Sebastian Rdl

Erscheint in: Internationales Jahrbuch des Deutschen

Idealismus / International Yearbook of German Idealism, Band 5, Berlin: de Gruyter 2008

Eliminating Externality
In his essay Hegels Idealism as Radicalization of Kant,1 John McDowell explains that Kant
fails to vindicate the objective validity of the pure concepts because he treats our form of intuition as external to the unity of apperception. McDowell recommends a simple way of mending
this mistake, which he suggests is exemplified, more or less, by his Mind and World. He contrasts
this simple route with a more complex one, which Hegel travels in the Science of Logic. In this
text, I say why I doubt the simple route, and inquire why eliminating the externality would take
the form of the Science of Logic. I proceed as follows. First, I recapitulate the relevant sections of
Hegels Idealism as Radicalization of Kant. Then I describe the course of the Transcendental
Deduction in the Critique of Pure Reason to bring out the positive role Kant assigns to the externality of the form of intuition in his restitution of philosophy as a pure science. I argue in the
third section that Mind and World does not eliminate the externality, and in the fourth represent a
progression of pure thought of the kind expounded in Hegels logic as a consequence of eliminating it.

1 McDowells account of Kants failure

In section two of his essay, McDowell credits Kant with the insight that, in order to recognize
acts of sensibility as something by which one is in a position to think an object, we must conceive
of what is given in such an act as bearing the unity of a judgment. The third section finds that this
invites the objection that, from the fact that only intuitions that bear the unity of a judgment provide thought with an object, it does not follow that our intuitions bear this unity. According to the
Transcendental Aesthetic, what is given in our intuition as such is spatial and temporal, and it has
not been shown that what satisfies this condition necessarily bears the unity of a judgment.
But a condition for objects to be thinkable is not thereby a condition for them to be capable of being
given to our senses. Indeed (the objection goes on), the Transcendental Aesthetic has already supplied an independent condition for objects to be able to be given to our senses: they must be spa-

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tially and temporally ordered. For all Kant can show, objects could satisfy that condition for being
present to our senses without conforming to the requirements of the understanding. (HIRK 4-5)

Kant responds to this objection in the second part of the Transcendental Deduction. It shows that
representing something as in time and space is nothing other than bringing it under the category.
Hence, what is given in intuition, as it is represented as temporal and spatial, bears the unity of a
judgment. McDowell then complains in section four that this vindicates the validity of the categories of our intuitions in a way that makes it impossible to equate being valid of our intuitions with
being valid of the object. For, the argument rests on the supposition that the form of our receptive
faculty, space and time, has a specificity that does not derive from its being a faculty that provides thought with an object. Since the pure idea of something in space and time is not identical
with the pure idea of an object of thought given in intuition, being valid of the temporal and spatial, which the argument proves, is not the same as being valid of a given object of thought berhaupt.
The fifth section draws a lesson from Kants failure: We must allow no gap between the
pure idea of a given object of thought and the pure idea of something in space and time. We must
recognize our form of intuition, space and time, as nothing other than the form of an intuition that
provides thought with an object. More generally, the concept that interprets our in conditions
for the possibility of our knowing an object must be nothing other than the concept of a thinker.
In Hegels words, any such condition must be a determination of the I think. Here is McDowell:
If we are to accommodate the critical insight that conditions for the possibility of our knowing
things cannot be seen as derivative from independent conditions on things themselves, while conceiving the conditions so that they are genuinely recognizable as conditions of our knowing things,
there is no stopping-point short of bringing all such conditions inside the sphere of free intellectual
activity. (HIRK, p. 12)

This principle is the measure of the true critical philosophy. McDowell contrasts two routes to a
philosophy that satisfies it, one simple, one more complex. The simple one is, he says, just [to]
eliminate the externality [of the forms of intuition to the form of thought; S.R.] that vitiates
Kants Deduction. A footnote explains that this yields more or less the position expounded in
Mind and World. The more complex route is Hegels in the Science of Logic.

