The Doctrine of Self-positing and Receptivity in Kant's Late ...

knower through a mediating faculty of representation. 181 The final possible approach to
this terminological dissonance is to accept that Kant used the terms interchangeably, and
thus, attend most to the more general idea that he elucidates in those passages.
While this terminological problem cannot be fully resolved and the second
suggested approach can only be evaluated after the exposition of the entirety of the
doctrine of self-positing, it can nonetheless be claimed that the above exposition of self-
objectification is satisfactory. This is because the act of self-consciousness is, regardless
of the term used, always qualified through expressions such as ―(merely) logical,‖
belonging to logic, involving only concepts, without manifold or determination, being
analytic only, or only analyzable through the rule of identity. The exposition of the kind
of object (―I‖) that arises out of the act of self-consciousness is one that does not
contradict any of these qualifications, as it is shown to be merely thinking or unifying
function and as such empty. This is the case even as self-consciousness is itself
recognized as being that ―through which‖ the subject knower‘s making itself into an
object is possible.
i. c. Apperception and existence
Another aspect of this first analytic level is Kant‘s introduction of the proof for
the existence of the ―I.‖ The possibility of this proof is already well known from the KrV
and the position in itself does not change in the Selbstsetzungslehre. From Kant‘s
181 Perhaps a clarifying note is called for with respect to the ―faculty of representation.‖ I
take this faculty to be one that is broader than mere thinking; it appears as he way to
address understanding, imagination, and intuition as conditions for the possibility of
cognition. In this regard, it can be referred to as the faculty of cognition.
124