stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

presupposed prior to all appearance and cannot therefore itself be an appearance) is supposed to
be appearance. In one word, I could not see how appearance could be possible at all if
representation and thought themselves are supposed to be appearance” (quoted in Sassen 94).
Transcendental subject gives appearance. Therefore it cannot itself be appearance. If appearance
were to give appearance then knowledge would not be necessary, in other words, it would not be
the imposition of concepts. However, because representational knowledge turns the
transcendental subject into the transcendental object it only knows it as an appearance. In this
sense, Pistorius’ point is an inverted version of Jacobi’s famous point. Representational
knowledge requires the existence of the transcendental subject who knows representationally,
however, it cannot know that transcendental subject. “Hence” Schelling writes in the System of
Transcendental Idealism “the first problem of philosophy can also be formulated as that of
finding something which absolutely cannot be thought of as a thing. But the only candidate here
is the self…Now if the self is absolutely not an object, or thing, it seems hard to explain how any
kind of knowledge of it is possible, or what sort of knowledge we have of it” (Schelling 368-9).
There are at least two commentators who think that knowledge of the transcendental subject is
impossible.
In “The Inconceivability of Kant’s Transcendental Subject” A.J. Mandt argues that “Kant
consistently treats the formal conditions of knowledge as formative activities constitutive of
experience…However, if the forms of experience are indistinguishable from constitutive acts,
the analysis of experience necessarily presupposes an agency that engages in these acts” (Mandt
15). For this reason, Mandt argues, Kant must explain this agency. “There is one metaphysical
question that, by its very nature, the Critique must address. This question concerns the nature of
reason itself. The organizing and unifying principles of the Critique is that embodied in Kant’s
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