1.

Apperception and the Individuality of Space and Time1

by

Wayne Waxman

For Kant, intuition is an immediate representation whose object is always an individual,

and since, in his view, the only way our minds are capable of representing anything immediately

is with the senses, he admitted no individuals but objects of the (outer and inner) senses.2 This is

not to say that universals (concepts, judgments) are never involved in the representation of

individuals, for Kant held that where intuitions have cognitive value, they almost invariably are:

whether a number, a shape, a physical object, or a mind enduring through time, concepts are no

less as essential than intuitions. The only exceptions are the pure intuitions of space and time of

the Transcendental Aesthetic: though individuals in the full cognitive sense, Kant left no doubt

that universals contribute nothing to their representation.

1I employ the standard abbreviations: A--/B-- (Critique of Pure Reason), CPrR (Critique of Practical Reason), CJ
(Critique of Judgment), PFM (Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics), L (Logic), and AA (Akademie Ausgabe).
In addition, I shall refer to my own books on Kant using the abbreviations KMM (Kant’s Model of the Mind: A New
Interpretation of Transcendental Idealism, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991) and UU (Kant and the
Empiricists. Understanding Understanding, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
2The only possible exception is the I think, an existence given through an indeterminate perception to thought in
general, and so not to sensibility (B422-3n). But is it a true individual? The representation has no content (no
 2.

Like other individuals, space and time contain their manifold immediately within them (and

not, like universals, under them, as instances). What makes their individuality unique is that they

precede and make possible everything in them, not vice versa (as wholes that are sums of their

parts). Indeed, Kant’s primary concern in the Transcendental Aesthetic was to establish that

space and time, as individuals in this sense, are a priori principles of sensible intuition: no space

is possible except in and through the (limitation of the) one presupposed space, and no time

except in and through the (limitation of the) one presupposed time. As such, pure space and time

are “essentially one” (A25/B39; also A31-2/B47): impossible multiply to instantiate, impossible

to resolve into multiple component parts. And, alone among intuitions, this unique, all-

containing individuality owes its necessary uniqueness to sensibility alone, without depending in

any way on concepts to impose restrictive rules that would otherwise be lacking (such as the

uniqueness of the intuition prescribed by the concept “is a whole number between 2 and 4”).

In my paper, I shall argue that the special individuality Kant attributed to the pure space

and time of the Aesthetic needs to be understood as a prediscursive expression of the same

original synthetic unity of apperception that finds discursive expression in the synthetic unity he

equated with nature and traced to the synthetic a priori judgments in which the categories are

predicated of appearances.3 Since my interpretation makes understanding, in its guise as faculty

of apperception, a condition of the possibility of the pure intuitions of space and time, it may be

thought incompatible with Kant’s express denial that concepts enter into the pure intuitions of

space and time. In response, I will argue that this objection draws its seeming force from the

mistaken belief that the pure concepts of the understanding (the categories) are necessary, rather

manifold) and so not object is given in it. Its indeterminacy would thus seem to include its status with regard to
individuality.
 3.

than merely sufficient, conditions for unity of apperception. There is ample textual evidence to

show that apperception is the ground of the categories rather than vice versa, and that

apperception is a more fundamental unity than that of either the categories or the logical

functions of judgment. My interpretation thus does no more than recognize that unity of

apperception is also more fundamental that the unity of pure space and time, so that, in supplying

the unity/individuality whereby “space and time are first given as intuitions” (B160n), the

understanding operates nondiscursively, without help from the categories or any other concepts.

Finally, I show that the role of understanding in producing pure intuitions of space and time is

not only consistent with but indispensable to the attainment of Kant’s objective in the

Transcendental Deduction of demonstrating that appearances conform a priori (universally and

necessarily) to the categories.

A. The individuality of space and time as original apperception

What evidence is there, above all in the Critique, that pure space and time are as much

products of the spontaneity of imagination and understanding as the receptivity of sensibility?

Most Kant specialists would probably say that the textual case in favor of such a reading falls

well short of compelling, either because the available evidence is unclear and insufficiently

detailed to permit one to form a definite view of any kind on this matter or because the claim that

imagination and apperception are just as essential to pure intuition and its manifold as sense is

contradicted by the text. The first reason is the more compelling since there is no denying that

Kant said far less about pure intuition and its manifold than he did about the categories and other

elements of cognitive understanding, and what he did say remains notoriously elusive. Yet,

3I use the term ‘prediscursive’ in contrast to Kant’s notion of discursivity as representation by means of universals
(concepts judgments). Prediscursive representation thus excludes neither sense nor imagination and, as I shall
 4.

militating against the temptation to play it safe and disregard Kant’s call to think through the

meaning of pure sensible intuition for ourselves rather than read the Critique like a dictionary

(Discovery 223) is the fact that one’s understanding of the key notions of Kant’s theory of

cognitive understanding can only be as good as one’s understanding of all the contents that enter

into them, including the manifold of pure intuition. Pure concepts of the understanding are “first

given” when the pure synthesis in imagination of the a priori manifold of sense is represented

universally (A78/B104) and such concepts explicate the categories (“The form of judgments

transformed into a concept of the synthesis of intuitions produced the categories that guide all

employment of the understanding in experience,” A321/B378). Apperception, regardless of

whether the synthetic or analytic unity is meant, always begins with the manifold of intuition

supplied ahead of all concepts (B132); and since apperception, insofar as it is to take place a

priori must incorporate a manifold of intuition that originates a priori as well, one can only

understand what apperception is by first understanding pure intuition and its manifold. And the

contribution of sensibility to the transcendental schemata and principles of pure understanding is

too obvious to need emphasizing. Clearly, then, to the extent one’s understanding of the

manifold of pure intuition and the other elements of Kant’s theory of sensibility is deficient, so

too must be one’s comprehension of the notions at the heart of Kant’s theory of cognitive

understanding.

Of course, if the texts necessary to interpret Kant’s theory of sensibility with clarity,

precision, and a high degree of confidence really are lacking, then it is pointless pretending

otherwise. But there is another possibility to consider: rather than a dearth of texts, what instead

may be wanting is the conceptual foundation needed to recognize relevant texts for what they are

and put them to effective interpretive use. The prediscursive sensible given is no longer a

argue, even the understanding in a certain guise.