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McDowells essay ends recommending that we keep in mind the simple route to what
Hegel wants as we try to understand the more complex progressions Hegel himself offers. I
agree that, in trying to understand Hegels progressions, it is helpful to keep in mind their aim of
representing any condition of knowledge as a determination of the I think, which involves
eliminating the externality of our form of intuition. But I am puzzled by the just in just eliminate the externality, by the suggestion that that formula describes a simple route, and by the
claim that the route it describes terminates in Mind and World. On the one hand, it does not seem
to me that Mind and World eliminates the externality. It is true that Mind and World does not
affirm the externality, but this is because it ends before the topic arises. On the other hand, footnotes in McDowells text suggest that eliminating the externality requires a revision of the Critique of Pure Reason the result of which should look very much like Hegels Science of Logic. In
the next section, I discuss the Transcendental Deduction, showing how, in Kant, the very idea of
a pure concept employed in knowledge hangs on the externality of the form of intuition. This will
enable us to see, in the third section, that Mind and World is not in a position to eliminate the
externality, and in the fourth section, how a Hegelian progression eliminates externality.

2 The Transcendental Deduction

The first part of the deduction establishes an analytic proposition that states the necessity of a
synthesis. Now this principle, of the necessary unity of apperception, is itself identical, thus an
analytic proposition; yet it declares a synthesis of the manifold given in an intuition to be necessary. (B 135)2 The argument is this. Reflecting on my faculty of thought, I recognize that I cannot, by thinking alone, provide the object of my thinking. The object must be given to me, and I
must receive it. Receiving an object, here, must be representing it. If an object merely affected
me in a manner such that my being affected by it did not constitute my representing it, I could not
recognize this affection as enabling me to think this object. But not only must I represent what I
receive. What I receptively represent must be something I can think. If I could not think what I
represent receptively, then I could not recognize receptive representations as providing me with
an object of thought. I would not see how it is that I think something as opposed to nothing.
Now, the category is the pure concept of something determinate with respect to a form of
judgment. But before I want to give the explanation of the categories: they are concepts of an
object as such through which its intuition is regarded as determinate in respect of one of the logi-

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cal functions of judgment. (B 128)3 As the receptive faculty by virtue of which I think something as opposed to nothing represents an object of thought, it represents something determinate
with regard to the form of judgment, i.e. something that exhibits the unity expressed by the pure
concept of an object. So intuitions, as such, bear the unity of the category.
The last statement is an analytic proposition; it expounds what is contained in the concept
of intuition-dependent thought. Let me summarize the argument so as to bring this out. One can
think an object only through intuition. But intuition can give thought an object only if it presents
something that can be thought. So intuitions that provide thought with an object are determinate
with regard to the form of judgment, i.e., exhibit the unity of the category.
The task of the transcendental deduction is to establish the objective validity of the form of
judgment, or the category. It is to show that intuitions necessarily bear the unity of a judgment.
Now, have we not established this? Did we not conclude that intuitions, as such, exhibit the unity
of the category? It is clear that the task of the deduction has not been discharged, for our result so
far is analytic. It is analytic that acts of a faculty that provide thought with an object exhibit the
unity of an object of thought. This declares a certain synthesis to be necessary intuitions must
bear the synthetic unity of the category but it is an analytic proposition.
An object of thought exhibits the unity of the category. It follows that intuitions providing
the object bear this unity. Kant explains that this treats the unity of the category in abstraction
from the manner in which the manifold of an empirical intuition is given (B 144). The concept of
thought not productive of its object contains the concept of receptive representations that bear the
unity of the category. In this sense the category prescribes a unity to intuitions (B 145). While
this shows that thought is possible only through intuitions that bear the unity of the category, it
does not show that the acts of our receptive faculty bear this unity. A mere analysis of the concept
of intuition-dependent thought cannot reveal this. In order to complete the deduction, we must
consider the character of our intuitions.
When we ask whether intuitions bear the unity of the category (as they must, if thought is to
be possible), we do not worry if some intuitions escape the category. This would entail that the
category is valid, of those intuitions of which it is valid, in virtue of their matter, and then the
category would be an empirical concept. The category either applies to intuitions as such, or not
at all. Hence, it must apply to intuitions in virtue of their form. Kant explains: In what follows,

