Béatrice Longuenesse

Elizabeth Anscombe argues that “I”-thoughts are “unmediated agent-or-patient conceptions of states, actions, motions, etc. …in this object here.” This characterization of “I”-thoughts bears striking similarities to Jean-Paul Sartre’s account of non-thetic or non-positional self-consciousness and its relation to our use of “I.” Of course, the methods are very different: phenomenological description for Sartre, semantic analysis for Anscombe. Those differences notwithstanding, Sartre’s account of our use of “I” in expressions of non-thetic (self)-consciousness foreshadows Anscombe’s view in significant respects. At the same time, Sartre’s phenomenological approach allows him to provide a unified account of self-consciousness as consciousness of mental states and actions, on the one hand; and as consciousness of bodily states and actions, on the other: a unified account which, Anscombe acknowledges, is somewhat elusive in the context of the analysis she proposes. Finally, Sartre’s and Anscombe’s accounts both amend and complete each other. Calling on Anscombe’s semantic unwrapping of the use of “I” brings a sobering new light on some of the more grandiose metaphysical formulations Sartre offers, including the statement that for non-thetic self-consciousness, “existence precedes essence.” Conversely, calling on Sartre’s phenomenological description of consciousness and self-consciousness usefully complements Anscombe’s semantic analysis even while providing support for rejecting her conclusion that “I” is not a referring expression and that “I am Elizabeth Anscombe” is not an identity proposition.

This chapter is divided into three sections. The first considers Kant's formulation of the problem of causality. It argues that Kant's questioning of the causal principle and his analysis of the concept of cause are best approached in light of his conception of logic, and more particularly in light of his conception of hypothetical judgments and hypothetical syllogisms. The second section considers Kant's proof of the causal principle in the Second Analogy of Experience. This relation provides an indispensable foundation for understanding Kant's argument on the conditions of time perception. However, the argument Kant provides does not appear to support the strong causal principle he claims to prove. This apparent discrepancy between Kant's claim and his actual argument in the specific context of the Second Analogy is a primary reason for the persisting disagreements about the meaning of the Second Analogy. The third section argues that Kant does provide an answer to the difficulty raised. This answer, however, relies not only on the discursive model of thought laid out in the first and second sections but also on Kant's conception of space and time as forms of intuition, as it emerges from the Transcendental Aesthetic and the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories.

For the past 200 years, Kant has acted as a lens--sometimes a distorting lens--between historians of philosophy and early modern intellectual history. Kant's writings about Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume have been so influential that it has often been difficult to see these predecessors on any terms but Kant's own. In Kant and the Early Moderns, Daniel Garber and Béatrice Longuenesse bring together some of the world's leading historians of philosophy to consider Kant in relation to these earlier thinkers. These original essays are grouped in pairs. A first essay discusses Kant's direct engagement with the philosophical thought of Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, or Hume, while a second essay focuses more on the original ideas of these earlier philosophers, with reflections on Kant's reading from the point of view of a more direct interest in the earlier thinker in question. What emerges is a rich and complex picture of the debates that shaped the "transcendental turn" from early modern epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind to Kant's critical philosophy. The contributors, in addition to the editors, are Jean-Marie Beyssade, Lisa Downing, Dina Emundts, Don Garrett, Paul Guyer, Anja Jauernig, Wayne Waxman, and Kenneth P. Winkler.

Kant claims to have established his table of categories or "pure concepts of the understanding" according to the "guiding thread" provided by logical forms of judgment. By drawing extensively on Kant's logical writings, Béatrice Longuenesse analyzes this controversial claim, and then follows the thread through its continuation in the transcendental deduction of the categories, the transcendental schemata, and the principles of pure understanding. The result is a systematic, persuasive new interpretation of the Critique of Pure Reason.Longuenesse shows that although Kant adopts his inventory of the forms of judgment from logic textbooks of his time, he is nevertheless original in selecting just those forms he holds to be indispensable to our ability to relate representations to objects. Kant gives formal representation to this relation between conceptual thought and its objects by introducing the term "x" into his analysis of logical forms to stand for the object that is "thought under" the concepts that are combined in judgment. This "x" plays no role in Kant's forms of logical inference, but instead plays a role in clarifying the relation between logical forms (forms of concept subordination) and combinations ("syntheses") of perceptual data, necessary for empirical cognition.Considering Kant's logical forms of judgment thus helps illuminate crucial aspects of the Transcendental Analytic as a whole, while revealing the systematic unity between Kant's theory of judgment in the first Critique and his analysis of "merely reflective" (aesthetic and teleological) judgments in the third Critique.

I focus on two main points in Ian Proops’s reading of Kant’s Paralogisms of Pure Reason: the structure of the paralogisms in the A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, and the changes in Kant’s exposition of the paralogisms from A to B. I agree with Proops that there are defects in the A exposition and that Kant attempted to correct those defects in B. But I argue that Proops fails to give its due to what remains fundamental in both editions: Kant’s criticism of the rational psychologist’s confusion between the subjective (albeit universally subjective) standpoint thinkers have on themselves just in virtue of thinking, and the objective, metaphysical standpoint on a thinking thing. In short, Proops fails to give sufficient attention to Kant’s opening statement in the Paralogisms of Pure Reason: ‘“I think” is the sole text of rational psychology’.