Abstract

In the Paralogisms of Pure Reason Kant casts a critical glance at that doctrine of the soul which was called "rational psychology" by the classical metaphysics of his time, and which can best be understood as a systematic reconstruction of Descartes' theory of mind. Kant agrees with the proponents of rational psychology that our representation of a subject of experience is necessarily the representation of a simple, unitary and persisting subject. But Kant's decisive objection to his opponents is that from these necessary truths about how a subject must represent itself no conclusions about the ontological constitution of the subject in itself can be derived. Despite the brilliance and profundity of his criticism, however, Kant himself remains, in a certain sense, trapped in the methodological solipsism of his predecessors.