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we shall prove, from the manner in which in sensibility the empirical intuition is given that its
unity [the unity of the empirical intuition] is none other than that which the category prescribes to
the manifold of a given intuition in general. (B 144f.)4 We prove that the unity of an intuition is
the unity of the category from the manner in which it is given, i.e. from the form of intuition. The
form of intuition enters not as a threat to the validity of the category, but as that from which its
validity must be established.
24 explains how the category applies to our intuitions in virtue of their form: Since in us
a certain form of intuition a priori underlies, [] the understanding [] can think a priori synthetic unity of apperception of the manifold of sensible intuition. (B 150) The corresponding
synthesis, Kant says a bit later, determines a priori the sense in respect of its form in accordance
with the unity of apperception. (B 152) In these sentences, a priori modifies think and determines.5 So Kant says, the manifold of a given intuition can be thought a priori, that is, it can
be thought independently of its matter. It can be thought in this way because intuitions bear a
certain form. Since an intuition bears a form, it can be thought solely with regard to its form, and
when it is so thought, then it is thought a priori or purely. A pure thought of a given intuition then
contains nothing but the form of this intuition, which means that its content is a pure, or formal,
intuition.6 A pure intuition is what is thought when an intuition is thought purely. Since a given
intuition has a form, it is possible to think its manifold a priori, i.e. solely with regard to its form.
And this shows that the category applies to intuition. It shows that the category is not empty, but
has a content. And it shows what that content is: a pure intuition, i.e., an intuition that contains
nothing but the form of an intuition. So the content of the category as it applies to our intuitions is
space and time. For us, the categories express the pure idea of something temporal and spatial.7
Let us dwell on the idea of thinking a priori the manifold of an intuition; it is difficult.
When one brings a pure concept, substance, say, to intuition so as to think this intuition with respect to its matter, one wields an empirical concept, the concept of wax, say, the form of which
the concept of substance represents. The content of the concept of wax depends on the matter of
the intuition thought by it; it is an empirical concept. The possibility of deploying the concept of
substance in this way, as the form of a substance-concept such as wax, presupposes that the manifold of an intuition thought by the concept of wax presents its matter in such a way as to allow it
to be thought in this manner, i.e. through a substance-concept. If Hume were right about how the
manifold of an intuition is presented, intuitions would not provide the content of a substance5

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concept. The pure concept of substance must apply to a given intuition prior to, or regardless of,
its matter. In other words, it must be possible to think intuitions a priori through the concept of
substance. Thinking an intuition a priori is thinking its form. So a pure concept can be applied a
priori to intuition if and only if intuitions have a certain form a priori. This form then grounds the
pure applicability of the category and provides its pure content.
The Deduction crucially deploys a contrast of pure concepts considered independently of
our receptive faculty, and pure concepts as they apply to our intuitions, a contrast of category and
schema. The first part of the deduction treats of the unity the category prescribes to intuitions that
provide an object for thought. Its second part explains that the pure concepts apply to our intuitions and so applied have a content. The category, the pure concept considered in abstraction
from the manner in which intuitions are given, represents the pure idea of an object of thought.
The schema, the pure concept applied to our intuitions, determines intuitions in respect of their
form. As our form of intuition is space and time, the schema represents the pure idea of something in space and time.

