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2. Kant vs. Lambert and Trendelenburg on the Ideality of Time Kant’s thesis that space and time are transcendentally ideal can be fruitfully understood, I claim, on the model of constructivism in the philosophy of mathematics. Just as numbers are not objective (Platonic ) realities but exist in and through procedures or constructions such as counting, so too space and time are not objective (absolute or relational ) realities but exist in and through “flowing” procedures or constructions . In this essay I develop and use this model to answer the longstanding objections of Lambert and Trendelenburg against Kant’s views, thereby showing the fruitfulness of pursuing this model. In Section 7 of the Aesthetic Kant states and responds to Lambert’s objection that since change is real, as shown by the succession of our own representations, therefore time too must be real. As Lambert puts it, “I think though that even an idealist must grant at least that changes really exist and occur in his representations, for example, their beginning and ending. Thus time cannot be regarded as something unreal.”1 Perhaps what is outside us is not really in space since our apprehension of what is outside us is questionable, but surely, according to Lambert, we are aware of our own representations as they really are and this awareness includes their being temporally successive. In one sense this is an odd objection, since Kant holds that time is real and pertains to our representations. Indeed his response is that “Certainly time is real, namely, the real form of inner intuition.” Lambert’s objection then would have to be that we are directly aware of the succession of our 21 1. Lambert’s objection is made in a letter of Oct. 13, 1770, to Kant. It is reprinted in Kant’s Philosophical Correspondence, ed. and trans. Arnulf Zweig (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 63. For a contemporary discussion of the objection, see James van Cleve, “The Ideality of Time,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, vol. 1, part 2, ed. Hoke Robinson (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995). My position in this essay is that Kant takes what van Cleve calls the “radical line” that our own representations by themselves are not successive. He finds this difficult to accept and hardly imaginable. In what follows I shall claim that if we understand succession to entail separation by a continuous expanse of time, the radical line is easy to grasp. own states apart from any mediation of a form of intuition, so that in this case at least we are directly aware of time in an inner sense without any determining of inner sense by the subject. The question then becomes , how it is that the representation of our own states as successive is dependent on some determination of inner sense by the subject? To get a handle on this question, let us first turn to Kant’s corresponding views regarding space. In the first paragraph of the Metaphysical Exposition of Space (A23, B28, p. 68).2 Kant contends that in order for us to represent things as outside or alongside one another, the representation of space is presupposed. Thus for Kant we cannot simply sense that one thing is alongside another apart from our form of intuition . Spatial relationships such as outside or alongside seem analogous to temporal relationships such as succession, and so if we can understand why the former presuppose space as a form of intuition, then we can understand why the latter presuppose time as a form of intuition (or why the latter are real only in relation to a determining by the subject). If one thing is outside another then the two things are separated by a span or expanse of space. Further, this span or stretch is seamless or continuous. Without such an intervening expanse there is no relation of one thing being outside or apart from another. Now, it is this seamless or continuous expanse, I suggest, that is not a matter of sensation for Kant but is contributed by the subject. Kant thinks that continuity can only signify that the whole is prior to the parts (A25, B39, p. 69). Following Leibniz he holds that a continuous expanse cannot be composed out of elements or components. But if an expanse of space were an objective whole it would have to be composed of elements, since a whole can only exist objectively if all its parts or components do. Take away the parts...

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