Kant's Theory of Knowledge

by H. A. Prichard

[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.