Paradigm Shifts in the Concept of "Self" in Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Kant's Transcendental Turn

Zhang Zebing

Hangzhou Xuejun High School

Abstract：

The concept of the "self" is a foundational yet deeply contested pillar of modern philosophy. This paper traces its paradigm shifts from Descartes to Kant, arguing that the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century developments were not linear but marked by ruptures and fundamental reconceptualizations. Descartes initiated the modern problematic by equating the self with the thinking substance—the cogito—thus grounding certainty in subjective consciousness, though at the cost of generating intractable dualisms. Locke and Hume, in different ways, dismantled this substantial self, replacing it with empirical accounts rooted in consciousness, memory, or bundles of perceptions. Kant, however, effected the most decisive break: his transcendental turn relocated the self from the domain of what can be known to the very conditions of knowing. The transcendental unity of apperception is not an object of experience but its formal precondition. Kant thus transformed the self from a substantive entity into a logical function—from something we have into something we do. This resolution simultaneously salvages and subverts the Cartesian project. Its implications continue to shape contemporary philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and ethics.

Key Words：

"Self"; cogito; transcendental apperception; personal identity; modern philosophy; Kant; Descartes