From Self-consciousness To Person

As Heidegger speaks, in the tradition of occidental philosophy there have been two aspects of questions of metaphysics since Aristotle, which are respectively expressed as the question about Xi estin and the question about hoti estin, in other words respectively about the essentia of beings and the existentia of beings. For a long time the first aspect took up the mainstream of metaphysical questions, and with it the philosophy of essences was constructed systematically. Till the metaphysics of subjectivity was developed after Descartes, it had just been more possible to investigate the second aspect, with which the philosophy of existence was developed. In Kant's critical philosophy the two aspects emerge together clearly simultaneously, which are respectively the transcendental philosophy and the moral metaphysics.According Heidegger's viewpoints in his famous Kant book, Kant's transcendental philosophy is far from to only be an epistemology, but also and mainly a metaphysics, namely the foundation for the metaphysics as science. Yet different from Heidegger's interpretation the role of foundation is played not by transcendental imagination but rather by self-consciousness, if we take a careful look on the holistic construction of his system. The function of synthesis which originates from self-consciousness as transcendental apperception is not only the condition a priori of experience but also the condition a priori of objects of experience, which is called the supreme principle of all synthetical judgments by Kant and becomes the core of Kant's philosophy of essences. In a sense subject constitutes as well real objects as object in general. The constitution is that not only categories with which object in general is thought must be consistent with the synthetical original unity of self-consciousness but also intuitions with which real objects are given. The being of objects as phenomenon depends on the understanding of human being in a sense, which answers the questions about essences of objects, without the questions about existence of subject, because self-consciousness is just an empty representation as a transcendental logical form without any contents which accompanies other manifold representations but is not accompanied by any other representations, and self-consciousness possesses no intellectual intuition to intuit itself, so that human being can't acquire self-knowledge about the existence of himself. On the ground of that Kant puts his critic against the paralogisms of transcendental psychology, and the critic demonstrates that the subject as "I think" or the self isn't a substance, and of course also not a person. The identity of the self which is manifested by self-consciousness is merely an analytical proposition, but the identity of a person must be a synthetical proposition based upon an intuition of the self as a substance.After all the synthetical original unity of self-consciousness manifests the spontaneity of subject, so self-consciousness can also be named consciousness of spontaneity. From such a consciousness we could assume the freedom of subject, which means that the subject can set up an original causality without abiding by the laws of the nature. But if the spontaneity doesn't belong to a person, it's not complete but merely as relative as of an automaton as Kant speaks. And the subject who doesn't possess of the power to determine its will is impossible to own freedom, and its acts are impossible to be moral, so Kant's moral metaphysics needs the self to be a person, for which the reality of freedom must be demonstrated. Therefor Kant finds out the consciousness of moral laws, which is called a fact of reason by him. In virtue of it human being doesn't merely live in a sensible world as homo phanomenon but also could be imagine living in an intelligible world as homo noumenon to which the freedom of subject could be ascribed. As result the personality of the self, i.e. the existence of the self as a substance in itself, can be rationally postulated, and then the questions about the existence of subject have been answered. By the moral metaphysics Kant founds his philosophy of existence.