Write maybe two or three pages on the following topic. Please print your essay using line spacing of 1.5 or 2. (1.5 saves a little paper) If sending a digital copy as an attachment file, put it in Word, or RTF, or PDF, or WordPerfect format. If you quote anything, give a full citation as a footnote or an endnote.
Background setup
Kant claims that we have a priori knowledge of a few basic features of time as time appears to us within our awarenesses (i.e., our "intuitions"). Here are some of these features he mentions: whenever we are aware (i.e., have an intuition), that awareness occurs either before or after or simultaneous with any other given awareness we have ever had or ever will have. In other words, any given "intuition" occurs within a single time sequence (and all have temporal features). He could also have said that we know a priori that each of our awarenesses will have some temporal duration. There never can be an awareness which is not related temporally to all other awarenesses or that doesn't last for at least a bit. (This does not mean we can remember or predict any particular awareness, or that we never make a mistake in recalling which ones came before which other ones. This is not about being able to actually list all our intuitions in order. It's about the fact that we know they all fit into an order whether or not we can figure that order out.)
It is important to Kant's project that our knowledge of such things be a priori rather than a posteriori, because the a priori character of our knowledge is the basic premise for his ultimate conclusion that time is something our mental apparatus brings to intuitions. In other words without the a priori character of this knowledge about time, he has no grounds for saying that time is a "form" that shapes our intuition of everything. He thinks he needs that conclusion about time because he wants to use it later on.
The topic to write about
Come up with the best reasons you can come up with for the Kantian conclusion that the basic features of time mentioned above are indeed knowable a priori, as Kant claimed. One approach would be to explain why it wouldn't be more reasonable or just as reasonable to claim instead that these features of time are ones we learn about through experience with lots of events. You could use Kant's own arguments, or take off from some of Kant's remarks that trigger an idea in you. Or, you could come up with a different twist and be original. Probably it's easier to find some remarks Kant makes and try to build on them.
Note that this is NOT a paper in Kant interpretation where you are supposed to quote a sentence he wrote and then come up with 39 different readings of it before you settle on the "best" reading. Instead, this is a paper topic that asks you to think of the problem that Kant saw as important, and to try to solve it. In the process, you will probably end up thinking some of Kant's own thoughts. You will at least understand the problem itself better, and thus appreciate what Kant was up against in trying to prove he was right.
Alternative topic
If you really don't like the above topic, propose another one that is just as significant that you like better, and negotiate.