ABSTRACT
If the universal self-consciousness ‘I think’ is the a priori condition for all possible logically structured thought, this condition’s own a priori condition cannot involve anything logical in its representation but must instead be purely sensible. Kant accordingly devised a theory of pure sensibility, termed transcendental aesthetic, which has as its raison d’être the psychologistic explication of the a priori sensible consciousness that precedes the ‘I think’ and first makes it possible—the original synthetic unity of apperception. The chapter approaches Kant’s theory of pure sensibility as a new solution to the problem that led Berkeley to devise his theory of vision: sensible spatiality. Instead of following the purely empirical path Berkeley trod, Kant blazed an a priori psychologistic trail leading, on the one hand, to the pure sensible consciousness presupposed by the ‘I think’ and, on the other, to strikingly new ways of thinking about the psychology of sense perception. Subjects/authors discussed include sensation, association, self-consciousness, imagination, understanding, cognitive evolution, subjectivity, objectivity, geometry, physics, space, time, spacetime, Leibniz, Hegel, and Gerald Edelman.
