Kant and Vasubandhu on the 'Transcendent Self'

Kant and Vasubandhu on the 'Transcendent Self'

Soraj Hongladarom

Department of Philosophy

Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University

ABSTRACT

Kant and Vasubandhu apparently make the same distinction between the empirical self and what might be called the ‘transcendent' self. The key question is how similar or how different these two conceptions are. The well known passage where Kant mpoints to the fact that there must be an overarching conception of a self that binds up the entions that the ‘I think' must be able to accompany all my representations, various representations into a single whole so that judgment is possible.

Among these various representations are conceptions of the empirical selves, the uses of ‘I' in various circumstances. I will compare and contrast Kant's argument here with that found in

Vasubandhu's Vimsatikakarika, where the same kind of distinction between the ‘ordinary' self and the ineffable ‘substantial' self is being made.

In the Transcendental Deduction, Kant argues for the existence of the ‘transcendental unity of apperception,’ which functions as principle of unity which makes synthesis of the manifold possible, which in turns makes it possible for one to be able to claim with justification that one has a right to objective knowledge. What is really intriguing in Kant’s argument here is how the transcendental unity of apperception, or in other words the transcendental self-consciousness, is different from the ordinary empirical self-consciousness.

Another related question is how the consideration of the two unities of apperception here is related to the whole set of questions pertaining to the self and the person. If the empirical unity of apperception is closely related to the ordinary conception of the empirical, individual self, then what does the transcendental unity of apperception correspond to?

I call the kind of putative self that corresponds to the idea of the transcendental unity of apperception, ‘transcendent’ self. The idea is that the transcendent self appears to exist over and above an empirical self, and functions as the condition of possibility of the latter. But then a number of vexing questions arise. First of all, what exactly is the transcendent self? If the transcendental unity of apperception is to be able to do any real work at all, it has to possess at least some kind of status as something that is referred to when talked about.

Then the question is exactly what is being talked about here? Kant’s text on this is, as is well known, exceedingly obscure; nonetheless it is my hope, and indeed my main contention in the paper, that one might understand this better philosophically if one considers the whole issue in light of insights obtained through comparison with the work of another philosopher from a very different tradition. I argue that the main work of a fourth century AD Indian philosopher and Buddhist saint Vasubandhu, the Vimsatikakarika (Twenty Verses), could shed light on this very difficult topic.

The idea is that both Kant and Vasubandhu make use of the distinction between the empirical self and the transcendent one (my use of ‘transcendent’ here only means that the status of the self in question is emphasized as some entity that at least functions as the referent of phrases such as “the transcendental unity of apperception” and the like. In what follows I shall discuss Kant’s main argument as well as Vasubandhu’s to the extent that is possible within the limited scope of this presentation. Then I shall outline how Vasubandhu’s viewpoint could contribute to the problem of the status of the transcendent self as well as its philosophical functions.

Let us look again at Kant’s famous passage on the necessity of the ‘I think’ to accompany all my representations: It must be possible for the 'I think' to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me which could not be thought at all, and that is equivalent to saying that the representation would be impossible, or at least would be nothing to me (B131-132).

The idea is that, no matter what kind of representations I am having, I need to be able to put ‘I think’ in front so that they are in fact my representation. It might be possible for me to entertain in some sense a representation which I am not conscious, but then that thought or representation would, in Kant’s sense, be nothing for me because it will not be possible to relate that representation to fall under the scheme of understanding that operates through the pure concepts of understanding.

Even if it were possible that I have a thought of which I am not conscious, that thought would then fall entirely outside my scope of understanding. This is Kant’s first step in arguing that all of my representations need to be able to fall under the scheme of the pure concepts of understanding. Furthermore, even if I could be conscious of one representation at one time, and another representation at another time, but if I could not relate these representations to fall under the same scheme, so to speak, then in a real sense neither of these representations could be called mine.

Kant then continues:

That representation which can be given prior to all thought is entitled intuition. All the manifold of intuition has, therefore, a necessary relation to the 'I think' in the same subject in which this manifold is found. But this representation is an act of spontaneity, that is, it cannot be regarded as belonging to sensibility.

I call it pure apperception, to distinguish it from empirical apperception, or, again, original apperception, because it is that self­consciousness which, while generating the representation 'I think' (a representation which must be capable of accompanying all other representations, and which in all consciousness is one and the same), cannot itself be accompanied by any further representation. The unity of this apperception I likewise entitle the transcendental unity of self-consciousness, in order to indicate the possibility of a priori knowledge arising from it (B132).

The main difference between what Kant calls the “pure apperception” and the “empirical apperception” is that the former, being the condition of possibility of the latter, in fact originates from the understanding; it is the pure apperception, or the “transcendental unity of self-consciousness” that gives rise to the representation to myself empirically that it is in fact my consciousness that accompanies my representations.

In other words, the transcendental unity of self-consciousness is the source of the empirical I’s that accompany my representations. Kant here employs his usual move of arguing for the necessity of the a priori as the condition of possibility of what is already there empirically which is understood to be necessarily the case.

So the question is: How is one to understand Kant’s notion that the transcendental unity of self-consciousness “gives rise” to “the representation to myself empirically that it is in fact my consciousness that accompanies my representations”? When I am conscious of myself, such as when I think of myself typing this paper out on the computer, it appears that my “self’ exists at two levels.