 5.

fashionable topic in philosophy and is commonly dealt with in cursory terms (if at all), even in

many works devoted to the interpretation of Kant and other early modern philosophers. But after

the passage of so much time and so many radical shifts in philosophical thinking, how confident

can we be that our understanding of it is sufficiently developed to comprehend a conception as

subtle and variegated as the one informing Kant’s explication of space and time as pure sensible

intuitions? Surely it is possible that the significance of even some of the most familiar texts

escapes us simply because the questions and challenges they were crafted to address have

receded too far from contemporary philosophical consciousness.

Another source of opposition to the interpretation of pure intuition and its manifold as

products of spontaneity is the widespread belief that apperception is founded on the categories

and so is intrinsically discursive. Since Kant left no doubt that the pure space and time of the

Transcendental Aesthetic are in no way beholden to discursivity (A24-5/B39 and A31-2/B47),

this assumption, if true, would imply that their unity/individuality cannot be apperceptual. The

assumption is, however, belied by Kant’s express assertions that the unity of apperception is

more fundamental than the unity thought in the categories or the logical functions of judgment

(B131; also B133-4) and that apperception is the ground of the categories, not vice versa (A401).

Since the logical functions in particular are essential to discursive understanding (representation

by means of universals), for him to characterize apperception as a more fundamental unity than

the logical functions means, at the very least, that one cannot simply take it for granted that

apperception is discursive not just in some but all its guises and is so essentially.4 In particular,

there was nothing to prevent Kant from supposing that this unity enters into the pure intuitions of

4The only discursive representation that does not intrinsically involve the logical functions of judgment is the I
think. But the I think, as an analytic unity of apperception, is preceded and made possible by a synthetic unity of
apperception that forms out of intuitions alone (B132-4). It is this synthetic unity, at least in its original
 6.

space and time of the Aesthetic. Why he would have found it necessary to posit two distinct

(synthetic) unities of apperception, a prediscursive (space and time) as well as a discursive

(nature), will be touched on briefly at the end of this paper. For the present, it suffices to

recognize that there is in fact no textual impediment to equating the unity of the manifold in pure

space and time – the prediscursive individuality essential to their status as intuitions – with

(instances of) the original synthetic unity of apperception.

What would count as textual confirmation that this is indeed the case? The best evidence

would be an explicit, unambiguous statement that the unity of space and time as individuals is

both original and synthetic, where there can be no question that unity of apperception is meant.

The text should also specify that the space and time in question are those of the Transcendental

Aesthetic and leave no doubt that the unity/individuality at issue is the same as the one exhibited

in the metaphysical expositions (A22-5/B37-40 and A30-2/B46-8). And it should occur nowhere

but in the course of the subjective deduction of the categories since this is the one text in which

Kant made it his business to penetrate as far as possible into the subjective foundations of pure

understanding (thought) itself (Axvi-xvii).

We find just such a text in §17 of the B edition Transcendental Deduction, a section

specifically concerned with apperception as the foundation of “the very possibility of the

understanding” (B137) – the topic of the subjective deduction. It opens with what seems like a

contrast between space and time and the original-synthetic unity of apperception: the former are

principles of the possibility of intuition in relation to sensibility, the latter the principle of the

possibility of intuition in relation to the understanding. Evidently concerned to prevent his

readers from inferring from this that space and time do not therefore involve unity of

prediscursive guise, that, on my reading, is manifested in the pure space and time of the Transcendental Aesthetic:
see UU ch 3-E.
 7.

apperception in their capacity as principles of the possibility of intuition in relation to sensibility,

Kant attached the following footnote:

Space and time and all their parts are intuitions, hence individual
representations with the manifold they contain in them (see the Transcendental
Aesthetic), not mere concepts through which one and the same consciousness is
contained in many representations but many contained in one and in the
consciousness of that one, and thus as composite; consequently, unity of
consciousness that is synthetic yet also original is met with in them. This
individuality of space and time is important in application (see §265). (B136n)

If commentators tend to pass over this passage in silence, it is not because it is ambiguous,

obscure, or otherwise confusing.6 It explicitly concerns the space and time of the Aesthetic,

particularly the portion of the metaphysical expositions concerned to exhibit space and time as

intuitions by showing that they are individuals that contain their manifold within them rather than

universals (concepts) that contain their manifold under them (esp. B40 but also A24-5/B39 and

A31-2/B47-8). So, when Kant proceeds to declare that the unity of the manifold in these

individuals is an original synthetic unity of consciousness, there is nothing whatever to suggest

that he was referring to mathematical, empirical, or any other space and time than the

prediscursive pure intuitions of the metaphysical expositions. And since the B136 footnote is

appended to a remark about the original-synthetic unity of apperception, no one can reasonably

doubt that the original synthetic unity of consciousness described in it is that very unity of

apperception.

While one can interpret the original synthetic unity attributed to the pure space and time of

the Aesthetic in different ways, I can see no plausible construal of B136n that does not begin

5Though the original refers the reader to §25, I have altered it for reasons that will be made clear shortly.
 8.

with the acknowledgement that it was Kant’s considered view that the unity/individuality of the

space and time of the Aesthetic are apperceptual in nature. Yet, to concede this also obliges one

to grant that he understood apperception to encompass the unity not only of pure concepts of the

understanding and logical functions but of prediscursive pure intuition as well.

