle peuvent trouver place en nous toutes les intuitions,’ donc externes ou internes” (). Thus, while “si, dans l’Esthétique, Kant parle du sens interne plutôt comme d’une ‘direction’ particulière de la sensibilité opposée à sa ‘direction’ externe,” nonetheless, toward the task of the Analytic Kant will advance a conception of inner intuition as “la sensibilité in général face à l’entendement qui la détermine, comme l’Inbegriff aller unseren Vorstellungen.” It is in this constructive context that Chenet’s Ch.  (“La question de la démonstrativité de l’Esthetique: La Dialectique doit-elle et peut-elle se porter au secours de l’Esthetique?”) should be read (). Gerold Prauss, in Erscheinung bei Kant (pp. –), recognizes the first Edition’s dominant construal of inner sense as an Inbegriff. Prauss also recognizes the thesis that this ‘universal representation’ disallows any categorial determination, and hence inclusion in the synthetic unity of consciousness. Prauss suggests that Kant had also recognized the problem, and that the Prolegomena obtains as the first significant record of Kant’s revisions. From the second Edition of the first Critique, Prauss advanced Kant’s assertions of the applicability of the categories to the manifold of inner sense, as evidence of Kant’s attempt at rectification. Prauss’ own resolution may appear questionable, but his reconstruction of Kant’s hesitations and reconstruals of the doctrine of inner sense, in the context of the very possibility of synthetic subjective judgment, have been of great value to me.

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rational psychology and rational theology as a doctrine of the soul.193 This containment, interestingly, would itself make problematic the central claim of the Refutation, that inner intuition is dependent upon outer intuition because of its impermanence. In the second Comment, Kant extends his claim to the derivative status of inner intuition; “we can undertake temporal determination solely through the variation in external relations by reference to the permanent in space.” Kant illustrates this claim with a reference to the empirical determination of motion. Kant reduces “the permanent in space” not only to empirical motion, but to matter; “except for matter, we do not even have anything permanent on which as intuition we could base the concept of a substance” (B –). Kant next claims, however, that “this permanence is . . . presupposed as a necessary a priori condition of all time determination, and hence presupposed also as determination of inner sense” (B ). The inclusion of both matter and permanence as a “determination of inner sense,” however—the “object” of which can only be a representational state or the soul as thinking substance— contravenes, as we will see, Kant’s critical commitments. This assertion of () an a priori condition of permanence and () the internal presence of an object of outer sense within inner intuition contravenes both the inconstancy and indeterminacy of inner intuition.194 Further, 193 Allison, recognizing that (a) “inner experience has no manifold of its own,” and that (b) “there are no sensible representations (intuitions) by means of which the self can represent itself to itself as object” qua cogitans, concludes that, thus, “the I (soul, mind, or self) is not itself an object of inner experience or inner sense” (). Allison recognized that this result is “to say the least, extremely problematic.” For upon its conclusion, the I qua cogitans “cannot be said to appear to itself at all” (). Allison recognized the problem character of this intrinsic indeterminacy in the context of the Refutation of Idealism. For therein, “Kant speaks of the consciousness of one’s existence as determined in time as being “bound up with (verbunden mit)” and even as being “at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me,” which would imply not independence or heterogeneity but interdependence or even identity. Thus, “these remarks suggest that the two modes of consciousness are two poles or aspects of a single experience. In other words, Kant now seems to be claiming that there is no purely inner experience, which is surely different from claiming that outer experience is a necessary condition of the possibility of inner experience” (). This claim would require that “the possibility of inner experience is, in fact, always correlated with outer experience,” which would stand in uncertain relation to the thesis of the Refutation of Rational Psychology, which requires independence rather than interdependence. Allison does not, in accordance with his hermeneutic intentions to defend Kant, further determine his apparent contradiction. 194 Baumanns (Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ [Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ]) notes that the Refutation first establishes the “notwendige Angewiesenheit der

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the assertion of permanence as a determination of inner sense violates the initial premise of the Refutation itself. Kant’s construal of the doctrine of inner sense remains atopical, and is altered in a variety of contexts in order to meet more general metaphysical or transcendental intentions.195 In the context of the heterodox assertion of the permanence of inner sense, then, Kant again asserts impermanence. Inner intuition will lack the least permanent predicate or character of permanence. For such a predicate could serve for determinacy in inner sense “as impenetrability is such a predicate of empirical intuition in matter” in outer intuition. Any analogy between outer experience and inner experience is thereby disallowed.196 The indeterminacy in inner intuition, Kant will claim, implies the dependence of inner

empirischen Bewußtseinsbestimmung auf ein äußeres Beharrliches . . ..” (). For Baumanns, the Refutation also asserts the “Korrelation von äußerer und innerer Beharrlichkeit, äußerer und innerer Identitätsgesetzlichkeit, die Uniformität der inneren Erfahrung . . .” (). This second implication requires not an independence or a dependence thesis, but an interdependence thesis, “daß innere und äußere Erfahrung im Vorstellungscharakter übereinkommen, weil sie konstitutionell interdependent sind” (). The Refutation, in this sense, would require the “unmittelbarer Einheit für die äußere Erfahrung überhaupt und innere Erfahrung überhaupt” (). Baumanns will even speak in this context of an “Einheit der äußeren und der denkenden Natur” (). 195 Sturma, too, takes the Opus distinction between the Ich als Subjekt und das Ich als Objekt as a key interpretive figure for his analysis of self-cognition (Ak  ; Sturma, ibid, ). Sturma’s analysis is directed to the constructive requirement that this difference yield to an identity; “Ich bin mir meiner selbst bewußt, ist ein Gedanke, der schon ein zweifaches Ich enthält, das Ich als Subject, und das Ich als Object . . . Es wird dadurch aber nicht eine doppelte Persönlichkeit gemeynt, sondern nur Ich, der ich denke und anschaue, ist die Person, das Ich aber des Objectes, was von mir angeschauet wird, ist gleich andern Gegenständen außer mir, die Sache.” (See particularly Sturma’s discussion of the Refutation of Idealism on pp. – as a conflict between the Zeitsequenz of inner sense and the demand of B  that this yield “zugleich ein unmittelbares Bewußtsein des Daseins anderer Dinge außer mir” []). Sturma recognizes as “aporetische” the required “selbstreferentielle kategoriale Synthesis,” and questions whether a genuine self-cognition can result from a “leeren Bewußtseins” (and hence “keine Identifikation” qua individuum) without a determinate inner intuition. 196 On this basis, Kant would reinstate the contrast between inner sense and apperception, in order to reassert the impossibility of synthetic cognition within the manifold of inner sense. The consciousness “that I have of myself in the presentation I is not an intuition at all, but is the merely intellectual presentation of a thinking subject’s self-activity (Selbsttaetigkeit).” In this way, inner sense, even if interdependent with outer intuition and its constancy, can be denied the conditions for the synthetic, a priori apprehension of an “object of inner sense.” Contrasted to apperception, inner sense will also retain a merely empirical and successive character. The cogito principle “does not offer the least predicate of intuition that as permanent could serve as correlate for the time-determination in inner sense” (B ).

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intuition upon outer intuition.197 Only outer intuition possesses the characters or predicates of constancy and substantiality capable of generating a determinable and determinate object of cognition. A functional dependence, even if necessary to a certain argumentative intention, cannot be asserted upon a basis of formal independence.198 Arguments adduced above, from the first-Edition Deduction to the Schematism to the Analogies, asserted the determinability and indeed determinacy of inner intuition, as a, and even the, highest, condition for the possibility of synthetic judgments. This exigence is, in the context of the Refutation, invisible because ignored. In its place, Kant attends only to the contravening requirement that inner intuition yield merely an indeterminacy and indeterminability, in order that its dependence upon

197 Baumanns (ibid) explicates the role of inner sense in the Refutation of Idealism on pp. –. For his treatment of tensions involved in Kant’s attempt to claim the interdependence of Selbstbewußtsein der denkenden Natur and Bewußtsein der äußeren Natur, see  ff. For specific reference to the “independence thesis” of die ParalogismenKritik, see p. . For his treatment of the relation between the Refutation of Idealism and the fourth Paralogism of the first Edition, see  ff. For Baumanns’ “dependence thesis” (Dependenz der inneren Erfahrung von der äußeren Erfahrung), see p. . Baumanns’ articulation of the various and variant claims Kant would make of inner sense remains a virtually unique example in recent German or English-language scholarship. For his discussion of the Funktionsstruktur of the “character” [Merkmal] Beharrliche, its applicability not to inner sense but only to outer sense, and its role in the critical argument of the Refutation of Idealism, see p.  ff. 198 The “letter” of the heterogeneity thesis casts doubt on the resolution proposed by Manfred Baum (Deduktion und Beweis in Kants Transzendentalphilosophie: Untersuchungen zur “Kritik der reinen Vernunft” [Königstein: Athenaeum Verlag, ]). Baum relies on the ubiquitous applicability of the categories. He ignores Kant’s assertion of the inapplicability of the categories to inner sense, and attempts to secure the conclusions of the deduction through the implicit reference to objective cognition in the concept of experience itself. But this assumes the formal possibility of an “inner experience.” Even if possible, this resolution would not deduce synthetically, but would only announce a necessity, in the analytic and undemonstrative manner of the Prolegomena. Baum is correct that the categories must apply to the manifold of inner sense as well as outer sense in order to generate the spatio-temporal unity requisite to intuitive cognition, but he may be incorrect in asserting that Kant has secured this possibility. Hermeneutically, Baum is forced to abandon interpretation for amendment; see p.  ff. Similarly, Becker, in Selbstbewußtsein und Erfahrung [Freiburg, Verlag Karl Alber, ], acknowledges the Restriktionslehre while ignoring its requirements: Becker states that “in a weakened sense, a priori synthesis can be understood with respect to empirical cognition” through inner sense “as indicating the possibility of an empirical synthesis of determinable representations, standing under specific restrictive conditions.” However, precisely these restrictive conditions may well disallow the empirical synthesis claimed by Becker ().

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a prior and privileged form of outer intuition be established.199 This same indeterminacy, we should note, would disallow the concept of an “inner experience.” Kant continues his discussion of these points in an extended argument appended, perhaps awkwardly, as an over two-page footnote to the second-Edition Preface. There (suggesting that the reader “see [B] ,” which we have just encountered), Kant reminds his reader of the context for the Refutation. Its task is to provide “a strict proof (also, I believe, the only possible proof) of the objective reality of outer intuition” (B xl). At stake is not first the mere play of an “innocuous idealism.” At stake is a genuine “scandal,” that obtains in the challenge to the ability of theoretical philosophy to demonstrate the reality, and our knowledge of, the external world. Without such a demonstration, by philosophy and in the name of its autonomous principle of knowledge, “we have to accept merely on faith the existence of things outside of us.” It is the thought of a heteronomous theological resolution to the problem of our knowledge of the external world—such as Malebranche’s “intelligible extension” and its possibility-condition, the “vision in God”—that appears to Kant scandalous, and occasions his renewed application to the problem. Kant begins this note with an assertion that “things outside us . . . provide us with all the material we have for cognitions, even for those of our inner sense” (B xl). Kant worries that “some will object to this proof,” or assertion.200 The problematic or psychological idealist depicted above, 199

On this acceptation, inner sense and imagination together would not yield ‘inner experience’ as outer sense and imagination yield outer experience. Experience, as objective consciousness, is claimed for the latter and is, or must be, disclaimed in the case of the former. No cognition can be claimed within the sphere of inner intuition, as can be claimed within the sphere of outer intuition. In this incapacity consists the dependence of inner intuition upon outer intuition, and the legitimacy of the Refutation. This dependence can be claimed only upon adherence to the heterogeneity thesis. This heterogeneity thesis establishes the formal independence of inner sense from outer sense, their lack of a common character. Only this independence disallows the dependence Kant would claim. For this dependence requires the imposition or superposition of the characters of outer sense upon those of inner sense, in spite of the heterogeneous formal character thereof. The same formal heterogeneity that establishes the necessity of this superposition establishes the impossibility of this superposition. 200 Beiser echoes Bennet’s often-cited lament that the Refutation is “Kant’s chef d’œuvre of compressed obscurity” (Beiser, German Idealism, p. ; Bennet; Kant’s Analytic, p. ). Noting that many have found in the second-edition Refutation “a fundamental shift in Kant’s position” (Beiser identifies Fischer, Vaihinger, Kemp Smith, and Guyer, among others), Beiser himself identifies “an important development in Kant’s thinking.” For Beiser, “while in the first edition of the Kritik Kant argued for the parity of inner and outer sense, and indeed for the priority of inner sense in schematizing the categories, in

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for example, will claim that “only of what is inner am I immediately conscious, i.e., my representations of outer objects.” But upon that model of consciousness, the immediate relation between cognition and its object would be attributed only to inner intuition and its representations, rather than to the actuality of the object in outer intuition. This restricted immediacy implies that the mode of existence of such outer objects would only be obtained inferentially (B xl). Upon this objection, the claim to the demonstration of the existence and reality of the external world would “still have not established whether or not there is anything corresponding to [a representation] outside me” (ibid). Let us leave to one side for the present the anti-theological intention of the argument, and attend instead to its course. Kant returns to the assertoric mode immediately; “through inner experience I am conscious of my existence in time (and hence also of its determinability in time) and that is more than to be conscious merely of my presentation.” But how will apprehension in inner sense be more than merely subjective? Inner intuition will contain within itself not only the representational states of the cognitive faculty, but will also contain the actuality of any object “outside me” (ibid). In the attempt to refute psychological idealism, Kant lays claim to the concept of inner experience. Experience is defined as objective cognition. Objective cognition has been denied to inner sense formally and in principle, in order to deny synthetic and theoretical cognition to rational psychology. However, Kant will assert that in inner experience, “I am conscious of my existence in time,” and “hence also of its [representation’s] determinability in time.” In inner experience, then, as obtains within inner sense and as governed by the conditions of inner intuition, both the the second edition he makes a case for the priority of outer over inner sense” (ibid, ). Beiser notes that “nowhere in the Fourth Paralogism [from ] does Kant attempt to connect inner and outer sense, and still less does he argue for the priority of outer over inner sense” (). Instead, in the “central thesis of the Refutation,” and its conclusion at B ; “the consciousness of my existence is at the same time an immediate consciousness of the existence of other things outside me” (). Beiser treats as problematic this claim to the identity of inner and outer sense, adducing evidence from B xl, B xli, and B  as well as Kemp Smith’s and Vaihinger’s identification of the same equivocity (see p. , n. ). Of course, recognizing the variance between the two editions does not commit one to the view that the second-edition is a degradation of the philosophical qualities of the first (e.g., Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, SW II [Hubscher, ed.], –, or Kuno Fischer, Immanuel Kant und seine Lehre [Heidelberg, Winter, ] I, – (and of course Heidegger)). With Beiser, one can simply note that the Refutation “marks an important development in Kant’s thinking,” and a repositioning (Beiser conceives of “a reformulation and revision”) of inner sense.

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“consciousness of one’s own existence in time” and the consciousness of the subsistence of one’s own representations, is given. This intuitive consciousness results in an inner experience, or an “empirical consciousness of my existence.”201 This empirical consciousness of one’s own existence, further, “can only be determined in reference to something connected to my existence as outside me.” In other words, any determination of inner sense bears a necessary relation to the outer sensory manifold, taken as prius. Through this interdependence, the conditions for an ‘inner experience,’ and the application of the categories obtain. This interdependence, however, in a manner that confounds clarity, is claimed upon the basis of an asserted independence. This independence is itself established—here in the note to B xl just as in the Refutation itself—on the basis of an assertion of the incapacity of inner intuition. This incapacity is asserted in particular by means of its intrinsic inconstancy. Thus, at B xl, Kant asserts that (a) permanence “cannot be [an element] in inner intuition” since (b) “all bases determining my existence within me are presentations” (B xl). As presentations, (c) they “require something permanent distinct from them,” from outer sense, and do not possess this permanence of themselves, within the flux of inner sense.202 It is, in fact, only “by reference to [this permanent element] that their variation, and hence my existence in the time in which they vary, can 201 “Experience” has been defined through the first Critique through “objective cognition.” In claiming inner experience, Kant would apparently be forced to disclaim the restrictions placed on inner intuition. For the (inner) manifold Kant would claim for “inner experience” is precisely that manifold disclaimed in the critique of rational theology as Seelenlehre and the refutation of materialism. It is this manifold alone by which Kant could claim to an inner experience, given in the consciousness of one’s own existence and through the temporality of inner sense. 202 Nabert (“L’Expérience Interne chez Kant,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, v. , n. , ) is attentive to this critical horizon and exigence; “ce n’est que dans le temps que l’existence du moi” qua cogitans “devient déterminable.” Its form, “le temps, est la seule forme de notre intuition intérieure, et il ne nous est pas donné d’observer notre esprit avec une autre intuition que celle de notre sens interne” (). However, Nabert is equally attentive to its positive exigence; “dire que des représentations sont miennes, c’est affirmer l’identité de ma conscience dans ces représentations,” which remains problematic within the temporal flux of inner sense (). Indeed, because of the Restriktionslehre enforced against rational psychology, “le moi ne devient pas un objet des catégories” as does “un objet distinct de moi” in outer intuition (). In this case, in order to sustain the refutation of rational psychology, inner sense “ne peut recevoir aucune détermination empirique.” For Kant’s later insistence on the necessity that inner sense yield ‘conditions for experience,’ see for example R , from ; “inner sense is not yet cognition of my self, rather we must first have appearances through it, immediately after which we make a concept of ourselves through reflection on these appearances, which thereupon has as a consequence the empirical cognition of my self, that is, inner experience” (Ak, , ).

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be determined.”203 The determination of one’s existence in self-cognition requires of outer intuition, then, what cannot obtain in inner intuition.204 On this acceptation, and still at B xli, Kant will continue to maintain their distinction; “inner experience depends on something permanent to which I must regard myself as related by way of contrast,” a Gegenstand as yielded in and through outer intuition. This contrast is, yet again established by means of the inconstancy thesis; “nothing permanent is within me, and must thus be found outside me.”205 203 Vaihinger attempted to afford Kant both the critical claim to the negation of the conditions necessary for synthetic cognition in inner sense as desired by the rational psychologist, and to afford Kant the constructive claim to possess the conditions necessary for synthetic cognition through inner sense, as required for a transcendenetal topic of the formal structure of and functional dynamics of the act of synthetic a priori cognition. Vaihinger, recognizing the tension between time qua pure succession and time qua simultaneous and perdurant, issues an apologetic defense, suggesting that qua subjective, time is one-dimensional and successive, while qua objective, time is multi-dimensional and replete. But this begs the question of the possibility of the objectivity of time, which is particularly problematic given Kant’s denial of the applicability of the categories to time, form of inner sense. (Kommentar II  ff.). Vaihinger would bracket, or obfuscate, the contravening demand made of inner sense in each case, as allowing and disallowing respectively the conditions required for synthetic and objective a priori judgment. For the classic treatment of the problem of objectively valid judgments about mental states, see L.W. Beck (“Did the Sage of Königsberg Have No Dreams?,” in Essays on Kant and Hume [New Haven and London, ], pp. –). 204 Benoist (Kant et les Limites de la Synthèse) contrasts assertions of the priority of inner sense in the Anticipations of Perception (pp. – ff., ) to assertions in the second-edition Refutation of Idealism of the derivative status of inner sense with regard to outer sense (). Chenet also reviews the tension between the apparently necessary “primat du temps sur l’espace” and the equally apparent necessity of a “primat de l’espace sur le temps” on ibid,  ff. 205 Guyer (Claims of Knowledge, ) protests Kant’s argument in the name of “common sense.” Guyer considers the extended footnote from the second edition preface (B xl) as evidence of Kant’s “almost immediate recognition of the inadequacy of his new refutation” of idealism; “for even before the revisions of  were ready for the press Kant added [these] two emendations” (). Guyer treats its claim that “the permanent cannot be an intuition in me,” and recognizes that Kant’s assertion of the dependence of inner sense upon outer sense does not itself guarantee a possible interdependence. For his full argument, see ibid., –. Guyer reviews also the claim of the General Note on the System of Principles (B –), and its claim that perception of a permanent object requires “an intuition in space (of matter),” since “space alone is determined as permanent, whereas time, and therefore everything that is in inner sense, is in constant flux (B )” ( ff.). For Guyer, “this assertion is utterly opaque.” Thus, “Kant’s claim that the perception of motion in space is necessary even to render thinkable the ‘successive existence of ourselves in different states,’ which is to say, any succession in representations at all, seems to contradict not only the apparent assumption of the second analogy” but also “common sense” (). Importantly and insightfully, Guyer claims that such tensions “did not yield only the additional remarks in the Preface and General Note of ; in fact,

a problematic idealism

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This predicate of permanence, applied to outer sense and now denied to inner sense, attests to the contravening exigences and the contradictory demands made of the doctrine of inner intuition.206 This distinction or principle of division between outer and inner sense will yield—almost immediately and quite confoundingly—to an assertion of their unity. The argumentative exigences of the Refutation, in other words, will lead Kant to assert not only that dependence that is to yield of itself interdependence, but also the formal “identity” of the forms of intuition (B xli). This empirical and objective consciousness of my existence obtains within the temporal form of inner intuition. The “inner experience” secured thereby requires outer experience, upon which it is modelled.207 But only an intrinsic relation to outer sense and the formal conditions of outer intuition can yield the determinacy within the manifold of inner intuition definitive of experience and required for the appearance of the outer object in inner sense. The relation between the forms of intuition is

Kant continued to work at the task of refuting idealism for at least half a dozen years after  . . . ” (). Guyer did not pursue his analysis to the Opus, which, I will argue in future publications, offers the clearest and most extensive evidence that Kant both recognized the aporetic character of his doctrine of inner sense (as it functions, variously and variantly, in, e.g., the first-Edition Deduction, Refutation of Idealism, and the Paralogisms), and also attempted to resolve its aporetic or antinomial character to its positive exigence. 206 Paton (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, v. II) had already identified these contravening exigencies as “the first alternative” and “the second alternative.” Upon the first, if the formal coordinates and structure of outer sense are spatial, “then this must equally be true of inner sense, for . . . the ideas of outer sense constitute the proper stuff of inner sense.” A demand is not a deduction, however. Upon the second, “if outer sense gives us only relations which are in some way spatial, inner sense will give us only temporal relations . . .” (). 207 Gendlin, in Kant and Phenomenology (Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology and University Press of America, Seebohm and Kockelmans, eds., ), notes that Kant “dramatically emphasizes the dependence of time-determination on spatial and outer intuition” in the second edition (). Kant, “in almost every clarification he inserts, [is] concerned with this theme,” this “seemingly very technical demotion of time.” Gendlin asks; “why this emphasis on the outer as capable of giving rise to a priori knowledge . . . why this fear that time will be considered as though it could be determined alone?” (). For Paton (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, v. II), Kant is “carried away by his zeal” () in the Refutation of Idealism, with regard to the questions of priority. Kant “asserts not only that inner experience is impossible apart from outer, but also that it is itself possible only mediately—does he intend to deny that inner experience is as immediate as outer experience?” Furthermore, “experience of bodies in space is experience of bodies moving; and since this is impossible apart from time, inner experience would seem to be the condition of outer, just as much as outer experience is the condition of inner, unless we are to abandon the doctrine of the Aesthetic that time is the immediate condition of inner appearances and the mediate condition of outer appearances” ().

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now, and for this reason, asserted to be “one of identity” (B xli). For “the consciousness of my existence in time is linked by way of identity with the consciousness of a relation to something outside me.” Interdependence in intuition is apparently to be accomplished by means of an isomorphism between inner intuition and outer intuition.208 This isomorphism yields the parallelism of an inner experience modelled upon outer experience, taken as prior; “what inseparably connects what is outside me with my inner sense is experience rather than invention.” 208 Beiser notes () that the Refutation of Idealism concerns fundamentally the “relationship between inner consciousness and spatial order.” Within it, “spatial order is the transcendental condition of inner awareness, and as such constitutive of our awareness of ourselves in time.” Dynamically, this priority is consistent with the first exposition of the Sinnenlehre of the Aesthetic; a materium must first affect outer sense in order to then be taken up into inner sense and transposed to the understanding for determination to objectivity. The Refutation, however, by positing outer sense as “constitutive of our temporal self-awareness,” would risk bringing to inner self-consciousness the conditions required for the applicability of the categories, and hence a Seelenlehre. This implication of the argument of the Refutation, by which “inner consciousness conforms to the conditions for the experience of objects in space” is not univocal (Beiser ). For Kant’s argument also relies upon the negation of all constancy and coherence in inner intuition, in order to establish the dependence of inner intuition upon outer intuition and its determinability. Beiser recognizes this second exigence as a “sticking point” () and is “problematic” (). Beiser notes that Kant “contends that to demonstrate the objective reality of the categories we need not only intuitions in general but outer intuitions specifically.” Inner intuition is denuded of the characteristics and capacities, attributed only to outer sense, that would allow for the applicability of the categories and the appearance of an object of a synthetic cognition. Citing B , Beiser recognizes that “to have something permanent in intuition corresponding to the concept of substance . . . we require the intuition of space,” for “space alone is determined as permanent, while time, and everything in inner sense, is in constant flux.” Nonetheless, for Beiser; “whatever the precise details of Kant’s argument, its general point and structure seem plain . . .” (). However, Beiser is attentive (–) to the fact that “behind the argument of the Refutation there lies a new and fundamental assumption that Kant articulates only in several places in the second edition of the Kritik; that inner states must be represented spatially,” and that “the representation of time depends upon space.” This new assumption leads in novel directions; “Kant goes so far as to state that the determinations of inner sense have to be arranged as appearances in time in precisely the same manner in which we arrange those of outer sense in space” (ibid). Beiser does not develop the implication of this introduction (of the determinability conditions required for the applicability of the categories and a genuinely synthetic inner cognition) for the Dialectic, and yet does record that “in the first edition Kant gave primacy to time: inner sense was the form of all appearances whatsoever . . . In the second edition, however, space usurps the title once accorded to time” (). Beiser notes that “Kant retains the passages in the second edition that make inner sense the form of all representations,” and indeed “Kant still thinks that inner sense is also the basis for outer sense.” Now, it seems, “the main shift is that Kant now thinks that both senses are interdependent: inner sense depends upon outer sense as much as outer sense on inner sense” ().

a problematic idealism

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Kant resolves inner sense and outer sense to unity or identity in order to claim a refutation of psychological idealism.209 This refutation requires that our relation to objects be intuitive before imaginative or intellectual. Such intuited objects are cognized in outer intuition before being recognized in inner intuition. Only as intuited can the unity and nondiscursive identity of objects, in an immediate relation to the cognitive faculty, be claimed. The refutation requires that any such object pertain first to outer intuition, in which alone such objects can appear as both actual and “outside me.” Such objects are only thereafter to pertain to inner intuition, through the “transposition” (transitus) made possible by the “relation of identity (identisch)” between the forms of outer and inner intuition, a relation that would in fact make not only possible or unproblematic, but seamless, that transitus.210 209 Chenet (L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale, –) is especially attentive to the tension between Kant’s assertions of the forms of intuition as both “en tous points comparable,” or homogenous and those assertions in which Kant “a souligné la déficience intuitive du temps,” and its aspatiality and “dépendence.” On p. , Chenet will conclude that “il y a une impuissance qui méritait d’être prise comme indice d’un problème.” This index is distinguished in Chenet’s discussion of “deux sphères représentative” of inner sense and outer sense (pp. –). Most importantly, Chenet will suggest that “la paradoxe de la philosophie de Kant est qu’elle exclut le temps du sujet [ontologique] dans la mouvement même par lequel elle rapporte le temps au seul sujet [de la connaissance].” While Chenet’s comprehension of the formal or structural aspect of the aporia is evident, the dynamic aspect of the aporia, and the full significance of incapacity of inner intuition, in its inability to ‘take up into itself ’ the datum of outer sense, is left undetermined. It is this second (functional) theme, inclusive of the very possibility of the synthetic a priori judgment of experience and physics, that we will demonstrate provides a problem-context for Kant’s development of his philosophy in the ’s and in the Opus postumum, to which I hope to return in future publications. 210 De Vleeschauwer, in La déduction transcendentale, recognizes that “le contenu matériel du sens interne est, malgré le parallélisme, tout autre que celui de sens externe.” Thus, what Melnick has called the “full propriety” of inner sense in the second edition, De Vleeschauwer conceived as “l’intégration de l’intuition interne” (). In the first-Edition, within the sphere of inner intuition, “les catégories pures,” their “liaison synthétique, et, à fortiori, l’unité synthétique, sont absentes, et qui ne répresent aucune intuition déterminée.” In the second-Edition, according to the already amplified form of intuition itself, “il n’y a plus aucune raison pour ne pas résoudre le problème de la connaissance objective du moi d’après les mêmes principes que ceux des autres objets externes.” However, de Vleeschauwer anticipates the Paralogisms, when “les déterminations plus précises concernant la portée de l’existence et de la connaissabilité du moi en soi sont traitées, sur la base du grand principle limitatif, dans la critique de la psychologie rationelle” (). De Vleeschauwer speaks of the “limitation rigoreuse et stricte de l’objectivité” in inner sense in , and “une réorganisation” of this thesis in  (). In the reorganization, instead, “l’intuition interne est exactement conforme à l’intuition externe.” De Vleeschauwer charts this oscillation between the assertions of identity and heterogeneity between inner and outer sense throughout v. ; –, and v. ; –,  ff., –, –.

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This topic of the dynamic act of cognition allows the object to be exhibited and legitimated as first intuited rather than imagined or merely represented. While representations obtain solely within inner sense and are in themselves subjective, they can yet yield a refutation of the psychological idealist’s skepticism regarding our relation to the external world, without petitio. For the origin of such representations can be traced directly to their external, noematic correlate. This containment is necessary in order to establish the reality of intuition, prior to its merely formal and subjective character in imagination.211 Kant claims both (a) an immediate relation to the objects of outer sense, and (b) a relation of identity between the form of outer sense and the form of inner sense. Taken together, these propositions allow Kant to claim that “experience rather than invention, sense rather than imagination, inseparably connects what is outside me with my inner sense.” This connection occurs within intuition rather than being effected on behalf of intuition by the understanding. This connection establishes the “relation of identity” between the externality and reality of outer sense and the pure temporality of inner intuition. The “reality of outer sense,” as opposed to imagination, “rests only on our linking outer sense inseparably, as we are doing here with inner experience itself ” (B xli). This inseparable connection is not fully reciprocal, however. Outer sense is “the possibility condition for inner experience.” Inner sense is not absolute prius, form for the exhibition of all representation, but is instead derivative of and dependent upon a datum of outer sense. The application of the conditions of outer sense is to transmute inner intuition into inner experience, or objective (internal) cognition. The “reality of outer sense is connected necessarily with the reality of inner sense” as its possibility condition. Only this interdependence or “necessary connection” allows for the determination in inner sense of one’s representations as one’s own and as related to the external world (B xli). But one can record and recapitulate Kant’s Refutation, and its construal of inner intuition,212 211

This containment bears an uncertain relation to the requirement of an a priori “anticipation” of possible perception through the transcendental determination of the form for that experience, prior to experience. Such an anticipation and justification, in order to avoid a merely empirical deduction, necessitated the determination of this form “independently of experience” and as “lying a priori in the mind.” This essay, however, concerns neither the ideality thesis nor the claim to the reality of outer intuition. Both doctrines, to avoid an external and skeptical manner of presentation, are assumed. 212 Moreau, in “Le temps, la succession et le sens interne” (Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses [Ed. Gerhard Funke; Berlin, de Gruyter, ]), notes that “au point de départ de l’Esthétique transcendentale, la distinction du sens externe et du sens interne est

a problematic idealism

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just as one can record and recapitulate Kant’s first-Edition Deduction, or Synthetic Principles, and their variant construal of inner intuition, and recognize oneself as being perpetually further, rather than closer, to any adequation or synthesis of their variance. Kant’s “addition” is a revision, and pertains more to the “matter” than the “manner” of exposition. Kant’s revision pertains above all to the basic character of the central doctrine of inner intuition. In the secondEdition Refutation of Idealism, the formal condition required for Kant’s constructive intentions (the relation of identity) is superposed over that required for Kant’s critical intentions (the relation of dependence). Both obtain together in this argumentative context, which illustrates the way in which Kant’s every attempt to resolve the aporia of inner sense seems only to render the doctrine progressively more complex.213 Upon the supposée donnée.” This heterogeneity thesis is rectified in the Analytic; “puis l’inclusion des phénomènes extérieurs dans la représentation, qui appartient à l’esprit et les rend présents au sens interne, fait de cette distinction un problème.” Moreau recognizes that this inclusion, within the Analytic, is necessary in order that the materium dabile, “donné au sens externe” may then be “assimilé par la conscience” by means of inner sense, and in this way “entrer dans l’unité de l’esprit” (). Nonetheless, Moreau is concerned above all to highlight and secure the thesis of the priority of outer sense, in order to avoid a problematic idealism. For this reason, according to Moreau, “la critique sera amenée à distinguer de celui-ci [outer sense and its determinability] le sens interne . . . [and its problematic conditions]” (). For this reason, Moreau treats as a risk the “liant ainsi l’intuition externe au sens interne” that most apologetic commentators treat as a necessity. 213 In his analysis of the Refutation, Guyer (ibid) helpfully reviews the fourth paralogism of . Therein, Kant had argued that “the expression ‘outside us’ is unavoidably ambiguous.” This expression could denote either (a) “what as thing in itself exists distinct from us,” or (b) “what belongs solely to outer appearance,” or “found in space” as form of outer sense (A ). Guyer continues; “the Kant of  did not merely diagnose this ambiguity. Rather, he argued that the problem of “skeptical idealism” [arose from] the incapacity to prove the existence of external objects (A ) because of the necessary inconclusiveness of any attempt to infer to their existence as the cause of our representations of them” (A , ). Skeptical idealism, Kant argued, “could be solved only by his transcendental idealism.” Guyer recalls that this transcendental idealism was to be “understood precisely as “the doctrine that appearances are to be regarded as being, one and all, representations only, not things in themselves” (A ). Thus, for Guyer, “Kant . . . argued that objects with spatial form had to be reduced to what are ontologically merely states of the self, in order to render them safe from doubt.” Importantly, this argumentative intention marks one important general metaphysical context for the heterogeneity thesis. Guyer notes that Kant “held, of course, that there was a phenomenological difference between representations of inner states and of external objects, but insisted that “external objects (bodies) are mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the objects of which are something only through these representations (A ).” Thus, “matter and corporeal things are “merely appearances, mere kinds of representation, which are never to be met with save in us (A ).” For Guyer; “if in  Kant held that external objects could be ontologically reduced to a variety of our own

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A-Edition doctrine of the heterogeneity of inner sense and outer sense— claimed, for example and as we will soon see, in order to refute any “doctrine of the soul” as object of inner sense—Kant superposes the homogeneity of inner sense and outer sense. Their “relation of identity (identisch),” is asserted in order to secure the immediate and demonstrable reality of the external world within purportedly privileged self-cognition. Any relation of priority, however, assumes first interdependence, which contravenes the heterogeneity thesis. Thus Kant’s conclusion; “I am conscious with just as much certainty that there are things outside me that have reference to my sense as I am conscious that I myself exist as determined in time” in inner sense (B xli). While this conclusion in itself requires only the ideality thesis and the negation of a priority of inner intuition, Kant has insisted upon “playing the game of idealism against itself.” Kant has asserted both the priority of outer intuition and the presence of outer intuition within inner intuition or intuitive self-consciousness. Kant hopes, however—in accord with the second-Edition Preface—to alter “only the manner” rather than the matter of his presentation or exposition. To this end, Kant will claim that the relation of identity between outer intuition and inner intuition does not contravene the claim to their mutual heterogeneity.214

representations yet still be described as ‘outside us,’ then it can hardly be self-evident that when he claims in  that the temporal determinations of self-consciousness require ‘objects in space outside us’ he means to prove the independent existence of things numerically distinct form the self and its states” (). 214 Citing passages from Allison’s Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (), Robinson takes the “problem of inner sense” to be one of relative priority, which can be articulated in three steps. First, “for Kant, ‘we intuit ourselves, that is, our thoughts, or our inner states, in time.’ ” Importantly, “time cannot be outwardly intuited.” Second, “we must appeal to outer intuition and its form, space, in order to represent time,” since “it is only with reference to outer, that is, spatial objects that we can determine our our existence in time.” Third, “the objective time order of appearances,” of spatio-temporal objects in motion “certainly include objects in space.” Thus, “how can there be experience of such an order if time cannot be a determination of outer appearances?” () While promising, this reasoning will lead Robinson to only a limited critique; “how can the time of inner sense derive from outer sense, where outer sense has, properly speaking, no time of its own at all except by virtue of inner sense?” (). Robinson here, peculiarly, conceives of the heterogeneity thesis as problematic not with regard to the aspatiality of time, but with regard only to the atemporality of space (itself unproblematic, given the permanence of, applicability of the categories to, outer sense). Robinson underdetermines the indeterminacy of inner intuition; “if the application of the categories is required for the unity, and hence the intelligibility, of all objects of experience, including inner objects, then . . . inner sense as appearance, as reflected upon, can indeed acquire this intelligibility.”

a problematic idealism

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Only in this way is the external object in its existence and reality “included necessarily in the determination of my own existence.” This containment of spatial form within the time of inner sense “results in a single experience.” This single or unified experience, however, requires that outer experience provide a model or typus toward the constitution of an inner experience. Clearly, the doctrine of inner sense and inner intuition had explicitly disallowed this claim to analogy. Indeed, Kant admits that inner experience “would not take place inwardly if it were not (in part) outer at the same time” (B xli).215 But this “partial” interdependence does not complement but contradicts both positions previously expressed, that of heterogeneity and that of homogeneity, or identity.216 The claim to “a unified experience,” and 215

In Kant’s Treatment of Causality (p.  ff.), Ewing set out his account “in accordance with the usual practice of commentators”—a practice unfortunately no longer current. Ewing takes the fourth paralogism from the first edition (A –), and set it against the second edition refutation of idealism, “in order to bring out the puzzling contrast between the two.” Ewing concludes that “the second edition contradicts the first. In the first, physical objects are asserted to be merely our representations; in the second it is denied that they are anything ‘in us’ at all.” In fact, “the second-edition Refutation seems at first sight at least to contradict also many other passages in the Critique.” Ewing recognizes that “one of the earliest objections that Kant encountered was to this effect” [; on this point, Erdmann provides a review of the first critics of the doctrine of inner sense, including Pistorius, in Kants Kriticismus in der ersten und in der zweiten Auflage der Kritik der reinen Vernunft, –]. Ewing will suggest that “perception in introspection of the phenomenal self is regarded as in some respects parallel to that of physical objects,” while in other respects inner sense is “dependent on the manifold of outer sense” (). For Ewing’s analysis, see ibid, –. While not as critical as Ward (A Study of Kant, p.  ff.), Ewing analyzed, both in Causality and in Idealism, the demands and implications of the heterogeneity thesis. His work is rarely referenced in contemporary scholarship. 216 Guyer (Claims of Knowledge, ) notes that “the majority position on the interpretation of the refutation has indeed been that it is intended to be entirely consistent with the ontological reduction of external objects to groups of representations advocated by the fourth paralogism of . This is what has been argued by a long line of distinguished Kantians such as Hans Vaihinger, Edward Caird, Robert Adamson, H.J. Paton, and Gerhard Lehmann. Only a scorned minority party of such figures as Benno Erdmann, Henry Sidgwick, Arthur Balfour, and H.A. Prichard have clearly defended the view that the argument of , whether so intended or not, requires a radical departure from the position of ” (). Guyer, for his part, holds that “Kant must have recognized almost immediately the inadequacy of his new refutation, at least the insufficiency of its actual argumentation, for even before the revisions of  were ready for the press Kant added two emendations which attempt to provide additional support for its conclusion. Yet neither of these passages succeeds in putting beyond doubt the intended thesis or argument of Kant’s new attack on skeptical idealism . . .” While Guyer’s list of the “scorned minority” view is incomplete, his is one of few accounts to acknowledge and pursue thoroughly this evident and important tension.

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indeed “a single subject” across the heterogenous spheres of intuition, remains aporetic, for the atopicality of the temporality of inner sense.217 Inner experience would be impossible without the conditions and characters of outer intuition, just as Kant’s wider critical intentions require that inner intuition be denuded of these characters. The “relation of identity” in the second-Edition Refutation of Idealism eliminates any valid claim to the refutation of materialism and the critique of rational psychology. Kant now asserts neither independence nor interdependence, but a “partial interdependence” between inner sense and outer sense. This “partial interdependence,” required for “inner experience,” contradicts openly the heterogeneity thesis. This interdependence, Kant asserts, “we cannot explain further.” This incapacity is itself analogous to the purportedly basic facts that “we cannot explain further how what is constant is thought by us in [the succession] of time,” or how “the concept of change arises from the simultaneity of what is constant with what varies,” as each encountered above. The identification of the formal and functional aspects of the aporia of inner sense has provided a key to understanding the thetic transformations, and discontinuities, between the first and second editions of the first Critique. Each of Kant’s principal amendments to the first edition have concerned either the formal character of inner intuition or its functional relation of independence or interdependence with outer intuition and the understanding as such. Now, in the General Comment, Kant offers the most general lineaments of his doctrine, as can be considered consistent across both editions. 217 Chenet (ibid, ) records Kant’s assertion that () time includes space as “universal representation,” while space is restricted to the form of outer sense. By this construal (illustrated with reference to A –, B – and R , and continued on p. ) time alone is that form of intuition in which “we order all our representations” universally. Thus, space is dependent upon time. Chenet also records () the assertions at B  and B  of the priority and universality of the spatiality of outer sense. By this construal, time is dependent upon space. Chenet realizes, of course, that “ces raisons se contrarient donc” (), and will until, “en attendant que l’Opus postumum y revienne satiété” (). As was stated in the Introduction, this essay is dedicated to demonstrating the validity of such insightful, though undemonstrated, intimations. Similarly, Gerhard Lehmann, in “Kants Widerlegung des Idealismus” (Kant-Studien  /, –) directed attention both to the problematic “Einheit von äußerer und innerer Erfahrung,” and indeed the necessary “Primats der inneren Erfahrung.” Lehmann also notes the salience of inner sense throughout Kant’s late reflections, and Kant’s concern with (a) achieving a “phenomenology of the cognition of reality” in a transcendental topic, rather than (b) “a ‘proof ’ of external things” in outer sense, which form of intuition is instead taken as unproblematic (ibid).

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With these perhaps surprising assertions (of an identity between outer and inner sense and of a partial identity between outer and inner sense), added to the second-Edition Preface, we reach Kant’s General Comment on the System of Principles.218 This Comment, too, was added with the Refutation to the second-Edition. On the firm ground of the ideality thesis, Kant again notes that it is “quite remarkable that we cannot have insight into the possibility of any thing according to the mere category.” We must “always have recourse to intuition,” if ever we wish “to exhibit the objective reality of the pure concept of the understanding” (B ; italics added). Dispossessed of intuition, Kant repeats, cognition is reduced to consciousness; “when intuition is absent, we do not know whether any object whatever can at all belong” to a given concept. Without an intuitive correlate, the categories “are no cognitions at all, but mere forms of thought for making cognitions from given intuitions” (ibid). It is clear, then, that “from mere categories no synthetic propositions can be formed” (B ). The centrality of pure intuition to synthetic a priori judgment is thus made evident. However, Kant adds, now under the sign of the heterogeneity thesis, that it is “even more remarkable that we need not merely intuitions, but indeed always outer intuitions,” in order

218

Paton, in Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, focuses on these shifting commitments in this context of his exegesis of the Refutation of Idealism. Temporal self-consciousness, he reviews, “is possible only in relation to something which . . . is external to myself.” This implies, for Paton, that “what is external to myself is inseparably bound up with inner sense,” which contradicts the major, the heterogeneity thesis (). On Kant’s exposition, “I have no ground whatever for regarding [the object] either as spatial or as permanent” insofar as it is subsumed to the aspatial temporal flux of inner sense (). Kant’s doctrine, it seems “which I have simplified and abbreviated, offers considerable difficulty in detail.” Paton specifies the reason; Kant “appears to be giving a further reason why what is external to myself is inseparably bound up with inner sense,” while yet suggesting that “what is external to myself is revealed to outer sense . . . as a condition of inner experience.” Paton notes that “it may be thought that on idealist principles we require no more for Kant’s purpose than a permanent knowing self.” This ground is clearly required, according to Paton, in order to “explain our knowledge of the succession of our own ideas . . ..” But, he adds, “there is nothing permanent in the empirical self as it is known through inner sense; and to suppose that we can pass from the unity of apperception to the knowledge that the soul is a permanent substance—this, according to Kant, is nothing but a paralogism of reason.” Paton notes that Kant has supported this position with the claim that “the permanent which is the condition of our experience is to be found in objects of outer sense and in them alone” (). In spite of such difficulties, Paton assures his reader that “whatever be the difficulties of Kant’s argument in detail, his general position is clear” (). Thus, “inner and outer experience constitute only one experience, and there could be no inner experience unless it was at the same time also partly an outer experience, that is, an experience of permanent objects in space” ().

