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BÉATRICE LONGUENESSE
“I, ME, MINE. BACK TO KANT, AND BACK AGAIN”
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. ISBN 978-0-19-966576-1

Abstract
The review provides an outline of Béatrice Longuenesse’s latest book: I, Me, Mine. Back to Kant, and Back Again (Oxford University Press, 2017), which attempts to offer “a more systematic exploration of Kant’s account of self-consciousness”, with a particular focus on “its relation to contemporary analyses of self-consciousness” (Longuenesse). Longuenesse’s recent analyses have indeed the major interest of orchestrating a fecund dialogue between Kant’s comprehension of the I and several key interlocutors, from Wittgenstein to Freud and including Sartre, Anscombe, Evans and others. Thus, the first section of the book originates in twentieth-century debates and challenges the claim that bodily self-consciousness is the ultimate ground of the unity of consciousness. The second section of I, Me, Mine provides a thorough discussion of Kant’s view on the “I think”, on self-consciousness and personhood, and continues to plead for a genuine form of self-consciousness independent from the consciousness of one’s body. Yet, a more general objective of the book progressively emerges: that of a “naturalization of the notion of person”, by showing that “Kant’s criticism of the paralogism of personhood opens the way to substituting for the rationalist concept a rich and complex concept of a person as a spatiotemporal, living entity endowed with unity of apperception and with the capacity for autonomous self-determination” (Longuenesse). This naturalization of the Kantian concept of subjectivity is set in motion, within the last section of the book, with the unexpected assistance of Freud’s account on the ego and the super-ego.

Key words
Kant, I, self-consciousness, apperception, person, naturalization, Freud.

References

• Longuenesse, B. (2017). I, Me, Mine. Back to Kant, and Back Again. Oxford: Oxford University Press.