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Phenomenological Interpretations ofKant in Husserl and Heidegger

PAUL GORNER

Introduction

Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) and Martin Heidegger (188–1976) are two of the mostinfluential “Continental” philosophers of the last century. Both were profoundly influ-enced by Kant and continued to study Kant, particularly his Critique of Pure of PureReason, throughout their philosophical careers. Husserl was the founder of phenom-enology, and for a time at least Heidegger also regarded himself as a phenomenologist,although, as I suggest, their conceptions of phenomenology diverge. Husserl sawphenomenology as the final answer to the question of epistemology: How is knowledgepossible? He sees Kant as representing a crucial stage on the way to the emergence ofhis own transcendental phenomenology, and provides interesting criticisms of Kantfrom that standpoint. Heidegger also approaches Kant from the standpoint of his owndistinctive conception of philosophy, but he does not just use this conception as ayardstick against which Kant is to be measured. He produces an original interpreta-tion of Kant but at the same time engages with the detail of Kant’s text. He admittedthat his interpretation did some violence to Kant’s text but thought this inevitable in a“thinking dialogue” rather than an “historical philology” (Heidegger 1991: forewordto 2nd ed.).

Husserl and Kant

Kant’s relation to Husserl is best brought out by sketching the latter’s transcendentalphenomenology.

The natural attitude

In what Husserl calls the “natural attitude” I am conscious of the world as endlesslyextended in space and in time (Husserl 1950: §27). I experience the world as existing,as real. I experience things as being simply there, whether or not I specially attend tothem or occupy myself with them. The objects which are there for me are not necessarilypresent in my perceptual field. Objects may be there for me, together with actually

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perceived objects, without themselves being perceived or even pictured in my imagina-tion. At the present moment I see my computer. I am not currently perceiving the partsof the room behind my back, or the street outside. Nor am I picturing them in my mind,but they are nonetheless there for me. Consciousness of my unseen surroundings isinseparable from my perceptual consciousness of a particular object. They belong towhat Husserl calls the horizon of my perception.

The horizon of my perception, however, is not exhausted by the objects of myimmediate surroundings which, though not currently perceived, are co-present to myconsciousness. The universal horizon of the consciousness of particular items is con-sciousness of the world as an all-embracing whole. The world as a whole is alwaysalready given as certainly existing. I may have doubts about a particular item in theworld, whether it genuinely exists or has the properties I take it to have, but all suchdoubt takes place in a context of certainty regarding the existence of the world as awhole. The world is always already there for me. It is other than I suppose at most inparticular circumstances. This unquestioning belief in the real existence of the worldas a whole is what Husserl calls the general thesis of the natural attitude.

In the natural attitude my consciousness is directed toward objects in the world inwhat Husserl calls the intentionality of consciousness. For the most part I take theseobjects, and the world to which they belong, to be real and to have the properties theyappear to have. An equally important feature of the natural attitude is how I regardmyself. In the natural attitude I regard myself and all other persons as belonging to theone spatiotemporal reality which is always already given. Although I am the subject ofconsciousness I am also, as a psychophysical being, in the world, related causally andin other ways to other items in the world.

The transcendental reduction

What Husserl understands by transcendental phenomenology involves bringing abouta radical change in the general thesis of the natural attitude, something he calls thephenomenological or transcendental reduction (Husserl 1950: chs. 1 and 4). In thenatural attitude I posit particular things as existing, as there, and underlying all suchpositings of existence is the general thesis, the taken-for-granted belief in the existenceof the world. Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology involves a radical change in allsuch positings of real existence.

The transformation of the general thesis of the natural attitude brought about bythe phenomenological reduction is not a transformation of the thesis into its antithesis.It is not a transformation of the general thesis into mere supposition, conjecture, unde-cidedness, or doubt. We as it were “put it out of action,” “disconnect,” or “bracket,” it.The thesis remains but we “make no use of it.” We perform what Husserl calls an epochéon the general thesis and all particular theses (Husserl 1950: §32). The purpose of thissuspension, this inhibiting, of belief is to enable us to turn our attention away fromthings in the world and the world itself and to focus instead on consciousness of thingsin the world and of the world as a whole. This does not mean that things in the worldand the world itself simply disappear. It means that rather than being interested intheir reality we are interested in them simply as they appear, as objects of conscious-ness or intentional objects. Phenomenology, as Husserl understands it, is the description

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of the essential structures of consciousness, in virtue of which it is consciousness of thevarious types of object and of the world as a whole.

