The Self-Conscious, Thinking Subject

This book argues that the primary function of human thinking in language is to make judgments, which are logical-normative connections of concepts. Robert Abele points out that this presupposes cognitive conditions that cannot be accounted for by empirical-linguistic analyses of language content or social conditions alone. Judgments rather assume both reason and a unified subject, and this requires recognition of a Kantian-type of transcendental dimension to them. Judgments are related to perception in that both are syntheses, defined as the unity of representations according to a rule/form. Perceptual syntheses are simultaneously pre-linguistic and proto-rational, and the understanding (Kant’s Verstand) makes these syntheses conceptually and thus self-consciously explicit.  Abele concludes with a transcendental critique of postmodernism and what its deflationary view of ontological categories—such as the unified and reasoning subject—has done to political thinking. He presents an alternative that calls for a return to normativity and a recognition of reason, objectivity, and the universality of principles.

“In this ambitious and provocative work, Robert Abele plumbs the depths of Kant’s doctrine of the Unity of Apperception, tracing its relevance to conceptual judgements and sensory intuition. He makes credible but critical applications to reductionism and postmodernism, and even to contemporary aberrations of political theory. It is worth the read both for those interested in Kant and for those concerned with the drawbacks of some of the contemporary trends regarding thinking and its necessary conditions.” (Howard Kainz, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, Marquette University, USA)

“This book is at once a careful study of the nature of human reason from a broadly Kantian point of view, and an impassioned defence of the integrity and irreducibility of aprioristic, non-instrumental human rationality against recent and contemporary empiricist-naturalist theorists and post-modernist critics, deflationists, and skeptics. All in all, this is first-rate philosophy: not only clearly presented and cogently argued, but also much needed in a contemporary context.” (Robert Hanna, author of Cognition, Content, and the A Priori: A Study in the Philosophy of Mind and Knowledge)

Robert Abele is Professor of Philosophy at Diablo Valley College, USA. He is the author of A User's Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act (2005); The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq (2009); and contributed to the Encyclopedia of Global Justice (2012).