Kant's Theory of the Self (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy)

Arthur Melnick

ISBN 10: 0415994705 / ISBN 13: 9780415994705

Published by Taylor & Francis Group, 2008

About this Item

pp. 186.

Seller Inventory # 26424314

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Kant's Theory of the Self (Routledge Studies in Eighteenth-Century Philosophy)
• Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0415994705
• ISBN 13: 9780415994705
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

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.

About the Author

Arthur Melnick is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has published several books on Kant’s philosophy including Space, Time, and Thought in Kant, and Themes in Kant’s Metaphysics and Ethics.