Implications such as this, whether recognized explicitly or not, most likely account for

commentators’ near total neglect of B136n. Rather than prejudice or preconception, it seems to

me to exemplify how failing to give sufficient thought to the problem of the prediscursive

sensible given can prevent us from understanding why Kant, coming after Berkeley and Hume,

might have found it necessary to treat the unity of sensibility as no less a construct of the active

(synthesizing, unifying) mind than the unity of material and thinking beings in nature Kant

ascribed to the understanding and its pure concepts.7 In any event, once attuned, one

immediately notices other passages in both versions of the Transcendental Deduction similar in

import to B136n. A pure synthesis of apprehension in imagination is essential because “without

it we could have the representations neither of space nor of time a priori” (A99). Apperception,

in particular, is expressly said to enter into “the pure form of intuition in time, merely as intuition

in general that contains a given manifold” (B140). And this, when read in conjunction with

B136n (understanding ‘concept’ only as an enumeration of the marks that pertain to

6For a detailed discussion of commentary on this and other texts examined in this chapter, see KMM ch 2. The
difference between my treatment of these texts here and in my earlier book is that I am focusing on the role of
understanding (apperception) rather than imagination (synthesis) in the production of pure space and time.
7Some interpreters of Kant, notably John McDowell, dispense with the problem of the unity of sensibility by
ascribing to Kant a denial of the prediscursive sensory given, with the implication that all consciousness, however
primitive and unreflective, is permeated by the logical space of the categories. In one form another, this
intellectualizing way of viewing Kant goes back at least to nineteenth century Neo-Kantians like Hermann Cohen
and accounts for Kant’s reputation as an intellectualist (see KMM, introduction).
 9.

representations that are in themselves nondiscursive),8 can be seen as a B edition echo of the

remark at A107:

no cognitions can take place in us, no connection and unity of cognitions with
one another, without that unity of consciousness that precedes all data of
intuitions and in relation to which alone all representation of objects is possible.
This pure original, unchangeable consciousness I will now entitle
transcendental apperception. That it deserves this name is already clear from
the fact that even the purest objective unity, namely that of a priori concepts
(space and time) is possible only through relation of intuitions to it. The
numerical unity of this apperception thus underlies all concepts a priori just as
the manifoldness of space and time underlies the intuitions of sensibility.

B. Formal intuition and the need for prediscursive understanding

But the most important text pertaining to the apperceptual character of pure space and time

apart from B136n is a footnote in section §26 of the B Deduction. In B136n, Kant tells us that

the individuality of space and time, as explained there, will have important consequences in

application; and although he there refers to §25, it seems overwhelmingly likely that he really

meant §26 since the unity/individuality of space and time plays no role in §25 but is central in

§26 (most likely, Kant decided at some point to split the original §24 into two sections and forgot

to correct the reference in B136n once the original §25 became §26). The portion of §26 that

concerns the nature of space and time begins with the remark that they are represented a priori

not merely as forms of sensible intuition but as themselves intuitions “with the determination of

the unity of this manifold” (B160). To explain the difference between forms of intuition and

actual intuitions a priori more precisely, Kant appended the following footnote:

8This is the sense in which “the concepts of space and time” are subjected to metaphysical and transcendental
expositions in the Aesthetic: the metaphysical exposition, in particular, shows that space and time are intuitions into
 10.

Space, represented as object (as we in fact require it in geometry), contains

more than mere form of intuition, namely, the taking together
(Zusammenfassung) of the manifold given according to the form of sensibility
in an intuitive representation, so that the form of intuition merely gives the
manifold while the formal intuition gives unity of representation. In the
Aesthetic, I attributed this unity merely to sensibility only in order to remark
that it precedes all concepts, even though it presupposes a synthesis that does
not belong to the senses whereby all concepts of space and time first become
possible. For since space or time are first given as intuitions through it (in that
the understanding determines sensibility), the unity of this a priori intuition
belongs to space and time and not to the concept of the understanding. (§24)

Though the interpretation of B160n is less straightforward than B136n, its basic outlines are

clear and its basic import the same. (1) Both the note and the sentence to which it is appended

mention the space and time of the Transcendental Aesthetic explicitly and leave no doubt that the

point at issue is the unity they confer on the manifold contained within them (individuality). (2)

In the Aesthetic, it was sufficient for Kant’s purposes to treat the pure formal intuitions of space

and time – space and time as individual unities of their manifolds – as if they had the same

source (the receptivity of sense) and nature (sensible) as the forms of intuition space and time –

the manifolds on which they confer this unity. (3) Concerned that this way of understanding the

unity of space and time might stand in the way of comprehending the reasoning in §26 of the

Transcendental Deduction, he opted to make explicit that this unity derives from a determination

of sensibility by the understanding by means of the figurative synthesis of productive

imagination described in §24. (4) This is not, however, to say that the formal intuitions of space

and time derive their unity from any determination of sensibility by means of concepts of space

and time; on the contrary, such concepts are first made possible by them. (5) Nor can the unity

of formal intuitions be equated with the unity that belongs to the categories since the unity here

in question is that through which space and time “are first given as intuitions.” (6) Thus, though

whose representations no concepts enter. In addition to A107, one finds this use of ‘concepts of space and time’ at
 11.

the unity pure space and time confer on their manifold is properly ascribed to sensibility, it is

not, as Kant’s treatment of it in the Aesthetic leads one to suppose, a product purely of

receptivity but also involves the imagination’s figurative synthesis and the understanding’s

original unity of apperception.

The purpose of (4) and (5) is to explain Kant’s procedure in the Aesthetic of ascribing a

unity originating in the understanding to sensibility (formal intuition is also described as sensible

at PFM 287, AA 18 §5928 and §5649). It would have to be adjudged a failure, however, if

‘understanding’ in B160n signifies discursive understanding (understanding as a faculty of

representation by means of universals – concepts, judgments), since the space and time of the

Aesthetic are explicitly said to be nondiscursive and virtually everything in Kant’s doctrine of

pure yet sensible intuitions depends on that being so. This means that the nondiscursive

character of the unity of the space and time of the Aesthetic can be preserved only if nothing

involving the logical functions of judgment, the categories included, is in any way concerned in

the action whereby the understanding produces formal intuitions by conferring synthetic unity on

the manifold supplied by the forms of intuition. In particular, Kant’s explanation in B160n for

proceeding as he did in the Aesthetic holds water only if, on his conception of the understanding,

it is just as possible for this faculty to confer synthetic unity on the manifold nondiscursively as

discursively.

