FOOTNOTES
[1] Cf. p. 206-10.
[2] B. 102-5, M. 62-3. Cf. pp. 155-6.
[3] The first two accounts are (1) that of judgement given B. 92-4, M. 56-8, and (2) that of judgement implicit in the view that the forms of judgement distinguished by Formal Logic are functions of unity. In A. 126, Mah. 215, Kant seems to imply—though untruly—that this new account coincides with the other two, which he does not distinguish.
[4] An interpretation of B. 105 init., M. 63 fin.
[5] E. g. Kant's arbitrary assertion that the operation of counting presupposes the conception of that number which forms the scale of notation adopted as the source of the unity of the synthesis. This is of course refuted among other ways by the fact that a number of units less than the scale of notation can be counted.
[6] Cf. A. 97, Mah. 193, 'Knowledge is a totality of compared and connected representations.
[7] No doubt Kant would allow that at least some categories, e. g. the conception of cause and effect, are principles of synthesis of a manifold which at any rate contains an empirical element, but it includes just one of the difficulties of the passage that it implies that a priori knowledge either is, or involves, a synthesis of pure or a priori elements.
[8] B. 92-4, M. 56-8.
[9] Kant, of course, thinks of this activity of thought, as identical with that which brings particulars under a conception.
[10] Cf. pp. 155-6.
[11] In bringing perceptions under a conception, thought, according to Kant, finds the conception in the perceptions by analysis of them, and in relating two conceptions in judgement, it determines the particular form of judgement by analysis of the conceptions.
[12] The italics are mine.
[13] The italics are mine.
[14] Cf. the description of the imagination as 'blind'.
[15] B. 162 note, M. 99 note. Cf. B. 152, M. 93. Similarly at one point in the passage under discussion (B. 102 fin., M. 62 med.) the synthesis is expressly attributed to the spontaneity of thought.
[16] A. 95-104, Mah. 194-8.
[17] Cf. A. 120, Mah. 211.
[18] 'Combine' is used as the verb corresponding to 'synthesis'.
[19] I. e. given to us through the operation of things in themselves upon our sensibility.
[20] B. 130, M. 80.
[21] A. 102, Mah. 197.
[22] The term 'synthesis' is undeserved, and is due to a desire to find a verbal parallel to the 'synthesis of apprehension in perception'. For the inappropriateness of 'reproduction' and of 'imagination' see pp. 239-41.
[23] A. 100-2, Mah. 195-7.
[24] Cf. A. 113, Mah. 205; A. 121-2, Mah. 211-12; and Caird, i. 362-3. For a fuller account of these presuppositions, and for a criticism of them, cf. Ch. IX, p. 219 and ff.
[25] This title also is a misnomer due to the desire to give parallel titles to the three operations involved in knowledge. There is really only one synthesis referred to, and the title here should be 'the recognition of the synthesis in the conception'.
[26] Begriff.
[27] A. 103-4, Mah. 197-8.
[28] Cf. pp. 162-9.
[29] That the combination proceeds on a specific principle only emerges in this account of the third operation.
[30] Kant's example shows that this consciousness is not the mere consciousness of the act of combination as throughout identical, but the consciousness of it as an identical act of a particular kind.
[31] When Kant says 'this conception [i. e. the conception of the number counted] consists in the consciousness of this unity of the synthesis', he is momentarily and contrary to his usual practice speaking of a conception in the sense of the activity of conceiving a universal, and not in the sense of the universal conceived. Similarly in appealing to the meaning of Begriff (conception) he is thinking of 'conceiving' as the activity of combining a manifold through a conception.
[32] The italics are mine. He does not say 'we should not be conscious of what we are thinking as the same representation and as belonging [Greek: ktl]., and we should not be conscious of the manifold as constituting a whole.
[33] The italics are mine.
[34] There could not, of course, be two syntheses, the one being and the other not being upon a principle.
[35] Cf. pp. 168-9.
