Abstract

The central thesis is that Kant's account of possible experience is actually an extension and development of an independent, prior theory of the possibility of perception. Since no school of Kant commentary acknowledges any such strict separation of problematics, its espousal poses the challenge of not simply refuting prevailing views but also defining a new alternative, i.e. a hitherto neglected body of doctrine not part of but premise to Kant's theory of experience. ;To meet this challenge, Kant's theory of the transcendental ideality of space and time is considered. It is argued on the basis of texts drawn from the period of the Critiques that their transcendental ideality signified an imagination origin--not imagination as traditionally conceived, but a productive imagination in virtue of which space and time constitute acquired yet original representation. The second chapter considers Kant's theory of perception as the work of a synthesis of apprehension by imagination. I argue that this too has a formal, originally acquired representational content and so is able to serve as a bridge that links space and time a priori with appearances. I attempt also to place the Kantian theory of perception in context by relating it to the Humean, for the former turns out to be able to resolve a quandary which stymied Hume. Finally, I maintain that the Kant's theory of the mind's faculties, far from being in violation of his own claim that things in themselves are unknowable, is actually to be understood as an idea, or model, not intended to be regarded as something existing in itself