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Kant on Time

In the Transcendental Aesthetic of his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant offers a series of dense arguments and strange conclusions concerning the nature of time (A30-2/B46-9). As with his prior discussion of space, Kant’s basic goal is to demonstrate that time is presupposed in all human experience, although not for the ordinary reason that it is in some way inherent in the nature of the universe apart from consciousness. Rather, Kant boldly claims that time is an a priori form of inner sense which structures and makes possible the cognition of objects qua appearances. Ultimately, Kant summarizes his theory of time with the idea that time possesses both “empirical reality” and “transcendental ideality” (A35-6/B52). Understanding the full meaning of and claimed support for that claim requires us to delve into the particular arguments and conclusions about time developed by Kant. Kant begins his discussion of time in the Transcendental Aesthetic with a series of five arguments about the basic nature of time. They aim to establish the human representation of time as an a priori form of sensibility—and thereby exclude the competing empirical and conceptual theories of time. In the first three arguments, Kant is concerned with proving the representation of time to be a priori rather than a pervasive feature of mind-independent reality. In the last two arguments, Kant argues that time is a sensible rather than conceptual structure imposed upon experience by the mind. In a set of three conclusions immediately thereafter, Kant denies that time could “subsist for itself or attach to things as an objective determination,” argues that time is “nothing other than the form of inner sense,” and claims time to be “the immediate condition of the inner intuition” and “the mediate condition of outer appearances” (A32-4/B4951). While the details of Kant’s theory of time are significant, his first three arguments for time as a priori are the necessary preconditions of all his other conclusions about time. Yet as we shall see, none of those arguments undermine the common sense view of time as some knowable aspect of a mind-independent reality.