In the natural attitude I regard myself as a psychophysical reality belonging to theone spatiotemporal reality which is always already given. But in the phenomenologicalreduction I suspend the general thesis of the natural attitude. This means that theconsciousness laid bare by the reduction is not consciousness understood as part of apsychophysical reality in the world, that is mundane consciousness. The consciousnesswe gain through the phenomenological reduction is transcendental consciousness.Transcendental phenomenology is the description of the essential structures of trans-cendental consciousness.

The life-world

Later versions of Husserl’s phenomenology appeal to what is called the “life-world”(Lebenswelt). As the name suggests the life-world is the world in which we live as weexperience it. It, or at least its basic stratum, is the spatiotemporal world of things as itis experienced in our prescientific and extrascientific life. The life-world is the world ofperception. The perceptual life-world is the foundation or ground of the scientific worldwhich may be taken to be the realm of the in-itself, of things as they objectively are,independently of subjectivity. The subjective and relative life-world is then thoughtto be something that must be overcome in favor of the being-in-itself which sciencepurports to describe, but Husserl thinks this a mistake.

It is a mistake for Husserl because science, as he points out, is an historically lateform of practice, which arises within the life-world and is ultimately intelligible onlywithin that context (Husserl 1970a: §33). It is the life-world which gives rise to thequestions of science and it is the life-world to which the scientist must ultimatelyappeal in answering such questions, and in verifying those answers. When physicistssee their instruments they see them in the life-world and what they see are “life-worldly”objects. In conducting an experiment scientists experience such things as persons,equipment, or the laboratory. These objects, as they experience them, are quite differentfrom things as described in scientific theories, but such scientific knowledge is incon-ceivable without the experience of life-worldly objects.

The life-world is the ultimate foundation of the objective world in the sense that theconcepts science uses to describe the world refer back to the life-world. The key to thisis what Husserl calls Galileo’s mathematization of nature. Prescientifically, in everydaysense-experience, the world is given in a subjectively relative way. Galileo’s idea wasto overcome this subjectivity and relativity by applying pure geometry and the math-ematics of the pure form of space-time to nature. In the intuitively given surroundingworld we do not encounter the “pure” bodies, the straight lines and figures of geometry.The things of the life-world “fluctuate, in general and in all their properties, in the sphereof the merely typical” (Husserl 1970a: 23–5).

Those exact forms of geometry, Husserl argues, are the product of a process of idealiza-tion performed on the “inexact” and “vague” shapes of “life-worldly” objects. Prescienti-fically the world is already a spatiotemporal world, except that unlike the “objective”world, it does not contain ideal mathematical points, or “pure” straight lines and planes.Prescientifically the world is a world in which things are experienced as causally

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interrelated, but the causality of the physical sciences is an idealization of such life-worldly causality. Husserl’s point is that, as the product of the idealization and math-ematization of life-worldly structures, the concepts used to construct the “objective”world refer back in their sense to such structures, and that, consequently, it is absurd todismiss the life-world, from the standpoint of the “objective” world, as merely subjective.

It is important, however, not to lose sight of the context of transcendental phenom-enology in which Husserl develops the notion of the life-world. The life-world is a stageon the way to transcendental subjectivity. In order to secure the life-world as an objectof study we must perform an epoché with respect to all the objective sciences, by putting“out of action” all their validity-claims so that scientific theories and science as a formof practice appear as cultural facts in the life-world. It is possible to study the life-worldfor its own sake, and laying bare the essential structures of the life-world is whatHusserl calls the ontology of the life-world (Husserl 1970a: §51). Phenomenologycan thus trace back the objective world to its “origin” in the life-world, but for Husserlthis would not be the end of the phenomenological story. For the life-world itselfhas an origin, in the sense that it is constituted in transcendental subjectivity (orintersubjectivity). If the doctrine of constitution, with its idealistic implications, isthought to be problematic, then the introduction of the theme of the life-world doesnot resolve it; but it can be seen as a criticism of the kind of transcendentalism whichtakes natural-scientific knowledge as its starting point. In Husserl’s view this is to startat too high a level; it overlooks the way in which such knowledge is grounded inprescientific experience of the life-world.