To recognize that this was indeed the case, one only needs to take to heart Kant’s insistence

that the unity of apperception he equated with “the understanding itself” (B133-4n) is higher than

the unity belonging to the categories and logical functions (B131), since, as noted earlier, this

opens up the possibility that it is also higher than the unity of space and time as individuals. In

§17 at B136n, he affirmed this in the clearest possible terms: the individuality of the space and

A85/B118.
 12.

time of the Transcendental Aesthetic – the a priori unity of the manifold contained within them –

is none other than the original synthetic unity of apperception. Then, in §26 at B160n, as if to

banish any residual doubts, Kant proceeded to reaffirm it, insisting that the space and time of the

Aesthetic “are first given as intuitions” only when understanding has synthetically determined

sensibility. Since this is just to say that given receptivity alone, operating in accordance with

forms of intuition, any intuition of space or time is just as impossible as any concept of them, the

clear implication is that understanding is no less essential to intuitions than to concepts. Thus,

the only way to read B160n so as to preserve the nondiscursive character essential to the space

and time of the Aesthetic is to suppose that, in producing the formal intuitions in which they are

first given, the understanding confers a priori unity on the manifold without the aid of universals,

logical functions, or anything else that would compromise the nondiscursive character of its

action.

C. The objective unity of space and time

Although the foregoing reading of the footnotes at B136 and B160 is much the most

straightforward, the overwhelming majority of interpreters nevertheless resist it because it seems

to make nonsense of the notion of understanding, not only in Kant’s theory but in general, to

suppose it can ever be anything other than discursive. Any supposition to the contrary

unquestionably conflicts with Kant’s initial explication of understanding as the capacity to judge

(A69/B94), as well as with each of his subsequent charcterizations of it (such as those at A126)

with the single possible exception of its equation with the capacity for apperception (B133-4n).

This characterization of understanding is unique in that, unlike all the others, it relates not to any

discursive representation or operation but to pure self-consciousness: our ability to represent the
 13.

identity of consciousness in respect to all the manifold entirely a priori and so to accompany all

our representations with one and the same I think (the analytic unity of apperception: B133).

One of the salient and most original features of Kant’s theory of understanding is his

endeavor to bring self-consciousness together with discursivity in a single indissoluble union.

But the question is which he deemed most fundamental to its nature. Where most interpreters go

wrong, I believe, is in deeming discursivity, as defined by logical functions of judgments,

definitive of understanding for Kant, and self-consciousness as something secondary and

derivative that results when logical functions of judgment (in their guise as pure concepts of the

understanding) are applied to the a priori manifold of sensibility. For it is not just that he

regarded apperception as a higher unity than that of either the categories or the logical functions

(B131) and made quite clear that categories presuppose apperception as their ground (A401). It

is above all his claim that apperception, in its guise as analytic unity, is constitutive of

universality itself, with the implication that the original synthetic unity that precedes this analytic

unity and first makes it possible (B133-4) must already be in place, right in intuition itself, “prior

to all thought” (B132), and so before discursive understanding is even possible:

the synthetic unity of apperception is the highest point to which every

employment of the understanding must adhere (heften), even the whole of logic,
and, in accordance therewith, transcendental philosophy. Indeed, this capacity
is the understanding itself. (B133-4n)

Yet, even if one concedes, at least provisionally, the priority of understanding qua

apperception over understanding as the capacity for discursive representation, one may still balk

at accepting the implication that understanding, in producing formal intuitions of space and time,

is not a discursive faculty of concepts and judgments at all but a nondiscursive faculty of
 14.

intuitions. How can apperception be nondiscursive? And if it can, why should this not rather be

viewed as proof that apperception is not after all the exclusive province of understanding?

Apperception – the synthetic unity of the manifold in one consciousness – involves three

distinct components, each of which Kant attributed to a different faculty: the manifold of sense,

the synthesis of imagination, and the unity of understanding. As such, it has unmistakable

affinities with the notion of a complex idea developed by Locke, where given ideas (a

“manifold” – which may be genuine givens of sense or previously produced complex ideas) are

brought together (“synthesis”) and the resulting combination considered as a single complex idea

(“synthetic unity of the manifold”), be it of a substance, mode, or relation.9 Thus, complex ideas

always involve the performance of two quite distinct acts on the ideas concerned in them: in

addition to bringing them together in one consciousness, the ideas must also be represented as

the manifold of one and the same representation.

For Kant, the objective unity that makes the difference between an object in the full

cognitive sense and objects of this or that particular person’s own subjective representation

(A108-9) is, with a single exception, discursive in nature: “an object is that in the concept of

which the manifold of a given intuition is united” (B137; also A104-6, A191/B236, and

A494/B522). Since this unification of representations “demands unity of consciousness in the

synthesis of them” (B137; also A78/B104, A105-6, B145, and A326/B382-3), a Kantian object,

just like a Lockean complex idea, involves three distinct components, each with its own

distinctive faculty source: the manifold of sense, its synthesis in imagination, and the concept

that, by determining this synthesis, unites the manifold in the representation of a single (complex

yet unitary) object in the understanding (A103-4). But, on Kant’s analysis, all objective unity of

9See UU 5-C for further discussion.

 15.

consciousness in the synthesis of representations rests ultimately on the original synthetic unity

of apperception, which therefore constitutes “an objective condition of all cognition ... a

condition under which every intuition must stand in order to become an object for me” (B138).

Thus, concepts can produce objects (objective unity) from the synthesis of the manifold only

insofar as they partake of the original synthetic unity of apperception.

Now, while Kant’s goal in analyzing objectivity was to establish that concepts can partake

of the unity of apperception and thereby acquire cognitive value only if they are subordinated to

the categories (§§19-21), one of the steps towards that goal was the thesis that “the pure form of

intuition in time, merely as intuition in general which contains a given manifold, stands under the

original unity of consciousness simply through the necessary relation of the manifold of intuition

to one I think, hence through the pure synthesis of the understanding which underlies the

empirical a priori” (B140; at A107, cited at the end of section A, the same point is made with

regard to the “objective unity” of space as well as time). Due to the essentially nondiscursive

nature of pure space and time, however, the “objective unity of self-consciousness” (title of §18

[B139]) involved in these intuitions cannot be founded on any concept, the categories (logical

functions) included. Nevertheless, pure space and time involve the same three components

found in any objective unity: the manifold, its synthesis, and the consciousness of that synthesis

as a unity, without which neither space nor time could be considered as a single complex object

in which all their manifold is contained. Since Kant invariably treated the difference between

these components as sufficiently great to warrant attributing each to a different faculty – sense,

imagination, and understanding – we should not therefore be surprised that he saw fit to attribute

the nondiscursive objective unity of pure space and time to these three faculties as well so that, in
 16.

the case of pure space and time uniquely, his two fundamental characterizations of

understanding, apperception and discursivity, diverge.

