The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant — Kant — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant
Kant · en
But form has also another meaning which justifies Kant in calling space
and time _only_ forms of our perception, and hence subjective. For,
while these forms are _found_ in what we perceive, the distinctive part
which they play in our knowledge is due to the fact that we use space
and time as a framework by which to connect our scattered experiences.
We come to think of the space and time we perceive as parts of an
absolute space and an absolute time. We perceive parts of space and
time, but absolute space and absolute time we do not perceive. They are
the form we perceive imagined indefinitely extended. We order the
particular parts of space and time which we do perceive in reference to
absolute space and time. Yet absolute space and time are only known
through the finite parts of space and time which we actually experience.
Hence absolute space and time are not perceived realities or perceived
orders, but ways in which we organise and arrange what we perceive.
Now, the qualities of space and time which are hard to think of as the
qualities of a thing that exists, _i.e._ their infinite divisibility and
infinite extension, are qualities of absolute space and time. When we
say that space is infinitely divisible, we do not mean that any existing
thing is made up of an infinite number of parts. The divisibility of
space and the divisibility of matter are quite different. An inch as a
spatial determination is infinitely divisible, but the divisibility of
the actual stuff which any inch may measure is a matter of empirical
investigation, and ought to admit of a definite answer. That means
that, while we use determinations of space which we consider infinitely
divisible and infinitely extensible to measure things in space, we do
not consider that these determinations, fractions, or multiples of
inches or centimetres, have anything to do with the constitution of the
thing they measure. It was not put together in fractions of inches.
Thus we must distinguish between space as the form of what we perceive,
the next-each-otherness of things, and the use we make of that form to
construct by means of measurement order in all different perception.
The first is obviously the form only of what we perceive, and gives rise
to no transcendental questions. But the second, infinite space, though
it seems to transcend our perception, has still only meaning in
reference to perception, is only a way of ordering our perceptions. The
same holds good of time.