Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation
The Nature of Inner Experience

Explores the relationship between self-knowledge, individuality, and personal development by reconstructing Kant's account of personhood.

Katharina T. Kraus (Author)

9781108812757, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 4 August 2022

320 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.6 cm, 0.46 kg

'… you should buy this book if you have a healthy interest in epistemic justification, logical consistency, self-cognition, empirical character traits and behavioural dispositions.' Jason Wakefield, A Genealogy of Ontology

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.

Introduction: from inner experience to the self-formation of psychological persons
Part I. The Appearing Self: 1. Inner sense as the faculty for inner receptivity
2. Temporal consciousness and inner perception
Part II. Self-Consciousness and the 'I' of the Understanding: 3. The form of reflexivity and the expression 'I think'
4. The conditions of self-reference
Part III. The Human Person and the Demands of Reason: 5. The guiding thread of inner experience
6. The demands of theoretical reason and self-knowledge
7. The demands of practical reason and self-formation
Epilogue: individuality and wholeness.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology [HPJ], Western philosophy: Enlightenment [HPCD1], Philosophy [HP]