Abstract

In this article I argue that Kant’s theory of time relies on two basic assumptions that are involved in his account of the necessary conditions of experience. I maintain that the temporal structure of experience encompasses the existence of a “tensed”series, according to which our representations occur in the present, past and future, and certain “laws of the temporal determination of experience”, according to which the temporal conditions of experience cannot be altered. These rules establish that the empirical intuitions, which are derived from inner and outer experience, cannot be stopped, reversed or anticipated. I suggest that the tensed temporal series can be deduced from the Critique of Pure Reason and especially from the second chapter of the ‘Analytic of Principles’. Furthermore, the existence of the second assumption becomes evident in the Dissertation, the ‘Axioms of Intuition’, the ‘Second Analogy of Experience’ and the ‘Postulates of Empirical Thought in general’.