“The transcendental conception of appearances in space, on the other hand, is a Critical reminder that nothing intuited in space is a thing in itself, that space is not a form inhering in things in themselves ... and that what we call outer objects are nothing but mere representations of our sensibility, the form of which is space.”
In other words, the distinction drawn in the preceding paragraph between colour as a subjective effect and space as an objective existence is no longer maintained. Kant, when thus developing his position on subjectivist lines, allows no kind of independent existence to anything in the known world. Objects as known are mere Ideas (blosse Vorstellungen unserer Sinnlichkeit), the sole correlate of which is the unknowable thing in itself. But even in this paragraph both tendencies find expression. “Colour, taste, etc., must not rightly be regarded as properties of things, but only as changes in the subject.” This implies a threefold distinction between subjective sensations, empirical objects in space, and the thing in itself. The material world, investigated by science, is recognised as possessing a relatively independent mode of existence.
Substituted Fourth Paragraph of second edition.—In preparing the second edition Kant himself evidently felt the awkwardness of this abrupt juxtaposition of the two very different points of view; and he accordingly adopts a non-committal attitude, substituting a logical distinction for the ontological. Space yields synthetic judgments a priori; the sense qualities do not. Only in the concluding sentence does there emerge any definite phenomenalist implication. The sense qualities, “as they are mere sensations and not intuitions, in themselves reveal no object, least of all [an object] a priori.”[490] The assertion that the secondary qualities have no ideality implies a new and stricter use of the term ideal than we find anywhere in the first edition—a use which runs counter to Kant’s own constant employment of the term. On this interpretation it is made to signify what though subjective is also a priori. Here, as in many of the alterations of the second edition, Kant is influenced by the desire to emphasise the points which distinguish his idealism from that of Berkeley.
THE TRANSCENDENTAL AESTHETIC
SECTION II
TIME
METAPHYSICAL EXPOSITION OF THE CONCEPTION OF TIME
Time: First Argument.—This argument is in all respects the same as the first argument on space. The thesis is that the representation[491] of time is not of empirical origin. The proof is based on the fact that this representation must be previously given in order that the perception of coexistence or succession be possible. It also runs on all fours with the first argument in the Dissertation.
“The idea of time does not originate in, but is presupposed by the senses. When a number of things act upon the senses, it is only by means of the idea of time that they can be represented whether as simultaneous or as successive. Nor does succession generate the conception of time; but stimulates us to form it. Thus the notion of time, even if acquired through experience, is very badly defined as being a series of actual things existing one after another. For I can understand what the word after signifies only if I already know what time means. For those things are after one another which exist at different times, as those are simultaneous which exist at one and the same time.”[492]
Second Argument.—Kant again applies to time the argument already employed by him in dealing with space. The thesis is that time is given a priori. Proof is found in the fact that it cannot be thought away, i.e. in the fact of its subjective necessity. From this subjective necessity follows its objective necessity, so far as all appearances are concerned. In the second edition Kant added a phrase—“as the general condition of their possibility”—which is seriously misleading. The concluding sentence is thereby made to read as if Kant were arguing from the objective necessity of time, i.e. from its necessity as a constituent in the appearances apprehended, to its apriority. It is indeed possible that Kant himself regarded this objective necessity of time as contributing to the proof of its apriority. But no such argument can be accepted. Time may be necessary to appearances, once appearances are granted. This does not, however, prove that it must therefore precede them a priori. This alteration in the second edition is an excellent, though unfortunate, example of Kant’s invincible carelessness in the exposition of his thought. It has contributed to a misreading by Herbart and others of this and of the corresponding argument on space.
“Let us not talk of an absolute space as the presupposition of all our constructed figures. Possibility is nothing but thought, and it arises only when it is thought. Space is nothing but possibility, for it contains nothing save images of the existent; and absolute space is nothing save the abstracted general possibility of such constructions, abstracted from it after completion of the construction. The necessity of the representation of space ought never to have played any rôle in philosophy. To think away space is to think away the possibility of that which has been previously posited as actual. Obviously that is impossible, and the opposite is necessary.”[493]
Were Kant really arguing here and in the second argument on space solely from the objective necessity of time and space, this criticism would be unanswerable. But even taking the argument in its first edition form, as an argument from the psychological necessity of time, it lies open to the same objection as the argument on space. It rests upon a false statement of fact. We cannot retain time in the absence of all appearances of outer and inner sense. With the removal of the given manifold, time itself must vanish.
Fourth Argument.[494]—This argument differs only slightly, and mainly through omissions,[495] from the fourth[496] of the arguments in regard to space; but a few minor points call for notice. (a) In the first sentence, instead of intuition, which alone is under consideration in its contrast to conception, Kant employs the phrase “pure form of intuition.” (b) In the third sentence Kant uses the quite untenable phrase “given through a single object (Gegenstand).” Time is not given from without, nor is it due to an object. (c) The concluding sentences properly belong to the transcendental exposition. They are here introduced, not in the ambiguous manner of the fourth[1] argument on space, but explicitly as a further argument in proof of the intuitive character of time. The synthetic proposition which Kant cites is taken neither from the science of motion nor from arithmetic. It expresses the nature of time itself, and for that reason is immediately contained in the intuition of time.