From Exposition to Phenomenological Insight

Abstract

The difference between rational functions and the reception of data as attention is a difference which may be rendered in phenomenological terms. Kant himself, in describing the difference as one between reception and spontaneity, already presented some of the basic features of these sources of knowledge. We start this part of our discussion by referring to the analysis of the topic before us in Friedrich Kuntze’s Die kritische Lehre von der Objektivitat.¹ We comment on that analysis because Kuntze correctly points out the kinship between Kant’s notion of metaphysical exposition and deduction and the phenomenological approach, although he does not elaborate on the difference between metaphysical exposition and metaphysical deduction; he even lists under the heading of deduction what Kant himself calls exposition. Kuntze’s attempt is the more important since, for chronological reasons, he had at hand only Husserl’s Logische Untersuchungen and could not discuss the explicit references the later Husserl makes to Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic. Be that as it may, it is instructive to comment on Kuntze’s interpretation, as well as on his attempt to elaborate Kant’s views, by taking advantage of the phenomenological approach.