A Commentary to Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason'

by Norman Kemp Smith

But the latter consequence is one which could not, at the stage represented by this section, be appreciated by Kant. For, as we shall find, he is endeavouring to solve the problem of the reference of sense-representation to an object without assumption of a priori categories. It is in empirical concepts, conditioned only by a transcendental apperception, that he professes to discover the grounds and conditions of this objective reference. Let us follow Kant’s argument in detail. The section opens[759] with what may be a reference to the Aesthetic, and proceeds to deal with the first of the two problems cited in the 1772 letter to Herz[760]—how sense-representations stand related to their object. The exact terms in which this question was there formulated should be noted.

“I propounded to myself this question: on what ground rests the relation of that in us which we name representation (Vorstellung) to the object. If the representation contains only the mode in which the subject is affected by the object, it is easily understood how it should accord (gemäss sei) with that object as an effect with its cause, and how [therefore] this determination of our mind should be able to represent something, i.e. have an object. The passive or sensuous representations have thus a comprehensible (begreifliche) relation to objects, and the principles, which are borrowed from the nature of our soul, have a comprehensible validity for all things in so far as they are to be objects of the senses.”[761]

Thus in 1772 there was here no real problem for Kant. The assumed fact, that our representations are generated in us by the action of independent existences, is taken as sufficient explanation of their being referred to objects.

The section of the Critique under consideration shows that Kant had come to realise the inadequacy of this explanation quite early, indeed prior to his solution of the second and further question which in that same letter is spoken of as “the key to the whole secret” of metaphysics. On what grounds, he now asks, is a subjective idea, even though it be a sense impression, capable of yielding consciousness of an object? In the letter to Herz the use of the term representation (Vorstellung) undoubtedly helped to conceal this problem. It is now emphasised that appearances are nothing but sense representations, and must never be regarded as objects capable of existing in themselves, with exactly the same character, outside our power of representation. Now also Kant employs, in place of the phrase “in accord with,” the much more definite term “corresponding to.” He points out that when we speak of an object corresponding to our knowledge, we imply that it is distinct from that knowledge. Consciousness of such an object must therefore be acquired from some other source than the given impressions. In other words, Kant is now prepared to withdraw his statement that “the passive or sensuous representations have an [easily] comprehensible relation to objects.” In and by themselves they are purely subjective, and can involve no such concept. The latter is a thought (Gedanke), a concept (Begriff), additional to, and distinct from, the given impressions. Its possibility, as regards both origin[762] and validity, must be “deduced.”

There then results this first and very peculiar form of the transcendental deduction. That part of it which persists in the successive stages rests upon an explicitly developed distinction between empirical and transcendental apperception. Kant teaches, in agreement with Hume, though, as we may believe, independently of his direct influence, that there is no single empirical state of the self which is constant throughout experience.[763]

“The consciousness of the self, according to the determinations of our state in inner perception, is merely empirical, and always in process of change.... That which has to be represented as of necessity numerically identical cannot be thought as such through empirical data. There must be a condition which precedes all experience, and renders experience itself possible, if a transcendental pre-supposition of this kind is to be rendered valid.... This pure, original, unchangeable consciousness I shall name transcendental apperception.”[764]

Kant would seem to have first developed this view in a quite crude form. The consciousness of the self, he seems to have held, consists in its awareness of its own unceasing activities. As consciousness of activity, it is entirely distinct in nature and in origin from all apprehension of sense impressions.[765] This teaching is a natural extension of the doctrine of the Dissertation,[766] that such pure notions as those of possibility, existence, necessity, substance, cause, are “acquired by attending to the actions of the mind on the occasion of experience.” Kant would very naturally hold that consciousness of the identity and unity of the self is obtained in a similar manner. Such, indeed, is the teaching of the section before us.

“No knowledge can take place in us ... without that unity of consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions, and in relation to which all representation of objects is alone possible.”[767] “It is precisely this transcendental apperception that constructs out of (macht aus) all possible appearances, which are capable of coexisting in one experience, a connection of all these representations according to laws. For this unity of consciousness would be impossible if the mind could not become conscious, in the knowledge of the manifold, of the identity of the function whereby it combines it synthetically in one knowledge. Thus the mind’s original and necessary consciousness of the identity of itself is at the same time a consciousness of an equally necessary unity of the synthesis of all appearances according to concepts, i.e. according to rules.... For the mind could not possibly think the identity of itself in the manifold of its representations, and indeed a priori, if it did not have before its eyes the identity of its action....”[768]

That is to say, the self is the sole source of all unity. As a pure and original unity it precedes experience; to its synthetic activities all conceptual unity is due; and by reflection upon the constancy of these activities it comes to consciousness of its own identity.

“...even the purest objective unity, namely that of the a priori concepts (space and time), is possible only through relation of the intuitions to [transcendental apperception]. The numerical unity of this apperception is therefore the a priori condition of all concepts, just as the manifoldness of space and of time is of the intuitions of sensibility.”[769]