Kant’s Space and Time as Nothing: Empirical Reality as the Ground of Experience

Abstract

In the Table of Nothing, Kant includes a discussion of space and time, under the heading of relation. There, he says that space or time is an ens imaginarium, as an empty intuition without an object. Space and time are something, namely forms required for human intuition, but they are nothing in themselves that can be intuited. When we think of Kant’s broader discussions of space and time in terms of the Table of Nothing, certain puzzles emerge. The most prominent of these is the relationship between space and time as transcendentally ideal and as empirically real. This chapter argues that Kant is talking about empirically real space and time in the Table of Nothing, and likewise it is empirically real space and time that serve as the ground of experience. Transcendental ideality, rather than providing the conditions for experience, is merely a negation of transcendental reality. Paying attention to this distinction illumines contours of Kant’s notion of the transcendental. Kant often discusses the transcendental in metaphysical terms, and he is often concerned with warding off such a use of transcendentality. This is true of not only space and time, but also the categories and Kant’s discussion of previous ontology. To make my case for the fundamental importance of empirically real space and time, I look at the Table of Nothing, Kant’s statements of transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, his explanation of ideality and reality in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and then compare these statements with his talk of the transcendental misuse of the categories (which have only an empirical use).

Appendix

At this point, it might be helpful to examine the other headings in the Table of Nothing to see how space and time might fit into them (even though Kant himself only lists them as ens imaginarium. As we examined this concept above, here I will focus on the other three listings in the Table, namely ens rationis, nihil privativum, and nihil negativum. To be clear, Kant does not list space and time in these sections, and there is good reason for this. Listing them there would not have served to illuminate his purposes. However, my hope is to give an attempted explanation of the conceptions of space and/or time that would be required in these forms of nothing in order to further illustrate both Kant’s understanding of space and/or time along with his conception of nothing.

An ens rationis is an “Empty concept without object”⁶² and “may not be counted among the possibilities because it is a mere invention (although not self-contradictory)…,”⁶³ in that it is “the object of a concept to which no intuition that can be given corresponds.”⁶⁴ It seems to me that space and time as transcendentally real would be an example of an ens rationis (empty concept without object). In the Table, Kant uses the example of a noumena as such a concept, saying that it “cannot be counted among the possibilities” though it “must not on that ground be asserted to be impossible…”⁶⁵ Transcendentally real space (applying to things in themselves) seems no more (logically) contradictory than does the notion of noumena itself. In the Vigilantus metaphysics lectures, Kant uses the example of a spirit as an ens rationis, saying that “the concept of spirit has nothing contradictory in the representation, but whether it is possible that such an immaterial being can exist, this one cannot comprehend” (29:961).⁶⁶ In a sense, a spirit would be a noumena in space and time, but this space and time would have to be transcendentally real, and thereby also being examples of ens rationis.

Kant says that the nihil privativum is akin to the ens imaginarium, in that both are “empty data for concepts.”⁶⁷ Kant explains the nihil privativum as an “Empty object of a concept”⁶⁸ or “a concept of the absence of an object,” giving the examples of shadow or cold. He explains his examples, saying, “If light were not given to the senses, then one would also not be able to represent darkness…”⁶⁹ In the same way, it seems to me that a vacuum in space might be an example of a nihil privativum. However, in the first Critique, Kant treats this notion in his discussion of the Postulates of empirical thinking,⁷⁰ which would locate it under modality; yet, Kant says, in the Metaphysik Mrongovius lecture notes,⁷¹ Kant says, “There is in the world no empty space and no empty time. This proposition belongs under the category of magnitude,”⁷² which would make it ens rationis. Nevertheless, in his discussion of the Third Analogy of experience, he says, “I do not in the least hereby mean to refute empty space; that may well exist where perceptions do not reach, and thus where no empirical cognition of simultaneity takes place; but it is then hardly an object for our possible experience at all.”⁷³ The Analogies of Experience, like the nihil privativum, concern relation. In the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Kant does not rule out the existence of mechanical empty space (a vacuum), though he thinks it likely unnecessary.⁷⁴ In any case, we could only think of such an empty space in the absence of objects in space, and so it serves as a nihil privativum.

A nihil negativum is an “Empty object without concept.”⁷⁵ Kant says that it is impossible, as “The object of a concept that contradicts itself is nothing because the concept is nothing, the impossible…”⁷⁶ and so it “is opposed to possibility because even its concept cancels itself out.”⁷⁷ Kant gives the example of “a rectilinear figure with two sides…”⁷⁸ I am unable to think of a formulation of space (or time) that would fit the nihil negativum, as I cannot conceive of a contradictory concept of space/time. However, we can think of the relation of space to the nihil negativum, given the example of a two-sided rectilinear figure. As a geometrical figure, it must be constructed in space. Of course, it is impossible by its very definition. However, we only determine the definition of geometrical figures through their attempted construction in space. In this way, it is the nature of space, as a form of intuition (and so as nothing), that we see the impossibly of a two-sided rectilinear figure. We are unable to determine space to construct such a figure, such that no formal intuition can be made of the form of intuition in relation to this attempted geometrical construction. Space, as ens imaginarium, simply will not allow a contradictory geometrical figure.

The only conception of space (or time) as nothing that can serve as the ground of possibility is the ens imaginarium. Space and time are nothing in that they cannot be intuited (and are themselves not objects of intuition), but they are merely the forms of intuition. Despite this, they are empirically real, in the very same sense in which they are nothing. In this way, much of the Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason concerns the empirical reality of nothing. But since empirically real space serves as the ground of the objects of experience, it is a nothing that does not merely noth.⁷⁹