In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze defines his transcendental empiricism as an “apodictic” aesthetics, by which he means a science not simply of the sensible, but of the being of the sensible. Yet, to the extent that the sensibility which is at stake in the Transcendental Aesthetics is a sensibility without sensation, Kantian aesthetics is not apodictic. Sensation is the only contact we have with the being of the sensible, namely that which is exterior with respect to the interior (...) of representation. But transcendental idealism is a subjectivism. Indeed, if one connects what Heidegger considers to be the greatest achievement of Kant’s Copernican revolution with the achievement that Kant held highest in this regard, then the two main precepts of Kant’s subjective phenomenalism fall into place. The first is that we cannot feel outside of us – this amounts to non-sensuous sensibility as transcendental idealism; the second is that we can feel inside – this amounts to non-sensuous sensibility as empirical realism. The aim of this article is to show how Kant's treatment of sensation prevented him from refuting Berkeley’s idealism. (shrink)

In considering Kant’s response to the Leibnizian theory of space in the Transcendental Aesthetic, scholars have overwhelmingly emphasized Kant’s response to Leibniz’s relationalism. They have largely missed the metaphysically realistic aspects of Leibniz’s theory with which Kant is primarily concerned. As such, scholars have failed to appreciate the threat Leibniz’s theory poses to Kant’s idealism, a point made publicly as early as 1786 by H. A. Pistorius. I argue that the Aesthetic does indeed contain a compelling argument (...) against the Leibnizian theory of space. This argument crucially depends upon Kant’s claim that space is monistic: that the whole of space is prior to the parts of space and, as such, spatial representations are not decomposable. (shrink)

In the Transcendental Aesthetic (TA), Kant is typically held to make negative assertations about “things in themselves,” namely that they are not spatial or temporal. These negative assertions stand behind the “neglected alternative” problem for Kant’s transcendental idealism. According to this problem, Kant may be entitled to assert that spatio-temporality is a subjective element of our cognition, but he cannot rule out that it may also be a feature of the objective world. In this paper, I show (...) in a new way how Kant’s view (focusing on his conclusions about space) is not subject to this objection, by showing that he does not make the denial about mind-independent reality that he is typically held to make. The argument develops consequences of a new reading of Kant’s expression “an sich selbst” (‘in itself’; ‘in themselves’). I argue that “an sich selbst” or “per se” has a special, judgment-level role, so that this expression does not form new noun-terms adjectivally. It follows that the conceptual unit of Kant’s “Conclusions” in the TA is simply “things” (Dinge), since “things in themselves” is not a nominal expression; Kant adopts the Wolffian ontological use of “thing” as the basic kind-term for any existent. The arguments that things per se are not in space are arguments that space cannot be a necessary property or relations of things as a kind. I show that this does not involve the positive claim about mind-independent reality that inspires the neglected alternative objection. (shrink)

This paper provides a novel reconstruction of Kant’s argument for transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic. This reconstruction relies on two main contentions: first, that Kant accepts the then-ubiquitous view that all cognition is either from grounds or consequences, a view he props up by drawing a distinction between logical and real grounds; second, that Kant, like most of his contemporaries, holds that our representations are the most immediate grounds of our cognition. By stressing these elements, the (...) most threatening objection to Kant’s argument can be avoided, namely, the claim that Kant ignores the possibility that our representations of space and time are subjective in origin, but objective as regards their applicability. My reconstruction shows that this so-called neglected alternative objection is based on a conceptual confusion about the nature of a priori cognition. (shrink)

Reflections on the relationship of aesthetics to politics tend to circle, almost compulsively, around a relatively stable set of conceptual oppositions, inherited from German philosophies of the late 18th century. This essay proposes an expansion of the theoretical terms of the debate by extending the field of transcendental aesthetics into the domain of historical temporalization. Fundamental art-historical categories may thereby be incorporated, philosophically transformed, into ‘aesthetics’ as forms of historical temporalization: avant-garde, modern, contemporary. The essay expounds two theses, in (...) particular: 1. The historical subsumption of the temporality of the avant-garde by the temporality of the modern: the modern stands to the avant-garde as the negation of its politics by the repetition of the new –‘the new as the ever–same’; 2. the historical subsumption of the temporality of the modern by ‘the contemporary’: the contemporary stands to the modern as the negation of the dialectical logic – and hence specifically developmentalist futurity – of the new by a spatially determined, but imaginary co-presencing. One effect of this latter subsumption, it is argued, is a particular, regressive ‘repetition of the national’, at the level of cultural representation, on the terrain of the global. (shrink)

