Intuition [Anschauung]: In the Aristotelian tradition there was considerable perplexity concerning the relationship between Aristotle's account of intuitive and demonstrative knowledge in the Posterior Analytics and the account of intelligible and sensible perception (noesis and aisthesis) in De anima. In the Posterior Analytics Aristotle claims that the 'primary premises' of scientific knowledge are apprehended intuitively, and that intuition is the 'originative source of scientific knowledge' (Aristotle, 1941, 100b). Intuitive apprehension is thus immediate as opposed to the mediated, discursive knowledge of scientific demonstration. According to De anima, knowledge arises out of the abstraction of noeta from aistheta, but with the proviso that the sensible and intelligible elements thought separately do not exist separately, or in Aristotle's words, 'that the mind which is actively thinking is the objects which it thinks' (Aristotle, 1941, 431b, 18).
The perplexity facing the tradition was whether to unite these two accounts of knowledge, and if so, in what way. Apart from denying any relationship between them, there were basically three available options. One was to emphasize the Platonic elements in Aristotle, and to identify immediate intuitive knowledge with the noeta; another was to identify intuitive knowledge with sense perception or aistheta; while a third was to postulate a group of objects occupying an intermediate position between noeta and aistheta (see Wolfson, 1962, Vol. II. p. 156). In formal terms, Kant's doctrine of intuition adumbrated in ID and developed in CPR may be situated within the terms of the third option, but emphasizing the paradoxical character of such intermediate objects.
Prior to Kant, Descartes and Spinoza distinguished radically between intuitive and other forms of knowledge. Although Descartes makes great play in the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (1628) of 'paying no attention' to the 'way in which particular terms have of late been employed in the schools', his professedly 'new use of the term intuition.' departs little from the Aristotelian tradition. He distinguishes it from the 'testimony of the senses' and defines it as an Undoubting conception of an unclouded and attentive mind [which] springs from the light of reason alone' (Rule III). Unlike deductive knowledge it is immediate and simple, and is exemplified by the individual's 'intuition of the fact that they exist, and that they think'. Spinoza in Ethics (1677) followed Descartes in distinguishing between three forms of knowing: knowledge of opinion grounded in the senses and imagination (broadly Aristotle's aistheta), knowledge of reason grounded in common notions or concepts (noeta) and, finally, immediate, intuitive knowledge of the formal essence of the attributes of God and things in general (1985, pp. 475-8).
Both Descartes and Spinoza lean towards a Platonic view of intuitive knowledge which prefers the immediate knowledge of the intelligible realm to the mediated knowledge of the senses. Locke in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding agreed that intuitive knowledge was not only immediate, but also 'the clearest and most certain that human frailty is capable of' (Locke, 1690, p. 272). Yet for him this knowledge is not derived from the intelligible noeta, as it was with Descartes and Spinoza, but from the objects of external perception: 'there can be nothing more certain than that the idea we receive from an external object is in our minds: this is intuitive knowledge' (p. 277). This knowledge is immediate, but oriented more towards aistheta than to noeta. Leibniz, in his critique of Locke in the New Essays on Human Understanding (completed 1705 but published in 1765), attempted to reconcile and Locke by proposing intuitive truths of both fact and reason (Leibniz, 1765, pp. 361-7), but his follower and popularizer Christian Wolff confined intuitive knowledge to the direct intuition of rational perfection. This view in its turn was criticized by the heretical Wolffian A.G. Baumgarten, who argued for the intuitive knowledge of rational perfection by way of sensible perception, a form of knowledge he christened 'aesthetic'.
Kant's doctrine of intuition must be situated within the agenda established by Aristotle. He remained consistent with the Aristotelian tradition in respect of the direct, unmediated character of intuition, but established his own variant of it which refused the opposition of direct knowledge between the rationalists' noeta or the empiricists' aistheta. While Kant situates intuition at the level of sensibility or aisthesis in the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' of CPR (that is, below the understanding and the reason), he also accords it an a priori formal character, managing in this way to stress the immediate, sensible element in knowledge without being Lockean, and the a priori, formal element without being Cartesian. It was essential to establish this balance in order to satisfy one of the major conditions required 'for solution of the general problem of transcendental philosophy: how are synthetic a priori judgements possible?' (CPR B 73). Such judgements synthesize concepts with sensible intuitions which, while heterogeneous to them, nevertheless possess an a priori, intelligible character.
Most of the elements of Kant's doctrine of intuition are present in (section) 10 of ID. He begins by claiming that 'There is (for man) no intuition of what belongs to the understanding . . . thinking is only possible for us by means of universal concepts in the abstract, not by means of a singular concept in the concrete'. Here he subscribes to the orthodox distinction between the immediate knowledge of intuition, and the mediated knowledge of the understanding. The human understanding can only function 'discursively by means of general concepts', but for Kant this does not exclude the possibility of other, differently constituted, understandings and intuitions. The ones which he considers in (section) 10 are intellectual and divine intuition, both of which return in CPR. Intellectual intuition consists in a direct, intellectual knowledge of things in themselves rather than as appearances in space and time (CPR B 307) while divine intuition is productive, producing the objects which it thinks rather than being passively affected by given objects in the manner of human intuition (ibid.).
