Kant on the Problem of Knowing the Past
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22370/rhv2025iss28.4854Keywords:
Kant, Memory, Threefold Synthesis, Transcendental Deduction, Philosophy of MindAbstract
Can we ever know the personal past as it really was? This is a question debated in contemporary philosophy of memory and one which, I argue, Kant grappled with centuries ago. My aim in this paper is to show that Kant’s first-edition Transcendental Deduction deals with the problem which today might be called that of objectively knowing my own personal past. The threefold synthesis expounded there sets up a structure for verifying representations as accurate depictions of previous experience. As I will show, the process of apprehension, reproduction, and recognition can answer the problem of knowing the past and explain the phenomenology of pastness.
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