In light of the central role scientific research plays in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the question has arisen whether his phenomenology involves some sort of commitment to naturalism or whether it is better understood along transcendental lines. In order to make headway on this issue, I focus specifically on Merleau-Ponty’s method and its relationship to Kant’s transcendental method. On the one hand, I argue that Merleau-Ponty rejects Kant’s method, the ‘method-without-which’, which seeks the a priori conditions of the possibility of (...) experience. On the other hand, I show that this does not amount to a methodological rejection of the transcendental altogether. To the contrary, I claim that Merleau-Ponty offers a new account of the transcendental and a priori that he takes to be the proper subject matter of his phenomenological method, the method of ‘radical reflection’. And I submit that this method has important affinities with aesthetic themes in Kant’s philosophy. (shrink)

An overview of Kant's arguments in the "Transcendental Aesthetic" with remarks on some of the most significant recent literature on the topic.

The purpose of this article is to explain the relationship between Life-world (Lebenswelt) and the concepts of Originality (Originalität) and Primordiality (Primordialität) founded in Edmund Husserl’s philosophy developed in the 20’s. In order to achieve this goal, we need to begin with a transcendental phenomenological analysis to then gain access to Ontology of the World in general. Therefore, we must explain how Transcendental Philosophy relates to Transcendental Aesthetics and how it phenomenologically labels all that is outside of (...) theory and reflection (i.e., the Natural World) as a precondition to all theoretical classifications. This way the Life-world could explain the relationship between the Originality and Primordiality as proto-datum that is the base of all human acts genetically describable. (shrink)

By going back to the starting point of Derrida’s debates with some of the main representatives of structuralism in France, I propose to highlight the ambiguities that cover the very notion of structure, and to take the measure of the exact role that the reference to phenomenology plays then and will continue to play thereafter. Among these ambiguities: the one that touches the mathematical notion of structure, central in the triumphant structuralist mathematical current in France at that time; and especially: (...) the one called “groups of transformations,” the most important one to understand at the same time the audacities and the impasses of structuralism. The hard core of mathematization of modern physics, with Galileo’s principle of relativity, then developed in a masterly way in Einstein’s theory of relativity rest on this very structure. After tracing the broad outlines of these initial discussions, we engage in an analysis of how it is possible to understand the “epistemological contemporaneity” of relativity theory and Husserl’s transcendental aesthetics. Based on a thorough exploration of the analyses of the intersubjective constitution of space, time and the objective common world, we identify this central structure that Husserl calls “intersubjective group of transformation.” Equipped with this phenomenological structure, we trace this motif in Derrida’s work. Its insistence allows us to understand how the phenomenological premises of his critique of structuralism can help to understand his theoretical positions, especially in contrast to Jean-Luc Nancy. (shrink)

This volume explores Husserl's theory of sensibility and his conceptualization of spatial and temporal constitution. The author maps the linkages between Husserl's 'transcendental aesthetic', the theory of pure experience in empirio-criticism, as well as Immanuel Kant's transcendental philosophy. The core argument in this analysis centers on the relationship between spatiality and temporality in Husserl's philosophy. The study interrogates Husserl's understanding of the relationship between spatiality and temporality in terms of stratifications, analogies and parallelisms. It incorporates a discussion (...) of the potentialities and limitations of such an understanding. It concludes that such limits can be overcome by adopting an understanding of spatiality and temporality as interwoven moments of sensible experience-a 'spatio-temporal intertwining'. This 'intertwining' is made explicit in a thorough inquiry into three central topics in the phenomenological analysis of sensible experience: spatio-temporal individuation, perspectival givenness and bodily experience. The book shows how such an inquiry can form the bedrock of a dynamic and relational understanding of experience as a whole. (shrink)

This paper gives an interpretation of Kant's argument for transcendental idealism in the Transcendental Aesthetic. I argue against a common way of reading this argument, which sees Kant as arguing that substantive a priori claims about mind-independent reality would be unintelligible because we cannot explain the source of their justification. I argue that Kant's concern with how synthetic a priori propositions are possible is not a concern with the source of their justification, but with how they can (...) have objects. I argue that Kant's notion of intuition needs to be understood as a kind of representation which involves the presence to consciousness of the object it represents, and that this means that a priori intuition cannot present us with a mind-independent feature of reality. (shrink)

The question of man -- Time and the will -- Receptivity and spatiality -- Distance and concealment -- Art and difference -- The 'speaking' of language -- Human nature and sensus communis -- Inspiration and genius -- Thought and expression -- A history of truth and truthfulness -- Being and the hidden God.

