AFFINITY

[A113] The affinity is the "objective ground" of all association of appearances, which follows from Kant's considerations about the unity of apperception. Kant asks, "how are we to make comprehensible to ourselves the thoroughgoing affinity of appearances, whereby they must stand under unchanging laws?" The doctrine of affinity is meant to explain how the act of synthesis is possible, and to explain why empirical objects (appearances) satisfy the conditions of human sensibility and understanding. The short answer is that because appearances are representations, it is a priori true that all appearances must satisfy the conditions of sensibility and understanding (and thus they have a transcendental affinity); it follows from this that each appearance, as empirically real object, will also meet these conditions (and thus they have an empirical affinity). Kant's version: "The ground of the possibility of the association of the manifold, so far as it lies in the object, is named the affinity of the manifold....On my principles it is easily explicable. All possible appearances, as representations, are [such that they are capable of being synthesized in the unity of apperception]....for nothing can come to our knowledge, save in terms of this original [synthesis of the unity of] apperception....[thus] so far as the synthesis [of the manifold] is to yield empirical knowledge, the appearances are subject to a priori conditions [of the sensibility and of the understanding, which Kant here calls rules]...thus all appearances stand in thoroughgoing connection according to necessary laws, and therefore in a transcendental affinity, of which the empirical is a mere consequence. Kant makes more of the problem of affinity in the Schematism, although it is unclear that he ought to.