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to perform this task.219 In order “to give as corresponding to the concept of substance something permanent in intuition” so as thereby to establish the objective reality of the categories, we require “an intuition of matter,” for which “we need an intuition in space.” For “space alone is determined as permanent,” while “time and hence whatever is in inner sense is always successive” (B ).220 This, perhaps frustrating, General Comment may occasion a more general review of the significance of our investigation. The centrality of the doctrine of the pure intuitions to the critical philosophy, we have seen, cannot be evaded. The juxtaposition of virtually any passage or series of texts evinces its salience. This centrality obtains, formally, since “all our knowledge is finally subject to time, the formal condition of inner sense,” in which it “must all be ordered, connected, and brought into relation” (A ). Centrality is also evident functionally, since “all human cognition begins with intuitions, [before it] proceeds from there to concepts . . . ” (A , B ).

219 Franzwa (Space and Schematism, Kant-Studien, , ) has emphasized the tension between Kant’s privilege of time and Kant’s contravening claim to the irreducibility of space to time, its own superior epistemic status with regard to the indeterminacy and inconstancy of inner sense. Franzwa treats Kant’s assertion at B  that the categories must (a) always receive application to intuition in order to become actual, and (b) “always outer intuition” for the stability thereof (). Havet begins his analysis of “les caractères intuitifs . . . qui fonde la possibilité d’une science . . . ” with this claim that “nous avons besoin non pas simplement d’intuitions, mais toujours d’intuitions externes . . . ” and on this basis notes that while in “l’espace, les objets sont a priori donnés en lui dans une extériorité réciproque” in inner sense, “la condition nécessaire pour qu’un objet soit donné comme objet,” time “au contraire se laisse mal dégager des représentations spatiales dans lesquelles on l’intuitionne et on le quantifie, ses propriétés intuitives sont extrêmement pauvres et à lui seul il ne saurait être l’objet d’aucune science, car dans la succession pure l’esprit n’aurait où se prendre” (ibid, ). 220 Guyer (ibid, ), while sensitive to the aspatiality of inner intuition, leaves the inconstancy of inner intuition underdetermined. Thus his protest; “why should an enduring self not be an adequate substratum for the permanence of time, especially since time itself is apparently nothing more than the form by which we represent ‘ourselves and our inner state’ (A , B )? . . . Why should the enduring self itself not be the kind of enduring and law-governed substance which permits such discriminations [those of simultaneity and endurance] to be made?” Guyer’s question is important. But Kant does not refer to such an ‘enduring self ’ precisely because simultaneity and endurance in inner sense has been disallowed, in order to legislate transcendentally against Seelenlehre. Thus Guyer () will complain that Kant “does not explain why mere inner intuition—passive apprehension of representations—is not only necessary but at the same time insufficient for empirical knowledge of the self ” when it is precisely this insufficiency that will motivate Kant’s ‘explanation’ of inner sense in the Paralogisms ().

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The distinction between transcendent and transcendental propositions is itself made through the doctrine of pure intuition; “we limit reason in such a way that it does not leave the thread of empirical conditions and stray into bases of explanation that are transcendent and incapable of any exhibition in concreto” according to the character of our intuition (A , B ). Through intuition, a cognitive content is to be made possible “materially” (materialiter). Through the understanding, it is to be made possible only “formally” (formaliter). From “mere concepts we can obtain no synthetic cognition at all, but only analytic cognition” (A , B ). Only through the union or unity of intuition and intellection can a synthetic content be generated. Synthetic cognition requires intuition, the proper function of which requires spatio-temporal unity (and the spatiality of time qua form of inner sense) at the level of pure intuition. But it is not only a priori intuition generally, but inner intuition a priori that retains this centrality; “there is only one whole in which all our representations are contained, namely inner sense, and its a priori form, time” (A , B ). In inner sense lies “the secret of the origin of our sensibility” (A ).221 The same centrality is evinced in beginning not from intellection or imagination but from sensation itself; “empirical intuition is possible only through pure intuition (of space and time)” (A , B ).222 Whether one works from the extreme of empirical sensibility or that of reason’s ideas and ideals, the doctrine of pure intuitions 221 In an important Reflexion, Kant wrote that “we perceive something only by being conscious of our apprehension, consequently of [its] existence in our inner sense . . . the intellectual (aspect) of perception goes to the power of inner sense . . . everything else . . . is nothing for us and cannot be perceived . . . ” (R ; Ak , –). 222 Moreau, in his article “Le temps, la succession et le sens interne” (Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses [Ed. Gerhard Funke; Berlin, de Gruyter, ]), recognizes the distinction between “sens externe, par lequel nous nous représentons des objets hors de nous et compris dans l’espace” and “sens intime, au moyen duquel l’esprit s’aperçoit luimême, ou du moins ses états intérieurs et leurs rapports de temps” (). He also notes, however, that this “opposition radicale” is complemented, or contradicted, by a second acceptation of inner intuition, since “en tant que déterminations de l’esprit à un état intérieur, et par là rentrent dans le temps, condition formelle de l’intuition interne, il s’ensuit de là que le temps est la condition a priori de tous les phénomènes en general,” including “des phénomènes externes eux-mêmes.” This second acceptation “fait rentrer le sens externe dans le sens interne” from which it had been segregated. This second acceptation also implies a “priorité accordé au sens interne, dans lequel est incluse la représentation des choses extérieures” (ibid). However, Moreau worries that this inclusion in inner intuition as an Inbegriff threatens the claims of the Refutation of Idealism; “elle fait apparaître la connaissance de celles-ci comme médiate et leur existence problématique,” but recognizes that each construal threatens each other construal, and the argumentative positions erected thereupon (). Regarding the ordo cognoscendi, then Moreau will recognize that

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and particularly inner intuition a priori retains its centrality; “the first thing that we must be given a priori in order to cognize any object is the manifold of pure intuition” (A, B).223 Aporiai in the doctrine of inner sense, far from concerning only the scholastic issue of the analytic predicates of an element in sensibility or any “subtle reasoning,” are no less aporiai for transcendental philosophy in its most universal character. Kant does not here recognize the implications of the demands for both constancy and inconstancy, spatiality and aspatiality, and homogeneity and heterogeneity, within the manifold of inner intuition. The wider and variant argumentative intentions themselves, to which the doctrine(s) of inner intuition provide formal justification, remain apparently of principal importance—at least at this stage in Kant’s development. Kant would direct attention not to the aporetic aspects of the doctrine, but only to its potentially advantageous applications. Kant asserts that while “Leibniz attributed to substances in the world as thought by the understanding” in the relation of cogitata-cogitatum, “he needed a diety to mediate this community.” Leibniz required a (theological) pre-established harmony. Kant would claim to be able to “make the possibility of community (of substances as appearances) quite readily comprehensible,” through the doctrine of pure intuitions, “if we present substances in space and hence in outer intuition.” This inestimable advance accrues to transcendental philosophy insofar as “space already contains a priori formal external relations as conditions for the possibility of real relations (in action and reaction).” In this, an indemonstrabilia becomes a demonstrandum, a scandal for philosophy instead an accomplished task.224 The doctrine of inner sense, while atopical and aporetic, is not arbitrary, but is rather central. Both for critical and doctrinal theses, the doctrine of inner sense is an intrinsically necessary element of the architectonic structuration of human cognition. Kant concludes the General “si la diversité sensible” or heterogeneity in intuition “était rebelle aux conditions de l’unité transcendentale de l’aperception, qui s’expriment dans les concepts pure de l’entendement, elle n’aurait pu déjà entrer dans la représentation, être appropriée par le sens interne” (). 223 At R , Kant wrote that “were time not given subjectively and therefore a priori as form of inner sense . . . apperception would not cognize a priori the relation in the existence of the manifold . . . (nor) the place of objects in time . . . (nor) constitute any experience unless it had rules of the time (that) it cannot take from the object” (Ak , ). 224 For Kant’s treatment of the thesis of a “pre-established [theological] harmony . . . of concordance betweeen phenomena and the laws of the understanding” as “a means to health worse than the evil” of the skepticism “that it must remedy,” for its reliance upon an undemonstrable claim, see the Preface to the Metaphysical Foundations (Ak , ).

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Comment by indicating the most proximate reason for this centrality, that “this whole remark is of great importance for confirming our preceding Refutation of Idealism” (B –). But this strategically conceived addition of  is not strategic only for its role in confirming the Refutation of Idealism. The General Comment is no less strategically conceived for its placement immediately before the Amphiboly chapter, to which it provides a transition. The General Comment contains summary reformulations of the doctrine of inner sense as propounded variously and variantly throughout the exposition of the synthetic principles. But it is “much more important for indicating to us when we shall be talking about self-cognition from mere inner consciousness.”225 This indication is to inform the impending investigation “about determination of our nature without the aid of outer intuitions” in Transcendental Dialectic. By this inability to claim the “aid of outer intuitions,” an inability enforced through the heterogeneity thesis, Kant will attempt to achieve the formal conditions required for establishing critically the “limits of the possibility of such cognition” (B ). In order to accomplish the right quid juris to claim such ‘limits of self-cognition,’ Kant must assign those limits transcendentally, to the 225 In spite of such clear evocations of the heterogeneity thesis, Aquila asserts homogeneity. Aquila advances Kant’s assertions that () “all appearances exist only ‘in us’ and as ‘determinations of my identical self,’ ” alongside those “in which he says that inner sense is the sum of all representations” (Aquila ; Kant, B ). He does so in order to suggest that “a single manifold of material provides the basis for two distinct kinds of intuitions, inner and outer” (see p.  for Aquila’s confrontation of, and attempt to explain away, Kant’s claim that “time cannot be intuited outside us” from A , B ). For Aquila, Kant holds “that one and the same material provides a vehicle for the apprehension of spatial forms, and also for the apprehension of our consciousness of such forms.” Aquila will resolve the heterogeneity thesis into an unqualified homogeneity thesis; “the fact that the material of outer sense is also that of inner sense implies that whatever of our own ‘self ’ is presented in inner intuition is something that is at best reflected in the very objects that we also conceptualize as objects of outer sense, i.e., as bodies in space” (). Thus, Aquila’s perhaps surprising conclusion; “the material of inner sense is the very same set of objects as are presented in outer sense . . . ” (). On this point, Bennett was particularly aware of the violation of the formal requirements necessary to sustain the Restriktionslehre of the Paralogisms that such an inner-outer union would imply. See particularly Kant’s Dialectic (London, ), pp. –. The majority of interpreters, however, like Aquila, have followed such examples as Kemp Smith, who so underdetermined the heterogeneity thesis that in exegeting the Refutation (Commentary p.  n. ), he claims that the locution außer uns is “pleonastic.” He admitted, however, that the secondEdition Refutation “proves the direct opposite of what is asserted in the first edition,” that “though outer appearances are immediately apprehended they must be existences distinct from the subjective states through which the mind represents them,” as Aquila apparently would not ().

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universal and necessary formal structure of our faculty of cognition itself, and to the form of inner intuition in particular. And an unequivocal assignment of only a resticted capacity to inner intuition, we are now in a position to say, Kant has not yet attained, having at points, already, claimed independence of outer intuition and inner intuition (in the heterogeneity thesis of the Aesthetic), the interdependence of the same (in the first-Edition Deduction and its First Synthesis), and the dependence of the latter upon the former (as was claimed in the Refutation of Idealism).226 Kant next offers a reflection on reflection, a comment upon the manner in which we possess not only consciousness of objects, but a consciousness of our consciousness of objects. He offers this comment in the context of an Appendix to the Transcendental Logic, entitled “On the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection.” His claims in this section, however, allow us to consider it also as a reflection on the character and limits of inner sense, and as an Introduction to the Transcendental Dialectic, to which we will turn next. By ‘amphiboly,’ Kant intends a “confusion of a pure object of understanding with an appearance” (A , B ). Such a confusion, Kant supposes, arises from an insufficient attention to the character and limits of our sensibility as condition for the possibility of appearance. Kant notes first that any thesis, and any resolution to contravening theses, regarding reflection, cannot be adjudicated with reference to empirical judgments or even empirical concepts. For at issue is not such consciousness of objects, but consciousness of consciousness itself. For this reason, Kant suggests that the act of reflection or deliberation (Überlegung) should be under stood as concerning “not objects themselves” in first-order cogni-

226 L.W. Beck, in “Toward a Meta-Critique of Pure Reason,” in Studies in the Critique of Pure Reason, finds it “regrettable that Kant did not say more about the peculiarities of self-knowledge,” a lack which Beck attributes to “his own criticism of the pretension of rational psychology.” Beck charges that “he has no explicit theory of how we come to know of the operations and faculties or abilities of the mind” (), a charge which as such appears to be too strong. I have argued instead that Kant does not lack for any theory, but that that theory, which centers on inner intuition, suffers from two variant construals, advanced in the service of wider argumentative intentions and which conspire to render Kant’s theory antinomial. Beck suggests that scholars not attempt to find “hints about how the meta-critical problem [of self-knowledge] can be solved,” but rather apply themselves to the more systematic question of “how these hints can be systematized and integrated with the rest of Kant’s philosophy and developed within the constraints he placed upon knowledge” ().

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tion, but “our state of mind” with and in which we “discover the subjective conditions under which we can arrive at concepts” (A , B ). In other words, Kant here would both indicate and accomplish a “consciousness of the relation of given presentations to our various sources of cognition” (A , B ). He will do so by means of a “transcendental deliberation” (reflexio), in which we are to “hold up the comparison of presentations to the cognitive power in which this comparison is made.” We are to do so in order to decide “whether the presentations being compared belong to pure understanding or sensible intuition” (A , B ).227 Deliberation is to issue in a judgment of, or clear decision upon, the analytic or synthetic character of an object or presentation. Thus Kant’s first suggestion in the following Comment on the Amphiboly is precisely that “transcendental location” will indicate “the position that we assign to a concept” as pertaining either to sensibility or understanding (A . B ). The full systematic elaboration of all such locations of concepts, according to principles, would result in a “transcendental topic.” Such a topic, Kant suggests immediately, “would instruct us according to rules” regarding the possible scope and limits of our cognitive capacities. In this way, the ‘topic’ would not only represent a distinct gain and “unexpected advantage” for transcendental idealism positively, but would as importantly, “protect us thoroughly from surreptitious claims” or extensions (A , B ).228 227

For Longuenesse (Kant and the Capacity to Judge [Princeton, Princeton University Press, ], ), “Kant’s criticism of the amphiboly consists accordingly in showing that () the form of the sensible given is irreducibly heterogeneous to any form thinkable by pure intellect, and () in the sensible given (objects of sensible representation) the matter does not determine the form . . . but on the contrary, the form precedes and determines the matter.” However, the salient heterogeneity in these passages is not first the heterogeneity in origin between intuition and intellection, but the heterogeneity in form between inner intuition and outer intuition. Longuenesse will speak only of the “homogenous (spatiotemporal) given” (), “the inseparability of temporal and spatial intuition,” and indeed the “quasi-spatial” character of inner sense (), which on her reconstruction are “jointly produced” by the understanding. Indeed, for Longuenesse, “both intuitions are the result of one and the same act of self-affection.” The aporia of inner sense, however, is unresolvable if Kant would retain (a) the priority of intuition to intellection in the dynamic act of empirical cognition, (b) the heterogeneity thesis, (c) the distinction between intuition, imagination, and intellection, by which it is only by means of, and through, intuition that an object can be given for a constitutive, first-order, determinate and synthetic cognition. Longuenesse in effect ignores or negates each. 228 As could be expected, Kant in this context issues several important comments on the formal character of space and time. Space, Kant begins, “the condition for outer appearances” or form for outer intuition, “already indicates plurality and numerical

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Kant’s most consistent polemical concern in the Amphiboly section is with Leibniz, and in particular to his misconstrual of the limits of our intuition. Kant would instruct Leibniz, by means of his transcendental topic, of the danger of “straying into intelligible worlds” (A , B ). Such wandering follows from a basic mistake, that of supposing that “intuitions must conform to concepts instead of concepts’ conforming to intuitions” (A , B ).229 Thus, having amplified inner intuition from its first appearance in the Aesthetic to its penultimate appearance in the Synthetic Principles, Kant would now insist that intuition is to restrict intellection.230 Leibniz “envisaged only concepts,” and ignored the difference” (A , B ). Any part of space, qua spatial, is represented according to this form as externally related to any other part of space. This distinction or mutual externality extends not only to the parts of space, or spaces, but to places conceived as points, and the elements which articulate such points. Space, while not itself infinitely divisible, is that form of intuition within which infinite divisibility obtains. Space, as a form of intuition rather than a concept, offers a principle of individuation and identity only by first offering a principle of differentiation. Further, “we are acquainted with substance only in space,” and “only through forces that are active in space” alone. These forces are enumerated as attraction, repulsion, and impenetrability. Each is repugnant to any intrinsic (inner, or temporal) determination. Instead, inner sense can yield only “what either is itself a thinking or is analogous to it.” (A , B –). 229 Longuenesse (see note , above) attempts to bracket the doctrine of inner intuition throughout her treatment of the Amphiboly. According to Longuenesse (ibid), Kant’s treatment of inner sense in the Amphiboly is indicative of the purely intellectual distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic determinations; “the basic thrust of Kant’s argument is logical, bearing on the interiority or exteriority of the condition or ground of predication” (, n. ). Kant is to be understood, according to Longuenesse, as arguing against the position that “all outer relations can be reduced to strictly inner determinations. Interiority here is thus interiority in a logical sense: the interiority of the condition of the attribution of any predicate to the subject of the judgment” (). This construal, I would suggest, underdetermines the role of inner intuition in Kant’s argumentation, and obscures the problematicity thereof. 230 In the context of his discussion of the Kant’s “polemical intention,” and its implications for Kant’s “positive intention” (positive Funktionsbestimmung) (ibid, ), Reuter admits that “problematisch ist also der systematische Status der Reflexionsbegriffe, und es bleibt zu fragen, wie sich die “Einheit der Reflexion” im Sinne der Kategorien von der im Sinne der Reflexionsbegriffe unterscheiden läßt.” Reuter notes that Kant will take up this problem again in the Opus postumum, in which Kant will return “noch einmal ausführlicher auf die amphibolische Natur der Reflexionsbegriffe.” Reuter introduces the consequent problem of a “constructive” determination of the manifold of inner sense through a konstitutive Akte of self-cognition at –. Reuter considers this implication of the “Heterogenitätsthese” on pp. –, and notes that “Kant glaubt also mit der These, daß raum-zeitliche Objekte Relationskomplexe sind, zugleich auch ausschließen zu können, daß das ‘Äußere’ der Erfahrungsobjekte eine Widerspiegelung ihres ‘Inneren’ sein könnte.” Reuter notes an “Äquivokation im Begriff des ‘Inneren’” for this reason of its exclusion of spatiality, expressed in the Aesthetic and necessary to the Dialectic, and its inclusion of spatiality, expressed in and necessary to the Analytic. See pp. – ff. for Reuter’s elaboration

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particular and restrictive condition of our faculty of intuition, or “their position in intuition wherein alone objects can be given” (A , B ). Leibniz, in other words, “ignored completely the transcendental location of concepts.” The problem Kant would diagnose and rectify concerns not only a violation of the limits of our intuition, but a violation of the limits of our inner intuition. In Leibniz’s “doctrinal system of space and time,” in fact, “everything is engaged only inwardly, with its presentations” (A , B ). The monadology is, according to Kant, a system of and in inner intuition. To this conception Kant will oppose his own doctrine of inner sense. He has employed the doctrine thus far, throughout the Aesethetic and the Analytic, to a constructive end. He will now, in a Dialectic, issue a novel and in fact a thoroughly critical, negative, or minimal account of inner intuition and its capacities to a variant end—to make formally impossible such “Platonic soaring.”

III. The Intellective Aspect of Cognition (Idealiter sic Dicta) There is no use in trying to moderate these fruitless endeavors of pure reason by all manner of cautions as to the difficulties of solving questions so obscure, by complaints of the limits of our reason, and by degrading our assertions into mere conjectures. For if their impossibility is not distinctly shown, and reason’s knowledge of itself does not become a true science, in which the field of its right use is distinguished with geometrical certainty from that of its worthless and idle use, these fruitless efforts will never be entirely abandoned. Prolegomena, § 

v. Seelenlehre, Weltwissenschaft, Gotteserkenntnis The Paralogisms chapters of the first and second-Editions, to which we are now prepared to turn, contain both (a) the most restrictive account of inner intuition within the entire first Critique, and (b) its argumentative application in Kant’s critique of Seelenlehre, or metaphysical-theological

of his critique. Reuter confesses that this heterogeneity implies for his analysis that “eine Interpretation des Amphiboliekapitels ist mit einem ganzen Bündel von Problemen konfrontiert,” first among which are Kant’s contravening depictions of the representative capacity of the intuitive manifold of inner sense ().

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doctrine of the soul as object of inner sense.231 In the following pages, I will attempt to determine as closely as possible the restrictive character of this account, in order both to isolate the character of inner sense as it appears within this argumentative context, and to prepare us for a comparison and contrast with earlier, more positive or amplified accounts of the character and capacity of inner sense. In its Introduction, Kant offers a classification of the variety of and in our presentations, in order to determine their status and function. Kant stipulates that the genus is representation as such, repraesentatio. A representation of which one is conscious, or a “presentation with consciousness,” is a perception, or perceptio. A perception “that refers solely to the subject” as “the modification of the subject’s state” is a sensation, or sensatio. A perception that is not subjective but objective, and refers not to the subject’s state but to an objective substance, is a cognition, or cognitio (A , B –). Kant then determines cognitio more closely. Cognition is differentiated internally as intuitus vel conceptus, intuition or concept, Anschauung oder Begriff. Consciousness that is intuitive is characterized as referring directly to the object, and as singular, in accordance with the individuality thesis regarding intuition expressed first in the Aesthetic. Consciousness that is merely conceptual refers to objects “by means of a characteristic common to several things,” and hence not as singular but as general or universal. Concepts, like intuitions, may be empirical or pure. A pure concept, for its provenance in the understanding, is to be termed a notion, or notio. Any concept generated from a mere notion will be termed an idea. An idea will denote a concept which “surpasses the possibility of experience.” For ideas, “no congruent object can be given through the senses” (A , B ). Such ideas will also be termed “concepts of reason” in order to indicate their distance from either any empirical concept or any applicability to any act of empirical cognition. It is with the latter that Kant is concerned in the Transcendental Dialectic. This classification has been implicit in the entirety of the first Critique, and departs not in the least from Kant’s consistent usage of each term. Kant’s construal of inner intuition, however, will depart considerably 231 Oddly, Van Cleve, in Problems from Kant (New York, Oxford University Press, , p. ) conceives of the “objects of inner sense” as “tickles and pains,” ostensibly as definitive psychological phenomena. I hope in this section to approach more closely a thoroughgoing comprehension of Kant’s doctrine of the rational-psychological and rational-theological ‘doctrine of the soul,’ and its function within the general economy of the Paralogisms.

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from the amplified account he had given in the Analytic. Kant reiterates his insistence, however, upon the most literal and strict of interpretive understandings. Kant warns the reader with an example in concreto; “once someone has become accustomed to these distinctions, he must find it unbearable to hear the presentation of some red color to be called an ‘idea’; it must not even be called a ‘notion’ (concept of understanding).” Such a presentation must instead be assigned its position within the transcendental topic of human cognition as a qualitative element of intuition. Only this assignment of the provenance of any repraesentatio will allow that “the field of its correct employment [be] distinguished with geometrical certainty from that of its worthless and idle use,” as the point was put in the Prolegomena (§ ). Having articulated in this way the context for and importance of the Paralogisms chapter, Kant will now “enter upon the same path that we took above in the deduction of the categories.” There, the scope or range and status of the various elements of human cognition was established. Again, “we must examine the logical form of rational cognition” (A , B ).232 Kant initiates this task by claiming that representations can be exhibited in their most universal logical form as follows. Representation as such, Kant begins, possesses two possible referential relations; “what is universal about all reference that our presentations can have is (A) their reference to the subject, (B) their reference to objects.” According to the latter, such objects may be understood as either “() appearances or () objects of thought as such” (A , B ). Appearances are understood as synthetic objects of intuition; objects of thought are understood as merely analytic or formal concepts. These relations of referentiality are articulated upon the model of the deduction, and yet, with 232 Just as Kant restricts himself to such a phenomenological stance, so too do we, interpretively. To this end, we need not and in fact do not assert, dogmatically and enthusiastically, the presence of an inner manifold for synthetic determination (in accordance with the claims of the Analytic, but to a rational-psychological or rational-theological end). Nor do we insist, oppositely, that such a manifold for determination not obtain (in accordance with the claims of the Paralogisms, as we will see). We, instead, transcendentally, inquire into Kant’s exposition of the necessary exclusion of the character and capacities necessary for synthetic determination to the manifold of inner intuition, at the same time that we inquire into Kant’s exposition of their neessary inclusion. We inquire, then, into the internal instability of the architectonic of pure reason as Kant has constructed it. Kant’s account of self-consciousness has often been criticized, of course, for its formality. Such external critiques, however, neither concern nor involve us. Our concern lies not with what we might suppose Kant should have taken as his explanandum (e.g., an embodied subjectivity, Spirit taken in the context of community, state, religion, etc.), but with the form of inner sense as Kant has explicated it (variously and variantly).

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the introduction of the ideas of reason, to a new end. Kant will examine “whether reason might likewise become, through this form, a source of concepts that would allow us to regard objects in themselves as determined synthetically a priori in regard to one or another function of reason” (A , B ).233 Through this articulation of the universal logical form of all representations, and toward the end of an examination of the possibility of further synthetic cognition, Kant precedes toward the paralogisms. While the pure concepts of the understanding “concern the synthetic unity of presentations,” the concepts of pure reason, as transcendental ideas, “concern the unconditioned synthetic unity of all conditions as such.” Transcendental ideas, then, remain formal, and are restricted to a subjective and regulative, rather than objective and constitutive, status. Accepting such restrictions, transcendental ideas “may be brought under three classes” of maximal inclusiveness. These are “first, the absolute (unconditioned) unity of the thinking subject”; second, “the absolute unity of the series of conditions of appearance”; and third, “the absolute unity of the condition of all objects of thought as such” (A , B ). The first idea, concerning the unity of the thinking subject, “is the object of psychology.” The second idea, concerning the “sum of all appearances (the world)” as a world-whole, “is the object of cosmology.” The third idea, “containing the supreme condition of the possibility of all that can be thought (the being of all beings) is the object of theology.”

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Concepts of reason, as “mere ideas,” are differentiated immediately from the concepts of understanding. The former are, by definition, incapable of presenting any object. The ideas of reason will allow for an “ascent from the conditioned synthesis” of and in synthetic cognition, “to which understanding always remains tied.” Through the ideas of reason, a transcendental topic may reach “to the unconditioned synthesis, which understanding can never reach.” By this unconditioned synthesis we do not “cognize any further object than would be cognized according to concepts.” Nonetheless, understanding is “guided better and further” thereby, since “the transcendental ideas of reason make possible a transition.” This transition does not obtain within the theory of cognition and between the elements necessary for its comprehension. This transition insteads abandons the terrain of theoretical philosophy, and moves “from the concepts of nature to practical concepts” (A , B ). The ideas of reason, then, represent less the consummation than the renunciation of the demands or claims of knowledge that have motivated this essay. Such practical and “regulative” concepts cannot generate the genuinely theoretical concepts required by experiential and experimental cognition or self-cognition. No resolution or application to the aporetic heterogeneity in intuition, then, can be fulfilled by the ideas, or ideals, of reason, through which we “do not cognize according to concepts” and intuition any synthetic object.

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In this way, pure reason and the ideas thereof “provide us with the concept of a transcendental psychology” as a psychologia rationalis. Pure reason will also provide us with the concept of a transcendental cosmology as cosmologia rationalis, and with the concept of transcendental theology as a theologia transcendentalis. Such disciplines would result, respectively, in a “doctrine of the soul” (Seelenlehre), a “science of the worldwhole” (Weltwissenschaft), and a “doctrine of God” (Gotteserkenntnis). Kant conceives of these disciplines not as distinct but as interdetermining and interdependent. In fact, “among the transcendental ideas there can be seen a certain coherence and unity,” and in fact a “system” or systematic character. Kant will write (A –, B ) of an ascending series or “progressus” from the first transcendental idea of the “unity of the thinking subject” and its theoretical expression in a “doctrine of the soul,” to the latter transcendental ideas.234 Kant for this reason will institute a distinction between “concepts of the understanding” as possess a categorial, synthetic, and theoretical status, and such “concepts of reason.” The latter will not admit of, or allow for, any “objective use” whatever (A , B ). They will “surpass the boundary of all experience” and thus cannot be adduced as conditions for the possibility of that experience; all such principles must necessarily remain “problematic” (A , B ). But Kant will also assert the impossibility of such an ascent by means of the doctrine of inner intuition. Through it, Kant will subject to critique the very possibility of a (neoPlatonic) Seelenlehre, and thus the progress of dialectical reason toward

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Kant worries over the apparently natural and unproblematic character of this processus, which “proceeds from the cognition of oneself (the soul) to the cognition of the world and by means of it to [the cognition of] the original being.” Its trajectory proposes “so natural an advance that it seems similar to reason’s logical progression from premises to conclusion” (A , B ). This passage indicates clearly not only “Platonic soaring” most generally but, more particularly, the traditional neo-Platonic model of ‘ascent’ from sensible theology or physics to symbolic theology or philosophy to speculative theology proper, standard in medieval neo-Platonism, from Patristic (e.g., Augustine), to Renaissance (e.g., Nicholas of Cusa), sources. More particularly still, of course, this polemical intention of Kant concerns Malebranche, as named at A . (See note , below.) In this intent to remove the formal conditions necessary for this ascent from Seelenlehre to Gotteslehre is found the first locus of significance of the Critique of Pure Reason and its Dialectic for the philosophy of religion and philosophical theology. Kant notes that such a progressus of understanding from, e.g., physics to philosophy to theology would instantiate or enshrine theology at the level of “our speculative power of reason” (B  note). In this essay, I am concerned with Kant’s theory of cognition and the role of inner intuition therein. Thus, I cannot enter in this essay into a full treatment of the character and relations between Kant’s critiques of rational theology. Nonetheless, I will return to the

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a speculative (neo-Aristotelian or neo-Thomistic) Gotteslehre. Thus, Kant replaces the synthetic claims of such disciplines with a demonstration of their merely analytic character, and replaces his own synthetic method (of deduction) as set out in the Analytic with the correlative (analytic) method of derivation as well. Kant will show that these disciplines are dialectical, and possess “concepts whose object cannot be given empirically at all and which therefore lie entirely out of the range of our power of pure understanding” (A , B ). It is this latter aspect of the Dialectic that most concerns us. Kant’s prosecution of the proof of the ‘unsuitability of our intuition’ for the requirements of the dialectical disciplines may appear to render inner intuition ‘unsuitable’ for Kant’s own requirements for its proper function in, e.g., the first-Edition Deduction. Given the instability in, or atopicality of, the doctrine of inner sense thus far in the first Critique, one may suspect in advance that the proof of the unsuitability of inner intuition for any synthetic use in the Dialectic will require claims that could be turned against Kant and his own amplified account of the capacities of inner sense in the Analytic. To the proof-structure of the Dialectic, the distinction between an eschewed “objective deduction,” which would result in the justification of the principles necessary for this ascent, and the “subjective derivation” or diagnosis that Kant instead offers of their erroneous pretentions, is central (A , B ; italics added). In the following sections, Kant will again need to “determine whether we cannot provide for human reason safe passage between these two extremes,” as he had put this point at A , B . There, Kant had hoped to assign to reason, and particularly to inner intuition, the ‘determinate boundaries,’ or limitations in its possible use, “which would yet keep open to it the entire realm of its appropriate activity” (A , B ). The task of the Dialectic, and particularly the Paralogisms, is to indicate a “safe passage” from conditioned to condition that allows for the transcendental determination of the possibility of experience, and yet does not allow for the transcendental-theological determination of the possibility of experience just adumbrated. It should be stressed that each discipline is necessary only to the systematicity and maximal inclusiveness of the transcendental topic (A , B ). None of these disciplines represents a necessary or even possible latter theme in future publications, as the former Restriktionslehre regarding inner sense is integral to Kant’s establishment of the impossibility of Seelenlehre, of metaphysical (both rational psychological and rational theological) doctrine of the soul.

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employment of an intuitive and synthetic cognition or self-cognition. An “objective deduction of these transcendental ideas such as we were able to supply for the categories is impossible.” As “only an idea,” none “possesses any reference to any object that could be given in accordance with them.” For this reason, they will remain only “problematic concepts.”235 As above, Kant will proceed by means of a “subjective derivation” or “instruction,” rather than an deduction or demonstration. While his intention lies in proof in the first context, his intention in this second context lies with disproof (A , B ). This derivation will take the form of an ascending series, that will ascend from conditioned to condition, and towards the unconditioned ground for syntheses (A –, B ). The merely problematic status of these results—their expressly restricted function of introducing only a formal unity and coherence into purely formal reason—is repeated at A , B . In the Dialectic, “no concept that can be shown and made intuitive in a possible experience” will be treated. The principles (ideas, inferences, and syllogisms) of pure reason as set out in Dialectic, will “contain no empirical premises” (ibid). Any extension of their range to an objective, empirical status would be nothing more than “illusion” or “deception.” Our engagement of the Dialectic, then, is restricted to the role and character of inner intuition as expressed therein. Our expectation is not that we will discover positive principles that will resolve and account for 235 Kitcher, too, in Kant’s Real Self, recognizes the dual exigence to which Kant subusmes his doctrine of self-cognition; “Kant must deny that the thinking self ” in inner sense “is phenomenal, because the actions of a phenomenal self would be causally determined (A , B ). For Kitcher, Kant “must deny that the doctrine of apperception concerns the self under its phenomenal aspect” (). However, Kitcher worries, “this maneuver cannot relieve Kant’s problem with the status of the unity of apperception” (). For “all representations must be united in one I that thinks,” and “this must be known through the categories.” Such a categorial determination of inner sense, however, would imply that “the doctrine of apperception must present a phenomenal aspect of the self ” (A –). Kitcher worries that “Kant is caught in a contradiction between two tenets of his system that he cannot renounce: our real self is possibly free, and . . . is known through the categories and hence phenomenal” (; italics added). Kitcher avoids introducing the intricacies of the doctrine of inner intuition into her account thereof. But Kitcher, too, intends “not [to] berate Kant for failing to resolve a hopeless contradiction, but rather to “establish that he himself recognizes that his doctrine of apperception clearly implies a phenomenal character for the thinking self.” In this way, Kitcher would attempt to resolve Kant’s “contradiction” by asserting the phenomenality (and intuitability) of our “real self,” as an object of inner sense. While I do not attempt to resolve either exigence to the other, either positive or negative, so as to retain a properly “transcendental” hermeneutic as Kant depicted this (see the Introduction to this essay), I have appreciated Kitcher’s work while preparing this manuscript.

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the still problematic possibility of synthetic cognition, nor even that we will discover a positive account of inner intuition. We may expect, in fact, to discover an exposition of inner sense that restricts its capacity to contribute to such synthetic cognition or yield the conditions necessary for synthetic judgment. The instructed or uninstructed attempt to transform such problematic concepts into empirical and objective concepts will be deemed illicit. These illicit inferences or dialectical syllogisms may be of three types. According to the first, “I infer from the transcendental concept of the subject”—which “contains nothing manifold”—to “the absolute unity of this subject” itself. This inference Kant will term the transcendental paralogism (A , B ). According to the second, one infers from “the transcendental concept of the absolute totality of the series of conditions” to “a given appearance as such” as intuitive. This inference Kant will term the antinomy of pure reason. According to the third inference, one infers “from the totality of conditions for the thinking of objects as such insofar as they can be given to me” to “the absolute synthetic unity of all conditions of the possibility of things as such.” One infers from a mere transcendental concept of a possible unity to a “being of all beings,” in accord with the theologia transcendentalis introduced above. Kant will term this inference the ideal of pure reason (A , B ). On the basis of this topic, and with the intent of restricting the status of the principles he encounters herein so thoroughly that they cannot be adduced in any account of the nature and dynamics of experience, Kant will build the first chapter of the Paralogisms of Pure Reason. Kant first identifies (in a treatment which will extend through A , B ) the paralogism definitive of psychologia rationalis. Any paralogism, including that of rational psychology, “consists in the falsity of a syllogism as regards its form, whatever its content may be.” In treating of this psychological paralogism, “we come to a concept that was not entered in the above general list of the transcendental concepts,” or categories. And yet, Kant adverts, it “must be classed with them.” In spite of Kant’s demand for precision in definition and literality in interpretation, Kant indicates that “this concept, or if one prefers, judgment” is seen in the not peripheral apperceptive principle, or “I think.” This concept was not set out in the table of categories, Kant claims, for being—analogously to the concept of substance as both object of appearance and principle for objects as appearances—“the vehicle of all concepts as such,” which “serves to bring forward all thought as belonging to consciousness” (A –, B –).

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This apperceptive principle, as the vehicle for all concepts, “serves to distinguish two kinds of objects.”236 These objects are () the “I as thinking” as the “object of inner sense . . . termed soul,” and () the I as “object of outer senses, termed body” (A , B ). The “I qua thinking” (cogito qua cogitans) is to be subjected to the sphere and manifold of inner sense, in which alone its structure could be apprehended and its synthetic status established.237 The “I” qua res extensa or body is to be subjected to the sphere and manifold of outer sense. Kant builds gradually toward a critical rather than constructive conclusion.238 By this division, “I, as thinking being, already indicates the object of psychology.” By psychology here, Kant intends “rational 236 Kant had asserted that “any division presupposes a divided concept” at A , B . Such a divided concept requires that “a still higher concept must be indicated” if any unity across this division is to be claimed. 237 On the basis of the argumentation presented on behalf of this claim, Chenet concludes that “le temps n’est pas une au même titre que l’espace.” In spite of the original assertion of their parity as a priori forms of intuition in the Aesthetic and the the privilege of time in the Analytic; “le temps n’est pas une représentation a priori au même titre que l’espace.” Chenet treats of “les thèses de parité du temps et de l’espace, du sens interne et du sens externe,” in ibid, Ch. , from pp. –. Chenet first asks whether, on the basis of the heterogeneity thesis, “la parité de l’espace et du temps est-elle effective?,” and recognizes that “la spécificité reconnue du temps” in the Analytic, as Inbegriff, must give way to the thesis of “la spécificité déniée du temps,” in the Dialectic (). Chenet also recognizes that ‘parity’ would require “l’assimilation du sort du temps à celui de l’espace,” since only in the spatiality of outer sense do the determinability conditions required for the applicability of the categories obtain. Chenet finds a “formule laborieuse—et même, pour tout dire, à nos yeux, vicieuse” according to which Kant’s will illegitimately extend his justified claim to the identical status of space and time (as forms of intuition a priori), with the unjustified claim to the identity of the representative capacities of space and time (as capable or incapable of yielding the conditions for synthetic a priori judgment), by which alone Kant could claim an unproblematic transitus of an object from outer sense through inner sense to the understanding. While this amplified account is necessary to the Analytic and its account of the nature of cognition, it is made impossible in the Dialectic and its account of the limits of cognition, which in these Paralogisms are established through limitations asserted of inner sense. 238 Ewing, in A Short Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, ) states that while the ‘constructive’ account of inner sense “is certainly one tendency in Kant,” it “conflicts with another, essential to his ethical thought” (). For this latter critical intention, according to Ewing, Kant must negate all determinability conditions of inner intuition, in order to ensure that the self-determination of the will in the sphere of inner sense not be subject to the passivity of sensibility; for this reason, Kant will assert that “the category of substance cannot be applied to the appearance-self because it has no absolutely permanent element. One would expect indeed that, since knowledge of the phenomenal self presupposes a synthesis, it would involve all the categories, but Kant hesitates to apply to the phenomenal self either substance or community, and there are passages in which he seems to deny that it is subject to any categories” ().

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psychology.” With the latter, Kant indicates (at least here) not a science that, as elsewhere, purports a relation between intellection and intuition, pure or sensible, but instead would investigate “nothing more of the soul than what can be inferred from the concept I,” independently of intuition. If rational psychology is to remain rational in this sense, Kant stipulates, it must not allow empirical data into its explanandum.239 For “if the slightest empirical [element] of my thought—some particular perception of my inner state—were also mixed in with this science’s bases of cognition,” then it would “no longer be rational but empirical psychology” (A , B ). Indeed, even the “slightest object of perception (e.g., even only pleasure or displeasure),” if “added to the universal presentation of self-consciousness,” would “transform rational into empirical psychology.”240 Kant indicates in this way, with reference to ‘inner perception,’ the distinction between the I qua formal, universal transcendental representation and the I qua object of rational psychology.241 Hence, Kant 239

Kant warns prospectively that “we must not be troubled” by the fact that the proposition “I think,” the proposition of rational psychology, expresses “the perception of oneself ” and “an inner experience.” Kant’s assertion of inner perception and even inner experience are troubling, however. In the Refutation, Kant had negated any legitimate possibility for the claim to a synthetic and intuitive “inner experience,” in order that inner sense not yield a determinate manifold toward any problematic idealism. There, Kant argued both that experience requires objective cognition, and that no such determinate object of experience can appear within the aspatial flux of the manifold of inner intuition. And yet Kant appears to admit here of the concept of an “inner experience.” His point here, however, appears to concern the order of derivation. Empirical self-perception or inner experience is to be derived from a transcendental determination of its possibility and limits. The admission of an inner perception within experience is made on the way to its exclusion as the basis for rational psychology as such, insofar as this empirical dynamic presupposes the transcendental determination of its nature and limits, its proper character. In the Paralogisms and their critique of rational psychology, “we face an alleged science which has been built on the single proposition,” of transcendental rather than empirical apperception (A , B ). The strength of the foundation, upon which the purportedly synthetic science of rational psychology has built its science, will now, “fittingly and in accordance with the nature of a transcendental philosophy,” be examined. 240 Kant will also differentiate transcendental apperception from empirical inner sense modally. The “proposition I think” will be taken in “terms of its mere possibility,” in order to “investigate what properties may from so simple a proposition flow to its subject (whether or not existent)” and actual (A , B ). Apperception “does not concern perception of an existent” as does a Cartesian “cogito, ergo sum.” Existence, and “our observations concerning out thoughts’ play and of the natural laws of the thinking self that can be drawn therefrom” are instead the provenance of “empirical psychology” and would obtain within “a physiology of inner sense,” which would for this reason “not be a rational psychology” (A , B ). 241 Reuter (Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe [Königshausen & Neumann, Wurzburg, ]) suggests that if the manifold of inner sense yields the conditions for only an a

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claims, “ “I think” is rational psychology’s sole text.” If, Kant continues, “this thought [the “I think”] is to be referred to an object (myself)” as relevant to the demands of rational psychology, then it “can contain nothing but transcendental predicates of this object” (ibid). Importantly, however, Kant’s treatment of rational psychology cannot and does not remain an investigation of the apperceptive principle in abstraction from its construal as an anima and hence as “object of inner sense.”242 In order to determine the nature and limits of this relation between apperception and its transcendental predicates, Kant offers a “topic of rational psychology” that would describe possible relations between apperception and its categorial determination. Thus Kant will consider the possibility of apperception construed as a “substance merely as object of inner sense” (A , B ).

posteriori inner intuition, one will (a) negate the parity between inner sense and outer sense as a priori forms of intuition, and yield only (b) a “synthetische-aposteriorische (mit Bezug auf Locke)” judgment. Reuter also notes that if the manifold of inner sense yields only an indeterminate though a priori manifold, and hence “keine synthetische Urteile a priori,” one will derive a judgment grounded as “analytische (mit Bezug auf Leibniz)” (). 242 Jacques Havet, in Kant et le problème du temps (Gallimard, Paris, ) writes initially of a “symétrie parfaite” between outer and inner sense, since both “rend[ent] possibles des principes apodictiques et qui explique la possibilité des connaissances synthétiques a priori” (). But this symmetry breaks down when Havet analyzes Kant’s arguments against rational psychology, a doctrine which “n’est point retenue par Kant comme une véritable science.” Kant’s intention is “montrer que le temps à lui seul ne permet pas de construire un objet dans l’intuition.” While outer sense will be exposed positively according to its capacity inner sense will be exposed “purement négativement par les insuffisances . . . ” above all because “il refuse le spatialité” (–). Havet depicts a “parallélisme” thesis (), and denounces the “faux parallélisme entre le sens interne et le sens externe” (). From the parallelism thesis, for Havet, “vont naître des difficultés qu’aucun commentateur n’a pu ignorer.” For this reason, “il faut rompre la fausse symétrie du temps et de l’espace” and recognize the heterogeneity thesis as both central and problematic (). For “si comme dans l’Esthétique le temps est Inbegriff ” such that “les phénomènes sont organisés par rapport à lui” (), here “les phénomènes peuvent être organisés par rapport à quelque chose de permanent dans l’intuition en tant que leur synthèse obéit à une règle nécessaire exprimant leur soumission par les categories,” which thus excludes inner intuition. These passages for Havet “mettent en valeur la nécessité d’une symbolisation spatiale du temps” (), which would however imply that “l’expérience interne apparaît comme inséparable de l’expérience externe” (). However clearly necessary, however, “il n’y a rien de plus paradoxal” than this interdependence, given the heterogeneity thesis. Havet concludes that “cette solution apparement si claire pose en réalité des problèmes qui nous paraissent insolubles,” for both heterogeneity and homogeneity, or exclusion or inclusion, are necessary (respectively) to the two principal directions of Kant’s theoretical philosophy—to secure knowledge for natural science and deny knowledge to metaphysics and theology—and yet impossible to hold together ().

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This topic is set out by means of the predicates that would appear in such a synthetic self-cognition in inner sense. The first possible predicate is offered by “immateriality, as simple substance,” and stands in contrast to the extrinsic and composite predicates of materiality. The second possible predicate is “incorruptibility.” The third and last possible predicate, denoting “intellectual substance,” is termed “personality.” Taken together, these concepts would yield “spirituality.” Each possible transcendental predicate is derived as a negation of, and in contrast to, the characters of outer intuition. For example, any relation of such substances as “spiritual” would yield commerce with bodies, as “possible objects in space” and thereby “the principle of life in matter,” or soul (anima). The rational psychological concept of the soul as anima, combined with spirituality, would yield immortality (A , B ). In this way, the rational psychological doctrine of the soul would arrive at, if not already itself be indistinguishable from, a rational-theological doctrine of the soul. Kant should not be thought, of course, to endorse any of these concepts or their derivations. By reference to this topic, Kant instead intends to indicate “four paralogisms of transcendental psychology.” These are each only “wrongly considered to be a science of pure reason concerning the nature of our thinking being.”243 Regarding apperception, Kant will assert not only that “we can lay at the basis of this science nothing but the simple” concept of the I, but in addition that “we cannot even say that it is a concept, but only that it is a mere consciousness accompanying all concepts.” This vehicle of or for concepts is revealed as an “I or he or it (the thing) that thinks, [in which] nothing more is presented than a transcendental subject of thoughts = x” (A , B ).244 243

Benoist also notes (Kant et les limites de la Synthèse: Le sujet sensible, ) that it is not only by means of the heterogeneity thesis that Kant will support his attack upon Seelenlehre. Benoist shows that Kant will also negate the parity between an a priori manifold of outer sense (issuing in a body of synthetic judgments in geometry and in physics, both grounded a priori in the form of outer sense) and an a priori manifold of inner sense. This fundamental reconstrual of the status of time as the form of inner sense, as a posteriori rather than a priori, obtains in an uncertain relation to the parallelism asserted in the Aesthetic. For Benoist, “elle ne veut pas simplement dire qu’il y a une âme, mais qu’on ne pourrait connaître qu’a posteriori.” In this way, Kant will negate all possibility that ein Denkendes Wesen (A , B ), as an ‘object of inner sense,’ can obtain synthetically and a priori. 244 This undetermined consciousness as represented in the ‘I think’ as =x is possible only insofar as ‘this subject is cognized only through the thoughts that are its predicates.’ The multiplicity of thoughts point to a ground of unity which cannot be determined except through this multiplicity and as =x. Kant notes that in the attempt to attain to a determinate judgment regarding the ground for judgment, ‘we revolve in a constant

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Interestingly, Kant does assert that a certain subject-predicate relation is established within apperception, between apperception as “subject, and the thoughts that are its predicates” (A , B ). But this relation is indicated in order to suggest that “we can never have the least concept” of a subject in which such predicates inhere or obtain. This latter is systematically elusive because it precedes the subject-object or subjectpredicate structure which we would have to apply in order to determine it. This “inconvenience” can be put more formally; “consciousness in itself is not so much a presentation distinguishing it as a particular object,” but is rather “a form of presentation as such.” Consciousness as such is that form in which such objects can appear, that cannot itself be determined without transforming it into what it, as a horizon, is not; objective (ibid). Kant’s discussion of the principle of apperception in the first-Edition Paralogisms extends from A  to A . Kant begins by taking “the proposition ‘I think’ formally” in terms of its pure possibility, or “problematically.” This significance of the apperceptive principle has not diminished; it “contains the form of any of understanding’s judgments,” as well as the categories, “as their vehicle.” In this its widest significance, then “the whole of philosophy, including logic, may be subsumed” under, or to, apperception. Of its treatment in pure psychology, however, Kant frames “in advance none but an unfavorable conception” (A ). The first paralogistic inference, then, concerns that from the concept of subject to the concept of soul or substance. The “absolute subject” (as defined at A , B ) is that element within a presentation which cannot be conceived as a predicate or determination of any other thing, or any further subject. The first paralogistic inference consists in the application of this concept of an ultimate subject in inner intuition, to oneself as I qua determining subject. All cognition requires “that we must lay at the basis the permanence of a given object taken from experience.” Only then may we “apply to this object the empirically usable concept of a substance” (A ). In the case of a self-cognition of the subject in inner sense, however, “we have merely inferred” such permanence from the conflation of the concepts of circle,’ for ‘in order to make any judgment regarding it we must always already make use of its presentation.’ An attempt to assign the possibility of judgment assumes its actuality, and an attempt to deduce (or justify) the form of judgment employs that same form. This infelicity, Kant suggests, is due to the same duplicity seen in the primitive concepts of substance and the ‘I think’ itself, as both concepts and principles for concepts; ‘consciousness itself is not so much a presentation distinguishing a particular object, as instead a form of presentation’ through which such objects may be thought (A , B ).

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substance, subject, and soul.245 This application, then, possesses no valid grounds, but only a circle of illegitimate inference. Kant founds his argument against any transition—from the transcendental concept of a subject to that of a substance to that of a soul—on a restrictive account of inner intuition.246 The “I think,” as absolute subject of all consciousness, is not to submit to a possible intuition, but is to remain independent of all intuition in the “logical signification of the I” (A ).247 It bears noting 245 Nabert (“L’Expérience Interne chez Kant,” Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale, v. XXXI, n. , ), addresses the question; “en quel sens, le ‘Je pense’ enveloppe-t-il un ‘Je suis’”? on p.  of his justly influential article. For “toute détermination d’existence est subordonnée au concours des formes de l’intuition sensible et des catégories.” These categories, however, and above all those of substance and causality, have been negated from all possible applicability to the manifold of inner sense. Nabert also recalls Kant’s claim at B  that Ich denke contains within itself Ich bin (). Yet, “si le ‘Je pense’ est une proposition d’existence, comment éviter que cette proposition ne présuppose l’usage des catégories par lesquelles l’aperception originaire détermine le donné?” (). Citing B , Nabert records that “la proposition “ ‘Je pense,’ en tant qu’elle signifie ‘J’existe pensant,’ est, si l’on peut dire, une proposition empirique . . . elle détermine le sujet (qui est en même temps objet) par rapport à l’existence, et ne peut pas avoir lieu sans le sens interne” (). And yet this categorial determination of inner sense would propose “un usage illégitime des catégories” (). 246 In the second-Edition, Kant suggests similarly that it is for this reason that “the identity of the subject of which I can become conscious” cannot indicate a constant “substratum,” but merely the logical condition of the homonymous I. For this reason, such logical identity “does not concern the subejct’s intuition where it is given as an object,” and therefore “cannot signify identity of person” or a personal identity, individuated through intuition (B ). 247 Benoist (ibid) also sets her analysis of “la question classique de ce qu’on a pu appeler le ‘privilège du temps’ dans la Critique de la raison pure” and the doctrine of inner sense () in the context of a conflict between Kant’s critical and constructive intentions. For Benoist, “la question est précisément de savoir si Kant tient alors sa promesse et sait ‘sauver’ le concept d’âme de la critique, c’est-à-dire aussi par la critique, en dégageant pour lui un sens qui ne serait pas celui d’un objet” (). Benoist notes that in order to negate the “illusion naturelle” (A , B ) which did not acknowledge that “la représentation [Je] simple et par elle-même totalement vide de content” (A –), Kant had also to negate the possibility of even “la figure d’un objet” appearing in the intuitive manifold of inner intuition (–). Benoist notes the reason for this Restriktionslehre; “pour que la question de la ‘psychologie rationelle’ puisse se poser . . . il faut donc que la philosophie transcendantale dispose déjà d’une certaine façon du concept ‘Je,’ ” which is precisely the possibility of its synthetic exhibition in intuition. (–). This Restriktionslehre functions as a “fil conducteur de cette analyse” (), and is most effectively applied in Benoist’s treatment of the problem of individuated self-cognition. The indeterminacy of inner intuition requires that “Kant présente lui-même son cogito comme . . . logico-grammatical” (). Benoist will assert on this basis that the apperceptive principle for this reason “ne serait-ce que de l’unité analytique de l’aperception,” and “ne refléter que l’identité de la pensée avec elle-même” (). On p. , however, Benoist also isolates the problem of how this universal, discursive, and formal self-consciousness could ever be individuated, one’s own; “la notion de sujet paraît s’appauvrir jusqu’à ne prendre qu’un sens purement

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that Kant does not and cannot merely assert the independence of the I of rational psychology from inner intuition, but must rather also assert the necessity of such an independence, the impossibility of any effective interaction between apperception and inner intuition. This latter claim to a necessary impossibility requires that Kant construe inner intuition such that it is incapable of such a relation. In order to legislate a priori the impossibility in principle of a rational psychology as a Seelenlehre, Kant does and must assert the necessary incapacity of inner intuition, its inability to yield conditions of synthesis. But the assertions made on this basis (of its aspatiality, inconstancy, indeterminability, etc.) concern precisely those characteristics that Kant requires of inner intuition in the Analytic. Having restricted the formal character of apperception to the preconceptual and predeterminate, then, Kant will not long defer a parallel restriction of the representative form of inner intuition, through which its character or predicates could be determined.248 As above, Kant will move to restrict both ‘natural’ conceptions of the elements in this relation. Apperception will not be construed through the category of substance, and inner intuition will not provide a manifold for a determination of predicates as predicates of an apperceptive subject (mis)taken as a substance. This second (intuitive) element of Kant’s critique develops as follows.

logique” rather than a “subjectum unum, individuum, singulare . . . ” (). Benoist will ask; “dans ces conditions, comment penser le rapport du sujet transcendantal et du supposé ‘sujet empirique’?” (), individuated through intuition and qua thinking through inner intuition? What “permet de la défenir comme objet particulier” (), when “la notion de sujet paraît s’appauvrir jusqu’à ne prendre qu’un sens purement logique,” and when its universality and necessity or infinite substitutability relies upon precisely this formality ()? Otherwise put; “Comment le ‘sens interne’ peut-il être le lieu du ‘il y a’ de la donation sans que l’on . . . retombe ainsi en plein dans la métaphysique de la subjectivité?” (). 248 Kant’s assertions of the inconstancy of inner intuition, which are of principal interest to our exegesis, are perhaps still clearer in the second-Edition exposition of the Paralogisms chapter. For example, at B , Kant will assert that “permanence of the soul considered as mere object of inner sense remains unproved, and even unprovable . . . ” Kant advances a similar claim that inner intuition “yields no permanent intuition” at B , and again at B ; “in respect of the determinability of my existence . . . I first need something permanent, yet such, insofar as I think myself, is not given to me at all in inner intuition.” Kant again repeats his motive for this restrictive construal; “this discipline sets these bounds in order to keep us from throwing ourselves into the lap of soulless materialism or getting lost while roving about in spiritualism, and reminds us [to] . . . turn our selfcognition away from fruitless transcendent speculation and to fruitful practical use” (B ). But Kant’s conviction in our proper vocation does little to resolve this properly theoretical problem of the antinomial depictions of the necessary character and capacities of inner intuition.

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Although Kant’s pronouncements upon the incapacities of inner intuition will be more clearly articulated in the Observations on the Paralogisms (A  ff.), even here Kant will assert that it is impossible for us to “establish permanence through any sure observation.” This inability to establish an experiential cognition of the I is thus established both categorially (since it is the principle for the use of the categories and hence not determinable thereby) and intuitively. There is “not linked with this presentation [of the I] the least intuition” through which it could be individuated and taken up as one’s own. Denied a manifold of (inner) intuition, the principle of apperception is denied equally any temporal determination; one could never perceive that “it is a constant and enduring intuition wherein thoughts (as mutable) vary” (A ).249 The second paralogistic inference concerns not the possible substantiality, but the necessary simplicity, of the concept of the subject. This paralogism, is for Kant the “Achilles heel of all dialectical inferences of pure psychology.” And yet, it appears to Kant to “withstand even the keenest examination and the most attentive investigation.” Nonetheless, Kant will not require of his exposition a “proof possessed of the usual rigorous guise, compliant with school standards.” Kant will require only a “popular formulation.” The “proof, or presentation, of the paralogistic inference,” thus qualified, begins with the possibility of the I qua cogitans as a “composite” (compositum). 249 It is essential that apperception attain and retain this analytic character and status within the economy of Kant’s presentation in the second-Edition Paralogisms as well. Kant’s argument procedes through the consciousness—cognition distinction. The “consciousness of myself in thought as such” as attained in apperception “does not yield the slightest gain as regards the cognition of myself as object.” The synthesis of this formal subject and intuitive cognition of “myself as object,” is disallowed formally and in principle, and deemed fallacious as an inference per sophisma figurae dictionis (B ). The attempt to attain a principle for the transition from (formal, determining) subject to (intuited, determined) object as a substance in inner sense is disallowed. One “cannot know whether an object belongs to this concept at all.” For if such a concept “is to become a [self-] cognition, then we must lay at its basis a permanent intuition” (B ). However, the intuitive manifold required for any synthetic self-cognition is that of inner intuition. And “in inner intuition, we have nothing permanent at all.” This impermanence in inner intuition implies that “one lacks the necessary condition for applying the concept of substance” as can be applied to outer intuition. For this reason, “the concept of a self-subsistent subject” is impossible to gain from inner intuition (B ). So, too, does “the simplicity of the substance” as “connected with this concept” necessarily “drop out entirely.” Simplicity is “transformed into nothing more than a logical qualitative unity of self-consciousness in thought as such,” insufficient for cognition. Hence, Kant continues, “the permanence of the soul, considered as mere object of inner sense, remains unproved.” Indeed, this permanence is “even unprovable” (B ).

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Any composite, as such and by definition, would be “an aggregate of many substances” or elements (A ). Such a composite would thus amount to “an aggregate of many actions or accidents, distributed among the set of substances,” or elements within a single substance. Any activity thereof would be understood as “an effect arising from the concurrence of many acting substances” (ibid). The mutually external elements of substance, “while possible when this effect is merely extrinsic”—e.g., the motion of a body as the united motion of all its parts—is nonetheless impossible when the effect or activity concerned is intrinsic. The cogito cogitans cannot be conceived on the model of physical knowledge of res extensae.250 For suppose, Kant begins, “that something composite thought.” Then, Kant supposes, “each part of it would contain a part of the thought,” but would only as “taken together contain the whole thought.” This impossible or “contradictory” implication allows Kant to disallow any parallelism between intrinsic and extrinsic determinations. Such a parallelism, of course, would allow for a claim to the possible unity or interdependence between substance and subject as soul. The disanalogy between intrinsic and extrinsic relations, Kant will argue, is evident from the fact that “the presentations (e.g., the individual words of a verse) distributed among different beings never amount to a whole thought (a verse).” A thought, then, “cannot inhere in something composite as composite.” It must be thought instead to be “possible only in one substance,” a unity that is “not an aggregate of many” but is instead “absolutely simple” (A ). The intrinsic determination of the spontaneity of our thought can neither be derived from, nor explained as arising from, the extrinsic determination of our substantiality.251 250

Chenet, in L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale, argues that while the denial of the conditions for synthetic a priori judgment and the appearance of an object of inner sense is essential to the first-Edition refutation of rational psychology and the second-Edition refutation of idealism, the affirmation of such conditions is requisite to the capacity of inner intuition to contain within itself, structurally, the conditions for the appearance of an object of synthetic cognition from outer sense. For “c’est dans l’intuition du temps que peuvent être déterminées les lois a priori et synthétiques du changement ().” But this theoretical result obtains only if pure successiveness gives way to perdurance, and the heterogeneity thesis gives way to an interdependence, as would violate the argumentative exigence apparent in the paralogisms sections. 251 In reviewing this “proof,” Kant asserts that “the nervus probandi of this argument lies in the proposition that in order for many presentations to amount to one thought,” they must “be contained in the absolute unity of the thinking subject” (A ). Kant will attack the means of possible proof; “no one, however, can prove this proposition from concepts.” Any such attempt would encounter immediately the impossibility of treating analytically the relation between a thought or concept and the “absolute unity of the thinking

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Kant will next, and further, determine the incapacity of inner intuition through its merely subjective character. The formal restrictions upon inner intuition, which follow from the heterogeneity thesis, were first set out in the Aesthetic. This divisio between our two kinds of intuition required that the consciousness of consciousness remain subjective, insofar as it could not yield or contain external relations. The implication of this merely subjective scope of inner intuition is drawn finally at A , B ; “through no outer experience, but solely through selfconsciousness, can I have the least presentation of a thinking being.” But Kant will now draw a further implication, regarding not only the subjective scope of inner intuition but also its first-personal character; “if one wants to have a presentation of a thinking being,” then “one must put oneself in that being’s place” (A –). One cannot obtain, through outer sense, a representation of (another’s) representation. In order to obtain this presentation, one must “substitute one’s own self as subject for the object that one wanted to consider.” In order to consider another qua cogitans, one cannot posit or place oneself as a subject to whom the other appears as object, since, qua object, the noematic correlate or content “qua cogitans” cannot appear. One must instead, Kant asserts, sympathetically re-enact this object (another subject), within one’s own inner sense. In these passages, the subjective and first-personal characteristics of inner intuition are

being” out of which it arises. For “since the thought consists of many presentations,” internally articulated into subject and predicates, “its unity is collective.” Thus, “as far as mere concepts are concerned,” this relation could be taken as analogous to “the collective unity of substances.” In this way, the “intrinsic” (innerlich) formal distinction within the elements of a possible cognition would be modelled upon the “extrinsic” (ausserlich) determination of the interaction between a body, its parts, and the motion thereof. Instead, such merely collective unity, and the isomorphism in intrinsic and extrinsic determination it proposes, is impossible, and repugnant to the pure formality and simplicity of apperception. We cannnot, “by the rule of identity,” and through a surreptitious claim to the isomorphism of intrinsic and extrinsic determinations, claim any insight into the I qua thinking (A ). Nor may the apperceptive principle, for its asserted independence from the inner intuitive manifold, “be cognized synthetically.” Neither through an analytic consciousness, for the composite structure of representation, nor through a synthetic cognition, for the indeterminacy of inner intuition, can the simplicity of the soul be advanced. Any ground for the rational psychological claim to the I qua cogitans is eliminated. Any grounds for the I qua cogitans or determining subject as an element within experience or an object of a possible cognition is also eliminated thereby (ibid). As in the case of the first Paralogism, Kant moves from claims regarding the restricted (purely intellectual) character of apperception to the restricted character of inner sense (through its incapacities, which we will enumerate below).

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taken together so as to yield Kant’s claim to an inner sense restricted both in scope and in—to employ the relevant term from the Critique of Judgment—territory (territorium). This requirement, Kant insists, is “not found in any other kind of investigation” except that of intersubjectivity. One cannot posit an outer object (in this case, another subject) within the form of outer sense, and apprehend the “presentation of a thinking being.” Within the spatial form of outer sense, no cognitive predicate can obtain. Only within the firstperson scope or range of one’s own inner sense may “the presentation of a thinking being” be exhibited. This restriction in the scope of inner intuition will combine with that of its purely successive character, and the aspatiality of its form, so as to make formally impossible the universalization required for the project of a rational psychology or a rational theology as Seelenlehre.252 Thus, the I qua thinking subject and I qua extended object of outer sense cannot appear together, or be “presented in a single manifold” or a unified, inclusive intuition (A ). Such a unified intuitive manifold would allow for the “erroneous transformation of a subjective condition” into an objective “concept of a thinking being as such” (a res cogitans or cogito sum cogitans). This inference is enforced as illicit and erroneous through the “formula” given in the strictly subjective and first-personal character of inner sense (A ). By these restrictions, such a unified manifold “is not an experience,” but is instead a “subjective condition,” regulative, logical, and analytic in status. This condition is not empirical and intuitive, but is intellective. The “I think” of apperceptive rather than empirical self-consciousness “excludes the least manifoldness” of intuition, and is possessed of “absolute (merely logical) unity” (A ). In this way, Kant can conclude, “here, just as in the previous Paralogism, the formal proposition of apperception . . . remains the sole basis on which rational psychology ventures to expand

252

The wider argumentative intentions for this heterogeneity are evident in Kant’s late consideration of the representation of an object in space as “a special kind of representation in us, which cannot represent that which is in us, and thus what exists in the flux in time, for then as a mere representation it would be capable of being thought only in relations of time.” Kant lists the argumentative intentions to which this heterogeneity should be applied; “. . .thus the refutation of skepticism, idealism, Spinozism, even so of materialism, predeterminism . . .” Reflexion  (Ak , – ). See also Reflexion ; “if the subject is only given by the predicate of inner sense (innere Empfindung) and if the predicate contains a condition of outer sense (äusseren Sinnlichkeit) the judgment is transcendent.”

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its cognitions” (A ). Instead, “this proposition is not an experience, but the form of apperception,” itself, denuded of any intuitive expansion. Kant further secures the merely logical character and status of apperception, or the “I think,” as follows. Kant differentiates the I as “an absolute but logical unity (simplicity of the subject),” from the cognition of “the actual simplicity of myself as subject” (A –). The illicit inference is precisely from the subjective genitive of the first to the objective genitive of the second. The proposition that “I am simple” is “tautological,” since this “means nothing more than that the I does not comprise the least manifoldness, and is thus an absolute (logical) unity” (A ). For example, in the “indivisible unity of the presentation” “we are not acquainted with or [do not] know the least property.”253 The presentation of the I qua subject “must indeed be simple, precisely because “we determine in this subject nothing whatever.”254 Although Kant’s proof 253

This differentiation is perhaps most clearly presented in the distinction between “the simplicity of the presentation of a subject” and “a cognition of the simplicity of the subject itself.” The former presentation remains intellective; the latter cognition would inscribe intuition. For “we abstract entirely from the subject’s properties when we designate it solely by the expression I,” and take this independently even of the manifold of its possible thoughts which serve as its predicates. Taken thus in its simplicity, this I of the I think “is entirely empty of content” and exclusive of intuition. It is this same “I” of apperception which may be applied to any thinking subject universally, rather than as individuated in each case through intuition. In this formal universality, apperceptive self-consciousness gains its independence from the empirical self-consciousness of a first-personal inner sense. But this same independence from intuition disallows its serving as a resolution to the aporetic heterogeneity in intuition, toward the possibility of an intuitive and constitutive self-cognition. 254 For Aquila, in Representational Mind, “the crux of Kant’s doctrine” of inner sense is “that self-awareness through inner sense is simply awareness of the flow of our own conscious life as manifested in the flow of the objects of outer sensibility . . .” (). Aquila finds confirmation in this thesis in “the second edition Refutation of Idealism,” which “is concerned with asserting precisely the necessity of such determination,” or indetermination. Indeed, “when dealing with the objects of inner sense one is not dealing with a domain of objects distinct from the realities outside of ourselves. In most cases, the objects of inner sense are in fact realities existing in space.” Aquila does not specify the other cases, and admits that “there is more to it than that” (). For “strictly speaking, one of the ‘objects’ of inner sense is not the sort of things that could be a reality existing in the space outside our own consciousness . . . the very flow of intentional objects in inner sense.” Aquila explains that “those objects might or might not, in any instance, be realities outside of us, but their intuited flow is never anything outside of us” () For Aquila, “whether Kant’s account of that awareness if acceptable of course remains undecided. But it is at least reasonable to suppose that the issues in question do not differ from those involved in the awareness of any ordinary judgment . . . ” (; italics added). Aquila leaves undetermined the critical exigence within the Paralogisms, implying even the applicability of the categories to the manifold of inner sense; “what Kant calls ‘empirical apperception’ or ‘inner sense’ is the aware of oneself insofar as one

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appears to function principally from the side of apperception, its subsequent development incorporates an increasingly variegated critique of inner intuition. The first-personal characterization of apperception “never contains a synthesis of the manifold,” and thus “teaches us nothing whatever regarding myself as an object of experience” (A ). For “the concept of substance,” as may be applied in self-cognition, “is used only as a function of synthesis” and is, as such, dispossessed of “an underlying intuition.” For this reason, self-cognition is “hence without an object” (ibid). The simplicity of the I as independent of both manifoldness and a possible intuition requires that it “not hold of any object that one can indicate.” This independence from any intuitive element implies that apperception will “teach us nothing” of the possibility conditions by which one might integrate the spheres of intuition and the correlates of selfcognition (ibid). This divisio is necessary to Kant’s critical argumentation against rational psychology. But insofar as the conditions for the ascription of identity across this absolute disunity or heterogeneity appear absent, this same divisio renders evidently problematic Kant’s constructive intention to provide for the formal possibility of synthetic unity in cognition and self-cognition. Moving toward the conclusion of the second paralogism, Kant expands upon such possible implications, and establishes the a basis for his claims in the restricted scope, or ‘territorium,’ of our inner intuition. Kant reviews the Aesthetic, in which it was “proved undeniably that bodies (Körper) are mere appearances of outer sense” (A ). On this basis, “we may rightly say that our thinking subject is not corporeal (körperlich),” since “it is presented by us as an object of inner sense.” Our thinking subject, then, “cannot, insofar as it thinks, be an object of outer senses, i.e., an appearance in space.” Thoughts, consciousness, and desires “belong to inner sense” alone (A ). While none is in itself intuitive, each ‘pertains’ to the sphere of inner intuition. Reciprocally, “extension, impenetrability, cohesion, and motion,” and indeed “whatever the outer senses can supply us with” will

is aware of particular stretches of intuited time ‘synthesizable’ together with others into the right sort of whole” Aquila does not identify the character of this ‘whole.’ Aquila apparently admits at this point an interpretive impasse, and states that his own attempt at apology “would appear of little use in the formulation of a phenomenological approach to inner sense that is sufficiently comparable to that proposed for outer sense,” or modelled upon any isomorphism ().

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“neither be nor contain thoughts, feeling, inclination, or decision” as acts of will. Each of the latter is an internal determining ground, that can ‘appear’ only within the sphere of inner sense, and thus are “not objects of outer intuition at all” (A ). The range of phenomena to be attributed to the sphere of inner intuition is thus, even if negatively, made clear. Similarly, matter “is merely outer appearance,” and cannot appear within the manifold and sphere of inner sense.255 The ground or formal conditions for this constructive concept of the unity across the principled divisio between outer appearance and inner sense remains problematic.256 The restrictions Kant asserts would effectively negate the formal conditions required for rational psychology. Such restrictions would also, however, negate the conditions required for the determinability of inner sense, and, e.g., the construction and exhibition of synthetic concepts therein. In order to meet critical argumentative requirements, then, Kant must negate the intrinsic unity of self-cognition, across the I qua determining subject—I qua determined object (of outer sense) distinction. Kant allows that “we may claim to know that the thinking I—the soul (a name for the transcendental object of inner sense)—is simple” (A ). But, Kant insists, “this expression does not therefore have any use what255 Indeed, Kant appears to retreat from even this assertion; we can, Kant suggests, “without permitting such hypotheses, make this general remark.” The simplicity of the soul, “is usable in a single case.” This possible use obtains “in the comparison of myself with objects of outer experience.” Such a range of outer objects must, of course, include oneself as object of outer sense. Such extrinsic determinations of outer sense “are not suitable for determining what is distinctive of one’s nature” as thinking (A –). Only the negative claim to apperception as not a compositum may be allowed. No determinate manifold of intuition, and no body of synthetic propositions, may be positively asserted of oneself qua cogitans. Simplicity is opposed to manifoldness in self-consciousness just as thought is opposed to extension in intuition; in both contrasts, inner intuition remains atopical. 256 One may find oneself inclined to simply allow Kant this claim; no possession seems more secure to our own convictions than our possession of a single, spatio-temporal manifold of experience. And yet Kant has insisted upon literality in interpretation, and asserted repeatedly precisely this divisio. Indeed, Kant has based his critical argumentation virtually in its entirety upon the “limiting condition” of inner sense. And as Kant will himself assert, “nothing is more vulgar” in philosophy than such an appeal to experience or one’s own convictions (A , B ). It is not with empirical experience as actual and lived quid facti but with its formal possibility quid juris that transcendental philosophy, and its critique, must be concerned. Kant’s deduction cannot rely upon the actuality of our spatio-temporal experience, but must demonstrate its formal possibility a priori. I claim that Kant (a) has not provided for this possibility, and that, further, Kant’s architectonic (b) renders this actuality formally impossible or unthinkable. Spatio-temporal unity, brought about in outer sense by means of the categorial determination of its manifold, would also have to apply to inner sense and its pure temporality.

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ever extending to actual objects”—of which we are ourselves one—as objects of outer sense and as Körperlich. Kant announces summarily and even triumphantly in conclusion that “thus falls” any “hope to broaden our insights through mere concepts,” or “through the mere subjective form of all our concepts; consciousness.” With this not unproblematic attainment, Kant moves to the third paralogism, of personality, in which the doctrine of inner sense is equally salient. Kant wishes, in the Paralogisms as in the Deductions, to grant “safe passage” to the transcendental determination of the nature and limits of cognition through a strait too narrow for the requirements of Seelenlehre. Thus, concluding his treatment of the concept of the simplicity of the soul, Kant concludes that “in the comparison of myself with objects of outer experience,” this concept is “not suitable for determining what is peculiar to and distinctive of one’s nature” as an anima. But Kant summarizes an argument not only intellectual but also intuitive in its scope; “the thinking I, the soul (a name for the transcendental object of inner sense)” does not have “any use whatever extending to actual objects, and hence cannot expand in the least our cognition” (A ). The number and variety of assertions of the heterogeneity within intuition and incapacity of inner intuition, as found throughout the paralogisms generally as well as in this second paralogism, casts doubt upon Kant’s surprising claim—or rather “assumption”—also found near the conclusion of the second paralogism (A ). Kant claims that () “the manner in which [matter]” as a determination of outer sense “affects our senses and produces in us the intuition of what is extended and hence composite” so as to be () “attended by thoughts” can on the basis of his account () “be presented consciously by . . . inner sense.” The requirements for this processus we saw above in our exegesis of the first-Edition Deduction and the Synthetic Principles. In both cases, inner sense was able to perform its proper function within this processus precisely, and only, because it appeared as an Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen, spatialized, constant, and determinable categorially. On the account of the character and capacities advanced thus far in the Paralogisms, however, the conditions in inner intuition necessary for this processus appears, at best, undemonstrated. In fact, it appears, given the varieties of incapacity Kant has asserted regarding inner sense both in the Refutation and the Dialectic, not only undemonstrated but indemonstrable. In fact, it is difficult to resist the impression that the basic intention of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, to determine both the nature and the limits of valid cognition, has led to a basic tension within the doctrine that is at

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the center of both the ordo cognoscendi taken positively and the Seelenlehre taken negatively. In the latter case, inner intuition functions not as a punctum flexus contrarii or coincidentia oppositorum but as a doctrine divided internally between two contradictory construals and functions. We have seen not only that inner intuition () must be amplified in order for the first to obtain, and () must be restricted to the point of incapacity for the second to obtain, but also () why each exigence obtains, or why each exigence is ineliminable as an essential element or aspect of transcendental idealism.257 In the first paralogism, Kant claimed the independence of the I from synthetic or intuitive determination, and the inapplicability of the category of substance. The second paralogism posited the independence of this I as “presented by us as object of inner sense,” from outer intuition. This independence allowed for the claim to the inapplicability, within inner intuition, of the predicates of extension, impenetrability, cohesion, motion, and matter, which allow for the determinate appearance of an object of outer intuition (A ). In the third paralogism, which concerns the “personality” of the soul, Kant specifies inner sense and its character still more directly and consistently throughout his argument. The illicit inference named in the third paralogism moves from () “whatever is conscious of the numerical identity of itself in different times is to that extent a person,” to () “the soul is so conscious,” and thereupon to () “therefore the soul is a person.” The third paralogism will assert, in its turn, the inability of rational psychology to claim a determinate cognition of the I of apperception through inner intuition. In each paralogism, various elements of the heterogeneity thesis have been claimed. In the first paralogism, the inability to move from substance to subject to soul was claimed, on the basis of the incapacity of inner intuition to yield any determinable synthetic apprehension (A –). In the second paralogism, the aspatiality of 257 Wolfgang Carl suggests that, in , when Kant was first drafting the first-Edition Deduction, “the paralogisms . . . were yet to be discovered; their discovery is to be dated rather late. Even in his lecture on metaphysics given about  or later, Kant adopted the dogmatic position of Rational Psychology (: –, –). When he gave up this position, he radically changed his notion of apperception and its role within the framework of a deduction of the categories . . . ” See Kant’s Transcendental Deductions, Förster, ed., (Stanford, Stanford University Press), p. . Chenet, too, though more critically, treats of “la nouvaeuté de la problématique de  par rapport à celle de ,” with reference to the manuscripts from –, and the gradual appearance and development of the heterogeneiety thesis, in L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Lille, ), §iv, from pp. –.

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inner sense resulted in its incapacity to yield a determinate object of cognition (A ). In the third paralogism, Kant will rely primarily upon the remaining element of the heterogeneity doctrine, the inconstancy of inner sense. Kant begins by claiming that “if I want to cognize the numerical identity of an external object through experience, then I shall pay attention to the permanent in appearance to which, as subject,” or substance, “everything impermanent refers as determination.” In this way, one may “note the identity of that permanent in the time wherein the remainder varies” (A ). Such an external object of attention can be determined insofar as it stands out from, and stands within, a permanent “horizon” or context. The one-dimensional “manifold” of inner sense, however, consists only in the intra-temporal distinction between time (as such) and (successive) times. For “I, however, [qua cogitans] am an object of inner sense, and all time is merely the form of inner sense.”258 This purely temporal manifold disallows, then, the constancy or “order and stability” attributed to the object of outer sense, gained by means of the categorial substantiality of its manifold. Kant here does not argue a dependence thesis, however, as was argued in the Refutation. Kant argues instead for the complete incapacity of inner intuition to yield synthetic conditions, and does so in open tension with the amplification of inner sense performedin the first-Edition Deduction and the Synthetic Principles. If such permanence were to obtain “in the form of the inner intuition of myself,” then “the personality of the soul,” as anima, “would have to be regarded not even as inferred, but as a fully identical proposition of self-consciousness in time” (A ). On this basis, the determinability of the object of inner sense required by the rational psychologist, that of the soul as anima, would be contained in “temporal self-consciousness,” and hence in a synthetically determined inner intuition. Rational psychology would not be disallowed, but provided for, by the transcendental topic of human cognition. One suspects that problematic idealism would be justified in its assertion of the priority and privilege of analytic selfconsciousness, and one is certain that the critical intention of Kant’s philosophy would be without formal justification.

258 Reuter (Kants Theorie der Reflexionsbegriffe (Konigshausen & Neumann, Wurzburg, )), notes the “Einschränkung der Diskussion der numerischen Identität im Amphiboliekapitel auf räumliche Stellendifferenz,” which “Indifferenz läßt das Problem sequentieller Identität” in inner sense unresolved, “unterbestimmt,” and “unklar” (pp. – ff.).

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Kant will argue instead that “the identity of the consciousness of myself in different times is only a formal condition of my thoughts and of their coherence” (ibid). This purely formal condition yields a logical rather than numerical identity. Kant states that this formal condition of my thoughts “does not prove at all the numerical identity of myself as subject” (A ). According to the inconstancy of inner sense, “there may have occured such variation as does not permit us to retain its identity” (A ). The conditions for the self-ascription of identity across the times of inner intuition no more obtains than do the conditions for the selfascription of identity across the time of inner intuition and the space of outer intuition, as this was asserted in the second paralogism (A ). For in the flux of inner intuition, Kant claims, “in any different state of the subject,” from one moment or instant to another, “the homonymous I” could “still always [only] preserve the thought of the preceding subject.” This preservation would allow an anterior subject to “pass [precedent thoughts] on to the subsequent one.” Such a preservation would yield an appearance of identity while not itself consisting in a genuine relation of identity. The assertion of the staccato-like succession of the “different times” of inner sense disallows the determination “at all times” and its serving within the same manifold toward a self-cognition (A ). Kant will extend this claim in asserting that “the proposition . . . that everything in the world is in flux and nothing is permanent and enduring,” while refuted in the context of the substantiality of outer intuition, “cannot be refuted by the unity of self-consciousness.” Most clearly; we “cannot judge from our consciousness whether as souls we are permanent or not” (A ). Thus, Kant concludes, “we do not encounter in the soul any permanent appearance except merely the [empty] presentation I,” which of course disallows rather than yields any synthetic extension. In fact, “we can never establish whether this I (a mere thought) is not just as much in flux as are all the remaining thoughts that it strings together” insofar as we would apprehend it in thought by means of inner intuition (A ). Kant’s motive for enforcing each of these “restricting” claims is best expressed in the Prolegomena citation with which this chapter began. By means of the divisio between inner sense and outer sense, Kant intends to distinguish “the field of [cognition’s] right use . . . with geometrical certainty from that of its worthless and idle use.” Kant does so with the polemical intention of identifying as “fruitless efforts” all

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attempts at a rational Seelenlehre. The latter, Kant hopes, “will . . . be entirely abandoned” (Prolegomena, § ).259 Kant evinces his argumentative strategy within the first Critique only in closing this third paralogism. Kant finds it “remarkable” that the personality of the soul as required by rational psychology “presupposes” permanence, and that this permanence has been shown as an illicit inference. The “personality of the soul,” with permanence as “its presupposition,” is disallowed. Hence, too, “the soul’s substantiality remains to be proved.” On the ground claimed by Kant, of course, such a proof would be impossible (A ). Kant warns that if the permanence of substantiality could be presupposed or claimed, “there would follow from it, not yet indeed the continuance of consciousness,” but “still the [formal] possibility of a continuing consciousness in an enduring subject.” The basis for this claim would “already be sufficient for personality.” The general metaphysical requirement that impermanence be assigned to, and permanence negated of, inner intuition is clear. Only then is the manifold required for the appearance of “the object of inner sense,” the soul as subject, denied to the rational psychologist as Seelenlehrer. To this argumentative end, Kant will close by claiming that permanence is “inferred,” rather than analytically contained in, inner intuition (A ). This inference illegitimately presumes the homogeneity of the permanent elements of outer intuition and the impermanent elements of inner intuition. This inference is generated illegitimately from the uncritical attribution of numerical identity to the temporal manifold of inner

259 In “Expérience Interne chez Kant,” Nabert analyzes not only Kant’s variant construals of the relation between the forms of intuition, but the reason why Kant must hold to such contradictory construals. Nabert argues that it is not due to a simple tension, but to an essential contradiction in the argumentative use to which Kant put the doctrine; “la plupart des malentendus ou des interprétations inexactes auxquelles a donné lieu la théorie des formes de la sensibilité proviennent de ce que l’on ne tient pas compte des différents points de vue sous lesquels Kant considère l’espace et le temps, dans l’Esthétique, dans l’Analytique, dans la Dialectique” (–). Nabert distinguishes theses for the (a) interdependence and (b) independence of the sensible forms, and distinguishes between “l’argumentation plus spécifiquement criticiste” and Kant’s contravening “constructif ” construal of inner sense (). With this specification, Nabert’s analysis gains in clarity; “on voit mieux maintenant pourquoi la difficulté était si grande pour Kant de faire du ‘Je pense’ une proposition d’existence, sans faire usage de la catégorie schématisée dans le temps” (). Ward had noted the same antinomy between the constructive intention to establish a synthetic unity of apperception inclusive of inner sense and the critical intention to exclude inner sense from the scope of synthetic judgments of experience; see A Study of Kant (Cambridge, ), –.

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sense. Such numerical identity can be attributed only to outer sense, and to the categorial determination of substantial objects that it alone contains. In this way, the table is turned on the idealist; “it is not inner intuition, but in fact outer intuition, that is in fact direct,” as Kant had put the point in the Refutation. Kant will assert that; “this [permanence] is what, if things were done rightly, should first be followed by the concept of substance that is usable only empirically” (A ). This reliance of intrinsic determinations upon the extrinsic determination of outer intuition follows from the fact that “identity of person does not by any means follow from the identity of the I found in the consciousness of all time wherein I cognize myself.” Inner sense is thus, Kant asserts, incapable of yielding synthetic conditions. Inner sense for this reason could never “serve to teach us apodeictically with regard to thinking beings as such anything whatever concerning their nature” (A , B ).260 It is only in “matter,” and only when “presented as something external” that “permanence as appearance can be observed.” Any claim to permanence in the inner manifold for self-cognition—required equally, however, for the subjective synthesis of mathematics and the transitus of dynamics—risks subreption. For “if I want to observe, in the variation of all appearances, the mere I” intrinsically, then I must, Kant asserts, engage in “substituting my concept and its unity for the properties belonging to myself as object” of outer sense, subreptically (A ).

260

Reuter (ibid), investigating the Reflexionsbegriffe asks: “Kant gibt keine Begründung dafür an, warum sich das Verfahren der logischen Reflexion auf einen Begriffsvergleich beschränkt; welchen Sinn soll ein bloßer Begriffsvergleich haben? Kann damit ein die Urteilsformen erst ableitender Verstandesgebrauch gemeint sein? In welchem Sinn kann die logische Reflexion, wenn sie tatsächlich nur ein formaler Begriffsvergleich ist, eine Vorbedingung für objektive—d.h. doch, Kants Terminologie entsprechend, gegenständliche (vgl. B )— Urteile sein, wie Kant statuiert (B )?” For Reuter, “empirische Reflexion” as a “Physiologie des inneren Sinnes” is essential to the integrity of the architectonic (p. ). On p. , Reuter stresses the importance of the problem; “Die transzendentale Reflexion ist obligatorischer Akt nicht nur zu Komparationszwecken, sondern auch für jede Urteilsbildung, d.i., eine Unterscheidung der Erkenntniskraft, wozu die gegebenen Begriffe gehören” (B ). Indeed, “Die transzendentale Reflexion ist conditio sine qua non für die Bildung synthetischer Urteile a priori.” Similarly, Heinz Heimsoeth (Transzendentale Dialektik: Ein Kommentar zu Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Vierter Teil, Die Methodenlehre [Berlin, New York, ] considered the doctrine of a priori intuition as both central and essential, virtually identifying “Transzendentalphilosophie” with the propaedeutic and architektonische articulation of “unsere Anschauung,” itself conceived as a form of immanente Physiologie of the faculty of cognition (–).

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In the fourth paralogism, and similarly, Kant treats of “the ideality of outer (äußer) relations,” and the relation between the formal character of externality and inner sense. As we have seen, the first paralogism asserted the impossibility of inner intuition in the sense of its irrelevance, i.e., the purely formal character of apperception. Then, the second paralogism isolated the first-personal and subjective character of inner sense (as well as its aspatiality), while the third paralogism focused on the inconstancy of inner intuition. Now, the fourth paralogism will return to the theme of the spatio-temporality of inner sense, and the heterogeneity thesis in this most basic acceptation. In the fourth paralogism, Kant will build upon the indications of the inferential relation between outer sense and inner sense made in the context of the third paralogism. The major of the fourth paralogism asserts that “that whose existence can only be inferred as the existence of a cause for given perceptions has a merely doubtful existence” (A ). Such an inference is illicit or paralogistic for assigning a merely problematic existence to “all outer appearances.” This reasoning assumes that outer appearances “cannot be perceived immediately.” Such a perception is possible, instead, “only [mediately] through a representation.” Thus the conclusion of the paralogistic inference of outer relation; “therefore the existence of all objects of outer senses is doubtful” (A ). At the root of this paralogistic reasoning lies a thesis on the relation between inner and outer sense. Kant begins the “critique of the fourth paralogism of transcendental psychology” by reasoning that, according to this inference, “I cannot . . . perceive external things but can only infer their existence from my inner perception” (A ). Thus, perception would stand to external objects as effect to cause; it is only the former to which we stand in an immediate relation. We must conclude to the latter through an inference. On this (faulty) basis, one would “rightly assert that only what is in ourselves can be perceived immediately” (A ). Such perception, then, would amount only to “a modification of inner sense” and be limited by its inability to represent the sphere of outer sensory objects. This reasoning, Kant states, “led Descartes to limit all perception in the narrowest meaning of the term to the proposition “I (as thinking being) am” (A ). Any inference from a certain effect given in inner sense to “a determinate cause” would always be uncertain; “in the reference of the perception to its cause, it always remains doubtful whether this cause is internal or external.” For this reason, “it remains doubtful whether all socalled outer perceptions are not a mere play of our inner sense,” subjective

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rather than objective in status. As such, the reference of all perception to existing outer objects would only consist in a problematic inference from “the object of inner sense.” Immediately intuited, the noematic content of this object is not inclusive of such objects, but is only first-personal and subjective; “I myself with all my representations” (A ). Kant’s exposition of the fourth paralogism next shifts to refutation. In attempting to show Descartes’ reasoning to be a “deceptive illusion,” Kant moves first to definition. A (problematic) idealist, Kant stipulates, does not properly name one “who denies the existence of external objects,” but one who “does not grant that this existence is cognized through immediate perception.” This distinction, so close to that of the Refutation, invites another. Kant differentiates transcendental idealism from transcendental realism. The former resists any claim to privilege or priority within its Sinnenlehre, Kant asserts, since both inner intuition and outer intuition are to yield “mere presentations and not things in themselves.” By this ideality thesis of transcendental idealism, “space and time are only sensible forms of our intuition,” and in that sense equally primitive or primordial. Kant defines this form or type of idealism over against “transcendental realism.” The latter “regards both time and space as something given in itself (independently of our sensibility)” (A ). Transcendental realism is for this reason forced to conceive outer appearances as “things in themselves that exist independently of us and our sensibility,” rather than only as appearances, ordered according to the characters of exteriority in and by the form of outer intuition. This forces the transcendental realist to conceive of outer appearances as “outside us even according to pure concepts of the understanding” (A ). The error of the transcendental realist consists in the assignation of a false provenance; “außer uns” instead can only possess meaning according to, and in, outer intuition. No such externality can be attributed directly of the faculty of representation as such, except through its possible relation to sensibility, and the form of outer sense. Thus, transcendental realism reduces to empirical idealism, insofar as both posit the externality of outer objects not in outer intuition but in objects independent of our sensibility. Transcendental idealism, instead, is indifferent to either empirical realism or dualism. As was asserted in the Refutation, Kant suggests that the transcendental idealist “can grant the existence of matter,” in its immediate relation to the cognitive faculty, “without going outside mere self-consciousness” (A ). Nor need the transcendental idealist “assume anything more than the certainty of presentations in oneself ”

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(A ). This assertion is not unproblematic, however, since “mere selfconsciousness” cannot contain the determination “matter” without violating the ‘nature and limits of our [inner] sensibility,’ as just set out in the first Paralogism. Matter, for the transcendental idealist, “is merely appearance.” Matter is “only a kind of presentation,” and is “called external not because it refers to objects in themselves external,” but because it refers “perceptions to the space wherein all [elements] are mutually external” (A ). In fact, as a presentational form, or “as separated from our sensibility, [it] is nothing.” This series of claims appears to claim nothing save the basic thesis of the ideality thesis; all objects are first appearances. Outer intuition allows for the unproblematic appearance of “mutual externality” by means of its formal “characters” (Merkmale) of limit, boundary, and position. Together, these allow for the determinate appearance of the extended essences and substances posited within the manifold of outer sense. Thus, “external objects (bodies) are mere appearances and hence are also nothing but one type of presentation” (A ). Not unproblematically, however, this form of spatial intuition “is in us,” as an element of the faculty of cognition (A ).261 This form of outer intuition, space, must necessarily be exhibited as such, transcendentally, and, hence, according to the—aspatial—form of inner sense (A ). Only on this basis could the transcendental idealist “grant the existence of matter without going outside mere self-consciousness.” Only if the extended matter of outer intuition can be exhibited within the temporal manifold of self-consciousness could this containment be legitimately claimed transcendentally.

261

Lachièze-Rey, in L’Idealisme kantien, considers the problem of the constructibility of space in time, through an examination of R ; “Je suis conscient de moi-même . . . dans le temps, mais les relations temporelles sont seulement en moi; je ne puis me les représenter comme étant en dehors de moi, à la manière des rélations spatiales, bien que la représentation de l’espace soit aussi en moi . . . Kant paraît d’ailleurs s’en apercevoir d’une manière fugitive, puisque, dans une parenthèse, il fait une réserve et affirme que la représentation spatiale est en moi après avoir dit que les relations spatiales n’y sont pas” (ibid, p. ; see also p. ). Lachièze-Rey will complain that “si paradoxale que la chose puisse sembler, l’espace . . . n’est réellement qu’en moi,” in which case “cet espace est incorporé aux données du sens interne” (). Thus, strictly, “les représentations qui appartiennent à cet espace ne sauraient être regardées comme extérieures, elles apparaissent uniquement comme des déterminations du moi” (, see also – ff.). This dialectic, or antinomy, of interiority and exteriority thus “présente des difficultés” and “donne naissance à un ordre nouveau de questions impossibles à éliminer.”

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On this basis, however, Kant will assert that “external objects exist just as well as I myself exist.” Both existence-claims are yielded through “the direct testimony of my self-consciousness” (A –). The “only difference” between these two classes of appearances obtains in the fact that “the presentation of myself as thinking subject is referred merely to inner sense,” while “presentations designating extended beings are referred also to outer sense,” i.e., both inner sense and outer sense. Inner sense here, like outer sense, apparently must contain spatiality within itself, in order to represent both extension (since spatial form, too, is found “in us”) and extended beings.262 But by this account, though, it is not inner sense, time, that possesses universality, encompassing time as well as space. Space, instead of time, here encompasses both forms of intuition, and attains the status of an Inbegriff or “universal representation” (A ).263 It is

262 While the intention of Ameriks’ account of inner sense is apologetic, such tensions lead Ameriks to several important points of criticism. First, Ameriks admits “an obvious and classical objection,” that of L.W. Beck in his “Sage of Königsberg” essay. For the latter, as is well-known, the case of “first-person present tense psychological statements,” present a case in which “it would seem that one can know something about oneself that is certain and even transcendentally valid, no matter what Kant may be able to prove about rational psychology and the phenomenality of time” (). Second, Ameriks notes the pre-eminence of space in the “illustrations” of synthetic cognition, and states that “the epistemological argument for ideality” concerns spatial form predominantly, such that “Kant has obvious difficulties applying it to time, for he is not even clear what the body of synthetic knowledge is that allegedly must be assumed and can be explained only on the doctrine of transcendental idealism” (). Third, Ameriks concludes that “Kant must stand in an ambiguous position with respect to a priori knowledge of time.” For “on the one hand, his general doctrine of transcendental idealism requires him to posit such knowledge in order to argue for the . . . phenomenality of time. On the other hand, once time is identified as the form of inner sense, Kant’s antirationalist limitation on self-knowledge must lead him to restrict a priori knowledge of time.” Ameriks asserts that “as might be expected, [Kant’s] final position tries to have it both ways—to hold both that there is such a thing as a pure form of time (structuring and limiting all our self-knowledge), and that by itself (i.e., without reference to features such as spatiality which do not apply to the self as a distinct being) it doesn’t yield any pure knowledge” (; italics added). Ameriks concludes that “Kant’s notion of a pure form of time is thus a fairly austere but uneliminable part of his general doctrine of transcendental idealism” (). Ameriks does not examine the effects of this “uneliminable” doctrine. For a more sustained treatment of the complex tension between the doctrine of inner sense as it appears in the Refutation’s critical argument and inner sense as an Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen see Ludwig Goldschmidt’s early, critical investigations in “Kants ‘Widerlegung des Idealismus,’ ” Archiv f. systematische Philosophie ,  (pp. –) and  (pp. –, –). 263 In R  (Ak, , ), Kant wrote that “in space alone do we posit that which endures; in time there is unceasing change. Now, however, the determination of the

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unfortunate, then, when already at A  Kant will give a contravening account of the scope of inner sense. There, in a way that manifests clearly the atopical and aporetic character of inner intuition, Kant suggests that empirical objects “are called external if presented in space,” and “called internal if presented only in a time-relation.” On this construal, inner sense would offer an objectivity exclusively temporal.264 Kant’s primary intention, however, is not to establish priority, but equiprimordiality. As in the second-Edition Refutation, so already in the first-Edition Paralogisms; “I do not require an inference to the actuality of outer objects” any more than I require an inference to “the actuality of the object of my inner sense (my thoughts).” While a certain indeterminacy with regard to the ‘object of inner sense’ can be seen here, it is clear that both forms of apprehension are to be, and yield, “nothing but presentations, whose direct perception (consciousness) is simultaneously a sufficient proof of their actuality” (A ). This proof can be claimed only upon the integrity of the transcendental Sinnenlehre, however. Only the immediate intuitive relation of the cognitive faculty to the object in its unity and identity may ground such a claim to actuality or existence. According to transcendental idealism, then, “external objects— viz., matter—are in all their shapes and changes nothing but mere appearances, i.e., presentations in us, of whose actuality we become conscious

existence of a thing in time, that is in such a change, is impossible unless its intuition is connected to that which endures. This must therefore be intuited outside us as the object of outer sense.” Kant continues; “permanence is intrinsic to the representation of space, as Newton said. The permanence of the form of our mind is not the same . . . rather [the representation of space is] the representation of something permanent.” Such assertions do not significantly advance the heterogeneity thesis of the  Aesthetic. In , however, “we subsume all time-determination” to this spatial permanent. This priority thesis is advanced in order to enforce the claim that we “cannot represent the spontaneity of self-determination” in inner sense as permanent, since this would allow for both rational psychology and materialism (See Guyer, ibid, ). Permanence is the mark solely of outer objects; if permanence obtains, then it cannot be an internal or intrinsic determination. Thus the priority of outer sense and the dependence of inner sense. However, the disconsonance with the  doctrine of inner sense are evident; time qua form of inner sense is capable of no constructive role, as any determinability through spatiality or constancy has been denied to its formal structure. Additionally, time is no longer universal representation, to which all representations are subsumed; space has become the universal, lexically prior form for all intuitive cognition. 264 In the second-Edition exposition, at B , Kant will assert similarly that “to the former [inner sense] only time, to the latter [outer sense] also space, attaches as formal condition of their intuition,” such that here space replaces time as the inclusive form of intuition; time does not incorporate space while space inscribes time within its sphere.

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directly,” precisely as we do for the appearances of inner sense. Both space and time, outer and inner sense, “are to be found only in us” (A – ).265 In the Paralogisms, the determination of inner sense though multivalent is clear in its basic intention. The first paralogism asserted the heterogeneity of (a posteriori) inner intuition from (a priori) transcendental apperception, and the inability of inner intuition to incorporate the logical universality of the latter. The second paralogism asserted the heterogeneity of (aspatial) inner intuition from (spatial) outer intuition, in which obtains the perdurance and substantiality which allow for synthetic cognition. The third paralogism asserted the heterogeneity between (inconstant) inner intuition and the constancy required for the claim to identity across time. Kant’s argument in the fourth paralogism continues to rely upon and extend these incapacities of inner intuition, each of which is grounded in its heterogeneity to outer intuition and its Merkmale.266 The fourth 265 Kant insists upon the universality of the object of appearance; the “object is called an external one if it is presented in space, and an internal one if presented in only temporal relation.” Both space and time are, however, “found only in us” (A ). Kant does not introduce, and does not here seem to be cognizant of, the problem that the form for all external intuition, as an element of the cognitive faculty, must obtain within inner intuition, which explicitly excludes all external relations or predicates. Kant does, however, admit that “the expression “outside us” carries with it an unavoidable ambiguity.” This ambiguity consists, however, only in the equivocity in meaning which encompasses the concept of an outer object, as both “something that as thing-in-itself exists as distinct from us,” and “what belongs merely to outer appearance.” This ambiguity—within outer sense—is to be resolved by the distinction, echoing the pre-critical praeter nos—extra nos distinction, between empirical objects (“things that are to be found in space”) and “transcendentally external” objects. The ambiguity in the character and capacities of inner intuition is not resolved thereby. 266 Kemp Smith (Commentary, p. ), following Vaihinger (Kants Widerlegung pp. – ), identifies the most important tensions (or antinomies) between Kant’s claims in the Fourth Paralogism and those in the Refutation. Kemp Smith contrasts Kant’s claim, e.g., that the perception of something permanent is possible “only through a thing outside me and not through the mere representation of a thing” (as subsumed to inner sense) at B , with the Fourth Paralogism claim that “outer objects are mere appearances, and are therefore nothing but a species of my representations, the objects of which are something only through these representations; apart from them they are nothing” at A . This is also discussed by Beiser (ibid, ). Beiser notes that the more fundamental context for this tension is given in the doctrine of inner sense; “when Kant writes of a thing outside me and distinct from my representations, he is using the phrase ‘outside me’ in a very narrow and specific sense to contrast the appearances of outer sense with those of inner sense” (). Thus, “when Kant writes about objects outside my representations he contrasts them with something more specific than representations in general; namely, my inner representations, which appear to occur according to inner

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paralogism extends the incapacities of inner intuition advanced in the first three paralogisms. It will also allow for a transition, from the fundamental claim to the heterogeneity of inner sense and outer sense to the derivative claim to the priority of outer sense, as required for the Refutation of Idealism. The context in which the significance for this series of restrictive construals can be seen, though, requires our distantiation from a close view on the Paralogisms or even on the Dialectic, and our adoption of a method of comparison, through which the basic tension between this restrictive construal and the amplified account in the Analytic and the Synthetic Principles can be seen. This distantiation allows us to see the peculiarity, even the antinomy, involved in Kant’s depiction of the relation of containment that obtains between time and space within inner intuition that ranges over the sphere of all that obtains “inner uns.”267 With Kant’s assertion here that “space itself and all its appearances are, as presentations, only in me” (italics added), we confront a difficulty that, while not as fundamental as the tension between the positive demands upon inner intuition as an Inbegriff in relation to the negative demands upon inner intuition as indeterminate, is nonetheless significant. We have in this context and this locution, “inner uns,” a new appearance of the aporia of inner sense, one peculiar to the Paralogisms and the ideas of reflection. Here, while asserting the aspatiality of time as form of inner intuition, Kant is forced to reassert the necessarily spatio-temporality of its sphere. Formally, this spatiality (bracketing the reality of its objects) must be displayed, or exhibited, within the necessarily aspatial form of inner sense . . . ” (). Discussing the B-Edition replacement of the fourth paralogism with the Refutation of Idealism, Lachièze-Rey, too, notes both the centrality of inner sense to this transformation, and that “l’auteur de la Critique nous apparaît donc comme n’étant pas encore en possession du mouvement d’ensemble qui, dynamiquement, dans son unité, doit introduire successivement tous les éléments constitutifs de l’expérience.” This amendment results in “la position du problème et non à sa solution” in the B-edition Refutation (). 267 We are forced by Kant’s doctrine of inner sense in the Aesthetic and its heterogeneity thesis to juxtapose its amplification in the Analytic (as the ‘thesis’) toward an inclusiveness thesis, to the exclusiveness thesis of and in the arguments against rational psychology in the Dialectic (as the ‘antithesis’), as in any antinomy. As appropriately, this ‘antinomy’ could be termed a ‘paralogism,’ insofar as, according to Kant, the latter is a “syllogism in which one is constrained, by a transcendental ground, to draw a formally invalid conclusion” (A/B), in this case regarding the necessary representative capacities of inner intuition. For if the processus of cognition as Kant has depicted it in the Analytic is to be possible, then Kant’s depiction of inner intuition and its incapacities in the Dialectic must apparently be disclaimed. One appears forced to choose between, rather than affirm both, the positive and negative intentions of Kant’s theoretical philosophy.

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intuition. The form of outer sense is “in me.” This form of inner intuition, however, excludes in principle the appearance of the attributes or analytic modes of outer intuition—limit, boundary, position—as well as its derived characters (extension, matter, et cetera). Although space is to obtain and be exhibited in time, the time of inner sense, inner sense cannot contain space. That “objects are called outer because they attach to the sense that we call the outer sense” is tautologous, and unproblematic (A ). The claim that “the intuition of this [outer] sense is space” is unproblematic.268 But the assertion that “this space itself, however, being yet nothing but an inner kind of presentation wherein certain perceptions connect with one another,” begs the question of the possibility for this interdependence, even homogeneity, within sensibility that Kant’s heterogeneity thesis has negated. According to the ideality thesis, “if we accept external objects as things-in-themselves,” it would be “absolutely impossible to comprehend how we could arrive at the cognition of their actuality outside us” (A ). For cognition, in order to be established in its a priori character, requires that “we rely merely on the presentations that are in us.” Only as “in us” and as an element of the cognitive faculty can the a priori formal character of our cognition be determined in an anticipation of perception (ibid).269 Kant’s intended conclusion consists, of course, in 268 At A , Kant will acknowledge an “unavoidable ambiguity” in “the expression outside us” since the latter must necessarily incorporate both (a) “existence distinct from us” and (b) “appearance as outer” which is thus external in form but nonetheless “in us” qua representation. This ambiguity clearly underlies Prolegomena §  and its assertion that “we know nature as nothing but the totality of appearances, i.e., of representations in us, and hence we can only derive the law of their connection from principles of their connection in us” (Ak ). Kant does not here, however, admit to the more significant ambiguity in the two acceptations of “within us” he relies upon, as spatial and as aspatial. 269 Baumanns, in Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft,’ notes Kant’s restriction of Nacheinander to time and Nebeneinander to space, and their respective function as “fundamental qualities” (Grundqualitäten). Baumanns also notes that “simultaneity” (Zugleichsein) and “duration” (Dauer) restricted to “spatial symbolization” (“räumliche Symbolierung”) ( n.). However, Baumanns grants, without argument, “Die Raum-Zeit Koordination” () necessary for Kant’s constructive intentions (e.g., at A , B ). There, Kant asserted the universality thesis, the inclusion of spatiality within time as form of inner intuition; “Das reine Bild aller Größen (quantorum) vor dem äußeren Sinne ist der Raum; aller Gegenstände der Sinne aber überhaupt, die Zeit.” This inattention to the tension within the doctrine of inner sense—between a demanded indepedendence from spatial form and a demanded interdependence with spatial form, to say nothing of the dependence upon spatial form introduced in the Refutation of Idealism—leads Baumanns to cite passages from the Opus postumum (e.g., , ), in which interdependence was claimed and independence was disclaimed, as purportedly clarificatory of the doctrine of . This

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the interdependence and interpeneteration of inner intution and outer intuition as forms of intuitive appearance. This interpenetration would allow for the first-order determinative claim that () transcendental idealism “can grant the existence of matter without going outside mere selfconsciousness” (A ). This interpenetration would also allow for the second-order reflective claim that () the form for both the intuition of external matter and that for our self-cognition may both be exhibited together in inner intuition as belonging to the cognitive faculty, ‘within us.’ It should be reiterated that Kant’s ideality thesis and immediacy thesis remain unproblematic. Having returned to the firm ground offered by the former, Kant also repeats the latter; “outer perception directly proves an actuality in space.” The claim that such spatial objects obtain for cognition through a “mere form of presentations” and an element of our sensibility is also unproblematic. One may further grant that the claim to the objective validity of such presentations, their capacity to present the “objective reality” of objects in space while consisting of “nothing but mere presentations” (A –). Indeed, any critique of the very possibility of outer objects is necessarily dogmatic and external. The aporia of inner sense, instead, concerns only the thematic Kant restates in closing his exposition. Kant asserts, as above, that “one cannot sense outside oneself but only within oneself.” Both sensible manifolds obtain as elements of the cognitive faculty, and are thus “in us.” Transcendental idealism differentiates itself from problematic idealism principally through its Sinnenlehre, but this is expressed not only through the ideality and immediacy theses, but also through the heterogeneity thesis. But only if the object of outer intuition can be unproblematically transposed through inner sense and presented to the discursive concepts of the understanding can transcendental idealism claim to the immediacy of our relation to, e.g., “the existence of matter,” without “going outside mere self-consciousness.”270

conflation obscures the specific character of the Sinnenlehre of each period (in  and  respectively). It should be stated clearly, however, that Baumanns’ understanding of the most difficult aspects of the Aesthetic, and their importance, is both rare and instructive. 270 Against this containment, Lachièze-Rey, in L’Idealisme kantien, adduces R  (Ak, , ). There, Kant asserts directly that “if we didn’t relate our representations to something other than ourselves, they would never afford to us any knowledge of objects; for inner sense can represent only the relation of representations to the subject” (). Such a containment of the outer object within inner intuition, then, is impossible. While outer

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This containment, if unproblematically secured, would allow the transcendental idealist to remain “indifferent” to the the skeptical idealist’s claim that “our entire self-consciousness supplies us with nothing but merely our own determinations.” Self-consciousness would already contain within itself the object of outer intuition in its immediate (spatiotemporal) identity. Skeptical idealism would rest merely on the “unavoidable ambiguity” of A . Skeptical idealism would consist merely in the erroneous claim that the determination of “matter” and with it spatial form, was not already contained in “mere self-consciousness.” But this containment carries with it, according to the letter of Kant’s exposition, an avoidable ambiguity regarding the status of inner sense, to which we cannot remain indifferent. In the “Observation on the Sum of Pure Psychology in Consequence of these Paralogisms” (A , A ), Kant issues several important comments upon inner intuition. In fact, this Observation and the greatly adumbrated second-Edition of the Paralogisms offers a still clearer account of inner intuition than has this much extended first-Edition exposition. Kant sets the context for his observation uncontroversially in the basic context of the ideality thesis; “to our outer intuitions there corresponds something actual in space” (A ). Kant’s “observation” will extend from A  to A , and is almost as long as the second-Edition Paralogisms themselves. Both inner intuition and outer intuition yield, as forms of intuition, only appearance. This thesis represents the most general claim of Kant’s Sinnenlehre. The ideality of the forms of intuition makes possible the contribution of sensibility to synthetic a priori cognition. This contribution allows for Kant’s construction of the transcendental topic of human cognition. The ideality thesis, however, is only propaedeutic to another exposition of the heterogeneity thesis. Kant invites us to compare “psychology as the physiology of inner sense,” and “somatology (Körperlehre) as a physiology of objects of outer senses” (A ). This comparison yields the result that, in the latter, “much can be cognized synthetically a priori from the mere concept of an extended, impenetrable being.” In the first sense contains, according to Lachièze-Rey, “passivité, l’extériorité et la permanence,” inner sense admitted only the first (). In the Opus, however, space is not only conceived as “une forme de réceptivité, le milieu des impressions passives que nous recevrons,” but is also placed “à l’intérieur du sujet,” which will imply “une modification complète de la fonction spatiale puisque l’espace, cessant d’être milieu de l’affection, deviendrait milieu de l’affectant” (). In this consists “la solution de l’Übergang” that Lachièze-Rey finds only in the Opus ().

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science of psychology, however, “nothing at all can be so cognized from the concept of a thinking being.” This dualism, between a Körperlehre and a Seelenlehre, Kant recognizes not as aporetic but as a desideratum. This dualism allows Kant to assign the conditions for objective synthetic cognition only to outer sense, and to disallow such conditions to inner sense and any rational psychology.271 Kant asserts that “the appearance of outer sense has something constant (stehend) and enduring that provides us with a substratum lying at the basis of mutable determinations” (A ). Temporal succession— though this had been denied to outer sense überhaupt in the Aesthetic— is characterized by its stability, its possession of a perduring ground 271 Kant’s differentiates two forms of dualism, empirical and transcendental. Empirical dualism affirms the heterogeneity thesis. This dualism is to be allowed to “give the law in psychology.” Insofar as psychology is taken “empirically,” then the division between substances “given to outer sense” and “the thinking I, likewise as substance . . . and given to inner sense,” is to be affirmed. Kant claims this dualism between inner sense and outer sense at the level of an empirical psychology in order to disclaim “transcendental dualism.” On the assumption of “transcendental dualism,” two pretended sciences could each purport to offer synthetic a priori bodies of doctrine. Both pneumatology, as a body of synthetic doctrine through inner intuition, and materialism, through outer intuition, would be valid. Both, Kant claims, within its restricted sphere, would be legitimate on its own principles. Each would offer a synthetic connection between intuition and concept, within its integral sphere. Kant will enforce instead a “distinction in kind” between the forms of intuition. Each form will yield spheres of objects independent of one another both in noematic content and noetic characters. Empirical dualism must be brought to a transcendental unity in order to result in a coherent experience. The real distinction between the forms of intuition must yet allow for the ascription of identity to an object across the heterogeneity of the characters in and through which it is apprehended. The “I as presented in inner sense in time” and “objects in space outside me” are, while “distinct in kind,” not “thereby thought as different things” (A ). Kant will yet hope that this formal distinction will not yet yield a “thought of different things,” or a real distinction in objects. The grounds for this hope, and demand rather than a deduction, remain unclear. In accordance with the dominant directionality of the paralogisms chapter, Kant’s critical intention is primary. Kant closes the first-edition exposition of the paralogisms by returning to the hope of “the [rational] psychologist,” whether a “materialist” or “spiritualist,” to attain to a cognition of the soul as subject and as substance through inner intuition (A ). Through their assertion of a synthetic apprehension of “merely thinking beings (according to the form of inner sense),” both are committed to the disregard of the restricted and restricting form of our inner intuition. Both have, “through misunderstanding, always kept doing subtle reasoning” about an object of inner sense, the possibility conditions for the apprehension of which Kant would eliminate formally and in principle. Kant’s intention to perform this critical task, however, is no less clear than the aporetic result of the formal restrictions upon cognition thereby effected. The critical restriction upon inner intuition, as the manifold for the apprehension of the soul as object of rational psychology, is also a restriction upon the (same) manifold required for the range of transcendental operations upon concepts (construction, exhibition, application) reviewed above.

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which allows for the identification and reidentification of an object across any characteristic transmutations as changes of place. This dimensionality, inclusive of constancy and inconstancy, or the stable and the impermanent, “provides us with a synthetic concept, viz., the concept of space and of an appearance in space” (A ). Time, instead, as the form of our inner intuition, “has nothing enduring,” and for this reason “allows us to cognize only variation (Wechsel) by determinations, but not a determinable object.” For “in what we call soul . . . everything is in continual flux and there is nothing enduring.” The deceptively natural transition from (transcendental) subject to (synthetic) soul or substance will be disallowed in this way as well. Kant appears to make an exception—“if one insists”—in the case of “the I.”272 This “I” or apperceptive principle is necessary to the coherence of all consciousness. Transcendental apperception must obtain “at all times,” at least potentially, and in this sense be “constant.” But precisely for this reason, the I of apperception must be differentiated absolutely from any intuitive basis. Such a possible intuition could be claimed by the rational psychologist as grounds for his purported rational and synthetic cognition of the soul as object of inner sense.273 272 Pippin, in Kant’s Theory of Form (–) treats both the problem of the various construals of the form of inner sense, and the various construals of the ‘object of inner sense.’ He recognizes that for constructive purposes, “the requirement for a determination by the understanding is just as strong a requirement when the manifold is inner as when it is outer.” In “the case of awareness of inner sense, we have found [Kant] arguing that the same conditions apply in order for there to be a consciousness of consciousness” in the Analytic (). Of course, “knowledge clearly involves bringing intuitions to concepts.” But Pippin asks, “what exactly are we aware of if we admit that, besides the thought of myself, I also need the “intuition” of the manifold in me?” Indeed, “elsewhere Kant argues that the “content” of inner sense should be considered wholly dependent upon, indeed identical with, the content of outer sense, making it even harder to understand what I am aware of in empirical self-awareness” (). Pippin confesses that Kant “speaks quite obscurely, in a manner I confess I simply do not undersand, of such judgments” in inner intuition “becoming judgments of experience by the ‘addition’ of an appeal to a categorial ground,” the possibility of which, according to our exegesis, Kant has made problematic in order to advance his critical argument. 273 Kitcher (Kant’s Real Self, p. ) develops her account of self-knowledge as follows. First, “Kant claims repeatedly that the thinking self is not and cannot be an object of sensible intuition; thus, it cannot be known (B , A , A , B ).” Second, “Kant believes that outer sense is incapable of divulging a thinking being (A ),” and “because we possess only two types of intuition, inner and outer, it would seem to follow that the thinking self cannot be intuited by us at all.” Kitcher esteems Kant’s argument “terribly weak,” yet acknowledges Kant insistence that “the properties that outer sense can capture—extension, impenetrability, cohesion, and motion—neither are nor contain thoughts, feeling, desire, or resolution (A ).” Kitcher argues that “Kant

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The designation “I,” then, is to, and must, denote only “a simple object,” dispossessed of the manifoldness required by the rational psychologist.274 Rational psychology requires that “this I would have to be an intuition” in order to allow for its synthetic propositions (A ). This I, instead, is by Kant’s account “no more an intuition than a concept of any object.” It is “the mere form of consciousness.” Through this concept of the I, “I do not cognize this thinking self better as regards its properties.” Nor do I “gain insight into its permanence” (A ). This denial, to the rational psychologist, of the conditions for cognition in inner intuition is not without implication, however, for transcendental idealism itself. This formal restriction allows Kant to “freely confess my own ignorance” regarding the nature of the soul. This restriction also allows for a transcendental refutation, or at least reply, to the “dogmatic assertions of a speculative opponent” or Seelenlehrer. The latter denial can be made by instituting the formal conditions according to which “he can never know more about the nature of myself qua subject . . . than do I” (A –).275 misrepresents the epistemological access to the thinker provided by inner sense,” asserting that the heterogeneity thesis is too strong (). Interpretation, however, here gives way to instruction. Kitcher concludes by recognizing that “the deduction of the categories depends on the principle of apperception.” The deduction requires that a categorial determination of inner sense be possible in order to render a synthetic unity of all representations possible: “we must use the categories in thinking about thinking” in the sphere of inner intuition (). 274 The formal requirements for Kant’s various critical positions may be distinguished. The refutation of idealism requires the priority of outer intuition over inner intuition, and indeed the priority of outer sense over outer imagination. This priority is established through the indeterminacy in inner intuition, which establishes its dependence upon outer intuition, which establishes the priority of outer intuition. Priority, however, presumes interdependence. (The Synthetic Principles of the Analytic argued not only for this interdependence, of course, but also for the inclusiveness or universality of inner intuition.) The refutation of materialism and the critiques of rational psychology and theology instead require the independence of inner intuition and outer intuition, and the inability to employ within inner intuition the formal structure of outer intuition whereby determinate synthetic judgment is possible. The assertion that “we are for ourselves first object of outer sense, for without this we would not perceive our place where we are in the world and we cannot have an intuition of ourselves except in relation to other things,” supports the refutation of idealism rather than either the critique of rational psychology or rational theology (R ; cf., R , R ; Ak, , ). 275 Kant’s comments upon this argumentative situation in the Discipline of Pure Reason may be of importance in our evaluation of this claim to be able to repel opponents’ attacks. At A , B , in the context of yet another review of the status of his critique of the soul (A –, B –), Kant suggests that “our reason does not need to prove the possession’s legitimacy” or our right to claim such a refutation, “nor would it be able to conduct that proof . . .” For this and related points regarding Kant’s principles of rhetoric, see Stanley Rosen, Hermeneutics as Politics (New Haven, Yale University Press, ).

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This demonstration of our necessary ignorance is to disallow both “materialism” and “spiritualism” (A ). Kant’s institution of this docta ignorantia, however, requires the assertion of the aporetic indeterminacy in inner intuition which will also disallow the possibility conditions for any determinate apprehension within its manifold.276 The heterogeneity thesis can be applied to Kant’s constructive attempts, just as Kant applied the thesis in his critical arguments. If Kant would assert the heterogneity thesis against a “speculative opponent” (whether Swedenborg in the preCritical writings, or Leibniz or Malebranche in the Critical writings), so the same thesis must apply equally to Kant’s own transcendental topic. Kant would apply this restrictive construal only to a speculative opponent. For this reason, Kant will not yet recognize its aporetic character; he identifies as an impossibility any decision regarding the question of “the possibility of the soul’s communion with an organic body” (A ). He does so by making impossible a unity in intuition, and by making necessary the most strict construal of the “limiting condition” upon our inner intuition. The very question of the soul’s communion with the body (according to A ), proposes, illegitimately, a determinate cognition through the manifold, and in the sphere, of inner sense. One may fear, though, that since the soul is understood as object of inner sense, and the body as object of outer sense, the formal conditions required for the assertion of impossibility regarding any decision on their unity or disunity will not remain unproblematic. The inability of inner sense to contain spatial form and its characters within itself disallowed the “order and steady coherence” necessary to the application of the categories. According to the unproblematic priority thesis, the categories wait, for their possible objectivity, upon the

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As above, “space itself, wherein they [extended objects] are intuited, is nothing but a presentation.” Representations, as such “cannot in the same quality cannot be encountered outside the soul at all” (A –). This heterogeneity implies that “the question is now no longer about the soul’s communion with other known substances outside us that are different in kind.” This traditional metaphysical question regarding the communion of the thinking and the extended may be resolved, transcendentally, to a question “merely about the connection of the presentations of inner sense with the modifications of our outer sensibility.” The transcendental question concerns “how these presentations and modifications may be connected among one another according to constant laws so as to cohere in an experience.” The specification of a question, however, does not of itself result in its resolution. Nor does a “confession of necessary ignorance,” given Kant’s imperative to avoid ‘pleading the incapacity of human reason’ (A xiii). Neither the “constancy” of inner sense, nor the more fundamental “connection” between inner sense and the form of outer sense, is evidently unproblematic.

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conditions given in and by intuition. As Kant himself had put the point, “if they [the categories] are not based on an intuition to whose manifold they can be applied as a function of synthetic unity,” the categories propose but “functions of judgment, without content” (A –). But Kant has now argued consistently, at least within the Dialectic, that inner intuition cannot incorporate, but must exclude, the conditions necessary for the appearance (and “transposition”) of the object of outer sense within its manifold. Five factors combine to afford Kant his basis for this conclusion; () the indeterminacy of the object of inner sense, () the heterogeneity of the formal characters of its manifold from those of outer intuition, () the absence of the conditions required for the applicability of the categories, () the impermanence or inconstancy of inner intuition,277 and () the a posteriori status of any inner sensory perception. These five factors combine to ensure the impossibility of a rational psychology or a rational theology as a Seelenlehre. Such restrictions would also combine, however, to disallow the conditions required for any synthetic cognition through inner sense, including the subjective synthesis of mathematics in inner sense and the objective synthesis and its dynamic transitus of the object of outer sense through inner sense to the understanding.278 277

In spite of the textual evidence (and scholarly concordance) recorded here, scholars in many cases have resisted consideration of each of these problematic construals of inner sense. Paton’s account is illustrative. In Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience (v. II), Paton states, regarding this successiveness or impermanence thesis, that “I am very reluctant to accept such a view, not only because it is manifestly at variance with common sense, but also because it seems inconsistent with Kant’s most central doctrines” (–). Noting the passages in which this pure succession of inner sense is in fact asserted, Paton would admit only that “it is difficult to be sure of the precise meaning intended to be conveyed by such a doctrine, but Kant is quite certainly dealing with abstractions which are the product of analysis” (). It should be noted that in §  (“The Permanence of Time”), Paton admits that “we get into new difficulties when we attempt to argue from the permanence of time.” For “Kant, as I have pointed out, believed that permanent substances are to be found only in space.” Paton here, however, will be eager to admit of the successiveness thesis. With only Kant’s critical intentions in view, Paton will affirm that “no permanent object is given to us in inner sense, and for this reason he rejects all attempts to prove that the soul is a substance” (). 278 Nabert, too, in “L’expérience interne chez Kant,” suggests that an intrinsic instability within the architectonic results from two distinct construals of inner sense. By the first (constructive) construal, “l’expérience interne envellopperait primitivement toutes les intuitions,” universally (). Upon this construal, Nabert suggests, “tous les phénomènes ne soient, de quelque manière, des modifications de l’esprit, des états du Gemüt,” which would jeopardize the priority of outer sense claimed in the Refutation of Idealism (). Nabert also identifies, however, the risk that this universality of time as form of inner sense contain within itself spatial determinations, as must be excluded from the manifold

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At this point of his exposition, and development, Kant supposes that an aporia of inner sense results only upon the adoption of transcendental realism. That doctrine Kant defines through its “deception” or misconception of the relation between outer and inner sense. The transcendental realist, Kant stipulates, holds that “what exists merely in thoughts is hypostatized and is assumed, in the same quality, as an actual object outside the thinking subject” (A ). This realism, Kant continues, comprehends extension not as ‘appearance,’ but instead as “a property of external things that subsists” (ibid). Kant’s critique of realism, however, concerns us less than does his construal of the character and capacities of inner intuition. And it is to this, our theme, that Kant returns in his development of his critique. Kant will protest a necessary ignorance in the origin of the matter of cognition; “there may well be something outside us to which the appearance that we call matter corresponds” (A ). But nothing is decided, no question is resolved, thereby. For, Kant continues, “in the same quality that it has as appearance it is not outside us, but is merely within us as a thought.” In other words, nothing is gained theoretically except the already secured passivity thesis by the claim to the actual externality of substance. In fact, much is lost. If one insists on transcendental realism, “the guide to the causes is entirely lost from their effects that are to show up in inner sense” (A ). Within outer sense, “we have no outer effects other than changes of place, and no forces except merely endeavors resulting in, as their effects, relations in space.” According to the ordo cognoscendi, it is “in us,” and according to the pure temporality of inner sense, that “the effects are [to be] thought.” Within this manifold of inner sense, however, “there occurs no relation of place, or any motion, shape,—or any determination of space at all” (ibid). This “extreme heterogeneity”—in terms that foreshadow the

of inner intuition if the refutation of rational psychology is to be sustained. This thesis would, in effect if not intention, “unit étroitement le temps et l’espace, la catégorie de substance et la catégorie de causalité” (). Nabert also notes an attempt, both in the Aesthetic and in the Dialectic, “pour affranchir la durée psychologique de tout contact avec l’espace, pour dissocier l’expérience externe et l’expérience interne” (). Nabert insists upon this critical exigence; “en toute rigueur, la connaissance que le sujet acquiert de luimême dans le sens interne où il se voit à la manière d’un objet, ne peut rivaliser en objectivité avec la connaissance de l’objet empirique hors de nous.” For Nabert, ultimately, “il n’y a pas, nous le verrons, une détermination intégrale de l’objet du sens interne par les catégories” (). Kant’s positive intention is thwarted by Kant’s negative intention.

