The Person in Kant

Abstract:

In contrast with the classical notion of “person”, that emphasizes the metaphysical subject as the ground of rational activity, Kant, as indeed the greater part of modern philosophers, swaps the terms of this relation giving pride of place to the operative dimension of the person, in detriment to the indispensable metaphysical ground. This swap gives origin to a double tendency: one, of resolution of the subject into his acts; and another, subsequently, of the substantialitation of the acts into fragmentary and disconnected entities. Of the distinct levels of the I in Kant’s philosophy (the empiric I, the logical I, the metaphysical I and the moral I), it is only to the moral I that the title of person belongs

Key words:

Metaphysical subject, rational activity; accidentalization of the substance, substantialization of the accident; empiric I, transcendental I (transcendental aperception), metaphysical I (I insofar as noumenon), moral I (the person); Boethius, Thomas Aquinas, Locke, Hume, Kant, Mounier, Guardini