Identity

This chapter concerns Kant's views on the issue of personal identity, the topic of the third paralogism. This is an especially complicated topic for Kant because it immediately requires bringing together non‐temporal (noumenal) and temporal (phenomenal) aspects of the self: something is one and the same ‘person’ only if in a certain way it is one and the same mental substance over time. I note the striking diversity of readings of Kant's argument here—some suggest the issue is primarily epistemological and empirical, others see that it is metaphysical. I also show how the range of recent analytic discussions of personal identity mirrors the basic options that Kant anticipated, at least implicitly.

Aesthetics · Identity (music) · Sociology · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy