Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason — trans. F. Max Müller

manifold which is given in intuition, without which synthesis it would be impossible to think the unbroken identity of self-consciousness. For through the Ego, as a simple representation, nothing manifold is given ; in the intuition, which is different from that, it can be given only, and then, by connection, be thought in one consciousness. An understanding in which, by its self-consciousness, all the manifold would be given at the same time, would possess intuition; our understanding can do nothing but think, and must seek for its intuition in the senses. I am conscious, therefore, of the identical self with respect to the manifold of the representations, which are given to me in an intuition, because I call them, altogether, my representations, as constituting one. This means, that I am conscious of a necessary synthesis of them a priori, which is called the original synthetical unity of apperception under which all representations given to me must stand, but have to be brought there, first, by means of a synthesis.

§17

The Principle of the Synthetical Unity of Appei'ception is the Highest Principle of all Employment of the Understanding

The highest principle of the possibility of all intuition, in relation to sensibility, was, according to the transcendental /Esthetic, that all the manifold in it should be subject to the formal conditions of space and time. The highest principle of the same possibility in relation to the understanding is, that all the manifold in intuition must be subject to the conditions of the original synthetical unity of apperception.^

All the manifold representations of intuition, so far as they

^ Space and time, and all portions thereof, are intuitions, and consequently single representations with the manifold of their content. (See the transcendental i^sthetic.) They are not, therefore, mere concepts, through which the same consciousness, as existing in many representations, but intuitions through which many representations are brought to us, as contained in one and in its consciousness; this latter, therefore, is compounded, and those intuitions represent the unity of consciousness as synthetical, but yet as primitive. This character oi singleness in them is practically of great importance (see § 25).

Supplement XIV y4.g

are given us, are subject to the former, so far as they must admit of being connected in one consciousness, to the latter ; and without that nothing can be thought or known by them, because the given representations would not share the act of apperception (I think) in common, and could not be comprehended in one selfconsciousness.

The understanding in its most general sense is the faculty of cognitions. These consist in a definite relation of given representations to an object ; and an object is that in the concept of which the manifold of a given intuition is connected. All such connection of representations requires of course the unity of the consciousness in their synthesis : consequently, the unity of consciousness is that which alone constitutes the relation of representations to an object, that is, their objective validity, and consequently their becoming cognitions, so that the very possibihty of the understanding depends on it.

The first pure cognition of the understanding, therefore, on which all the rest of its employment is founded, and which at the same time is entirely independent of all conditions of sensuous intuition, is this very principle of the original synthetical unity of apperception. Space, the mere form of external sensuous intuition, is not yet cognition : it only supplies the manifold of intuition a priori for a possible cognition. In order to know anything in space, for instance, a line, I must draw it, and produce synthetically a certain connection of the manifold that is given, so that the unity of that act is at the same time the unity of the consciousness (in the concept of a line), and (so that) an object (a determinate space) is then only known for the first time. The synthetical unity of consciousness is, therefore, an objective condition of all knowledge ; a condition, not necessary for myself only, in order to know an object, but one to which each intuition must be subject, in order to become an object ioxvixt., because the manifold could not become connected in one consciousness in any other way, and without such a synthesis.

No doubt, that proposition, as I said before, is itself analytical, though it makes synthetical unity a condition of all thought, for it really says no more than that all my representations in any given

75 o Supplement XIV intuition must be subject to the condition under which alone I can ascribe them, as my representations, to the identical self, and therefore comprehend them, as synthetically connected, in one apperception through the general expression, I think.