Schema (Kant)

In Kantian philosophy, a transcendental schema (plural: schemata; from Greek: σχῆμα, "form, shape, figure") is the procedural rule by which a category or pure, non-empirical concept is associated with a sense impression. A private, subjective intuition is thereby discursively thought to be a representation of an external object. Transcendental schemata are supposedly produced by the imagination in relation to time.

Kant created an architectonic system in which there is a progression of phases from the most formal to the most empirical: "Kant develops his system of corporeal nature in the following way. He starts in the Critique with the most formal act of human cognition, called by him the transcendental unity of apperception, and its various aspects, called the logical functions of judgment. He then proceeds to the pure categories of the understanding, and then to the schematized categories, and finally to the transcendental principles of nature in general." It is within this system that the transcendental schemata are supposed to serve a crucial purpose. Many interpreters of Kant have emphasized the importance of the schematism.

If pure concepts of the understanding (categories) and sensations are radically different, what common quality allows them to relate? Kant wrote the chapter on Schematism in his Critique of Pure Reason to solve the problem of "...how we can ensure that categories have 'sense and significance.' "

A posteriori concepts have sense when they are derived from a mental image that is based on experienced sense impressions. Kant's a priori concepts, on the other hand, are alleged to have sense when they are derived from a non–experienced mental schema, trace, outline, sketch, monogram, or minimal image. This is similar to a Euclidean geometrical diagram.

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