Falk Wunderlich advances a fundamentally new approach to an understanding of Kant's theory of consciousness. In the first part of his study, he presents a detailed reconstruction of 18th century discussions on the theory of consciousness, focusing on those discussions in the context of which Kant's deliberations took place. In the second part, Kant's approaches to a theory of consciousness are related to these contemporary debates. The author takes the view that, contrary to appearances, Kant only modifies the standard contemporarary views on consciousness, apperception and consciousness of self to a limited degree and retains their terminological bases. Finally, an alternative interpretation of transcendental discussion is offered against the background of this contextualisation.

Autorentext

Falk Wunderlich is Lorenz Krüger Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) and Erasmus Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, USA.