Kant as precursor of transcendental phenomenology

Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is the culmination of the turn to the subjectthat takes place in Descartes, but how does it relate to Kant? In Husserl’s view Kant’ssignificance lies in the fact that he succeeds in converting Descartes’ subjectivism intophilosophy which is genuinely transcendental. Descartes’ subject remains an item inthe world (Husserl 1960: §10). Kant’s subject is transcendental in the sense that it is asubject in which the world as object is constituted. Such philosophy is the only one ableto answer the epistemological question: How is knowledge possible?, and it does this byshowing how the world is “constituted” in transcendental subjectivity. An inevitableconsequence of Husserl’s conception of transcendental phenomenology is transcen-dental idealism, and Husserl not only accepts this but enthusiastically proclaims it.He sees his own transcendental idealism as Kant’s idealism rendered consistent.

Husserl’s criticisms of Kant

1. Husserl does not argue that transcendental consciousness must have such and suchstructures if knowledge is to be possible. Phenomenology is essentially a form of seeing.The constitution of objects in transcendental subjectivity is something which can be-come the “object” of what Husserl calls transcendental experience. Access to the kindsof active and passive synthesis in which objects, and ultimately the whole world, areconstituted requires the carrying out of the transcendental reduction. Lacking a properconception of the phenomenological method Kant’s account of the constitution of the

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world by the transcendental subject operates with “mythical constructions” (Husserl1970: §30, §12, §30).

2. Husserl thinks that because Kant never really appreciated the need for a tran-scendental reduction he was always in danger of falling back into psychologism (Husserl1956: Foreword to Kant und die Idee der transzendentalen Philosophie). In the veryearliest stages of his encounter with Kant Husserl thought that Kant was guilty ofpsychologism, trying to explain the necessity and universality of a priori truths by tracingthem back to our psychological constitution which makes assent to them inevitable.By the time of Logical Investigations he had come to see that this view of Kant is falseeven though traces of psychologism remained (Husserl 1956: 369). Kant explains thepossibility of a priori knowledge in terms of the faculties of sensibility, imagination andunderstanding, and these are human psychological faculties. But as items in the worldhuman beings cannot fulfil a transcendental role. From the standpoint of Husserl’stranscendental phenomenology human beings are entities in the world constituted intranscendental subjectivity which is not an entity in the world.

3. A genuinely transcendental philosophy cannot countenance things in themselveswhich cannot themselves be presented or given to consciousness. At the core of Husserl’sphenomenology is the strict correlation between being (Sein) and consciousness(Bewusstsein) (Husserl 1950: §43). Given this correlation the idea of an unknowablething in itself makes no sense. Although it is possible to interpret Kantian things inthemselves in a way compatible with Husserl’s transcendental philosophy there is stillthe strong suggestion that they have a causal role in Kant’s epistemology, whichHusserl thinks absurd. This explains why his transcendental idealism is more radicalthan Kant’s and owes as much to Fichte as to Kant.

4. Kant starts at too high a level since he ignores the life-world and the constitutionof the life-world (Husserl 1970a: 103–23). The synthetic a priori principles whosepossibility Kant seeks to explain are supposed to be the fundamental principles ofnatural science. But in Husserl the concepts employed in the formulation of suchknowledge refer back to experience of the life-world. So what is needed is first anaccount of the constitution of the life-world and its structures.

5. Kant does not subject his transcendental philosophy to transcendental self-criticism (Husserl 1956: 376; 1970: §63). We do not expect a natural scientist to beable to give an account of how natural-scientific knowledge is possible. If he or sheshould do so it is not qua scientist but qua philosopher. But we are right to expect aphilosopher to be able to give an account of how philosophical knowledge is possible.This is because philosophy is essentially self-reflective. Husserl criticizes Kant on thegrounds that his transcendental philosophy is not sufficiently self-reflective. It does notraise, let alone answer, the prior question of how transcendental philosophy is possible.

Despite these criticisms Husserl regarded himself as the heir to Kant’s transcendentalphilosophy, but there are two fundamental respects in which this can be questioned.Firstly, there is something essentially Cartesian about Husserl’s conception of transcen-dental philosophy. Phenomenological reflection is a kind of purified introspection. It ispurified in being carried out on the basis of the phenomenological reduction, whereas“ordinary” introspection takes place within the natural attitude and on the basis of thegeneral thesis. This is something quite alien to Kant’s conception of philosophy.

