ON THE PRIMARY-SYNTHETIC UNITY OF APPERCEPTION IN THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

Abstract: This research focuses on the primary-synthetic unity of apperception, as it appears in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in a larger framework called transcendental idealism. Descartes’ philosophy may be considered the first step towards transcendental idealism: the first occurrence 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 corpus: I exist because I think. In the System of Transcendental Idealism, Schelling starts with 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 conjunction between the objective datum and the subjective one, or how can both of them be put together, so that no contradiction should arise? When the subjective takes priority, we are talking about transcendental philosophy, a philosophy which holds as central to itself the epistemic subject; and starting from it, we can accomplish the accord between subject and object, within knowledge. For all this mechanism described above to work, we need an organon, which is above the mediated knowledge, meaning it is direct. According to Shelling, this instrument is the intellectual insight. Returning to Kant, the transcendental subject depends on perceptiveness; therefore the transcendental subject cannot have intellectual insights. The primary-synthetic unity of apperception belongs to the intellect and includes perceptiveness 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 with the exterior objects. The subject-object accord, created by Schelling by the means of intellectual insight, is achieved, in Kant’s view, through the unity of apperception