(1) Summary of Kant's transcendental idealism

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Analytic of the Cognition

Kant’s separation of time and space from the world has been the greatest achievement in the domain of critical philosophy and won’t be outdone by any other. He moved the puzzling entities, real monstrosities, which stand in the way of every attempt of fathoming the being of the world, moved them from the world into our head, and made them forms of our sensuous perception, to principles of knowledge, which precede all experience, to prerequisites for the possibility of experience. He has laid down the justification of this treatment in his immortal Transcendental Aesthetic, and even if there will always be “savages”, who reject Kant’s transcendental idealism and make time and space again forms of the things-as-they-are, seriously threatened the great achievement won’t be: it belongs to the few truths, which have become possession of human knowledge.

More than separating the monstrosities from the things-as-the-are and lying them in ourselves, the perceiving subjects, Kant did not. Although he didn’t uncritically adopt them and simply granted them to the subject, as I will clearly show, (and was occupied by how they actually came to their tormenting infiniteness, which no imagination can measure, how they could have emerged at all,) he nevertheless had no problems to lay them, such as they are, in our sensuousness, as forms. The Transcendental Aesthetic leaves no doubt about this. It determines:

We can never represent to ourselves the absence of space, though we can quite well think it as empty of objects.

Space is a pure form of intuition/visualization. We can imagine one space only and if we speak of many spaces, we mean parts only of one and the same space. Nor can these parts be considered as antecedent to the one and all-embracing space and, as it were, its component parts out of which an aggregate is formed, but they can be thought of as existing within it only. Space is essentially one; its multiplicity, and therefore the general concept of spaces in general, arises entirely from limitations.

With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves time void of phenomena.

Time is a pure form of sensuous intuition/visualization. Different times are merely parts of one and the same time.

To say that time is infinite means no more than that every definite quantity of time is possible only by limitations of one time which forms the foundation of all times. The original representation of time must therefore be given as unlimited.

So space and time lie as two pure forms of sensuous intuition/visualization, before all experience in us, space as quantity, whose three dimensions are infinite, time as a from infinity coming and into infinity proceeding line.

All objects of possible experience must go through these two pure aprioric^1 forms and are determined by them, indeed as much as by space as by time, since:

because all representations, whether they have or have not external things for their objects still, as-they-are, as determinations of the mind, belong to our internal state; and because this internal state is subject to the formal condition of the internal intuition, that is, to time—time is a condition a priori of all phenomena whatsoever—the immediate condition of all internal, and thereby the mediate condition of all external phenomena. If I can say a priori, "All outward phenomena are in space, and determined a priori according to the relations of space," I can also, from the principle of the internal sense, affirm universally, "All phenomena in general, that is, all objects of the senses, are in time and stand necessarily in relations of time."

On all these passages I will come back later and show, that in them lies the cause of a great contradiction, of which Kant was conscious, but which he intentionally hided. Because as sure it is, that time and space are not properties of the things-as-they-are, so sure is it too, that space and time, as they are characterized above by Kant, cannot be pure forms a priori and indeed are not.

It is good to first make clear what Kant, because of the discussed pure intuitions/visualizations, understands under empirical visualization.

(TN! This will make clear why “intuition” is such a bad translation, although all Kant translators used it. Visualization means here, all representations which can be embedded in space themselves, whether they are thought or empirical.)^2

Only the impressions of the senses, which lead to limitations of space, so on the outlines of outer objects, provide visualizations. He therefore firmly rejects “that there is, outside space, also another subjective and on something else related representation, which can be called objective a priori” in order to prevent that Locke’s secondary qualities of the things, like color, smoothness, coarseness, taste, smell, coldness, warmth, etc. could be brought back to a common principle, a third form of sensuousness. Without the limitation above, one could assume, that Kant understood under visualization only the section, of the sum of our representations, which rely on vision. It is however more and less: more, while also touch provides visualizations; less, while some impressions, like colors, mere sensations, don’t provide visualizations. Smells, sensations of taste and tones are entirely locked out. He says (First Edition):

The flavor of a wine does not belong to the objective properties of the wine, rather to the specific nature of the senses of the subject, who enjoys the wine. Colors are not properties of the bodies, on whose representation they depend, but only modifications of the sense of viewing, which is affected by light in a certain way.