This book presents a paragraph-by-paragraph analysis of all of the major arguments and explanations in the "aesthetic" of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. The first part of the book aims to provide a clear analysis of the meanings of the terms Kant uses to name faculties and types of representation, the second offers a thorough account of the reasoning behind the "metaphysical" and "transcendental" expositions, and the third investigates the basis for Kant's major conclusions about space, time, appearances, (...) things in themselves, and the cognitive constitution of the subject. A major goal of the work is to establish that Kant takes spatiotemporal form to be originally given through the constitution of the subject's receptive faculty, not generated through synthetic procedures of the imagination or understanding. (shrink)

The essay examines the idea of ―biological space and time‖ found in Evan Thompson‘s Mind in Life and Gilles Deleuze‘s Difference and Repetition. Tracking down this ―new Transcendental Aesthetic‖ intersects new work done on panpsychism. Both Deleuze and Thompson can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s what ―Mind in Life‖ means: mind and life are coextensive; life is a sufficient condition for mind. Deleuze is not just a biological panpsychist, however, so we‘ll have to confront full-fledged (...) panpsychism. At the end of the essay we‘ll be able to pose the question whether or not we can supplement Thompson‘s ―Mind in Life‖ position with a ―Mind in Process‖ position and if so, what that supplement means both for his work and for panpsychism. (shrink)

I take up Kant's remarks about a " transcendental deduction" of the "concepts of space and time". I argue for the need to make a clearer assessment of the philosophical resources of the Aesthetic in order to account for this transcendental deduction. Special attention needs to be given to the fact that the central task of the Aesthetic is simply the "exposition" of these concepts. The Metaphysical Exposition reflects upon facts about our usage to reveal our (...) commitment to the idea that these concepts refer to pure intuitions. But the legitimacy of these concepts still hangs in the balance: these concepts may turn out to refer to nothing real at all. The subsequent Transcendental Exposition addresses this issue. The objective validity of the concepts of space and time, and hence their transcendental deduction, hinges on careful treatment of this last point. (shrink)

By transcendental aesthetic, Kant means “the science of all principles of a priori sensibility” (A 21/B 35). These, he argues, are the laws that properly direct our judgments of taste (B 35 – 36 fn.), i.e. our aesthetic judgments as we ordinarily understand that notion in the context of contemporary art. Thus the first part of the Critique of Pure Reason, entitled the Transcendental Aesthetic, enumerates the necessary presuppositions of, among other things, our ability to (...) make empirical judgments about particular works of art. These presuppositions are sensible rather than intellectual because on Kant’s view, all intellection that considers objects of any kind, whether abstract or concrete, must at base connect to actual, material objects with which we come into direct contact; and this we can do only through sensibility (A 19/B 33). Thus the following discussion explores what Kant claims must be true of us in order to make the sorts of aesthetic judgments we make, rather than any particular class or quality of aesthetic judgments itself. On Kant’s view, what must be true of us in order to make aesthetic judgments is not different from what must be true of us in order to make any other kind of judgment about empirical objects. (shrink)

Kant's Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Lorne Falkenstein. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995. pp. xxiii + 465. £45–50. ISBN 0–8020–2973–6.

Kant's claim that time is a subjective form of intuition was first proposed in his Inaugural Dissertation. This view was immediately criticised by Schultz, Lambert and Mendelssohn. Their criticisms are based on the claim that representations change which implies that change is real. From the reality of change they then argue to the reality of time, which undermines its supposed status as a subjective form of intuition that only applies to appearances. Kant took these criticisms very seriously and attempted to (...) reply to them in § 7 of the Transcendental Aesthetic. This paper provides a critical assessment of the objections raised by Schultz, Lambert and Mendelssohn as well as of Kant's diagnosis and response. In particular, it shows how Kant can consistently hold that knowledge of our mental states is restricted to knowledge of appearances. (shrink)

In this close reading of the Transcendental Aesthetic, the author argues that an important aspect of the Aesthetic has been neglected in the secondary literature on Kant: the Aesthetic also provides a highly original account of the basis of our knowledge of spatiotemporal properties and relations. However, in arguing for his thesis, Falkenstein stills addresses the traditional questions that any interpretation of the Aesthetic must cover.

