270

This act of apperception (sum cogitans) is not yet a judgment about an object. (ibid., p. 89).⁸²

Of course, the presentation I am, which expresses the consciousness that can accompany all thinking, is that which immediately includes the existence of a subject in itself, but not yet any knowledge of it, thus not em-pirical knowledge, i.e., experience. (B 277)

In this context, Kant’s note in §25 becomes clear:

The “I think” expresses the act of determining my existence. The existence is thereby already given, but the way in which I am to determine it, i.e., the manifold that I am to posit in myself as belonging to it, is not yet thereby given. (B 157)

What is presented is “only the spontaneity of the act of determining”—which is the reason “that I call myself an intelligence.” Therefore, in this apperception my existence qua existence is simply given, but it is not determined as an object.

The cogito as something expressed, means: “. . . me cogitare; me esse; sum cogitans” [(I think) “myself as thinking, myself as being, myself as the one who is thinking”].⁸³ In this self-comprehension, nothing can be made out as regards its what-content. As original a priori, it always has the function of giving what it is related to as constant identical unity, namely: the whole given, determined manifold of knowledge. Logical consciousness knows no what-content; rather, it knows only “that I am” (B 157). This comprehension of the self, when seen in terms of the determination of the mental, is without content, empty. It says nothing about how, or as what, I appear to myself, nor does it say what I am as a thing-in-itself. Even less so does this act provide any knowledge of my self (B 158), but only of the fact that I am here: existence in the sense of being-there-ness. My “existence” is “thereby” given. Thus Kant says in the Opus postumum:

The consciousness of my self is a logical act . . . (Akademie, vol. 22, p. 69).⁸⁴

This is merely a logical act, an act of thought . . . through which no object is yet given by me. (ibid., p. 79)⁸⁵

82. [This text is not included among the selections translated in the Förster and Rosen edition of the Opus postumum.]

83. [“Das cogito als Gesagtes sagt: me cogitare—me esse—sum cogitans.”]84. [This text is not included among the selections translated in the Förster and Rosen edition of the Opus postumum.]

85. [Opus postumum, trans. Förster and Rosen, p. 187.14–15.]