Kant’s Space and Time as Nothing: Empirical Reality as the Ground of Experience

In the Table of Nothing, Kant includes a discussion of space and time, under the heading of relation. There, he says that space or time is an ens imaginarium, as an empty intuition without an object. Space and time are something, namely forms required for human intuition, but they are nothing in themselves that can be intuited. When we think of Kant's broader discussions of space and time in terms of the Table of Nothing, certain puzzles emerge. The most prominent of these is the relationship between space and time as transcendentally ideal and as empirically real. This chapter argues that Kant is talking about empirically real space and time in the Table of Nothing, and likewise it is empirically real space and time that serve as the ground of experience. Transcendental ideality, rather than providing the conditions for experience, is merely a negation of transcendental reality. Paying attention to this distinction illumines contours of Kant's notion of the transcendental. Kant often discusses the transcendental in metaphysical terms, and he is often concerned with warding off such a use of transcendentality. This is true of not only space and time, but also the categories and Kant's discussion of previous ontology. To make my case for the fundamental importance of empirically real space and time, I look at the Table of Nothing, Kant's statements of transcendental idealism and transcendental realism, his explanation of ideality and reality in the Transcendental Aesthetic, and then compare these statements with his talk of the transcendental misuse of the categories (which have only an empirical use).