Imaginative Synthesis and the Basic Function of the Second Part of Kant's Transcendental Deduction in B

Abstract

Most recent commentators on Kant's Transcendental Deduction assume that the main purpose of the second part of the B-Deduction (“BD2”) is to show that human intuitions must fall under categories for reasons connected with their spatio-temporal form. But there are good reasons to hold that the Deduction as a whole is concerned with pure categories, whose application to spatio-temporal objects is undetermined. If so, BD2 cannot establish a connection between the categories and the spatio-temporal order. I advance the alternative view that the basic function of BD2 is to explain in general terms why, abstracting from their specifically human forms, intuitions must fall under categories; and that Kant's explanation is that the forms of imaginative synthesis which yield the intuitions must correspond to the forms of intellectual synthesis involved in the functions of unity in judgement underlying the categories. This alternative interpretation accounts well for BD2's contribution to the Analytic, and an analysis of key passages shows that it can be used to make better sense of the core reasoning of BD2 than the standard assumption. Kant's remarks about space, time, and the spatio-temporal form of human intuition in BD2 serve heuristic purposes, and are not essential to this reasoning.