The first division rests on somewhat irrelevant distinctions derived from the traditional logic; the other is more directly inspired by the distinctions which naturally belong to Kant’s own philosophical system.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS
PART I
THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC
THE Aesthetic opens with a series of definitions. Intuition (Anschauung) is knowledge (Erkenntnis) which is in immediate relation to objects (sich auf Gegenstände unmittelbar bezieht). Each term in this definition calls for comment. Anschauung etymologically applies only to visual sensation. Kant extends it to cover sensations of all the senses. The current term was Empfindung. Kant’s reason for introducing the term intuition in place of sensation was evidently the fact that the latter could not be made to cover space and time. We can speak of pure intuitions, but not of pure sensations. Knowledge is used in a very wide sense, not strictly consistent with A 50-1 = B 74-5.[345] The phrase sich bezieht is quite indefinite and ambiguous. Its meaning will depend upon the interpretation of its context. Object is used in its widest and most indefinite meaning. It may be taken as signifying content (Inhalt, a term which does not occur in this passage, but which Kant elsewhere employs[346]). That, at least, is the meaning which best fits the context. For when Kant adds that intuition relates itself to objects immediately, it becomes clear that he has in mind its distinction from conception (Begriff) which as expressing the universal is related to objects only indirectly, representing some one or more attributes of the given objects. Ultimately the whole content of conception must be given.[347] The phrase “relates itself to objects” may, therefore, be paraphrased “has some content, such as red or cold, as its immediate object.” Through the content of intuition the whole material of thought is supplied. Intuition in itself is blind, but not empty. “Thoughts without content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.”[348]
But the phrase “is in relation to objects” has also for Kant a second meaning, implied in the above, but supplementary to it. As he states in the very next sentence, intuition can have an object, meaning thereby a content, only in so far as that content is given. The material of thought must be supplied; it cannot be invented.[349] The only mode, however, in which it can be supplied, at least to the human mind, is through the affecting of the mind by “the object.” This is an excellent instance of Kant’s careless mode of expressing himself. In the first part of the sentence object means object of intuition. In the latter part it signifies the cause of intuition. And on Kant’s view the two cannot coincide. The object which affects the mind is independently real; the immediate object of the intuition is a sense-content, which Kant, following the universally accepted view of his time, regards as purely subjective. The term object is thus used in two quite distinct meanings within one and the same sentence.
Kant’s definition of intuition, when stated quite explicitly, and cleared of all ambiguity, is therefore as follows. Intuition is the immediate apprehension of a content which as given is due to the action of an independently real object upon the mind. This definition is obviously not meant to be a description of intuition as it presents itself to introspection, but to be a reflective statement of its indispensable conditions. Also it has in view only empirical intuitions. It does not cover the pure intuitions space and time.[350] Though space and time are given, and though each possesses an intrinsic content, these contents are not due to the action of objects upon the sensibility.
“An intuition is such a representation as immediately depends upon the presence of the object. Hence it seems impossible originally to intuit a priori because intuition would in that event take place without either a former or a present object to refer to, and by consequence could not be intuition.”[351]
This interpretation is borne out by Kant’s answer to Beck when the latter objected that only through subsumption under the categories can a representation become objective. Kant replies in a marginal note, the meaning of which, though difficult to decipher, admits of a fairly definite interpretation.
“The determining of a concept through intuition so as to yield knowledge of the object falls within the province of the faculty of judgment, but not the relation of the intuition to an object in general [i.e. the view of it as having a content which is given and which is therefore due to some object], for that is merely the logical use of the representation, whereby it is thought as falling within the province of knowledge. On the other hand, if this single representation is related only to the subject, the use is aesthetic (feeling), and the representation cannot be an act of knowledge.”[352]
Mind (Gemüt) is a neutral term without metaphysical implications.[353] It is practically equivalent to the term which is substituted for it in the next paragraph, power of representation (Vorstellungsfähigkeit). Representation (Vorstellung) Kant employs in the widest possible meaning. It covers any and every cognitive state. The definition here given of sensibility—“the capacity (receptivity) to obtain representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects”—is taken directly over from the Dissertation.[354] In this definition, as in that of intuition, Kant, without argument or question, postulates the existence of independently existing objects. The existence of given sensations presupposes the existence of things in themselves. Sensibility is spoken of as the source both of objects and of intuitions. This is legitimate since object and intuition mutually imply one another; the latter is the apprehension of the former. By “objects” is obviously meant what in the third paragraph is called the matter of appearances, i.e. sensations in their objective aspect, as qualities or contents. The term “object” is similarly employed in the last line of this first paragraph.