Why does Kant say that a “skeptical satisfaction of pure reason” is “impossible” (A758/B786)? I answer this question by giving a reading of “The Discipline of Pure Reason in Respect of Its Polemic Employment.” I explain that Kant must address skepticism in this context because his warning against developing counterarguments to dogmatic attacks encourages a comparison between the critical and the skeptical methods. I then argue that skepticism fails to “satisfy” [befriedigen] reason insofar as it cannot “pacify” reason’s tendency to (...) go beyond its own boundaries. The skeptical method reveals the past failures of dogmatic metaphysics but cannot rule out future successes. Only critical knowledge of reason’s proper bounds can do this, thereby pacifying our restless reason. I close by arguing that Kant’s discussion implies that a skeptic must feel dissatisfied with her renunciation of metaphysics, and that this dissatisfaction can lead her to take interest in Kant’s critical philosophy. (shrink)

The paper inspects Anderson’s central thesis that Kant’s dogmatic slumber was interrupted by Hume’s critique of metaphysics in his Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, namely, by his critique of the rationalist principle of sufficient reason, which lies at the heart of dogmatic proofs of God’s existence. I recreate the meaning of “Hume’s objection,” define the larger role the principle of sufficient reason plays in Kant’s philosophy, and evaluate the explanatory potential of Anderson’s interpretation in view of Kant’s early and critical texts, (...) as well as his other autobiographical statements. Although Anderson’s hypothesis seems well-founded and even explicates the hidden connection between the entire critical project and the refutation of Spinozism, I argue it is almost impossible to reconcile it with the current research in Kant’s Entwicklungsgeschichte. (shrink)

This dissertation claims that the problem of self-knowledge involves a kind of splitting of the mind or self into a knower and a known, a subject and an object of knowledge. As modern philosophy becomes concerned with the project of certainty, its turn toward the self renders this splitting into a kind of aporia: how can the self know itself when it is at once a subject and an object of its own knowing? The goal of this dissertation is not (...) to develop a paradigm of self-awareness that avoids or escapes the limits of self-certainty, per se; rather it considers how we might address what is constitutively unknowable about the self without recapitulating the limits of the modern epistemic subject. Chapter I introduces the problem of self-knowledge and the split self. Chapter 2 analyzes Descartes' Second Meditation in terms of its presentation of self-knowledge as self-certainty. Descartes' res cogitans argument, I claim, reveals not only how Descartes conceives of the self as a substance, but also how such a conception relies upon a notion of transparent self-awareness which attempts to resolve the aporia of the split self. Chapter 3 presents Hume's critique of the philosophical notion of personal identity, particularly in terms of its assumption of the self as a substance. Without an alternative notion of self-awareness, however, Hume's method of critique—his empirical epistemology—leaves in place the position of the knowing self capable of transparent introspection. Chapter 4 focuses on Michel Foucault's critique of self-knowledge as knowledge of a substance by an unimpeded knower. Using Foucault's notion of “caring” for the self, I consider how claims of self-knowledge have a productive effect on the self. I critique Foucault's implicit assumption of and failure to provide an alternative notion of self-awareness, however. Citing Descartes' self-reflective meditations, Chapter 5 explores my own relation to self-knowledge, highlighting by example how one can address what is constitutively unknowable about the self. Through explorations of identity through the figure of ‘being adopted’ I argue that we can begin to unpack both the ontological and the epistemological assumptions of identity. (shrink)