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first Introduction of the third Critique, would imply that “we have outside of us a character of efficient causes that refuses to be reconciled with their effects within us” (A ). Kant recognizes the impossibility of a heterogeneity thesis, but only in its character as a causal thesis. Kant does not recognize or record the similar reductio conclusion that follows in the case that we replace causal heterogeneity with formal heterogeneity.279 Kant would insist, against this causal heterogeneity, that “bodies are not objects in themselves” and are not “something outside us” but are instead “merely presentations in us.” For this reason, the heterogeneity of cause and effect is to be dismissed as dogmatic, and replaced by the formal heterogeneity indicated at A . The internal-external distinction, in other words, is to obtain within the concept of presentation. Motion itself, “and hence also the matter that we can thereby come to know, is mere presentation” (A ). The claim that “the motion of matter does not produce representations in us” is less important for our present purposes than is the proposed resolution to this problem of the origin of our presentations (A ). But the question is not resolved as much as repositioned, as a formal rather than causal problem. Kant argues that the proper transcendental question does not concern “the soul’s communion with other known substances different in kind” from ourselves as thinking substances, but rather concerns “the connection of the presentations of inner sense with the modifications of our outer sensibility” (ibid).280 This purely formal 279

Guyer nonetheless overstates the analogy between Descartes’ causal heterogeneity and Kant’s formal heterogeneity. Guyer suggests that through its “assocation of the forms of outer and inner sense” in the second edition, “Kant’s argument is essentially the same as that of Descartes and rests our knowledge of external existence on a premise which is, in Kant’s own words, ‘valid merely as a hypothesis’ ” (R , Ak, , ). Guyer discusses this “relapse into Cartesianism” at Claims of Knowledge, pp. –. 280 Only in the Conclusion to his second volume (Ch. LII, “Inner Sense and SelfKnowledge”), will Paton, “after a period of comparatively easy-going,” admit that “we must unfortunately turn to one of the most difficult aspects of the Critical Philosophy— the nature of inner sense.” Paton had “deliberately kept this topic to the end,” of his second volume, even though Kant had exposed the doctrine in the opening pages of the Aesthetic. Paton admits that “the account of time as the form of inner sense is an integral and essential part of the whole Critical Philosophy” (). And yet, Paton will evade a serious engagement; “the full treatment of this question demands a detailed discussion of the Paralogisms,” which unfortunately “is outside the scope of this book” (). Nonetheless, Paton assures his reader that “whatever be the difficulties of Kant’s argument in detail, his general position is clear” (). Thus, “inner and outer experience constitute only one experience, and there could be no inner experience unless it was at the same time also partly an outer experience, that is, an experience of permanent objects in space” (). This orthodox apologia and its acceptance of this most fundamental

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question is not answered, however, but is only specified and reintroduced, in the rejection of the causal heterogeneity of transcendental realism and the adoption of a formal heterogeneity within intuition. Kant would argue that “the entire self-created difficulty reduces to this,” a single question that, interestingly, is in Kant’s formulation both causal and formal. The question concerns “how and by what cause the presentations of our sensibility are so connected with one another that the presentations called outer intuitions can, according to empirical laws,” in inner intuition, “be presented as objects outside us” (A ). Kant hopes to have dismissed the causal question (“by what cause”). He will assert clearly that “now, this question in no way involves the supposed difficulty of explaining the origin of presentations of efficient causes as objects outside us” (A ). This causal and realist formulation of the inner-outer distinction is to be replaced with a transcendental and idealist formulation. According to the latter, as above, “the question . . . concerns merely the connection of the presentations of inner sense with the modifications of our outer sensibility,” and “how these presentations and modifications may be connected among one another according to constant laws so as to cohere in an experience” (A). But if Kant succeeds in repositioning the question, it is not clear that he has succeeded in responding unequivocally to its purely formal requirements. In fact, the new, formal question of (“how”) remains unanswered and, on principles established thus far, unanswerable without antinomy.281 Inner intuition must possess a constitutive role in bringing

ambiguity can no longer be convincing or satisfying. Paton is no doubt correct that “to understand fully [Kant’s] view of space and time we must supplement the doctrine of the Aesthetic and the Analytic by the doctrine of the Dialectic” (ibid, ). This is correct in part, however, because there Kant set out his claim, as Paton notes, that “permanent substances are to be found only in space. No permanent object is given to us in inner sense.” For Paton, it is “for this reason he rejects all attempts to prove that the soul is a substance . . . ” (ibid, ). This recognition vitiates, however, his assertion above that inner sense contains ‘permanent objects in space’ within itself. 281 In the second-Edition exposition of the Paralogisms, Kant will revisit this question. There, at B –, Kant will admit that “the difficulty giving rise to this problem consists, as is familiar, in the presupposed heterogeneity of the object of inner sense (the soul) and the objects of outer senses; to the former only time, to the latter also space, attaches as formal condition of their intuition.” Kant will suggest that “the two kinds of objects differ not intrinsically but only insofar as one appears extrinsically to the other. Thus, what it is as thing-in-itself that underlies the appearance of matter might perhaps not be so heterogenous” (B –). But between the expressed options—between this question of the relation between inner sense and outer sense () being established once forever, () being impossible for any to establish, and () being ‘perhaps’ unproblematic

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the object of outer intuition to objective determination by the understanding in the dynamic act of cognition (and thereafter, in a reverse order, the “application” of a synthetic, empirical concept). Inner intuition also possesses a central role in the operations upon the concepts (e.g., construction and exhibition) of the cognitive faculty itself. For this reason, the degree to which the critical refutations of problematic or skeptical idealism, materialism, and spiritualism are successful mark equally the degree to which Kant’s doctrinal or constructive topic must remain aporetic. On this basis, one could almost say that Kantian philosophy is internally contradictory or unstable. The (intention to establish the) conditions required for refutation disallow the (intention to establish the conditions for) construction.282 after all—there is considerable logical space. Kant would hope that “if we bear this in mind, then the difficulty vanishes, and only one remains; how a communion of substances is possible at all” (B ). But if the false causal problem has vanished, a formal problem nonetheless remains; we will examine together a selection from Kant’s attempts after the Critique at resolving this formal problem below. 282 For apologetic purposes, Friedrich Kaulbach, in “Kants Beweis des ‘Daseins der Gegenstände im Raum Ausser Mir,’ ” takes a still more direct interpretive path, asserting simply that “der Innen- und der Außenwelt” obtain instead in “eine Identität.” Indeed, “mit der Innenwelt ist zugleich Außenwelt gegeben” (). Kaulbach asserts this internalexternal identity on the basis of the demand of the Refutation; “Das Bewußtsein meines eignen Daseins ist zugleich ein unmittelbares Bewußtsein des Daseins anderer Dinge außer mir” (). When this identity forces Kaulbach to recognize “eine kategoriale Bestimmung” of inner intuition (see also ), he draws the necessary conclusion; “empirisches Ichbewußtsein ist identisch mit Weltbewußtsein” (ibid). Kaulbach advances this account on the basis of the following claim; “Kant spricht . . . von der Identität des empirischen Ichbewußtseins mit dem Existenzbewußtsein der Dinge ‘außer mir’” and asserts that “Das ‘Bewußtsein meines Daseins in der Zeit’ ist also mit dem Bewußtsein eines Verhältnisses zu etwas außer mir identisch verbunden, und es ist also Erfahrung und nicht Erdichtung, Sinn und nicht Einbildungskraft, welches das Äußere mit meinem inneren Sinn untrennbar verknüpft (B xl).” Indeed, Kant does assert this identity; Kaulbach has merely repeated Kant’s claim. But in drawing the conclusion that in inner sense can be found the “gegenständlichen Prädikaten . . . welche von realen Dingen ‘außer mir’ gelten,” then a tension— the “flagrant contradiction” identified by Havet—cannot be avoided (). Kaulbach continues throughout his work on the basis of such a “unmittelbare Verbindung der Innenwelt mit der Außenwelt” (, ) at the level of intuition as if a heterogeneity thesis had never been asserted, and weren’t equally essential to Kant’s argumentation in the critique of Seelenlehre. Kaulbach attributes to the “Bestimmung des inneren Sinnes” an “äußerlich-inneres Zwischenreich” that contains within it an “unmittelbaren Übergang zwischen innerer und äußerer Erfahrungswelt” (). This unity between inner and outer sense would suffice, of course, for the equivalence of Seelenlehre and Körperlehre, but it is asserted not by a ‘theological enthusiast,’ but an interpreter intent upon saving the positive construal of inner intuition; “Das empirische Selbstbewußtsein ist eine innere Erfahrung,” in which “bestimme ich mich kategorial, bringe also z.B. das Ich mit dem ‘Beharrlichen,’ Substantiellen der Erfahrungsdinge in Zusammenhang,” which allows that “ich begreife mich

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This question results not from skeptical or dogmatic propositions, and still less from paralogistic inferences. This question, Kant’s own, results from properly formal and transcendental theses. Causal heterogeneity has been revealed by Kant to be problematic, for its difficulty in explicating the possibility of the ordo cognoscendi. Formal heterogeneity has been revealed here to be aporetic for its difficulty in explicating the possibility of the ordo cognoscendi. The impossibility of causal heterogeneity accrues also to a formal heterogeneity. Some admission of dissatisfaction over his positioning of inner sense and reposititioning of the question of heterogeneity nonetheless can be found even with the first Critique. In fact, Kant here uses language reminiscent of the second-Edition Preface, where Kant admitted to a “lack of intuitive clarity” and the deferred a “proof conforming to school standards.” Here, Kant apparently admits that his “liberation of our reason from sophistical theories can hardly already have the distinctness that it needs in order to be fully satisfactory” (A ). Curiously, however, Kant assigns blame not to his exposition but to those that it would replace. Kant claims that the positions of his metaphysical and theological opponents “involve a misinterpretation that has through long habit taken root,” and that render his own self-critique of reason more difficult; “it is impossible to make the correction immediately as comprehensible as may be demanded in other cases where no such unavoidable illusion confuses” (A ). Lachièze-Rey may well be correct that the clearest recognition and efforts at résolution of the aporiai which develop from the heterogeneity thesis will be found in the Reflexionen from the ’s and throughout

als Substanz neben anderen Substanzen” in the empirical self-consciousness of inner sense (). In complete disregard of the heterogeneity thesis, and the demands of the Paralogisms, Kaulbach concludes with the claim that; “das sogenannte ‘Innere’ ist mit dem ihm korrespondieren Äußeren so verflochten, daß ein identischer Zussamenhang beide Sphären überwächst” (). As Alois Monzel replied to Reininger; “Damit ist aber nicht Kants Lehre.” By citing this interpretation in the context of our address of the Paralogisms rather than the Analytic or the Refutation, I wish to indicate how apologetic accounts of the aporia of inner sense, intending to secure a sense to Kant’s doctrine, cannot help but violate it. J.B. Lotz, instead, in “Die Raum-Zeit Problematik in Auseinandersetzung mit Kants transzendentaler Aesthetik,” Zeitschrift fuer philosophische Forschung v.  (), pp. – , suggests more straightforwardly that “Das reine Innen und das reine Außen sind völlig heterogene” and must be recognized as such in order that Kant’s claim that “Gott und die Menschenseele nicht sinnlich oder raum-zeitlich” be well-grounded. Only then can Kant’s claim “Daß Gott, Seele, und Wesenheiten nicht sinnlich angeschaut werden können” be validated (ibid, ).

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the Opus Postumum.283 Presently, however, it is important to note that Kant’s rejection of the question of “the supposed difficulty of explaining the origin of presentations of efficient causes outside us quite different in kind” cannot be univocal. The aporia of inner sense requires that Kant address the related question of formal heterogeneity, and the problematic relation between “presentations of external relations outside us, quite different in form” from the purely temporal inner sense in which they must be exhibited. This latter question, though purely formal, is not dismissed by or extrinsic to transcendental idealism, but is intrinsic to the possibility of its self-cognition of reason.284 Kant’s opponent is found not only in the figure of the skeptical idealist, but also in the preconceptions or prejudgments of the ‘natural attitude’ itself. Kant suggests that “reason’s ordinary concepts” are dogmatic. Ordinary concepts “regarding the community (Gemeinschaft) in which our thinking subject stands with the things outside us” are dogmatic. Without transcendental reflection, such objects are not taken as appearances, but as “subsisting outside us” and as “veritable objects subsisting independently of us.” In this, natural consciousness follows “a certain dualism,” and thereby commits a “subreption” which can only be judged upon strict transcendental standards as fallacious (A ). For this reason, it is important as readers of Kant to orient our exegesis and hence our understanding not on the basis of common sense and its presumptions but instead on the letter of the text and the intentions it conveys. This natural tendency to subreptive fallacy is evident, Kant asserts, in those systems of reason built upon such a “healthy reason,” uninstructed by critique. The natural attitude and “reason’s ordinary concepts” appear to Kant to lead directly not to critical positions, which will remain 283 See note , above. For the former, please see the Appendix on the Vom inneren Sinne fragment, included below. For reasons of space, I have not included herein exegesis of the latter text, to which I hope to return in future publications. 284 De Vleeschauwer (ibid, v. II) warns that “la connaissance a priori est fonction d’une union entre l’espace-temps et une catégorie,” at the same time that, in the Paralogisms, both spatiality and the categories have been excluded formally and in principle from applicability to the temporal manifold of inner sense. For this reason, De Vleeschauwer will speak of “l’unité plus systématique de l’Esthétique et de l’Analytique” in the later, corrective writings (). Indeed, “un des plus graves reproches que nous avons élevés nous-mêmes contre le plan primitif, concerne la disjonction fatale de l’Esthétique dans l’Analytique,” made in order to prepare the way for the Dialectic. For De Vleeschauwer, this ‘disjunction’ “constituait un défaut très grave, parce qu’elle obligeait Kant à des corrections incessantes,” with regard to the determinability, constancy, and possible simultaneity of the manifold of inner sense (). De Vleeschauwer’s critique of the doctrine of inner sense is his least well appreciated contribution to scholarship.

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unpopular and difficult, but to theological positions regarding the relation between thought and extension, or mind and world. The rationalpsychological and rational-theological systems of (healthy) reason open out from, and take advantage of, the dogmatic philosophical inability to correctly position the relation between thought and extension, between mind and world. They are three, and are named as () physical influence (that of both “common sense” and Descartes), () predetermined harmony (that of Leibniz), and () supernatural assistance (that of Malebranche) (A ).285 Kant’s ‘Observation’ upon the Paralogisms chapter will contain, through to its conclusion at A , his account of, and response to, the subreptive inferences contained within these general metaphysical and theological doctrines. Each is subject to critique for a common assertion. All are “entirely baseless,” for their common assertion of “the transcendental cause of our presentations of outer senses” (A ).286 None, 285

For a brief and excellent history of German metaphysics and theology prior to Kant, see L.W. Beck’s Early German Philosophy: Kant and His Predecessors (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, ). In this essay, I will allow myself to rely on the brief but effective review of the neo-Platonic theology of Meister Eckhart and Nicholas of Cusa, and their influence on the development of early modern German philosophy. I’m particularly indebted to Beck’s treatment of the way in which Leibniz’s “neoplatonic mystical piety [is] present in his metaphysics” (), since, for instance, “the root of the principle of pre-established harmony” is “the creation of substances by a ‘continuous emanation’ of God . . . ” () This ingredience of metaphysics in (and even subservience to) theology is, however, still clearer in the case of the ‘Cartesian Augustinianian,’ Malebranche, also named by Kant here. To (a) Malebranche, to (b) the interdependence of rational psychology and rational theology he asserts—correctly named by Kant as a “systematic” interconnection—and to (c) the way in which Malebranche carries forward into the early modern period a long tradition of neo-Platonic theology (and its intented progressus; ab exterioribus ad interioribus, ab inferioribus ad superioribus), I will return in future publications. It will be sufficient for present purposes to identify the aporia of inner sense as problematic for Kant’s ‘critique of metaphysics,’ most generally. 286 Kant provides (A , B ) an additional classification in which Gotteslehre will be divided internally into two types; theologia rationalis and theologia revelata. The first “thinks its object (as ens originarium, ens realissimum, ens entium) merely through pure reason,” and by means of the traditional predicates of rationalist theology and its analogia entis. This is and can become, according to Kant, both “deistic” and “ontotheological,” as it focuses on the divine being as an object and as “cause of the world.” The second “thinks its object—as the supreme intelligence—through a concept which it borrows from . . . the nature of our soul.” The second proceeds by means of an analogia mentis rather than an analogia entis, a neo-Platonic rather than neo-Thomistic ascent from the nature and dynamics of human intelligence as an imago Dei to the nature and dynamics of God as a “summa intelligentia,” and the model or pattern for the full self-understanding of the structure of our cognitive activity. In spite of this recognition of the very different methods and characteristics of these two basic ‘theological styles,’ Kant’s critique will be

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Kant asserts, can withstand critique. Each, “by the proofs given by us above,” must “necessarily concede transcendental idealism.” This concession must be forthcoming, “assuming that he does not want manifestly to hypostatize presentations and to transfer them, as true things, outside himself ” (A ). Kant will claim, on this basis, a properly transcendental rather than dogmatic or skeptical response to the “notorious question concerning the communion of the thinking and the extended.” A response to this question, Kant asserts, is now not only possible and necessary, and indeed actual (A ). Once repositioned transcendentally, this question concerns precisely “how in a thinking being as such there is possible an outer intuition.” Outer intuition is salient here for Kant for the spatiality and extension it represents; “specifically, a filling of space with shape and motion.” Importantly, Kant asserts that “finding an answer to this question is . . . impossible for any human being.”287 In a phrase replete with future significance for both the first Introduction to the third less refined; “I maintain that all attempts to make a merely speculative use of reason in regard to theology are entirely fruitless and are, by their intrinsic character, null and void, and that the principles of reason’s natural use lead to no theology whatever” (A , B ). De Vleeschauwer insists on differentiating instead “deux problèmes nettement différents.” Whereas the first concerns “le problème de l’existence” of God in an analogia entis, the second concerns “le problème de l’essence” of the mind in an analogia mentis and the manner in which we may be said to comprehend its form and dynamics (). The principal point for present purposes is simply that the argumentation pertinent to the neo-Aristotelian proofs for the existence of God in a Gotteslehre (which does not involve or concern inner sense) are independent (conceptually and historically) from the argumentation pertinent to the Seelenlehre of neo-Platonism in the Paralogisms (which requires Kant’s restrictive construal or inner sense and is made dubious by the difficulties within Kant’s doctrine of inner sense), and that the integrity of Kant’s critique of the former doesn’t imply the integrity of the latter. 287 Kant’s docta ignorantia is extended in his concluding remarks to the first-Edition Paralogisms. There, he identifies—in a term the future significance of which will become clear below—as a vitium subreptionis, or “subreption of the hypostatized self-consciousness (apperceptionis substantiatae)” and a “sophisma figurae dictionis” any violation of this restrictive construal of the character and capacities of inner sense. Thus, here the concept of a “subject,” applicable to the “soul,” as object of inner sense cannot reveal whether “it is a part of outer intuitions” (A ). By Kant’s analysis, “the concept of the I in the psychological principle (I think) tells us not one word” about the predicates of constancy and externality (A ). Further, the predicates applicable to the I as pure apperception “cannot have any consequences that would be applied to objects of experience.” The I qua subject will be “a purely intellectual concept” and remain “without conditions of sensible intuition.” (A ). The victory that may thereby be claimed against materialism and spiritualism is not without cost, however, for the internal integrity of the transcendental topic, and the unity of the act of self-cognition across the I qua determining subject—I qua determined object distinction.

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Critique and the Opus Postumum, Kant writes that “we can never fill this gap in our knowledge,” but can “only mark it by ascribing outer appearances to a transcendental object” = x (A , and again at A ; italics added).288 Thereby, “all questions of transcendental psychology answerable and actually answered,” in a docta ignorantia, an assertion of their unanswerability (A , B ). Kant will here take this restriction as a desideratum, for its contribution to the widest argumentative strategies of the critical philosophy. Kant will claim to have established, in this treatment of “the communion between a thinking and an extended being,” the “settlement of all controversies and objections,” by removing any basis for either assertion or objection regarding the community of the thinking and the extended. No unanswerable or unanswered question regarding the relation between thought and extension remains to be answered (or exploited by the theological theses of Malebranche) because none can be asked. He has done so “by means of a determination of reason’s bounds, carried out according to secure principles.” These principles have allowed us to “affix with utmost reliability its nihil ulterius to the Pillars of Hercules” 288

Although I cannot treat this development adequately here, I should note that (A) still in the  Introduction to the third Critique, Kant worried over the “disturbingly unbounded diversity of empirical laws and heterogeneity of natural forms” that would render impossible “experience as an empirical system” (Ak : ). He thus there considers the “unity of experience” in terms of a still problematic “unity of nature and time and space.” The two are, indeed, “identical” (ibid). Kant will record in § , and in this thematic context, his hope that his third Critique will “fill in a gap in the system of cognitive faculties,” and provide a “promising prospect for a complete system of all the powers of the mind.” (Ak : ). Still in  and (B) in a letter to Kiesewatter ( October ; see Ak , ), Kant worried again that without the self-critique of, and novel principles provided by, his Opus, “a gap will remain in the critical philosophy.” In the Opus postumum, too, Kant worries over the conditions for the possibility of “the unity of experience” (: ). Kant presumes as unproblematic that “there exists outside us a sense-object,” and on this basis an “outer experience” (: ). The possibility thereof, however, requires that one must ascend to the “empirical representation” of outer objects as “combined in a subject.” Only within the latter does there obtain “the basis of all appearances [and] . . . the unity of experience” (: ). This latter, “absolute subjective unity of the manifold of sensible représentation,” concerns above all “space and time are forms of outer and inner intuition, given a priori in one synthetic representation.” These two forms of intuition must be “combined in one experience without a gap (without an intervening void)” or hiatus. Both must be thought “as combined in an absolute whole” rather than as formally heterogenous (: ). See also, e.g., Ak :  and Ak : –. Thus, (C) Each of Kant’s usages of the concept of a “gap” (from the first Critique to the third Critique to the Opus) pertains to inner sense. See also Förster’s “Is There ‘a Gap’ in Kant’s Critical System?,” Journal for the History of Philosophy  (), –; –. To this theme I will return in future publications.

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(A ).289 But rather than mark a territory none would again venture to survey, Kant’s doctrine of the incapacity of inner intuition would occasion a series of investigations—both Kant’s own frequent return to the aporia in the later unpublished writings and Fichte’s and Schelling’s critique of the same incapacity—that would come to define the reception of Kant in the first years of classical German Idealism.290 Kant continues to conceive the problem-context for inner intuition not as (a) that intuitive manifold for the construction, exhibition, and application of concepts, nor as (b) that element of the transcendental topic in which each of the definitive tensions of transcendental philosophy are contained and in which they must be resolved. At this stage in the Dialectic, Kant instead views the indeterminacy and inconstancy of inner intuition as a critical desideratum. For by means of this restrictive account of the character and capacities of inner intuition, the condition for the possibility of the “threefold transcendental illusion” or “three illusory sciences” of “transcendental psychology, transcendental cosmology, and transcendental theology” has been diagnosed and eliminated (A ).291 289

This restriction will occupy Kant again in his conclusion to the Observation. Kant repeats that “if someone were to pose to me the question, in general, ‘what is the character of a thing that thinks,’ ” then, Kant protests, “I do not a priori know the slighest answer to this.” For its inclusion of both thought and substance within its address of a “thinking thing,” any answer must be synthetic. Any synthetic response, however, would require intuition; “but in this problem, universal as it is, intuition has been omitted entirely” (A ). Any universal determination of this question will require the categories, and “a category alone, without an underlying intuition, cannot provide me with the concept of an object.” Only “through intuition is the object given,” and capable of being given to thought (A ). But again, this protest of our necessary ignorance may not be any less problematic, and indeed may be more problematic, for Kant than it is for, e.g., Malebranche. 290 See my “Fichte’s Critique of Kant,” Idealistic Studies :  (December ), pp. – . 291 These “three illusory sciences” will be investigated in the paralogisms, the antithetic, and the antinomy, respectively. The first will concern “the synthesis of the conditions of a thought as such,” as already treated in the psychological paralogism. The second will concern “the synthesis of the conditions of empirical thinking.” This synthesis pertains to cosmology and will be treated in the antinomy chapter. This exposition of transcendental cosmology will provide this essay with a transition from the Critique of Pure Reason to the unpublished Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, in which Kant continued to work engage this most aporetic element of the transcendental topic through the central concept of “cosmological apperception.” The third illusory science of theology and its subreptive or paralogistic inferences will concern “the synthesis of the condition of pure thinking,” and will be treated in the antithetic chapter. The aporia of inner sense implies principally the first. In Kant’s own development, the second will become of principal importance only in Kant’s attempts to reposition his doctrine after . And the third will become important only in the final fragments of the Selbstbesetzungslehre of the Opus Postumum. As noted

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Upon the exegetical basis achieved above, and Kant’s clear conclusion to a maximally restrictive account of inner intuition, a general or systematic review of some of the basic features of the aporia of inner sense may now prove helpful. The form of inner sense, as we learned already in the first pages of the Aesthetic, is time; “the manifold of inner sense, of which time is the form, constitutes a series of one dimension, the parts of which are always successive” (A , B ). The form of outer sense, we learned, is space; in outer sense, we “present objects one and all in space, in which alone shape, magnitude, and mutual relation is determined or determinable” (A , B ). The heterogeneity that marks their formal relation is total; “time cannot be intuited outwardly, any more than space can be intuited as something in us” (A , B ). Heterogeneity is total, further, necessarily. Kant combines the claim that (a) only outer sense “possesses anything fixed and abiding which supplies a substratum as the basis of its transitory determinations” of A , B , with the claim that (b) “time, the form of inner intuition, has nothing abiding,” which together imply that “no object can thereby be determined” within the sphere of the latter (A ). Together, these constraints upon the manifold of inner intuition, when combined with other implications of the heterogeneity thesis, effect Kant’s fundamental critical intention to disallow to both rational psychology and rational theology any determinable “object of inner sense.”292 As above, however, it is by means of the ‘natural progression’ from the first, psychological paralogism that one arrives at the third, theological paralogism, just as the purportedly ‘psychological’ paralogism already possesses an intrinsically theological character and content in, e.g., Malebranche’s system of ‘supernatural assistance’ [A ]). 292 In Kants Lehre vom Inneren Sinn und Seine Theorie der Erfahrung (Wein, ), Reininger acknowledged the ideality thesis but ignores the heterogeneity thesis. He there addressed the “Unklarheiten in Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft” on the question of the “Divergenz” between inner and outer sense, in an “apologetischen” spirit (i). For Reininger, the defining thesis of the Aesthetic lies in the “Idealität von Raum und Zeit.” In order to establish inner sense in its positive role in the Theorie der Erfahrung, Reininger took the Sinnenlehre of the Aesthetic as an investigation of a “Doppel-Vermögen: ein äußerer und ein inneren Sinn” (). Rather than acknowledge a heterogeneity thesis, Reininger investigates the “formaler Beschaffenheit” of each not in terms of a “Discrepanz” but in terms of a “paritätischem Erkenntniswert” and an “ursprüngliche Coordination” (; see also , ). Inner and outer sense, then, obtain as two “gleichberechtigte Erkenntnisquelle” (). Inner sense “in eine Parallele zum äußeren stellt” offers a cognitive capacity in an “analog dem äußeren Sinn” (). Even in the context of his treatment of the Beschaffenheit and the “charakteristische Merkmal” of inner sense, Reininger insisted on a “Parallele” (). Even the “Materie des inneren Anschauungen” was placed in an “Analogie des äußeren Sinnes.” Reininger does so in order to ground Kant’s claim that “Alle Vorstellungen . . . als Bestimmungen des Gemueths, zum inneren Zustande” (), subsumed to the

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we have seen, heterogeneity must be resolved synthetically to a spatiotemporal unity in (inner) intuition if a synthetic unity of and in cognition, experience and experiment, are to result.293 For “appearances of both our outer and inner perceptions . . . must be connected with one another in order to yield experience” (A ). At the level of its formal character, then, there has appeared to be a contradiction within, or contravening demands upon, the form of inner intuition. The scope specified by both the amplificative and the restrictive arguments regarding the character and capacities of inner sense is identical. For example, one may record or repeat Kant’s claims

time-relations that can obtain within inner intuition. Reininger spoke thus of a “zweifache sinnliche Erfahrung . . . eine äußere und eine innere . . . ” Here, of course, interpretation is reconstruction, and is original rather than expository. Reininger hoped that in this way, the “Achillesferse des Kant’schen System . . .” can be explained by being explained away. For Reininger, time was “nicht nur als die Form des inneren Sinnes, sondern auch als die Grundform unseres Gesammtbewusstseins überhaupt” (; see also ). This second acceptation reveals not only the “specifisch inneren Empfindungen” () but an “Innerer Sinn höherer Ordnung,” possessed not only the “charakteristischen Merkmal der Immanenz” () but also a “strengen Parallelismus” with outer intuition, and thus also the “Elementarempfindungen des äußeren Sinnes . . .” (). As we were forced to ask in the case of Kaulbach above; if one has to revise so thoroughly what one would save, what is saved? 293 When confronted with Kant’s assertion that “time cannot be outwardly intuited, any more than space can be intuited as something in us” at A , B , Longuenesse (ibid) admits that “this twofold restriction needs explanation.” Similarly, exegeting Kant’s claim that A , B – that “time cannot be a determination of outer appearances; it has to do neither with shape or position, but with the relation of representations in our inner state,” Longuenesse protests again; “this is not convincing.” For Longuenesse, “[the claim] that time has to do neither with shape nor position is not enough to prove that it is not a form of outer sense if one considers, as Kant did in the Dissertation (and as he never denied later) that shapes and positions themselves, along with the entirety of space, are in time.” But of course Kant did deny, both in this very passage, throughout the Dialectic, and even in the Metaphysical Foundations, such homogeneity in character and conditions. Longuenesse acknowledges only Kant’s assertion at A , B  that “all representations, whether they have for their objects outer things or not, belong, in themselves, as determinations of the mind, to our inner state, and since this inner state stands under the formal condition of inner intuition, and so belongs to time, time is an a priori condition of all appearanceas whatsoever . . .” Longuenesse approves; “the relation of time to inner sense is better expressed in [this] conclusion” than in the above assertions of the heterogeneity thesis (). Thus, Longuenesse will refer to the “homogenous (spatiotemporal) given,” and conveniently consider this homogeneity justified. So, too, will Longuenesse advance, as if it were unproblematic, the “temporal continuity of my representations,” and both “their acts and their effects” in inner sense (). Longuenesse has made “the nature of the synthesis speciosa or ‘affection of inner sense by the understanding’ ” the “guiding thread” and constant thematic reference of her well-received and sophisticated account. But she has done so by refusing to acknowledge the complexity, problematicity, and systematic significance thereof.

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that “any progress of perception, no matter what the objects may be, is nothing but an expansion of the determinations of inner sense” (A , B ), and that “as presentations, appearances universally amount to determinations of our inner sense (A ). This acceptation of inner sense as an Inbegriff implies above all its universality; the synthetic activity of the understanding would (a) be subsumed to, (b) be derivative of, and (c) obtain within, the manifold of inner sense. However, it also appeared to be the case that such progress in perception, as a progress of and in inner sense, was restricted severely by the “limiting condition” upon inner sense, since Kant also argued that “no empirical laws of corporeal appearance [ought] mix with the explanations of what belongs merely to inner sense” (A , B ), in accordance with Kant’s exclusion or segregation of inner sense from the dynamics of synthetic cognition and the claims of knowledge.294 While the claim was not necessary to our exegetical exposition, we encountered doubt not only about the formal status of such a synthetic connection, given this ambivalence within Kant’s account of inner intuition, but also about its very possibility.295 It would seem that, upon the 294

This is not to say that scholars have not been willing, or even eager, to grant to Kant such a spatio-temporal unity. For example, while recognizing that according to Kant’s exposition, “by itself . . . time cannot support a metric” (), Friedman, in Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, ), hopes to derive “the temporal metric from the spatial metric,” so that he may “endow space-time with an ‘affine structure’ ” (). For Friedman—in spite of several citations of Kant’s claim that time cannot and does not yield spatial form or content, “space and time as mere forms of intuition comprise a one-dimensional sequence of three-dimensional Euclidean spaces: a four-dimensional space-time structure comprising a one-dimensional ordering of three-dimensional ‘planes of simultaneity’ ” (). Friedman justifies this attribution by claiming that it is “not entirely foreign to Kant himself: compare the footnote to Section  of the Inaugural Dissertation at , .–” (cf. –). We do not dispute this (perhaps slight) textual basis, nor deny that Kant would wish to amplify inner intuition in this manner, but concern ourselves with the internal adjudication of the possibility of such an amplification, given Kant’s restrictive construal in the argumentation against Seelenlehre in the Paralogisms. 295 We might note that Kant appears to propose resolving this heterogeneity in intuition through the hypothesis that “what it is, as thing in itself underlying the appearance of matter, might perhaps not be so heterogenous” (B ). However, the positing of a thing-in-itself as necessarily both uncognized and uncognizable cannot, however, on pain of obvious contradiction, resolve a heterogeneity within the formal elements of cognition. If this necessarily uncognizable element “perhaps might not be so heterogenous,” then the resolution it offers is hypothetical rather than assertoric, and far from being demonstrative or responding to the transcendental demand for proof. Further, this necessity must not only be asserted but demonstrated. Deduction rather than demand is required. Kant insists that “a transcendental hypothesis, in which a mere idea of reason

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adoption of the priority thesis, neither the imagination, nor any synthetic principle, nor the categories, could provide the resolution to the aporia of inner sense, insofar as each is an element of the cognitive structure dependent upon and posterior (in the ordo cognoscendi) to the materium dabile provided by the forms of intuition. Only (inner) intuition, it would seem, could perform the function of a mediating principle, allowing the given object of outer intuition to be ‘taken up’ into and determined by and through intellectual functions. Upon the adoption of the heterogeneity thesis, it would appear to be incapable of doing so. This incapacity pertains formally to the restrictions upon its representative capacities and pertains functionally to its place within the order of cognition. Only a rectification of heterogeneity at the level of intuition itself could suffice, apparently, for a resolution to the questions of priority and heterogeneity, the exclusion by inner intuition of the characteristics and qualities of the object that it receives from outer sense and is to transpose to the understanding. But let us begin with a review of the formal question of status, before moving toward a review of the functional question of the possibility itself of the dynamics of cognition. What type of synthetic resolution to spatio-temporal unity in (inner) intuition is proposed, and possible? Throughout and by means of the synthetic principles of the Analytic, Kant attempted to return the formal indeterminability of inner intuition to a possible determinacy, and its inconstancy to constancy, in pro experientia. The synthetic principles were charged with introducing, into the manifold of inner sense, the conditions necessary to its contribution to synthetic cognition (both subjective and objective). The Axioms of Intuition were to universalize extension across both forms of intuition; the “principle” of the Axioms was

would be used to explain natural things, would be no explanation at all.” For “in such a hypothesis, what one does not sufficiently understand from familiar empirical principles would be explained through something whereof one understands nothing at all” (A , B ), the replacement of demand for deduction evincing only an ignava ratio (A , B ). That repositioning of an aporetic element of empirical intuition first into the understanding then into reason and its ideas and thereupon its ideals “cannot be permitted at all.” Claiming “transcendental hypotheses of reason’s speculative use—and a freedom to compensate for the lack of physical bases of explanation by availing oneself at least of hypoerphysical ones” indeed “does not at all advance reaosn but rather cuts off all progress in reason’s use.” For “if natural explanation becomes difficult for us here or there, we then constantly have at hand a transcendent basis of explanation that exempts us from that inquiry, and our investigation is concluded not by insight but by the utter incomprehensibility of a principle that has already beforehand been excogitated so as to contain necessarily the concept of the absolutely primary [demonstrandum].”

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precisely that “all intuitions are extensive magnitudes” (A , B ). The “Anticipations of Perception” then claimed that “all appearances,” inclusive of those of inner sense, “contain matter [Materien],” as had previously been attributed exclusively to outer intuition. Similarly, the same Anticipations would then claim that inner sense possesses an [intensive] “magnitude” (A , B ), and will attempt to attribute to inner sense “continuity in time (quanta continua).” Kant also attributed the characteristics of “boundary” and “limit” (Einschraenkung) as analytic predicates thereof (A , B , and again at A , B  in the Second Analogy). The “Analogies” of Experience, too, argued that “all empirical timedeterminations,” and “in particular those of inner sense,” were “subject to the rules of universal time-determination.” In this way, Kant attempted to amplify the “pure succession” of inner sense to a replete temporality, inclusive of “the three modes of time; permanence, succession, and simultaneity (Beharrlichkeit, Folge, Zugleichsein)” (A , B ). Kant’s three “Analogies of Experience” pertained to () permanence, () the relation between subjective succession and objective succession, and () the predicate of “simultaneity.” Together, these synthetic principles—if unproblematic—would “determine inner sense,” or resolve its incapacity to capacity, its inconstancy to constancy, its independence to interdependence. But each “analogy,” even if (a) possible, required and relied on (b) the imposition of dynamics and principles which inner sense and its pure succession, according to the exposition of the Paralogisms and the argumentation against metaphysicaltheological Seelenlehre, explicitly excludes. For example, the first “analogy” of permanence required the introduction of the pure concept of substance into inner intuition; “all [permanence in] time-determinations is possible only in this [permanent, substantial] substratum.” For “only through the permanent does sequential existence in different parts of the time-series acquire a magnitude, called duration” [not a “successive time-series” (Zeitfolge) but a “permanent time-range”; A , B ]. The equally necessary incapacity of inner intuition to admit of such determinations—permanence, magnitude, duration—can only now be seen clearly, once through exegesis we have encountered the contravening claims of the Paralogisms. While Kant hoped to establish, in the first Analogy, that “in all appearances, substance is permanent” (A , B ), this begged the question of the applicability of this substantial permanent to the purely successive manifold of inner sense, the exclusion of which Kant has relied on throughout the Paralogisms.

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The Second Analogy intended to “subject subjective succession” in inner sense “to objective succession.” But this amplification was effected through the imposition of the law of causality, which, since the Preface, had been disallowed in principle from the sphere of inner sense (A , B ). Similarly, the second “analogy” required the introduction of the heterogeneous pure concept of causality or cause-effect relations into inner sense; “all changes [of temporal succession] occur according to the law of the connection of cause and effect” (B ). The Third Analogy argued that “simultaneity” [Zugleichsein], as has just been denied to inner intuition in the Paralogisms, “is necessary in order that perceptions succeed each other reciprocally,” or stand to one another in necessary relations of objective succession. But this “analogy,” too, requires () the pure concept of a “dynamical community” and () the pure intuition of a “communio spatii” of objects in a commercium of causal relations (A , B ). Both, of course, have been exposed in a relation of heterogeneity to the aspatial and inconstant intuitive manifold of inner sense. Thus, the three analogies attempt to determine the inconstant succession of inner sense through the predicates of () magnitude, and thereby duration, () objective rather than subjective sequentiality, () simultaneity. The third “analogy” will introduce “simultaneity” only by relying upon the pure concept of “community” or “mutual interaction” elsewhere deemed subreptical (B ). Perhaps we ought re-orient ourselves at this point from the more general principle that no intellectual principle possesses the Exponenten of an intuitive principle. None, for example, yields (a) the actual existence of an object of outer sense for a first-order, determinative, and constitutive act of cognition or self-cognition. In this consists the justification of the claim that our intuition is an intuitus derivativus. None could secure (b) the individuality (as a representatio singularis rather than a representatio per notas communes or representatio discursiva), and spatio-temporal identity of the object of experience and knowledge as does intuition. All intellectual functions wait upon the materium of intuition, functionally, in order to be given an object for its synthetic activity, either (a) formally and subjectively, in inner intuition, in accordance with its character, and (b) functionally and objectively, to the understanding through inner intuition.296 296 Kant wrote for example that “the pure category is insufficient for a synthetic a priori principle” without the deliverance of the datum of outer intuition through the manifold of inner intuition wherein the understanding may apply its discursive “[intellective]

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There are thus severe formal restrictions upon the possible efficacy of such synthetic acts. Perhaps for this reason, in order to retain and reaffirm the distinction between intuition and intellection, and thus the character of our sensibility as an intuitus derivativus, Kant had inserted, for example, at B , a “restriction” upon the the Analogies, which were on this basis to be understood as offering only “regulative” principles (B ). Analogies indeed could not “say how perception itself, as empirical intuition as such, is to arise” (A , B ). Importantly, this same restriction will apply to the Postulates of Empirical Thought, which offer “only regulative principles” (A , B ). In fact, the unity that the synthetic principles intend (according to A , B ) pertains “solely to the schema,” and obtains only as a “function” entirely “unrestricted by any sensible condition.” Kant indicates that only a resolution in intuition can resolve a problem regarding intuition; the synthetic principles as set out in the Analytic do not possess the “type of evidence” and “intuitive character” of sensibility (A , B ). These principles apparently “entitle us to assemble appearances only by an analogy with the logical and universal unity of concepts” rather than the intuitive unity of and in intuition, in concreto and in pro experientia. Such principles necessarily commit a vitium subreptionis if they are extended from a logical to a material use (A , B ), or are thought to yield the (intuitive) individuality and unity of an object rather than their purely discursive and universal (intellectual) character (A , B ). The postulates of empirical thought, for instance, must be admitted to “not in the least augment the concept of which they are affirmed.” The

representation of a [intuitive] representation” (A ). The “categories possess meaning only in reference to the unity of intuitions in space and time.” Given the priority thesis, the categories must be thought to be dependent upon the deliverance of the object of outer intuition through inner intuition itself, before any synthetic principle can be given a noematic correlate upon which it may function (B ). This exigence can be understood clearly from Prolegomena § , where Kant records that the “understanding is not a faculty of intuition but only of the connection of given intuitions in an experience according to the form of intuition.” To this form of intuition and its Merkmale, all experiential cognition must accord. No object can be given except according to its form. The understanding, then, presumes formal homogeneity and a functional or dynamic interdependence in intuition, both of which are made problematic by the heterogeneity thesis. More clearly still, at Prolegomena § , Kant writes that “the categories . . . are nothing but logical functions, and as such do not constitute the least concept of an object itself, but require some sensible intuition as a basis.” One may rightly worry, then, whether this sensible basis, as a spatio-temporal unity in inner intuition, has been secured unproblematically and without equivocation.

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postulates are synthetic not objectively but only subjectively, “merely in the understanding,” in order to ensure that a valid transcendental use is not extended to include an invalid metaphysical use.297 But should such synthetic principles be understood to be efficacious in themselves, in spite of such restrictions, they must also overcome the limitations upon the sphere and form of their application as instituted upon inner sense.298 More generally, with regard to this complex and uncertain question of status, one can say that if the laws of its intuitive form limit or bound the laws of intellection, then the restriction upon time as form of inner sense as expressed in the Dialectic, as just noted, must be retained in the Analytic.299 This question of “status” arises from the apparently insurmountable insufficiency of these intellectual principles to introduce, post hoc,

297 For the merely regulative status of the analogies, see A –, B –; for that of the schema, A , B . The imagination offers an indeterminate principle of an object in its absence rather than presence; for its status as subjective, see B . For a discussion of the regulative status of the analogies and the postulates, see Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences (–). 298 To bring external intuition and its conditions into the Zeitfolge of inner sense, independence must give way to interdependence. Chenet L’Assise de l’Ontologie Critique: l’Esthétique transcendentale (Paris, Presses Universitaires de Lille, ) concludes his exposition (ibid, ) with the pronouncement that inner sense “est foncièrement insuffisante pour imposer” the conditions “que Kant entend fonder sur la connaissance synthétique a priori.” By Chenet’s analysis, if Kant’s first Critique “transcendental topic” remains unreconstructed, then, one must choose between the positive attempt to “secure” the conditions necessary for synthetic a priori judgment for outer intuition, and the negative attempt to “limit” such conditions from inner intuition. If we wish to grant Kant the legitimation of synthetic a priori judgment, whether in physics and experience or in mathematics, then we must abandon the refutations of rational psychology and theology. The demands of Kant’s positive and negative arguments is irremediably inconsistent internally. The formal requirements necessary to establish both arguments are internally contradictory, and this contradiction is concentrated in the contravening demands Kant makes of inner intuition. The Appendix to this work will show, though only briefly, that Kant himself recognized this aporia and internal contradiction. I hope to return to this latter theme, of Kant’s late recognition of the aporia of inner sense (particularly in the Selbstsetzungslehre of the Opus postumum), in future publications. 299 Kant recalls that “we saw in the deduction that concepts are meaningless and without reference unless an object is given for the concept.” Kant reiterates that such objects are impossible except as “given to us in the modification of our sensibility.” These conditions are given generally, in the “formal and pure condition of sensibility to which the concept of understanding is restricted in its use.” These conditions are also given to us according to “the [restrictive] formal conditions of sensibility (of inner sense, specifically)” (A , B ). These conditions, Kant claims, yield “the universal condition under which alone the category can,” and cannot, “be applied to any object.” The importance of inner intuition, and the positive task of the synthetic principles generally, lies in this context.