3 Mind and World

McDowell tells us that, in order to rectify Kant, we must just eliminate the externality. We saw
in the first section that this amounts to eliminating the gap between the pure idea of a given object of thought and the pure idea of something in space and time. As we now know, this is the gap
between category and schema. Eliminating the externality is identifying category and schema.
McDowell claims this leads us to Mind and World, implying that Mind and World identifies
category and schema. Let me explain why I do not think that this is right.
It seems to me that the argument of Mind and World is the first part of the Transcendental
Deduction; its conclusion is an analytic proposition stating the necessity of a synthesis. McDowell asks in Mind and World: How must we conceive sensory experience, if it is to be that by
which thought is not empty? He explains that we must not think of experience as presenting less
than an object of thought, less than something that bears the unity of a judgment, lest we will be
unable to conceive of thought as having an object through its nexus with experience. This is the
line of thought laid out, in all brevity, in the second section of Hegels Idealism as Radicalization of Kant, before, in the third section, the objection that calls forth the second part of the Deduction is raised.
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The first part of the deduction, or Mind and World, reduces to absurdity a certain empiricism. Since acts of sensibility are that by virtue of which one thinks an object only if what is
given in such acts bears the unity of the category, an empiricism of Humean stripe fails as an account of intuition-dependent thought. The analytic proposition about the necessity of a synthesis
refutes an empiricism that pretends to give an account of empirical thought and yet does not represent intuitions as bearing the unity of a thought. In this way, the first part of the deduction, or
Mind and World, shows how one can not conceive empirical thought. This is not the same as
showing how one can. Knowing what empirical thought is not is not knowing what it is. Refuting
Hume yields a negative result: we must conceive of the idea of an object of sensory intuition as a
pure concept, signifying a form of knowledge. It does not tell us how to do that.
If the argument of Mind and World is the first part of the deduction, then it only speaks of
the category, the pure concept considered in abstraction from sensibility. I think this is borne out
by the way in which Mind and World deploys the idea of the form of judgment. Consider first
how Kant introduces the category. He derives from the table of forms of judgments a table of
categories by the principle that, for any given form of judgment, there is a pure concept representing the unity of an object thought according to this form. The same function which gives
unity to the various representations in a judgment also gives unity to the mere synthesis of various representation in an intuition, which, in its general expression, is called the pure concept of
the understanding. (A 79/B 104f) This passage, which McDowell often quotes, explains how
certain concepts have their origin in the understanding independently of sensibility. The passage
introduces the category. It does not identify category and schema. The schema is not yet on the
scene. Now, McDowell handles the form of thought, or the pure concept, as Kant does, as originating in the understanding independently of sensibility, when he explains the objective purport
of experience in terms of its bearing the unity of a thought. This affords illumination only if we
know that unity, and know it independently of understanding how intuitions provide thought with
an object. For, we are said to understand this by recognizing that intuitions exhibit that unity.
McDowell adds:
It might seem that Kant undertakes to explain the objective purport of (purported) intuitions their
purporting to be directly of objects in terms of a supposedly antecedent understanding of the objective purport of judgement its answerability to its subject matter. This would leave a question
about how to understand the supposed starting point of the explanation, the objective purport of

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judgement. But I think the idea is rather that by invoking the unity of apperception we enable ourselves to make sense of the objective purport of intuitions and the objective purport of judgements
together. (HIRK, pp. 2-3)

This does not affect the point. Clearly, a judgment can only be answerable to a subject matter if it
has one, and it only has a subject matter if intuition provides it with one. Kant says as much. He
does not conclude, nor could he, that therefore the form of thought, its unity, is to be understood
through its relation to intuition.
It might be suggested that it is not true that Mind and World only speaks of the category.
Rather, it immediately identifies category and schema, wherefore the identity never becomes a
topic. But this cannot be right. It may be sensible to hold, as Kant does, that the form represented
by the schema exhausts knowledge, but it is absurd to claim that it exhausts thought. If it did,
there would be no critique of the schema, no limitation of its valid application. The gap between
category and schema is to allow us to think beyond the schema, even though we do not know
beyond it. But closing the gap must not be locking ourselves into the schema. It must not deprive
us even of the capacity to think beyond it; on the contrary, it must reveal our knowledge to reach
beyond it. This is, notoriously, Hegels view. And McDowell agrees when he writes: Objective
validity for ideal requirements can spread into the terrain of the Transcendental Dialectic of the
first Critique. Requirements that Kant can see only as regulative as meeting subjective needs
of ours rather than characterizing objective reality itself can be seen as objectively valid.
(HIRK, p. 14, note 24.)
Certain passages might give the impression that McDowell thinks identifying category and
schema does away with pure concepts altogether, leaving us immersed in empirical inquiry as the
only act of thought, which now satisfies us because we know it to be the free movement of the
Notion. But when we speak of the Notion, synthetic unity of apperception, self-consciousness, we
employ pure concepts; any concept that further develops the content of these is equally pure. As
it is impossible to state the position without using pure concepts, the position cannot entail that
there are no pure concepts.