I noted earlier that the issue of whether Kant, in attributing the objective unity of pure

space and time of the Aesthetic to the understanding, was conceiving of its operation as

nondiscursive turns on which of his two characterizations of this faculty is regarded as more

fundamental. Since the evidence suggests that no unity was more fundamental for him than

apperception10 and that apperception must be conceived as a distinction action from the

synthesis of imagination, it should now be clear not only that there is nothing extraordinary,

much less absurd, in Kant’s assertion that understanding is the source of the objective unity of

space and time, but that it is precisely what he should have held in the one instance where the

apperceptual signification of understanding ceases to coincide with the discursive.11

D. Formal intuitions and forms of intuition

The B160 footnote should be read in conjunction with Kant’s discussion of objective unity

in §§ 17 -18 because its topic is the representation of space and time as objects. The argument of

§26 required its insertion because it turns on the recognition that space and time are not only

forms of intuition but intuitions themselves that, as such, already involve (objective) unity of

apperception. But what in that case are forms of intuition? Both the footnote and the text to

which it is attached make clear that they are not intuitions and, in particular, that space and time

cannot be given as intuitions by their means alone. The only positive characterization Kant

10Excepting of course the illusory unities of the transcendental dialectic of pure reason.
11That Kant found nothing odd about characterizing the understanding as a faculty of intuitions is clear from the
following: “It is readily evident that if the capacity of cognition in general is to be called understanding (in the most
general sense of the word), the latter must contain a capacity for the apprehension (attentio) of given representations
in order to produce (hervorzubringen) intuition, a capacity for abstraction of that which is common to several
 17.

offers is that forms of intuition “give the manifold” that the understanding will transform into

actual intuitions. But a manifold of what? Affections of sensation and self-affections are

presumably not the manifold supplied by forms of intuition since they concern the matter rather

than the form of appearances. Nor can it be the manifold of outer spatial and inner temporal

appearances since a cardinal tenet of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic is that appearances are

preceded and made possible by pure intuitions of space and time, that is, not by mere forms of

intuition but actual intuitions, for which ‘formal intuition’ seems a mere terminological variant.

Such evidence as there is suggests that space and time, considered merely as forms of

intuition, prior to and independently of the synthetic determination of sensibility by

understanding through which “space and time are first given as intuitions,” are not

representations of any kind at all but capacities to exhibit affections as outside or after one

another, and so differ from one another in the same sense the capacity to see differs from the

capacity of touch as the source of sensations of color and light rather than qualities like

smooth/rough, soft/hard, wet/dry, warm/cool, etc. It is not just Kant’s insistence in B160n that,

given forms of intuition alone, neither intuitions nor concepts of space and time are possible that

suggests this. In the only other passage in the Critique where both expressions – ‘form of

intuition’ and ‘formal intuition’ – occur, the former is parenthetically equated with the

“subjective constitution of sensibility” and the latter with the time and space presupposed by “the

things themselves that appear” (A267-8/B323-4). In the case of the form of intuition, the matter

it is said to precede are sensations; and while this would not accord with Kant’s view if the space

and time intuitions were meant (space and time represented as objects), it most definitely would

if a capacity rather than any actual representation were. And, indeed, Kant states in this passage

(abstractio) in order to produce a concept, and a capacity for reflexion (reflexio) in order to produce a cognition of
the object” (Anthropology 138).
 18.

that space and time precede not sensations but “all appearances and all data of experience,” and

it is in this sense that he terms them formal intuitions there.

Elsewhere, Kant used ‘formal intuition’ as a parenthetical clarification of pure intuition

(B207) and to indicate the sense in which he was using ‘form of external intuition’

(A429/B457n). But the text that most closely echoes A267-8/B323-4 is a passage in Kant’s

response to his Leibnizian critic Eberhard:

This first formal ground alone, e.g. of the possibility of a space intuition, is
innate, not the space representation itself. For it always requires impressions in
order first to determine the cognitive faculty to the representation of an object
(which is always its own act). Thus arises the formal intuition one terms space
as an originally acquired representation (the form of outer objects generally),
the ground of which (as sheer receptivity) nevertheless is innate and the
acquisition of which long precedes determinate concepts of things that conform
to this form… Concerning this signification of the ground of the possibility of a
pure sensory intuition no one can be in doubt save he who wanders through the
Critique with the aid of a dictionary but has not thought it through. (Discovery
221-3)

Despite minor terminological differences, this passage, like A267-8/B323-4, sheds light on the

B160 footnote by contrasting a faculty ground with space considered as an actual a priori

representation (pure intuition). The latter is termed a ‘formal intuition’ and, more importantly

still, is contrasted with the “sheer receptivity” of the innate formal ground as resulting from an

act of the cognitive faculty. To contrast with receptivity, formal intuition must at least involve a

synthesis of imagination, which the occurrence of ‘act’ would seem to confirm (Kant seldom if

ever used ‘Handlung ’ except in reference to spontaneity, which includes imagination as well as

discursivity). And since Kant always, to my knowledge, employed the term ‘cognitive faculty’

(Erkenntniskraft) so as to include the understanding, this text is at the very least consistent with
 19.

his claim at B160n that formal intuition results from the determination of sensibility by the

understanding.

Putting all this together, ‘form of intuition’ appears to signify that in the constitution of

sensibility which determines the mode in which the imagination will exhibit differences among

affections as the manifold of one and the same representation (pure intuition). In beings

constituted like ourselves, these modes are juxtaposition and succession. As mere capacities,

they do not of themselves furnish a manifold of outer and inner appearances. Instead, this

manifold first comes into being by means of the synthesis of the imagination and the

consciousness of this unity in the understanding. Our imaginations synthesize appearances to

exhibit differences of affection by setting one outside (in juxtaposition to) or after (in succession

to) another. Since appearances differentiated in these ways are ipso facto intuited in immediate

relation, this synthesis is at the same time an a priori consciousness that each appearance can be

immediately related to any other appearance that can be synthesized in accordance with the same

form of intuition. Accordingly, the formal intuition produced a priori by the understanding is a

consciousness of the objective unity in which each and every possible (outer or inner)

appearance stands immediately related to every other. So, while it is true that a form of intuition

gives a manifold of appearances, it does not do so prior to or independently of the synthesis of

imagination and the objective unity of the understanding but only in conjunction with them.12

E. Conceptualist construals of formal intuition

Interpreters of section §26 who overlook or reject the possibility that the contribution of the

understanding to formal intuition is nondiscursive construe the discursive component in either of

 20.

two ways (KMM ch 2-A). Taking their cue from the opening of the B160 footnote, “Space,

represented as object (as we in fact require it in geometry),” some equate it with a mathematical

space (and mathematical time in the senses specified at B155n, A724/B752, ID 397-8, and PFM

283). Mathematical intuitions result when a concept so determines the synthesis of imagination

that an object corresponding to the concept is constructed in pure intuition (A713-4/B741-2).

