SPAH Seminar Series: Dr Thomas Khurana, University of Essex

Abstract

In the contemporary literature on self-knowledge, it is often assumed that Kant has distinguished two forms of self-knowledge: knowledge of our sensations through “inner sense” and knowledge of what we think and judge through “pure apperception”.

In this talk, I want to question the assumption that Kant’s distinction of pure and empirical apperception can in fact be understood as pointing us to two self-standing types of self-knowledge. As Kant makes clear in various places, pure apperception alone does not amount to "cognition of myself" (Erkenntnis meiner selbst). For it to yield knowledge of myself, it is itself dependent on my empirical awareness of myself. Self-knowledge is thus based on two forms of self-relation that are in seeming tension with one another, but only together give us knowledge of ourselves.

I elaborate this Kantian account in three steps: First, I retrace the way in which Kant distinguishes and relates pure and empirical apperception (I). In a second step, I highlight the way in which Kant’s distinction implies that we are given to ourselves in two perspectives that, in the context of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, remain in a problematic tension (II). I close by investigating the way Kant elaborates this tension through an account of practical self-consciousness (III).