Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation

The Nature of Inner Experience

Katharina T. Kraus

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781108836647
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108877619
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Modern Philosophy

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Table
• Preface
• Introduction From Inner Experience to the Self-Formation of Psychological Persons
• Part I The Appearing Self
• Part II Self-Consciousness and the “I” of the Understanding
• Part III The Human Person and the Demands of Reason
• Epilogue Individuality and Wholeness
• Bibliography
• Index