He wants to say: A certain book has for all humans the same extent; everyone identifies the same boundaries. But it can be blue for some, for others grey, for some it can be smooth, for others rough etc. Such representations:

are, to be precise, not ideal, although like space, they are part of the subjective forms of the senses.

This is a very strange distinction. I will come back on this.

The results of the Transcendental Aesthetic are mainly two:

that we do not perceive the things-as-they-are as they are, but only how they appear to us, after going through the aprioric forms of our sensuousness, space and time.
that these appearances and space itself only seemingly lie outside of us, in reality they are in our head. Or with Kant’s words:

And as we have just shown that the senses never and in no manner enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances, which are mere representations of the sensibility, we conclude that all bodies, together with the space in which they are, must be considered nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere but in our thoughts. (Prolegomena, remark II)

The excellent Locke came, strictly sticking with experience, through research of the subjective share of the representation, to the result, that the things have also independent from subject the so-called primary qualities:

Solidity, extension, figure, motion and rest, would be really in the world, as they are, whether there were any sensible being to perceive them, or not. (On human understanding. L. II)

Kant went significantly further. Since he made space and time pure forms of perception a priori, he could deny the things their primary qualities.

We can only talk from the human standpoint of space, of expanded objects.

With the expansion all properties of the things fall away; the things crimp together into a single thing-as-it-is, the rows of x become a single x and this one x is equal to zero, a mathematical point, naturally without motion.

Kant shied away from this consequence, but his protests could not solve it. What does it help that he tirelessly emphasizes, that the transcendental idealism doesn’t hit the existence and being of the things-as-they-are, only the way and manner they appear for a subject: he has destroyed that what appears, the cause of the representations, at least for human knowledge. We cannot say that Kant has found a better placement of the boundary between what is ideal and real, than Locke has, a for all times valid separation of the world in ideal and real; since a separation doesn’t happen at all, when everything is moved to one side. With Kant there is only ideal to work with; what is real, as said, is not x, rather zero.

I go the the Trancendental Logic. (TN: Which has two parts, Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic)

As we have seen above, the sensuousness, an activity (receptiveness) of the mind, gives with help of its both forms, space and time, visualizations. These visualizations are completed through subjective sensations of one or more senses, in particular by vision (colors) and finalized by and for it.

Visualization doesn’t need the functions of thinking in any way.

But they are not whole, but partial-representations, a distinction which is very important which we need to hold on to, because it is the only key, which opens the Trancendental Logic, this profound work, for understanding.

Since every appearance contains diversity, therefore different perceptions are found scattered and separately in the mind, as such a composition of the same is needed, which they cannot have in the senses themselves. (FirstE)

It is accepted, that the senses deliver not only impressions, but also put them together and provide images of objects, to which without doubt besides the receptiveness of impressions something more is needed, namely a function of Synthesis of the same. (FE)

For the unity of diversity becomes visualization (like something in the representation of space,) first the accession of the diversity and then the unification of the same [diversity] is necessary, an act which I call the Synthesis of apprehension. (FE)

The combination (conjunctio) of a diversity can never come to us through the senses ^(127D, 151E)

The similar-diverse and what is homogenous must therefore get composed into a complete object by a power of cognition, if we don’t want only isolated, strange, separated partial-representations, which are unworkable for cognition. To make the matter clear with an illustration, I say: the impressions, which the senses deliver us, are, after Kant, like staves of a barrel; should these impressions become a finished object, then they need a composition, like the staves of a barrel require barrel hoops, in order to become a barrel. This faculty, whose function is this composition, Synthesis, is, after Kant, the imagination.

The synthesis is a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no cognition whatever, but of the working of which we are seldom even conscious. ^(109D, 112E)

It is beyond doubt, that this diversity-Synthesis of a visualization is an aprioric function in us, like the ability of the hand to grab must precede an object. If it is a function of the imagination, as Kant says, or another power of cognition: I leave it open for now. If Kant had discussed this at the beginning of the Transcendental Logic and introduced the understanding with its 12 categories after it, then this treatise of the great thinker would have been less misunderstood and distorted.

