L’usage des pronoms personnels dans la réfutation kantienne du cogito. Une lecture élargie du premier paragraphe de l’Anthropologie du point de vue pragmatique

Abstract

Though known for his linguistic scepticism, Kant grants a universal meaning to personal pronouns. It is this exception which accounts for the decisive role that the use of personal pronouns plays in the kantian criticism of the cogito. It can be shown that a paradox inherent to this use emerges at the core of the thought-desubstancializing operation developed by Kant in the Trascendental deduction and the Paralogisms: on one hand, the substitution of the pronoun “I” (ich) for the pronouns “he” (er) and “it” (es) in the famous “I think” allows the reduction of thought to its strict logical function, but, on the other hand, the play of pronoun substitution does not prevent the subject of thought –even tough strictly grammatical–from being instanciated in the formula of the cogito. This paradoxical strain between a desubstancialized subject and a “subjectivity” neutralized but nonetheless still instantiated in the act of thinking is to be noted in the second edition of the Critique of pure reason, which derives from the cogito a new category of existence. It seems, therefore, that Kant lays the first ground for a new conception of the subjectivity of thought, which we call “the fact-subject of responsible thought” and which implies a novel notion of the constitution of the “I” in and through the addressing force of reason. This analysis allows for a new understanding of the first paragraph of the Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, leads us to critically re-consider Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the kantian subject of thought in L’animal que donc je suis (Paris, Galilée, 2006), and initiates perhaps a new (kantian) conception of responsible subject.