Jacqueline Mariña

How should we understand the identity of the self over time? Immanuel Kant’s (1724- 1804) analysis of this problem is theme of this book, provisionally entitled Kant and the Problem of Personal Identity. This question, and its relation to issues of self-understanding, thought, and action have been at the forefront of philosophical debate since the problem of the cogito was brought to the fore by Descartes. Famously, for René Descartes (1596-1650), the “I think’ served as the fulcrum of an apodictic certainty that could withstand the radical doubt that arose from the possibility of systematic deception by an all powerful being. He reasoned that even if all my thoughts were mere fantasies that did not truly reflect a world distinct from the mind, access to both my activity of thinking and its products is immediate, and consequently my judgments regarding them indubitable. The self to which I have such immediate access is, according to Descartes, a simple substance retaining its unity and identity over time. David Hume (1711-1776) challenged this paradigm from an empiricist standpoint, problematizing the unity, identity, and simplicity of the self. He questioned the kind of access we have to the self over time, noting that we have immediate access only to the impressions of sense, from which our ideas are derived. And if this is so, he argued, we have no idea of a single self over time, but rather have access only to a variety of impressions that are constantly changing. In his Treatise on Human Nature, he observed, “Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions or from any other that the idea of self is derived, and consequently, there is no such idea.” Instead, Hume argued, the self is a mere bundle of ideas, one whose constitution changes over time.

It was Hume’s radical skepticism that awoke Kant from his dogmatic slumbers. Hume’s skeptical arguments concerned not only the identity of the self, but also the identity of objects, as well as the possibility of a cogent rational account of causation. Kant’s monumental Critique of Pure Reason countered this skepticism in arguing that the mind is not a passive blank slate receiving the impressions of sense, but that it is active as well; the impressions of sense must be structured by fundamental concepts (categories) if objective knowledge is to be possible. Impressions of sense alone cannot yield stable objects; without categories they are blind–a mere blooming mass of confusion. This book focuses on how Kant conceived of the activity the mind and the self-conscious awareness of the identity of consciousness as a precondition for the possibility of judgment. We are not here speaking of the possibility of knowledge of the soul as a thing in itself and hence of metaphysics, but rather, of the identity of consciousness as a condition of the possibility of the knowledge of objects, and as thereby conditioning judgment. 

Famously, in §16 of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had noted that “The I think must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much to say that the representation would either be impossible or else at least would be nothing for me” (B131-2). A principle function of the B- deduction is to show how it is possible that the same I think can accompany different representations, for only if such an identical I think can accompany them can I become aware of them as mine. The possibility of becoming aware of the different representations as mine conditions the possibility of their synthesis, and hence is a condition of judgment. This implies, further, that the possibility of self-consciousness conditions my capacity to be aware of my representations as belonging to me. Hence, the I think that must be able to accompany my representations is the I think as object of thought. The argument of the transcendental deduction thereby turns on an analysis of self-consciousness, that is, of how it is possible for the self to make itself, as an identical subject having representations, its own object. This possibility of self- awareness, in which the self becomes an object for itself, is a transcendental condition of cognition and thereby of all experience. Kant’s understanding of the mind thereby involves two moments that stand in interrelation to one another. The first is what he calls original apperception. This is the activity of thinking itself to which we have only an immediate access; in regard to original apperception alone, I am aware only that I am (B157). This activity, however, cannot be an awareness of anything unless it is also possible for the mind to be co-conscious of itself in its awareness of something. Hence the second moment in self-consciousness is the self’s awareness of itself as an identical subject having representations. In making the possibility of self-consciousness a condition of the possibility of cognition, Kant fundamentally transformed the notion of the self that he inherited from his rationalist predecessors. The idea of the soul as a simple metaphysical substance is replaced with an understanding of the mind as active, along with an account of the conditions of cognition, which Kant argued included the possibility of awareness of the I think as object of thought.

Noting that awareness of the I think must be possible for cognition to take place is one thing, however; showing how it is possible is quite another. Hume had convincingly argued that this self-awareness, which must be identical throughout changes in the self’s representational states, cannot be any kind of idea derived from sense impressions, as those are constantly changing. For these reasons, Hume concluded we simply do not have such an idea of self. Kant recognized Hume’s challenge and sought to overcome it: the I that accompanies all my thoughts must be a simple and self-identical representation, so that through it “nothing manifold is given.” Moreover, as condition of all cognition, this awareness of the self as thinker must be given a priori. Given these conditions, in what way can I become aware of the identity of the consciousness accompanying my representations? In this book I read Kant’s transcendental deduction, the schematism of the pure concepts of the understanding, the refutation of idealism, and the analogies of experience of the first Critique in light of the question of the possibility of a pure a priori self-consciousness through which the self cognizes itself as the simple and identical thinker of its thoughts. This pure a priori self-consciousness depends on the possibility of the unification of the temporal manifold, through which the self is able to project its possible acts of thought forwards and backwards in time, and to be aware of these as its own. Given that the possibility of such self-awareness conditions the possibility of our knowledge of objects and our capacity to make judgments, an analysis of it is central not only to Kant’s examination of theoretical reason, but to his understanding of the possibility of practical reason as well. My ability to think of myself as identical over time is a condition of my capacity to act on principles and make moral judgments. In order to act on principles, I must be able to grasp my past as my own and project myself into the future. I must grasp my point of view as my own, and I must also understand my situation. Only in so grasping my history as my own, my strengths and limitations, and the constellation of events in which I find myself, can I reflect upon the present, my possibilities for action, and how the actions I take now will impinge upon the direction of my life as whole. 

While there are many studies of Kant’s work in English, and a few that take up the problem of Kant’s theory of the mind, (most significantly Ameriks 1983, Brooke 1994, Kitcher, 1990, 2011, and Keller 1998), these works either do not recognize, or do not focus on, the relation of what I call original apperception in Kant and its relation to transcendental self- consciousness (what I call the apriori reflected self-consciousness). I argue that for Kant this relation is the most important one in determining the self’s understanding of its own personal identity and how this identity must function in regard to practical reason and moral judgments. This study explores how Kant’s groundbreaking philosophy set up a completely new framework for understanding personal identity in terms of self-consciousness, one that became the dominant paradigm in nineteenth and twentieth century Continental thought.