Euclidean space – space possessing the properties prescribed by the Euclidean synthetic a priori

judgments termed ‘definitions’, ‘axioms’, and ‘postulates’ – is presumably no exception: its

construction presupposes the concepts from which those fundamental judgments are formed and

they in turn presuppose the categories of quantity together with their transcendental schema

(number: A142-3/B182). Contrasting with this Euclidean formal intuition of space (and its

temporal counterpart) are the space and time of the Aesthetic, the forms of intuition, which are

metaphysical rather than mathematical and not only do not result from the construction of given

mathematical concepts but themselves first make such (constructable) concepts possible

(A32/B48 and Discovery 240).

The most obvious objection to equating the formal intuitions of B160n with concept-

presupposing mathematical intuitions is that it is directly contradicted by the text: “In the

Aesthetic, I attributed this unity merely to sensibility only in order to remark that it precedes all

concepts, even though it presupposes a synthesis not belonging to the senses whereby all

concepts of space and time first become possible.” If the unity of formal intuitions precedes all

concepts and first makes concepts of space and time possible, then the supposition that formal

intuitions are mathematical intuitions, and so constructed conformably to mathematical concepts,

is viciously circular. To avoid the circle, one must rather understand the formal intuition of

12The conception outlined in this paragraph is developed in chapter 3 of the second volume of Kant and the
Empiricists (currently in progress).
 21.

space “required by geometry” as the metaphysical space presupposed by geometrical concepts,

that is, as identical with the space of the metaphysical and transcendental expositions of the

Transcendental Aesthetic.

An even more decisive objection against equating formal intuitions with mathematical

space and time relates not to the B160 footnote but to the role this reading would accord to

mathematics in the argument of §26. Introducing representations borrowed from mathematics

into a transcendental deduction would violate virtually every rule in Kant’s methodological

canon. He went to great pains to distinguish transcendental from mathematical cognition and

expressly proscribed any admixture of the latter in the former (A712-38/B740-66, Progress 261).

This was not just because he deemed it beyond the power of transcendental philosophy to

provide intuitions corresponding to any of its concepts (A718-24/B746-52). With its doctrines of

the manifold of a priori sensible intuition and the pure concepts of the understanding such a

manifold alone makes possible (A76-9/B102-5), Kant deemed transcendental philosophy a

discipline uniquely situated to explain the possibility of pure mathematical cognition and how

such cognition can be valid of sensible appearances given a posteriori.13 The contribution of the

argument of §26 of the B Deduction to this explanation depends on the thesis that the synthesis

of apprehension responsible for empirical consciousness of the manifold of appearance conforms

a priori to space and time not merely as forms of intuition but as (formal) “intuitions themselves

... represented with the determination of the unity of this manifold (see Transcendental

13“Transcendental philosophy does not consider objects but the human mind according to the sources in it from
which a priori cognition stems and the bounds. Thus, pure mathematics is not part of transcendental philosophy,
while the sources in the mind from which it springs indeed are” (AA 18 §4873). This text would appear to be an
earlier version of the contrast Kant drew between philosophy and mathematics late in the Critique of Pure Reason:
“From what source the concepts of space and time (as the only original quanta) they [mathematicians] occupy
themselves with may originate (herkommen) is, for them, a matter of complete indifference, and it seems to them
equally pointless (nutzlos) to inquire into the origin of the pure concepts of the understanding and therewith
(hiermit) the scope of their validity, rather than simply to put them to use (nur sich ihrer zu bedienen)”
(A725/B753). This passage, in turn, anticipates PFM 258-9, a crucial text that will be examined in the next chapter.
 22.

Aesthetic)” (B160). This indeed must be the case if, as shown in the previous section, forms of

intuition supply their manifold only in conjunction with (not prior to and independently of) the

synthesis of imagination and the unity of the understanding. But how could this possibly be the

case if mathematical concepts of space and time had to be formed prior to and independently of

formal intuitions? The senses do not need the assistance of concepts to supply their manifold

(B67, A89-91/B122-3, A111, A124, B145, A253/B309), least of all concepts available only to

those trained in mathematics. Nor could the categories possibly be supposed to underwrite the

possibility of mathematics and its application to appearances if the formal intuitions on which

this (the schematism of the categories) depends had themselves to be constructed from

mathematical concepts. Thus, any attempt to construe formal intuitions as mathematical seems

wholly incompatible with the lineaments of Kant’s transcendental deduction of the categories.

Considerations like these have led some to suppose that formal intuitions derive their unity

from the categories. This proposal undoubtedly has a certain attraction since, in conforming a

priori to formal intuitions, apprehended appearances ipso facto would conform to the categories

as well, and showing this to be the case was Kant’s primary objective in the Transcendental

Deduction. But how is it to be reconciled with Kant’s express denial in the B160 footnote that

the unity of formal intuition is that belonging to the category? The reason he denied it seems

clear: the formal intuitions in which space and time are “first given as intuitions” must be

nondiscursive or the footnote would be in conflict with both the Aesthetic and the many passages

earlier in the Deduction (B136n, A107, and B140) where the unity/individuality of space and

time is credited to original apperception without any suggestion that it derives from, or depends

in any way, on the categories. So, unless one persists in the questionable assumption that
 23.

apperception is essentially categorial, there is no warrant for tracing the unity credited to formal

intuition in the B160 footnote to the categories.

