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.
which the possibility of all experience and of the knowledge of its objects depends, namely, sense, imagination, and apperception. Each of them may be considered as empirical in its application to given phenomena; all, however, are also elements or grounds a priori which render their empirical application possible. Sense represents phenomena empirically in perception, imagination in association (and reproduction), apperception in the empirical consciousness of the identity of these reproductive representations with the phenomena by which they were given ; therefore in recognition.
The whole of our perception rests a priori on pure intuition (if the perception is regarded as representation, then on time, as the form of our internal intuition), the association of it (the whole) on the pure syn- [p. 116] thesis of imagination, and our empirical consciousness of it on pure apperception, that is, on the permanent identity of oneself in the midst of all possible representations.
If we wish to follow up ^he internal ground of this connection of representations to that point towards which they must all converge, and where they receive for the first time that unity of knowledge which is requisite for every possible experience, we must begin with pure apperception. Intuitions are nothing to us, and do not concern us in the least, if they cannot be received into our consciousness, into which they may enter either directly or indirectly. Knowledge is impossible in any other way. We are conscious a priori of our own permanent identity with regard to all representations that can ever belong to our knowledge, as forming a necessary condition of the possibility of all
96 Transcendental Analytic representations (because these could not represent anything in me, unless they belonged with everything else to one consciousness and could at least be connected within it). , This principle stands firm a priori^ and may be called the transcendental principle of the tmity of all the manifold of our representations (therefore also of intuition). This unity of the manifold in one subject is synthetical ; the pure apperception therefore supplies us with a principle of the synthetical unity of [p. 117] the manifold in all possible intuitions.^
This synthetical unity, however, presupposes [p. 118] or involves a synthesis, and if that unity is necessary a priori, the synthesis also must be a prioid. The transcendental unity of apperception therefore refers to the pure synthesis of imagination as a condition a priori of
1 This point is of great importance and should be carefully considered. All representations have a necessary relation to some possible empirical consciousness, for if they did not possess that relation, and if it were entirely impossible to become conscious of them, this would be the same as if they did not exist. All empirical consciousness has a necessary relation to a transcendental consciousness, which precedes all single experiences, namely, the consciousness of my own self as the original apperception. It is absolutely necessary therefore that in my knowledge all consciousness should belong to one consciousness of my own self. Here we have a synthetical unity of the manifold (consciousness) which can be known a priori, and which may thus supply a foundation for synthetical propositions a priori concerning pure thinking in the same way as space and time supply a foundation for synthetical propositions which concern the form of mere intuition.
The synthetical proposition that the different kinds of empirical consciousness must be connected in one self-consciousness, is the very first and synthetical foundation of all our thinking. It should be remembered that the mere representation of the Ego in reference to all other representations (the collective unity of which would be impossible without it) constitutes our transcendental consciousness. It does not matter whether that representation is clear (empirical consciousness) or confused, not even whether it is real; but the possibility of the logical form of all knowledge rests necessarily on the relation to this apperception as a faculty.
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the possibility of the manifold being united in one knowledge. Now there can take place a priori the productive synthesis of imagination only, because the reproductive rests on conditions of experience. The principle therefore of the necessary unity of the pure (productive) synthesis of imagination, before all apperception, constitutes the ground of the possibility of all knowledge, nay, of all experience.
The synthesis of the manifold in imagination is called transcendental, if, without reference to the difference of intuitions, it affects only the a priori conjunction of the manifold ; and the unity of that synthesis is called transcendental if, with reference to the original unity of apperception, it is represented as a priori necessary. As the possibility of all knowledge depends on the unity of that apperception, it follows that the transcendental unity of the synthesis of imagination is the pure form of all possible knowledge through which therefore all objects of possible experience must be represented a priori.
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