Kant on self-knowledge and self-formation : the nature of inner experience

Author / Creator

Kraus, Katharina T., 1983- author

Available as

Online

Summary

"As the preeminent Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant is famous for emphasizing that each and every one of us is called to "make use of one's own understanding without direction from another"...

"As the preeminent Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant is famous for emphasizing that each and every one of us is called to "make use of one's own understanding without direction from another" (Enlightenment, 8:35). We are all called to make up our own minds, independently from the external constraints imposed on us by others. In the face of this Enlightenment calling, much of Kant's philosophy then reads as a manual for how to employ one's mental faculties in the proper way - faculties that are supposed to be universally realized by all human beings. Given his focus on a universal conception of the human mind, Kant tells us surprisingly little about what makes us the unique individual persons we are and how we come to know ourselves as such. This book explores Kant's distinctive account of psychological personhood by unfolding, in accordance with the tenets of his Critical philosophy, his account of empirical self-knowledge as the knowledge that one has of oneself as a unique psychological person"--

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