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Secondly, Husserl’s conception of the a priori is really quite different from that ofKant. Kant’s synthetic a priori judgments are characterized by necessity and strictuniversality. The synthetic a priori transcendental principles have these characteristicsby virtue of being conditions of the possibility of experience. Husserl also uses the notionof synthetic a priori judgments but his conception of such judgments involves some-thing which is entirely alien to Kant, namely the intuition of essences (Wesensschau,literally the viewing or seeing of an essence) (Husserl 1950: div. 1, ch. 1). For Husserlit is not only individuals but also universals which can be intuited. Every contingentsomething has an essence or “eidos.” An individual object is not simply a “this, here”but has also an essential “what.” Every specific sound, for example, has a universalessence “sound as such.” Likewise every material thing has its essence. At a higherlevel of generality there is the essence “material thing as such” and, included in this,“temporal determination as such,” “duration as such,” “figure as such,” and “materialityas such.” Everything which belongs to the essence of an individual can also belong toanother individual, and essences of the highest levels of generality demarcate “regions”or “categories” of individuals.

Every “what” of an individual can be separated from that individual and apprehendedas an idea. Empirical or individual intuition can thus be converted into essential intui-tion, and what is then intuited is the pure essence or eidos. The essence is a new kindof object. Just as what is given in an individual or empirical intuition is an individualobject so what is given in essential intuition (Wesenserschauung), is a pure essence.Husserl insists that the talk of intuition here is no mere analogy. Essential intuition isgenuinely intuition and the eidetic object is genuinely an object. Essential intuition is amode of consciousness of something in which the object, the essence, is itself given.The eidos, the pure essence, can be intuitively exemplified in what is given in experi-ence, in perception, or memory, but it can equally well be exemplified in imagination.In order to apprehend an essence itself we can start out from either correspondingexperiential intuitions or non-experiential intuitions in which existence is not appre-hended, that is to say from intuitions in which something is merely imagined. For exampleessences of spatial forms, melodies, social processes, acts of experience, pleasure, dis-pleasure, or willing can be intuited on the basis of purely imagined instances of suchthings. The positing and intuitive apprehension of essences does not imply the slight-est positing of any individual existence. Pure essential truths do not contain the leastassertion about facts. Consequently not even the most trivial factual truth can beinferred from them.

Essential truths (Wesenswahrheiten) are truths concerning relations between essences,such as those of exclusion and inclusion. Such relations, like the essences betweenwhich they obtain, can themselves be intuitively apprehended and not merely thought.An example of such an essential synthetic a priori truth would be that one and thesame surface cannot be both red and green all over at the same time. They are neces-sarily true but cannot be converted into analytic truths. The latter can be reduced topurely formal truths by substituting formal concepts for the material concepts theycontain. Formal concepts are concepts which apply to something simply as something.Truths of logic are true of anything regardless of content, but synthetic or material apriori truths are not reducible to formal truths.

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Heidegger and Kant

Heidegger’s conception of phenomenology

Whereas for Husserl phenomenology became inseparable from a certain kind ofidealism, for Heidegger it is essentially only a method (Heidegger 1962: §7). Itssubject-matter is not consciousness but being (Sein). Primarily and for the most partwe are concerned with entities, with what is (Seiendes). But comportment (Verhalten)to entities, including that entity which I myself am, is only possible on the basis ofthe understanding of being. Being itself is not an entity, and normally remainshidden, while phenomenology is a method of gaining access to it. It is the letting beseen (Sehenlassen) of the being of entities (Sein des Seienden).

In Being and Time (1927), the work which established his reputation as a philo-sopher, Heidegger raises the question of the meaning or sense (Sinn) of being (Sein). Thisrequires that we first focus on our own being, but not because of any absurd identifica-tion of human being with being as such. It is rather because what distinguishes ourbeing from the being of other entities is that in our being we understand being, that ofourselves and that of entities other than ourselves. To designate the entity distin-guished by the understanding of being (Seinsverständnis) he employs the term Dasein.The being of Dasein he calls “existence.” Most of the published part of Being and Time istaken up with the laying bare, the “letting be seen,” of the structures of the being ofDasein, which he calls “existentials.” What lies at the base of all these structures andmakes them possible is the temporality of Dasein. This is not time in the ordinary orcommon (vulgär) sense of a beginningless and endless sequence of “nows.” The originaltemporality of Dasein is not being in time thus understood. The temporality whichmakes the being of Dasein possible is the unity of coming-toward-itself (future, Zukunft),coming-back-to-itself (having-been-ness, Gewesenheit), and enpresenting (present,Gegenwärtigen, Gegenwart). In each of these elements of its temporality Dasein is“outside itself,” each of them is an ecstasis and Heidegger calls such temporality ecstatictemporality. Each of the ecstases creates a horizon from out of which entities areencountered. Time understood as ecstatic-horizonal temporality is the sense or meaningof being. This gives us some indication of how we should understand the title of thework. The relationship between being and time is not one of opposition but such thatthe latter is the key to the meaning of the former.

