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Reflection, Enlightenment, and the Significance of Spontaneity in Kant

Spontaneity is arguably the central concept of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Kant distinguishes a spontaneous capacity of the mind to ‘bring forth representations itself’ from a capacity of the mind to ‘receive representations, insofar as it is affected in some way’ (A51/B75). While sensibility is receptive, the intellect – or higher cognitive faculty – is said to be spontaneous. What is the meaning of Kant’s appeal to spontaneity? Its silhouette, at least, can be traced as follows. In so far as our cognitive capacity is receptive, it may be affected by the causal order of material nature; but in so far as it is spontaneous, it is free from determination by that causal order. However, this tells us relatively little, except perhaps that spontaneity is a certain self-determination of the mind. Naturally, this silhouette is underdetermined. One way of filling it in stresses the mind’s freedom from being determined by the material causal order, yet this leads directly to a puzzle about what can legitimately be said regarding the spontaneity of the mind. After all, Kant holds that cognition is limited to objects of possible experience; and the appeal to spontaneity is