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Part II

ception of time in general as a form of intuition. To repeat: In my interpretation, time is the unthematically presented basis-on-which, one that accompanies every act of letting a manifold be encountered as such, insofar as that manifold becomes accessible through inner sense. In his Anthropology §4, Kant says that inner sense “sees the relations of its modification [i.e., of whatever determines it] only in time, and therefore in flux, where the stability of observation that is necessary for experience is lacking.”64 The inner sense is nothing other than empirical apperception, i.e., the empirical self-consciousness in which self-consciousness, the self or I, is encountered simply as an object, not a subject. [298]


d) Space and time as given infinite magnitudes; quantum and quantitas in Kant’s interpretation

According to Kant, space and time are forms of intuition, not objects that are intuited. And yet in the same context in which he explains space and time (in the Transcendental Aesthetic), Kant also gives another characterization of space and time, in terms of their content. Although he says that space and time are forms of intuition and thus cogitationes, he also says: “Space is presented as a given infinite magnitude” (B 39).

In this second case space is obviously not understood as a form of intuition, but is understood from the point of view of content, i.e., as an “object,” although, as we will soon see, certainly not in the Kantian sense of that word, namely, an objectivity that is thought through synthesis. Concerning time, Kant therefore says: “The original presentation ‘time’ {Kant means: time as presented} must be given as unlimited” (B 48). So even though space and time are not objects, they are nonetheless presented, they are a “presented.” They are what is previewed in a pre-view. In fact, here space and time are understood to be prior to all determinations, i.e., not as formal intuitions but as forms of intuition.

To illustrate this first determination of the content of space and time that we recognize—namely, as an infinite given magnitude—we have to go back to our analyses of the phenomena of ordering and preview. In interpreting the determination of space and time that we now have before us, we will stick with the formulation in the first edition, where Kant says much more clearly: “Space is presented as an infinite given magnitude” (A 25). If you recall my earlier analyses of the givenness


64. Akademie-Ausgabe, vol. 7, p. 134. [In translation as Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, trans. Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), p. 15. I gloss Gregor’s “its modifications” (seiner Bestimmungen) above.]


Martin Heidegger (GA 21) Logic : the question of truth

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