In philosophy, transcendental apperception is a term employed by Immanuel Kant and subsequent Kantian philosophers to designate that which makes experience possible.
[2] Transcendental apperception is the uniting and building of coherent consciousness out of different elementary inner experiences (differing in both time and topic, but all belonging to self-consciousness).
For example, the experience of "passing of time" relies on this transcendental unity of apperception, according to Kant.
There are six steps to transcendental apperception: One consequence of Kant's notion of transcendental apperception is that the "self" is only ever encountered as appearance,[3] never as it is in itself.
The term was later adapted in psychology by Johann Friedrich Herbart (see Apperception).