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4 Hegelian Progression
McDowell expects that eliminating the externality will undermine the architecture of the Critique
of Pure Reason. Our discussion allows us to form an abstract idea of the architectonic consequences. The Analytic of Concepts derives the pure concepts independently of sensibility in the
Metaphysical Deduction, and shows their applicability to our intuitions in the Transcendental
Deduction. The Analytic of Principles expounds the content of the pure concepts applied to our
intuitions. And the Transcendental Dialectic limits the employment of the category in acts of
knowledge to the schema, i.e. to the form of knowledge that the Principles describe. Now, if we
want to eliminate externality, we cannot derive the pure concepts from general logic. Since general logic does not attend to the manner in which thought has an object, we could derive from it
only a category and would have to ask, in a second step, after its employment in knowledge. Eliminating externality requires that we derive a pure concept in such a way that, by thus deriving it,
we know it to be a form of knowledge. In other words, the Metaphysical and the Transcendental
Deduction of the pure concepts will be one and the same derivation. Moreover, since the pure
concepts derived in this way are forms of knowledge, they are not empty. We find the pure concepts in such a way that thus finding them is grasping their content. So the Analytic of Concepts
and the Analytic of Principles will be but one movement of thought. Finally, as we eliminate externality, we cannot limit the employment of a pure concept in acts of knowledge to its application to our form of intuition. A pure concept must be limited in the very course of the specification of its pure content. So the Analytic of Principles and the Transcendental Dialectic will no
longer be distinct sections of our theory of pure knowledge.
In Kant, the Metaphysical and the Transcendental Deduction of the pure concepts, or the
Analytic of Concepts, the exposition of their pure content, or the Analytic of Principles, and the
critique of their valid employment, or the Transcendental Dialectic, are separate steps; the success of each does not prejudge that of the next. As we eliminate externality, they become one: a
derivation that is at the same time deduction of the pure concepts, exposition of their content and
critique of their valid employment. Let us call such a derivation a Hegelian progression. I think it
is evident that the Science of Logic is, or at least aspires to be, a Hegelian progression. Eliminating externality turns the Critique of Pure Reason into the Science of Logic.

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Eliminating externality is conceiving of thought as absolute. We know how to do this and,

hence, how to eliminate externality, if we know how to think a Hegelian progression. In Hegelian
progression, we said, we do not receive pure concepts from general logic, and we de not limit the
valid application of a pure concept by a form of intuition. How then do we find the pure concepts,
and how do we limit their application? Both tasks are linked as follows: we find one pure concept
as what limits another. When we find pure concepts in this way, then, by thus finding them, we
grasp their content and know them to be forms of knowledge, while what limits their application
and provides them with content is thought itself.8
We can, perhaps, catch a glimpse of a segment of a Hegelian progression, when we consider how the critique of the employment of the categories in acts of knowledge is reconfigured
when we eliminate externality. Let us consider the schema of causality, the form of explanation
that the Second Analogy describes; call it finite explanation. Kant observes that the attempt to
think completion of the kind of understanding that the deployment of this schema affords gets
entangled in contradiction. It happens in this way. The principle that gives the content of the
schema of causality is: Anything that happens presupposes something upon which it follows according to a rule. What it presupposes is different from it, and is something that happens, and
therefore falls under the same principle: it presupposes something upon which it follows according to a rule. So in deploying the schema, we move along a chain of things happening. A complete explanation of this form is a complete chain. Now we ask, is the complete chain finite or
infinite? It turns out that we can prove both assertions, or, rather, disprove both.
Kants critical solution of the contradiction is that, posing the question that receives contradictory answers, we employ a concept of causation that goes beyond finite explanation, beyond
the schema that is the topic of the Second Analogy. The antithesis speaks of something that
causes something to happen without its causing it being a case of somethings happening; the
thesis represents a totality of things happening as the cause of its elements (A 444-7/B 472-5).
The refutation in each case objects that such a thing, a causing of somethings happening that is
not a case of somethings happening, or a totality of things happening that explains its elements,
is not given in experience. So the reason why both thesis and antithesis are false is that finite explanation is the only employment of the category of causation in acts of knowledge.

