Translation Help

[Ichabod]

I'm reading a biography of Immanuel Kant in english and I'm having difficulty to understand a certain passage. So, maybe someone can help me.

Here's the passage:

"He defined sensibility as 'the receptivity of the subject through which it is possible that its representative state be affected in a certain manner by the presence of an object,' and intelligence as the 'faculty of the subject through which it is able to represent things which cannot by their own nature come before the senses of their subject'".

The bolded part is the one I'm having a problem with. Is this "come before" being used in a "temporal" meaning, as in "precede", or is it being used in a "spatial" meaning, as in "things which cannot by their own nature be subject to/be experienced by the senses of their subject"? The second meaning could work in the way I'm translating it to portuguese, but I'm not sure if english actually allows it (and I'm not sure if I'm making myself understandable here ). It'd be like using "come before" as in the sentence "I came before the king and asked to be named a knight", I guess - which I'm not sure if works too.

I can't really understand what the sentence means if the "temporal" meaning is being used, but I'm a bit afraid that the "spatial" meaning, as I understand it, is not what's there to be understood. It's probably a case of just lack of knowledge on the topic, but I wanted to make sure.

Sorry for the confusing explanation. I don't know a lot about philosophy and it gets worst when I try to read it in another language.

[Mardoc]

The spatial meaning is how I would interpret the passage - intelligence as the ability to think about abstract things that can't be seen/touched/etc. It's a slightly archaic usage, but still perfectly valid.

My only doubt is that I don't know Kant - but given just that passage, that's what I think it means. Your example of 'came before the king' is perfectly good English.

[T-hawk]

Same here. I believe your second interpretation is correct. "I came before the king" is the same sense of the phrase.

This is why AI language translation is hard.

[WilliamLP]

I think as an essence of intelligence, the capability to represent something not sensed is a more reasonable attempted definition than the capability to represent things in the past. But I know nothing about philosophy.

[sunrise089]

Spatial (second).

[Ichabod]

Thanks, everyone.

[NobleHelium]

Look up the term a priori, should help you understand the translation here.