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Apperception and Related Matters in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Opus Postumum
 
Title (other)Апперцепция и связанные с ней вопросы в «Критике чистого разума» Канта и в «Opus Postumum»
PIIS271326680024029-1-1
DOI10.18254/S271326680024029-1
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Andrew Brook 
Affiliation: Carleton University
Address: Canada, Ottawa
Journal nameStudies in Transcendental Philosophy
EditionVolume 3 Issue 3
Abstract

In the Critique of Pure Reason (1781/7), Kant laid out a deep-running and largely original picture of the apperceptive mind, including a claim that in consciousness of self, one does not appear to oneself as an object and that consciousness of self is presupposed by consciousness of other things. As a result, consciousness of oneself does not provide knowledge of oneself and the referential apparatus of consciousness of self is radically different from other kinds of referential apparatus. The main purpose of this paper is to summarize this picture and then explore how much of it is still to be found in his late, unfinished Opus Postumum (1800/04).

Abstract (other)

В «Критике чистого разума» (1781/7) Кант изложил глубокую и во многом оригинальную картину апперцептивного разума, включая утверждение о том, что в самосознании человек не представляется самому себе объектом и что сознание других вещей предполагает самосознание. В результате самосознание не дает знания о себе, а референциальный аппарат самосознания радикально отличается от других видов референциального аппарата. Основная цель данной статьи – обобщить эту картину, а затем исследовать, насколько ее можно найти у Канта в позднем, незаконченном «Opus Postumum» (1800/04).

KeywordsCritique of Pure Reason, Opus Postumum, apperception, consciousness of self – one does not appear as an object in, presupposed by other consciousness, referential apparatus of.
Keywords list (other)Критика чистого разума, Opus Postumum, апперцепция, сознание себя – человек не предстает как объект в, предполагаемом другим сознанием, референтный аппарат.
Received17.11.2022
Publication date29.12.2022
Number of characters41090
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Table of contents

Apperceptive Consciousness of Self in the Critique of Pure Reason
The Shape of Opus Postumum
Apperceptive Consciousness of Self in the Opus Postumum
Final Thoughts
1 In Kant’s work, apperception is one’s consciousness of oneself as the single common subject of one’s experience (A350). (That is what he meant by the term most of the time, anyway [Brook 2021a]). In some widely separated passages in the Critique of Pure Reason at the beginning of his Critical Period, Kant paints a complicated and penetrating picture of apperceptive consciousness of oneself (AppCS) – how one is presented in such consciousness, what one is conscious of in oneself, and what the ‘machinery’ of such consciousness of self is like. I have tried to lay out Kant’s views on these matters a number of times (Brook 1993, 2001, 2004/2020).
2 Here I will examine a different issue: How did Kant’s views on apperception stand at the end of the Critical Period (or, for those who date the end of the Critical Period to the publication of the Critique of Judgment, a dating that Kant himself encouraged), at the end of his work? Here one might look to two works, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View and the Opus Postumum. Since I have said something about Anthropology elsewhere (Brook 1993, 2001), in this paper I will focus on Opus Postumum (hereafter OP).
3 OP is difficult. It exists only as bundles (fascicles) of drafts, often highly repetitious – it is only a slight exaggeration to say that many passages of, let us say, 30 pages read more like a three-page passage repeated with revisions ten times. Because it was far from finished when Kant stopped working on it, gauging the status of what Kant says is often difficult. In particular, for many scribbles in the margins, it is unclear whether he endorsed what he wrote or was merely making a note to himself (we all make notes that we would never endorse). Or again, when OP contains only an undeveloped sketch of an idea, is that all that Kant would have said in a completed manuscript or would he have developed a detailed account of the idea?
4

Why compare what Kant said about AppCS early in his Critical period to what he said about it near the end? The question is interesting in its own right, I think, but there is a more particular reason. On some topics, Kant laid out contradictory views about the mind in different works at different times. The relationship between simplicity of the ‘soul’ (i.e., the mind not being a system of components) and unified consciousness is a good example. In the first-edition CPR chapter on the paralogisms, he argued (against Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, and maybe Reid, cogently, in my view) that consciousness being unified does not entail that the subject of that consciousness is simple. As he put it,
5

