Kant's Theory of the Self [Book Review]

British Journal for the History of Philosophy 18 (5):950-952 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

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.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,518

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-11-25

Downloads
167 (#141,504)

6 months
14 (#243,699)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Colin Marshall
University of Washington

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references