KANT AND RODL ON THE IDENTITY OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND OBJECTIVITY A CRITICAL STUDY OF SEBASTIAN RODL'S SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS AND OBJECTIVITY: AN INTRODUCTION TO ABSOLUTE IDEALISM

Sebastian Rodl's 2018 book articulates and unfolds the thought that judgment's self-consciousness is identical with its objectivity. This view is laid forth in a Hegelian spirit, against the spirit of Kant's merely formal or transcendental idealism. I review R&M central theses and then offer a criticism of his reading of Kant. I hold that we can agree with Rodl that self-consciousness is identical with objectivity (though only in a 'formal' sense). We can also agree with Rod] that this identity enables us to see the completeness and the incompleteness of judgment as two sides of one coin. And, it is not necessary to reject the formality or 'emptiness' of Kant's 'I think' in order to establish these points. Indeed, the virtue of these Kantian theses flows directly from Kant's formal identification of self-consciousness with objectivity. And, because Rodl need not reject these features of Kant's formal idealism, he also need not locate them as the source of the need for a turn to Hegel.