Form of Intuition and Formal Intuition

This dissertation is a study of the dichotomy of matter and form in Kant’s theory of intuition. I distinguish between two ways of construing matter and form and argue that these two hylomorphisms are suitable for analyzing the act of intuiting and the intuited object, respectively. The relation between sensations and empirical intuitings should be understood as analogous to the relation between the raw materials for some production and the finished product. The form according to this hylomorphism is what is brought about by the spontaneity of the mind. The production of empirical intuitings is the generation of a kind of mental states that, unlike its raw materials, have intentional objects. What is represented by such an intuiting, that is, its object, exhibits a hylomorphic structure of a different type. I offer an account of spatiality as the form of the intuited according to which to represent something as a spatial object is primarily to represent it as a shaped extension, which is a special case of the more general formed-content structure, the second type of hylomorphism that I explore. On the basis of the exploration of the two kinds of hylomorphism and their respective application to the intuiting acts and the intuited objects, I suggest a solution to the problem of pure and formal intuition. I argue that an act of pure intuiting need not have an object that is a contentless form. At the end of the dissertation, I sketch an interpretation of the Transcendental Deduction of the categories that combines the insights of the two hylomorphisms.