Statutul unităţii originar-sintetice a apercepţiei în "Critica raţiunii pure" / (The Statute of Originar-Synthetic Unity of Apperception in Critique of Pure Reason)

Abstract

This research is about the originar-sinthetic unity of apperception, as it appears in Kant’s ”Critique of pure reason”, in a larger framework called transcendental idealism. Descartes’s philosophy can  be considered the first step towards transcendental idealism: the first appearance of the idea of an epistemic subject. The essence of the epistemic subject through the method of systematic doubt is that of  being a thinking substance: I exist because I think.  Schelling starts in “System of transcendental idealism” for a classical question of western metaphysics: knowledge means an accord between something that is objective and something that is subjective. From here, the following question arises: what is the link between the objective datum and the subjective one, or how can the two be put together, so that no contradiction arises. When the subjective has priority we have transcendental philosophy, philosophy which holds as central to itself the epistemic subject and starting from it, we can realize the accord between subject and object,  inside knowledge. For all this mechanism described above  to work, we need an organon, which is above the mediated knowledge, meaning it is direct. This instrument in Schelling’s vision is the intellectual intuition. Returning to Kant, the transcendental subject depends on sensibility; therefore the transcendental subject can’t have intellectual intuitions. The originar-sintethic unity of apperception belongs to the intellect and includes sensibility and the categories. This unity creates an accord between “I think” and "my representations". “I think” is the essence of the epistemic subject. Representations must be associated, in Kant’s view, with the exterior objects. The consent subject-object, created by Schelling through the means of intellectual intuition is realized in Kant’s view, through the unity of apperception.