Conférence | Talk
Béatrice Longuenesse
(New York University)
(New York University)
Kant's "I" in "I ought to" and Freud's Superego
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
There are striking structural similarities between Freud’s ego and
Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception, which for Kant grounds our use of
“I” in “I think.” There are also striking similarities between Freud’s
superego and Kant’s account of the mental structure that grounds our use of “I”
in the moral “I ought to.” The paper explores the latter similarities,
focusing on three main points: the conflict of motivations internal to
the mind, the relation between discursive and pre-discursive representation of
moral motivation, the unconscious character of moral motivation. The
suggestion is that Freud offers resources for a naturalized account (an account
in terms of the causal development of empirical human beings) of just those
features of our moral motivation that, according to Kant, seem to make it least
amenable to a naturalistic explanation. How much of a revision of Kant´s
analysis of moral justification is thereby entailed is beyond the purview of
the paper.
Friday, March 2nd, 2012
3:00pm
University of Ottawa
Simard Hall (165, Waller)
Room 123
