Kant’s Über das Organ der Seele and the limits of physiology: arguments and legacy

The paper provides a reading of Kant's argument about the separation of philosophy and physiology in his late writing on Soemmering's "On the organ of the soul". First, Kant's discussion of Soemmering's hypothesis on the localization of the soul is revealing of how he accepts the prospect of a physiology of mind (Gemueth), and indeed gives original suggestions on the chemical analysis of imagination processes, while he rejects the very possibility of a lozalisation of the "I" as pure consciousness, as this concepts refers to a subject of pure principles and not to an object of experience. Hence, the hypothesis produces a misplaced conflict between philosophy, as a faculty concerned with pure principles, and medicine, as a faculty concerned with empirical principles