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Cassirer and Kant on the Unity of Space and the Role of Imagination

  • Roberto Horácio de Sá Pereira
Published/Copyright: September 9, 2020
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Abstract

The focus of this paper is Cassirer’s Neo-Kantian reading of Kant’s conception of unity of space. Cassirer’s neo-Kantian reading is largely in conformity with the mainstream of intellectualist Kant-scholars, which is unsurprising, given his own intellectualist view of space and perception and his rejection of the existence of a ‘merely sensory consciousness’ as a ‘formless mass of impression’. I argue against Cassirer’s reading by relying on a Kantian distinction first recognized by Heinrich Rickert, a neo-Kantian from the Southwest school, between Kenntnis (roughly knowledge by acquaintance) and Erkenntnis (roughly propositional knowledge). Correspondingly, I claim that concepts and categories are conditions for Erkenntnis of objects as such, namely for thinking of and apprehending the pre-existing unity as an object, rather than for the ‘constitution’ of this very unity.

Bibliography

References to Kant’s works are given in the German Academy edition: Gesammelte Schriften, herausgegeben von der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 29 vols. (Berlin: 1902 – 1983; 2d ed., Berlin: De Gruyter, 1968, for vols. I–IX). They are indicated as follows: abbreviation of the title of the work, followed by AA., volume, and page. For the Critique of Pure Reason, the references are shortened, in keeping with current practice, to the pagination of the original edition indicated by A for the 1781 edition and B for the 1787 edition. All translations in this essay are taken from P. Guyer and A. Wood’s translation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)

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Published Online: 2020-09-09

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