| The science of all the principles of sensibility a priori, I call transcendental aesthetic.* There must, then, be such a science forming the first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements, in contradistinction to that part which contains the principles of pure thought, and which is called transcendental logic. |
| [Footnote; The Germans are the only people who at present use this word to indicate what others call the critique of taste. |
| At the foundation of this term lies the disappointed hope, which the eminent analyst, Baumgarten, conceived, of subjecting the criticism of the beautiful to principles of reason, and so of elevating its rules into a science. |
| But his endeavours were vain. |
| For the said rules or criteria are, in respect to their chief sources, merely empirical, consequently never can serve as determinate laws a priori, by which our judgement in matters of taste is to be directed. |
| It is rather our judgement which forms the proper test as to the correctness of the principles. |
| On this account it is advisable to give up the use of the term as designating the critique of taste, and to apply it solely to that doctrine, which is true science--the science of the laws of sensibility--and thus come nearer to the language and the sense of the ancients in their well-known division of the objects of cognition into aiotheta kai noeta, or to share it with speculative philosophy, and employ it partly in a transcendental, partly in a psychological signification.] |
| In the science of transcendental aesthetic accordingly, we shall first isolate sensibility or the sensuous faculty, by separating from it all that is annexed to its perceptions by the conceptions of understanding, so that nothing be left but empirical intuition. |
| In the next place we shall take away from this intuition all that belongs to sensation, so that nothing may remain but pure intuition, and the mere form of phenomena, which is all that the sensibility can afford a priorI. From this investigation it will be found that there are two pure forms of sensuous intuition, as principles of knowledge a priori, namely, space and time. |
| To the consideration of these we shall now proceed. |
| SECTION I. Of Space. SS 2. Metaphysical Exposition of this Conception. |
| By means of the external sense (a property of the mind), we represent to ourselves objects as without us, and these all in space. |
| Herein alone are their shape, dimensions, and relations to each other determined or determinable. |
| The internal sense, by means of which the mind contemplates itself or its internal state, gives, indeed, no intuition of the soul as an object; yet there is nevertheless a determinate form, under which alone the contemplation of our internal state is possible, so that all which relates to the inward determinations of the mind is represented in relations of time. |
| Of time we cannot have any external intuition, any more than we can have an internal intuition of space. |
| What then are time and space? |
| Are they real existences? |
| Or, are they merely relations or determinations of things, such, however, as would equally belong to these things in themselves, though they should never become objects of intuition; or, are they such as belong only to the form of intuition, and consequently to the subjective constitution of the mind, without which these predicates of time and space could not be attached to any object? |
| In order to become informed on these points, we shall first give an exposition of the conception of space. |
| By exposition, I mean the clear, though not detailed, representation of that which belongs to a conception; and an exposition is metaphysical when it contains that which represents the conception as given a priorI. 1. Space is not a conception which has been derived from outward experiences. |
| For, in order that certain sensations may relate to something without me (that is, to something which occupies a different part of space from that in which I am); in like manner, in order that I may represent them not merely as without, of, and near to each other, but also in separate places, the representation of space must already exist as a foundation. |