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Kantian Time and Space Reconsidered
| Article
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11929 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
8 / 1987 |
4,910 Words |
| Author
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Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried is a senior editor of the Modern Thought
section of The World & I and author of The Search for
Historical Meaning: Hegel and the Postwar American Right. |
The following essay is intended neither to provide a conclusive validation for Kant's conception of time or even to refute all the arguments that can conceivably be raised against it. The first task will be to indicate some of the more recurrent criticisms that have been directed against his writing on space and time. We shall then turn to the power of his critical philosophy, and of its defenders, in dealing with the types of criticism treated. The view being proposed is that despite his occasionally clumsy rhetoric and the limitations of his illustrations, his reasoning on this problem has remained eminently defensible in the face of repeated attack.
The bulk of Kant's exposition on time and space in relation to sensory perception can be found in the opening pages of The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Although already foreshadowed in his inaugural dissertation (1770) and further clarified in the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), one must turn to the first part of the Critique, the "Transcendental Aesthetic," for the most detailed treatment of time and space as the a priori condition for cognition. In this section Kant examines time and space as universal forms of intuition that help render sensory impressions intelligible to the human mind. Although these forms are "subjective conditions of sensation" and depend for their appearance on perceptual activity, they are nonetheless characterized as being a priori: antecedent to the specific sensations for which they provide a conceptual frame (Werke, 3:68-70; 4:32-37). Kant drew an argument in favor of ideal time and space from mathematics. In the introduction to the Critique, he spoke of mathematical axioms as "synthetic judgments a priori." They were synthetic insofar as they taught things not simply inherent in the definition of terms and concepts but rather
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