Among the most peculiar traits of Kant’s critical philosophy is the contention that, while we can know our moral maxims and can thus reflect on our actions from a moral point of view, we cannot really know whether in a given situation our actions are actually motivated by those maxims. This means that, although we have a firm sense of our moral duties, we can never be certain whether some particular action of ours is done from duty or simply in (...) accordance with it. This view is voiced in several of Kant’s writings. Most prominent is its appearance in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, but we also find it in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and in The Metaphysics of Morals, and it is even present in smaller writings such as “On a Miscarriage of all Philosophical Trials in Theodicy” or “On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but is of no use in practice”. It is against this background that I revisit Kant’s remarks on the lack of self-knowledge regarding the motives of our proper actions. I suggest a reading of Kant’s views on this issue in the light of a tradition reaching back to Plato, in which man’s self-relation is shaped in an irreducible way by both self-consciousness and self-ignorance. (shrink)

The paper argues that Kant’s distinction between pure and empirical apperception cannot be interpreted as distinguishing two self-standing types of self-knowledge. For Kant, empirical and pure apperception need to co-operate to yield substantive self-knowledge. What makes Kant’s account interesting is his acknowledgment that there is a deep tension between the way I become conscious of myself as subject through pure apperception and the way I am given to myself as an object of inner sense. This tension remains problematic in the (...) realm of theoretical cognition but can be put to work and made productive in terms of practical self-knowledge. (shrink)

What is it that makes a mental state conscious? Recent commentators have proposed that for Kant, consciousness results from differentiation: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is distinguished, by means of our conceptual capacities, from other states and/or things. I argue instead that Kant’s conception of state consciousness is sensory: A mental state is conscious insofar as it is accompanied by an inner sensation. Interpreting state consciousness as inner sensation reveals an underappreciated influence of Crusius on Kant’s view, (...) solves some long-standing puzzles concerning Kant’s difficult doctrine of self-affection, and sheds light on his theory of inner experience. (shrink)