KantÆs Theory of the Self

by Melnick; Arthur

• ISBN13: 9780415994705
• ISBN10: 0415994705
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-25
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The self for Kant is something real, and yet is neither appearance nor thing in itself, but rather has some third status. Appearances for Kant arise in space and time where these are respectively forms of outer and inner attending (intuition). Melnick explains the "third status" by identifying the self with intellectual action that does not arise in the progression of attending (and so is not appearance), but accompanies and unifies inner attending. As so accompanying, it progresses with that attending and is therefore temporal--not a thing in itself. According to Melnick, the distinction between the self or the subject and its thoughts is a distinction wholly within intellectual action; only such a non-entitative view of the self is consistent with Kant's transcendental idealism. As Melnick demonstrates in this volume, this conception of the self clarifies all of Kant's main discussions of this issue in the Transcendental Deduction and the Paralogisms of Pure Reason.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Preliminary Overview
The Reality of the Thinking Subject	p. 3
The Paralogisms and Transcendental Idealism	p. 12
The Thinking Subject
The First Paralogism	p. 29
The Second Paralogism	p. 39
Transcendental Self-Consciousness	p. 51
Other Interpretations of the Paralogisms	p. 61
The Cognizing Subject
Empirical Apperception	p. 75
Pure Apperception	p. 94
The Person as Subject
Apperception and Inner Sense	p. 111
The Third Paralogism and Kant's Conception of a Person	p. 131
The Subject and Material Reality
The Embodied Subject	p. 151
The Fourth Paralogism	p. 160
Notes	p. 177
Bibliography	p. 181
Index	p. 185
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