Kant on Space

I thought it might be more helpful to just post this essay....Please forgive the lack of page citations, if anyone is expressly in need of them, I can get them for you.

In his Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant describes space as both transcendentally ideal and empirically real. This declaration creates what might initially be perceived as a paradoxical dilemma. How can space be both something that exists only in the mind, independent of experience (transcendentally ideal), yet also be described as possessing empirical reality, that is, the result of experience? Kant attempts to answer this quandary with a two-fold application of the term [space].
First, Kant treats space as an a priori intuition. He states, “this intuition must, however, be encountered in us a priori, i.e., prior to any perception of an object; hence, this intuition must be pure rather than empirical.” This assertion then raises the question of how the intuition of space can precede sensation of objects themselves. For Kant, the solution to this was that the intuition of space exists as an intrinsic and limiting part of the concept of the subject (the conscious entity capable of perception of objects).
Kant explains this by saying, “The subject’s receptivity for being affected by objects necessarily precedes all [sensible] intuitions of these objects.” That is to say, we must contain within us a preexisting mechanism [our a priori intuition of space] which allows us to order the data delivered to us by our senses. This mechanism allows us to formulate relations between objects of the senses. In this case, namely, how these objects appear to us in terms of spatial relationships.
Next, Kant deals with the empirical aspect of space. Although he claims, “space represents no property whatsoever of any things in themselves, nor does it represent things in themselves in relation to one another,” he assures us that space can be (and is) applied both empirically and universally. He tells us, “We can indeed say that space encompasses all things that appear to us externally, but not that it encompasses all things in themselves…” and that, “If the limitation on a judgment is added to the concept of the subject, then the judgment holds unconditionally.”
That is to say, our reception of objects is framed by our preexisting intuition of space, and that all our perceptions of objects conform to the notion they exist in space. This process is universal, with respect to humans, in that we all are limited in our perceptive ability (in regards to objects) by our preexistent (transcendentally ideal) intuition of space (limitation on judgment). For one and all, our ideas of external objects conform to a notion of space. Kant sums this up by telling us:
“That space is real in regard to everything that we can encounter externally as object, but teaches at the same time that space is ideal in regard to things when reason considers them in themselves…Hence we assert that space is empirically real (as regards all possible outer experience), despite asserting that space is transcendentally ideal... (the condition of the possibility of all experience).”