Abstract

For Kant, knowledge can arise only through a synthesis of two separate elements: concepts and intuitions. What allows concepts and intuitions to be combined through an act of synthesis is much debated, and this issue constitutes the topic of the dissertation. My study centers on a cryptic footnote are given as unities prior to any synthesis, are already amenable to synthesis insofar as they are unities, and thus are even responsible for guiding the synthesis. On the other hand, some scholars argue that it is the faculty of imagination that is responsible for the connection between intuitions and concepts because the imagination mediates between the faculties of sensibility and understanding. The imagination, on this reading, exhibits characteristics of both sensibility and understanding, in that it "belongs" to sensibility, but still exercises a pre-categorial synthesis. ;On my interpretation, the understanding--functioning as the imagination--is responsible for the connection between intuitions and concepts. The imagination simply is the understanding insofar as it affects sensibility, the faculty out of which intuitions arise. Because the imagination is a manifestation of the understanding, its synthesis must be categorial. Formal intuitions are not responsible for the connection between intuitions and concepts. Rather, they arise only because the understanding affects sensibility. Hence, formal intuitions serve as evidence for us of an original action of the understanding upon sensibility, and this action accounts for the amenability of intuitions to be combined with concepts. ;My interpretation avoids the overly realist reading of Kant, into which commentators who stress formal intuition are pushed. Likewise, my view stays closer to the text than many commentators who emphasize the independence of the imagination from the understanding