The construction of a conception is the
presentation a priori of the intuition which corresponds to the
conception. For this purpose a non-empirical intuition is requisite,
which, as an intuition, is an individual object; while, as the
construction of a conception (a general representation), it must be
seen to be universally valid for all the possible intuitions which
rank under that conception. Thus I construct a triangle, by the
presentation of the object which corresponds to this conception,
either by mere imagination, in pure intuition, or upon paper, in
empirical intuition, in both cases completely a priori, without
borrowing the type of that figure from any experience. The
individual figure drawn upon paper is empirical; but it serves,
notwithstanding, to indicate the conception, even in its universality,
because in this empirical intuition we keep our eye merely on the
act of the construction of the conception, and pay no attention to the
various modes of determining it, for example, its size, the length
of its sides, the size of its angles, these not in the least affecting
the essential character of the conception.
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