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What shall we say to this as we eliminate externality and think of the pure concept, not as
the result of applying a category to intuition, but as in itself representing a form of knowledge?
Kant observes that, in attempting to conceive completion of the form of understanding that finite
explanation affords, we find ourselves thinking a different kind of cause. However, we now cannot maintain, as Kant does, that this different concept of causation cannot be employed in acts of
knowledge. For Kants ground for holding this is that this pure concept does not represent the
unity of intuitions of a certain form. And now saying that a form different from finite explanation
does not express that unity is nothing but a way of saying that it is a different form. The argument
that a certain form of explanation is not a form of knowledge because it represents a kind of
cause that is not given in experience reduces to the claim that it is not a form of knowledge because it is different from finite explanation. The critical solution does no more than assert
stubbornly insist, Hegel says that we can know only the finite.
According to Kant, the concept of causation we employ in thinking completion of finite explanation is the empty category. If this is right, then it is impossible to give a positive account of
the content of the concept of causation that the question of the antinomy employs, a concept that
goes beyond the causality represented in finite explanation. This pure concept can be characterized only by negation of the schema. Thus, the antithesis propounds a cause that is like what figures as cause in finite explanation, except that it is not, since it makes no sense to ask for its
cause. And the thesis propounds a cause that is like a cause of finite explanation, except that it is
not, since its effect is not other than it. However, now that we eliminate externality, we have no
grounds for claiming that the pure concept employed in thinking completion of finite explanation
is empty. And since, in the antinomy, we employ this concept, its content must transpire from
reflection on the antinomy. It is true that the antinomy only gives a negative characterization of
this concept, but, as Hegel never tires to say, negation has a positive result. We must think, then,
a form of explanation that represents a cause that conjoins the features of the cause envisaged in
thesis and antithesis. These were: the cause is an explanatory unity of elements that are related
among themselves by finite explanation, and its causality is not a case of somethings happening.
Now, we are familiar with such a form of explanation, teleological explanation, the pure content
of which is defined by these conditions.
Consider the process of DNA-replication. In its first stage, the two cords are unwound by
Helicase. Suppose we are observing this; we see that Helicase is acting on a bit of DNA, unwind11

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ing its cords. The action of the Helicase is a case of somethings happening. Thinking according
to the form of finite explanation, we search for something that affected the Helicase, upon which,
according to a rule, it acted on the given bit of DNA. But we may also explain why Helicase is
unwinding the cords by the fact that the given bit of DNA is replicating. Now, the cause given by
the phrase the DNA is replicating is a case of somethings happening, but its causality not a
case of somethings affecting the Helicase, so that we could ask why it affected the Helicase. The
given cause causes not by affecting something. Rather, its effects are related to it as things
happening by which it, the cause, is happening; its effects are things that realize it. So the cause,
here, is an explanatory unity of elements related among themselves by finite explanation. The
cause unifies the elements of which it is the cause, and is their cause by being their unity. Thus
the cause is defined by the identity of the features of the causes represented in thesis and antithesis of the antinomy.
Eliminating externality turns the critique of finite explanation into a metaphysical deduction of teleological explanation. And this deduction has answered the question of the validity of
the pure concept of a final cause before it can arise, for it reveals it to be a condition of the employment of finite explanation. Finite explanation only holds of appearances, appearances not, as
Kant has it, of a thing itself of which we know nothing, but of a reality that bears a teleological
order. (Of course, there are phenomena subject to finite explanation that cannot be represented as
appearances of a teleologically ordered reality. Such phenomena, then, are capable only of a form
of understanding that is imperfect by a measure internal to the very understanding of which they
are capable.) In our example, a chain of chemical processes is the appearance of DNAreplication, the way in which it realizes itself in the medium of chemical causation. So if finite
explanation is valid, so is teleological explanation. Finally, the derived form of knowledge limits
the validity of finite explanation. For, we derived the pure concept of a reality that cannot be represented by finite explanation. Here is a segment of a Hegelian progression: a metaphysical deduction, which is a transcendental deduction, which is a critique.
The progression reveals a new content, remaining entirely within pure thought. The content
is pure, we did not receive it, its source is thinking alone. In general, the development of pure
knowledge in a Hegelian progression never receives content from a different source (in contrast
to any other science, the progress of which always depends on matter not provided by thought,
the I think, the unity of apperception, self-consciousness). So the progression is a case of abso12