Kant and being

Heidegger lectured on the Critique of Pure Reason (hereafter the Critique) in the wintersemester of 1927/8 in Marburg and subsequently in Riga and Davos. The Davos work-shop, which included both Ernst Cassirer and Rudolf Carnap as participants, is discussedin Michael Friedman (2000). The essentials of Heidegger’s Kant interpretation appearedin his Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, which was published in 1929.The Marburg lectures were published in 1977, the year after his death, under the titlePhenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. In the foreword to thefirst edition of Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics Heidegger states that his interpretation

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of the Critique arose in connection with work on Part Two of Being and Time, the subjectof which was to have been the phenomenological destruction of the history of onto-logy. The first of three divisions of Part II was to have had the title “Kant’s doctrine ofschematism and time as a first stage in the problematic of temporality” (Heidegger1962: §8).

In his interpretation of Kant Heidegger is not suggesting that Kant has a conceptionof Dasein. Nor is he suggesting that Kant consciously raises his Seinsfrage, that is, thequestion of being or, more precisely, the question concerning the meaning of being.Kant is concerned with the knowing subject but Dasein cannot be identified with thesubject. The being of Dasein is being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-sein) but this should notbe equated with the relationship between a subject and an object. As regards being,Heidegger thinks that Kant, in common with other philosophers, equates being with“presence-at-hand” or “occurrentness” (Vorhandenheit). However, he sees Kant as grop-ing towards an interpretation of being in terms of time. It is in this that he sees Kant’simportance, rather than in any completion of the modern move, initiated by Descartes,from the object to the subject.

Heidegger thus interprets the Critique as ontology, understood as the study of being.With the collapse of German Idealism and its idea of philosophy as absolute Wissenschaft(absolute knowledge of the absolute), the view had come to dominate that knowledgeof reality is provided by, and only by, science, so that the only thing left for philosophyto do is to analyze scientific knowledge and to try to explain how it is possible. Philo-sophy becomes theory of knowledge, more specifically theory of scientific knowledge.In line with this conception of the rather limited role of philosophy the Critique cameto be seen as exclusively concerned with the theory of natural science. It asks: giventhe fact of natural scientific knowledge, what are the conditions of the possibility of suchknowledge?

In Heidegger’s view this is to get Kant completely wrong.

The purpose of the Critique of Pure Reason is completely misunderstood . . . if this workis interpreted as a “theory of experience” or perhaps as a theory of the positive sciences.The Critique of Pure Reason has nothing to do with a “theory of knowledge.” (Heidegger1991: 16f)

The Critique is not epistemology but ontology. It belongs to metaphysica generalis (gen-eral metaphysics). Traditionally metaphysics has been understood as the fundamentalknowledge of beings as such and as a whole. Beings as a whole, that is the totality ofwhat is, is divided up into basic regions: God, nature and man. The rational sciences ofthese three regions – rational theology, rational cosmology, and rational psychology –together make up metaphysica specialis (special metaphysics). Metaphysica generalis, bycontrast, is the study of beings as beings, being as such. That Kant is concerned withthe possibility of metaphysica specialis would be agreed on all sides. But according toHeidegger’s ontological reading of Kant his more fundamental concern is withmetaphysica generalis and its possibility.

When the Critique asks: how are synthetic a priori judgments possible? Heideggerinterprets such judgments as belonging to metaphysica generalis or ontology. Kant’ssynthetic a priori judgments are interpreted as ontological judgments, that is to say,

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they are not judgments about entities or beings (what Heidegger calls ontic judgments)but judgments about being, the being of entities (das Sein des Seienden). All comport-ment to entities presupposes an understanding of being, so that knowledge of entities, asa mode of comportment to entities, presupposes an understanding of the being of thoseentities. Ontic knowledge presupposes ontological knowledge. Kant’s synthetic a prioriprinciples represent the ontological knowledge required for knowledge of objects. Theyarticulate the understanding of objectivity or objecthood (Gegenständlichkeit), the beingof objects.

