counts through it. It is the condition for the possibility of there being anything present at all.
The function of the now in time-filling is different from its function in time-production (number). Moreover, in the schema of reality—namely, filling-up-a-certain-period-of-time—the now is also something quantitatively determined and determinable. Therefore the schema [390] of reality likewise entails the possible countability of the nows140 and, with that, the presupposition of number and, with that, the schema of quantity. This connection is intrinsically plain and clear, if one considers that
1. the schematism is indeed centered on the question of how the concepts of the understanding can have relations to appearances through the elapsing of time;
2. the appearances present nature; and therefore
3. the entities to which the concepts of the understanding are related, are understood from the start in terms of a measuring and deter-mining in scientific knowledge, i.e., physics.
Thus we see a remarkable linking of the schema of reality with the schema of quantity. Kant did not express himself any further on the point. That would not have been possible for him because of the fact that he strung together the categories and, correspondingly, the schemata as well, in an artificially construed table that necessarily had to cover-over the inner, material connection of the categories as well as the schemata. On a closer look there is not a founding connection in the sense that the schema of reality would be founded in that of quantity. Instead it is the other way around. Or more precisely, both are co-original—and both are founded in the schema that Kant puts in third place: the schema of substance, i.e., of purdurance.
The characterization of these two schematisms already shows that the now and the pure sequence of nows can be seen in the synthesis speciosa temporis in various ways, and therefore that the now-structure is richer than one has generally believed up until now and than Kant himself explicitly saw. The various modes of the synthesis speciosa temporis are differentiated precisely by the fact that they prescind in various ways from the full now-structure, and make use only of a specific structural moment of the now. [391]
140. [Literally: “. . . and so in the schema of reality there likewise lies the character of the possible countability of nows . . .”]