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spatio-temporal unity into the manifold of inner sense.300 Whatever their status and efficacy in themselves, Kant could not resolve heterogeneity to homogeneity sufficiently for synthetic cognition, without “violating the limits of our (inner) sensibility.” There, time qua form of inner sense, as depicted in the Paralogisms, explicitly excluded spatiality and its “characters,” as well as the dynamic relations possible within it. In other words; if inner sense is rendered determinate sufficiently for synthetic cognition, so as to yield a Selbstaffektion or Selbstanschauung, it could then perform its positive role in the subjective synthesis of mathematics and the objective synthesis of physics and experience. But if this “constructive” intention is realized, then Kant’s “critical” or “negative” intention to argue against rational doctrines of the soul (as object of inner sense) is rendered invalid. These contravening claims on inner intuition appears now to indicate an intrinsic and uneliminable contradiction within the architectonic of the first Critique. To ask the question of the type of synthetic resolution to spatiotemporal unity in (inner) intuition that is proposed in pro experientia, then, is to ask the question of the determinability conditions of and in inner intuition. If the status of the amplificative argument is restricted, its resolution, to the degree that it does not incorporate each of the standards or characteristics of synthetic judgment, will be insufficient to the demands of the Analytic. Only if inner intuition possesses each of the characteristics required for its role in the process of synthetic cognition—spatiality, constancy, determinability—will Kant’s explanandum be accomplished. However, if Kant attributes each of these characteristics to inner intuition in the Analytic, no basis will obtain for the Restriktionslehre of the Dialectic, insofar as precisely these characteristics are sought by the Seelenlehrer, whether a rational psychologist or rational theologian, for his “doctrine of the soul as an object of inner sense.” This basic tension can be appreciated interpretively only if the doctrine of inner intuition is acknowledged as a lens through which the basic structure of Kant’s Critique can be seen.301 300 Otherwise put; toward the possibility of a genuine synthetic unity of and in cognition, such a synthesis of the heterogeneity in intuition must itself possess a certain status, a status not inferior to objective cognition or experience itself. This synthesis must be, for example, objective rather than subjective, constitutive rather than regulative, determinate rather than indeterminate, theoretical rather than practical, transcendental rather than logical, a priori rather than a posteriori, and, as we will see, first-order and determinative rather than reflective, and absolute rather than problematic or technical. 301 Neither the positive principles expressed of the Analytic nor the negative principles

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But in our exegetical understanding of the aporia of inner sense, we needn’t insist only upon the inviolability of the formal laws of intuition and inner intuition as set out in the Aesthetic. Nor, although this will be decisive on transcendental-hermeneutical grounds, need we merely set up the demands of the Dialectic over against the demands of the Analytic. We may emphasize, upon the exigence of the Analytic and within the Analytic itself, the priority thesis, and its inevitable implications. The dynamic act of cognition rests for its possibility upon the capacity of the doctrine of pure intuitions to secure the conditions in which an outer object can be delivered from outer intuition to the understanding, through the pure temporality of inner sense; as we learned, it is “by means of this [inner] intuition” that we encompass within or “take up into our faculty of representation all outer intuitions” (A , B ). The objective of outer sense must in this way be “brought to” inner intuition, wherein alone the understanding could establish a relation to it in a “[intellectual] representation of its [intuitive] representation” (A ).302 In this problem consists the functional aspect of the aporia. This functional aspect of the aporia, though not without its own intracacies, appears clearer than does the formal aspect of the aporia, insofar as the latter includes the question of the status and intention of the synthetic of the Dialectic can violate that character and capacities of our intuition as established in the organon that is the Aesthetic. Both are and must be, then upon theses found within the Aesthetic that are themselves unresolved. Just as the Analytic founds itself upon the claim that inner sense offers an Inbegriff, so the Dialectic founds itself upon the contravening claim that inner sense does not and cannot contain the characters and conditions of spatial form within itself, according to the hetereogeneity thesis. Insofar as both are ‘grounded’ thus in the Aesthetic, both are ungrounded. The well-rehearsed problem of unity in Kant’s philosophy, say, across the three Critiques, can be shown to be a problem already in the context of the first Critique. The principles upon which the Analytic are constructed contradict those upon which the Dialectic is constructed. I will next suggest that not only the first Critique, but also Kant’s development of his theoretical philosophy, can be understood in terms of this tension. 302 In spite of her apologetic intentions (see note  above), Longuenesse will refer cryptically to “unresolved difficulties” associated with “the ‘internalization within representation of the object of representation’ ” while concluding Kant and the Capacity to Judge (). In spite of this veiled recognition of the persistence of the functional aspect of the aporia of inner sense, Longuenesse asserts that “the infamous ‘transcendental synthesis of imagination’ turns out to be the complex web of perceptual combinations by means of which we take up sensible data into what we, in present times, have come to term” in a telling image, “ ‘the space of reasons’ ” (). In this apologetic reconstrual, the “internalization of representations” is less problematic for Longuenesse than it became for Kant, as will be shown below. For a more thorough admission of the difficulties involved in this process of “internalization,” see Maréchal, Le point de départ de la Métaphysique, v. III, p.  ff.

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principles. For clearly, without the prior legitimacy and proper function of the Sinnenlehre, such synthetic functions—even if possible—will be functionally “empty” and “useless” to the attempt to assign the possibility of synthetic a priori judgment. One could almost say that while the resolution to the question of the representative capacity of inner intuition must be resolved before the synthetic principles may be thought to be effective, it is only their effectivity that could generate the requisite capacity of inner intuition. But the priority thesis and its problematic role in the determination of the ordo cognoscendi is not the only difficulty or obstacle one encounters, and must overcome, in order to affirm Kant’s depiction of the dynamics of synthetic cognition. For just as the possible efficacy of the synthetic principles presumes the problematic possibility of the “transposition” (transitus) of the object from spatial, outer sense through aspatial inner sense, to the understanding, all, further, assume the problematic demonstration of the “consciousness of the identity of function” by which each is effective and by which each may be included within a transcendental determination of the possibility and character of cognition. In the terms of A , without “the identity of the act which the mind subjects all empirical synthesis of apprehension to transcendental unity,” such synthesis is “nothing for us.” 303 For such a consciousness of the identity of their functions must obtain within the Inbegriff that offers the manifold for the construction and exhibition of concepts. Only within its sphere could each be apprehended transcendentally and included within the transcendental topic of human cognition. But this latter consciousness must assume the indeterminacy of inner intuition. Any functional resolution could only be asserted dogmatically, then, unless the principle for this intuitive, empirical synthesis could be demonstrated. For this reason, there can be no resolution from a “blind function of the soul,” “rarely if ever open to view,” as was asserted of the figurative synthesis (A , B ). As a blind function, such a principle cannot 303 Henrich (Identität und Objektivität, Heidelberg, Carl Winter, ) has drawn attention to A  and its claim that “unity of consciousness would be impossible if the mind in knowledge of the manifold could not become conscious of the identity of function” by which such synthetic unity is effected. Henrich acknowledges that this unity would require the universal applicability of the pure concepts, in order to transform selfconsciousness into self-cognition, across the inner intuition—outer intuition distinction. For Henrich’s discussion of the identity requirement (“gemässigte Identität” rather than an indeterminate succession), see pp. –. For Henrich’s discussion of the continuity requirement, see particularly pp. –.

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submit to the demand for a “consciousness of the identity of its function” by which transcendental method can be distinguished from dogmatic method. Nor, formally, can this consciousness of the identity of function be claimed unless the (inner) manifold for its exhibition is determinate. This was precisely in question. Kant addresses this point at R  with regard to the imagination as a possible synthetic principle, when he records that the “imagination and its product is itself only an object of inner sense,” and must in order to itself be exhibited in conformity with the conditions of inner intuition.304 Thus, all synthetic functions already “pertain to inner sense” as elements of the cognitive faculty.305 For example, should the categories be proposed as a possible synthetic principle, it must yet be recalled that the categories “are nothing but a form of thought,” and thus obtain in the already exclusively temporal manifold of inner intuition (so assuming the proof of the possibility of a synthetic capability).306 All synthetic functions both are and can only be apprehended as already pertaining to time as Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen for the exhibition of all cognitive elements, as already temporal, thus presuming the proof. If form still constrains function, then the asserted indeterminability of the former constrains the possible efficacy of the latter. The categories are applicable, of course, unproblematically, to the manifold of outer sense. In this way, the claims of knowledge—from a 304 The question of domain was also problematic. The schemata, for example, were to combine only homogenous elements within time—the time-series, the time-content, the time-order, and totality of time—with the already temporal categories (B ). But the schematism “comes down indirectly to the unity of apperception as a function corresponding to inner sense (a receptivity)” (A , B ). Similarly, the imagination proposed a synthesis not of outer spatial intuition and inner temporal intuition, but intuition überhaupt and understanding; “by means of pure imagination we connect the manifold of intuition on one hand with the condition of the necessary unity of pure apperception” on the other. This single “manifold” of intuition is taken as homogenous across its most problematic internal distinction. As such, imagination assumes a homogeneity in intuition rather than provides for the requisite syntheis, leaving to one side its only subjective status (A , B ). 305 The schematism, as a product of the imagination, is itself “the transcendental determination of time” as form of inner sense; as already temporal it begs the question of the unity of time with space (A , B ). This requires the recognition of the problematic possibility of a basic inability to apprehend the unity of outer sense (space and substance), and inner sense (time and representation), upon the necessity that this apprehension must occur and obtain within the formal context of the latter, defined already as necessary aspatial. 306 In the same Reflexion, R , Kant writes that; “the imagination (and its product) is itself only an object of inner sense” (Ak, , ).

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permanence in intuition to categorial cause-effect relations, can be presented within the spatial form of outer intuition. This interdependence between outer intuition and the understanding justified Kant’s claim to an “outer experience.” According to the exposition of the Paralogisms, however, no categorial determination of inner sense was possible. No introduction into inner sense, of either spatial form or the pure concepts of the understanding, was deemed possible, and in fact was made in principle impossible. Any such claim would have ‘violated the limits of our [inner] sensibility.’ Kant was intent to claim this “Restriktionslehre” as an advance, for its utility in his attempt to “limit” as well as “secure” the conditions necessary for synthetic a priori judgment. But this accomplishment was also an index of a still greater problem, and an intrinsic tension within Kant’s philosophy. These dynamics, both formal and functional, are definitive of the aporia of inner sense. Only upon their resolution may transcendental philosophy evade skeptical doubt upon the status and legitimacy of its claimed results. The actual reception of Kant’s philosophy confirms this claim. Critical (Reinhold, Fichte, Beck), skeptical (Maimon, Schulze), and dogmatic (Schelling) interpreters each succeeded in isolating aspects of the aporetic doctrine of inner sense, and establishing this doctrine as central to their various, and variant, interpretive understandings. But our task is not to insist, either externally or on the basis of Kant’s arguments in the Dialectic, only on the aspatiality of time. Nor are we to insist, oppositely, on the necessity of the spatialization of time (to use Bergson’s phrase), either for external reasons or on the basis of Kant’s arguments in the Analytic. We do not insist on one or the other exigence but on both, and we insist on both, exegetically, in order to highlight the tension that obtains within Kant’s architectonic of human cognition. We insist on this tension, then, only on the basis of results gained from exegesis. In this way, and on Kant’s own hermeneutic principles (as we reviewed in our Introduction), an ambiguity in Kant’s theoretical philosophy becomes in our analysis an unequivocal result. An antinomy within Kant’s theoretical philosophy can be understood unequivocally as central to Kant’s theoretical philosophy and essential to Kant’s development of the critical philosophy.307 Doubt or skepticism regarding Kant’s variant con307 For Paton, while “in the Analogies, Kant has given an account of the principles in acccordance with which we determine the time of objective events. He has omitted to give a similar account of the way in which we determine the time of our own thinkings and perceivings” as objects of inner sense (). Paton hopes, though, that “no

seelenlehre, weltwissenschaft, gotteserkenntnis



struals can be replaced by a clear exposition of the character of that conflict and its necessary resolution. But neither is there any need to depict the aporia of inner sense as only a latter-day interpretive hypotheses. After a systematic conclusion to our exegesis of the doctrine of inner sense in the first Critique, I will turn to an example of Kant’s own retrospective recognitions (nearly all retained unpublished) of the aporetic aspects of his doctrine. This recognition, I would like to suggest, is as important to the understanding of Kant’s development of his philosophy—and to the development of post-Kantian philosophy—as is the doctrine of inner intuition itself to the architectonic of the Critique of Pure Reason.

doubt he holds that there too the same principles are at work.” However, Körperlehre in outer intuition and Seelenlehre in inner intuition can hardly be established analogously. Paton acknowledges that such a commonality would be controversial, and cites Ewing’s demonstration of the restrictive demands upon inner sense made in the Dialectic and in the Paralogisms. Paton admits that “in the absence of greater detail some critics have thought that the categories cannot apply to the self.” However, Paton continues, this “seems to me to be a mistake except in regard to the category of substance,” which Paton admits could not be applied to the manifold of inner sense without vitiating the critique of rational psychological doctrine of the substantiality of the soul. This admission, though limited, suggests to Paton that “the difficulties which we have to face may legitimately raise the question whether it is possible to think out Kant’s system consistently.” Paton, however, defers the task; “an attempt to solve these difficulties would demand a book to itself, and I must be content if I have made comparatively clear what his problem is. I should like to think that I have shown it to be a real problem.” In spite of his frequent assurances that no problem of any seriousness obtained, Paton has done as much as any in English-language scholarship, save Guyer, to reveal the character and extent of the aporia of inner sense. His expressed concern, however, has received little comprehension or commentary.

chapter three CONCLUSION: THE ANTINOMY BETWEEN THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE AND CRITIQUE OF METAPHYSICS IN KANT’S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

No one attempts to establish a science unless he has an idea upon which to base it. But in the development of this science . . . , the first idea given to this science is very seldom adequate. For this idea lies within reason, like a germ in which the parts are hidden, undeveloped, and barely recognizable, even under the closest observation. Consequently, since sciences are devised from the point of view of a certain universal interest, we must not explain and determine them according to the description that their founder gives of them, but in conformity with the idea that, out of the natural unity of the parts that we have assembled, we find to be grounded in reason itself. For then we shall find that its founder and often even his most recent successors are groping around for an idea which they have never succeeded in making clear to themselves, and consequently they have not been able to determine the proper content, articulation (systematic unity), and limits of the science. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (A , B )

In the following conclusion, I would like to provide () a thematic summary of our exegetical engagements, () a brief review of a competing (and in fact the standard) interpretive position on the character and significance of the doctrine of inner sense, and () a final series of reflections upon the wider significance of the identification of the aporia of inner sense, and the possible directions for research that it reveals. This essay attempted to set out systematically Kant’s doctrine of inner sense, and provide a basis for a scholarly estimation of each of Kant’s various—and variant—indications of its structure and significance. This exegesis also attempted to isolate the reasons according to which Kant’s variant formulations of the doctrine were not merely arbitrary or peripheral, but necessary and central to the architectonic of human cognition. The horizon for this necessity was found in the wider argumentative intentions definitive of transcendental idealism, to both “limit” and “secure” the possibility of synthetic a priori judgment.



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The contravening claims upon inner intuition were found to consist in (a) the constructive intention to demonstrate the possibility of synthetic a priori judgment within the sphere of outer intuition and in (b) the critical intention to demonstrate the impossibility of synthetic a priori judgment within the sphere of inner intuition. The first exigence required that the conditions for the synthetic cognition of a spatial and substantial object obtain also within the form and sphere of inner intuition, in order that it perform its function within the ordo cognoscendi. But the second exigence required that the conditions for the synthetic cognition of a spatial and substantial object be excluded from the form and sphere of inner intuition. The aporia of inner sense, then, across its aspects, consists in the constrictive effect that the formal requirements for Kant’s critical intentions exerts upon Kant’s constructive intentions. No thesis was more central or determinative to the latter intention in particular than was the heterogeneity thesis thereof, as this was set out first in the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason (, II, –, above). The heterogeneity thesis consisted first in Kant’s division between time as “form of inner sense” (A , B ) and space as “form of outer sense” (A , B ). By means of this divisio, Kant also assigned the sphere of application of each sensible form, and the (in)capacities of each. Inner intuition was thus subject to a “limiting condition,” that resulted from its formal character or structure (B ). This condition yielded Kant’s claim to (a) the inconstancy rather than constancy of inner sense; within inner sense, only a “mere flux, chaos” of perpetual succession could appear (A , B –; B ). This condition also yielded the claim to its (b) indeterminacy rather than determinacy; time, “the sole form of our inner intuition, has nothing abiding and therefore yields knowledge only of the succession of determinations,” and “not of any object that can thereby be determined” (A ). From this indeterminacy was derived the incapacity of inner intuition; only in space and hence in outer sense “is shape, magnitude, and mutual relation determined or determinable” (A , B ). Time, then, did “not pertain to any shape or position” (A , B ). For the absence of these conditions, inner sense could yield within its manifold neither “empirical location” (R ) nor the conditions for individuation, or determinate objectivity (A , B ). Within its succession, Kant asserted, “no object whatever is presented.” Within it, “nothing is distinguished from anything else” (A , B ). Each incapacity characteristic of inner intuition was contrasted to the determinacy and “steady

conclusion



order and coherence” of outer sense. Only outer sense, Kant argued, “possesses a fixed or abiding element which supplies a substratum as a basis for transitory determinations” (A ). While outer intuition yields the knowledge represented in geometry and physics, inner intuition disallows both the conditions required for determinacy and determinability, and indeed the applicability of the categories (A , B ). Only within the sphere of outer sense did the conditions required for synthetic cognition obtain. In this way, the “valid use” of synthetic cognition in the “sciences of body” or Körperlehren of outer sense—geometry and physics—was established, while the “sciences of the soul” or Seelenlehren of inner sense—rational psychology and rational theology—were made impossible (B ). As Kant had put the point; “no fixed and abiding self,” or object of inner sense, “can present itself in this flux of inner appearances” (A , B ). This constraint upon any possible synthetic cognition through inner intuition were each established through the assertion of the limiting condition of the formal aspatiality, inconstancy, and indeterminacy of its manifold. Kant instituted this “limiting condition” [Restriktionslehre] upon the formal structure of inner intuition in order to effect the “critical” or “negative” intention of transcendental idealism. The heterogeneity thesis, while indicated first in the Aesthetic, was applied argumentatively only in the Paralogisms section of the Dialectic. However, the formal conditions required in order to effect the “constructive” or “positive” intention to secure the conditions for synthetic a priori cognition in the Analytic required a contravening construal of inner intuition, its character, and capacities. For it was “in fact through these latter principles [of the possible presentations of inner sense] that the principles of mathematics and general dynamics acquire one and all their possibility” (A , B ). In these contravening demands upon inner intuition—between a demand for the independence of time from space and a demand for the interdependence of time and space within the temporality of inner sense— consisted the first aspect of the aporetic doctrine of inner sense. This aspect concerned the formal condition of determinacy or indeterminacy in inner intuition. A second, functional or dynamic aspect of the aporia was found to consist in the conditions according to which a given object [materium dabile], originally present within outer sense, could be transposed through the heterogenous manifold of inner sense and its pure temporality, wherein alone it could be presented to, or “gone over and run through” by the understanding. For it was only “by means of this [inner]



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intuition” as a “universal representation” [Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen] that we “encompass within” or take up “all outer intuitions into our power of presentation” (A , B ).1 This positive exigence was prosecuted by Kant most clearly in the first-Edition Deduction (.III.ii.a, above), in which inner intuition was amplified across three synthetic moments so as to incorporate () spatio-temporal unity, () temporal constancy, and thus () categorical determinability of inner intuition—precisely those characteristics that Kant was forced to deny to inner intuition in order that Seelenlehre be refuted. But this amplified account was not restricted to the first-Edition, as we saw in our exegesis of the Synthetic Principles (.III.iii, above). The Aesthetic, as we saw, was to articulate the conditions of synthetic judgment (through which such judgment is to be accomplished). Aesthetic did not yet contain the conditions for synthetic judgment (in which such judgment is to obtain as already accomplished and attained). In this consisted the priority thesis. All synthetic functions of the understanding rely upon intuition; the “conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given precede the conditions under which these objects are thought” (A , B ). Architectonically and formally, judgment rests upon the matter of sensation as given in and through intuition, pure or sensible. Functionally or dynamically, judgment waits upon the transitus through which such a materium dabile is transposed from (the form for) external empirical sensation to the understanding, by being “taken up into” inner intuition. To such synthetic judgments the element of intuition is necessary but not sufficient, a first but not final component. Judgment, in yet another formulation of this point, yields not an immediate presentation of an object, but “a [intellective] presentation of a [intuitive] presentation” (A , B ).

1

The first aspect of the aporia concerned directly only the subjective synthesis, requisite to the construction, exhibition, and application of synthetic concepts. The second aspect of the aporia concerned the dynamic act of cognition in its empirical and objective use. Only through a formal homogeneity or interdependence, rather than heterogeneity or independence, could this transitus be claimed, and a possible object of intuition be given to the understanding. The formal aspect, then, concerned the formal possibility by which we may “make our concepts sensible,” or exhibit concepts in intuition; the functional aspect concerned the conditions whereby we may “make our intuitions understandable” or “subsume intuition to concepts” (A , B ). The formal aspect concerned the question: “how are synthetic propositions in mathematics possible?” The functional aspect concerned the question: “how are synthetic propositions in experience and experiment (physics) possible?” The first aspect of the aporia follows from the

conclusion

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Intellectual re-presentation waited upon the noematic content offered originally in any case of synthetic cognition by an intuitive presentation, its noema or content. As Kant put this point, the “conditions under which alone the objects of human cognition are given precede the conditions under which these objects are thought” (A , B ). The synthetic status of any judgment was possible only for the presence of the perpetually prior manifold of intuition, which alone yields the object for a possible cognition not as discursive and conceptual but in its unity, identity, individuality and immediate relation to the faculty of cognition. In this claim consists the individuality thesis. Only in and through intuition could the unity, individuality, and identity (A , B ) of a possible object be gained for cognition, and only therein could the immediate [unmittelbar] relation to such a possible object be attained (A , B ; A , B ). Heterogeneity must be resolved synthetically to a spatiotemporal unity in intuition, then, if the conditions for rather than only conditions of experience, are to result. This lexical priority of intuition to intellection was asserted both in the argumentation against Aristotle and in that against Leibniz. Against Aristotle, Kant had asserted one of the definitive doctrine of transcendental idealism, that “the modes of pure sensibility [time, location, position, priority, simultaneity, or quando, ubi, situs, prius, simul] as well as motion [motus]” are to be segregated form the understanding in principle, as “not belonging at all in this register of the understanding’s original concepts” (A , B ). Space and time were instead generated only in sensibility and only from intuition, according to the formal character thereof (A , B  ff., particularly A , B ). In this consisted the mutual exclusivity or heterogeneity of the analytic predicates or modes of inner sense and outer sense. This implies directly the aspatiality, and hence instability and indeterminacy, of the manifold of inner intuition. The second aspect of the aporia instead implies the architectonic in its entirety, not only as a formal structure, but in the interaction, and even harmony of its elements or faculties. The formal aspect—in Kant’s own terms, from the Opus Postumum, where these two ‘aspects’ are most clearly set out—addresses the question “how a given object of inner sense [cogitabile] becomes (reflectively) thought [cogitata],” the “phenomenon of the phenomenon” in the “consciousness of consciousness.” This second-order or reflective problem of exhibition obtains whether the object of inner sense was yielded first objectively through outer intuition or subjectively through inner intuition. The second aspect addresses the question of “how a given object of outer sense [dabile] becomes determinable [cogitabile]” in inner sense, an appearance capable of yielding a synthetic cognition rather than a mere analytic unity of and in consciousness (Ak, , ). Precisely for this heterogeneity in intuition, an intellective synthesis was required; “appearances of both our outer and inner perceptions . . . must be connected with one another so as to yield experience” (A ).



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ideality thesis, and the capacity of intuition to contribute to the constitution of the possibility of synthetic judgment. A non-intuitive consciousness, Kant had argued, would appear only “through all the predicates that are already contained” in the understanding. This enumeration would have to be made negatively, as “not extended in space,” as possessed of “a duration that is not a time, that “no change (succession of determinations in time) is to be found in it, et cetera” (B ). This contribution of sensibility was instrumental, then, in establishing the very possibility of cognition both synthetic and a priori. Further, Kant had argued that this spatial and temporal ordering of our experience was generated not only by intuition rather than intellection, but always and only according to the restrictive conditions of our forms of intuition. Kant had claimed (against Leibniz) that “the presentations of space and time,” as “forms of both outer and inner sensible a priori intuition,” are precisely “those forms to which the synthesis of apprehension of the manifold of appearance must always conform.” This Restriktionslehre argued that any such “synthesis can take place only according to this form” and its limiting condition. This formal restriction was applied in the critique of a rational-psychological or rational-theological doctrine of the soul. For the latter, Kant was forced to assert the in principle impossibility, or necessary incapacity, of inner intuition according to its universal form; “we have not been given [the ability] to observe even our own mind” as an object of a synthetic cognition, and so develop “an intellectual system of the world,” or a monadology. For “we, who are acquainted with ourselves only through inner sense” possess “so unfitting an instrument” for such intrinsic determination that “the reference of sensibility to an object, and the transcendental basis of this unity” in inner sense is impossible (A , B ; see also A , B ). Thus, the heterogeneity thesis was demonstrated to be not eliminable but rather essential to the architectonic of human cognition, both in its negative or critical and positive or constructive applications. The applicability of the categories to the “steady order and coherence” of the spatial manifold allowed outer sense to yield unproblematically the intuition of a (temporal) permanent substance or determinate noematic content. It was, Kant suggested, a “remarkable fact” that “from mere categories no synthetic propositions can be formed,” either independently of all intuition or in inner intuition rather than outer intuition. Without a possible intuition, “there is nothing that we could employ in order to go beyond the concept and connect with it another concept” (B ). It was, however, “even more remarkable,” that “we need not merely intuitions,

conclusion



but indeed always outer intuitions” in order to perform this task. For in order “to give as corresponding to the concept of substance something permanent in intuition,” so as thereby to establish the objective reality of the categories, we require “an intuition of matter,” for which “we need an intuition in space.” For “space alone is determined as permanent,” while “time and hence whatever is in inner sense is always successive” and indeterminate (B ). The inapplicability of the categories (substance, permanence, causality) to inner sense, however, disallowed any such categorial synthesis of a heterogenous spatiality within the sphere of inner sense. For this reason, inner sense could not contain within itself the totum of representations— inclusive of the material, spatial, and substantial determinations—of outer intuition. Its necessary status as an Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen was thus seen to be uncertain and atopical. Should this problem of the scope of inner intuition be thought superable, however, the question of its status would still require resolution. The inapplicability of the categories just noted implied that inner sense can “yield none but regulative principles,” and must obtain “only by analogy with the logical and universal unity of concepts” rather than a synthetic, determinative, objective, cognition of an individuum (B , note; A , B ). For “the categories possess meaning only in reference to the unity of intuitions,” and could not be applied to the pure temporality of inner sense, taken as heterogenous to or exclusive of the spatial and substantial determinations of outer sense (B ). Kant’s constructive or positive argumentation, then, presumed formal homogeneity and a functional or dynamic interdependence in intuition—the “amplified account” of inner sense, and its character and capacities. But Kant’s critical or negative argumentation, and the “restrictive account” of inner intuition, presumes not interdeterminacy but rather indeterminacy, and the incapacity of inner intuition to yield synthetic conditions. This inner tension raises a possibility, and a doubt. If the doctrine of inner sense is amplified sufficiently for the constructive exigence—according to which inner sense must be “universal representation” [Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen] and include within itself the conditions and determinations of outer sense—such a synthesis must be insufficient to the critical exigence. For according to the latter, inner sense must exclude such conditions in order to negate the formal possibility for a Seelenlehre. In this consists the antinomy of inner intuition. The positive demand for a synthetic determination of inner intuition could not, without violating the character and limits of our sensibility,



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be adequated to the negative demand that inner intuition exclude the conditions for spatial appearance—by means of the condition of permanence, the determination of matter, and the category of substance— within the temporal manifold of inner sense. In this general thematic problem-context, the (a) exegetical exposition of the heterogeneity thesis, (b) discovery of its centrality to both the architectonic form of human cognition and the proper function of the activity thereof, (c) articulation of its argumentative applications, both constructive and critical, and the (d) comprehension of the contravening demands of this argumentation, formed together the principal results of our engagement of the Critique of Pure Reason. While it has been necessary to expose the problematic doctrine of inner intuition argumentatively, within our address of the first Critique, it will be possible in a brief Appendix to expose the aporetic aspects of this doctrine purely exegetically, through Kant's own recognition of its character and extent.2 In the Vom inneren Sinne fragment, the concept of "cosmological apperception" will be exposed as evidence of Kant's cognizance of the intrinsic tension between the constructive or positive, and critical or negative, intentions within transcendental idealism. This tension will be traced back to its original source, to the doctrine of inner intuition, in which the contravening requirements of each intention are 2

In this transformed interpretive context, one could also set Kant’s explicit admission of the “boundless and disturbing heterogeneity in sensible forms” within the third Critique Introduction of . Kant’s recognition of the problematic character of the “Ungleichartigkeit of empirical laws and Heterogenität of natural forms” was there recognized to have excluded, or have made impossible, “the concept of a system in terms of these empirical laws” (Ak : ). The question of the conditions for this systematic “unity of experience,” and the question of the “unity of nature and time and space” as forms of intuition were, in Kant’s own term, “identical” (Ak : ). In this way, Kant’s attempt in the third Critique to move toward “a system in which empirical laws, even with regard to what is different” or heterogenous “in them . . . are bound together under a principle,” can be comprehended. Kant would name this principle “the transcendental principle of the power of judgment” (: –). Thus this doctrine was to redress or “fill a gap in the system of our cognitive powers” (, ). This topical or topographical ‘gap’ implied by the heterogeneity thesis of the first Critique is addressed in the third Critique Introductions through the concepts of domain [ditio], sphere [domicilium], and territory [territorium], through which interdependence was, though still with severe restrictions, to replace independence. But by revealing the aporia of inner sense as the motive for such addresses of a ‘gap,’ the context and content of these resolving concepts could thus be seen as neither merely “obscure,” nor “entirely gratuitous” [Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, ), –]. Instead, they could be comprehended as integral elements of Kant’s ongoing attempt at a transcendental determination of the nature and limits of judgment as synthetic cognition.

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

concentrated. In this fragment, Kant appears to indicate that the formal conditions for the synthetic apprehension of oneself as an object of intuition required an interdependence in intuition deemed dialectical and cosmological in the first Critique topic of human cognition. Thus, in our brief engagement of the Vom inneren Sinne fragment, an important implication and benefit for the comprehension of Kant’s development will be discovered. Kant recognized in this unpublished reflection that the critical argumentation of the Dialectic implied that “inner sense would never yield representations of a spatial element.” This fragment highlighted not only the formal aspect of the aporia, however, but also the functional aspect of the aporia. Empirical consciousness (empirisches Bewußtseyn), Kant continued, is to consist in the act by which, dynamically, “I affect myself in bringing the representations of my outer senses to an empirical consciousness of my state” (v. ). And yet, this “something external,” which one must “find in space” and outer sense, originally, “cannot [then] be derived from inner sense” (r –). In other words, the intuitive representation “of the external” cannot “correspond to my representation” as it must necessarily, in order that the ordo cognoscendi be possible. While, formally, “inner sense could never yield spatial representations,” this spatiality “must nonetheless and necessarily obtain, since it must be at least possible [formally] to become conscious of such [spatial] representations as pertaining to inner sense” (r –). In its account of the Vom inneren Sinne fragment, this essay recognized, with Georg Mohr, that “a more precise explication of this doctrine remains a desideratum.”3 In attempting to realize this interpretive intention, this essay articulated the thematic context for this recently discovered fragment through the heterogeneity thesis, and thereby respond to Brandt’s pronouncement that “we must bring into the light of day the question why the refutation of idealism could still remain a central attraction for Kant’s meditations after the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason” (ibid, ).4 In this way, this essay was able not only to repeat a 3

Georg Mohr, Revue de theologie et de philosophie, v. , /, . In  and within a letter to Kiesewatter ( October; see Ak , ), Kant worried again (see note , above) that without the self-critique of, and novel principles provided by, his Opus, “a gap will remain in the critical philosophy.” In the Opus postumum, too, Kant will worry over the conditions for the possibility of “the unity of experience” (: ; see note  above). In the latter text, Kant presumes as unproblematic that “there exists outside us a sense-object,” and on this basis an “outer experience” (: ). The possibility thereof, however, requires that one must ascend to the “empirical representation” of outer 4

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call for, but to effect, a systematic exposition of Kant’s doctrine of time as form of inner intuition. Baumanns’ announcement of “the determinability of time as form of intuition” as the “principal problem” of transcendental idealism, which required no less the “systematic clarification of the relations between inner and outer experience” has now been justified.5 Moreau’s call for “a deeper comprehension of the Transcendental Aesthetic,” and in particular “a more precise discrimination of the relations between outer sense and inner sense” has been answered.6 Ferrarin’s proobjects as “combined in a subject.” Only within the latter does there obtain “the basis of all appearances [and] . . . the unity of experience” (: ). This latter, “absolute subjective unity of the manifold of sensible representation,” concerns above all “space and time are forms of outer and inner intuition, given a priori in one synthetic representation.” These two forms of intuition must be “combined in one experience without a gap (without an intervening void)” or hiatus. Both must be thought “as combined in an absolute whole” rather than as formally heterogenous (: ). In depicting “space, time, and the absolute unity of the two,” Kant makes clear that this unity of space and time must obtain within the form of inner sense. The latter must obtain as an Inbegriff, to yield “space, time . . . [and] the consciousness of unity in a composition within the subject, according to the absolute totality of this [inner] intuition” (: ). Inner sense will contain within itself a “systematic unity of perceptions,” inner uns, that the strictures of the first Critique had made impossible. This reconstrual of the form and function of inner intuition, Kant will suggest, is “necessary for the knowledge of the science of nature as a doctrine of experience” (: ). Kant recognizes in the Opus that “the key to this problem [of the condition for the possibility of experience] lies in the principle of the determination of objects (their intuition) in space and time” (: ). In future publications, then, I will suggest that one could also set Kant’s Opus postumum in this same thematic context. For in this text, too, Kant not only (a) recognized, and (b) attempted to resolve the aporetic heterogeneity in intuition, but also (c) isolated and abandoned the wider argumentative positions based upon that heterogeneity. The exegesis of this text will allow the aporia of inner sense to be shown properly as not an extrinsic interpretive imposition upon transcendental idealism, but as an internal representation of the structure and dynamics intrinsic thereto, equal to Kant’s own mature estimation of the doctrine and its effects upon transcendental idealism generally. In other words, the Opus will afford the thesis of ‘the aporia of inner sense’ a further application, through which to make fully manifest (in the way that the Vom inneren Sinne fragment merely intimated) the validity and fruitfulness of its initial engagement of the doctrine of inner intuition. In this way, we will be able to comprehend Kant’s recognition of the widest significance of the aporia, as pertinent not only to self-cognition—or the “unity of the manifold of intuition” in “conformity with which the subject posits itself as an object (dabile)”—but as coextensive with the widest intentions of transcendental idealism as such. With the aporia of inner sense, “the supreme problem of transcendental philosophy arises, ‘how are synthetic a priori propositions possible?’ ” (, ). 5 Baumanns Kants Philosophie der Erkenntnis: Durchgehender Kommentar zu den Hauptkapiteln der ‘Kritik der reinen Vernunft’ [Würzburg, Königshausen and Neumann ], –. 6 Moreau, “Le temps, la succession et le sens interne,” in Akten des . Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (Ed. Gerhard Funke; Berlin, de Gruyter, ), .

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nouncement that “the general task that transcendental philosophy must undertake,” lies in the “comprehensive analysis of the relation between spontaneity and form, and thereby between inner sense and space” has been justified.7 Nonetheless, the predominant interpretive positions on Kant’s doctrine of inner sense remain apologetic. We began this essay, in our Introduction, with a brief depiction of a prominent type of apology, that of Waxman’s, which recognized the problematic character of the doctrine of inner sense only to deny its function, and even salience, in the ars characteristica that is Kant’s determination of the nature and limits of the cognitive faculty. I would now like to depict briefly a second type of apology, that of Allison, which retains traditional canons of interpretation by not denying the presence and role of the doctrine of inner sense, but instead acknowledges and explains the doctrine of inner sense only to explain it away. I do so in order to illustrate the relative effects, merits, or gains allowed by each interpretive stance. In other words, I would like to suggest that, in both forms of apology, an attempt at ‘saving’ the every letter of the first Critique leads to the disappearance of the thematic key to both the structure of that text and to Kant’s eventual development of his theoretical philosophy. Let us see how an attempt at explaining away this doctrine risks such wider interpretive intentions. In Kant’s Transcendental Idealism, Allison dedicated an important chapter to the doctrine of inner sense.8 He repeats Paton’s lament that “Kant’s doctrine of self-knowledge is the most obscure and difficult 7 Ferrarin, “Kant on the Exhibition of a Concept in Intuition,” Kant-Studien  (), pp. –, . It remains to be seen, however, how Ferrarin’s speculation that “German Idealism could find a seminal and paradigmatic theme for some of its guiding theses at a theoretical level” can be both predicted and demonstrated. 8 Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (New Haven, Yale University Press, ), pp. – . I refer throughout to this first-Edition. See ibid, p. . Allison’s second, revised edition of Kant’s Transcendental Idealism (New Haven, Yale University Press, ) has collapsed the chapter on inner sense into a chapter on the second-edition Refutation of Idealism, eliminating many of the citations here treated from the original work on inner sense. Allison further has avoided the first-Edition deduction and its amplification of inner sense (for his justification, see p. ). Allison does review the tension between A  (“time cannot be a determination of outer appearances; it belongs neither to a shape nor a position . . . ”) and B – (“time is the a priori formal condition of all appearances in general.”) He also acknowledges that these assertions “appear to conflict with one another, since the former seems to limit the scope of time to inner appearances while the latter asserts that it is a condition of all appearances.” But he will find that “this conflict is merely apparent,” explained or perhaps explained away as Allison simply allows that “this enables Kant to conclude that ‘all appearances in general, i.e., all objects of the senses, are in time, and necessarily stand in relations of time (A /B)’ ” (–).

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part of his philosophy.”9 Allison indeed claimed that this difficulty “is rooted in his theory of inner sense,” which he described alternately as “inherently paradoxical” “exceedingly fragmentary,” and “unsatisfactory.” Allison noted first that “time cannot be outwardly intuited,” according to the heterogeneity thesis and that “permanence” pertained only to outer sense, according to the inconstancy thesis. However, for Allison, “apart from the cryptic remark that time has nothing to do with either shape or position, Kant himself is silent on the whole topic” of inner sense. The exegesis effected herein may cast doubt upon this claim; the citations adduced from Kant’s work both published and unpublished across the ’s attest to the virtually constant salience of the theme. Allison for this reason referred his reader to contemporary results within tense logic, while admitting that “there is no textual evidence to support the claim that this or anything like it is what Kant actually had in mind” (). Allison next claimed that “the manifest difference between outer and inner intuition stems from the fact that what we outwardly intuit are appearances with spatial forms and properties, while what we inwardly intuit is the appearing of these appearances” (ibid). However, and clearly, such appearances could not be recognized as first cognized if the form of inner sense disallowed the spatiality and extension thereof. For this reason, perhaps, Allison admitted that “this general picture is grossly oversimplified and serious difficulties arise as soon as one turns to the details of Kant’s theory.” First among these difficulties is the heterogeneity thesis and the incapacity of inner sense; “according to Kant’s own account, inner sense has no manifold of its own” (ibid). Allison recognized that any such claim is “to say the least, extremely problematic.” For apparently, upon its conclusion, the I qua cogitans “cannot be said to appear to itself at all” in a determinate inner intuition (). Allison protested against the “extreme crypticness” of Kant’s exposition, and its being “obviously inadequate” to any positive function, even terming the doctrine itself a “non sequitur” within the architectonic; “if this argument establishes anything, it is that we cannot know 9 Allison first deflects a direct address of the difficulty, and appeals to Weldon’s interpretation; “according to Weldon, the key to understanding Kant’s doctrine of inner sense lies in its connection with that of his contemporary, the psychologist Johann Nicholas Tetens.” Actually, Weldon (Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ) had protested that “it is all very well to say of a crucial passage that ‘this, like everything else which Kant wrote about inner sense is profoundly unsatisfactory’ [referring to Kemp Smith’s Commentary, ] and to allude in passing to Teten’s Philosophische Versuche, but it is not very helpful.”

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ourselves at all, at least not through sensible intuition” (–). Allison also admitted that this “difficult notion of self-affection is obviously crucial,” rather than peripheral, “to Kant’s whole account of selfknowledge.” Indeed, “Kant’s position becomes even more problematic” if interpreted more closely; “here, perhaps as much as anywhere in the Critique, it is difficult to resist the impression that Kant has been victimized by his own jargon” (–).10 For in this context of the heterogeneity thesis, and the aspatiality of time as form of inner sense, Allison was forced to confront the thesis of the universality of time, its incorporation of space; “all appearances, as modifications of the mind, belong to inner sense” as Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen.11 Allison confessed 10 Allison recognized that “inner sense does not have any data that can be regarded as representations of the soul in the way in which outer intuitions are regarded as representations of body” (). This for Allison implies “a significant asymmetry between outer and inner experience, which in turn tends to undermine the neat parallelism between outer and inner sense that Kant’s account in the Aesthetic suggests” (). In fact, “since inner sense has no manifold of its own, there are no sensible representations through which the self can represent itself to itself as object” (). Further, “as a result of all this, the application of the transcendental distinction to the self becomes extremely problematic,” since according to “the view to which Kant is committed, it cannot be said to appear to itself at all” () Although, in beginning, Allison will assert that “the materials of outer sense are also the materials of inner sense” (), he will later acknowledge that “inner sense has no manifold of its own, from which he infers its incapacity to generate the data of outer sense” (). Allison will settle on passages which for him “assert that inner and outer experience possess the same epistemic status” (). His analysis of B xli revealed “language of being ‘combined’ or ‘bound up identically with (identisch verbunden mit),’ ” which Allison named an “inseparability” thesis (). But in spite of this juxtaposition of homogeneity and heterogeneity claims, Allison avoids any conclusions on the root causes or implications of these tensions. 11 For Allison, Kant asserts in the Refutation of Idealism that “even the most rudimentary bit of self-knowledge, say, that I am currently perceiving a white surface, rests on inner sense and its conditions” (). Allison wants to say that “if there were nothing that endured [in inner sense] then we could not become aware of either the coexistence or the succession of phenomena in a common, objective time, [Kant] extends this principle to the domain of inner experience” (–). However, Allison recognized that the very idea of an inner experience, modeled upon outer experience, is not uncomplicated; “unfortunately, any attempt to go beyond this very general result” or comment “soon runs into grave difficulties” (). Principally, these difficulties are textual; “first, not everything that Kant has to say . . . is readily reconcilable with this account.” Indeed, “Kant has next to nothing to say about how the categories and principles are applied in inner experience” analogously to outer experience (). Actually, one may suggest, Kant had much to say throughout the Dialectic about how the categories cannot and must not be applied to inner sense. Allison admitted on this point that “in the case of inner experience it is not at all clear whether certain categories and principles are applicable,” categories “which include the key categories of substance and causality” (). As we saw, it is quite clear that such categories cannot be applied to the manifold of inner sense, in order that the refutation of Seelenlehre may be maintained. On p. , Allison noted (p. ) the

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for this reason that “this suggests that there may be a fundamental incoherence in Kant’s whole account of self-affection.” Allison’s defense thus ultimately results in a policy of dismissal; “nevertheless, anything like an adequate treatment of the general topic of the function of the categories of inner experience is beyond the scope of this study,” which was no less general than “Kant’s Transcendental Idealism” as such. More importantly, Allison does not only reject the task of clarifying this central element of the architectonic, but rejects the very possibility of such clarification; “given the paucity of texts relating to the topic, I venture to say that it is beyond the scope of Kantian exegesis” (). We have shown that there is no such paucity of texts, and that one can hardly claim an understanding of Kant’s transcendental idealism, whether interpretation, defense, or critique, if the central doctrine of the inner intuition remains so completely shrouded in darkness. I would like to suggest that one cannot defend Kant’s idealism by placing one of its central doctrines beyond adjudication (any more than one can, with Waxman, ‘save’ Kant’s theoretical philosophy by eliminating its most central element). Doing so implicitly places beyond reclamation any full understanding of Kant’s theoretical philosophy; one could almost say that to efface inner sense is to obscure the basic structure of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, both in, and after, . By means of Allison’s, or another, apologetic, view, one can elect still to remain within the labyrinth of Kant’s first Critique doctrine of synthetic cognition. The intention to do so will be marked, however, by the same doubt and perplexity that Allison was forced to recognize; the a-poria of inner sense indicates precisely this non-porousness of the problem, its failure to yield a way forward, or out, of this labyrinth.12 One can no longer hope, in other words, that Kant’s claim to have provided, finally, for the “satisfaction” of self-consciousness can ever be realized and established within its structure. The dissatisfaction that he identified in pre-critical metaphysical and theological accounts of the form and dynamics of cognition is ineliminable from his own critical Selbsterkenntnis der menschlichen Vernunft.

necessity of this inapplicability to the wider intentions of the critical philosophy that this allows Kant; “this means that there are no sensible representations which we can recognize as representations of the soul,” as, e.g., object of a rational psychology. 12 I use the term “labyrinth” with reference to, and as did, Gilles Deleuze In Kant’s Critical Philosophy: The Doctrine of the Faculties (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, ) (translated from La Philosophie Critique de Kant, PUF, ), vii.

