Schema (Kant) - Pluhar's Interpretation

Pluhar's Interpretation

In the translator's introduction to his version of Kant's Critique of Judgment, page xxxvi, Werner Pluhar tried to explain schemata. He noted that perceptual intuitions and Kant's conceptual categories are very different, yet they relate to each other. This exposition by Professor Pluhar paraphrases Kant's doctrine that perceptions are based on concepts. Kant's position can be contrasted with Schopenhauer's opposite teaching that concepts are derived or abstracted from perceptions, thereby giving content to the concepts and allowing them to make sense. This is the very reason why pure concepts, or categories, require schemata. "Something is needed," Pluhar wrote, sharing Kant's viewpoint, "to mediate between intuition in general and the categories, viz., a rule or 'schema' that stipulates what conditions the intuition must meet so that it can match a category." Professor Pluhar then gave a specific example of how time is utilized to accomplish the matching or mediation. His explanation does not resort to presenting schemata through the use of visual analogies such as "sketches" or "outlines." Pluhar's schemata are rules. "In the case of causal relation, the schema is the rule that the effect must follow the cause in time." After providing this particular instance, he declared generally that "…all schemata connect the categories with time…." Professor Pluhar then asserted the reason for this schematic connection: "…time is the only form of intuition that applies to any intuition whatsoever, even to the inner intuition that we have of ourselves, whereas space applies merely to all outer intuitions." Oddly enough, schemata do not have to be added as mediators to the categories of causality and substance. These are already temporalized. Time is intrinsic to the relation between cause and effect. Substance, by its very nature, is a thing that continually endures.