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

known through an analysis of the ―I think;‖ and third, that the discovery of the existence
of the ―I‖ cannot be inferred from the ―I think‖ by means of a syllogism. It is this third
criticism that all of the passages from the Op that were quoted in the last section make
indirect references; this is the case, for instance, when Kant clarifies that the
consciousness of myself as existent, sum, is to be understood logically (cogito) and not
als ein Schluss (ergo sum). 187
For Kant the use of a syllogism to get at the existence of the ―I‖ leads the thinker
to assume that the major premise that ―everything that thinks exists.‖ This major premise
was for him absurd because it would mean that every being that thinks is a necessary
being. 188 Furthermore, resuming the discussion from the last section, Kant thought that
this inference was a tautology because of the logical identity between ―I think‖ and ―I
am.‖ 189
It is commonly accepted, however, that Kant‘s understanding of Descartes method
for this proof is incorrect. Descartes explicitly denies that he deduced the conclusion
through a syllogism with an assumed major premise. 190 That he would not think of doing
187 Ak: 22:83.
188 KrV, B42. According to Bernard Williams, the argument behind Kant‘s claim of
absurdity assumes the following: 1) that Kant understood the needed major premise to be
a necessary proposition; 2) that necessary beings are those that have their existence
contained in their definitions; and 3) that ―thinking‖ is a description or characteristic
mark of a possible being. As a result, any entity with the property of thought would have
to be a necessary being. Cf., Williams, Bernard. ―The Certainty of the Cogito,‖ in
Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry, New Jersey, Humanities Press, 1978.
189 KrV, A355.
190 Descartes makes one of these denials in a reply in Objections II, 38: ―But when we
become aware that we are thinking beings, this is a primitive act of knowledge derived
from no syllogistic reasoning.‖ Despite Descartes assertion of his methodological
intentions, however, scholars have pointed out that he appears at times to contradict
himself. Cf., Steven Priest‘s ―Descartes, Kant, and Self-Consciousness,‖ where the
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