Being Mindful of Appearance: Receptivity, Neutralization, Discursivity

Abstract

Sensibility in general is a capacity [ Fähigkeit] for receptivity. The Transcendental Aesthetic of the Critique of Pure Reason establishes that sensibility contributes intuited ingredients, both material and formal, in order to make possible the thorough determination of objects and their cognition. Intuition, defined as an immediate relation to something, occurs in humans only by means of sensibility. Since human intuition is sensible, it is a capacity for receptivity rather than a faculty for the creative or even spontaneous grasp of entities. Following Kant’s general subjectivization of Leibniz’s principle of determination and his limitation of this principle to experience, we can interpret the spontaneity of the faculty of intellect or understanding as the categorially articulated matrix of experiential possibility and we can interpret the receptivity of the capacity for sensible intuition as the human openness towards the actual given in experience. In the Critique of Judgment,§76; Kant aligns possibility with understanding and actuality with sensible intuition.¹⁹⁰