Causation; Knowledge, Theory of; Philosophy, German; Reason
which, therefore, must necessarily be found in the object, because the
object is given before your cognition, and not by means of it. If,
therefore, space (and time also) were not a mere form of your
intuition, which contains conditions à priori, under which alone things
can become external objects for you, and without which subjective
conditions the objects are in themselves nothing, you could not
construct any synthetical proposition whatsoever regarding external
objects. It is therefore not merely possible or probable, but
indubitably certain, that space and time, as the necessary conditions
of all our external and internal experience, are merely subjective
conditions of all our intuitions, in relation to which all objects are
therefore mere phenomena, and not things in themselves, presented to us
in this particular manner. And for this reason, in respect to the form
of phenomena, much may be said à priori, whilst of the thing in itself,
which may lie at the foundation of these phenomena, it is impossible to
say anything.
II. In confirmation of this theory of the ideality of the external as
well as internal sense, consequently of all objects of sense, as mere
phenomena, we may especially remark that all in our cognition that
belongs to intuition contains nothing more than mere relations. (The
feelings of pain and pleasure, and the will, which are not cognitions,
are excepted.) The relations, to wit, of place in an intuition
(extension), change of place (motion), and laws according to which this
change is determined (moving forces). That, however, which is present
in this or that place, or any operation going on, or result taking
place in the things themselves, with the exception of change of place,
is not given to us by intuition. Now by means of mere relations, a
thing cannot be known in itself; and it may therefore be fairly
concluded, that, as through the external sense nothing but mere
representations of relations are given us, the said external sense in
its representation can contain only the relation of the object to the
subject, but not the essential nature of the object as a thing in
itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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