ABSTRACT
I have remarked already on Kant's confident use of the first personal pronouns and possessives in stating, or alluding to, the doctrines of transcendental idealism. It is, manifestly, of importance to him to ensure that there is a point of connexion, in the way of identity, between the supersensible world and the world of human beings, between things as they are in themselves on the one hand and Kant and his readers, the ordinary referents of personal pronouns and possessives, on the other. Without such a point of connexion, in the way of identity, the claim that freedom is at least possible (though to us incomprehensible) as a property of supersensible beings, would be without relevance to the moral nature or situation of human beings. Without such a point of connexion, in the way of identity, between that thing which is, in itself, the seat of space, time and the categories, and the human student of geometry or of the critical philosophy, it would be impossible to assemble, let alone to work, that crude model of imposed necessities available, through self-analysis or self-inspection, to our non-empirical knowledge. The mere use of the personal pronouns and possessives does nothing, however, to show where the point of connexion lies. We have to ask what we human beings, Kant's readers, can unambiguously understand by "us" and "we" and "our" when these expressions are so easily and loftily used to convey the doctrines of transcendental idealism.
