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E pistemology, metaphysics [German, literally, putting forward; normally translated as representation] In addition to being a term for representation, Vorstellung is employed as a counterpart of the British empiricist terms “idea” or “sense-datum” and is used in a variety of ways by different philosophers. For these reasons, many authors prefer not to translate it into English. For Kant , representations include sensations, intuitions, concepts , and ideas and thus appear in sensibility, understanding , and reason. Representations provide the elements that are combined in judgment. The categories are representations, and the “I think” that must be able to accompany all my representations is a representation. Representations can be as ephemeral and subjective as sensations and as robust and objective as spatio-temporal objects , that is, Kantian appearances. Ideas, for Kant, differing radically from empiricist ideas, are representations that go beyond the possibility of experience. Hegel contrasted Vorstellung with “concept.” Schopenhauer claimed that “the world is my Vorstellung (representation).” “Kant in effect makes his philosophical starting-point a notion of Vorstellung or an ‘idea’. This ‘idea’ or experience can be thought of as the interface between the experiencing mind, the subject, and something in the world, an object.” Podro, The ... log in or subscribe to read full text