Kantian Space and Time

In the Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) argued that knowledge can be divided into two different types: a priori and a posteriori. The latter is knowledge that is acquired through experience. The color of an object is a type of a posteriori knowledge. We know Edward’s car is a silver Volvo because we’ve seen it. Edward’s car could easily be blue, however. Color is an accidental property, which means the color of the car has no effect on the car. We can imagine it as any color we wish, but it’s still Edward’s car.

A priori knowledge is knowledge that we possess independent of an experience. If we separate all the unnecessary properties from Edward’s car such as its color, shape, hardness, and so on, we are eventually left with one inseparable property: extension. This just means that no matter what the car looks like, how big it is, and so on, it must take up space. It’s impossible to imagine a physical object without it occupying a certain amount of space. Extension, therefore, is a form of a priori knowledge for Kant. We know that objects must occupy space without having to encounter every possible object. This means we must have the notion of space prior to any perception of an object.

Like space, time is also a matter of a priori knowledge. Time, of course, is central to concepts like succession and motion. When Bella Swan drives her truck from Charlie’s house to school, the distance she travels can be divided into successive parts. First she is at Charlie’s house, then she is one block away, then two, and so on, until she arrives at school. This progression makes sense only if we understand it in terms of earlier and later (that is, in terms of time). Likewise, motion is the change of place over time. Obviously, one couldn’t change locations if there were no time in which to do so. As with space, we can’t imagine an absence of time. We can imagine a period of time without any objects, but we can’t imagine an object without time (an object wouldn’t exist if it didn’t exist for any time). So, like space, time is something that we bring to the world in order to make sense of it.¹

Kant revolutionized the way we think of space and time, arguing that space and time are not part of the world but instead are part of the mind. How we perceive the world is the result of how our brains are structured to understand it, and not how the world is actually structured. When Bella is still human, her perception of the world is limited. After she becomes a vampire, however, she perceives the world in a new way. Because of her heightened senses, she can see individual motes of dust floating in the air and hear car radios on the freeway miles away. The world itself hasn’t changed. The dust and sounds exist while Bella is human and remain unchanged once she’s a vampire, but Bella has changed. The physical limitations she experienced as a human have been removed.

**Kant, Dracula, and Twilight’s Vampires**

What was a year to an immortal?

—Bella, New Moon²

The vampires in the Twilight series differ from those in traditional vampire lore in many respects, but instead of examining every vampire legend, we’ll use the vampire who became the template for modern vampire lore: Count Dracula. Dracula was based on the vampire legends of Europe, and since most vampires today are modeled after Dracula, he’ll fit our purpose nicely.

Dracula shares much in common with the vampires in Twilight: being immortal, requiring blood for sustenance, and possessing tremendous physical strength.³ Whether Dracula is stronger than Emmett Cullen is unknown, but I’d bet on Emmett in an arm wrestling competition. Dracula also has the power to hypnotize his victims, a power Edward Cullen appears to have as well.

There are, though, some notable differences between Dracula and Twilight’s vampires, such as Dracula’s aversion to crucifixes and holy objects that have no effect on Edward and his kind. Where the vampires in the Twilight series really differ from modern vampire lore, however, is their ability to go outside during the day. While Dracula is merely weakened by sunlight, modern vampire lore heightens this weakness, making sunlight fatal to vampires.⁴ Shortly after Edward rescues Bella in Port Angeles, we learn that most legends concerning the weaknesses of vampires are myth. It isn’t until Edward takes Bella to his hidden meadow that we become privy to the sun’s effect on vampires. Rather than bursting into flames, vampire skin sparkles in sunlight. This departure from modern vampire lore creates an interesting distinction between the ontology of Stephenie Meyer’s vampires and the ontology of archetypal Dracula-vampires.

Although Dracula doesn’t age, he is still affected by the passage of time. Dracula-vampires cannot come out during the day without being weakened or bursting into flames. The vampires of Twilight are not limited by the sun, and therefore, there is no temporal division for them between day and night. Their life is not endangered by being in sunlight. They avoid it because they want to keep their existence a secret. Staying out of the sun is a self-imposed limitation (although one that’s enforced by the Volturi). It isn’t an ontological limitation. Thus, the vampires in Twilight are much more atemporal beings than Dracula-vampires. Could the absence of external time restraints explain their ageless quality? Perhaps, but given that we cannot think outside of space and time, we can only speculate.

Not only time but space is practically irrelevant for the vampires in Twilight. Supernatural speed enables vampires to traverse great distances very quickly. Because they don’t need to breathe, they are excellent swimmers. And their incredible strength allows them to jump over (or move) any obstacle in their way. As a human, Bella is limited in terms of space; it takes her a long time to travel great distances by foot. Edward, by contrast, is able to travel short distances in the blink of an eye. Just think of the time when he rescued Bella from being crushed by Tyler Crowley’s van. External space is compressed to the point of irrelevance.

Abilities beyond Space and Time: Alice, Edward, and Aro

Many of the vampires in Twilight possess special abilities. Alice Cullen, for example, can see the future. In addition to the fortunes of humans and vampires, she can predict trends in the stock market. (Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?) It’s one thing to have supernatural speed and strength, but how are abilities like this possible?

Alice’s ability to see the future is bound up with space and time. When Alice sees a possible future event, two things are occurring. First, she is seeing a future event in the present, which means she is experiencing the future as overlapping with the present. Time is being collapsed such that the time period between present and future is eliminated. Second, she is viewing one spatial event in a different, current space. When Alice and Jasper Cullen take Bella to the motel to hide her from James, Alice “sees” James in the ballet studio while she’s currently in the motel. Just as with time, she experiences one spatial event overlapping with another because the distance between these two spaces collapses. By suspending space and time, Alice blurs the boundary between present and future.

Edward’s ability to read minds also manipulates space. Instead of being confined inside his own mind, Edward is able to hear the thoughts of others. His ability works over distance, allowing him to hear the thoughts of people in the same room, as well as the thoughts of people a few miles away. Essentially, Edward collapses the space between his mind and the minds of others.

Aro, one of the leaders of the Volturi, possesses a more powerful version of this ability. Aro is able to hear everything in a person’s mind simply by touching the person. He hears not only what a person is currently thinking, but everything they have ever thought. While Alice can view a person’s future, Aro is able to view their past. Aro collapses the past and the present, while Alice collapses the present and the future.

Since the past, present, and future are meaningless in the face of eternity, and space does not present an obstacle, we have a good clue here for understanding vampire ontology: they do not exist in space and time in the same way that we do.

When Worlds Collide

You are a magnet for trouble.

—Edward, Twilight⁵

One of the central themes of the Twilight series is the conflict between the worlds of Edward and Bella. Edward’s world makes sense before he encounters Bella, and Bella’s world, while drab, makes sense before she encounters Edward. It’s only when Bella and Edward pursue a relationship that problems result for both. Edward exists in a world that is dangerous to humans, while Bella exists in a world that is largely ignorant of vampires. But perhaps the problems that Bella encounters because of the dangers vampires like James and Victoria pose are just manifestations of a deeper problem—namely, the conflict between Bella’s imposition of Kantian space and time with Edward’s suspension of it.

Consider how Bella is depicted as unathletic and clumsy, while Edward and his family are athletic and graceful. Alice always seems to be dancing when she moves, while Bella struggles not to trip over her own feet. Even their driving habits reflect this conflict. Bella drives her slow-moving truck, while the Cullens race fancy cars at dangerous speeds. Bella seems entirely limited by space, while the Cullens transcend space.

Bella is aware of this disparity, as she always remarks that time seems to slip by when she’s with Edward, resulting in a muddled blur of both time and place. It’s as if the speed of her world increases when she’s with Edward and slows down when they part company. This feeling is rather common, especially when driving. Think of a time you didn’t notice how fast you were actually driving until you got off the highway and slowed down. It’s the same with Bella. When she’s with Edward she doesn’t notice time. But once she leaves his company, she returns to “normal” speed and it feels like everything has slowed to a crawl. While the high of new love certainly helps explain this experience, it may also be the result of Bella’s limited world of space and time directly interacting with Edward’s. The conflict between the worlds takes a dangerous turn, of course, at the major plot point in Breaking Dawn: Bella’s pregnancy.

Previously, the struggle between Bella’s and Edward’s worlds never manifested in actual conflict. Yes, Bella was often in danger due to her encounters with the vampire world, but her world could stay separate from Edward’s. When Edward and his family leave the town of Forks at the beginning of New Moon, Bella is completely devastated, but she is not in danger. Her life goes on, as does Edward’s. Once Bella becomes pregnant, however, the conflict between Edward’s suspended Kantian world and Bella’s world is no longer superficial. Her pregnancy creates a direct physical, biological, and ontological conflict between the world of humans and the world of vampires, threatening her life. If Bella has the child, she will likely die. Sadly, humans and vampires appear incompatible, at least at first.

The confluence of Edward’s and Bella’s worlds creates new possibilities that don’t exist in Bella’s world. When Bella becomes pregnant, she reaches full term in weeks instead of months. For humans, pregnancy is supposed to take nine months. Large, quick changes can be unhealthy for both mother and child. It’s no surprise, then, that as Bella’s pregnancy reaches the end of its term, Renesmee begins to damage her from the inside by breaking Bella’s bones. Bella’s world of Kantian space and time is in a life-or-death struggle with the suspended vampire world, and as we know, Bella’s world loses. Only by turning Bella into a vampire, and removing the limitations of space and time, is Edward able to save her.

As we have seen, if the ontology of vampires involves the suspension of Kantian space and time, humans are at a significant disadvantage. And it turns out Bella was right to insist on becoming a vampire!

NOTES

1 For an in-depth explanation, see Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

2 Stephenie Meyer, New Moon (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2006), p. 57.

3 See Bram Stoker’s Dracula (New York: Scholastic, 1971).

4 One need only look at recent television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and True Blood.

5 Stephenie Meyer, Twilight (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2005), p. 174.