Interpreting synthetic a priori judgments as ontological judgments enablesHeidegger to interpret Kant’s Copernican revolution in a way that avoids absurdity.Given that we are finite beings it seems perverse to claim that objects must conformto our knowledge rather than our knowledge conform to objects. On Heidegger’s inter-pretation of the Copernican Revolution, Kant is not saying that objects must conformto empirical or ontic knowledge, but that objects must conform to synthetic a priori know-ledge, that entities must conform to ontological knowledge. Entities must conform toontological knowledge in the sense that entities can only manifest themselves as entitieson the basis of an understanding of their being. Far from dispensing with the tradi-tional concept of truth as “correspondence” (adaequatio) the Copernican revolutionpresupposes it and for the first time shows how such ontic truth is possible (Heidegger1991: 13).

Ontic knowledge can only correspond to entities if these entities are alreadymanifest (offenbar) as entities, i.e. are known in the constitution of their being(Seinsverfassung). Objects, i.e. their ontic determinability, must conform to this ultim-ate knowledge. Manifestness of entities (ontic truth) revolves around the disclosednessof the constitution of the being of entities (ontological truth). But ontic knowledge cannever by itself conform “to” objects because without ontological knowledge it cannoteven have a possible thing to conform to (Heidegger 1991: 13).

The elements of ontological knowledge

According to Heidegger, Kant maintains that knowledge is primarily intuition(Anschauung). In support of this claim he quotes the opening sentence of the Tran-scendental Aesthetic:

In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge [a cognition, eineErkenntnis] may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate rela-tion to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. (B 33; translation fromKant 1961)

But although knowledge is primarily intuition, for finite knowers such as human beingsintuition by itself can never be knowledge. In order to be knowledge finite intuitionrequires concepts or thought, for it needs to be determined as thus and so. Finiteintuition of entities (empirical intuition) is dependent on the prior existence of itsobject. It cannot give its object to itself. Our intuition of entities is intuitus derivatus(Heidegger 1991: §5). This is contrasted with intuitus originarius, which of itself andthrough its intuiting first produces the intuited entity.

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It is because human knowledge is finite that it requires concepts. Finite knowledgeis thinking intuition (denkendes Anschauen) or intuiting thinking (anschauendes Denken).Representation through concepts (begriffliches Vorstellen) lacks the immediacy of evenfinite intuition. It relates to entities via the reference to something general. This circui-tousness or discursivity (Umwegigkeit), which belongs to the essence of the understanding(Verstand ), is, Heidegger says, the clearest mark of its finitude (Heidegger 1991: 30).

So the essential elements of finite knowledge are intuition and concepts. The firststep towards explaining the possibility of ontological knowledge is to identify the essen-tial elements of such knowledge. These are pure intuition and pure thought or concepts.In pure intuition what is intuited (das Angeschaute) is not an entity (ein Seiendes), but(an aspect of) the being (Sein) of entities. Concepts are general representations which“hold for many.” They are formed by reflection, which is the focusing on the one inwhich the many agree. The origin of the content of empirical concepts is empiricalintuition. A priori or pure concepts are not just a priori with respect to their form – thisis true of all concepts – but also with respect to their content. Such concepts are not theproduct of reflection; rather they are representations of unity (Einheit) which belong tothe essential structure of reflection as such.

Transcendental imagination and the unity of pure intuition and pure concepts

So far pure intuition and pure concepts have been dealt with in isolation. But there isa relationship of essential interdependence between them. Marburg neo-Kantians likeHermann Cohen recognized the artificiality of Kant’s treatment of the pure intuitionsof space and time in isolation from the Transcendental Logic but tried to overcome thisby treating space and time as categories (Cohen 1885). In Heidegger’s view this istotally misguided and runs counter to Kant’s insistence on the primacy of intuition.Pure thought essentially relates to intuition and is the servant of intuition. But equallyin a finite being pure intuition is essentially dependent on pure thought in the sense ofbeing in need of determination (bestimmungsbedürftig).

