A Study Of The Transcendental Imagination In The Critique Of Pure Reason

Kant's basic idea in the transcendental deduction of Critique of Pure Reason is to demonstrate how the category of intellectuality can be applied to perceptual intuition.Kant mainly uses the concept of "transcendental imagination" to solve this problem.However,in the two editions of "transcendental deduction ",Kant's exposition on the role of transcendental imagination in the composition of human knowledge is quite different,which makes Kant researchers have different disputes on this issue and form two different views.One view tends to the elucidation in the first edition,that transcendental imagination,as an ability independent of sensibility and intellectuality,provides the conditions for the application of intellectual category to perceptual intuition.Another view tends to the second edition,that transcendental imagination is only a synonym for the comprehensive application of intellectual catergory to perceptual intuition,and imagination does not have independent epistemological significance.Both ideas have inherent difficulties.The first need to explain why the transcendental imagination independent of sensibility and intellectuality can be used as a condition for the combination of the two.In other words,how to understand the perceptual and intellectual nature of the transcendental imagination?The second is the possibility that the problem of transcendental deduction is cancelled,because transcendental deduction is to demonstrate how the category of intellectual can be applied to perceptual intuition,and if transcendental imagination is only a synonym for the comprehensive role of category,Then this is equal to nothing proved.How to understand the connotation of transcendental imagination and its position in human knowledge affects the judgment of Kant's whole transcendental deduction and the understanding of Kant's whole critique of pure reason.Based on the whole position of Kant's transcendental philosophy,this paper investigates the transcendental imagination in the two editions of deduction,and rethinks how the transcendental imagination can connect sensibility and intellectuality.The relationship between transcendental imagination and cognitive elements is further explored in order to obtain a further perspectivity of transcendental imagination in the transcendental philosophy system.We find that one of the reasons why these scholars argue is the complexity of the concept of synthesis.Kant uses the concept of "synthesis" in different meanings: the "general synthesis" of imagination,the synthesis of transcendental imagination and the synthesis of intellectuality.In the first edition,Kant incorporated all visual objects into the synthesis of transcendental imagination,which can synthesize perceptual intuitive miscellaneous and all logical possible intuitive miscellaneous representations.And the equivocal of Kant's theory makes transcendental imagination have the possibility of giving synthetic unity.The second edition distinguishes the three meanings of synthesis,and clarifies the blind nature of the "general synthesis" of imagination itself.Only on the premise of the unity of transcendental apperception can imagination have the meaning of transcendental synthesis.Transcendental imagination can only synthesize sensible intuitive objects.Therefore,this paper agrees with scholars' affirmation of imagination as an independent ability in the first edition,but does not agree with the view that imagination is the ultimate source of cognition.The second edition of Kant's more logical exposition clarifies the position of transcendental apperception as the premise of the unity of cognition.The synthesis of imagination itself is blindness.The function of transcendental imagination occurs when the unity of intellectuality acts on perceptual heterogeneity.It is the ability of experience to truly connect sensibility and intellectuality.These three cognitive elements have their own finite characteristics,which makes the cognition complete the comprehensive unity activity of forming "object" only with the participation of sensibility,imagination and intellectuality.Therefore,we believe that transcendental imagination is fundamentally an independent ability to form an intermediary between perceptual and intellectual communication,and all three abilities are essential for cognition.