Intuiting the Original Unity?

Abstract

In the exposition of his Critical Philosophy, Immanuel Kant makes ample use of the concept of an intellectual intuition, roughly, a productive unity of thinking and being. The section on the modalities thus introduces a conceptual path to an overcoming of the various separations that the original separation gave rise to12 in a new form of unity. Conceptual representations always presuppose, Fichte argued, a differentiation between subject and object, which has to be established by transcendental reasoning in the first place. Hölderlin's rejection of Kant's conception of intellectual intuition as a mere limiting concept is very much in line with Fichte's discussion: Like Fichte, he sees intellectual intuition as a means to become aware of a unity of subject and object that is not accessible by other epistemic means. Actuality, accordingly, is the sum total of objects one can be immediately conscious of, whereas possibility is the sum total of objects of mediate consciousness.