Description
Book SynopsisIn Apperception and Self-Consciousness in Kant and German Idealism, Dennis Schulting examines the themes of reflexivity, self-consciousness, representation and apperception in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German Idealism more widely. Central to Schulting's argument is the claim that all human experience is inherently self-referential and that this is part of a self-reflexivity of thought, or what is called transcendental apperception, a Kantian insight that was first apparent in the work of Christian Wolff and came to inform all of German Idealism.
In this rigorous text, Schulting establishes the historical roots of Kant's thought and traces it through to his immediate successors, Karl Leonhard Reinhold, Johann Gottlieb Fichte and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. He specifically examines the cognitive role of selfconsciousness and its relation to idealism and situates it in a clear and coherent history of rationalist philosophy.
Trade ReviewIn this volume Dennis Schulting goes beyond his earlier close studies of Kant's Transcendental Deduction by explaining in detail how Kant's critical conception of self-consciousness plays a central and positive role in the philosophies of Reinhold, Fichte, and Hegel. A distinctive feature of the work is its extensive attention to recent secondary literature on this topic, as well as its nuanced articulation and defense of a systematic position on German Idealism that develops many related themes emphasized by scholars such as Robert Pippin. * Karl Ameriks, McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, University of Notre Dame, USA *
This highly engaging study provides a subtle and intelligent interpretation of Kant’s concept of transcendental apperception. It sheds welcome light on Kant’s significant debt to Leibniz and Wolff and highlights Kant’s profound influence on his successors, Reinhold, Fichte and Hegel. This is an eminently readable and thought-provoking study. * Stephen Houlgate, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick, UK *
Table of ContentsPreface 1. Introduction: Ineliminably Reflexive Human Experience 2. The ‘Self-Knowledge’ of Reason: Kant’s Copernican Hypothesis 3. ‘A representation of my representations’: Apperception and the Leibnizian-Wolffian Background 4. Apperception, Self-Consciousness, and Self-Knowledge in Kant 5. Reflexivity, Intentionality, and Animal Perception 6. Disciple or Renegade? On Reinhold’s Representationalism, the Principle of Consciousness, and the Thing in Itself 7. Apperception and Representational Content: Fichte, Hegel, and Pippin 8. On the Kinship of Kant’s and Hegel’s Metaphysical Logics 9. Hegel, Transcendental Philosophy, and the Myth of Realism
Notes Bibliography Index