On the one hand, there is clearly somebody who is typing on the keyboard at this moment, and on the other there seems to be a rather different one who is being conscious of the act of typing. When we think about what we think, feel, desire, and so forth, what we think of are episodes of mental acts, and if these episodes were not threaded together within a single framework of self consciousness, then Kant would say that the episodes would not be mine at all.

A consequence, of course, will be that no objective knowledge is possible since objective knowledge is possible only if one is able to thread the various episodes of one’s mental acts together under a single framework. Indeed this is the conclusion of the Transcendental Deduction itself.

So it is quite clear that the episodes themselves are one thing, and the act of synthesis that presupposes the transcendental unity of self consciousness is another. Nonetheless, any object of self consciousness, any referent of the first person pronoun in thoughts of the type “I am thinking that F” needs to be empirical because it is being thought of.

For Kant, the transcendental unity of apperception functions solely as the source of the possibility of awareness of empirical episodes of the various selves acting in various moments: "... it is that self-consciousness which, while generating the representation 'I think' (a representation which must be capable of accompanying all other representations, and which in all consciousness is one and the same), cannot itself be accompanied by any further representation.” It cannot be accompanied by any further representation because it is the source, the condition of possibility, of there being empirical awareness of the self doing such and such from the beginning.

The idea here bears similarity to what Vasubandhu says in his Vimsatikakarika. In fact what ties the two works together is that they are both idealist. Kant’s, of course, is transcendental idealism, meaning that it is an idealism about the thing in itself and not about ordinary empirical objects in general. Vasubandhu belongs to a philosophical school in Buddhism known as “Yogacara,” which espouses that reality as is perceived is nothing but consciousness only.

That is, ordinary objects are ultimately speaking nothing but projections of the consciousness, deriving their being and characteristics from consciousness. It is not a straightforward matter, however, whether Yogacara should be classified as empirical or transcendental idealism, since transcendental idealism is Kant’s own terminology and presupposes his own philosophical system. Nonetheless, this matter does not have to concern us here, since we are considering the two levels of the self and their philosophical implications. For this matter, let us look at a part of the seminal text of this topic, the Vimsatikakarika:

...we must distinguish between reality [[[self]] and objects] as constructed by ordinary consciousness (especially the imagination) and reality as it is in itself, in its “suchness” (tathata). Beyond the ordinary (constructed) self [[[ego]]] and its subject-object duality, there is an ineffable (anabhilapya) transcendent Self (in which the duality of subject and object does not arise), which is known by the Buddha and other enlightened ones. It is the constructed self and its constructed objects that are insubstantial, merely transformations and representations of consciousness .... [The ineffable (true) Self is substantial (dravyatah), that is, “really real.”]

For those who are not familiar with Buddhist philosophy, this can present a real challenge. Nonetheless, our purpose here is more modest, which is to find similarities or differences between what Vasubandhu is saying here and Kant’s view on the unity of apperception. What Vasubandhu is saying here is that there is a distinction between the self as object of perception, and the ‘transcendent’ Self which is ineffable and is beyond the duality of subject and object.

In the passage Vasubandhu does not present an explicit argument for the existence of the transcendent Self, but it can be inferred that such a self needs to exist because if it did not, there would then be no grounding of unity of the self of an individual in such a way that coherence in thought and understanding is possible. What is startling here is Vasubandhu’s assertion that the transcendent Self is ineffable and beyond subject-object duality.

This requires at least some explication. What Vasubandhu seems to have in mind is that what is effable, that is capable of being expressed through language, requires that there be a distinction between subject and object. In other words, the duality or distinction between subject and object is necessary for formation of an expression in propositional form so that a judgment is possible. Any proposition must consist of a subject and a predicate, and it seems that this distinction mirrors the distinction between subject and object in the mind.

One talks about one thing, ascribing certain qualities to it; hence there is a distinction between the thing talked about and the qualities ascribed. Kant terms this distinction as one between intuition, which is there as the matter of judgment, and concepts, which functions in the way corresponding to the predicate in the form of judgment. In terms of the awareness of the self, in so far as the self here exists as an object of thought, then it is effable because it exists within the scheme of the duality of judgmental form.

This is but another way of saying that the empirical self is always effable. However, when it comes to Kant’s transcendental unity of self­consciousness, a question then emerges whether it can be only a subject. A related question whether the transcendental unity of self consciousness can be an object can be answered in the negative from the beginning because it functions as the origin of a priori synthesis, hence cannot fall under the scheme whereby it is being thought.

However, if the transcendental unity of apperception (or self-consciousness) is only a subject, then it always requires an object. Furthermore, since there does not seem to be a guarantee that a subject accompanying an object needs to be one and the same, the transcendental unity here cannot perhaps be a subject either. So, if we accept the argument that a necessary condition for effability is that it falls under the subject-object distinction, then the transcendental unity of self-consciousness here does not appear to be effable.

That the transcendental unity of self consciousness is ineffable does not mean that it is mystical; rather it means that it underlies the very possibility of effability and of any objective relation between the pure concepts of understanding and empirical intuitions. Here the transcendental unity of apperception functions in a similar way to Vasubandhu’s transcendent Self in that it grounds the very coherence of thought that alone makes it possible for objective, empirical knowledge.

In this sense both the transcendent Self and the transcendental unity of apperception does not belong to one person only. It is not the case that my “transcendental unity of apperception” and yours are numerically distinct or numerically one and the same, since the very concept of identity, being one of the pure concepts of understanding, already presupposes the transcendental unity. Thus identity does not apply to the latter.