Haley Brennan - Center for Post-Kantian Philosophy

I’m a PhD candidate in the Philosophy Department at Princeton University. Before coming to Princeton, I received an MA from Simon Fraser University and a BA from Carleton University. I am the creator, and formally the host and producer, of the New Voices in the History of Philosophy podcast. I work on the self and how we think about it: the metaphysics and ethics of identity, and the significance of self-referring thoughts and feelings. I focus on these topics in Kant, early modern, and post-Kantian philosophy.

Research Project

Kant’s Invisible Self

I investigate the role and significance of the metaphysically real self (the self as a thing in itself or noumena) in Kant‘s theory. Traditionally, the real self is pitched as an object of the mind: a fiction, a heuristic, a perspective, or an ideal. Correspondingly, standard accounts of Kantian consciousness, cognition, and knowledge do not taxonomize any mental activity that has as its referent the real self. The consensus remains that the best account we can give of the self in Kant is one that entirely excises the role of the noumenal or real self. I argue that, despite the hurdles in making sense of a metaphysically real self in Kant’s theory, this consensus is mistaken: it dismisses some crucial claims of Kant’s, makes theoretical discussions of consciousness hard if not impossible to square with practical ones, and leaves on the table valuable resources for making sense of the way we think about our self and our identity. I show how Kant’s theoretical writings about the self and self-consciousness provide a framework for an account that is filled in with ethical content in the practical writings. This understanding lends insight into key parts of Kant’s philosophy: his theory of cognition, the possible content of representations, and the relation that obtains between the appearances and things in themselves. These insights, in turn, situate Kant’s account of the self as one that is relevant and instructive for thinking about the self and personal identity. The project also examines how this understanding of Kant’s theory of the self and self-consciousness informs and is picked up by post-Kantian philosophers, especially Fichte.