Andrew Specht

In this work, I conduct a reconstruction and evaluation of the Neglected Alternative objection to Immanuel Kant's philosophy. Kant famously argues in the Transcendental Aesthetic section of the Critique of Pure Reason that space and time are subjective forms of human intuition, and the Neglected Alternative maintains that this argument is a failure. According to the Neglected Alternative, Kant completely overlooks the possibility that space and time are in some way both subjective and objective, and so Kant's conclusions about the nature of space and time are not justified by his arguments. This objection was first formulated very soon after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason but is still subject to great controversy among Kant scholars. I argue that the Neglected Alternative objection is unsuccessful. To do this, I provide a close analysis of Kant's key technical term “a priori intuition,” and I reconstruct the work of two important critics of Kant: H.A. Pistorius and F.A. Trendelenburg. I then argue that in the Transcendental Aesthetic, Kant is justified in deriving the conclusion that space and time have nothing to do with things in themselves, or objects entirely independent of human cognition. Finally, I look at Kant's works as a whole and consider Kant's arguments that seem to rule out the possibility that things in themselves have a structure that is even similar to space and time.

Despite his impressive influence on nineteenth-century philosophy, F. A. Trendelenburg's own philosophy has been largely ignored. However, among Kant scholars, Trendelenburg has always been remembered for his feud with Kuno Fischer over the subjectivity of space and time in Kant's philosophy. The topic of the dispute, now frequently referred to as the ?Neglected Alternative? objection, has become a prominent issue in contemporary discussions and interpretations of Kant's view of space and time. The Neglected Alternative contends that Kant unjustifiably moves from the claim that we have a priori intuitions of space and time to the sceptical conclusion that space and time are exclusively subjective. Most current discussions trace the objection back to Trendelenburg and often use him to motivate the objection. However, to date Trendelenburg's actual arguments and reasons for rejecting the Kantian view of space and time have not been sufficiently uncovered; my goal here is to fill this lacuna. By better understanding what Trendelenburg actually argued, we will be in a better position to assess whether the Neglected Alternative objection against Kant is successful. But in addition, Trendelenburg's own system is of independent philosophical interest, and my work here will shed light on one part of it