Transcendental apperception
Encyclopedia
In philosophy
, Kantian
transcendental apperception is that which Immanuel Kant
thinks makes experience possible. It is where the self
and the world come together.
There are six steps to transcendental apperception:
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
, Kantian
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
transcendental apperception is that which Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
thinks makes experience possible. It is where the self
Self (philosophy)
The philosophy of self defines the essential qualities that make one person distinct from all others. There have been numerous approaches to defining these qualities. The self is the idea of a unified being which is the source of consciousness. Moreover, this self is the agent responsible for the...
and the world come together.
There are six steps to transcendental apperception:
- All experience is the succession of a variety of contents (an idea taken from David HumeDavid HumeDavid Hume was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist, known especially for his philosophical empiricism and skepticism. He was one of the most important figures in the history of Western philosophy and the Scottish Enlightenment...
). - To be experienced at all, the successive data must be combined or held together in a unity for consciousness.
- Unity of experience therefore implies a unity of self.
- The unity of self is as much an object of experience as anything is.
- Therefore experience both of the self and its objects rests on acts of synthesis that, because they are the conditions of any experience, are not themselves experienced.
- These prior syntheses are made possible by the categoriesCategory (Kant)In Kant's philosophy, a category is a pure concept of the understanding. A Kantian category is a characteristic of the appearance of any object in general, before it has been experienced...
. Categories allow us to synthesize the self and the objects.
Sources
- Glendinning, Simon, ed. 1999. The Edinburgh Encyclopedia of Continental Philosophy. Vol. 1999, pt. 2. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP. ISBN 0748607838.