7 - The Demands of Practical Reason and Self-Formation

Summary

Chapter 7, “The Demands of Practical Reason and Self-Formation”, completes Kant’s account of psychological personhood by showing that the idea of the soul defines the unifying form of a person’s mental life. It finally establishes the self-formation view via the second central thesis that psychological persons first form themselves in the course of realizing their mental capacities under the normative guidance of a unifying idea. The idea of the soul demands, for instance, that we realize ourselves as unified across time (according to the presupposition of substantiality), as the self-efficacious common cause of all mental activity (according to the presupposition of a fundamental power), and as self-directing towards a rational personality (according to the presupposition of personal identity). The chapter explicates the intrinsic normativity of personhood in terms of a demand for inner systematicity across three distinct, though interrelated spheres: the epistemic, the practical, and the affective. This demand is finally articulated in the form of two imperatives: the imperative of self-formation and the imperative of self-knowledge.