Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation

Abstract

As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Kant famously calls on all humans to make up their own minds, independently from the constraints imposed on them by others. Kant's focus, however, is on universal human reason, and he tells us little about what makes us individual persons. In this book, Katharina T. Kraus explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding how, according to Kant, we come to know ourselves as such persons. Drawing on Kant's Critical works and on his Lectures and Reflections, Kraus develops the first textually comprehensive and systematically coherent account of our capacity for what Kant calls 'inner experience'. The novel view of self-knowledge and self-formation in Kant that she offers addresses present-day issues in philosophy of mind and will be relevant for contemporary philosophical debates. It will be of interest to scholars of the history of philosophy, as well as of philosophy of mind and psychology.

A rule‐based account of the regulative use of reason in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason

“…The challenge for the reading I am proposing is therefore not so much to find textual evidence for it (which is abundant) but to show that Kant develops a coherent story. Taking my cue from other contributions that have emphasized the prescriptive role of reason (Kraus, 2020; Massimi, 2017; Walden, 2019), I will present a unified account that will hopefully explain why the regulative use of reason is legitimate and thereby can have a positive use in science 19…”

“…The challenge for the reading I am proposing is therefore not so much to find textual evidence for it (which is abundant) but to show that Kant develops a coherent story. Taking my cue from other contributions that have emphasized the prescriptive role of reason (Kraus, 2020;Massimi, 2017;Walden, 2019), I will present a unified account that will hopefully explain why the regulative use of reason is legitimate and thereby can have a positive use in science. 19 More specifically, I submit that not enough attention has been given so far to a crucial aspect of the prescriptive role of reason: the fact that reason's prescriptions are not to be applied to things in themselves or appearances but to the empirical use of the understanding.…”

What is the Idea of the Soul? Comments on Katharina Kraus, Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation

“…Notes 1 I do not affirm strict parity between inner and outer sense, but I do affirm that the category of substance applies to both. (Throughout, all references by simple page number are to Kraus 2020. ) 2 This also fits with another passage Kraus cites, namely, 'the persistence of the soul, merely as an object of inner sense, remains unproved and unprovable, although its persistence in life, where the thinking being (as a human being) is at the same time an object of outer sense, is clear of itself' (B415, quoted p. 158, my emphasis).…”

An expressivist interpretation of Kant's “I think”1

“…For a discussion of these matters, see Kraus (2019) and Kraus (2020: 150-167 and 171-216). 52 For a discussion of empirical self-consciousness in Kant, see Kraus (2020), and specifically of its relation to outer experience, see Kraus (2019).…”