Rather than pausing now for a dry and boring analysis of what is required for transcendental schemata of pure concepts of the understanding in gen-eral, we would rather present them according to the order of the categories and in connection with these. (B 181)

This second way of proceeding is certainly just as necessary as the first way of explaining the pure schema in general, and it is the only practical method for explaining individual schemata concretely. In fact, Kant makes a good start at giving a detailed interpretation of the individual schemata, but basically he explains only three of the twelve in any detail [379]—and characteristically, they are the schemata of quantity, reality, and substance, in other words the categories in which existent nature first appears as an entity that is to be comprehended in the determinate measurements of physics. Twelve schemata would have to be developed in accordance with the twelve categories, which themselves correspond to the twelve forms of judgment taken as concepts of the unities constitutive of these ways of combining. (1) These twelve schemata would have to be explained in their order of succession as well as in their inner connection. Moreover, such an investigation [would also have to provide] (2) the rigorously demonstrated derivation of the categories from the Table of Judgments (as regards their possibility and intrinsic necessity), as well as (3) their derivation from the “I think.” However, these three elements of a truly fundamental investigation of the possible groundwork of the Critique of Pure Reason are lacking. So, from the start, Kant’s explanation of the schemata remains on a terrain that is both uncertain and undeveloped. Nonetheless, we must try to shed some light on his explanation of the schemata of quantity, reality, and substance. And we will try to do that with an eye to our guiding question: How is time understood—or how must it be understood—in these schemata as rules governing the transcendental determination of time?

Staying with our already elaborated problematic of ur-temporality is the only way to get a substantive understanding of Kant’s explanation and to see how close to the problematic he was pushed as well as why he necessarily could not get access to it. Our inquiry will ask about the three categories of quantity, reality, and substance:

1. What does the figurative synthesis regulated by these categories show in the pure image of time?

2. How is this sensible appearance of time understood? That is: How is it that what gets determined in the synthesis speciosa is always time? What kind of determination of time is operative here?

3. In each of the three cases [quality, reality, and substance], does “time” mean the same thing? or something different in each case? and if so, why? [380]