Even in the context of §26 itself, the categorial construal of formal intuition is a good deal

less satisfactory than it may first seem. If formal intuitions presuppose the categories but forms

of intuition do not, then the manifold of appearances made possible prediscursively by forms of

intuition would be given prior to and independently of both the categories and the formal

intuitions that ostensibly incorporate these concepts. Since in that case conformity to formal

intuitions entails conformity to the categories, apprehended appearances could only be show to

conform to formal intuitions by establishing, on grounds wholly independent of formal intuitions

and their unity, that they conform to the categories. But if Kant could have established that

independently of formal intuitions, why would he have needed to introduce them into the

Transcendental Deduction of the Categories at all? Or, if he could not, how could the addition of

categorially determinate formal intuitions do anything to improve matters since proving the

conformity of appearances to them cannot be done without at the same time proving their

conformity to the categories? The categorial interpretation of formal intuitions thus leads to the

following dilemma: either Kant would have had to prove the conformity of appearances to the

categories independently of formal intuitions, in which case their introduction in §26 would be

supererogatory, or, if unable to do so, the addition of formal intuition could do nothing to make

good this want since it would still leave unexplained how appearances can conform to the

discursive unity thought in the categories in the first place. In order for formal intuitions to play

the indispensable mediating role between apprehension and the categories accorded to them in

§26, the involvement of the understanding in their production must therefore be construed as

involving neither transcendental nor mathematical concepts.

 24.

One might hope to skirt this dilemma by equating the categorial formal intuitions of

Transcendental Deduction §26 with the pure intuitions of space and time of the Transcendental

Aesthetic. Doing so has the added bonus of seeming to achieve at a stroke Kant’s goal in the

Deduction of demonstrating the a priori conformity of appearances to the categories in the most

straightforward way imaginable. For if the formal intuitions of the B160 footnote are equated

with the pure intuitions of the Transcendental Aesthetic that precede and make possible all

appearances to the senses, then the assumption that formal intuitions derive their unity from the

categories would imply that, in conforming to the Aesthetic’s pure intuitions of space and time,

appearances ipso facto conform to the categories.

The most obvious problem with this proposal is that it brings the Deduction into direct

conflict with the Aesthetic: whereas Kant insisted on the nondiscursive character of pure space

and time in the Aesthetic, their equation with the (supposedly) categorially determinate formal

intuitions of the Deduction would recast them as intuitions that incorporate the most

quintessentially discursive representations of all, the logical functions of judgment present in

each category. Indeed, the conflict would go deeper still since it effectively obliterates all

distinction between sensibility and discursive understanding. For Kant, by contrast with the

Leibnizians, sensible intuition is neither obscure nor confused discursive thought, it is not

discursive at all (A43-6/B60-3). Sensibility and understanding are radically heterogeneous

sources of representations (A51-2/B75-6) and any philosophy that fails to respect this

fundamental distinction is guilty of the fallacy Kant termed ‘transcendental amphiboly’ (A270-

1/B326-7). So, whatever superficial attractions the categorial interpretation of formal intuition

may have, by making Kant’s own philosophy amphibolous, it is a nonstarter.

 25.

This becomes still more evident when the absurdity it conceals is exposed. The exponent

of the categorial interpretation presumably regards pure formal intuition as the product of the

application of the categories to the manifold supplied by our form of intuition (B160n). Setting

aside the question of what this manifold may be supposed to consist in (sensations such as itches

and heat flashes? innate points and instants engraved directly on the sensible faculty?), there is

the problem of explaining how the logical functions of judgment constitutive of each category

can be applied directly to this manifold. The only determinative function that logical functions

can coherently be supposed to perform is on discursive inputs: representations that have already

been converted into concepts or judgments. For what other than concepts can be combined as

subject and predicate (and universal or particular, affirmative or negative), and what other than

judgments can be combined hypothetically or disjunctively (and problematic, assertoric, or

apodeictic)? Logical functions seem incapable of directly determining anything nondiscursive:

not customary associations, not simple sensory discriminations, and certainly not the rawest

sensory data furnished by the senses prior to all discernment, comparing, and ordering or relating

generally. But is this – the direct determination of the nondiscursive – not precisely what the

logical functions would have to be supposed capable of doing if the categories are to produce the

pure intuitions of the Aesthetic? Since it was presumably to avoid such absurdities that Kant

insisted so adamantly on the radical heterogeneity of sensibility and discursive understanding,

the categorial interpretation of the formal intuition of §26 of the B Deduction thus fails no matter

how it is construed: if formal intuition is equated to the pure intuition of the Aesthetic, then Kant

would be guilty of the transcendental amphiboly of denying the incommensurability of

sensibility and discursive understanding; if they are not equated, then he would be guilty of the
 26.

futility of introducing something at the culmination of the argument of the Deduction that can do

nothing at all to advance it.

Nevertheless, if the textual evidence for supposing that Kant traced the unity of formal

intuition to the categories were sufficiently compelling, then the case just made against

interpreting him this way would instead become an indictment of Kant himself. When one turns

to what Kant actually says in §26, however, the deficiencies of such a reading quickly become

apparent:

space and time are represented a priori not merely as forms of sensible intuition
but as themselves intuitions (which contain a manifold), and thus with the
determination of the unity of this manifold in them (see Transcendental
Aesthetic).* Thus, unity of the synthesis of the manifold, without or within us,
hence also a combination to which everything to be represented determinately in
space or time must conform, is at the same time already given as a condition of
the synthesis of all apprehension with (not in) these intuitions. But, this
synthetic unity can be none other than that of the combination of the manifold
of a given intuition in general in an original consciousness in conformity to the
categories, only applied to our sensible intuition. Consequently, all synthesis
whereby perception itself becomes possible stands under the categories, and
since experience is cognition through connected perceptions, the categories are
conditions of the possibility of experience, and therefore hold a priori also of all
objects of experience. (B160-1)

If Kant had said “in these intuitions” rather than “with (not in)” them, his identification in the

next sentence of the synthesis unity of the manifold of apprehended appearances with

combination in conformity to the categories would indeed be most naturally read as affirming

that the unity of formal intuitions derives from the categories. The parenthesis works to prevent

this because it is most plausibly construed as being specifically intended to stop readers from

supposing that the categories have anything at all to do with the synthetic unity of the manifold

in these intuitions.
 27.

