JVB on the TCD of the B Edition Sections 24-25

pp. 131

Sections 24-25

To complete this discussion, let's look at Kant's view of self-knowledge in sections 24 and 25. At B152-3 he describes the "paradox" of self-knowledge as following from the Aesthetic doctrine that in inner sense we are presented to ourselves "only as we appear to ourselves, not as we are in ourselves, since we intuit ourselves only as we are internally affected, which seems to be contradictory, since we would have to relate ourselves passively."

The paradox follows from transcendental idealism. Because space and time are merely subjectiev forms of sensibility, all objects intuited in space and time are only appearances, and not things in themselves. This applies equally to the empricial self, given in inner sense. Accordingly, we can no more intuit the self in itself than we do physical objects in themsleves.

In the Analytic, however, Kant has shown that the "I" that thinks is active and spontaneous. Judging is an activity consisting of synthetic operations the "I" performs on the manifold given in intuition. So it seems paradoxical to claim both that the "I" must be active and that it can know itself only as it passively appears to itself.

Kant's solution is to deny both that the "I think" is a cognition of the self, and that we can cognize the thinking self. In transcendental self-consciousness, Kant says, "I am conscious of myself not as I appear to myself, nor as I am in myself, but only that I am. This representation is a thinking, not an intuiting" (B157). Self-awareness in the t.u.a. is not a cognition of the self as an object, but a merely formal representation of one's existence as thinking. (This is why Kant disagrees with Descartes's view that the "I" of the cogito must be a mental substance.) This self-awareness is devoid of the intuition required to distinguish oneself from other objects and thus to represent oneself as a particular obejct. In his footnote at B157 Kant says, "The I think expresses the act of determining my existence. The existence is thereby already given, but the way in which I am to determine it, i.e., the manifold that I am to posit in myself as belonging to it, is not yet thereby given." And at B158n he denies that we can intuit the activity of thinking: "Now I do not have yet another self-intutiion, which would give the determining in me, of the spontaneity of which alone I am conscious...thus I cannot determine my existence as that of a self-active being, rather I merely represent the spontaneity of my thought."


Thus Kant dispels the paradox by denying that the t.u.a. is a cognition of the theinking self. It is only a formal awareness of the activity of thinking, identical for all discursive intelligences. Since the sensibility yields only appearances, we can know ourselves only as we appear to ourselves, not as things in themselves. Although this too seems paradoxical, the "I" of "I think" is neither an appearance nor a thing in itself, but a condition of all thought.