BODY AND PRACTICE IN KANT

SPATIAL EXPERIENCE AND THE BODY IN THE CRITIQUE 169
least potentially, and at the same time being one and the same,
transcendental apperception is the fundamental principle of unity that
keeps our consciousness together. 14 As such, it is also the principle on
which all synthesis depends, Kant argues. And, finally, it is the principle
under which all use of the understanding takes place. Actually, Kant
concludes, this synthetic unity of apperception is the understanding.
And thus the synthetic unity of apperception is the highest point to
which one must affix all use of the understanding, even the whole of
logic and, after it, transcendental philosophy; indeed this faculty is the
understanding itself. (B 134, note)
How is this new modification of the meaning of ‘understanding’ to be
understood? Let us return for a moment to the A-version of the
transcendental deduction. At A 94 we saw that Kant stated there are
only three original faculties of the mind, sense, imagination and
apperception. Within this model, the understanding lacks the status of
being an independent basic faculty but is said to be produced by the
three original ones. Is this any help here? I think it is. If the
understanding is a derived faculty, originating in the interplay of (all or
some of) the three more basic faculties, then it should come as no surprise
that the term ‘understanding’ is sometimes associated with imagination,
and sometimes, as in B 134, with transcendental apperception. 15
Kant’s use of the term ‘understanding’ in the B-deduction is an
indication, I believe, that he operates with a threefold model of the mind
not only in the A-deduction, but here as well. That this is actually so is
confirmed a little later in the B-deduction where he introduces the notion
of a ‘figurative synthesis’, which is also called the transcendental synthesis
of the imagination (B 151). Here Kant also defines imagination for the
first time in the B-deduction: imagination is the capacity to represent an
object also when it is not present.
It is sometimes maintained that the B-deduction differs from the Adeduction
in that the imagination is ascribed a more limited function
here, but I do not agree. On the contrary, I think that up to this point in
the B-deduction the presence of the imagination has been presupposed,
other words, it does not affirm that I must actually perform a reflective act in
order to represent (think) anything.’
14
For a further and highly interesting discussion of transcendental apperception,
cf. Brook (1994), 55ff.
15
It might be useful here to remind oneself of the ambiguous use of the term
‘understanding’ in the Anthropology too, cf. e.g. Ak VII: 196-7.