Kant's Theory of the Self

Abstract

I must begin this paper with an attempt to formulate what I am trying to accomplish. I dare not and cannot make grandiose and arrogant claims about the intent and content of this paper. I frankly find the Critique of Reason a confusing, almost unintelligible document at times, and I strongly feel my own incompetence at dealing with the remarkable insights others recognize hidden in the obscurities of Kant's labyrinthe. So I approach my work in humility and address this paper not to the Kantian scholar, but to the Kantian student, who, like myself, is trying to make sense out of the Great Morass. It is possible to approach the Critique of Reason with its manifold complexity and ambiguity, as a work of art. Like an artist, Kant possessed tremendous insights, and, as sometimes happens in art, his structures are called upon to carry more than they can bear. Some insights are scarcely more than allusions, some are concretely detailed. The insights are plentiful, in any case, and they lead any prospective commentator in a great variety of disconnected directions, firmly barring the path to any single interpretation of the Critique.