Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on the texts and translation
- Letters on the Kantian Philosophy
- First Letter: The need for a Critique of Reason
- Second Letter: The result of the Kantian philosophy on the question of God's existence
- Third Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the necessary connection between morality and religion
- Fourth Letter: On the elements and the previous course of conviction in the basic truths of religion
- Fifth Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the future life
- Sixth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The united interests of religion and morality in the clearing away of the metaphysical ground for cognition of a future life
- Seventh Letter: A sketch of a history of reason's psychological concept of a simple thinking substance
- Eighth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The master key to the rational psychology of the Greeks
- Appendix: the major additions in the 1790 edition
- Index
- Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
Seventh Letter: A sketch of a history of reason's psychological concept of a simple thinking substance
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- Chronology
- Further reading
- Note on the texts and translation
- Letters on the Kantian Philosophy
- First Letter: The need for a Critique of Reason
- Second Letter: The result of the Kantian philosophy on the question of God's existence
- Third Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the necessary connection between morality and religion
- Fourth Letter: On the elements and the previous course of conviction in the basic truths of religion
- Fifth Letter: The result of the Critique of Reason concerning the future life
- Sixth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The united interests of religion and morality in the clearing away of the metaphysical ground for cognition of a future life
- Seventh Letter: A sketch of a history of reason's psychological concept of a simple thinking substance
- Eighth Letter: Continuation of the preceding letter: The master key to the rational psychology of the Greeks
- Appendix: the major additions in the 1790 edition
- Index
- Cambridge texts in the history of philosophy
Summary
That the distinction between body and soul belongs among the earliest advances of the human spirit on the path of its development must have struck you long ago, my dear friend, given your close familiarity with the vestiges of the most ancient eras of eastern and Greek philosophy. But even if all of these original records had been lost, this distinction would have emerged simply by a closer examination of the nature of our cognitive faculty. Right at the first dawning of reason, the thinking I, in conformity with the laws of consciousness, had to distinguish itself from every one of the representations it was thinking and consequently also from the body, particularly in so far as this body appeared among those representations. Similarly, the laws of sensibility made necessary the essential distinction between the objects of inner and of outer sense – that is, between representations in [143] us and things outside us. Now, in so far as all representations in us attach to the I as their subject, while the body belongs to the order of things outside us, the distinction that is thought in consciousness between the I and the body – between representations presented through inner sense, on the one hand, and the body that is presented through outer sense, on the other – had to be given already in intuition as well.
Thus, there was agreement very soon about the fact that the I and the body had to be two very different things.
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- Reinhold: Letters on the Kantian Philosophy , pp. 89 - 103Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006