Kant's Theory of Knowledge: An Outline of One Central Argument in the Critique of Pure Reason

'We can assign no other basis for this teaching than the simple, and in itself completely empty representation "I"' (B 404).

'. . . the simple "I" in the representation to which all thought relates, has its own importance. For apperception is something real' (B 419).

SOME account of the notion of personality has already been given in the discussion of apperception (Ch. 9, pp. 136-140). But it was emphasised there that Kant's treatment of the concept cannot be understood apart from the later arguments of the Paralogisms and Refutation of Idealism. In this chapter something is to be finally said of this theoretical and personal aspect of apperception. Kant has both a negative, or critical, account of the limits to be placed upon this personal sense of 'apperception', and also a more positive theory of the relation between categories and personality. These two accounts exhaust Kant's theoretical interest in personality, but the same notion is involved also in the transition from theoretical to practical philosophy in the Third Antinomy (cf. B 430-431). It was suggested earlier (Ch. 2) that Kant's commitment to noumena cannot be assessed until this transitional passage has been considered. The accounts of personality and of noumenal objects can therefore be completed by a discussion of this transitional argument in the next, and final, chapter.

In the Transcendental Deduction (B 152-157) Kant provides a general explanation of the contrast between apperception and inner sense. He says, for example (B 154):

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