"What in an object of the senses [i.e.

, the object given in inner intuition

through self-affection] is not itself appearance I call intelligible. Accordingly,
if what in the world of sense must be regarded as appearance has, when taken in
itself, also a power which is not an object of sensible intuition but through which
it can still be the cause of appearances, then the causality of this being can be
considered from two sides: as intelligible, according to its action as that of a
thing in itself; and as sensible, according to the effects of this causality as
those of an appearance in the world of sense. Thus regarding such a subject's power
we would frame an empirical as well as an intellectual concept of its causality,
these concepts occurring together in one and the same effect."

This power of thinking, the object that Kant calls intelligible, because we cannot
cognise as in space and time --> this object, referred to by an appearances as
that what lies beyond the appearances (since it is not spatiotemporal) - "that what
in an object of the sense is not itself appearances" - is not merely the object of
an logically and to some extent arbitrarily thought-up concept, i.e., an ideas such
as the hypothetical object the 'pure water' or 'all human beings are mortal' or
'the world as it is in itself' that may or may not be a possible object of sensible
intuition. For the 'thing' this representation refers to is the very 'fundamental
power' that must be in place if we are to think up logical concepts in the first
place. Kant's point in the Appendix is that it does not make sense that to claim
that this power is merely something we are allowed to postulate (as a hypothesis)..
the principle, though regulative, is a t the same time transcendental and
objectively valid of thing in themselves (and thus also must be ascribed objective
reality). The only restriction Kant puts in place is merely this: that we cannot
objectify this fundamental power (reification as later Marxist will call it) as a
building block in our web of knowledge, next to horses, tables, quarks and bosons,
precisely because it has it cannot be ascribed spatio-temporal properties (the act
of thinking). The reason is, ultimately, not that we 'finite' in the sense that we
must alway be affected, and that we cannot be affected by things in themselves...
for there IS a sense in which things in themselves affect us (at least in the case
of our ouwn thinking activity affecting inner sense). the reason for Kant that we
cannot objectivy these fundamental powers, is that if we did ascribe this
fundamental power spatio-temporal properties, antinomies would arise.

What holds for the fundamental power of thought, also holds for the fundamental
power of Nature. To emphasise this 'reality' or the fundamental power, if it cannot
be called actual (since such categories can only be applied to objects of sensible
intuition) then perhaps we may call it actualising, and if it cannot be called
existing, then perhaps it must be called insisting.

We cognise this unconditioned fundamental power not in space and time, but we
cognise it nonetheless; that is, we do not see it in the empirical data of an
intuition (Socrates odour, his nasty habit of picking his nose), but we "encounter"
it in an pure example (Socrates), only as that of which the appearance (the thing's
sensible character) is the sensible sign, and that, since it cannot appear, we must
think as the cause or ground of that sensible sign (insofar it has no specific
determination: just something = x that lies beyond the appearance).

Yet we nonetheless give this fundamental power specific pure properties through
imagination. This 'coloroing in,' - through thought, by considering which of two
opposed predicates would apply to the thing in itself in its pure perfection - of
a pure idea through imagination Kant calls the ideal of reason. Yet we are also
able to think this 'thing in itself' that is the fundamental power according to
specific determinations, that is, not only as a complete, i.e., unconditioned
condition, but also as complete, thoroughly determined INDIVIDUAL! This we do with
the help of the imagination: it is what Kant calls an ideal: the stoic wise man.