Analysis Of Kant's Four Considerations On The A Priori Nature Of Space

Kant’s Four Considerations on the A Priori Nature of Space

Knowledge about the world we inhabit is often considered the chief ambition of philosophy, and such was the desire of Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. The crux of his critique is the acknowledgment and application of synthetic, a priori judgments. This ambitious work contains a number of complex arguments regarding the inherent a priori/a posteriori nature of things and the analytic/synthetic reasoning behind human knowledge of such things. Perhaps one of the most disputable arguments posited by Kant involves the a priori nature of space. In Kant’s “Metaphysical Exposition”, a complex series labeled “The Four Considerations” are argued for in attempt to prove that space is not experience-contingent, but that space must be an inherently-understood, a priori layout for the universe.

For in order that certain sensations be referred to as something outside me (that is, to something in another region of space from that in which I find myself), and similarly in order that I may be able to represent them as outside and alongside one another, and accordingly as not only different but as in different places, the representation of space must be presupposed. The representation of space cannot, therefore, be empirically obtained from the relations of outer appearance. On the contrary, this outer experience is itself possible at all only through that representation” (Kant