The diversity-composition of a visualization by the imagination would be a useless play, i.e. the composed diversity would immediately fall apart in separated pieces and the cognition of an object would be virtually impossible, if I wouldn’t be conscious of the Synthesis. The imagination can’t follow its Synthesis with this absolutely necessary consciousness, since it's a blind function of the soul, and there must therefore be a new power of cognition, which gets connected with the sensuousness through the imagination. It is the Understanding.

The empirical consciousness, which accompanies different representations, is in itself diverse and without relation to the identity of the subject. That relation comes about, not simply through my accompanying each representation with consciousness, but only in so far as I conjoin one representation with another, and am conscious of the synthesis of them. ^(130D, 153E)

Without consciousness, that that, which we think, is the same as, as what we thought a moment ago, all reproductions in the rows of representations would be in vain.

Kant has defined the Understanding in many ways: as capability to think, capability of concepts, of judgements, of rules, etc. and also as capability of knowledge, which is, for our current standpoint, the most suitable designation; he defines knowledge as follow:

Knowledge consists in the determinate relation of given representations to an object. Object is that in the concept of which the diversity of a given visualization is united. ^(132D, 156E)

We need to hold onto these definitions, because Schopenhauer, in regard to object, has totally misunderstood Kant.

Because now, what we compose with consciousness, something which the senses and the imagination are not capable of, all representations are our representations. The: “I think” accompanies all our representations, binds at every separate a thread, and the threads come together in a single point. This centrum of consciousness is the self-consciousness, which Kant calls the pure, original apperception, and also the original-synthetical unity of apperception. If this union of all representations wouldn’t take place in one self-consciousness

then I would have an as many-coloured and diverse self as I have representations of which I am conscious myself. ^(130D, 154E)

Therefore the Understanding accompanies with consciousness the Synthesis of the imagination, through which the partial-representations are composed into objects and

of bringing the diversity of given representations under the unity of apperception, which is the highest principle in the whole sphere of human knowledge. ^(131D, 154E)

The best way to recapitulate what we have read, is with Kant’s own words (First Edition):

There are three original sources (faculties or capabilities of the soul), which contain the prerequisites of all experience and can’t be brought back to other capabilities of the mind, namely:

the Synopsis of the diversity a priori through the sense;

the Synthesis of this diversity through the imagination; finally
the unity of this Synthesis through original apperception.

And now we will proceed to the Categories or pure concepts of the Understanding.

The Understanding is currently understood as the capability of concepts. The categories are now originally in the Understanding produced concepts, concepts a priori, which lie before all experience, as seeds, in our Understanding. They are on one side prerequisites for the possibility of knowledge and experience (like time and space are prerequisites for the possibility of the visualization), on the other side however they receive only meaning and content through the material, which the sensuousness provides them.

Kant established 12 pure concepts of understanding:

Of Quantity| 2. Of Quality|3. Of Relation|4. Of Modality ----|----|----|---- Unity|Reality|Inherence and Subsistence|Possibility -- Impossibility Plurality| Negation|Causality and Dependence|Existence -- Non-existence Totality| Limitation|Community|Necessity -- Contingency

Which he has drawn from the table of all possible judgements. This one is composed as follow:

Quantity of the judgements	Quality	Relation	Modality
Universal	Affirmative	Categorical	Problematical
Particular	Negative	Hypothetical	Assertoric
Singular	Infinite	Disjunctive	Apodictic

He justifies this treatments with the words:

The same function which gives unity to the various representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representations in a visualization; and this unity, in its most general expression, we entitle the pure concept of the understanding. ^(110D,112E)

We have seen above that the Understanding accompanies the Synthesis of imagination with consciousness and the into objects composed partial-representations and puts them in relation to the original apperception. As far as it exercises this activity it is called judgement-power. This judgement-power gives the pure concepts of understanding its necessary content from the impressions of sensuousness, while it guides the Synthesis of imagination and subsumes that which is composed under the Categories.

It’s good to have a look at the covered way again, short as it may be, from this point out.