What mediates between pure intuition and pure thought and makes their unitypossible is the transcendental imagination. This synthesizes the manifold of pure intui-tion in accordance with those modes of unity represented in the pure concepts of theunderstanding. A priori knowledge of objects, that is knowledge of the objectivity orobjecthood (Gegenständlichkeit or Gegenständlichsein) of objects, the being of objectsrequires, firstly, “the manifold of pure intuition,” secondly, “the synthesis of the mani-fold by means of the imagination” and, thirdly, “the concepts which give unity to thispure synthesis” (CPR, B 104).

The product of this pure synthesis is what makes experience of objects possible. Themodes of unity represented in the pure concepts in their interconnection constitute ahorizon from within which objects are able to show themselves as objects. Or rather itis the manifold of pure intuition unified in these various ways which constitutes thehorizon. This is not an entity nor a totality of entities but the being of entities. In all ofthis Heidegger consciously makes use of the literal meaning of the German word for“object,” Gegenstand. The object is what “stands over against.” The ontological syn-thesis “performed” by the transcendental (or productive) imagination is what makesthis standing-over-against possible. That the transcendental imagination produces the

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horizon of objectivity does not mean that empirical objects are imaginary entities.Being is not itself an entity; objectivity is not itself an object.

Transcendence

But because such ontological knowledge involves a kind of “going beyond” objects, notto another realm of entities “behind” them, but to the being of objects, Heidegger alsospeaks of it as transcendence. Transcendence characterizes the being of the subject, thesubjectivity of the subject. “Transcendent” does not mean being transcendent in thesense in which theologians speak of God as transcendent. Nor does it mean beingtranscendent in the Husserlian sense, according to which material objects are tran-scendent (in relation to consciousness) and such things as thoughts and sensationsare immanent. It is to be understood in an active sense. Dasein is transcendent in thesense that it transcends. What does it transcend, go beyond? It transcends entities. Towhat does it go beyond? Being. This is not some mysterious superentity but the horizonof objectivity created by the transcendental imagination. Transcendence is not itselfcomportment to entities, what Husserl calls “intentionality,” but the understanding ofbeing which makes comportment to entities possible. Transcendence we might say isnot an instance of intentionality but the condition of the possibility of intentionality.

The transcendental deduction of the categories

Such transcendence cannot be achieved by the pure concepts of the understandingconsidered simply as notions, as concepts derived from the logical forms of judgment.Notions must become categories. The task of the Transcendental Deduction is to exhibitthe ontological character of the categories by uncovering their origin in pure imagina-tive time-related synthesis. Given that Kant’s fundamental concern is to lay bare theessential content of these concepts the quasilegal conception of the Deduction is mis-leading. If metaphysics is thought of as the “ontic science of the super-sensible” thenthe question arises as to the legitimacy of the use of certain concepts. Dogmatic meta-physics (metaphysica specialis) seeks to provide knowledge of what lies beyond the boundsof sense by means of the most general concepts of the understanding without beingable to show that the employment of such concepts is justified. But Kant’s real concernis not with metaphysica specialis but with metaphysica generalis or ontology. For meta-physics as ontology the problem is quite different. What must the content of thecategories be if they are to constitute the objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) of objects? Oras Heidegger puts it: what must their ontological essence be? In the TranscendentalDeduction Kant lays bare this essence – what constitutes a category as a category – interms of time, the imagination and the logical function of concepts. However he doesnot do this for individual categories in the Transcendental Deduction.

Transcendental schematism

From Heidegger’s perspective, the task of exhibiting the ontological essence of thecategories is continued in the Transcendental Schematism (CPR, B 176–87) and inthe presentation of the system of synthetic a priori principles (B 187–294). Of the

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former he says that these few pages of the Critique constitute the centerpiece (Kernstück)of the entire work (Heidegger 1991: 89). The transcendental schematism is not a“barock theory” but has been wrested (geschöpft) from the phenomena themselves(Heidegger 1991: 106). To become categories notions must be made sensible(versinnlicht). Schematism is the bringing into an image or picture (in ein Bild bringen)of a concept. But Kant says “. . . the schema of a pure concept of the understanding cannever be brought into any image whatsoever” (B 181). In seeming contradictionto this he says that “The pure image . . . of all objects of the senses in general is time”(B 182). In fact the kinds of schema-images Kant means to exclude in the formerquotation are those which belong to the schemata of empirical and mathematicalconcepts. Time as pure intuition is what, prior to all experience, furnishes an image forpure concepts of the understanding. This pure image is the pure succession of thesequence of “nows.” Corresponding to the closed multiplicity of the pure concepts ofthe understanding is a multiplicity of ways in which this pure image can be formed(gebildet). The schemata of the pure concepts are nothing but a priori determinationsof time in accordance with rules, or transcendental determinations of time. Suchtranscendental schemata are a “transcendental product of imagination.”

