Critique of Pure Reason a real substance. Unlike Descartes who believes that the soul may be known directly through reason, Kant asserts that no such thing is possible. Descartes declares "cogito ergo sum" but Kant denies that any knowledge of "I" may be possible. "I" is only the background of the field of apperception and as such lacks the experience of direct intuition that would make self-knowledge possible. This implies that the self in itself could never be known. Like Hume, Kant rejects knowledge of the "I" as substance. For Kant, the "I" that is taken to be the soul is purely logical and
Cogito and the History of Madness Cogito and the History of Madness "Cogito and the History of Madness" is a paper by Jacques Derrida that critically responds to Michel Foucault's book the "History of Madness". In this paper, Derrida questions the intentions and feasibility of Foucault's book, particularly in relation to the historical importance attributed by Foucault to the treatment of madness by Descartes in the "Meditations on First Philosophy". Derrida's paper began a high-profile exchange between Derrida and Foucault as well as a considerable amount of attention from scholars. Foucault responded directly to Derrida in an appendix added to the 1972 edition of the "History