4 - Exposition, Conceptual Analysis, and Apperception

Summary

I develop an account of Kant’s technical notion of “exposition” and, in particular, “metaphysical” exposition. This involves explaining his distinction between concepts that are “made” and those that are “given,” as well as his murky notion of “original acquisition.” I then turn to Kant’s account of exposition as conceptual analysis. I argue that apperceptive reflection is the principal vehicle of conceptual analysis and, thus, the nervus probandi of Kant’s arguments in the Expositions. This yields a general picture of the Expositions as advancing the critical project of reason’s self-knowledge. An attractive consequence of my account en passant is that the discussion of original acquisition provides a novel and tidy explanation of the much-discussed distinction between formal intuition and the form of intuition in terms of the tripartite Aristotelian distinction between first potentiality, second potentiality (first actuality), and second actuality.