TRANSCENTAL FORM

Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, is focused on what he calls pure, or transcendental form, and how it comes to be.  Are the forms that we generate transcendental, and would Kant agree?  I believe he would.

With Transparent Drawing, we generate holistic form.  Have you ever wondered where or what, exactly, these forms are?  What is their phenomena?  Are they solely in our minds?  Or is the holistic knowledge on our paper?  We draw resolved forms, which can exist in the world.  Yet, as future form, they don’t.

Philosophers have been arguing over the empirical / rational question for thousands of years.  As he strives to develop a link between these binaries, his focus is the same as ours:  objects in space.  So, strictly from a Kantian view, I wanted to try to summarize how Kant’s understanding of form, as described in his Critique, helps us to a better understanding of the forms that we generate on our paper.  

What are our forms?

Our forms are transcendental because they are free from empirical input.

Our forms are pure because they are devoid of sensation.

Whereas they are a possible experience, they are not an actual experience. 

Time is the subjective condition under which all of our intuitions take place. 

Any form that is rooted in the empirical is an illusion. 

Our forms are certain, and they are necessary.  

Once our forms are generated, no cognition can contradict it, without losing all content, or without dissolving the form.  p51

Our forms give matter to our pure conceptions.

They are concerned with quality, and have nothing to do with quantity.

Our forms are devoid of psychology.  

The above drawing is of a resolved transcendental form.  And I believe that all of the statements above apply to the form.  It is free from empirical sensory input.  Time is what makes comprehension of the holistic form possible.  It is a possible experience.  There is no psychology.  Etc.  I wonder how Kant’s Critique would have modified if he had our Transparent Drawing bandwidth?  

Kant’s Critique is sort of like the Bible.  That is, you can open it and find a passage that says pretty much what you want it to say.  I fully admit that I possibly have performed this reductionist action in the statements above.  If I did that, without tying it into the holistic philosophical structure, I apologize.  All the same, there remain parallel overtones which I find fascinating to think about.  

1. Kant, Immanuel.  Critique of Pure Reason.  Translated by J.M.D. Meiklejohn.  Dover Philosophical Classics:  New York.  2003.