L’io senza soggetto e il soggetto senza io. Questioni kantiane tra logica e antropologia

The paper investigates a number of questions concerning the logical I, grounded on the synthetic unity of apperception, and the empirical I of the individual in Kant’s work. Kant takes pains to separate these two notions: the first belongs to logic and corresponds to a general function of cognition, while the latter is its instantiation in a “self”, and as such it is subject to empirical conditions that are expounded in the anthropology. The paper sketches the legacy of these ideas. The final sections examine non-human animals as an empirical case of subjectivity which lacks the unifying function of the I and the prospects of Kant’s late neurophysiology for the study of animal minds.