Initially we have a “chaos of appearances”, separated partial-representations, provided to us by the sensuousness, with help from its form, space. Under guidance of the Understanding, called here judgement-power, the imagination comes into activity, whose function is the compostion of diversity. Without fixed rules however the imagination would compose, whatever is presented: what is similar and homogenous, as well what is heterogeneous. The judgement-power has these rules with the categories, and this way complete representations emerge which stand under certain categories.

With this the business of the judgement-power isn’t done yet. The under certain categories brought objects are

“a rhapsody of composed perceptions”

if they can’t be connected among themselves. The judgement-power does this; it puts the objects among each other in composition and subsumes these connections/ under certain categories (Relation).

Now all our, by the sensuousness for the Understanding supplied, visualizations are arranged, connected, and brought in relations to each other, they are put together under concepts, and for the Understanding only one step remains: it must bring the content of the categories to the highest point in our complete cognition, to the apperception, the self-consciousness.

Above we have stitched threads (so to speak) in our, into objects composed representations, and led these directly into our self-consciousness. Due the in the meanwhile inserted categories, this direct course of the threads has been interrupted. Now they are first unified in the categories and brought in relationship to each other and then connected into the self-consciousness. And now we have an intimate cohesion of all representations, have through connecting (following general and necessary laws) knowledge and experience, connected representations, with one word: the unity of the self-consciousness stands in opposition to nature, which is through and through the work of our Understanding.

And now we want to have short look at the use of the categories on the appearances. By doing this we have to deal first with the schematics of the pure concepts of understanding. Schopenhauer calls the treatise on this: “wondrous and known as exceedingly obscure, while no man has ever been able to make anything out of it”, and gives it diverse interpretations. Kant says:

But pure concepts of understanding being quite heterogeneous from empirical visualizations, and indeed from all sensible visualizations, can never be met with in any visualization. ^(157D, 180E)

Since all in subsumptions of an object under a concept all representations of the first must be homogenous with the last one, so must there be

some third thing, which is homogeneous on the one hand with the category, and on the other hand with the appearance, and which thus makes the application of the former to the latter possible. ^(158E,181E)

Kant calls this mediating third the transcendental scheme and find that, what he seeks, in time, so that every scheme of a concept of understanding is a determination of time a priori resting upon rules.

Now a transcendental determination of time is so far homogeneous with the category, which constitutes its unity, in that it is universal and rests upon an a priori rule. But, on the other hand, it is so far homogeneous with appearance, in that time is contained in every empirical representation of the diversity. ^(158D,181E)

The schemata now go, after their arrangement of the categories,

I can find in the “wondrous” chapter nothing else, than that the diversity-Synthesis of a visualization would be impossible without succession, i.e. without time, which, a bit modified, is very true, which I’ll show. But what great obscurity and unclarity did Kant have to lay upon this simple relationship, since his categories are concepts, which precede all experience. An empirical concept naturally has a homogeneity with the by it represented objects, since it is only its image. But a concept, a priori is obviously not homogenous with empirical visualizations, which can of course satisfy no one.

We will assume however with Kant, that it does satisfy, and go on to the use of the categories.

The rules for the objective use of the categories are the principles of pure Understanding. They fall apart in:

Axioms of visualization.
Anticipations of perception.
Analogies of experience.
Postulates of empirical thought in general.

Kant divides the principles into mathematical and dynamical ones, and considers that 1 and 2 to belong to the first mentioned one, 3 and 4 under the last one, after having made the same section in the categories. His line of thought is remarkable:

All combination (conjunctio) is either composition (compositio) or connection (nexus). The former is the synthesis of the diversity where its constituents do not necessarily belong to one another.(…) Such also is the synthesis of the homogeneous in everything which can be mathematically treated.(…) The second mode of combination (nexus) is the synthesis of the diversity so far as its constituents necessarily belong to one another, as, for example, the accident to some substance, or the effect to the cause. It is therefore synthesis of that which, though heterogeneous, is yet represented as combined a priori. This combination, as not being arbitrary and as concerning the connection of the existence of the diversity, I entitle dynamical. ^(174D,197/8E)

In the application of pure concepts of understanding to possible experience, the employment of their synthesis is either mathematical or dynamical; for it is concerned partly with the mere visualization of an appearance in general, partly with its existence. The a priori conditions of visualization are absolutely necessary conditions of any possible experience; those of the existence of the objects of a possible empirical visualization are in themselves only accidental. The principles of mathematical employment will therefore be unconditionally necessary, that is, apodictic. Those of dynamical employment will also in- deed possess the character of a priori necessity, but only under the condition of empirical thought in some experience, there- fore only mediately and indirectly.^(173D,196E)

The principle of the Axioms of visualization is:

All visualizations are extensive magnitudes.

