Kant’s Philosophy: Matter, Form, and Knowledge

Posted on Feb 15, 2025 in Philosophy and ethics

Matter and Form of Knowledge

In philosophy, the subject refers to anything presented in knowledge. For Kant, it represents the organizing principle of what is given. The matter is what is given to knowledge, and the form is the structure we impose upon it.

Division of Pure Reason

Transcendental Aesthetic

Deals with the conditions of possibility of sensitive knowledge. Kant uses the concept of aesthetics in the Greek sense, “aisthesis” (perception). It depends on the a priori forms of sensibility, which are space and time.

Synthetic Judgments a priori

Analysis means that the logical process through the universal infers something that is virtually universal content. How is it possible that these statements can both serve as a framework of analysis for physical phenomena? Kant seems to solve it by denying that the nature of analytical science is that by eliminating all metaphysical explanation. Mathematics, for Kant, is the same physical condition and therefore cannot explain this without that.

“The judgments of mathematics are all a priori.”

If we want to explain math, we test the sensitivity, knowing intuitively objects. Intuition is the act of knowledge of the sensitivity: pure or empirical intuition.

So there is the matter and form of intuition. The matter is the feeling itself, and the form is the a priori conditions of sensibility (space and time).

Space and Time: a priori Forms of Sensibility

For Kant, these are a priori conditions of all perception, forms of sensibility a priori. In addition, space and time are not concepts. What we have here are intuitions, one space and one time (both are pure intuitions because they are independent of experience), which are themselves infinite quanta. Kant believed it could not be otherwise, representing an infinite space, and that all limits can be moved. The same happens with time.

Space, Time, and Mathematics

Mathematical knowledge is based on the forms of sensibility. Space is the basis of geometry, and time is the basis of arithmetic.

Mathematics is built on the insights of figures and numbers (representations). Discontinued qualities of empirical intuition (which provides a geometric phenomenon) are called pure intuition, differentiating them on the sensations (matter and form). We can say the same over time.

Space is perceived through the external senses, and time through both external and internal senses. So Kant says that space and time, as a priori forms of sensibility, are the foundation of mathematics, thus ensuring the synthetic character that depends on the pure intuition of mathematics and its status as a priori.

Mathematics, as all science, is built from concepts, but the test of concept and trial depends upon an understanding. “The role of the senses is to contemplate; the understanding is to think.”

Transcendental Analytic

Kant divided logic into analytical and dialectical. Analytics refers to the logic of appearance and, in turn, considers the trial, while dialectic considers the reasoning. Kant considered it.

He discusses the analytical concepts and the power to them (understanding), but the concepts are based on the trial. To explain how the concepts are possible, it is necessary to determine the nature and types of trials. JUDGEMENT mediate knowledge of an object, therefore the representation of a representation of an object.