SYNTHESIS (More)

The categories are crucial to "giving unity" to the manifold of intuition after it has been acted upon by the imagination in the pure synthesis of intuitions. Namely, they give an "a priori synthetic unity" through a pure synthesis of the understanding. After the categories are thus applied, and the manifold of intuition is ordered in this "a priori synthetic unity", the manifold now meets the conditions necessary to be acted upon by the faculty of judgment. Finally, the manifold as it is now (i.e., after the pure synthesis of the imagination and the pure synthesis of the understanding) is synthesized empirically, with empirical concepts, through an act of judgment. In experience we are conscious of this triply-synthesized manifold. (In the Deduction in B, at B130, Kant says that all synthesis takes place through the understanding, including the pure synthesis of the manifold of intuition. The unity of apperception is the a priori synthetic unity after application of the categories.)