Here we encounter partial-representations again, which we discussed at the beginning of my analysis of the Transcendental Analytic. What this is about is the composition of the homogenous partial-representations and the consciousness of the synthetical unity of this homogenous (diversity).

Consciousness of the synthetic unity of the diversity-homogeneous in visualization in general, in so far as the representation of an object first becomes possible by means of it, is, however, the concept of a magnitude (quanti). Thus even the perception of an object, as appearance, is only possible through the same synthetic unity of the diversity of the given sensuous visualization as that whereby the unity of the combination of the diversity-homogenous is thought in the concept of a magnitude. In other words, appearances are all without exception magnitudes, indeed extensive magnitudes.

The principle of the Anticipations of perception is:

In all appearances, the real that is an object of sensation has intensive magnitude, that is, a degree.

As we have seen in the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant makes a strict distinction between visualizations and mere Sensations. The first ones are limitations of the before all experience in us lying pure visualizations (space and time), so that we can, without having seen an object, state a priori with full certainty, that is has a shape and stands in a necessary relation to time. The mere sensations however, like color, temperature, smell, etc. lack a similar transcendental principle; since I can’t determine before all experience the activity of an object. Moreover experience learns us that what one calls warm, another calls cold, this one considers light what another considers heavy, and especially tastes and color! Des goûts et des colours il ne faut jamais disputer. (About taste and color we must never dispute)

Thus all these mere sensations wander homelessly around the Transcendental Aesthetic, as bastards, begotten in the impure marriage bet of the sensuousness, since Kant couldn’t find a form of sensuousness, under which they should fall, like the infinite space for all imaginable spaces, the infinite time all imaginable times.

But all these sensations, as diverse as they may appear in different subjects, are inseparably with the appearances connected and won’t themselves be disavowed away. Yes, they are main issue, since the activity which evokes them, as such fulfills space and time; since it is clear, that an object is not further expanded, than where it works. In the Transcendental Aesthetic Kant may settle with the mere sensations this way, but not anymore in the Transcendental Analytic, which is about the connection of appearances, (where all its peculiarities are considered,) and where they are subsumed according to rules under the diverse Concepts of Understanding. Kant united them under the category of quality and called the rule according to which this happens, Anticipation of perception.

Now we should assume that, what can at least be anticipated (known and determined a priori) what is only empirically perceptible,------, Or with Kant’s words:

But as there is an element in the appearances (namely, sensation, the matter of perception) which can never be known a priori, and which therefore constitutes the distinctive difference between empirical and a priori knowledge, it follows that sensation is just that element which cannot be anticipated. On the other hand, we might very well entitle the pure determinations in space and time, in respect of shape as well as of magnitude, anticipations of appearances, since they represent a priori that which may always be given a posteriori in experience.^(179D,202E)

But Kant is not shy. Since he can’t solve the difficulty with reasons, he skips over them. He says:

Apprehension by means merely of sensation occupies only an instant, if, that is, I do not take into account the succession of different sensations. As sensation is that element in the [field of] appearance the apprehension of which does not involve a successive synthesis proceeding from parts to the whole representation, it has no extensive magnitude. The absence of sensation at that instant would involve the representation of the instant as empty, therefore as = 0. Now what corresponds in empirical intuition to sensation is reality (realitas phaenomenon); what corresponds to its absence is negation = 0. Every sensation, however, is capable of diminution, so that it can decrease and gradually vanish. Between reality in the [field of] appearance and negation there is therefore a continuity of many possible intermediate sensations, the difference between any two of which is always smaller than the difference between the given sensation and zero or complete negation. In other words, the real in the [field of] appearance has always a magnitude. ^(180D,203E)

A magnitude which is apprehended only as unity, and in which multiplicity can be represented only through ap- proximation to negation = 0, I entitle an intensive magnitude. ^(180D,203E)

Kant desires after this, that I, with every empirical sensation, start from the negation of it, from zero, and produce them first by intensification. ---

This is meanwhile only an empirical process; he doesn’t explain, how an anticipation is possible. Here is now the explanation.

