Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller
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The translator’s English as printed (F. Max Müller). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
even if all subjective conditions of intuition were removed. For no determinations of objects, whether belonging to them absolutely or in relation to others, can enter into our intuition before the actual existence of the objects themselves, that is to Sriy, th-^)^ ^an n^^^^r he intuitions a priori.
b. Space is nothing but the form of all phenomena of the external senses ; it is the subjective condition of our sensibility, without which no external intuition is possible for us. If then we consider that the receptivity of the J subject, its capacity of being affected by objects, must I necessarily precede all intuition of objects, we shall understand how the form of all phenomena may be given before all real perceptions, may be, in idi(:X^a_J>rMzL in the^-soul, and may, as a pure intuition, by which all objects must be determined, contain, prior to all experience, principles regulating their relations.
It is therefore-irom th^jruiman standpoint only that we can speak of -spaee, extejided objects, etc. If we drop the subjective condition under which alone we can gain external intuition, that is, so far as we ourselves may be affected by objects, the representation of space means nothing. For this predicate is applied to objects only in so far as they appear to us, and are objects of our [p. 27] senses. The constant form of this receptivity, which we call sensibility, is a necessary condition of all relations in which objects, as without us, can be perceived ; and, when abstraction is made of these objects, what remains is that pure intuition which we call space. As the peculiar conditions of our sensibility cannot be looked upon as conditions of the possibility of the objects themselves, but only of their appearance as phenomena to us, we may say indeed that space corrrprehejid_s all things which may
22 Of Space appear to us externally, but not all things by themselves, whether perceived by us or not, or by any subject whatsoever. We cannot judge whether the intuitions of other thinking beings are subject to the same conditions which determine our intuition, and which for us are generally binding. If we add the limitation of a judgment to a subjective concept, the judgment gains absolute validity. The proposition 'all things are beside each other in space,' is valid only under the limitation that things are taken as objects of our sensuous intuition (Anschauung). If I add that limitation to the concept and say 'all things, as external phenomena, are beside each other in space,' the rule obtains universal and unlimited validity. Our discussions teach therefore the reality, i.e. the objective validity, of space with regard to all that can come to us exter- [p. 28] nally as an object, but likewise the ideality of space with regard to things, when they are considered in themselves by our reason, and independent of the nature of our senses. We maintain the empirical reality of space, so far as every possible external experience is concerned, but at the same time its transcendental ideality ; that is to say, we maintain that space is nothing, if we leave out of consideration the condition of a possible experience, and accept it as something on which things by themselves are in any way dependent.
With the exception of space there is no other subjective representation (Vorstellung) referring to something external, that would be called a priori objective. [This ^ subjective condition of all external phenomena cannot therefore be compared to any other. The taste of wine does
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