Kant and the Self 61

self-consciousness."18 The crucial complication that arises here is that Henrich

has also argued that Kant unfortunately understood this notion of a subject's
"constant relation to itself' in terms of a "Reflexion Theory" of the I, according
to which "this relation to the self is brought about by the subject making an
object of itself."19 Although SAT by itself is taken to be a valuable component
of the Transcendental Deduction, this extra Reflexion Theory is assailed by
Henrich as an inadequate account of self-consciousness.
Henrich's main criticism of the theory20 is that it generates a vicious cir-
cle, presupposing self-consciousness rather than giving an "explanation" of
its "origin." According to Henrich, this is because the reflection in which a
subject makes an object of itself must, in order for it to be intentional and
effective, already understand that the representations it is reflecting on are its
own (since it is precisely seeking out "its" experiences), and so the reflection
itself can hardly be what first brings about self-consciousness.
This is an interesting argument, but note that even if one accepts it and
acknowledges that Kant did not directly state or appreciate it, this does nothing
to show that Kant really held the "Reflexion Theory." Moreover, I also believe
the weakness of the Reflexion theory can be seen in at least two other ways,
ways that Kant could easily accept. First, one can hold the "phenomenological"
view that a person just will not be presented with instances of experience to
reflect on (which is not the same as saying that it could not have any "non-
personal" layers of awareness) that do not already "come to" one (before one
even begins to "seek" them "intentionally and effectively") with what we have
called a "personal quality," an implicit "I think" in the original experience.
Second, one can note that SAT itself can be taken to presume original experi-
ences that are already instances of a kind of self-consciousness, for it is pre-
cisely a thesis about how such first-level "personal" experiences must in addi-
tion supposedly be tied to a higher level of self-consciousness. As was noted
above, for Kant this cannot be the thesis that all one's mere representations as
such contain self-consciousness; rather it is a thesis about what else is needed
by what are already in some sense one's self-conscious representations.
Thus, SAT by itself does not lead to the Reflexion Theory, and in the
absence of any proof that Kant subscribed to the Reflexion Theory, it can be
concluded that the problems of the Reflexion Theory, severe as they may be, do
not show that here Henrich has any valid critique of Kant. That is, Henrich's
critique illegitimately presumes that Kant means to or should be attempting to
give an explanation of how self-consciousness "originates."21 Once this extrav-
agant demand is dropped, there is no clear reason to believe Kant's theory
requires modification, as Henrich proposes, by something closer to Fichte's phi-
losophy. Ironically, Henrich's discussion seems appropriate rather for classical
non-Kantian theories, theories which (unlike Kant's) presume that there is
some sort of objective "criterion" or marker attaching to a set of experiences