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In the above, we focused exclusively on the changing character and function of inner intuition, as this obtained in Kant’s initial formulation in the Aesthetic, in Kant’s amplification thereof in the Analytic, and in his virtual negation thereof, in the Dialectic. In an Appendix, we will attempt to see this internal tension between the ‘positive’ and the ‘negative’ argumentation within the first Critique, and at its point of maximum density in the doctrine and sphere of inner intuition, as the principle for Kant’s development of his theoretical philosophy. This Fragment hopefully will provide a clue not only to the basic structure and divisions within the Critique of Pure Reason, but to the principle for the development of Kant’s reflection thereupon.13 The same problem-context, I will suggest, will bring to light a perhaps hidden motive both in the skeptical (Maimon), and in the properly transcendental (Fichte), reception of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, and thus will offer to us a principle for the development of post-Kantian philosophy, or Classical German Idealism. 13

Some readers might wish that the foregoing analysis had been established a greater distance from Kant’s own expositions. To such readers, a protest of the genuine intricacy, influence, and importance of Kant’s account will not suffice. However, internal critiques, advanced by means of this exegetical method, afford a consistency and clarity in interpretation that disallow eccentric analyses and arbitrary conclusions, imposed upon, rather than evolved out of, Kant’s own exposition. I would also suggest that, at least in this case, the most important as well as most fruitful results can only be derived from the closest reading. In other words, the significance of Kant’s contribution and Kant’s successors’ critiques thereof will only become clear to those who labor patiently toward the most precise possible comprehension of the interstices of and in each contribution taken singly. Other readers may wish that this analysis had insisted upon the sympathy that finds occasion only for affirmation and the most tentative questions—an interpretation that is also a defense—and never critique. While recognizing that this essay has allowed itself considerable, and otherwise excessive, repetition, I would like to suggest that only a critical engagement of Kant’s theoretical philosophy can evince its basic structure and the tensions that define it, to say nothing of the reasons for Kant’s development thereof. I would also suggest that an attention to the tensions within the first Critique can evince the reasons both for the centrality and importance of Kant’s contribution to later European philosophy and for the critical engagement of that contribution from Kant’s immediate successors in th-century German philosophy to classical phenomenology and indeed its contemporary exponents. In this, even the closest exegetical work is not “scholastic,” but is rather constructive, as the reconstruction of a historical position and contribution is allowed to inform and define the range of subsequent, and contemporary, possibilities (in both theoretical philosophy and in philosophy of religion). In spite of its intricacy and difficulty, the doctrine of inner sense should no longer be understood as a problem of merely “scholastic” interest. (Perhaps we ought reply as Kant himself did in the Preface to the Prolegomena, that “the long-windedness of the work, so far as it depends on the science itself and not on the exposition, its consequent unavoidable dryness, and its scholastic precision, are qualities that, though they may discredit the book, can only benefit the science” [Preface, Ak , ]).

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In this sense, Pippin’s estimation of the importance of Kant’s doctrine of time as form of inner sense, advanced already in our Introduction, can now be justified. For Pippin, the doctrine of inner sense “involves much more than a technical clarification” of a single element within Kant’s structuration of human cognition. For within this doctrine are contained (a) “very important, foundational elements in his whole theory,” and the basis for (b) the “most important results of Kant’s argument in the Critique.”14 Only by having earned our right through exegesis to a thorough comprehension of (a) and (b), will we be able to affirm and confirm Pippin’s subsequent suspicion that the theme of the form and function of inner intuition also offers (c) the necessary basis for Kant’s “criticism of the metaphysical tradition,” and (d) “one of the best ways to view the entire complex of problems in the philosophic movement known as German Idealism.”15 These latter desiderata can only be intimated, and cannot be accomplished, herein. Nonetheless, the identification of the aporia of inner sense accomplished herein will function as a condition for the possibility of such subsequent, research projects—of Kant’s critiques of pre-Critical metaphysics and theology, and of the generative principles for Classical German Idealism—of progressively wider scope and significance. The reader will have to decide for herself which scholarly and interpretive intention is the more fruitful or productive, and upon what type of standard such evaluative judgments are to be made. In light of the promise of the latter, however, and the new and more precise comprehension of the development of classical German Idealism that it offers, the insistence upon “saving” inner sense and the the ipsissima verba, the every “letter,” of Kant’s first Critique, may well come to be seen as a philosophical form of idolatry.16 14

Robert Pippin, Kant’s Theory of Form (New Haven, Yale University Press, ), . Ibid, . 16 In other words, it is undeniably unfortunate that our presentation of Kant herein is principally critical. We have set out Kant’s account of the nature and limits of human cognition only as contextual for a critique thereof. There is, further, a dissatisfaction associated with the aporia itself; it casts us out of our long-standing philosophical habitation in Kant’s architectonic that, after more than  years as the accepted beginning point of all subsequent philosophical work, has however come to resemble a labyrinth. It is important to note, however, that by means of an affirmation of the general principles of transcendental philosophy, and a precise but critical attention to the aporia of inner sense, Kant’s philosophy in its spirit if not its every letter remains untouched. From an apparently merely technical amendment to the transcendental topic, however, a most significant transformation of the estimation of the nature of human cognition may well 15

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The resolution of the aporia, the recognition of the antinomy contained within it, allows us to exit from the labyrinth that is the first Critique. It also affords us the right to question the Kant’s claim on behalf of the first Critique and its Selbsterkenntnis to an exclusive and eternal authority. Such a bracketing or suspension of Kant’s claims to apodeictic certainty and the self-satisfaction of reason (A xvi), then, opens up before us unexpected, largely unchosen, and yet demonstrably legitimate paths for research. Apologetic interpretive intentions—such as Allison’s, interpretations that are already defenses—in effect masked such a Gang des Denkens. Along this, our own way, Kant’s late, unpublished Vom inneren Sinne manuscript was encountered first. But this in turn will lead or point beyond itself, for example, to Kant’s own Opus postumum, to Fichte’s addresses of the tension between the positive and negative intentions within Kant’s first Critique,17 and to Schelling’s own, early concerns with this doctrine,18 and thus to the development of classical German Idealism. This latter tradition may come to appear not as an arbitrary aberration but as a necessary unfolding of the principles of transcendental follow. Thus, in terms of the division of the sciences Kant had effected, a revisioning of the nature and limits of human cognition, and the possibility of Seelenlehre itself, may well result. But it is important to remember that, if the (every) letter of Kant’s critical-period theoretical philosophy cannot be saved, we in its revision retain the spirit of critique that animated that epochal call to a Selbsterkenntnis der menschlichen Vernunft. 17 I have treated Fichte’s first extended critique of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense in Fichte’s unpublished Meditationen über Elementarphilosophie, in “Self-Consciousness and Temporality; Fichte and Husserl,” forthcoming in Fichte-Studien Supplementa, Daniel Breazeale and Violetta Waibel, eds. I have treated Fichte’s first, extended, and published critique of the same doctrine in the Grundriss des Eigenthümlichen der Wissenschaftslehre in Rücksicht auf das theoretische Vermögen in “Una fenomenologia trascendentale, Un’epistemologia fichtiana: L’eredità fenomenologica di Fichte in Husserl e Henry,” in L’eredità contemporanea della filosofia trascendentale (Editrice Università di Padova, ). As stated in this Introduction, above (note ), I will follow this present work on the intra-systematic significance of the aporia of inner sense within Kant’s theoretical philosophy with a work dedicated to the extra-systematic significance of the aporia, in the founding and development of German Idealism. In the latter, I will expand on these article-length treatments of Fichte’s Meditationen and Grundriss in order to show that these early texts not only propose critical engagements, and resolutions, of the problematic aspects of Kant’s doctrine of inner sense, but also provide a thematic introduction to () such later texts as the Tatsachen des Bewußtseins of  (in which Fichte’s concern with Kant’s doctrine becomes explicit again), () the character of Fichte’s philosophy of religion as contained within this latter text and those of the mature, Berlin period works more generally (including the Wissenschaftslehre  and the Staatslehre ). 18 For a brief treatment and citations of Schelling’s early critiques of Kant’s doctrine of time as form of inner sense, through to the System of , see my “Fichte’s Critique of Kant’s Doctrine of Inner Sense,” in Idealistic Studies :  (December ), pp. –, pp. –.

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philosophy and its doctrine of self-consciousness. As we prosecute this path, from a genuine antinomy in Kant’s theoretical philosophy to the varieties of its inheritance, we can posit, at least as a regulative ideal for our effort, the same satisfaction of self-consciousness that one was promised by, and had hoped to find in, Kant’s Selbsterkenntnis.

chapter four APPENDIX: THE APORIA OF INNER SENSE AND THE VOM INNEREN SINNE FRAGMENT: A PRINCIPLE FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF KANT’S THEORETICAL PHILOSOPHY? It will be said that the solution to the difficulty given here involves an even greater difficulty and is hardly susceptible of a lucid presentation . . . One might rather say that the dogmatic teachers of metaphysics have shown more shrewdness than sincerity in keeping this difficult point out of sight as much as possible, in the hope that if they said nothing about it no one would be likely to think of it. If a science is to be advanced, all difficulties must be exposed and we must even search for those however well hidden that lie in its way, for every difficulty calls forth a remedy that cannot be found without science gaining either in extent or determinateness, so that even obstacles become means for promoting the thoroughness of science. On the contrary, if the difficulties are purposely concealed or removed through palliatives, then sooner or later they break out in incurable troubles that bring science to ruin in a complete skepticism. Critique of Practical Reason One can well posit oneself in time, but one cannot posit oneself in time and determine oneself therein—yet in this consists empirical self-consciousness. Reflexion 

The context for the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, I would like now to suggest, is given in the aporetic first Critique doctrine of inner sense. The content of the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, and its central concept of cosmological apperception, is anticipated in the cosmological antinomy and the doctrine of the merely regulative status of the cosmological ideas, an extension of the paralogism of rational psychology as just treated. Each contextual element is itself contextualized not by the ideality thesis most generally, but by the heterogeneity thesis, and by the indeterminacy of inner intuition that follows from its inconstancy and aspatiality.1 1 Kant’s “On Inner Sense” fragment, or Loses Blatt Leningrad , “Vom inneren Sinne,” is transcribed by Werner Stark, in R. Brandt and W. Stark, eds., Kant-Forschungen

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The Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, or “Leningrad Reflexion,” offers perhaps the most widely-circulated reflection in the unpublished writings dedicated exclusively to (a) the formal character of inner sense and (b) the functional role of inner intuition in the architectonic of human cognition.2 Kant retained the Leningrad Reflection (not insignificantly) unpublished. Its dating is uncertain and its conclusion problematic. However, while philological issues remain uncertain, the problemcontext and philosophical content of the Leningrad Reflection can now be made clear. This only recently discovered fragment attests to Kant’s continued preoccupation with the doctrine of inner sense. The scope and significance of this concern may now be set out. Kant begins his reflection with a review of the basic claims of the Aesthetic. Time is subjective rather than objective, and therefore yields only appearance. In the language of the Dissertation, the temporality of

(Hamburg: Meiner Verlag, ), v. , pp. –. As was noted in the Introduction to this essay, R. Brandt, in his authoritative review of the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment (Revue de theologie et de philosophie, v. , /IV, ), admits that the context for the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment has remained obscure; “nous devrons tirer au clair la question de savoir pourquoi la réfutation de l’idéalisme pouvait constituer encore un centre d’attraction de la méditation kantienne après la ème édition de la Critique de la raison pure.” Georg Mohr (Revue de theologie et de philosophie, v. , /, ), adds that the content of the doctrine has also resisted comprehension; “une élucidation plus poussée de cette doctrine est restée un desideratum.” Guyer notes the “remarkably little discussion” that the Reflexionen on inner sense and the Refutation of Idealism have received (ibid, , note ), since only glancing and quite general references have been made in Englishlanguage scholarship to either their context or content, and the only thorough German language treatment is still Lehmann’s  Kant-Studien article. Guyer does not note the monumental works in Italian (Mathieu) and French (Lachièze-Rey, Chenet) dedicated to precisely this issue. 2 See also the series from R –, R –, and R . In R  (Ak, , ), for example, Kant writes that “it comes to this; I can become conscious of myself in an outer relation through a special sense, which is, however, requisite for the determination of inner sense. Space proves to be a representation which cannot be related to the subject (as object) for otherwise it would be the representation of time. That it is not, but is rather immediately related as existing to something distinct from the subject, that (is) the consciousness of the object as a thing outside me.” Kant also writes that “if I make myself into an object, space is not in me but yet is in the formal subjective condition of the empirical consciousness of myself, that is, time.” Without this intrinsic spatiality, repugnant to the inner form in which it must obtain, “I could not empirically determine my existence” as an individuated object amongst others. Thus, inner sense, which “makes our self an object of our own representation,” in accordance with its formal character of a pure temporality, must also contain within itself “the relation to something distinct from ourself.” Kant takes up this theme again in  at R ; “my representations cannot be outside me, and an external object of representations cannot be in me, for that would be a contradiction.”

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inner intuition proposes not a relatio realis et obiectiva of subordination but a relatio idealis et subiecti of coordination.3 Inner intuition reveals not a manner of existence (wie wir sind) but a manner of appearance (wie wir uns selbst erscheinen) (vorderseite –). Time, qua intuitive, pertains to inner intuition and a self-affection, rather than to outer intuition and an objective affection. Further, time contains the characters of neither figure, nor position, as pertain instead only to outer intuition. The faculty of cognition is capable of representing time, and itself as temporal, not directly but only indirectly, by “analogy.” This indirect selfrepresentation of the cognitive faculty must be achieved through the characters which articulate the heterogenous manifold of outer intuition. The space of outer intuition yields not only the proper sphere of possible cognition; it is only in or through “the act of describing space” that the temporality of our cognitive activity can be made manifest. By attending to the temporally successive character of this act we may thereby become aware, if only analogically, of our consciousness as temporally successive. This succession is evident in the mind’s own progressive accomplishment of “drawing a line in thought,” as we treated above in the contexts of the Aesthetic and the second-Edition Deduction. This consciousness of (the activity of) consciousness is an ‘intellectual consciousness’ (v. –), and is to be set over against ‘empirical consciousness.’ Empirical consciousness (empirisches Bewußtseyn) is to consist in the act by which, dynamically, “I affect myself in bringing the representations of my outer senses to an empirical consciousness of my state” (v. ). By this act, as we have seen, the object of outer intuition as a materium dabile is returned through inner sense to the faculty of representation, 3

For Kant’s definition and treatment of (a) the subordination—coordination distinction, (b) the pertinence of coordinatio to outer sense, and (c) the restriction of subordinatio to inner sense, see Critique of Pure Reason, B . Kant there had differentiated dynamical judgments from mathematical or subjective judgments. Dynamical judgments, Kant specified, are accomplished through a coordinatio (koordinieren). Mathematical judgments consisted in a subordinatio (subordinieren). This distinction repeats that between the second and the first aspects of the aporia, respectively. Dynamical judgment is to obtain in a mereological aggregate, while mathematical judgment is to obtain in a temporal series, in accordance with the formal character of inner sense (B ). Kant considered mathematical judgments as “syntheses of the understanding in concepts.” Such syntheses, Kant suggests, pertain only to a synthesis of homogenous elements, within a single manifold of intuition. Dynamical judgment, through a coordinatio, is to “connect even heterogenous elements of cognition” across the heterogenous manifolds of intuition. The dynamical synthesis must connect these elements “in one consciousness, by means of (durch) a principle,” by which “unity and plurality or homogeneity and heterogeneity can be comprised within a totality” (B ). See also A , B .

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in order to be determined to objectivity by the understanding.4 Selfconsciousness, then, obtains in and through that dynamic act by which an outer sensory manifold is integrated into an empirical self-consciousness in and according to the character of inner intuition. By this dynamic act, one is to posit oneself as oneself—i.e., by means of a Selbstaffektion or Selbstanschauung, and yet within the sphere of outer intuition, in a single act—within the manifold of outer, spatial intuition.5 In this 4 In his review of the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment (“Making Sense Out of Inner Sense: The Kantian Doctrine as Illuminated by the Lenningrad Reflexion,” International Philosophical Quarterly , pp. –), Zoeller asserts that the conclusion of this first paragraph is; “that inner sense, as the condition of all inner experience, presupposes an outer sense which provides the material to be apprehended” (). For Zoeller, then, the question at issue is only one of priority. Zoeller suggests that this fragment concerns “the process of self-affection” (), and “how inner experience comes about” (). This process of self-affection, then, is “the process of self-objectification in which the self comes to an awareness of its own cognitive states.” This is to be accomplished by “raising empirical contents of consciousness to the level of reflexive . . . self-awareness” (). Zoeller also notes that the Leningrad Reflection concerns that process by which “inner experience comes about” through “[my bringing] the representations of outer sense into an empirical consciousness of my state.” Zoeller does not, however, identify this theme as a problem, nor therefore why Kant had continue to concern himself with the character and implications of this processus after its deduction in the first Critique. 5 While at B  and in the context of the merely regulative principles of the secondEdition Paralogisms, Kant classified “my body” as one of the virtually infinite number of objects which appear as “outside me” qua determining subject (B ). Qua object, then, “my body” is to be classed with “other things outside me.” Upon this exigence, the natural character of the I qua natural object must be secured. For “the principle of the causality of appearances among one another,” among which is our own body or the I qua object, “is required by us in order that for natural events we can seek and indicate natural conditions, causes in the realm of appearance” (A , B ). Unlike other objects and other subjects, however, one’s own body is the object of self-affection rather than objectual affection, while it is yet present with the range of external objects within the sphere of outer intuition. As embodied, I am revealed to myself through outer sense and as an object of outer intuition. Kant claimed that “I distinguish my own existence” (quod sum) “as that of a thinking being” (quod sum cogitans) “from other things outside me (which include my own body).” The disconsonance or incongruence between (a) Selbstaffektion and Selbstanschauung as governed by the restrictive account of the capacities of inner intuition, and (b) the requirement that one’s own body, while given by means of such a self-affection and self-intuition, must be an object of physics understood according to causal laws in community and interaction with other physical objects, overarches the distinction between self-affection in inner sense and objectual affection in outer sense. For in this case, a self-affection must pertain to outer sense, while the merely regulative construal of the former disallows the necessity of a fully constitutive construal of the latter. While such complexities within the dynamics of Selbstsetzung and the self-cognition of one’s body as both one’s own and in a ‘system of moving forces,’ will be treated with greater attention and detail in the Selbstsetzungslehre of the Opus. I would suggest, however, that such complexities are already treated as a problem, in their proper context and with recognition of their proper significance, in this fragment.

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manifold alone may objects and other subjects appear for an experiential or experimental cognition. But one may appear to oneself as oneself as an object of intuition only through self-affection, and according to the limiting condition of inner sense.6 This act, then, requires the interdependence of inner intuition, through which self-affection is possible, and outer intuition, through which such a spatial manifold of extension can be represented. Only in this way could self-consciousness (intellectuelle Bewußtseyn) become self-cognition (empirisches Bewußtseyn), in which one is to be, for oneself, a possible object of cognition. The first, formal self-consciousness cannot, however, be extended to a synthetic principle, or attain the status of a possible experience. According to the heterogeneity thesis, “Ich bin ist kein Erfahrungssatz” and “auch kein Erkenntnissatz” (v. ). Introducing spatial form into the purely temporal manifold of inner sense would risk (cosmological) antinomy and paralogism, the “subreption of the hypostatized self-consciousness (apperceptionis substantiatae)” (A ), as well as the heterogeneity thesis of the Aesthetic. This mention of an apperception that would be ‘cosmological’ and therefore overstep the limits of possible experience invites a brief review of Kant’s exposition of the cosmological antinomy in regard to the relation between inner and outer sense in the Dialectic of the first 6

Paton (ibid, ) expresses his hope that, in spite of the aporiai associated with the heterogeneity thesis, “the Kantian doctrine” of synthetic a priori judgment “might perhaps be reformed and restablished.” This, Paton suggests, is possible “if we could show that the categories are implicit in our knowledge of time” or time-determination, in Guyer’s terms (). Paton elsewhere realizes that, according to the letter of Kant’s exposition, no such application of the categories to time as form of inner sense is possible. However, Paton suggests, “if we are to make a satisfactory doctrine, we shall have to work with space and time (or perhaps with space-time)” rather than the heterogeneity thesis. For Paton, “it is clear that Kant’s own mind was steadily working in this direction: space is not wholly neglected even in the first edition, and it becomes much more prominent in the second,” and thereafter. Nonetheless, “such a development of Kant’s view will certainly give rise to new difficulties; for it may tempt us to regard the mind itself as spatial, and this will have consequences which Kant at least is not prepared to accept. But even in Kant’s own doctrine there are many puzzles about the mind, which it is doubtful if he ever solved” (). Paton refers to the work of Alexander (in Space, Time, and Diety), who attempted to “improve and develop Kant’s doctrine along the lines suggested by the second edition of the Kritik. He accepts the theory that the mind is spatial as well as temporal.” However, Paton acknowledges the antinomy in which the unreconstructed Kantian position is forced, since “this leads to views of freedom and immortality which are fundamentally opposed to the views of Kant,” an exigence that requires the aspatiality of time for reasons articulated clearly already in the second-Edition Preface and (, note).

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Critique. In his Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, Kant offered a general clarificatory review of the basic character of his Restriktionslehre. There, he discussed the “three transcendental ideas (psychological, cosmological, and theological).” Each, we may recall, was exposed as a (merely) “regulative principle of the systematic unity of the manifold of empirical cognition as such” (A , B ). The unity each ‘prescribed’ to the faculty of cognition was regulative rather than constitutive; i.e., each did “not yield constitutive principles for cognition’s expansion,” in other words. We might now determine this ‘unity’ more closely. In conformity with the first of these ideas, we, in psychology, were to, “by the guidance of inner experience, connect all appearances, actions and receptivity of our mind as if this mind were a simple substance.” We were to do so even while its states, i.e., its concepts, judgments, and ideas, “vary continually.” In conformity with the second idea, we were, in cosmology, to “trace the conditions of both internal and external natural appearance, in an inquiry not to be completed at any point, as if nature were in itself infinite . . . ” (ibid; see also A , B ). But both sciences, insofar as they relied on the capacity of inner intuition to yield continuity and spatio-temporality, were restricted so severely that they could not be sciences, or synthetic; “we must never bring these bases into the context of natural explanations, because we are not acquainted with them at all” (A , B ).7

7

For the merely regulative status of the “cosmological principle” and thus “cosmological apperception,” see A , B ; see also A , B . For Kant’s amplification of this distinction see also A –, B –. We are not to “attribute reality to an idea that serves merely as a rule,” and would do so only by a “transcendental subreption” (A , B ). In fact, if any transcendental principle is to contribute to the structure of appearance, then, “it must always find its condition, which determines them as regards space or time, in intuition” (A , B ). The cosmological principle “retains its validity as a problem for the understanding,” rather than as a constitutive solution to a difficulty internal to the Sinnenlehre. With the Ideal of Pure Reason in Book II of the Dialectic, instead, “we are still further removed from objective reality than the categories, for no appearance can be found in which they could be presented in concreto” (see also A , B ). Ideas “contain a certain completeness to which no possible empirical cognition is adequate,” and, thereafter “an ideal appears still further removed from objective reality than is even the idea” (A , B  ff.; see also A , B ). For this reason, while “their object [of any such idea] must be given empirically,” such ideas yet “presuppose their object and the empirical synthesis required for its concept as given.” For this reason, the cosmological ideas assume, and cannot generate, any empirical synthesis of a given object of intuition (A , B ). Thus restricted, the “solution of these problems can itself never occur in experience,” and they themselves can never be brought to bear in an analysis of the structure of appearance (A , B ). For this reason, according to Kant’s own

appendix

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In that same section, Kant indicated the problem-context motivating his exposition of the ‘transcendental ideas’; “the first object of such an idea . . . am I myself, regarded merely as thinking nature (soul)” (A , B ). Importantly, he reviewed, to this idea “I cannot even apply to this object any one of the categories except insofar as the schema thereof is given in sensible intuition.” The restrictions upon inner intuition implied that “I never arrive at a systematic unity of all appearances of inner sense,” in a spatio-temporal unity, inclusive of, e.g., “a community with other actual things outside it” (A , B ). The incapacity of inner intuition was instituted in order that we “not cognize the soul” by means of predicates. Such predicates or properties, Kant argued, “cannot at all be presented in concreto” in and by means of a determinate manifold of inner sense (ibid, see also A , B ). Kant was intent to press the virtues of the argument; “such a psychological idea can give rise to nothing but advantage.” In order to attain to this advantage, we needed only to construe inner intuition such that “no empirical laws of corporeal appearance, which are of a quite different kind, mingle with the explanations of what belongs to inner sense” (A , B ). This limit or restriction upon inner sense was to banish forever “windy hypotheses concerning the generation, destruction, and palingenesis of souls.” Indeed, Kant would “banish forever” or “remove all predicates of any possible experience,” and “all conditions for thinking [constitutively] an object for such a concept” as the soul in inner intuition (ibid). Such systematic unity was, then, exposed as only an “as if,” a “principium vagum,” an indeterminate and regulative principle. It functioned “only problematically,” since through it we could not “reach any concepts of understanding in order to regard all connection of things in the world of sense” as if they had their basis in such an amplified inner intuition (A , B ). However, the Sinnenlehre of the Aesthetic, for the merely individual and immediate character of its intuitions, led us to the Kategorienlehre of the (first-Edition) Analytic, in which such immediate intuitions of corporeal appearance received their categorical determination in the sphere of the Inbegriff that was inner intuition. But the critique of

assertion, I within experience, “never arrive at a systematic unity of all appearances of inner sense” (A , B ). As above, “there cannot occur in inner sense anything that would constitute a manifold [of elements] outside one another and thus in a real composition” (A , B ). See also §  of the Prolegomena (Ak, , ), otherwise remarkable for its attempt to eliminate all possible reference to inner intuition.

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Seelenlehre and the severe restrictions it put upon inner intuition in the Dialectic—have caused, retroactively, some doubt or skepticism over the ability of inner sense to serve as an Inbegriff in the context of the Kategorienlehre of the Analytic. If any doubts about the spatio-temporal unity and determinability of time as form of inner sense obtained in the Aesthetic, and remained in the Analytic, they would not be relieved or resolved here with the principium vagum of the Dialectic. For if Kant’s determination of inner sense can bear the weight and responsibility put upon it in the positive context of the Analytic, then it will contravene the weight and responsibility that Kant has put upon it in the negative context of the Dialectic. The intricacies of the question of status, then, make more complex but cannot resolve the aporia of inner sense.8 According to the letter of Kant’s exposition, to meet the exigence of the Analytic is to fail to meet the exigence of the Dialectic, and vice versa. In fact, the assertion of the principium vagum only serves to evince the more basic, or fundamental, problem of the two contravening demands Kant makes upon inner sense, negative and positive. As Kant’s continuing concern with 8

Nonetheless, Kant “exempted [himself] from any specific and long-winded further discussion of the transcendental illusion whereby the systematic unity of all manifoldness of inner sense is presented hypostatically” (A , B , note). He does so for having met the “duty” to “resolve our transcendent cognition into its elements,” a resolution that was accomplished as if “in the proceedings of a trial,” so “comprehensively” that no reasonable doubt over the nature and limits of our cognition, and the character of the ordo cognoscendi thereof, can remain (A , B ). Such natural illusions as were treated in the Paralogisms and the Dialectic more generally, Kant hoped, could now be considered “deposited in the archives of human reason in order to prevent similar future errors” (A , B ). In this way, Kant claimed to have “brought human reason to complete satisfaction” (echoing his usage of the term in the first-Edition Preface) regarding the nature and limits of human cognition (A , B ). But if Kant was right that such a construal of inner intuition “will banish forever windy hypotheses concerning the soul,” Kant was wrong to think that this banishment yields “nothing save advantage.” For in “removing all predicates” from the manifold of inner intuition, Kant disallowed not only its illegitimate, but equally all legitimate and indeed necessary function. If the “laws of corporeal appearance” required by the Seelenlehrer are denied thereto, they will be denied to the transcendental philosopher no less, for whom the proper function of the doctrine is no less important. Kant here claimed that reason had been brought to satisfaction in the successful prosecution of the juridical process or investigation of its nature and limits, and hopes that past errors or misunderstandings thereof have been consigned to the archive or dust-bin of history. But Kant’s own apparent error, the antinomy into which he too fell in his determination of the character and capacities of inner sense, would continue to occupy him well into his own future, and into the future of transcendental philosophy conceived in his Critique of Pure Reason and questioned in the Vom inneren Sinne fragment and Opus postumum.

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the doctrine in the Vom inneren Sinne fragment attests, Kant would not be able simply to ‘banish forever’ the determinability of inner intuition required by Seelenlehre, for reasons intrinsic to transcendental idealism itself. In spite of such restrictions upon inner intuition as were asserted in Kant’s ‘unchangeable’ or ‘unalterable’ exposition of the first Critique, selfaffection—Selbstanschauung, Selbstaffektion, Selbstsetzung—is possible through the act by which each returns the object of outer intuition to the intellectual determination of one’s own state—in and by means of inner intuition. Kant will now assert, in accordance with the positive exigence of inner intuition, that “in inner experience, I affect myself by bringing the representations of outer sense into an empirical self-consciousness of my state” in inner sense (bey der inneren Erfahrung aber die ich an stelle afficire ich mich selbst indem ich die Vorstellungen äusserer Sinne in ein empirisches Bewusstseyn [bringe um] meines Zustandes bringe, v. – ).9 In this act, “I affect myself,” or achieve the determination by which selfcognition rather than mere self-consciousness is possible. In Kant’s determination of the dynamics within this act, self-affection is represented as an activity and an accomplishment. This accomplishment requires our passivity, a relation to ourselves as receptive. Only the mutual interdependence between intuition and intellection allows inner intuition and self-affection to remain the consciousness of a finite human understanding possessed of an intuitus derivativus, rather than the intuitus originarius that gives to itself its own intuitive objectivity. But this interdependence between inner intuition and intellection is only possible if a prior interdependence within intuition obtains. The spheres of outer intuition and inner intuition must admit of a possible unity; only as interdependent can self-affection and self-cognition become actual. Self-affection and self-cognition require the integration of the sphere of outer sense (and its noematic correlate of oneself qua determined object) and the sphere of inner sense (and its noetic correlate of oneself qua determining subject). Only a unified sphere of intuition can grant the unity of a single subject, across the determining— determined distinction. Kant writes that “I affect myself in returning the 9 R  () also treats this problematic conditions for an ‘inner experience’; “the difficulty [with regard to inner experience] concerns only how the subject could itself institute experience. It must not merely perceive sensations in itself, but rather excite [erregen] and connect them synthetically, consequently affecting itself ” (:–).

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representations of the outer senses to an empirical consciousness of my state,” in order that, as above, they may be “taken up, gone over, and run through” by the understanding.10 This universal self-consciousness, however, waits upon the determinate presence of oneself to oneself in inner intuition. Through this processus alone could “I affect myself,” or appear to myself as an individuated object of intuition. Through it, “I cognize myself, but only insofar as I may affect myself ” qua subject, as “the subject who perceives such an object” (dadurch erkenne ich mich selbst aber nur so fern ich durch mich selbst afficirt bin (v. ))”. . . “nicht ein Gegenstand sondern nur der so [de] einer Gegenstand wanimt” (r ). This is only possible if (a) the manifold of inner sense can, formally, represent the spatial and substantial relations of outer intuition, and (b) functionally, achieve the problematic “transposition” (transitus) definitive of the dynamic act of self-cognition. The forms, characters, and spheres of outer intuition and inner intuition must be integrated, and this integration must obtain within inner intuition, in order that formal, logical self-consciousness may become functional, dynamic self-cognition, across the I qua determining subject—I qua determined object distinction. According to Kant’s exposition, then, self-affection first requires the outer intuition of oneself as an object amongst other outer objects (v. ). For “space is the [form for the] representation of outer objects as appearances” (“Der Raum ist nämlich die Vorstellung äußerer Gegenstände”). However, the “synthetic apprehension of their representations in a selfcognition of my representations must be linked to time.” Time is and governs both “the merely subjective form of my [inner] sensibility,” and “how I appear to myself in inner sense.”11 As is the case in the Refutation of 10 Many of Kant’s Reflexionen remain concerned with the Refutation of Idealism, then, as many scholars (above all Brandt) have noted, but only because they first concern the problem-context for the Refutation itself, the doctrine of inner sense. On the simultaneity issue, see also R  (Ak, , ); wherein Kant asserts in  that the possibility of simultaneity rather than mere succession “lies in the relation of representations to something outside us, and indeed, to something which is not in turn merely inner representation . . . ” See also R  (Ak, , ), where Kant discusses both the “impossibility of determining [our] existence in the succession of time through the succession of representations within us” and “even so the [necessary] actuality of this determination of [our] existence,” which requires “an immediate consciousness of something outside me, which corresponds to these representations . . . ,” and thus an intuitive unity of inner and outer sense. 11 The “Apprehension dieser Vorstellungen [in] zu einem Bewußtseyn des Zustandes meiner Vorstellungen ist an die Zeit gebunden deren Vorstellung blos die subjective Form meiner Sinnlichkeit ist wie ich mir selbst vor dem inneren Sinn escheine” (v. –). Zoeller

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Idealism, “one can see that we would possess no inner sense and could not determine our existence in time if we possessed no (actual) outer sense.” For only in outer sense can we “represent objects in space as distinct from us” (V –). Only through outer sense, then, can one stand out for oneself as individuated, over against objects and other subjects. In accordance with the Refutation, Kant would reassert the priority thesis, the dependence of inner intuition upon outer sense for its noematic correlate.12 The Vom Inneren Sinne fragment has named as its theme the problematic possibility of a cosmological apperception.13 We have traced the (“Making Sense out of Inner Sense,” ibid) treats the aspatiality of time as form of inner sense only as a theoretical desideratum, since the “impossible requirement of thinking of objects of inner sense (representations) as located in space,” would allow Kant to refute the skeptical idealist’s thesis that “there might be no outer sense but only inner sense combined with inferences from real inner perception to something external to us” (). For Zoeller, the denial of spatiality to inner sense is understood only in its critical acceptation, for its disallowing the skeptical idealists’ premise (). While valid, this identification of the critical exigence of Kant’s doctrine ignores its constructive exigence, and indeed the reason Kant was forced to extend his reflections upon the heterogeneity thesis and the refutation of idealism across the ’s. 12 “Heiraus ist zu sehen daß wir keinen inneren Sinn haben würden Daseyn nicht in der Zeit bestimmen könnten wenn wir keinen äußeren (wirklichen) sinn hätten und Gegenstände im Raume als von uns unterschieden uns vorstelleten” r –. 13 In “Kant on Cosmological Apperception” (International Philosophical Quarterly , pp. –), Baum approaches the heterogeneity thesis apologetically. Though “without going into further detail,” () Baum will nonetheless admit that “there is nothing permanent in inner intuition, no constans et perdurabile rerum (B )” (). However, or “on the other hand, it seems quite clear that Kant means” equally to assert the interdependence and interdeterminacy of inner sense and outer sense (ibid). Baum identifies “the elementary construction of drawing a line in space as the required spatial analogies of the intuition of time itself ” (). Baum will even assert that “time is the form of the apprehension of representations of things outside us” (), though for this reason will also admit to a certain “ambiguity” in Kant’s requirements for time as independent of, and time as interdependent with, spatiality (). In the face of this contradiction, Baum will retreat to a dependence thesis, indicating “the dependence of self-affection” in time “on affection by something else” as appears in outer sense (). Baum admitted, however, the “underivability of space from time,” since “in inner sense there is no permanence in time,” and “only in space is the permanence of something changing (a substance) possible” (). On this not unproblematic basis Baum will on Kant’s behalf attempt “to avoid the conclusion that permanence and duration can to attributed to the body only” in outer sense alone (). Thus, Baum will accept without argument that “the mind or soul as somehow [italics original] abiding for some period of time” in a relation of constancy (). In spite of this previous recognition of the heterogeneity thesis and the necessary aspatiality of time, Baum even holds that the term Weltwesen is “intentionally ambiguous,” as if ambiguity, or rather contradiction, were innocent or even a theoretical virtue (). This intentional ambiguity is to inscribe “an entity in the world,” in outer sense and “also an entity that has a world within itself ” in inner sense, as if this inner

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provenance of such an apperceptive principle to Kant’s exposition of the ‘cosmological idea’ in the first Critique. We have traced the dynamics treated herein in its name to their most systematic exposition in the Paralogisms. And we saw in that reconstruction that these dynamics both explicitly and implicity concern the theme of the character and capacities of inner intuition. In accordance with that construal, cosmological apperception is announced again in similar terms at v.  of the Leningrad Reflection. A “cosmological apperception” would propose an integration, invalid according to the letter of the first Critique, of time, the spatiality of outer intuition, and apperception within inner intuition as a totum. Here, then, Kant will think through the problematic implication of his insisitence upon the “divisio” of the heterogeneity thesis between time and space, and its consequent prohibition on a categorial attribution of spatiality to time qua form of inner sense. I would suggest, then, that we read the title of a ‘cosmological apperception’ as indicative of the ‘systematic unity in inner intuition’ that Kant had deemed ‘cosmological.’ I would suggest further that this necessary incompleteness within time, its aspatiality and indeterminability, has become for Kant himself a problem, rather than purely a resolution to the inherited ‘problem’ of rational-psychological and rationaltheological Seelenlehren. Cosmological ideas—which, as we have seen, “the first object of which am I myself, regarded merely as thinking nature (soul) (A , B )”—were established in the conclusion to the Paralogism chapter exclusively of the laws of intuition and cognition. The interdependence between intellection and intuition, within inner intuition, while a desire of reason and a quite natural ‘deception,’ was to be denied any synthetic and constitutive status and allowed only as a “regulative” concept or principle, as we have just reviewed. Such an idea was “not to be presupposed as if it were the actual basis of the soul’s properties.” For “we could not properly speaking cognize the soul” as such “in itself, through these assumed predicates, even if we wanted to allow

spatiality were unproblematic (). Thus, Baum will conclude that “Kant’s little system of inner sense and its form, time, takes this time as determined by two kinds of affection, from within and from without,” as if this interdependence were unproblematic (). Baum’s exposition is dogmatic rather than demonstrative; “the self as appearance and the world of outer appearances do not coexist separately. They are interconnected in the human being because its self-consciousness is at the same time consciousness of the world, cosmological apperception” (), apparently without any acknowledgment of the paralogistic status of Baum’s proposal of a unified form of intuition, and the ambiguous textual evidence upon which it is based.

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them to hold of the soul absolutely.” They necessarily “amount [only] to a mere idea, which cannot at all be presented in concreto,” according to the conditions of inner intuition (A , B ). Inner intuition was reduced to an absolute incapacity; “I remove not merely corporeal nature but nature as such,” Kant continued in that passage, but “all predicates of any possible experience.” In doing so, Kant removed “all conditions for thinking an object for such a concept.” By means of this divisio, Kant concluded, confidently, that “nature is twofold—either thinking or corporeal nature,” Körperlehre or Seelenlehre. On the basis of that divisio, Kant suggested that he was “exempt from any specific and long-winded further discussion of the transcendental illusion whereby the systematic unity of all manifoldness of inner sense is presented substantively” (A , B , note). In the language of Prolegomena § , we might say that “the field of the right use of cognition is distinguished with geometrical certainty from that of its worthless and idle,” and indeed impossible, employment. But while the tone of Kant’s presentation was confident, this complete and principled elimination of all representative capacity has become a theme not only for revisiting, as problematic, but for reforming. In our fragment, in the act of apperception deemed cosmological, “my existence is considered as a quantity [Große; magnitude] in inner sense” (“mein Daseyn als Größe in der Zeit betrachtet setzt mich in Verheltnis gegen andere Dinge die da sind waren und seyn werden,” v. –).14 In this

14 Nabert, in “L’expérience interne chez Kant,” in Revue de metaphysique et de morale , , pp. –, argues against the purely formal, intellective “Je pense” of the first Critique, and yet will criticize Kant for attempting to claim its synthetic status thereafter. For Nabert, the most general structural elements of the architectonic disallow the resolution necessary to the doctrine of inner sense. Nabert argues that the “I think” of the first Critique “n’est ni un phénomène (car un phénomène en tant qu’objet de l’intuition, impliquerait une détermination dans le temps par les catégories et, par suite, une conscience déterminée du moi), ni un noumène” and was for this reason atopical (). For Nabert, “Kant ne parvient pas, entre le moi inaccessible de l’apperception et le moi connu dans dans le sens interne, à justifier le sum du Cogito” (). Thus, “le problème de l’expérience interne porte sur la recherche des conditions qui rendent possible la connaissance du moi déterminé, c’est-à-dire du moi individuel dont les états, en relation définie de succession dans le temps, constituerait un objet distingué des autres objets de la nature, si on parvenait à les lier convenablement dans une expérience” (). Nabert will insist that “il n’y a pas de représentation ou de succession de représentations dont nous puissions avoir conscience sans qu’elle soit déterminée pas une des catégories de l’entendement” (). For this reason, Nabert would criticize the amplified, cosmological apperception of the Vom Inneren Sinne

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act, I appear to myself as “being in relation, and set over against, other existing objects” within inner intuition, its pure temporality, and mere successiveness. This is paralogistic or cosmological, since “simultaneity [Zugleichseyn] is not a real determination of percipiens” in inner sense. Simultaneity is valid only “of the perceptum,” of outer sense. Kant repeats the reason for the denial of simultaneity to inner sense; “simultaneity can only be represented in that which can be represented backward as well as forward” (“Zugleichseyn nur an dem vorgestellt wird was rükwerts [in Ansehung derVergangenen Zeit] eben so wohl als Vorwerts percipirt Werden kan welches nicht das Daseyn des percipientis seyn kan die nur successiv, d.i., vorwerts geschehen kan”). This apperception is cosmological and thus antinomial or paralogistic for its conflation of functions; magnitude is, of course, a determination of outer intuition, as is, more basically, the manifold of “other objects.” Instead, only “der Raum ist das Bewußtseyn dieser wirklichen Relation” of magnitude (r ). One’s situs temporis is determined by, and within the sphere of, inner intuition alone, and only through the spontaneity of our concepts, regulatively not constitutively. “One must distinguish,” Kant directs, the distinct and heterogenous principles evident within this cosmological apperception, on pain of the fallacy of an apperceptionis substantiatae.15 Kant will first differentiate pure apperception, as both logical and universal (v. ), from apperceptio percipientis. The latter is empirical and individuated, first-personal, and indicative of a purely subjective genitive. Apperceptiva percepti indicates not a first-personal and intuitive apperceptio but its universal and purely formal principle. This proposes not a subjective genitive but a “percepti” or object of intuition. The significance of these scholastic distinctions (not to my knowledge repeated in

fragment; “c’est en construisant rationnellement la science de la nature physique que le sujet acquiert aussi la connaissance de ses propres états” (–). Nabert notes that “de différencier une succession” in inner sense “d’une succession objective” in outer sense is “autre chose d’admettre une sorte de passage psychologique de la première à la seconde” and a unity in intuition (). Such a unity would resolve the problematic aspects of the heterogeneity thesis only by violating the stricture against the fallacy of subreption, and the pure temporality of inner sense. 15 Lachièze-Rey, (ibid), sets out the threefold distinction between the “moi sujet [of apperception], le moi intuitionné [in inner sense], le moi objet [of outer sense]” on p. , note. For discussion of the “charactère amphibologique” of this inclusive apprehension see p. , note.

