Self Concept In The Theory Of Kant's Epistemology

The concept of “self” is a central concept in philosophy and thequestions about self are important questions in philosophy, thesequestions including the follow: How can we know ourselves? Can weable to gain true knowledge about ourselves? Is self a substance? Sincephilosophical thinking occurred, ancient philosophers perplexed bythese questions and they gave their own opinions. In Critique Of PureReason, Kant gave a critical response not only to the ancient opinionsbut also to these questions themselves. But Kant’s main points andarticulations are not lucid, the first aim of this essay is to clarify theconcept of self in Kant’s epistemology. From my point of view, theconcept of self in Kant’s epistemology can be divided into threeaspects, namely empirical self, noumenal self and transcendental selfconsciousness. In part one of this essay, I will begin my discuss fromKant’s view about time, and then elucidate Kant’s distinction betweenempirical self and noumenal self and why the attempt to acquireknowledge about the later can only leads to a series of illusions but notthe empirical knowledge. Part two mainly concerns abouttranscendental self consciousness, including why we need it, how tounderstand it and the its function. The second aim of this essay is to putKant’s view about self into a broader context of modern philosophyand discuss the relationship between Kant’s view and former and laterphilosophers’ views, so part three including the follows: the criticalheritage of Kant’s concept of self from the earlier philosophers such asDescartes, Leibniz and Hume; the influence of Kant’s concept of self tothe later philosopher, such as Fichte, Schelling and Husserl; how can weeliminate the puzzle of mind-body interaction from Kant’s point of view;how Kant offer a solution about the inter-subjectivity problem throughhis transcendental subjectivity and influence of this program on the later philosopher such as Mead and later Wittgenstein; the similarity anddifference between Kant’s view about self and the contemporaryfunctionalists.