The quality of sensation, as for instance in colors, taste, etc. , is always merely empirical, and cannot be represented a priori. But the real, which corresponds to sensations in general, as opposed to negation = 0, represents only that something the very concept of which includes being, and signifies nothing but the synthesis in an empirical consciousness in general.(…) Consequently, though all sensations as such are given only a posteriori, their property of possessing a degree can be known a priori.

Then the philosopher steps in: he’ll show

That it certainly had to be so.

^((Goethe, Faust, The Study)^)

Let us wait for a moment and orientate us. We have, in accordance with the Axioms of visualization and Anticipations of perception, extensive and intensive magnitudes, i.e. completed objects which we follow with consciousness, we think these objects as such. We see houses, trees, fields, humans, animals etc. Nevertheless two things have to be mentioned. First, these objects are pure creations of the Understanding. He alone has connected the data of sensuousness and the resulting objects are his work. The Synthesis is in only in the Understanding, through the Understanding, for the Understanding and nothing in that what appears forces the Understanding, to connect it in a certain way.

We cannot represent to ourselves anything as combined in the object which we have not ourselves previously combined, and that of all representations combination is the only one which cannot be given through objects. Being an act of the self-activity of the subject, it cannot be executed save by the subject itself. ^(128D,151/2E)

For where the understanding has not previously combined, it cannot dissolve, since only as having been combined by the understanding can anything that allows of analysis be given to the faculty of representation.

Secondly, these objects stand to each other in an isolated, separated way. If experience occurs in the senses, then these objects must be connected under each other. The categories of Relations accomplish this, according to rules, which Kant call Analogies of experience.

The general principle of the Analogies of experience is (TN; there are three analogies):

Experience is possible only through the representation of a necessary connection of perceptions.

The principle of the first analogy is:

In all change of appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is neither increased nor diminished.

I won’t stop at this principle now, since I’ll discuss it at another occasion. I want mention only, that it makes the substance to a communal subtract before all appearances, in which they are connected together. All changes, all emerging and dissolving, doesn’t affect the substance, but only its accidents, i.e. its being of existence, its specific way to exist. The corollaries of this principle are the well-known, that the substance hasn’t emerged, nor can it dissolve, or like the ancients said: Gigno de nihilo nihil, in nihilum nil posse reverti. (Nothing can be born of nothing, nothing can be resolved into nothing.)

The principle of the second analogy is:

All alterations take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect.

In the first Analogy we have seen the regulation of the existence of the objects by the Understanding, here we have to consider the law, according to which the Understanding orders its changes. I can be short, since I will investigate all causality-relations in the criticism of the Schopenhauerian philosophy. I restrict myself to representation of the Kantian proof of the apriority of the concept of causality.

I perceive that appearances follow one another, that is, that there is a state of things at one time the opposite of which was in the preceding time. Thus I am really connecting two perceptions in time. Now connection is not the work of mere sense and viewing, but is here the product of a synthetic faculty of imagination, which determines inner sense in respect of the time-relation. But imagination can connect these two states in two ways, so that either the one or the other precedes in time. For time cannot be perceived in itself, and what precedes and what follows cannot, therefore, by relation to it, be empirically determined in the object. I am conscious only that my imagination sets the one state before and the other after, not that the one state precedes the other in the object. In other words, the objective relation of appearances that follow upon one another is not to be determined through mere perception. In order that this relation be known as determined, the relation between the two states must be so thought that it is thereby determined as necessary which of them must be placed before, and which of them after, and that they cannot be placed in the reverse relation. But the concept which carries with it a necessity of synthetic unity can only be a pure concept that lies in the understanding, not in perception; and in this case it is the concept of the relation of cause and effect, the former of which determines the latter in time, as its consequence, not as in a sequence that may occur solely in the imagination. ^(196/7D,218/9E)

Therefore in that what appears does not lie the coercion for the Understanding, to set one as the cause of the effect of the other, but the first the Understanding brings both appearances in the relation of causality and determines unconcerned, which of both precedes the other in time, that is, which one is the cause of the other. –

The principle of the third analogy is:

All substances, in so far as they can be perceived to coexist in space, are in thoroughgoing reciprocity.

