North American Philosophical Publications

An Infinite Given Magnitude

Author(s): Ermanno Bencivenga
Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 2010), pp. 95-100
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical
Publications
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27745183
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 History of Philosophy Quarterly
Volume 27, Number 1, January 2010

AN INFINITE GIVENMAGNITUDE

Ermanno Bencivenga

At B39represented
in the asTranscendental Aesthetic,
an infinite given magnitude."1 Kant
This sentence says, famously, "Space is
has been
the source of constant criticism by commentators. A powerful statement
of what they find troubling in it was made by F. A. Trendelenburg in his
Logische Untersuchungen, when he pointed out that everything given
must be limited; hence, Kant should have said that space is thought,
not given, as infinite. Here I will address this worry in the context of a
general interpretation of Kant's position on space. More precisely, I will
first bring out all the elements I need for resolving the problem and then
present my resolution of it.2
"Space is not a discursive or, as is said, general concept of relations
of things in general, but a pure intuition," we are told at A24-25/B39.
This formulation, however, cannot be right. Concepts and intuitions
are representations, and space was characterized above (and at several
other places) not as a representation but as something represented. To
be sure, representations "can themselves be objects of other represen
tations in turn" (A108); but, if space were a representation, then this
representation could certainly not be (represented as) itself an infinite
magnitude. It is rather the representation of an object, not of a repre
sentation, that represents it as an infinite magnitude; and when Kant
says that space is an intuition or a representation (as at A24/B38), he
is involved in the same sort of terminological confusion I discussed in
my Kant's Copernican Revolution? It is literally untrue that empirical
objects are representations; what they are instead is the (intentional)
objects of (categorially connected) representations, but Kant will often
use the improper expression above to signal the fact that intentional,
and hence also empirical, objects depend conceptually on representa
tions within transcendental idealism, in a way that would be absurd
within transcendental realism (empirical objects, as I explained in
my book and repeated here, are nothing but categorially connected
intentional objects). Analogously, space is not a representation or an

95

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96 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

intuition, but the intentional object of a representation and (maybe)

of an intuition. We may have (at best; see below) an intuition (and a
representation) of space.
A second confusing aspect of Kant's views on this matter is that,
though space is supposed to be the object of an intuition, no intuition
(of space or anything else) can have currency within transcendental
philosophy, which, as a form of philosophy, is "cognition from concepts"
(A837/B865). A geometer can "see" circles and squares4 and draw imper
fect approximations of them on the board, and in that way, she can prove
properties of them with apodictic necessity; so she will put the intuition
of space to concrete use. A philosopher, on the other hand, can only talk
or think about space; hence, what will have currency in her work is the
concept of space, which (inter alia) is the concept of a singular thing,
such as could also be the object of a singular representation?or an in
tuition. Kant is not misspeaking, then, when he calls the metaphysical
and transcendental expositions of space (in the second edition) exposi
tions "of this concept" (B37) or when he later draws (in both editions)
"[conclusions from the above concepts" (A26/B42?additional relevant
quotes will be offered later).
One more thing: space for Kant is "the form of all appearances of outer
sense, i.e., the subjective condition of sensibility, under which alone outer
intuition is possible for us" (A26/B42). Outer sense establishes contact
with what is other than us, and outer intuitions are representations of
individual outer objects; no such representations are possible for us if
not in space. Or, conversely, if I abstract from any specific feature of an
outer object and an intuition of it, what I am eventually left with, as the
essence (or form) of outerness (and otherness) as such, is space (which,
importantly, is not to say that space is the result of abstraction?or in
general that Kant cares about such genetic, as opposed to logical, mat
ters). As we read in Metaphysik von Sch?n, "All objects of the senses
are thus represented in such a way that, if I eliminate everything else,
space always remains, as the form of outer intuition, and hence I cannot
eliminate space" (XXVIII 483).
In the Aesthetic, Kant makes this same point in different words:
"Space is a necessary representation, a priori, that is the ground of all
outer intuition." And then he continues: "One can never represent that
there is no space, though one can very well think that there are no
objects to be encountered in it" (A24/B38). Notice that he does not say
"one can very well intuit empty space"; he uses the word "think," which
leads one to believe that even the previous "represent" is to be read the
same way?that one cannot think of the absence of space. The concept
of space is necessarily involved in all representations of outer objects.

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 AN INFINITE GIVEN MAGNITUDE 97

Consider some concrete cases of spatial representations. Say that I

am imagining a winged horse flying through the sky. It is a representa
tion; it is the representation of something other than me; and it is the
representation of one thing. Sure enough, it is in space. And say that I
am also imagining Indiana Jones looking for a hidden treasure in the
jungle; that, also, is a representation of one object other than me; and it,
too, is in space. But can I say whether the location of the winged horse
is above or below, to the left or to the right of, the location of Indiana
Jones? Of course not: the two spaces cannot be compared; it makes no
sense to think of them as parts of the same space, of the one and only
space that is the subject-matter of the Aesthetic. How do we arrive at
the latter? In the Analytic, Kant says:
In the Aesthetic I ascribed ... [the] unity [of space] merely to sen
sibility, only in order to note that it precedes all concepts, though
to be sure it presupposes a synthesis, which does not belong to the
senses but through which all concepts of space and time first become
possible. For since through it (as the understanding determines the
sensibility) space or time are first given as intuitions, the unity of this
a priori intuition belongs to space and time, and not to the concept of
the understanding. (B160-6 In)
So here we are told that, for space to be given, it must first be constructed,
or synthesized. And indeed, "[w]e cannot think of a line without draw
ing it in thought, we cannot think of a circle without describing it, we
cannot represent the three dimensions of space at all without placing
three lines perpendicular to each other at the same point" (B154).
Space, it seems, cannot be intuited after all; what we intuit is always
objects in space, and we take space to be given together with them, as
the formal condition of their intuition. And for us to be able to take our
selves to be in the presence of one single space, we must take ourselves
to be in the presence of one and the same world: the unity of space is
sues from the same synthetic operation that presides over the unity of
the world. The world is one if (or, better, to the extent that?see below)
it is categorially connected; and, if it is, it also inhabits one and the
same space. The spaces of Indiana Jones and of the winged horse are
independent of one another and cannot be compared because there is
no objective connection between Indiana Jones and the winged horse,
no causal chain that at some point includes the one and at some later
point includes the other. Space may be an inert container, but in order
to know that we have one such container, we must (think of ourselves
as able to) bring together all of its contents. "The principle of the form
of the universe is that which contains the ground of the universal con
nection, in virtue of which all substances and their states belong to the