[36] In view of Kant's subsequent account of the function of the categories it should be noticed that, according to the present passage, the conception involved in an act of knowledge is the conception not of an 'object in general', but of 'an object of the particular kind which constitutes the individual whole produced by the combination a whole of the particular kind that it is of', and that, in accordance with this, the self-consciousness involved is not the mere consciousness that our combining activity is identical throughout, but the consciousness that it is an identical activity of a particular kind, e. g. that of counting five units. Cf. pp. 184 fin.-186, 190-2, and 206-7.
[37] Vorstellung in the present passage is perhaps better rendered 'idea', but representation has been retained for the sake of uniformity.
[38] Erkenntnisse.
[39] A. 104, Mah. 199.
[40] Cf. A. 105, Mah. 199.
[41] Cf. A. 106, Mah. 200.
[42] It may be noticed that possession of the unity of a system does not really distinguish 'an object' from any other whole of parts, nor in particular from 'a representation'. Any whole of parts must be a systematic unity.
[43] Cf. pp. 230-3.
[44] Erkenntnisse.
[45] Vorgestellt.
[46] Cf. p. 183, note 2.
[47] 'The formal unity' means not the unity peculiar to any particular synthesis, but the character shared by all syntheses of being a systematic whole.
[48] The final sense is the same whether 'object' be here understood to refer to the thing in itself or to a phenomenon.
[49] A comparison of this passage (A. 104-5, Mah. 198-9) with A. 108-9, Mah. 201-2 (which seems to reproduce A. 104-5, Mah. 198-9), B. 522-3, M. 309 and A. 250, Mah. 224, seems to render it absolutely necessary to understand by x, and by the transcendental object, the thing in itself. Cf. also B. 236, M. 143 ('so soon as I raise my conception of an object to the transcendental meaning thereof, the house is not a thing in itself but only a phenomenon, i. e. a representation of which the transcendental object is unknown'), A. 372, Mah. 247 and A. 379, Mah. 253.
[50] Compare 'The object of our perceptions is merely that something of which the conception expresses such a necessity of synthesis' (A. 106, Mah. 200), and 'An object is that in the conception of which the manifold of a given perception is united' (B. 137, M. 84). Cf. also A. 108, Mah. 201.
[51] Kant's position is no doubt explained by the fact that since the object corresponding to our representations is the thing in itself, and since we only know that this is of the same kind in the case of every representation, it can only be thought of as producing systematic unity, and not a unity of a particular kind. The position is also in part due to the fact that the principles of synthesis involved by the phenomenal object are usually thought of by Kant as the categories; these of course can only contribute a general kind of unity, and not the special kind of unity belonging to an individual object.
[52] Erkenntnisse.
[53] A. 106-7, Mah. 200-1.
[54] We should have expected this to have been already accomplished. For according to the account already considered, it is we who by our imagination introduce necessity into the synthesis of the manifold and by our understanding become conscious of it. We shall therefore not be surprised to find that 'transcendental apperception' is really only ourselves as exercising imagination and understanding in a new guise.
[55] Kant seems here and elsewhere to use the phrase 'transcendental unity of apperception' as synonymous with 'transcendental apperception', the reason, presumably, being that transcendental apperception is a unity.
[56] Objecte überhaupt, i. e. objects of any kind in distinction not from objects of a particular kind but from no objects at all.
[57] A. 111, Mah. 204
[58] A. 112, Mah. 204.
[59] A. 110-12, Mah. 203-4.
[60] Cf. A. 113, Mah. 205-6 and A. 108-10, Mah. 202-3.
[61] The existence of this new starting-point is more explicit, A. 116-7 (and note), Mah. 208 (and note), and A. 122, Mah. 212.
[62] A. 107, Mah. 200.
[63] The main clauses have been numbered for convenience of reference.
[64] This is an indisputable case of the use of representation in the sense of something represented or presented.
[65] I. e. consciousness of our identity is final; we cannot, for instance, go further back to a consciousness of the consciousness of our identity.
[66] I understand this to mean 'This through and through identical consciousness of myself as the identical subject of a manifold given in perception involves a synthesis of representations'.
