Kant and the doctrine of synthesis

Kant's way of accounting for the existence of ordinary concrete objects is, in essence, to show how the content of our experience must exhibit a definite connectedness and relational structure, and to argue that objects are nothing more than ‘centres’ of such connectedness. None the less, he holds that these relations and forms of connection are not inherent in reality per se: ¹ he argues that they rest on the synthesizing activity of the transcendental subject, which organizes our experience using certain a priori categories. If Kant's position is to be made comprehensible, something must be said about the background to his doctrine of synthesis and an outline must be given of his general philosophical project; I will then discuss his account of the categories as the source of relational unity in our experience, and show how he uses the unity of the subject to ground this relational unity of the object.