Pure intuition in mathematics: historical origins of a misunderstanding

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the distinction between pure and empirical intuition, and on and the role of imagination as the exhibition of concepts in intuition, in mathematical construction. I will illustrate Kant’s thesis through a discussion of the history of a widespread misunderstanding of Kant’s appeal to intuition in mathematics that is still dominant today in the literature devoted to Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. I trace the origin of that misunderstanding back to Frege (and, before him, to Eberhard and Trendelenburg), and conclude with a brief analysis of an instructive antecedent of the con]ation of image and pure intuition, the exchange between Descartes and Gassendi regarding the chiliagon.