[67] The drift of the passage as a whole (cf. especially § 16) seems to show that here 'the synthesis of representations' means 'their connectedness' and not 'the act of connecting them'.
[68] B. 131-5, M. 81-4.
[69] Cf. p. 204, note 3.
[70] More accurately, 'of the possibility of the connectedness'.
[71] The same view seems implied A. 117-8, Mah. 208. Kant apparently thinks of this consciousness as also a self-consciousness (cf. § 9), though it seems that he should have considered it rather as a condition of self-consciousness, cf. p. 204, note 2.
[72] Sections 6 and 10.
[73] Cf. pp. 202-3.
[74] A third alternative is to understand Kant to be thinking of all thought as self-conscious, i. e. as thinking accompanied by the consciousness of thinking. But since in that case Kant would be arguing from thinking as thinking, i. e. as apprehending objects, the possibility of self-consciousness would only be glaringly assumed.
[75] The same is true of A. 116 and A. 117 note, Mah. 208, where Kant also appears to be offering what he considers to be an argument.
[76] §§ 5-11.
[77] Cf. B. 138 fin.-139 init., M. 85 fin.
[78] B. 139 init., M. 85 fin. also assumes that it is impossible for a mind to be a unity without being able to be conscious of its unity.
[79] It is in consequence of this that the statement that 'a manifold of representations belongs to me' means, with the probable exception of § 1, not, 'I am aware of A, I am aware of B, I am aware of C,' but, 'I am aware, in one act of awareness, of A B C as related' (= ABC are 'connected in' or 'belong to' one consciousness). Cf. §§ 4, 8 ('in one consciousness'), 9, 10 ('in one consciousness'), and A. 116, Mah. 208 ('These representations only represent anything in me by belonging with all the rest to one consciousness [accepting Erdmann's emendation mit allen anderen], in which at any rate they can be connected').
[80] The above criticism of Kant's thought has not implied that it may not be true that a knowing mind is, as such, capable of being aware of its own unity; the argument has only been that Kant's proof is unsuccessful.
[81] Cf. p. 198.
[82] A. 111, Mah. 204. Cf. A. 119, Mah. 210.
[83] A. 112, Mah. 204.
[84] Cf. p. 161.
[85] Cf. p. 177, note 2, and p. 185.
[86] Cf. pp. 215-17.
[87] Cf. pp. 181-2.
[88] Cf. p. 217.
[89] Erkenntnisse here is clearly used as a synonym for representations. Cf. A. 104, Mah. 199.
[90] B. 140-2, M. 86-8; cf. Prol., §§ 18-20.
[91] Cf. Caird, i. 348-9 note.
[92] We may notice in passing that this passage renders explicit the extreme difficulty of Kant's view that 'the objective unity of apperception' is the unity of the parts of nature or of the physical world. How can the 'very same representations' stand at once in the subjective relation of association and in the objective relation which consists in their being related as parts of nature? There is plainly involved a transition from representation, in the sense of the apprehension of something, to representation, in the sense of something apprehended. It is objects apprehended which are objectively related; it is our apprehensions of objects which are associated, cf. pp. 233 and 281-2. Current psychology seems to share Kant's mistake in its doctrine of association of ideas, by treating the elements associated, which are really apprehensions of objects, as if they were objects apprehended.
[93] Cf. A. 112, Mah. 204; B. 162, M. 99.
[94] A. 125, Mah. 214.
[95] A. 127, Mah. 216.
[96] Inbegriff.
[97] A. 114, Mah. 206.
[98] B. 164, M. 100.
[99] The main passage (B. 146-9, M. 90-2), in which he argues that the categories do not apply to things in themselves, ignores the account of a conception as a principle of synthesis, upon which the deduction turns, and returns to the earlier account of a conception as something opposed to a perception, i. e. as that by which an object is thought as opposed to a perception by which an object is given. Consequently, it argues merely that the categories, as conceptions, are empty or without an object, unless an object is given in perception, and that, since things in themselves are not objects of perception, the categories are no more applicable to things in themselves than are any other conceptions.