Kant on First-Person Speech and Personhood

Abstract

Abstract Kant stresses the presence, in all languages, of first-person formulas. In the Anthropology , § 1, he argues (i) that the use of ‘I’ (or any other linguistic form referring to the speaker) makes the human being “a person”, and (ii) that the use of the first-person pronoun enables the child to “think herself”. In the present paper, I claim that, in order to understand those assertions, first-person linguistic formulas should not be construed as mere expressions of an infra-discursive self-awareness; for Kant after 1781, such formulas actually contribute to making self-awareness possible.