Reflective Judgment and Symbolic Functions: On the Possibility of a Phenomenology of Person

Abstract

The following paper seeks to examine whether, from the standpoint of a transcendental idealist, it is possible to have a phenomenology that can adequately disclose the nature and activity of person. First I establish that symbols are intuitive concretizations of the activity of person/Geist, and thus symbols are available to phenom- enological description. Then I raise the question of whether reflective judgment can be understood as a part of a possible phenomenology. I come to the conclusion that yes, the process of reflective judgment is phenomenologically available; reflective judgment offers an experience of “what it is like to be a person” (meaning a transcendental process of symbol creation). However, it is clear that reflective judgment must borrow a rule from phenomenal/determinate experience in order to imaginatively analogize the transcendental creativity of person. Thus, all that is available to phenomenology is an analogy of being person, and not person itself.

Keywords

• cassirer
• kant
• reflective judgment
• personalism
• phenomenology
• transcendental anthropology