Page:History of Modern Philosophy (Falckenberg).djvu/376

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354 KANT. sphere of representation the sun moves around the earth. It is true, as has been said, that Kant sometimes ignores the distinction between phenomena as related to noumena and phenomena as related to representations ; and, as a result of this, that the phenomenon is either completely volatilized into the representation* or split up into an objective half independent of us and a representative half dependent on us, of which the former falls into the thing in itself,f while the latter is resolved into subjective states of the ego. After the possibility and the legitimacy of synthetic judgments a priori have been proved for pure mathematics upon the basis of the pure intuitions, there emerges, in the second place, the problem of the possibility oi ji_^iori syntheses in pure natural science, ox the question, Do pure concepts exist? And after this has been answered in the Affirmative, the further questions come up, Is the application |bf these, first, to phenomena, and second, to things in them- ^'selves, possible and legitimate, and how far? (b) The Concepts and Principles of the Pure Understand- ing (Transcendental Analytic). — Sensations, in order to become " intuition " or the perception of a phenomenon, needed to be ordered in space and time ; in order to become '* experience" or a unified knowledge of objects, intuitions l/need a synthesis through concepts. In order to objective knowledge the manifold of intuition (already ordered by its arrangement in space and time) must be connected in the unity of the concept. SensibiHty gives thejnanifold to

  • Phenomena " are altogether in me," " exist only in our sensibility as a modi-

fication of it." " There is nothing in space but that which is actually repre- sented in it." Phenomena are "mere representations, which, if they are not given in us (in perception) nowhere exist." f Here Kant is guilty of the fault which he himself has censured, of confusing the physical and transcendental meanings of "in itself." He forgets that the thing, if it is momentarily not intuited or represented by me, and therefore is not immediately given for me as an individual, is nevertheless still present for me as man, is mediately given, that is, is discoverable by future search. That which is without my present consciousness is not for this reason without all human consciousness. In fact, Kant often overlooks the distinction between actual and possible intuition, so that for him the "objects" of the latter slip out of space and time and into the thing in itself. To the "transcendental object we may ascribe the extent and connection of our possible perceptions, and say that it is given in itself before all experience." In it "the real things of the past are given."