In the second sentence of (section) 10 Kant writes that 'all our intuition is bound to a certain principle of form, and it is only under- this form that anything can be apprehended by the mind immediately or as singular, and not merely conceived discursively by means of general concepts'. With this he converts intuition from an adjectival characteristic of knowledge into a faculty of knowledge. The faculty of intuition possesses a 'certain principle of form' through which the mind may directly apprehend the concrete singularity of things and not subsume them as instances of abstract and general concepts. In this sentence Kant presents the central paradox of his account of intuition: that it directly apprehends objects yet does so by means of formal principles. This quality of intuition recurs repeatedly in CPR where intuition is both the 'immediate relation' (sic) to objects and takes place 'only in so far as the object is given to us' (CPR A 20/B 34).
In the third sentence of ID (section) 10 the formal principles of intuition are revealed as space and time, which are further specified as the conditions under which something can be an object of our senses'. Although in ID Kant lists the properties space and time possess as pure intuitions - they are 'singular', neither 'innate' nor 'acquired', both the conditions of sensations and excited into action by them - he does not venture a proof of why they are the conditions for the objects of our senses. This he supplies in CPR and P by means of the analytic and synthetic methods. In the 'Transcendental Aesthetic' of CPR Kant analyzes or breaks sensibility down into its elements. He proposes first to 'isolate sensibility, by taking away from it everything which the understanding thinks through its concepts' (CPR A22/B 36). This leaves nothing 'save empirical intuition' from which is separated 'everything which belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain save pure intuition and the mere form of appearances'. These are then found to be 'the forms of sensible intuition' namely space and time. In P Kant argues synthetically from the forms of intuition to sense objects. He argues that intuitions of present things are not possible without a 'ground of relation between my representation and the object' ((section) 9) which 'precedes all the actual impressions through which I am affected by, objects'; without the a priori forms of intuition to relate the I and its objects, there would be no experience of objects (see also CPR B 132).
In CPR Kant offers proofs for why only space and time qualify as forms of intuition. The one he seems to find most compelling holds that while all concepts except space and time presuppose 'something empirical', space and time are pure and a priori: space does not occupy space and time does not suffer alteration in time (CPR A 41/B 58). This argument also validates the transcendental status of space and time, namely that they arc conditions of spatio-temporal experience and cannot be abstracted from sensation or the nature of thinking substance. This accords with the view stated in ID (section) 1 that the forms of intuition provide 'the condition of sensitive cognition' and are prior to sensitive cognition and not derived from it. But this claim sits uneasily with the view that intuition is passive, that the 'matter of cognition' is given through the senses, and that intuition is 'only possible in so far as it is possible for something to affect our sense' (ibid.). Intuition here seems both to provide conditions for something to affect our sensibility, and to be conditioned by, something affecting it.
The paradoxical character of intuition as both condition of and conditioned by objects of sense is used in ID to prevent nonn1ena being 'conceived by means of representations drawn from sensations'. It is further employed in CPR to underpin the critique of claims that space and time are more than the forms which structure our intuition. The latter development is already implied in the distinction between representation and sensation mentioned in ID (section) 10, which anticipates the crucial critical distinction between appearance and sensation in CPR. Appearances are divided into sensation, or 'matter of appearance', and the 'form of appearance', or space and time. The latter are in a state of potentiality, or in Kant's words 'lie ready for the sensations a priori in the mind' (CPR A 20/B 34), and are activated by sensation. In this way the notion of appearance makes it possible for the forms of intuition to be regarded as potentially prior to (but in actuality posterior to) sensation or the matter of intuition. A further complexity arises here, which is that the matter of intuition which is directly intuited cannot be considered as objects in themselves, but are already constituted as appearances, since it is axiomatic for Kant That the things we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them as being' (CPR A 42/B 59). This is again paradoxical since it requires that we consider intuition both as direct knowledge of objects, namely 'the things we intuit', and as a mediated appearance or 'what we intuit them as being' (ibid.).
When the perspective on intuition shifts from the relationship between intuition and objects of sense to that between intuition and understanding, an analogous set of paradoxes manifest themselves. It is vital for the critical project that the concepts of the understanding and the forms of intuition be generically distinguished. Intuition corresponds to the 'passive' or 'receptive' aspect of human experience and the understanding to the part played in it by the active, spontaneous synthesis of apperception. While the two must be rigorously distinguished from each other, they must also be related in synthetic a priori judgements. Kant noted this in the lapidary sentence 'Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind' (CPR A 51/B 75), from which he concluded that concepts must be made sensible and intuitions intelligible without either exchanging their proper function and domain.
The results presented in the 'Transcendental Logic' of CPR show how the aistheta and the noeta of the tradition may be brought into relation without either being subordinated to the other. In this way the critical philosophy both respects the received Aristotelian distinction, while reconfiguring it in accordance with a doctrine of inuition which combines sensible and intelligible aspects.
(Abbreviations: CPR = Critique of Pure Reason, P = Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that will be able to come forward as Science, ID = Inaugural Dissertation, On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and the Intelligible World)
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