Kant and the Self 57

position in that world. The Htranscendental psychology" of approach (D) adds

that the synthetic role of apperception can be explained further in terms of a
number of specific faculties or functional capacities that go beyond what is
given in sensation and that are needed for all sorts of basic kinds of "cognitive
tasks" (and not merely the knowledge of our position or of other persons in
space-tiIne) that are central in our experience.
Because I have discussed approaches (C) and (D) further elsewhere,s my
main focus here will be on approach (B), the Fichtean reaction to Kant, in
Henrich and Neuhauser. Even here I must abstract from what I have argued
elsewhere is the real key to Fichte' s own reaction, namely his conception of the
self as a moral being.
9
Moreover, I will in general be abstracting here from
the noumenal and metaphysical issues that I believe are central to the ultimate
understanding of the Kantian self, in order to concentrate instead on its purely
apperceptive aspect, for it is this aspect that is dominant in strand (B), which is
the mainline current German approach.
In order to begin an evaluation of this approach, some further clarification
of Kant's doctrine in its own terms is required. In the most fundamental claim
of his doctrine of apperception, Kant says there is an "I think" that is "tran-
scendental" precisely because it necessarily can accompany all of one's repre-
sentations.
10
Much attention has been focused on the phrase "I think" here, but
equal attention needs to be given to what it is that this "I think" is supposed to
be accompanying. Exactly what is it, that this "I think" thinks of? One might
believe that here Kant is speaking directly of objects, psychological objects at
least. But for at least two reasons that cannot be exactly right.
The first reason is that to say "I think" is to use a phrase that calls out for
completion with a that-clause rather than a mere object term; we say "I think
that this is how it feels, etc.," rather than merely "I think x" or "I think x, y."l1
Second, although it might seem that Kant means to attach the transcendental "I
think" directly to representations as such, his real claim is about one's "own"
representations, that is, representations that have the quality of not being, as he
says, "nothing to me. "12 Although this is often forgotten, Kant's doctrine is
not that all representation requires apperception, for he holds that there are
whole species of beings (e.g., dogs, and no doubt cats as well) who have rep-
resentation but not apperception, and there are probably whole layers of human
existence (e.g., our "peripheral" or subconscious or infantile representations)
that have a similar form. So, Kant's claim is only that representations that are
"something to" one, are what must be able to be accompanied by the transcen-
dental "I think." And this means that his doctrine of apperception is precisely
not a claim that each human representation as such, that is, just as a represen-
tation, must be susceptible to apperception. And yet it is his view that all "rel-
evant" representations (representations that are not "nothing to" one) must
already have some kind of personal quality.