Wonderfully clear, scholarly, and well argued, Kant’s Intuitionism offers a bold new interpretation of the thesis of the Transcendental Aesthetic. Falkenstein reads Kant as a “formal intuitionist.” That is, he takes Kant to have maintained that the forms of intuition, space, and time were given along with sensations. They were neither preexisting representations, nor intellectual or imaginative constructions out of sensations. In this context “given” contrasts with “constructed”; subjects’ representations of space and time derived from their sensory constitutions. (...) When subjects’ senses were stimulated, that produced sensations with intensities varying according to the stimulus; because of the subjects’ constitutions, the intensity values were ordered after one another in time and adjacent to one another in space. Falkenstein characterizes space and time as “presentational orders” of sensations. (shrink)

É bem sabido que a estética de Kant está estruturada intersubjetivamente, porque ele honra a reivindicação do gosto pela universalidade. No entanto, o fundamento transcendental desta universalidade compartilhada é uma base suprasensível tida por certa, mas que não pode ser trazida diretamente para dentro da experiência comunicativa. O apelo kantiano à estrutura sintética a priori do juízo estético também remove-o da esfera da interação pessoal observável. Esta estratégia argumentativa expõe-no a desafios céticos e gera referências inacessíveis às representações internas (...) (sejam elas intuições, categorias do entendimento ou idéias racionais). Não é suficiente, como faz Kant, propor uma descrição da experiência estética que seja subjetivamente plausível e, a partir disso, reivindicar sua validade intersubjetiva. É indispensável encarnar a intersubjetividade no comportamento e na linguagem. Na intersubjetividade prática, lida-se com as atitudes estéticas em um modo concreto e acessível, sem depender de pressupostos mentalistas como fundamento. Termos conceituais como 'agradável', 'belo', 'sublime', 'feio', 'universalidade' adquirem novo significado em um contexto interativo e reivindicações estéticas são testadas em um modelo dialógico de jogo semântico. (shrink)

Both Deleuze in DR and Thompson / Jonas can be fairly said to be biological panpsychists. That‘s pretty much what ―Mind in Life‖ means: mind and life are co-extensive: life = autopoiesis and cognition = sense-making. Thus Mind in Life = autopoietic sense-making = control of action of organism in environment. Sense-making here is three-fold: 1) sensibility as openness to environment; 2) signification as positive or negative valence of environmental features relative to the subjective norms of the organism; 3) direction (...) or orientation the organism adopts in response to 1 and 2. (―Sense of the river‖ is archaic in English, but ―sens unique‖ for ―one-way street‖ is perfectly clear in French.). (shrink)

Provides comment on the first of the three primary sections of Kant's Critique; the analytical, the dialectical, and the methodological. The analytical section runs from Kant's Introduction to nearly the end of the Analytic of Principles, and is concerned with the nature, foundations, and the limits of empirical knowledge.

RESUMEN Se examinan de modo sistemático las críticas de Merleau-Ponty, en la Phénoménologie de la perception, a la teoría kantiana de la experiencia, atendiendo al papel de los conceptos en la conformación de la experiencia objetiva, la relación entre la sensibilidad y el entendimiento, así como la redefinición del carácter formal de la sensibilidad. Se discuten posibles objeciones a la interpretación merieau-pontiana de la teoría kantiana y se evalúa, así mismo, el alcance relativo de ciertas referencias positivas de Merleau-Ponty a (...) nociones kantianas tales como afinidad, sinopsis e imaginación. ABSTRACT The article carries out a systematic examination of Merleau-Ponty's critiques of the Kantian theory of experience, in Phénoménologie de la perception, taking into account the role of concepts in shaping objective experience, the relation between sensibility and understanding, and the redefinition of the formal nature of sensibility. It discusses possible objections to Merleau-Ponty's interpretation of Kantian theory and assesses the relative scope of some of Merleau-Ponty's positive references to Kantian notions such as affinity, synopsis, and imagination. (shrink)

Se pretende reconstruir los argumentos de la exposición metafísica de la Crítica de la razón pura, según los cuales nuestras representaciones de espacio y tiempo deben ser consideradas como intuiciones y no como conceptos. Para cumplir con este objetivo, en primer lugar, se determina un criterio de la intuición y, en segundo lugar, se demuestra que las representaciones de espacio y de tiempo cumplen con ese criterio. The paper reconstructs the arguments of the metaphysical presentation of the Critique of Pure (...) Reason, according to which our representations of space and time should be considered as intuitions and not as concepts. To this effect, a criterion for intuition is established in the first place, and then it is demonstrated that the representations of space and time do in fact fulfill that criterion. (shrink)