Heidegger offers a brief interpretation of the transcendental schema of the categoryof substance. “The schema of substance is the permanence [Beharrlichkeit] of thereal [des Realen] in time” (B 183). As a notion substance means simply: Zugrundeliegen,lying at the base, subsistence. Its schema must be the representation of subsistence inso far as this presents itself in the pure image of time. Now time as pure sequence ofnows is always now; in every now it is now, and in this way time shows its ownpermanence. As such time is unchanging (unwandelbar) and abiding (bleibend ), it doesnot pass away (sie verläuft sich nicht). Time is not one abiding thing among others,rather on the basis of this essential feature – that of being now in every now – itprovides the pure image of abiding as such. As this pure image it presents subsistencein pure intuition.

However this function of presentation only becomes genuinely clear when we con-sider the full content of the notion of substance. Substance is a category of “relation”(between subsistence and inherence). Thus time is only the pure image of the notionsubstance if it presents precisely this relation in the pure image. But now time as thesequence of nows is such that, flowing in every now, it remains a now even whilebecoming another now. As the image of abiding it at the same time offers the image ofpure change in abiding. In this way, the horizon of objectivity, in so far as substancebelongs to it as a constitutive element, becomes a priori intuitable. It is the prior havingin view of the pure image of permanence which makes possible the experience ofentities as substances.

The “origin” of time

The transcendental schemata as determinations of time are the “transcendental prod-uct of imagination” but for Heidegger there is also a sense in which the transcendentalimagination is responsible not just for the determination of time but for time itself(Heidegger 1991: 175f ). Time as the sequence of nows is not original time. The tran-scendental imagination is what gives rise to time as the sequence of nows (lässt die Zeit

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als Jetztfolge entspringen) and is therefore original or primordial (ursprünglich) time. Asthe “origin” of time the transcendental imagination is time.

Ontology as the radicalization of epistemology

In his opposition to a purely epistemological interpretation of Kant, Heidegger somewhatoverstates his case by suggesting that the Critique has nothing to do with epistemology,but his ontological interpretation of Kant is in fact compatible with recognition of animportant epistemological dimension to Kant’s work. Science, Heidegger would pointout, can be viewed as a system of propositions, but can also be viewed existentially, asa distinctive mode of comportment to what is. Heidegger’s ontological Kant can beseen as showing how such natural-scientific comportment to entities is possible byshowing how it is grounded in the more basic comportment to entities as objects.The objectification of entities (beings, what is) is not the result of natural sciencebut what makes natural science possible. Kant is then represented as providing anontology of objects, an account of the being of objects, their objectivity or objecthood(Gegenständlichkeit), and as showing how the understanding of such being is groundedin the ontological constitution (Seinsverfassung) of the subject. This is a radicalizationof epistemology rather than its rejection, which Heidegger, but not Kant, pursuesfurther in his notion of “readiness-to-hand” or “availableness” (Zuhandenheit).

References and Further Reading

Bell, David (1990). Husserl. London: Routledge.Cohen, Hermann (1885). Kants Theorie der Erfahrung, 2nd ed. Berlin: Dümmler.Friedman, Michael (2000). A Parting of the Ways: Carnap, Cassirer, and Heidegger. Chicago: Open

Court.Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time, tr. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell.Heidegger, M. (1977). Phänomenologische Interpretation von Kants Kritik der reinen Vernunft

[Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason], ed. Ingtraud Görland. Frank-furt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Heidegger, M. (1991). Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik [Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics],5th ed., ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann. Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.

Husserl, E. (1950). Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie [Ideasfor a pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy], ed. Walter Biemel. The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff.

Husserl, E. (1956). Erste Philosophie [First Philosophy], ed. Rudolf Boehm. The Hague: MartinusNijhoff.

Husserl, E. (1970). Cartesian Meditations, tr. D. Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.Husserl, E. (1970a). The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology, tr. D. Carr.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.Kant, Immanuel (1961). Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan.

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