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ON THE BORDER OF SELF-APPEARANCE. SELF-AFFECTION AND REFLECTION IN THE REMEMBERING IN KANT AND HUSSERL

Abstract
In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant points out that the inclusion of the inner representations of a subject in the form of time does not link them so as to produce the self-consciousness. To this end, a synthesis of the understanding — by means of the transcendental imagination — that affects the inner sense is necessary. Therefore the temporal succession of my inner states will appear to me until I draw implicitly an infinite line which is an image of time representing its succession on the space, thus inasmuch as I am conscious, at least implicitly, of my activity of the drawing. Using the example of the peculiar reflection of remembering, I will hypothesize the idea that a phenomenology of self-consciousness could readopt and renew Kant's theory of self-affection; however the limits of a phenomenological analysis of the reflection on my past and my past Self shall be set. Because of these limits, the reflection on my past I is always tainted with «substitutes» of my life-history, namely fluctuating representations of my experience in the past. Also, in this respect I am a passive subject facing the spontaneity of my phantasy while I remember myself. From a phenomenological point of view we can rearrange Kant's theory in this way: by reflection on my past, the I splits into a remembering-I and a phantasy-I that fills out the horizon of memory to some extent with substitutes. In this respect my life-history is never given to me without a mediation of phantasy and imagination.

Key words
Self-affection, reflection, past I, Self, irrevocability, substitutes, phantasy.

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