stankovic, sasa thesis.pdf - Atrium - University of Guelph

Most of the time Kant does not differentiate between knowledge of objects and self-
knowledge. “The only difference is that the representation of myself, as the thinking subject,
belongs to inner sense only, while the representations which mark extended beings belong also to
outer sense” (CPR A371). But there is a good reason for that. From the point of view of
representational knowledge even self-knowledge is re-presentation of the thing in itself that
affects it. “If, then, as regards the latter (outer sense), we admit that we know objects only in so
far as we are externally affected, we must also recognize, as regards inner sense, that by means
of it we intuit ourselves only as we are inwardly affected by ourselves” (CPR B157). In this
sense, representational self-knowledge posits the existence of the self in itself that precedes self-
knowledge. “The whole difficulty is as to how a subject can inwardly intuit itself; and this is a
difficulty common to every theory. The consciousness of self (apperception) is the simple
representation of the ‘I’, and if all that is manifold in the subject were given by the activity of the
self, the inner intuition would be intellectual. In man this consciousness demands inner
perception of the manifold which is antecedently given in the subject, and the mode in which this
manifold is given in the mind must, as non-spontaneous, be entitled sensibility” (CPR B68). But
that is not all. This self in itself takes the form of the transcendental object. “Though the ‘I,’ as
represented through inner sense in time, and objects in space outside me, are specifically distinct
appearances, they are not for that reason thought as being different things. Neither the
transcendental object which underlies outer appearances nor that which underlies inner intuition,
is in itself either matter or a thinking being, but a ground (to us unknown) of the appearances
which supply to us the empirical concept of the former as well as of the latter mode of existence”
(CPR A380). However, that self-in itself takes the form of the transcendental object does not
mean that it actually is the transcendental object. For Kant transcendental object is not an actual
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