Is Synthesis Self-Reflexive?

Abstract This paper focuses on Kant’s conceptions of synthesis and spontaneity in cognition. On a popular interpretation, Kant takes judgments and other cognitive acts to be spontaneous in the sense that all judgments, thoughts, etc., are inherently self-reflexive. Yet, when it comes to synthesis, the combination of representations presupposed by all cognition, this interpretation seems only partly correct: while Kant states that allsynthesis is an act of the understanding, and therefore a self-activity of the subject, he also defines synthesis in generalas an effect of the blind faculty of imagination. I argue that, given Kant’s opposing yet programmatic claims about synthesis, the self-reflexivity of cognitive acts does not reflect his complete position on spontaneity. In the paper, I propose an alternative interpretation of spontaneity, arguing that central to Kant’s theory is the fundamental opennessof the relation of spontaneity to the self-conscious subject: although the subject necessarily represents itself as spontaneous, the subject ultimately cannot knowwhether it is the agent of the spontaneous acts that it represents as its own. This interpretation, I argue, better accounts for Kant’s notion of blind synthesis: the latter preserves the openness of his conception of the agent of spontaneous acts. The paper offers a novel perspective on spontaneity, differing from the often debated question of whether the spontaneity of thought is absolute or relative. It offers a new way of understanding and resolving the tension in Kant’s account of synthesis.