A Priori Knowledge as the Anticipation of a Material Given and the Need for a Spatial Schematism

Abstract

This chapter deals with the objective side of Immanuel Kant's epistemological project. As many commentators have recognised, Kant's hopes for the conclusiveness of the ‘Transcendental Deduction’ turned out to be rather premature. Kant claims that the categories apply to all perception, to the possibility of experience and therefore to all objects of experience. The chapter's account of the structure of Kant's extended legitimation of the categories owes much to Gerd Buchdahl's reading, in which every element of the ‘Analytic’ has a part to play. However, its reading brings out elements essential to the relation between Kant's epistemology and aesthetics, not to be found in Buchdahl or in the accounts given by others who also resist the temptation to assume that the full deduction of the categories is supplied in the ‘Transcendental Deduction’. The chapter explains how the principles of the understanding are not merely an application of the categories, but rather a further and aesthetically charged articulation that is necessary for the legitimation of the latter.