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the Kantian corpus) is not patent.16 Their function, however, in the argumentative order of Kant’s exposition, is not utterly opaque.17 Pure apperception is and remains a formal and transcendental principle, representative of our spontaneity. Apperceptio percipientis proposes a subjective empirical relation analogous to inner intuition. Apperceptiva percepti proposes an objective empirical relation analogous to outer intuition. The sense of Kant’s distinction is best evinced not in terms of Kant’s Latin, however, but in terms of Kant’s argument. In this acceptation, Kant’s intention is clear. Kant’s insistence on the a posteriori and empirical character of inner sensory intuition is directed toward securing a determinate inner intuition of our representative state that avoids the determinacy of inner sense deemed “cosmological” in the Dialectic while yet responding to the need for a constitutive rather than regulative, and categorial determinability of inner sense.18 16

Zoeller (“Making Sense out of Inner Sense,” p. ), reads apperceptio percipientis as “apperception of the apperceiving” and apperceptio percepti as “apperception of the perceived” (). 17 Guyer reviews the important and thematically similar R  in Claims of Knowledge (p. ). There, Kant claims that problematic idealism “can be refuted by showing that the representation of external things must not lie merely in the imagination, but in an outer sense, because the form of representation in time would make possible no empirical consciousness of one’s existence in time, this no inner experience, unless supplemented with [the form of representation] in space (Ak , ).” Guyer suggests that the problem context for this fragment remains the refutation of idealism, and that “if we take the form of representation in time to consist simply of the successiveness of all representations in time (the manifold of inner sense, of which time is “ ‘nothing but the form,’)” that “constitutes a series of one dimension . . . the parts of which are always successive” [A , B –], “then this too implies that the mere fact of the successiveness of representations is not sufficient for empirical knowledge . . . ” (). This would establish the dependency thesis of the Refutation and the indeterminacy of inner intuition required for Kant’s critical argumentation. However, this would also negate of inner intuition the conditions required for Kant’s constructive argumentation, by which inner intuition must be able to contain within itself the materium given originally to outer sense, in order to perform the transitus by which such intuitions may be delivered to the understanding. This complex context escapes Guyer’s analysis; “although these remarks make clearer than the published text what Kant’s fundamental premise must be, our key question still remains: Why is the successiveness of consciousness insufficient for its own recognition, and why should spatial, let alone independent objects be necessary for this purpose? This question has haunted us since our discussion of Kant’s original theory of experience” (). See also the letter to Marcus Herz ( May , Briefweschel, II, XI, ), for Kant’s reflections on the fact that, epistemically, “the soul as object of inner sense cannot perceive its place within the body,” while, ontologically, “[the soul] is in the place in which the person is” (:). 18 As importantly, Kant differentiates Ich bin from the fully constituted, experiential or intuitive series “I was, I am, and I will be” (“ich war, ich bin, und ich werde”). This first

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Kant thereupon returns to the equally heterogenous relation between simultaneity and succession. Simultaneity pertains not to percipiens, but only to the perceptum, while succession pertains instead to the percipiens and not to the perceptum; “one can perceive only successively,” Kant clarifies (v. ).19 In each distinction, Kant continues to concern himself with determination of “I am” is, in inner intuition, “purely psychological” (Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, v. ). As ingredient within the fully constituted temporal series of inner intuition, however, “the act of determining my existence as a magnitude” therein, gegen andere Dinge and yet within the purely temporal form of inner intuition, can only be “cosmological” (v. –). The scope and status of the concept of magnitude is itself problematic. No attempt to address or resolve its intricacies may be made here; Kant introduces the concept in Vom Inneren Sinne only glancingly. Minimally, however, and in order to more fully determine the critical context for Kant’s intimation of the concept of a magnitude, the following contraindications would have to be addressed. Kant had asserted in the Aesthetic that it is only in space that “shape, magnitude, and mutual relation determined or determinable” (A , B ). Inner sense, Kant asserted, “never has the least magnitude” (A , B ). Apprehension as such “has no extensive magnitude” (A , B ). Kant had asserted in the exposition of the axioms of intuition, however, that “all appearances as intuitive are extensive magnitudes” and, in the second-edition revision, that “all intuitions are extensive magnitudes” (B ). Kant applied the concept of an “intensive” magnitude to the manifold of inner intuition in the synthetic principles. Inner sense “never has the least magnitude” since, in its temporality, “no parts are simultaneous, and all are sequential” (A , B ). The introduction of a ‘steady and orderly coherence’ or “permanence” to this inconstancy was a possibility-condition for the Anticipations of Perception a priori. For “solely through the permanent does sequential existence in different parts of the time-series acquire a [intensive] magnitude, called duration.” (A , B ). However, the “substratum” of all permanent determinations was there specified as the concept of substance. The attribution of a magnitude to the manifold of inner sense, if sufficient to the demands of synthetic cognition, would then risk the paralogistic apperceptionis substantiatae of B . 19 Beiser treats extensively and insightfully the Reflexionen from  to , and suggests that “the most important new point is the introduction of the concept of simultaneity to link the concepts of permanence and spatiality, whose connection was left obscure in the earlier proof.” See German Idealism: The Struggle Against Subjectivism, – (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, ), p. . against problematic idealism. Discussing such fragments as Gegen den (materialen) Idealism (R ), Widerlegung des problematischen Idealismus (R ), and Wider den Idealism (R ), Beiser notes that “it has often been objected against Kant that even if the recognition of change requires something permanent, there is no need that this permanent object be something in space” (–). Beiser notes that there “Kant now addresses this very point” (). For “the nub of his argument is that we can recognize something as permanent only through simultaneity, and that the awareness of simultaneity cannot be reducible to inner sense, the awareness of my representations in time” (ibid). For Beiser, “we recognize things to be simultaneous . . . only if it is possible for us to reverse the order of our perceptions, so that we can proceed not only forward from A to C but also backward from C to A. But if we are able to reverse the order of our perceptions, Kant then argues, that cannot be a function merely of inner sense, because all representations of inner sense are only successive” (). Beiser records that “the Reflexionen also help to clarify . . . the

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the contravening demands of independence and interdependence, of heterogeneity and homogeneity. While the intricacies of Kant’s Reflexion as well as his conclusion remain to be comprehended, the problem-context for this long-ignored and misunderstood fragment is now evident.20 Self-cognition consists in the self-determination of one’s own existence in time (v. –). This internally complex act, however, requires first that “I apprehend objects as standing over against me in time” (“ich Gegenstände in der Zeit apprehendire”) in accordance with the form of inner intuition. The self-determination claimed therein, however, of the I by the I as a determinate object in time, is only possible upon a certain precondition. I must “be able to be conscious a priori of myself as being in relation with outer objects” in a self-consciousness that is equally an outer intuition of objects (v. ). This must obtain “before even I can perceive these [objects]” within experience, in order that the anticipations of perception be established a priori. This interdependence of inner intuition and outer intuition must be secured a priori through a homogeneity in their formal structure.21 The noematic correlate of this apprehension of this Ich, over against its Gegenstände, is constituted by Gegenstände des Raumes (v. –). And these, again, stand in a relation of independence rather than interdependence to the form in which “I determine my own existence in time.” If it is transcendentally “necessary that I can be conscious of myself a priori in relation with other objects,” this necessity is not thus demonstrated as formally possible or actual. Nor, however, can this requisite interdependence in intuition and its characters be met by an apperceptive and intellective principle. For if this heterogeneity in intuition is reconciled through the obscure connection between inner and outer senses” and that this thematic concern “will later play a crucial role in the Opus Postumum” (). For Beiser, most insightfully; “there is a specific representation in question: that of my empirical self-consciousness, the representation of myself in time and as having a body” (). 20 Regarding Kant’s treatment of Zugleichsein (r –), Mohr complains that “la signification dans ce contexte n’est éclaircie par aucune explication dans le texte précédent. Avant tout, one ne sait pas dans quelle mesure ce terme peut ici justifier or expliquer quelque chose.” While for Mohr it is clear that “Kant utilise indèniablement l’idée d’existence simultanée comme point de depart de la justification de sa thése susmentionée,” it is not clear to Mohr why this Merkmal of intuition would be of any concern to Kant. 21 De Vleeschauwer notes “la reprise de l’Esthétique” in the later writings of the ’s (La déduction transcendentale, v. , ), and that “le texte [here the Fortschritte] annonce l’examen d’une affection par des objets externes ou internes” (). De Vleeschauwer specifies (pace Förster); “il n’est question dans la suite que de l’affection interne” (– ), since outer sense as such, both through the exposition of the first Critique and the Metaphysical Foundations, may be taken as unproblematic.

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regulative and formal function of a non-intuitive principle, only an analytic self-consciousness may result. Self-consciousness cannot become self-cognition if the manifold of inner sense does not offer a determinate manifold for synthesis. And yet without this synthetic relation of consciousness to its object, transcendental philosophy would reduce to transcendental logic, and self-cognition to self-consciousness. The wider question of the basis of synthetic a priori judgment, inclusive of intuition pure or sensible, would remain undemonstrated and undemonstrable.22 Kant returns to the question of priority and dependence. It is necessary, Kant explores, “that I infer from determinate spatial representations” the “self-consciousness of an existing individual” (“Existenz eines Einzelnen”), since such individuated intuitive self-cognition could not be gained from an indeterminate inner intuition. The self-determination of “one’s own existence” is formally dependent upon, and functionally posterior to, outer intuition.23 It is not the claim to the necessity of outer objects, however, but such objects’ inclusion within a heterogenous inner intuitive manifold, that remains problematic. Kant repeats this necessary and universal priority, as asserted in the Refutation of Idealism; selfaffection “presupposes necessarily an outer object (etwas äußeres; r ).24 22 In his important, though general, article “Did Kant Have a Theory of Self-Knowledge?,” Michael Washburn treats of Kant’s doctrine of Selbsterkenntnis, and for this reason suggests that “self-knowledge always remained a problem for Kant. He dealt with it on several occasions but never with complete success. It is something that he struggled with for years—indeed, to the very end of his career—without resolving to his own satisfaction” (). Washburn also intimates that “the problem of self-knowledge remained just that, a problem. We know that it because a problem for him by  at least; and there is every indication that it remained a difficult point to the very last (i.e., the Opus Postumum)” (). Baumanns identifies the problematic formal requirements for the Refutation of Idealism as the proper context for our understanding of the Reflexionen of the ’s and the Opus Postumum at p.  ff. This problem-context, as will be shown, concerns (pace Förster) “nicht der Konstitution der äußeren Erfahrung,” but “die Konstitution des empirischen Selbst und damit die Konstitution der inneren Erfahrung” (). 23 See also, for example, R , where Kant records that “in our inner sense our existence is determined in time . . .; in time, however, the representation of change is contained; change presupposes something enduring, in terms of which changes obtain; consequently, there must be something which endures, agaisnt which one can perceive change in time. This enduring thing cannot be our self, for precisely as object of inner sense we are determined through time; that which endures therefore can only be posited [gesetzt] in that which is given through outer sense. Thus the possibility of inner experience presupposes the reality of outer sense” (Ak , ). One could also have concluded; inner sense must contain spatiality and its conditions within itself. 24 The question of relative priority between inner sense and outer sense has been addressed in English by H. Robinson, in “The Priority of Inner Sense,” Kant-Studien,  (), –. This question is indeed difficult, and the textual evidence is ambiguous.

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Self-affection “is only possible through our apprehension of the representations of things that affect us” (r ). However, only “time is actually the form for the apprehension of representations” (die Zeit ist eigentlich die form der Apprehension der Vorstellungen; r ). The pure temporality of that sensible form renders problematic, both formally and functionally, the representation of the externality and spatiality of the objects that affect us. Kant does not subject to critique either (a) the priority, or (b) the actuality of outer sense. Nor does Kant subject to critique (c) our capacity to “receive” those objects in outer sense. With Kant, however, one may and indeed must subject to critique () the capacity of the first Critique architectonic to yield the possibility for an inner intuitive representation of the object of outer intuition.25 One may also subject to critique () But the question is not fundamental: the relative priority (or, here, relative “dependence”) of inner sense and outer sense, assumes already a positive resolution to their asserted independence, or heterogeneity. Nonetheless, Robinson has succeeded in directing attention to the doctrine of inner sense. In this, Robinson follows Guyer, who “does recognize (as many do not)” that Kant’s doctrine contains “a prima facie contradiction in need of resolution” (), and Allison, who, for Robinson, “recognizes the centrality of the concept of inner sense for an understanding of the Transcendental Philosophy” (). Robinson notes that inner sense does often appear to be derived from and dependent upon outer sense. For example, at, B, B, and B, one reads that “we need space in order to construct time, and thus determine the latter by means of the former . . .” Indeed, “we could have no inner sense and could not determine our existence in time if we had no outer (real) sense,” as Kant here claims, amplifying the Refutation of Idealism (LR I, – ). Reflexionen  and  could also be adduced. However, inner sense also appears to require and possess priority (see particularly B  and B ). The problem of reciprocal dependence is put well by Robinson, summarizing Allison; “how can the time of inner sense derive from outer sense where outer sense has properly speaking no time of its own except by virtue of inner sense?” (). Robinson suggests that “if time is originally a form of inner sense only, and outer objects nevertheless exhibit change, the time of this change must have come from inner sense . . . (which) supports the Inner-Priority Thesis” (ibid, ). Robinson will follow Allison, however, in his eventual adoption of apologetic strategies: “despite the central importance of the concept of inner sense for the Aesthetic, the Deduction, the Schematism, and the Analogies” (Robinson ignores the Dialectic), Kant “scarcely addressses it directly; the only explicit treatment I know of is in the Anthropology” (). 25 In order to more fully establish the context for Kant’s concern in the basic structure of the first Critique, we might helpfully review Kant’s brief depiction of the ‘Possibility of Causality through Freedom, Reconciled with the Universal Law of Natural Necessity’ at A , B . There, Kant discussed the role of the restrictive account of inner intuition in securing the desired claim to the indeterminability of the determining grounds of our cognitive and conative activity, our freedom, as he had indicated already in the Preface. On this exigence, “the acting subject [must] not stand under any conditions of time,” in order that it “not be subjected to the law of time-determination and of everything changeable” (A , B ). For changeability for Kant is tantamount to “the series of empirical conditions that make the event necessary in the world of sense,” in which case



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the capacity of that architectonic to yield the “transposition” of this outer object through inner sense to the understanding, and its discursive and conceptual, intellectual representation of that intuitive representation.26 The demand for interdependence must remain indexed to the demand for independence. And yet Kant does attain to a certain clarity regarding the aporia; “the difficulty lies precisely in that one cannot understand how an outer sense is possible” (r ). Though the actuality of outer sense is necessary and unquestioned, its possibility remains problematic. Outer

the sphere of our cognitive and conative activity, our intellectual spontaneity and ethical freedom, we be determinable by the causal laws of natural phenomena (A , B ). For this reason, the principled independence therefrom of the I qua subject must be secured, unless “the acting subject would as causa phenomenon, be linked up with nature” and submitted to its universal natural or causal laws. Inner intuition obtains as the center of these opposing forces of freedom and nature, as an intuitive form, thus ingredient in the explication of our sensible experience, and yet as that form which ranges over the inner, determining grounds that manifest our freedom and that must be restricted from the laws of sensible experience. Only in a single case do we encounter this difficulty. It is “only the human being, who otherwise is acquainted with all of nature solely through his senses, cognizes himself also through mere apperception,” i.e., “in actions and inner determinations that he cannot class at all with any impressions of the senses.” And “thus he is to himself on one hand phenomenon, and on the other, in regard to certain [inner] powers, a merely intelligible object, since his action cannot be classed at all with the receptivity of sensibility” (A , B ). 26 The Vom Inneren Sinne fragment, as Brandt has suggested, is indeed only one of a series of Kant’s reflections on the forms of intuition and their constitutive role in selfcognition after the second edition of the Critique. Guyer notes (Kant and the Claims of Knowledge, ) that the “surviving Nachlass indicates no fewer than ten lengthy fragments from the years  to  which in view of their titles, form, and content could only have been intended as improved versions of the argument first attempted in  and thus as efforts to fulfill the intentions of that argument.” Guyer directs attention to R – from October  (, –); R  (, ), also from the ’s; and R – (, –), and R  (, –), from  and  respectively. Guyer identifies the refutation of idealism as the thematic context for these extensive reflections, on the basis of the titles assigned by Kant in the unpublished notes; “Gegen den (materialen) Idealism (R ), Wieder den Idealism (R ), Widerlegung des problematischen Idealismus (R ), Wieder den Idealism (R ), Ueber den Idealism (R ), Vom Idealism (R ), Wieder den Idealism (R )” (). Guyer does not, however, sufficiently identify the problem-context (and hence the importance) for these reflections, in the doctrine of inner sense and its internal tensions. Guyer suggests only that “the assumptions of Kant’s two emendations of , the assumptions that there is a direct connection between the determination of time and spatial form and that there is a direct connection between the determination of time and the positing of enduring objects other than the self,” is incomplete (). Thus, Guyer construes only generally Kant’s attempt “to show how an argument for the thesis that we can know that there are objects independent of ourselves . . . can be reconciled . . . with his own transcendental idealism” ().

appendix



sense is to obtain a priori as an element of the cognitive faculty, and must be exhibited therein in accordance with the form of inner intuition. For “one must first represent to oneself the outer manifold before positing an object therein.” The representation of this manifold, prior to objective empirical experience, is necessary to the transcendental determination of the possibility of outer experience. Clearly, if “we did not possess an outer sense,” then “neither would we possess a concept of the external,” in a phrase repeated serially in the Reflexionen (r –).27 Spatiality is and can only be an intuitive presentation, and within sensibility can only pertain to outer intuition. However, this “something external,” which one must “find in space” itself, “cannot be derived from inner sense,” in which the faculty of cognition universally must be exhibited and determined (r –).28 This 27 See, for example, R ; “the matter of represetnations in space would not possibly occur in the mind without an outer sense. For the imagination can create a representation of the outer only if it affects outer sense . . . and there would be no material for external representations in the imagination if there were not an outer sense” (: ). R  attests similarly to such an innere Gewissenheit; “we are first object of outer sense to ourselves, for otherwise we could not perceive our place in the world and thus intuit ourselves in relation to other things” (:). 28 Claudio La Rocca dedicated his Soggetto e mondo; Studi su Kant (Marsilio Editori, Venezia, ) to the problem of the “rapporto tra soggetto conoscente e realtà esterna, oggetto conosciuto,” by means of the “tema del senso interno.” Before treating the “processo conoscitivo” (in ch. , ), La Rocca focuses on the character of inner sense itself, and concentrates his analysis (one of the most ample and the most articulate analyses of the document yet achieved) on the Leningrad Reflexion. His approach is far from critical; his intention is always to ask “come la sua teoria possa conservare coerenza” or, in the case of apparent aporiai, “ovvero quali conseguenze teoriche ulteriori ne scaturiscono” (). For La Rocca, “la chiave anche di questa costruzione teorica kantiana è contenuta nelle caratterizzazioni ‘formali’ di ‘interno’ ed ‘esterno’” (). This focus on the Merkmale allows La Rocca to note “la preliminarità di una esperienza esterna rispetto a quella interna . . . che ‘precede’ l’esperienza interna e forma l’orizzonte . . . ” (), since “un quid permanente esterno come condizione della autocoscienza empirica” (ibid). La Rocca also for “un primato del senso esterno sul senso interno” since “la permanenza [has] un carattere esclusivo di ciò che si dà nel senso esterno . . .” Indeed, recognizing the role of the heterogeneity thesis in this argument, La Rocca acknowledges that “il concetto di sostanza riemerge nel senso esterno, e solo in esso” (). La Rocca recognizes, then, that “il senso interno dovrebbe poter produrre da se’ le caratteristiche formali del senso esterno” while recognizing that “il tempo è unidimensionale, e non può dar luogo alla tridimensionalità dello spazio” (). Indeed, recognizing the role of the heterogeneity thesis in this argument, La Rocca acknowledges that “il concetto di sostanza riemerge nel senso esterno, e solo in esso” (). It is surprising, then, that La Rocca simply grants Kant’s claims to the “onnicomprensività del tempo come condizione di tutte le esperienze” (). La Rocca also grants a “primato del senso interno” in the Leningrad Reflexion, “dovuto appunto al fatto che esso costituisce una condizione formale a priori di tutte le apparenze in generale” ().



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exhibition “contains the condition for its [outer intuition] existence” and its proper function within empirical experience. All a priori elements of experience possess a transcendental basis and require a transcendental demonstration. However, the intuitive representation “of the external” cannot “correspond to my representation” as must obtain within the temporality of inner sense (r ).29 Kant states clearly herein both aspects of the aporia of inner sense. In spatial intuition alone can “one think the connection or relation of things which are distinct one from another” (r –). This relation must yet also “be grounded in” inner sense, however, if determinate and individuated self-cognition is to be possible.30 However, “this ground” has been made impossible, since inner sense “lacks any permanent element in the succession of representations (Der Grund dieses nicht für eine blos innere Bestimmung und Vorstellung seines Zustandes zu halten ist weil diesem das Beharrliche in dem Weschel der Vorstellungen fehlt)” (r –). Whether according to “inneren oder äußeren Bestimmungsgründe” [Kant’s emphasis], the “consciousness of our receptivity must obtain

29 Kant’s assertion of the priority of outer sense in the determination of one’s own existence is consistent, and yet not unequivocal. The reader will recall Kant’s assertion in the footnote to B ; “all principles for the determination of my own existence which can be found in me are representations,” which as such must obtain in inner sense. 30 Paton has noticed similar revisions throughout Kant’s unpublished reflections. Paton holds in view throughout his analysis (Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience, v. ) the requirement that time, or the temporality of inner sense, hold within itself all intuitive representations, as Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen, and thus incorporate within itself the spatial Merkmale of outer intuition. Paton suggests that “Kant’s notes on his own copy of the first edition of the Kritik (Erdmann, Nachträge LXXVII–LXXXIV, LXXX) show that at one time he intended to re-write the argument in terms of space (or of spacetime). Such re-writing could not be confined to the First Analogy—it obviously demands, for instance, a re-writings of the chapter on the schematism of the categories. Perhaps for this reason Kant changed his mind, and made the proof of the second edition rest, even more than that of the first, on the permanence of time. Nevertheless he indicates that the proof ought to bring in space as the permanent in time; for he takes our breath away by a later assertion that space alone is permanently determined, while time, and therefore everything in inner sense, is in constant flux!” (–). The sense of this reference to the inconstancy thesis, and indeed the most fundamental problem-context for Kant’s continued preoccupation with the relations between space and time qua forms of intuition, however, remained unclear to Paton. Paton will elsewhere, indeed, acknowledge the equal and opposite necessity. Having just affirmed Kant’s assertion of time qua permanence in the B-Edition, Paton admits that in the Refutation of Idealism, “Kant is assuming that in inner sense we have only a succession of ideas and nothing permanent to which the succession can be determined. This doctrine he holds consistently—it is indeed at the very root of his argument in the Paralogisms” (–). It must be admitted that Paton left altogether unresolved the contradiction between these two theses.

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

a priori,” in a formal intuition of the form of intuition. Without this consciousness, the a priori character of our sensibility would remain undemonstrated, and the anticipations of perception would remain impossible (r –). Kant centers his exposition on outer intuition a priori, without a demonstration of which our claim to wirklichen Warnehmungen of outer intuition rather than concepts would remain unjustified (r ). And yet from such a demonstration of outer intuition a priori, “one could derive no inner principle determining the faculty of representation” (r ). For “all that which is in space is represented as outside us.” Kant at this point breaks off his reflection, leaving in a state of aporia this fundamental formal requirement for the self-cognition of reason. Space, Kant recognizes, “cannot be derived from any inner grounds of determination (“keinen inneren Bestimmungsgruenden der Vorstellungskraft abgleitet werden kann”). Nor can spatiality be attributed to time, as form of inner sense, since (a) “everything about [such inner grounds; time and inner sense] would be represented as outside of us” (“alles an ihm als ausser uns vorgestellt”) and (b) because “it is impossible to think of our representations as existing and in space (“unmoeglich ist sich Vorstellungen im Raum existirend”). From this incapacity, Kant draws a conclusion. This conclusion consists of two propositions. The first consists in the assertion of an impossibility. The second consists in an assertion of a contravening, and impossible, necessity.31 First, and formally; “inner sense could never yield spatial representations (“der innere Sinn niemals [solche] Raumesvorstellungen geben koennte).” However, Kant recognizes that “this [spatiality of our inner representations] must nonetheless and necessarily obtain, since it must be at least possible [formally] to become conscious of such [spatial] representations as pertaining to inner sense” ( . . . welches gleich wohl muesste geschehen koennen weil es wenigstens moeglich seyn muss sich solcher vorstellungen als zim inneren Sinn gehoerig bewust zu werden; r –).

31 See also R ; “Every object signifies something distinct from the representation, which, however, is only in the understanding; thus inner sense itself, which makes of ourselves an object of our own representation, is related to something distinct [etwas . . . verschiedenes] from ourself (as transcendental object of apperception). If we did not therefore relate our representations to seomthing distinct from ourself,” as can only appear according to the capacity of outer sense, “they would never yield knowledge of objects” (Ak , ).



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The demonstration of this necessity is not claimed. Nor can Kant see how the demonstration of the formal possibility of this inclusion (of space within time as form of inner sense) could be achieved unproblematically on the basis of the transcendental topic of the first Critique. The Vom Inneren Sinne fragment evinces that Kant had recognized the aporetic character of his doctrine of inner sense (just as the Opus postumum will evince that Kant had undertaken to resolve this aporia).32 In

32 La Rocca, in Soggetto e mondo; Studi su Kant, sees the doctrine of inner sense as a principle of thematic continuity from (a) the Duisburgschen Nachlaß (–), to (b) the virtual sum total of the corrections to the second-Edition of the first Critique and the Refutation of Idealism, to (c) a long series of Reflexionen from the ’s (including R –, –, –, ) and (d) the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment (), to (e) the “conclusione non conclusa” that is the Opus postumum (). For La Rocca, however, Kant’s continual concern indicates only the following; “Kant non era soddisfatto della sua Confutazione dell’idealismo.” For La Rocca, Kant’s “continuo ritorno sugli stessi temi non sembrano dovute in questo caso al valore fondante di queste pagine per la filosofia critica,” except insofar as this is contained in Kant’s hope to “chiudere realmente lo ‘scandalo della filosofia’ consistente nella mancanza di una dimonstrazione decisiva dell esistenza delle cose esterne” (–). While it is no doubt true that Kant’s preoccupation with inner sense across the ’s is inseparable from this ‘scandal,’ this does not imply that Kant’s concern is reducible thereto. Might Kant’s admittedly continual concern not point to a ‘founding value,’ and a problem of still greater importance? Does not the internal tension that inner sense contains within it—the antinomy between a positive and a negative construal—reflect the most basic aspirations of the first Critique, to set out both the nature, and the limits, of possible appearance, and therefore experience? Doesn’t the ‘satisfaction’ that Kant promised to the transcendental philosopher, as an incentive in order to abandon pre-critical, metaphysical and theological depictions of the nature and limits of possible appearance, wait upon such a resolution as well? La Rocca is correct that “il frammento Vom inneren Sinne rappresenta . . . una sorta di cerniera tra la tematica della confutazione dell’idealismo e la Selbstsetzungslehre dell’Opus postumum (), just as he is correct in noting that, in the latter, “le condizioni dell’autocoscienza sono mutate” (). The identification of the aporia of inner sense will allow us to return to Kant’s Opus, in future publications, with a clear thematic horizon and context already established. But it is our further thesis that Kant’s continual concern with the doctrine of inner sense—and its subsequent transformation in the Opus, in which Kant resolves the doctrine of inner intuition to its positive exigence—is justified precisely because it concerns a ‘fundamental value’ of transcendental idealism. As such, this same theme will contextualize for our subsequent addresses not only of the theoretical philosophy of Kant’s transcendental idealism, but of the historical development that this opened up, and that we inherit. I hope to show that several prominent post-Kantian theories of cognition—idealist (Fichte, Schelling), phenomenological (Michel Henry), and rational theological (Maréchal)—have explicitly critiqued Kant’s doctrine of inner sense, and have amplified on this basis, and not without right, the latter’s understanding of the nature and limits of possible experience. In the latter acceptation, the aporia of inner sense provides a key not only to Kant’s theroetical philosophy and its development, but to the subsequent development of prominent figures within post-Kantian theory of knowledge as such, both idealistic and phenomenological.

appendix



other words, by tracing out the various appearances of the doctrine of inner sense in the first Critique, we comprehend its centrality within the architectonic structure of Kant’s theoretical philosophy. By naming and presenting both the amplified and the restrictive construals thereof—and by showing the way in which each supports a basic argumentative intention of Kant’s; either to deduce the ‘nature’ of genuine synthetic cognition through the amplified construal of inner sense or to expose the ‘limits’ of synthetic cognition against Seelenlehren through the restrictive construal of inner sense—we comprehend these construals as variant or antinomial. This interpretive desideratum both illuminates the structure of the first Critique, but also provides context for the historical development represented in the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment. The latter allows us to glimpse Kant’s own recognition of the character and effects of this aporia. This recognition encourages a renewed reflection upon Kant’s late revisions of the critical period theoretical philosophy, just as it encourages reflection upon the post-Kantian development of transcendental idealism in, e.g., Fichte and Schelling. It also encourages a return to the first pages of this work. Therein, we recorded Kant’s epochal call, in the first-edition Preface, to a self-cognition of reason (Selbsterkenntnis der menschlichen Vernunft). Reason’s structure was to be “articulated completely and systematically,” through “a determination of the sources, range, and bounds of reason” (A viii). This result, a transcendental topic of the cognitive faculty, was to generate a thoroughgoing ‘satisfaction’ (A xvi). This systematicity, we recall, was to replace the dissatisfaction and necessary incompleteness that issued from pre-critical, metaphysical and theological “programs.” Kant’s claim to provide for a thorough ‘satisfaction’ of the demands, and aspirations, of reason—his assertion that “there should not be a single metaphysical problem that has not been solved here . . . ”—can now be shown to be unsupported (A xii). So, too, is Kant’s negative intention— “the destruction of the most highly extolled and cherished delusions” of metaphysics and theology—left without support (A xiii). And both desiderata—the former, positive claims and the latter, negative claims— remain unsecured precisely because of the antinomial doctrine of inner sense. Our exegesis of the Vom Inneren Sinne fragment has illustrated this tension. The satisfaction of Kant’s positive intention requires an amplified construal of the character and capacities of inner intuition, while the satisfaction of Kant’s negative intention—to make impossible the “ascent”



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from objects of experience to the subject of experience or soul, and from “the simple nature of the soul” to “the necessity of a first beginning of the world” (A xiv)—requires a contravening, restrictive construal of the character and capacities of inner intuition. Our own recognition of this tension allows us, however, to introduce clarity into Kant’s many, mutually contradictory, assertions regarding inner intuition. We may take away from our engagement of Kant’s doctrine a conviction in its incomplete, and perhaps incompletable, character. We may also take away from this engagement an ability to trace this, its ongoing problematicity, to the doctrine of inner sense. Nonetheless, Kant’s intention to effect a thoroughgoing Selbsterkenntnis der menschlichen Vernunft remains compelling. Indeed, Kant’s hope for such a self-knowledge—a satisfaction of, and in, self-consciousness—will continue to characterize post-Kantian philosophy. But it will no longer be sought for, and found, in the labyrinth that is Kant’s critical philosophy itself. Its structure, and strictures, will be subject to critique by a series of figures (from, e.g., Fichte and Schelling to Michel Henry), often with a remarkable focus upon the problematicity of the doctrine of time as form of inner sense. While such figures may appear less prominently than does Kant in standard histories of modern philosophy, their contributions—once contextualized and clarified—may offer a novel history of post-Kantian philosophy, and therefore a novel comprehension of ourselves, as its inheritors. As importantly, they may also offer unanticipated insights into the unresolved questions of the nature and limits of possible experience, and the variety of possible relations between philosophy, metaphysics, and theology.

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INDEX Adamson, R., n Adickes, E., n Allison, H., n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –, n Ameriks, K., –n, n, – n, n, n aporia of inner sense formal aspect of, –, –, n, , ,  functional aspect of, –, , – , n, n, , –, n, , , , – , – apprehension, , , , , , –,  apperception cosmological, , – inner sense and, –, n, ,  intuition and, –, , – ,  logical status of,  “Paralogisms” and, , n,  pure and empirical,  synthetic status of,  unity of, , , , ,  Aquila, R., –n, – n, n, –n Aristotle, n,  Arnold, E., n Augustine, n Balfour, A., n Barale, M., n, n Baum, M., n, n, n, n, –n Baumanns, P. on inner sense, , n, n, n, n, 

on interdependence thesis, n, –n on Kant’s latter works, n on pre-critical works, n on time, n, n Beck, J.S.,  Beck, L.W., n, n, n, n, n Becker, Wolfgang, n, n, n Beiser, F., –n, –n, –n, n, n, –n Bennet, J., n, n, n, n Benoist, J., , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –n Berkeleyan idealism,  Böhme, G., n Bourgeois, B., n, n, n Brandt, R., n, n, n Buchdahl, G., n, n Buroker, J., n Caird, E., , n, n Carl, W., n Cartesian idealism. See Descartes Cassirer, E., n, n Cassirer, H.W., – categories inner sense and, ,  intuition and, , , ,  outer sense and, ,  characteristic marks (Merkmale), n, n, n, n, n, , n, –, , n, , n, , , , , , , n, , n, n, n



index

Chenet, F.X., n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –n, n, – n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n cognition a priori, , n, , , , – elements of, , , , , ,  experience and,  inner intuition and, , ,  intellective element of,  judgment and, – limits of, , n, , , ,  objects of,  sensibility and, , ,  synthetic, , , , , , , , , , , ,  Cohen, H., n Cramer, K., n Critique of Judgment, n, , , , –, n, n Critique of Pure Reason first-edition Preface, , – inner sense exemplified in,  relation of first and second editions, , –, –,  second-edition Preface, –, , n, , , , , , , n structure of, –n,  See also section and chapter titles Cusa, Nicholas of, n, n Dahlstrom, Daniel, n Deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding first edition, –, , – , , , , , ,  second edition, –

inner intuition in, –, ,  Deleuze, Giles, n, n, n, n Descartes, Rene, n, –, , n, , n,  De Vleeschauwer, H.J., , , – , n, n, , n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n doctrine of sensibility (sinnenlehre), , , , n, , –, , , –, ,  Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, n Eberhard, J.A.,  Eckhart, Meister, n Erdmann, Benno, n Ewing, A.C., n, n, n, n, n, n experience a priori conditions of,  intuition and, ,  sources of, – Falkenstein, L., , n, n Ferrarin, A., , , –n, – n, –n, n, – n, –n Fichte, J.G., , , n, , n, , , , , n, –  Fischer, K., n, –n figurative synthesis, n, – , –, n,  Förster, E., n Franzwa, G., n freedom ethical and epistemic, n,  necessity and, , n,  practical philosophy and, n Friedman, M., n formal intuition, – Gendlin, E.T., n Geometry, , –, , , 

index German Idealism, , , n, – n, , – God, , , n, n, – Guyer, P., –n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –n, –n, n, n, –n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Haering, T., n Havet, J., n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –n, n, n, n, n, n Heidegger, , , –, –n, n, n Heidemann, D., –n Heidemann, I., –n Heimsoeth, H., n Heinemann, F., n Henrich, D., n, n, n Henry, Michel, n, , n, n,  Herz, Marcus, n heterogeneity thesis, –, , – , n, , n, , n, n, –, , , –, , , n, n, , n, n, –, –, n, n, –, –, , , –, n, , , , n homogeneity thesis, , –, –, , n Husserl, Edmund, , n, n



Ideal of Pure Reason anti-Thomist character of,  critique of Gotteslehre, ,  objective reality and, n ideality thesis, , , –, –, , , –, –, ,  imagination inner sense and, , , , n, n intuition and, n, –n, –, , ,  mediating role of, –, ,  outer sense and, , , n understanding and, , n immediacy thesis, n, – Inaugural Dissertation, n, n, n, n,  inclusiveness thesis, ,  individuality thesis, n inner intuition amplification of, , –, , – aporia of, , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , n, , , –, , –, –, , , n, , n, – apperception and, –, , –, ,  aspatiality of, , , –, , , , – a priori character of, ,  categories and, , , , ,  contravening demands upon, ,  impermanence of,  in the Three Syntheses, , –  in the Synthesis of Apprehension, , – in the Synthesis of Reproduction, , –



index

inner intuition (Continued) in the Synthesis of Recognition, – in Analytic of Principles,  in Schematism, – in Axioms of Intuition, ,  in Anticipations of Perception, ,  in Analogies of Experience, – , –; in first analogy, –, ; in second analogy, , –, –; in third analogy, –,  in critique of rational psychology, –, –, –, – as heterogeneous to outer sense, , , –, , ,  as indeterminable by categories,  As impermanent, , –, – in Refutation of Idealism, –  as aspatial; , , ; as inconstant; , , –, –; as indeterminable; , – , –, , ; as identical with outer sense; , –, –; as dependent upon outer sense; , , , ,  in the Amphiboly of Concepts of Reflection, – limitations of, , , –, – manifold of, , , , – , , , ,  negative and positive intentions,  outer intuition and, , , –, –, , , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , , , n, –, n

passivity of, ,  permanence and,  philosophy of religion and, , –n psychology and, –, , –  pure, ,  restriction of, , , , , n structure of human cognition and, , ,  successive, , ,  time and, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  inner sense. See inner intuition intellect, , , , , –, –, , , , , , , ,  intuition a priori, n, , , –,  cognition and, , ,  concepts and,  division of,  empirical, , , , ,  forms of, , ,  heterogeneity in, , ,  homogeneity in,  ideality of, – imagination and, –,  intellection and, , –, , , , , , ,  laws of, , , – manifold of, , , ,  passivity of, ,  positive role of,  priority of, , ,  pure, , , , , , , , – recognition and,  understanding and, , , ,  unity of, , ,  See also inner intuition See also outer intuition

index Jacobi, F.H.,  judgment dynamical, n inner sense and, , – n intuition and, ,  mathematical, , n mediate character of,  ordo cognoscendi and,  outer intuition and,  priority thesis and,  synthetic, , , , , , n, , n, , , , , , –, , ,  understanding and,  Kant, I. correspondence of, n, n, n recognition of aporia of inner sense, , , –,  Kaulbach, F., –n, n Kemp Smith, N., n, n, m, –n, n, n, n Kitcher, P., n, –n Knothe, P., n Lachièze-Rey, P., , n, n, n, –n, n, –n, n, n, n, –n, n, n, –n, , n,  Lambert, n, n La Rocca, C., n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n Lehmann, G., n, n, n Leibniz, G.W. idea of clarity,  Kant’s critique of, , , n, n, –, , –  on time, n



pre-established harmony, n, , , , n logic transcendental, –, n general, , ,  lack of advancement,  status of system,  Longuenesse, B., , n, – n, –n, n, n, n, n, n, n Lotz, J.B., n Maimon, Salomon, ,  Malebranche, , n, , n, , , n, , n, n Maréchal, J., n, n mathematics, n,  Mathieu, V., , n, n Meier, Georg Friedrich, n Melnick, A., n, n, n Mendelssohn, Moses, , n, n Merkmale. See characteristic marks Mohr, Georg, n, – n, , , n monadology,  Monzel, A., n, n Moreau, J., n, –n, n, –n, n,  Nabert, Jean, n, n, n, n, n, n, – n, n, n, n, n, –n, –n neo-Aristotelianism,  neo-Platonism, , n, n Opus Postumum, , , n, , n, n, n, n, n, , , n, n, n,



index

Opus Postumum (Continued) n, –n, , n, n, n order of cognition (ordo cognoscendi), –, n, –, n, , , n, , , , n, n, , n, , , , ,  outer intuition cognition and, ,  external reality and, , , ,  geography and physics,  individuation and, n,  inner sense and, , –, – , , , , , , , –, , , , , n, –, n pure concepts of understanding and,  representation and,  self and, n space and, , , , , , , , , ,  outer sense. See outer intuition “Paralogisms” anti-Platonic argumentation of,  first paralogism, –,  fourth paralogism, – heterogeneity thesis and,  inner sense in, n, , , n, , , , , ,  limits of cognition,  misinterpretation of,  purpose of,  second paralogism, –, ,  third paralogism, – transcendental ideas,  passivity thesis, , , , , , , , , n,  Paton, H.J. critique of Kant, , , n, n, –n

heterogeneity thesis, n, n inner sense, n, n, n, n, n, –n on Kant’s ordo cognoscendi, n on Kant’s unpublished work, n on “Refutation of Idealism”, n, n, n philosophy of religion, , n physics, , ,  Pippin, Robert, –, n, n, n, n,  Pozzo, G., n Prauss, G., n Prichard, H.A., n priority thesis, , , , –, – , , n, , n, , , –, , n, , n, , n, , – , – Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, –n, n, – n, n, n, , n, n, , n,  Radamaker,F., n, n Rational Psychology empirical psychology and,  heterogeneity thesis and, – impossibility of, n, , , –, , , ,  rational theology and, , , , ,  soul as object of, , –, n, , , n Refutation of Idealism inner intuition in, , n, n, , , , n, n, , –,  outer intuition in, n, ,  Reinhold, K.,  Reininger, R., n, n, n, n, n, –n

index representations apperception and,  cognition and,  inner sense and, , n intuitive, ,  of the mind, –,  sensibility and,  universal form of,  Reuter, P., n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, –n, n, n, n Robinson, H., n, n, –n Rohs, P., n Rosen, S., n Rousset, B., n, n, n Schelling, F.W.J., , , , , , , n, – Schopenhauer, A., n Schrader, G., n Schulze, G.E., , n,  Schwaemerei,  Seelenlehre. See soul, doctrine of Sidgwick, H., n Sinnenlehre. See doctrine of sensibility Soul, doctrine of (seelenlehre) amplification of inner sense and,  concept of the I as, , –, –,  critique of, –, , –, , n, n, , , , , , , , ,  heterogeneity thesis and, – inner sense and, , , n, , n, , , , ,  Körperlehre and, , , n neo-Platonic account of,  rational psychology and, –, , , , ,  simplicity of, , , n,  substance and, , , , 



space as an object,  transcendental and metaphysical expositions of, – form of intuition, , , ,  permanent,  time and, , –, , , –, n,  unity of,  Stark, W., n Strawson, P.F., n, n, n, n Sturma, D., n, n, n, n Swedenborg, Emanuel, n,  Swing, T.K., n Tetens, Johann Nicholas, n, n thing-in itself appearance and,  ideality thesis and,  impossibility for cognition,  time amplification of, ,  as a line, ,  as form of inner sense, , , , ,  as form of intuition,  as universal representation (Inbegriff aller Vorstellungen), –, n, n, –, n, n, n, n, , n, –, – , , , –, , , , , , n, , n, n, n, , , , , ,  characteristics of, see Merkmale transcendental and metaphysical expositions of,  space and, , –, , ,  Transcendental Aesthetic aporia of inner sense in, , , 

 Transcendental Aesthetic (Continued) General Comment upon,  inner intuition in, , , , ,  organon for theoretical philosophy, , , , –, – n outer intuition in, ,  second edition amendments to,  sensibility in,  Sinnenlehre in,  space in, – theses of, , – time in, , , n Transcendental Analytic inner sense in, , , , , , ,  space, n Transcendental Aesthetic and,  Transcendental Dialectic and, – Transcendental Dialectic heterogeneity thesis and,  inner intuition in, , , , , , –, ,  logic of illusion,  outer sense in, ,  rational psychology in, ,  spiritualism and skepticism in,  synthetic principles in,  Transcendental Analytic and, –,  Transcendental Logic Transcendental Aesthetic and,  priority of intuition in,  transcendental philosophy,  Tuschling, B., n

index understanding (faculty of) as active, ,  concepts of, , , –, , , n inner sense and, ,  intuition and, , , –, , , , , , , n, – restriction of,  spontaneity of, – synthetic activity of, , , , ,  Vaihinger, H., –n, n, n, n Van Biéma, E., n Van Cleve, J., n, n, n Vom Inneren Sinne fragment cosmological apperception, –  inner sense and, n, , – , n, –n,  Kant’s development and, , , n,  Opus Postumum and, n,  transition to, n Walker, n Ward, K., , n, n Washburn, M., n, n, n, n Waxman, W., –, n, n, ,  Weldon, T.D., , , n, n Weltwissenschaft,  Windelband, n Wolff, C., , , n, n Wood, Allen,  Zoeller, G., n, –n, n