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Phenomenological Interpretation of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason (Studies in Continental Thought)

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A lecture course that eventually became the famous Kantbuch, Heidegger demonstrates his remarkable capacity to think in complete sentences. The reading of Kant is decidedly Aristotlizing, with the priority of the imagination (phantasia) over reason (nous) or sense (aisthesis), and the priority of imagination cannot be separated from the priority of time, the gift which is self giving (or in Kant, self-affection: masturbation). The most clever thing that H does, and which he refrains from in the Kantbuch, is to turn the categories (quantity, quality, modality, and something else) into emanations of past, present, future. H reads modern philosophy as the triumph of the imagination, and that is no clearer than in Kant, but for Heidegger, the future possesses a priority, and the future is "image-poor." The connection of imagination with manipulation (and potentiality) leads some (like Sartre) to identify imagination with negativity, but H wants no part of this "humanism." Imagination and time may possess a priority that Kant "recoils" from, but H demonstrates the reductio in Kant's argument not to valorize imagination but ironically to resuscitate aisthesis, or the potentia passiva, the ability or power to receive, to listen intently, or just to listen.