Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
The text is shown on its own: no facing layer is held for this issue.
The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
First Section of the Transcendental ^Esthetic
Of Space
By means of our .gxtemaLsense, a property of our mind (Gemuth), we represent to ourselves objects as external or outside ourselves, and all of these in space. It is within space that their form, size, and relative position are fixed or can be fixed. The ijiterng.! ^pn.c;p by means of which the mind perceives itself or its internal state, does not give an intuition (Anschauung) of the soul (Seele) itself, as an object, but it is nevertheless a fixed form under which alone an intuition of its internal state is [p. 23] possible, so that whatever belongs to its internal determinations (Bestimmungen) must be represented in relations of time. Time cannot be perceived (angeschaut) externally, aslittle^as space can be ..^perceived as something^3^d4^ft^ us.
What then are space and time .'' Are they real beings } Or, if not that, are they determinations or relations of things, but such as would belong to them even if they were not perceived .'' Or lastly, are they determinations and relations which are inherent in the form of intuition only, and therefore in the. subjective nature of our mind, without which such predicates as space and time would never be ascribed to anything.'*
In order to understand this more clearly, let us first consider space. { I. Space is not an empirical concept which has been Iderived from external experience. For in order that certain sensations should be referred to something outside myself, i.e. to something in a different part of space from that where I am ; again, in order that I may be able to
Of space 19
represent them (vorstellen) as side by side, that is, not only as different, but as in different places, the representation (Vorstellung) of space must already be there. There-"^ fore the representation of space cannot be borrowed \ through experience from relations of external phenomena, \ but, on the contrary, this external experience becomes 1 possible only by means of the representation of space. — J
2. Space is a necessary representation^^ priori^ form-T ing the very foundation of all external intuitions, [p. 24] I It is impossible to imagine that there should be no space, I though one might very well imagine that there should I be -&pace without objects^^o fill it. Space is therefore [ regarded as a condition of the possibility of phenomena, i not as a determination produced by them ; it is a repre- I sentationj2u^i^^^w^' which necessarily precedes all external V phenomena.
[3. On this necessity of an a prdori representation of | space rests the apodictic certainty of all geometrical prin- I ciples, and the possibility of their construction a priori. ^ For if the intuition of space were a concept gained a posteriori, borrowed from general external experience, the first principles of mathematical definition would be nothing but perceptions. They would be exposed to all the accidents of perception, and there being but one straight line between two points would not be a necessity, but only something taught in each case by experience. Whatever is derived from experience possesses a—xelative ^generality only., based on induction. We should therefore not be able to say more than that, so far as hitherto observed, no space has yet been found having more than' threeHcUmension s . ]
4. Space is not a discursive or so-called general [p. 25]
20 Of Space concept of the relations of things in general, but a pure intuition. For, first of all, we can imagine one space only, and if we speak of many spaces, we mean parts only of one and the same space. Nor can these parts be considered as antecedent to the one and all-embracing space and, as it were, its component parts out of which an aggregate is formed, but they can be thought of as existing within it only. Space is essentially one ; its multiplicity, and therefore the general concept of spaces in general, arises entirely from limitations. Hence it follows that, .with respect to space, an intuition a priori, which is not empirical, must form the foundation of all conceptions of space. In the same manner all geometrical principles, e.g. 'that in every triangle two sides together are greater than the third,' are never to be derived from the general concepts of side and triangle, but from an intuition, and that a priori, with apodictic certainty.
[5. Space is represented as an infinite quantity. Now a general concept of space, which is found in a foot as well as in an ell, could tell us nothing in respect to the quantity of the space. If there were not infinity in the progression of intuition, no concept of relations of space could ever contain a principle of infinity.^]
Conclusions from the Foregoing Concepts [p. 26]
a. Space does not represent any quality of objects by themselves, or objects in their relation to one another; i.e. space does not represent any determination which is inherent in the objects themselves, and would remain,
1 No. 5 (No. 4) is differently worded in the Second Edition; see Supplement VIII.
Of space 21
No commentary for this page under the selected tracks.
There is commentary on page 1.