Kant on First-Person Speech and Personhood
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Raphaël Ehrsam
Abstract
Kant stresses the presence, in all languages, of first-person formulas. In the Anthropology, § 1, he argues (i) that the use of ‘I’ (or any other linguistic form referring to the speaker) makes the human being “a person”, and (ii) that the use of the first-person pronoun enables the child to “think herself”. In the present paper, I claim that, in order to understand those assertions, first-person linguistic formulas should not be construed as mere expressions of an infra-discursive self-awareness; for Kant after 1781, such formulas actually contribute to making self-awareness possible.
Bibliography
All translations are quoted from The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant (1996) and the quotation rules followed are those established by the Akademie Ausgabe (AA). Kant, Immanuel (1900 ff): Gesammelte Schriften. Hrsg.: Bd. 1 – 22 Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. 23 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, ab Bd. 24 Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin.
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Titlepages
- Table of Contents
- Articles
- Kant’s Transcendental Theory of Universal Grammar. The Cognitive Foundation of the Structure of Language
- Kant’s Semiotics and Hermeneutics in the 1760s
- Kant on First-Person Speech and Personhood
- Kantian Thoughts. Towards an Alternative to Russellian and Fregean Propositions
- Kant on Language and the (Self‐)Development of Reason
- Kant on Language, Communication and Objective Judgment
- Kant’s Philosophy of Language of Philosophy: On Philosophical Terminology
- Kant on Propositional Content and Knowledge
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2024, 2025 and 2026
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Titlepages
- Table of Contents
- Articles
- Kant’s Transcendental Theory of Universal Grammar. The Cognitive Foundation of the Structure of Language
- Kant’s Semiotics and Hermeneutics in the 1760s
- Kant on First-Person Speech and Personhood
- Kantian Thoughts. Towards an Alternative to Russellian and Fregean Propositions
- Kant on Language and the (Self‐)Development of Reason
- Kant on Language, Communication and Objective Judgment
- Kant’s Philosophy of Language of Philosophy: On Philosophical Terminology
- Kant on Propositional Content and Knowledge
- Topics of the Kant Yearbook 2024, 2025 and 2026
