This is a brief description of Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic.

Kant establishes a method of understanding metaphysics, the study of being and knowing, that goes beyond prior rationalist and empirical philosophies. Central to his argument is the notion that our minds actively shape, and provide structure, to our experiences of reality. Kant states that our minds understand reality, and engage with it, through sensibility, which he defines as “the capacity (receptivity) to obtain representations through the way in which we are affected by objects (p.156).” Essentially, we find ourselves surrounded by a variety of objects, each of which gives us a large set of sensory responses. It is by establishing a relation to these objects that we begin to distinguish a self.

However, to begin this process, one must already have certain mental faculties at their disposal, specific a priori knowledge of space and time. These are what Kant refers to as the Transcendental Aesthetic. With time, as Kant depicts it, we understand sequences of events, and view ourselves as an actor operating through time. Time is not something that we can understand as external to ourselves, but rather is a pure sensation.

We intuitively understand the concepts of external and internal, as they relate to our bodies. Our conception of space then, is something that we use to differentiate our selves, and to come to the realization that other objects exist. The arrangement of ourselves within space, moving between, into, over, away from, and onto objects, is a negotiation based upon experience.