Introduction - From Inner Experience to the Self-Formation of Psychological Persons

Summary

As the pre-eminent Enlightenment philosopher, Immanuel Kant is famous for emphasizing that each and every one of us is called to “make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another” (Enlightenment 8:35). We are all called to make up our own minds, independently from the external constraints imposed on us by others. In the face of this Enlightenment calling, much of Kant’s philosophy, then, reads as a manual for how to employ one’s mental faculties in the proper way – faculties that are supposed to be universally realized by all human beings. Given his focus on a universal conception of the human mind, Kant tells us surprisingly little about what makes us the unique individual persons we are and how we come to know ourselves as such.