Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation: The Nature of Inner Experience

Description

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.

Katharina T. Kraus is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. She has published numerous articles on Kant's theoretical philosophy in journals such as Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, European Journal of Philosophy and Nous.

'Katharina T. Kraus provides us with an original and valuable exploration of Kant's specifically regulative idea of the soul and the relation of this idea to inner experience and self-formation. The topics she treats are as important philosophically as they are as matters of Kant interpretation, and her analysis represents a welcome addition to the existing literature.' Julian Wuerth, Vanderbilt University 'Katharina Kraus' important book offers a careful discussion of Kant's account of the self and self-awareness that is both hermeneutically and philosophically rewarding. On her highly original reading of Kant, our self or person is not something we find, but something we must achieve. Kraus develops this deep and difficult idea with impressive ingenuity and sophistication.' Marcus Willaschek, Goethe-University Frankfurt