2 - Temporal Consciousness and Inner Perception

Summary

Chapter 2, “Temporal Consciousness and Inner Perception”, offers an interpretation of inner perception as the perception of distinctively inner appearances by drawing on resources from the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Analytic (mainly the A-Deduction) of the first Critique. The chapter develops an interactional model of perception with three constitutive aspects: (1) affection through outer sense, (2) synthesis of apprehension through the active faculties of the mind, viz. imagination and understanding, and (3) self-affection through inner sense. Each of these constitutive aspects is shown to define a formal and a material condition of perception. By carving out the notion of transcendental self-affection, i.e., the a priori determination of the form of inner sense through the understanding, the chapter derives the a priori temporal conditions of perception. Applying the general model to the inner case, inner perception is construed as empirical consciousness of inner appearances, based on empirical self-affection.