Kant's Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Lorne Falkenstein. Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1995. pp. xxiii + 465. £45?50. ISBN 0?8020?2973?6.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic by Lorne FalkensteinManfred KuehnLorne Falkenstein. Kant’s Intuitionism: A Commentary on the Transcendental Aesthetic. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 1995. Pp. xxiii + 465. Cloth, $70.00.This is the most substantial book on Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic to appear in a long time. Though the Transcendental Aesthetic takes up only thirty-five pages of the (...) six hundred sixty-five pages of the Critique of Pure Reason, it is most important. Kant’s theory of space and time belongs among his most provocative contributions to philosophy, and it is the centerpiece of his so-called transcendental idealism. As such, it has received a great deal of attention even in recent times, just not many book-length treatments.The book has three parts. The first deals with Kant’s terminology, and in particular with the distinctions between intuition and understanding, form and matter in intuition, and sensation and matter in intuition. Since Kant was far from clear in drawing these distinctions, Falkenstein’s sophisticated discussion adds considerably to a better understanding of them. Part II discusses Kant’s various Metaphysical and Transcendental Expositions. Falkenstein is for the most part sympathetic to Kant’s goals in the Metaphysical Expositions, believing that they go a long way towards establishing that space and time are intuitive or “prior to all processing” (279) and not the result of any kind of synthesis. He is more guarded in his evaluation of the Transcendental Expositions. Though they seem to establish the same conclusion as the Metaphysical Expositions, and though they even seem to strengthen these conclusions, the Transcendental Expositions start from premises that “many will not be able to grant,” like the claim that Euclidean geometry must be presupposed for “solid and enduring objects” (282). Furthermore, they also rely on results established in the Metaphysical Expositions. Thus, while the conclusions of the Metaphysical Expositions are weaker, they are more trustworthy. Falkenstein believes that “far too much attention” has been given to the subjectivity of the forms of intuition, “and far too little (in fact, none) has been focused on the weaker, but still important conclusion that space and time are orders in which sensations are originally received by us” (283). Falkenstein also calls space and time “presentational orders.” In the third part, he examines central claims, which, according to Kant, follow from his arguments, namely, (i) the subjectivity thesis, (ii) the non-spatiotemporality thesis, and (iii) the unknowability thesis. (i) is the claim that space and [End Page 326] time “do and must qualify all the objects of our sensory experience” (288); (ii) is the claim that space and time are “absolutely nothing” apart from intuition, and that things in themselves are neither spatial nor temporal; and (iii) is the claim that things in themselves are unknowable. Falkenstein argues that (i) is largely uncontroversial. It is a basic conclusion that follows from his arguments. While (ii) is controversial and might present great difficulties for Kant, it can be rescued, if it is understood simply as the “analytic claim that any order of things in themselves could not be a presentational order” (356). In this sense it is innocuous and follows from Kant’s arguments. The unknowability thesis (iii) seems to conflict both with the non-spatiotemporality thesis in the strong sense and with a number of things which Kant says about affection and the receptive constitution of the subject in intuition. However, it can also be rescued. If we understand (ii) in a mitigated sense, and if we dismiss Kant’s claims about affection and receptive constitution as vacuous, it also presents no fundamental problems. And Falkenstein argues that we should do just that. The claims about affinity and our receptive constitution do not do any work. They “translate Kant’s Critical Idealism into a naive realist paradigm” and are thus “needlessly confusing” (357).Falkenstein’s book offers a carefully argued and sophisticated account of the Aesthetic. No one concerned with this aspect of Kant’s theoretical philosophy (or indeed any other aspect of it) can afford to ignore it. The book should become an indispensable part of graduate seminars on Kant’s first... (shrink)

In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant offers an argument for transcendental idealism. This argument is one focus of the longstanding controversy between "one-world" and "two-world" interpretations of the distinction between things in themselves and things as they appear. I present an interpretation of the argument of the "Aesthetic" that supports a novel "one-world" interpretation. On this interpretation, Kant is concerned with the mind-dependence of spatial and temporal properties; and with the idea (...) that space and time can be identified with mental objects. I end by arguing that, for Kant, even on a "one-world" interpretation, we do not know the nature or even the existence of mind-independent things. (shrink)