out. Kant investigates knowledge—and more precisely, scientific knowledge—in terms of the conditions of its possibility. And why is it that he investigates scientific, theoretical knowledge in terms of the conditions of its possibility? What motivated this investigation? Answer: Kant’s concerns for a scientific metaphysics, i.e., scientific knowledge of three specific entities: God, the soul, and the world.

Kant asks: What elements constitute scientific knowledge of entities? And he investigates scientific knowledge not in order to demolish metaphysics but in order to find a scientific metaphysics. He is looking for a touchstone that would tell him whether what has been put forward up to now as scientific knowledge of God, the soul, and the world can be and is scientific knowledge at all. [307] Kant’s aim was not set on the limits of knowledge but on the positive possibility of knowledge. The fact that he came up against limits was a trick that the issues played on him. The fact that he respected these issues shows that he understood how to philosophize.

As we said, there are two stems constitutive of knowledge: sensibility and understanding. If we want to assert something about an entity and to determine it in its being by such a statement, the entity first of all has to be given to the act of determining. So we have to ask about both the conditions of the possibility of the giving of the entity, and the conditions of the possibility of the scientific determining of the entity that has been given. This means that in the second question we ask about the conditions of the possibility of the connection between the conditions of the possibility of one stem and that of another. Only when we show the conditions of the possibility of the connection of those two sets of conditions have we philosophically conceptualized knowledge, as regards its possibility, from out of the unity of the two stems. Which means: The fundamental task is to interpret the being of this very unity; and in turn: we can meaningfully ask and answer that question only if we first achieve an understanding of being as such.

But this formulation of the question—as a question about the conditions of the possibility of the connection of the conditions of sensibility and understanding—is still too empty and formalistic, and it hardly corresponds to the concrete focus that Kant’s investigation had in view. The question is further trivialized if it is posed as an inquiry into form and content, or if one goes even further and asks how the unity of form and content manages to agree with the object. In those cases one is asking questions that never crossed Kant’s mind. When Kant talks about form and content, these concepts have a completely concrete meaning that has arisen from actual investigation. [308] They are not the uprooted and groundless concepts that are so much in use today.

In his investigation, Kant presses ahead and inquires about the prior element in scientific knowledge as such. What is already given before