Wunderlich, Falk. Kant und die Bewusstseinstheorien des 18. Jahrhunderts.

Watkins, Eric

WUNDERLICH, Falk. Kant und die Bewusstseinstheorien des 18. Jahrhunderts. Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie, vol. 64. Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2005. ix + 274 pp. Cloth, 68.00 [euro]--In his impressive book, Falk Wunderlich sheds important new light on an old and seemingly intractable problem at the center of Kant's theoretical philosophy: the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. What is novel about Wunderlich's approach is that he provides detailed analyses of the notions of consciousness, apperception, and self-consciousness that Kant employs at the heart of this argument without ever explicitly defining. This approach contrasts with the standard view, which assumes that we already know what these notions mean or that we can determine any departures either straightforwardly from the text or from what is required for Kant's argument to be plausibly attributed to him. The conclusion seems unavoidable, however, that this assumption has so far failed to create any widespread consensus, so that Wunderlich's idea is an eminently sensible response to the current situation in the literature. What makes Wunderlich's work especially illuminating, however, is the kind of analysis that he provides for these notions. For he holds that if Kant does not provide definitions of these terms, then it is because he assumes that his readers have already obtained an appropriate understanding of them from their use in the broader philosophical literature of the time. As a result, the way to understand what Kant means by these notions, is to consider what meanings these terms had in the works of the authors that constitute that tradition. Such observations allow one to determine what Kant might mean by these terms, and consider how the argument of the Transcendental Deduction is to be understood.

Accordingly, Wunderlich's project divides naturally into three parts. Part One breaks new ground by developing detailed accounts of (self-) consciousness developed by a wide range of both major and minor philosophers writing in 18th century Germany. After discussing the positions of several major figures--Locke, Leibniz, Hume, and Reid--in the first chapter, Wunderlich turns to presenting the views of the Wolffian school in the second chapter, several independent rationalists (such as Knutzen, Lambert, and Ploucquet) in the third chapter, German empiricists (including, but not restricted to, Tetens, Platner and Merian, who are, despite their empiricist emphasis, still heavily dependent on Wolff) in the fourth chapter, and Condillac and Bonnet in the fifth chapter. The conclusion of this invaluable historical scholarship is that even for those heavily influenced by empiricism these central notions are typically (though not universally) understood as adhering to Wolff's conception, according to which consciousness is the distinguishing of objects, while self-consciousness is the distinguishing of the subject from these objects. Such a relational definition of consciousness is contrasted with Locke's, Reid's and Condillac's, according to which consciousness is immediately combined with every representation, and with Rudiger's and Crusius's, for whom consciousness is the result of such acts rather than what produces them. Further claims--for example, concerning the use of clarity and distinctness as a schema for distinguishing different kinds of representations--are then added with a range of slight to moderate variations as further elaborations within the Wolffian framework.

In Part Two Wunderlich then uses the terms, distinctions, and claims articulated by these thinkers to understand how Kant's general views on these topics might be understood. The main thesis is that it is quite plausible to think that Kant accepted an essentially Wolffian, relationalistic conception of consciousness that renders intelligible how Kant could understand apperception as both serf-consciousness and as consciousness of representations (since in distinguishing one's representations from the objects thereof one must represent the subject, or self, doing the distinguishing). What is novel about Kant's account, viewed in this context, are his claims that sensible representations can be distinct, that the distinction between pure and empirical apperception plays a more important systematic role than had been appreciated by earlier thinkers, and that self-reference depends only on the understanding, and not on pure or empirical intuition.

Part Three then considers some of the implications that the understanding of Kant's notions of consciousness and self-consciousness worked out in Part Two has for the argument of the Transcendental Deduction. Wunderlich's primary focus here is on the connections between self-consciousness and objectivity that Kant draws in sections 16 and 17 of the second edition version of that argument. Specifically, he argues that if we accept that Kant adopts an essentially Wolffian conception of self-consciousness, then we can understand in a very straightforward way what otherwise sounds like an extremely controversial, and possibly unsupportable, claim, namely that the identity of self-consciousness is based on the synthetic unity of representations. For if self-consciousness requires distinguishing between representations of objects and representations of the self, then even a very thin notion of self-consciousness immediately implies a distinguishing, synthetic activity. Another implication of Wunderlich's thesis is that certain interpretations of Kant's theory of consciousness that are widely held in Germany--namely that Kant is committed to a reflection model of self-consciousness--may well be impositions forced on Kant by later thinkers rather than readings supported by a proper understanding of the historical context.

In sum, Wunderlich's book makes a strong and clear case for a novel thesis regarding one of Kant's central claims, making it indispensable reading for anyone interested in Kant's theoretical philosophy.--Eric Watkins, University of California, San Diego.