Despite the recent flurry of books or essays on Kant's supposed theory of `the self ', one may wonder whether Kant even has a concept of `the self '. If he does, what is that concept? Does it differ from `the I', `the soul' or `the mind'? If it does differ, in what ways does it differ? The paper is an attempt at answering some of these questions. I focus on Kant's use of the substantivized reflexive `the self ' (`das Selbst') and its differences, if any, from Kant's use of the substantivized first-person pronoun `the I' (`das Ich'). I argue that Kant's use of two different terms reflects two contrasting influences. On the one hand, Kant inherits the notion of `the self ' from Locke and the empiricist tradition in psychology (therefore, Kant's term `das Selbst'). On the other hand, he is the heir of the discussion of Descartes' cogito argument in the rationalist tradition (therefore, Kant's `I think' and Kant's use of the substantivized `das Ich'). The paper defends the claim that from these two contrasting influences, Kant elaborates an original and complex notion of `the self ' or `being self to oneself '. That notion is expressed in using `I' as the (logical) subject in the proposition `I think'. This explains why, in Kant's use of the expressions, the two notions, `the self ' and `the I' converge. Neither of them is the concept of an object. Both notions refer to the subject of thinking in virtue of the fact that the subject is, in thinking, self to itself. Section 1 of the paper offers and analysis of Locke's idea of `the self ' as an ancestor of Kant's notion. Section 2 offers an analysis of Kant's notion of the self in the Transcendental Deduction of the Categories. Section 3 analyzes Kant's contrast between the `standing and abiding self ' of transcendental apperception and the forever changing consciousness of oneself in the empirical unity of apperception. Section 4 analyzes the relation between Kant's notion of `the self ' and Kant's analysis of the proposition `I think'. To conclude, the paper takes stock of the original features of Kant's notions of `the self ' and `the I'.