 Since a thought consists of many presentations, its unity [that is to say, it being a single unified thought] is collective and can … refer just as well to the collective unity of the substances co-operating on the thought … as it can refer to the absolute unity [here he has to mean, indeed in the next sentence says, simplicity] of the subject (A353)
6 However, pre-Critically, he had argued that unity does require simplicity and after CPR, especially in popular lectures, he slid back to his earlier view (unfortunately, as I see it). Indeed, it became his dominant view, as Wuerth (2014, esp. Ch. 5.3) has shown. Given this example (and there are others: whether we can show that the mind is immaterial is another), a comparison of his early Critical views on the mind with his final views is well worth doing. Kant does not discuss simplicity in OP,1 so we cannot compare CPR and OP on simplicity, as nice as that would be, but we can compare the two works on consciousness of self. He also mentions immateriality in both works. Though the comments are very short and sparse in OP, near the end we will briefly compare his views on that topic, too. 1. He may mention it briefly a couple of times (pp. 118 and 149 of the Forster selections [see note 9]).
7

Apperceptive Consciousness of Self in the Critique of Pure Reason
8

Before we launch into OP, let us remind ourselves of some of Kant’s claims about consciousness of self in CPR – penetrating and often highly original claims. I will order them so that they will connect readily to OP. Kant made at least four major claims. They are all in the two versions of the chapter on the paralogisms and two passages in B derived from the chapter in A, §24 (the last half) and §25 of the B-edition Transcendental Deduction. The first is this:
9

1. In AppCS, one is conscious of oneself as other than an object (presumably, other than as an object among other objects). Rather, one is conscious of oneself (and of space and time) as the ‘form of all experience’ (A346/B404, A402; see also B421).
10 Kant held that we are conscious of ourselves in two very different ways. We are of course conscious of ourselves as a middle-size chunk of tissue – an object – standing in complicated relationships to other middle-sized objects. This is consciousness of ourselves in inner sense. However, says Kant, though we are conscious of, “… the rest of nature solely through the senses” and we have that kind of consciousness of ourselves, too, we are also conscious of ourselves,

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1. Bennett, J. F. (1974) Kant’s Dialectic. New York: Cambridge University Press;
2. Brook, A. (1993) “Kant’s A Priori Methods for Recognizing Necessary Truths.” In: Philip Hanson and Bruce Hunter (eds.), Return of the A Priori, Canadian Journal of Philosophy (Supplementary Volume), 18: 215–52;
3. Brook, A. (2001) “Kant, self-awareness and self-reference.” In A. Brook, DeVidi R.C. (eds.), Self-reference and self-awareness. Philadelphia: John Benjamins;
4. Brook, A. and J. Wuerth (2020) “Kant’s View of the Mind and Consciousness of Self,” In: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.);
5. Brook, A. (2021a) Apperception. In: Julian Wuerth, ed. The Cambridge Kant Lexicon. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 42–46;
6. Brook, A. (2021b) Obscure Representations. In: Julian Wuerth, ed. The Cambridge Kant Lexicon. New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 316–18;
7. Kant, I. (1781/7) Critique of Pure Reason, ed. and trans. P. Guyer and A. Wood. Cambridge:
8. Cambridge University Press, 1997;
9. Kant, I. (1783) Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, ed. and trans. G. Hatfield. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004;
10. Kant, I. (1786) Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, ed. and trans. M. Friedman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004;
11. Kant, I. (1796/1802) Opus Postumum. A selection of passages by Eckart Förster, translation by Eckard Förster and Michael Rosen. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press;
12. Shoemaker, S.  (1968) Self-reference and self-awareness. Journal of Philosophy 65: 555–567;
13. Wuerth, J. (2014) Kant on Mind, Action, and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press;
14. Wittgenstein, L. (1935-6/1968)  Notes for Lectures on ‘Private Experience’ and ‘Sense-Data’, ed. Rush Rhees. Philosophical Review 77, pp. 271–300.

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