„I think“ as form and action: Kant’s self beyond time and substance

Abstract

The qualitative determination of the relationships between time, substance and transcendental apperception reveals a complex labyrinth of trajectories. In the first Critique the three concepts circulate through one another without showing a perfect dialectical totality in which each of them could constitute a moment of mediation between the others. It appears that, instead of a stable dynamic triangle emerging, a double structural instability unfolds, specially if the triangle is observed from the vertex of transcendental apperception. This is due to the fact that not only does pure self break its traditionally strong ties with substance, but it also posits itself outside the sphere of time. Indeed, owing to its intellectual and logical nonphenomenal essence, transcendental apperception has no common measure with sensibility and sensible intuition. Furthermore, it cannot belong either to substance or to time, given that only a permanent sensible intuition can correspond to the concept of substance, and that only intuited phenomena can appear in the form of time. Now, by enjoying a state of exception, as the originating condition of the unity of all experience – that is, the common quality of all representations which consists in their being mine or being unified by and in myself –, transcendental apperception seems to be on the brink of becoming an unstable centre. Without activity, transcendental apperception is reduced to an empty formal concept or judgement, deprived of all mental effectiveness. On the other hand, however, if transcendental apperception does display a real and effective mental activity, as should be necessarily supposed, one must wonder whether and how the I think can be conceived simply as a timeless process and, what is more, as an absolutely disembodied, non-substantial, process, as though there were activity without any agent.