Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
We have à priori forms of the external and internal sensuous intuition
in the representations of space and time, and to these must the
synthesis of apprehension of the manifold in a phenomenon be always
comformable, because the synthesis itself can only take place according
to these forms. But space and time are not merely forms of sensuous
intuition, but intuitions themselves (which contain a manifold), and
therefore contain à priori the determination of the unity of this
manifold.[23] (See the Transcendent Æsthetic.) Therefore is unity of
the synthesis of the manifold without or within us, consequently also a
conjunction to which all that is to be represented as determined in
space or time must correspond, given à priori along with (not in) these
intuitions, as the condition of the synthesis of all apprehension of
them. But this synthetical unity can be no other than that of the
conjunction of the manifold of a given intuition in general, in a
primitive act of consciousness, according to the categories, but
applied to our sensuous intuition. Consequently all synthesis, whereby
alone is even perception possible, is subject to the categories. And,
as experience is cognition by means of conjoined perceptions, the
categories are conditions of the possibility of experience and are
therefore valid à priori for all objects of experience.
[23] Space represented as an object (as geometry really requires it to
be) contains more than the mere form of the intuition; namely, a
combination of the manifold given according to the form of sensibility
into a representation that can be intuited; so that the form of the
intuition gives us merely the manifold, but the formal intuition gives
unity of representation. In the æsthetic, I regarded this unity as
belonging entirely to sensibility, for the purpose of indicating that
it antecedes all conceptions, although it presupposes a synthesis
which does not belong to sense, through which alone, however, all our
conceptions of space and time are possible. For as by means of this
unity alone (the understanding determining the sensibility) space and
time are given as intuitions, it follows that the unity of this
intuition à priori belongs to space and time, and not to the
conception of the understanding (§ 20).
When, then, for example, I make the empirical intuition of a house by
apprehension of the manifold contained therein into a perception, the
necessary unity of space and of my external sensuous intuition lies at
the foundation of this act, and I, as it were, draw the form of the
house conformably to this synthetical unity of the manifold in space.
But this very synthetical unity remains, even when I abstract the form
of space, and has its seat in the understanding, and is in fact the
category of the synthesis of the homogeneous in an intuition; that is
to say, the category of quantity, to which the aforesaid synthesis of
apprehension, that is, the perception, must be completely
conformable.[24]
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