On Two Different Lines of Argumentation in Kant's Theory of Schematism of Empirical and Mathematical Concepts

Abstract

The aim of this article is to show that the Schematism chapter of Kant´s "Critique of Pure Reason" presents two different and irreconcilable lines of argumentation of the schematism of empirical and mathematical concepts. These two lines of argumentation are two different ways of approaching the same problem, i.e., the difference between the universality of empirical and mathematical concepts and the singularity of their corresponding intuitions. 1) The first line of argumentation conceives of the schemata as procedures of synthesis (and not as rules of synthesis, as they are often interpreted). In this case, a schema is a universal procedure of the imagination to constitute singular intuitions as cases of their corresponding universal concepts. The content of a concept, i.e., that which is thought in it, requires a certain and determinate synthesis of the sensible manifold, and our imagination responds to this exigency by generating a universal procedure of synthesis (schema). 2) The second line of argumentation interprets schemata as universal figures or monograms. These universal figures are generated by imagination in accordance with the content of concepts. Such figures can be understood as intuitive characteristics that express the content of concepts in their universality and whose aspect resembles that of all the particular cases of the concepts in question. These particular cases are constituted through and in conformity with the universal figures that, as schemata, correspond to their universal concepts.