Note 892 — Chapter II · DEDUCTION OF THE PURE CONCEPTS OF THE UNDERSTANDING (continued 2)

Memory is only one particular mode in which recognition presents itself in our experience; Kant’s purpose is to show that it is not more fundamental, nor more truly constitutive of apperception, than is recognition in any of its other manifestations. Indeed the central contention of the objective deduction is that it is through consciousness of objects, i.e. through consciousness of objective meanings, that self-consciousness comes to be actualised at all. Only in contrast with, and through relation to, an objective system is consciousness of inner experience, past or present, and therefore self-consciousness in its contingent empirical forms, possible to the mind. Cf. above, pp. li-ii; below, pp. 260-3.