F. The role of formal intuition in §26 of the B Deduction

What then is the contribution of formal intuitions of space and time to the argument of §26

of the Transcendental Deduction? The answer, I think, comes into view when we consider what

pure space and time are not and, in particular, how far short of full-fledged cognitive experience

they leave us. Because of the exclusion of discursive contents from their representation, they

cannot be represented as having in themselves any of the determinations (properties, relations)

attributed to them by mathematicians or natural scientists (PFM 321-2). This includes the

Euclidean or any other axiomitization of space together with everything that follows from the

definitions, axioms, and postulates of geometry.14 It includes intuitions representable as

extensive magnitudes (the representation of spaces and times as sums of their component spaces

and times), their numerical representation (algebraic included), and, in general, any

representation involving the categories of unity, plurality, and totality or their predicables. It

includes intensive magnitudes, the limits they alone make intuitable in an otherwise empty,

uniform, featureless space and time (points, lines and planes, instants and lengths of time), and,

in general, any representation involving the categories of reality, negation, and limitation or their

predicables. And it includes everything in virtue of which intuitions count as objects of

experience, since all such intuitions, whether of humdrum objects like houses and chunks of

beeswax or of esoteric objects like elementary particles, Newtonian forces, and natural laws, are

possible only through the determination of the manifold of sensibility conformably to the

categories of relation or their predicables. Thus, beyond ensuring the unity of sensibility, pure

14See UU ch 4-A.
 28.

space and time leave virtually everything – order, coherence, objective determination – to

discursive understanding and its pure concepts.

As Kant made clear at B160-1, the role of the categories is not to produce order, coherence,

and determination in pure space and time. To understand their contribution, one needs to

consider a further representational deficiency of space and time, stemming from their

nonsensational nature (A20/B34, A50-1/B74-5). The appearances that exhibit differences among

sensations or reflexions15 are contained within the original synthetic unity of the individual

intuitions pure space and time, and this is true of appearances necessarily and universally since

pure space and time are a priori conditions of their possibility (section A). But there is

something else pertaining to sensations that these appearances also exhibit: the actuality, or real

existence, that distinguishes appearances of the senses from mere fictions of imagination

(sensible objects not present in sensation).16 Since this is just to say that the real corresponding

to sensation can be given in no other way than perception (consciousness of sensation), hence a

posteriori,17 it follows that the metaphysical space and time of the Transcendental Aesthetic –

precisely because they are pure and so imperceptible (i.e. sensation does not enter into their

content in any way: A50-1/B74-5)18 – are altogether devoid of reality in the field of appearance:

15Since Kant had no term for the counterpart to sensations in the case of self-affection, I employ the Empiricists’
term ‘reflexion’ to designate them. He sometimes used ‘impression’ and even ‘sensation’ to refer to both sorts of
data of affection indifferently. ‘Data of inner sense’ is a possible alternative but not fully satisfactory because it is
ambiguous between inner appearances and data of inner of affection, and, on my interpretation, the former are
temporal, the latter not.
16See A143/B182, B207-8, A223/B270, A225/B272, A373-4, CJ 189, 203, 291, Discovery 240, Progress 276, AA
17 §4513, AA 18 §5277 and §5502. There is no equivalent distinction between actuality and fiction in the case of
reflexions since every representational act, even the idlest fancy, is still a real reflexive self-affection.
17Perception has two principal meaning for Kant, one generic, the other specific. In the former, a perception is any
representation of which there is consciousness (e.g. A320/B376). The latter, much the most common, is sensation of
which there is consciousness: B147, B207, A225/B272, A373-5, Progress 266, letter to Beck, 20.Jan.1792, and AA
15 § (a variant is empirical consciousness of intuition as appearance: A120, B160; cf. A115, PFM 283, 300,
Discovery 217-18, AA 18 §5661, §5923, §6333-4).
18However, to say that sensation does not enter into the content of pure space and time is not to say that its presence
is not a prerequisite for pure formal intuition: “sensations, while exciting this action of the mind, do not enter into
 29.

“Space and time still give nothing actual; only sensation gives that to us,” (AA 17 §4513 [early-

mid 1770s]; also “space and time are ... nothing existent,” AA 18 §6323 [1793]) and “empty

space cannot be perceived nor have about it an existence,” Progress 288).

The implications from a Kantian standpoint can hardly be exaggerated. If space and time

have no reality in the field of appearance, the realities given in perception have no space and

time to occupy; there is no real individual space to contain all outer appearances, no real

individual time to contain all inner ones. Since the individuality of space and time is nothing

else than the original synthetic unity of their manifold in them (section A), it follows that, given

pure space and time alone, the realities given in perception fail to exhibit unity of apperception.

The significance of this becomes clear when one recalls Kant’s insistence that no representation

can be anything to us unless the I think is able to accompany it and that this is impossible where

apperception is lacking (A119, B131-4). If unity of apperception is lacking from the realities

given to us in perception, their relation to one another – their objective unity – can be nothing to

us as well, and, in place of objective experience (cognition), the psyche would be “crammed with

a throng of appearances from which experience could never arise” (A111), “a blind play of

representations, i.e. less than a dream” (A112). And this is where the categories prove their

mettle as conditions of the possibility of experience and its objects: by bringing the realities of

perception to original synthetic unity of apperception in the same way pure space and time

confer such unity on appearances in their formal regard, the categories ensure that what

otherwise would be a mere “rhapsody of perceptions” (A156/B195) will be experienced as a

and become part of the intuition” (ID 406); also A429/B457n A452/B480n, Discovery 222-3, AA17 §4634. In the
absence of sensations, space and time are only a capacity (forms of intuition), not actual representations. The
imperceptibility of pure space and time is affirmed repeatedly and, as will emerge in pt V, plays a crucial role in
Kant’s proofs for the principles of pure understanding: E LXX (relates to A163/B204), B207, B233, A200/B245,
B257, and A215/B262; also Progress 276, AA18 §5637, AA 22 42, 44-5, 105, 364, 435.
 30.

nexus of necessarily connected objects (material and thinking beings) all bound together in a

single (individual) system of nature.