Comments on Katharina T. Kraus, Kant on Self-Knowledge and Self-Formation: The Nature of Inner Experience

Abstract

Kraus’s book is both deep and wide-ranging. My comments focus on her account of Kant on self-awareness – both a priori and empirical apperception. Basic to her account is what she calls the hylomorphism of mental faculties in Kant. Kraus distinguishes her ‘reflexive’ account of apperception from both ‘logical’ and ‘psychological’ accounts. An inevitable question is: Does Kant think we have an empirical cognition of the self? Kraus seems to want to say yes, but I question this answer. Cognition requires both intuition and conception. My claim is that it requires intuition in both space and time, but inner empirical self-awareness is apparently in time only. Kant’s Refutation of Idealism in B, as developed later in the Kiesewetter essays, makes awareness of our body essential to time determination.