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lute thinking. We considered only a segment, but its beginning and end point transpire from what
we said. Hegelian progression ends in itself, in a description of the very form of knowledge that
the progression is. For, as long as a form of thought depends for its deployment on material it
does not itself provide, the attempt to think completion of knowledge in this form will give rise to
contradiction. Only in pure knowledge of pure knowledge does knowledge come to rest. So the
endpoint of the progression is the Absolute Idea. What is its beginning? It cannot presuppose any
form of knowledge as valid. So it must begin with the bare idea of knowledge itself, and that is,
with the concept of being, with it is so. For, this is the formal concept of an object of knowledge: knowledge, as such, is of what is. Hegel says the Science of Logic begins with the decision
to think purely. As we eliminate externality, we recognize that this is not a decision to do nothing.9

Henceforth HIRK.

All translations of German texts are my own.

Kemp Smiths translation of this sentence is incorrect, without apparent reason. He translates die Erklrung

der Kategorien as a word of explanation in regard of the categories. He does not seem to trust Kant that what
follows is the explanation of the categories.
4

John McDowell reads its in its unity as depending on the manner in which in sensibility the empirical

intuition is given. I think the antecedent is the empirical intuition, first because I have difficulty understanding the
idea of a unity of a manner of somethings being given in intuition (in contrast to the unity of something given in
intuition), and secondly because, in the default case, the antecedent of a pronoun is the nearest possible term. There
are linguistic means to direct the reader to a more distant antecedent, which Kant does not employ in this sentence.
5

Kemp Smiths translation treats a priori in the sentence on B 150 as modifying sensible intuition, not

underlies and think. That this is wrong is, I think, shown by the parallel on B 152, where a priori modifies
determine and cannot modify sense.
6

Compare B 74-5: Therefore pure intuition contains solely the form under which something is intuited.

According to this account of the notion of a pure determination of sensibility, pure intuitions cannot be

presupposed and their unity found to be a case of the unity of apperception. A pure intuition is what is thought when
an intuition is thought purely. And since saying that intuitions can be thought purely is saying that the categories are
valid, that means that the availability of pure intuitions is the conclusion, not a premise of the second part of the
Deduction. This explains the footnote on B 160: the unity represented in a pure intuition is given only through the
application of the pure concepts to intuition, in which the understanding thinks a priori sensible intuitions (indem

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Eliminating Externality

Sebastian Rdl

der Verstand die Sinnlichkeit bestimmt, echoing B 150 and 152 quoted above). This interpretation of the Transcendental Deduction seems to differ from McDowells. He seems to understand it in this way: The first part of the
Deduction has shown that all intuitions exhibit the unity of the category. The second part observes that pure intuitions are intuitions, so that the result of the first part applies: they exhibit the unity of the category. (Capacities that
belong to apperceptive spontaneity are actualized in intuitions. That goes in particular for the pure intuitions of space
and time. (HIRK, p. 5) [] although he manages to represent the unity of our formal intuitions, qua intuitions, as a
case of a kind of unity that can be understood only in terms of its role in free intellectual activity [] (HIRK, p. 11))
8

This is the only way in which a form of thought can be limited. The matter of intuition cannot limit it: it can

never reveal the validity of a higher form of thought (whence the need for a transcendental deduction); nor, we are
supposing, can the form of intuition limit it.
9

There is only the decision, which could be taken to be arbitrary, namely that one wants to contemplate

thought as such. (G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in 20 Bnden, E. Moldenhauer, K. M. Michel (eds.), Frankfurt/Main:
Suhrkamp 1986, vol. 5, p. 68.)

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