Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
But, with the exception of space, there is no representation,
subjective and referring to something external to us, which could be
called objective à priori. For there are no other subjective
representations from which we can deduce synthetical propositions à
priori, as we can from the intuition of space. (See § 3.) Therefore, to
speak accurately, no ideality whatever belongs to these, although they
agree in this respect with the representation of space, that they
belong merely to the subjective nature of the mode of sensuous
perception; such a mode, for example, as that of sight, of hearing, and
of feeling, by means of the sensations of colour, sound, and heat, but
which, because they are only sensations and not intuitions, do not of
themselves give us the cognition of any object, least of all, an à
priori cognition. My purpose, in the above remark, is merely this: to
guard any one against illustrating the asserted ideality of space by
examples quite insufficient, for example, by colour, taste, etc.; for
these must be contemplated not as properties of things, but only as
changes in the subject, changes which may be different in different
men. For, in such a case, that which is originally a mere phenomenon, a
rose, for example, is taken by the empirical understanding for a thing
in itself, though to every different eye, in respect of its colour, it
may appear different. On the contrary, the transcendental conception of
phenomena in space is a critical admonition, that, in general, nothing
which is intuited in space is a thing in itself, and that space is not
a form which belongs as a property to things; but that objects are
quite unknown to us in themselves, and what we call outward objects,
are nothing else but mere representations of our sensibility, whose
form is space, but whose real correlate, the thing in itself, is not
known by means of these representations, nor ever can be, but
respecting which, in experience, no inquiry is ever made.
SECTION II. Of Time.
§ 5. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception.
1. Time is not an empirical conception. For neither coexistence nor
succession would be perceived by us, if the representation of time did
not exist as a foundation à priori. Without this presupposition we
could not represent to ourselves that things exist together at one and
the same time, or at different times, that is, contemporaneously, or in
succession.
2. Time is a necessary representation, lying at the foundation of all
our intuitions. With regard to phenomena in general, we cannot think
away time from them, and represent them to ourselves as out of and
unconnected with time, but we can quite well represent to ourselves
time void of phenomena. Time is therefore given à priori. In it alone
is all reality of phenomena possible. These may all be annihilated in
thought, but time itself, as the universal condition of their
possibility, cannot be so annulled.
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