This principle achieves the expansion of the causality on all appearances in that way, that every appearance works on all others in the world directly and indirectly, like all appearances for their part work upon every single one, and indeed always simultaneously.

In this sense has the community or reciprocity^3 its full legitimacy, and if the concept reciprocity is found in no language but the German language, then it only proves, that the Germans are the most profound thinkers. Schopenhauer’s position towards this category will be touched upon by me at a suitable moment. That Kant had his eyes set on connecting the appearances into a world-entirety, in which nothing can lead a completely independent life, is clear for all open-minded. That, which the category of community identifies, is best expressed by the poet’s exclamation of admiration:

How each to the Whole its selfhood gives,

One in another works and lives!

^((Goethe, Faust, Night)^)

The categories of Modality do not help to complete the experience.

The categories of modality have the peculiarity that, in determining an object, they do not in the least enlarge the concept to which they are attached as predicates. They only express the relation of the concept to the faculty of knowledge. ^(217D, 239E)

I cite the postulates of empirical thought only for the completeness.

That which agrees with the formal conditions of experience, that is, with the conditions of visualization and of concepts, is possible.

That which is bound up with the material conditions of experience, that is, with sensation, is actual.
That which in its connection with the actual is determined in accordance with universal conditions of experience, is (that is, exists as) necessary.

If we go back to the Analogies of experience, the question arises: what do they teach us? They teach us, that, like the composition of partial-representations into objects is the work of the Understanding, also connecting these objects under each other is achieved by the Understanding. The three dynamical relations, inherence, consequence and composition have only meaning for and thanks to the human Understanding.

The consequences which follow from this leave Kant cold and unmoved.

All appearances stand in a continuously connection after necessary laws and therefore in a transcendental affinity, from which the empirical is the mere result. (FE)

The arrangement and the regularity of the appearances, which we call nature, we bring them ourselves in it, and we couldn’t find them in it, if we wouldn’t have, or the nature of our mind, initially placed them. (FE)

So exaggerated, so nonsensical as it sounds, to say: the Understanding itself is the source of the laws of nature, so right is such an assertion. (FE)

The understanding does not derive its laws from nature, but prescribes them to it. (Prolegomena, last sentence of § 36)

And so we stand, at the end of the Transcendental Analytic, even more depressed, than at the end of the Transcendental Aesthetic. It delivered the Understanding partial-representations of an appearing = 0, which got worked into deception-objects, in an deceptive nexus. In the deception of sensuousness produces the Understanding, through composing, new deceptions. The ghostliness of the outside world is inexpressibly grim. The freely thinking subject, who should be the creator of the whole phantasmagoria resists with full force against the accusation, but already the siren calls of the “all-crusher” (TN; Kant’s nickname) anaesthetize, and he clamps himself at his last resort, his self-consciousness. Or is it mere deception and illusion too?

The Transcendental Analytic should have as motto the line above the gate of hell:

Abandon all hope, you who enter here.

But no! Schopenhauer says: “Kant is perhaps the most original mind, which nature has ever produced”; and I cross out with full conviction “perhaps” and many would do the same. What such a man has written, with such great effort of astuteness, cannot be through and through false, up to its root. And it indeed isn’t. One can open a side of the Transcendental Analytic, and one will always find the Synthesis of a diversity and the time: they are the indestructible crown on the corpse of the categories, which I’ll show.

Now it’s my most urgent affair, to prove from passages of the Transcendental Analytic, which I have until now left untouched, that the infinite space and the infinite time cannot be forms of our sensuousness.

Posted Mar 22, 2017, 1:09 PM UTC · edited