being-of-something-“in-me” (B 131).76 Everything that can be given, that can be intuited (in Kant’s language: every intuition), even the pure intuition, time—all that is referred to a “for” and only in such a “for” can it be given at all.
In the first place, this “I think” in which is grounded the belongsto-me-ness of presentations, cannot be derived from anything else. It is an original act of spontaneity. The grasping of oneself in the cogitare, this act of apprehending the “I am the one who is thinking”—this “I think” does not mean that my thinking is [324] an activity that just occurs. Rather, it is an expression of the thought which is the “I am thinking,” the sum cogitans. In the second place, this “I think” is one and the same in all consciousness. Only through this relation to the I that thinks, to the “I am thinking” (i.e., the “I have this presented in this act of presenting”), can the manifold that is given in such a presenting have a unity. The a priori unity is grounded in this cogito me cogitare. Kant takes his orientation basically in the direction of Descartes’s position, and maintains that position, but he does not stand firm on that ground. Instead, he tries to go beyond that position by asking what it is that makes possible this very belonging-to-me-ness: “In the same subject in which the manifold is encountered, this manifold has a necessary relation to the ‘I think’” (B 132).77 That means: The subjective, which for Kant is that which is given first, must be able to be present together with the I (which is the basis of my subjectivity) in which something is given. In order for this something to be referable to the I, this I must itself be comprehended, and that means: In having-present the I, the thinking, I also have present, together with it, that which is given to this thinking, that which is thought by this thinking. And the given can be given only in such a “having-the-ego-present qua having-the-given-co-present.”
Therefore, the belonging-to-me-ness of anything is grounded in this original ability of something to be related to the I, to an I that must always think of something. This original synthesis within which alone the given is giveable, combines the given with the I as that which is comprehendible at every moment in the self-identity of its existence. This constant self-identity of the I with which the given as such is [a priori] combined—or this combining wherein the constant self- identity
76. [Also “mir angehören” (B 132–133).]
77. [While retaining the sense of Kant’s sentence, Heidegger drops Also („therefore“), substitutes dieses („this“) for alles („all“), and inverts the word order from „Also hat alles Mannigfaltige der Anschauung eine notwendige Beziehung auf das ‚Ich denke‘ in demselben Subjekt, darin dieses Mannigfaltige angetroffen wird,“ to „In demselben Subjekt, darin das Mannigfaltige angetroffen wird, hat dieses Mannigfaltige eine notwendige Beziehung auf das: Ich denke.“]