Egoism and Sociability in the Kantian Public Sphere

This article reframes the interpretation of Kant as a social thinker. Reflecting on the politicization of Kant's theory of judgment, it instead suggests a return to Kant's "sociability" on his own terms: to the intrinsic monologism of his model of intellectual community. This historical intervention serves to elucidate the interrelation of egoism and sociability in his ideas about judgment, critical thinking, and knowledge production. Situating these within the intellectual context of late eighteenth-century Prussia, it offers a reading of Kant as a "communitarian logician," someone committed to an abstract, non-empirical sense of community fostered in the introspective mind.