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98 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

same whole which is called a world" (TB391II398). (And because space

is involved in outer intuition even when such intuition is not objective,
it is a subjective condition of sensibility.)
The concept of the whole world is an idea: a representation to which
no experience is ever adequate. This idea guides me as I proceed to syn
thesize the always partial environment I do have experience of: when I
connect various elements of it and convince myself of their objectivity,
it is their connectedness with everything else that I presume and that
substantiates my commitment to their objectivity. This idea regulates
my cognitive efforts and claims; nothing will be found to have cognitive
value that contradicts it. The concept of the whole space in which the
whole world is located, of the one objective space that provides the co
ordinates for everything existing and objective, is similarly an idea: it is
the concept of an infinite space, and no experience can ever be adequate
to its infinity. Speaking of absolute space in The Metaphysical Founda
tions of Natural Science, Kant says: "Absolute space is ... necessary, not
as a concept of an actual object, but rather as an idea, which is to serve
as a rule for considering all motion therein merely as relative" (TA265
IV 560).
We now have all the pieces we need to address our problem. Say that
I am looking at a particular object, a table before me. Since the table is
a single object, my representation of it is an intuition: an empirical one
because it is provided by experience. As I think about it, I take it apart
and think of myself as also in the presence of an instance of the concept
table, and maybe rectangular table and wooden table, and also in the
presence of a spatial object, one that brings out the various traits of the
concept of (three-dimensional) space?indeed of Euclidean space if the
space of my imagination, where only I can imagine, or make images
of, things is Euclidean; and if I can only perceive things I can possibly
imagine ("No psychologist has yet thought that the imagination is a
necessary ingredient of perception itself," A120n). But none of this would
qualify my representation as objective: its (intentional) object could still
be an object only in a manner of speaking, an object by courtesy. For it to
be a real, empirical object, an object simpliciter (but see below), I should
be able to conceive of it as connected with every other such real object
in a unified world, of which one could have a unified experience; and a
necessary condition for this to be the case is that I could also conceive of
it as located in a single, unified space, which space could only be infinite.
The idea of an infinite, single space is as embedded in my claim that
this is a real object as the very idea of an object?which is also an idea
because, as it turns out, nothing encountered in experience is in fact
adequate to it, is an object simpliciter; everything ever encountered is

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 AN INFINITE GIVEN MAGNITUDE 99

only an appearance. And ?/"this infinite, single space were represented,

its representation would be an intuition: a singular representation of
a single object?and an a priori one because it is independent of any
empirical content.
Does this mean that infinite space is given? Well, that is not quite
what Kant says. He says that space is represented as an infinite given
magnitude. The reason that so many have objected to this statement is
that they read that "represented" as "intuited," and there is no possible
intuition of infinity. But I have argued that what is discussed in the
Transcendental Aesthetic, primarily, is the concept or rather, now, the
idea of space; and this is precisely the idea of an infinite expanse that
is given to me whenever any object is given, as an ideal condition of its
objectivity?more specifically, of its identifiability: of the possibility of
identifying it for the object it is and distinguishing it from any other
object. So, by all means, space is represented, that is, conceived, as an
infinite magnitude that is given to me whenever anything in it is given
(Trendelenburg was right, but Kant was not wrong); and it is the sort of
thing that could also be intuited, except that it is not. We take ourselves
to experience portions of it, and even those we do not experience directly;
we only experience objects in them. This means that, ultimately, the most
concrete role space plays for us is as a form of intuition?a condition at
which only we can take ourselves to have singular representations.

University of California, Irvine

Note on Texts
Quotes from the first Critique are from the translation by P. Guy er and
A. Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). They are given
by the usual A/B numbers.
All other Kant quotes include references to the volume and page num
bers of the Akademie edition of the Gesammelte Schriften, and (with one
exception) to English translations for which the following abbreviations
are used:
TA: Theoretical Philosophy after 1781, ed. H. Allison and P. Heath,
trans. G. Hatfield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

TB: Theoretical Philosophy 1755-1770, ed. and trans. D. Walford, in

collaboration with R. Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1992).
The only other text cited is my Kant's Copernican Revolution (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987).

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100 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY
NOTES

1. In the first edition, only the order of words was different: "Space is rep
resented as a given infinite magnitude" (A25). Given the extent of the changes
between the first and second edition Aesthetics, we may take this as evidence
that this particular view of Kant's was a stable one. (As additional, if small,
evidence for the same conclusion, no marginal notes were inserted by Kant on
this passage in his own copy of the Critique.)
2. For the sake of definiteness, I will concentrate on space here. But every
major conclusion I reach below can easily be extended to time.
3. See 85-86 there.
4. Though only in her imagination. This point will become relevant later.

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