The Doctrine of Self-positing and Receptivity in Kant's Late ...

now that there needs to be some given intuitive content for the above discussed synthesis
to take place. 151 Pointing out this necessity provides one possible interpretative axis from
which to address the reason why in these quoted passages from the Op Kant qualifies
apperception as the first act that grounds all representations with the expression ―blos
logischer‖ or ―merely logical.‖ This lies in the difference that Kant makes between an
intuitive understanding and a discursive understanding; where the first refers to the kind
of thought that can be speculatively attributed to a divine being and the latter to the kind
of thought present in finite rational beings. 152
In the case of an intuitive understanding there is no distinction between intuition
and concept when it comes to cognition. 153 And, in so far as these are collapsed, what is
being thought is immediately present and at the same time always already a whole that
can be said to be, at least in Leibnizian terms, infinitely determined by thought. 154
Contrary to this, a discursive understanding is essentially distinguished from intuition and
its content; in the case of human beings, this intuition must be thought of, from the
151 This qualification is a sign of the possible methodological problem that the doctrine of
self-positing presents when contrasted with the KrV. That is to say, the question of the
spatio-temporal nature of human intuition is suspended here because the first level of
discussion is limited to thought and not sensibility. Contrary to this, Kant starts in the
KrV with an exposition of the forms of our sensibility. This dissonance within Kant‘s
critical position that arises from the Op is discussed below, once entire doctrine is
elucidated.
152 KrV, A68/B93. I say that it is one of the possible reasons or part of the reason because
there are other angles from which this articulation can be unpacked. Another such angle
will be articulated below, in the next section, when the main source for the explanation of
this first level of the doctrine is Kant's discussion of the paralogisms of pure reason.
153 Cf., KU §77; KrV, §2.3 & §4.4 and §16n, from the ―Transcendental Aesthetic.‖
154 Reich, K. The Completeness of Kant‘s Table of Judgments Trans. Jane Kneller and
Michael Losonsky. Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1992, 37.
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