simply in its constant and self-identical presence, the “logical personality.” He calls it a “personality” insofar as it is understood in terms of its original activity, that of the understanding qua combining as such, the combining of the given with the understanding itself. We will now explain more precisely how Kant is not (as one might allege) moving in a circle in his analysis of the transcendental unity of apperception; and we will do so in order then to ask: What is this original synthesis of the given as such with the I?90
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First of all we need to get rid of a misunderstanding. One might say: Kant explicitly emphasizes that combining presupposes unity. But when we ask what the unity underlying this combining might be, the answer is: synthesis. And what about this synthesis? In any synthesis, as an act of combining, a unity is antecedently presented. So the synthesis is referred back to a unity. But that unity, in turn, is referred back to yet another synthesis—and so on ad infinitum. Proceeding that way, we never get to firm ground; in fact we arrive at the opposite of what Kant was looking for, viz., the original, the “one” to which everything else is to be referred.
That objection, however, overlooks an important fact. The synthesis that Kant calls “original,” the synthesis in which he saw fit to ground the unity that makes every synthesis possible—and to ground even this foundational synthesis itself—this original synthesis is not just any synthesis but a quite exceptional one.
What makes it so exceptional is the fact that one of the things it combines is the I; and the I means: “I think.” I am that “for” which something can be given. Insofar as I am, I am that very “for.”91 The I is the “for-whom-it-is-given” of whatever can be given and thus whatever can be determined. The “for-whom-it-is-given” (which is I myself) is likewise the that-which-determines. To combine something with the I—i.e., to let it be with this I92—means that the “something” has the possibility of being-given-for. . . . [331] This act of combining requires no further
90. [Here (Moser, p. 662) Heidegger ends his lecture of Wednesday, 10 February 1926, to be followed by that of Thursday, 11 February, which opened with a 670-word summary that is omitted in GA 21.]
91. [“Ich bin das seiende Für selbst.” The selbst here is emphatic (“that very ‘for’ . . .”), and not reflexive (“the for-itself”).]
92. [This point anticipates what Heidegger will write a few months later in the manuscript of Being and Time; cf. SZ, p. 201.12–14 / tr. 192.35–37: „Wenn innerweltliches Seiendes mit dem Sein des Daseins entdeckt, das heißt zu Verständnis gekommen ist, sagen wir, es hat Sinn.“ What can be meaningful or meaningless? Cf. ibid., p. 201 / tr. 193: Only Dasein’s „eigenes Sein und das mit diesem erschlossene Seiende.“ And cf. also SZ, p. 429.35 / tr. 371.35–36: „Wenn wir sagen: Seien des ‚hat Sinn‘, dann bedeutet das, es ist in seinem Sein [which is correlative to ‚das Sein des Daseins‘] zugänglich geworden.“]