David Hume boldly went against convention in claiming that there is no such thing as a self. This seems irrational and becomes confusing when trying to use language which presupposes the self. It had been generally held that every person had a self, a personality, a soul. Kant challenged this and instead said that all man has are bundles of perceptions with no unifying perception to call the self. Immanuel Kant refutes this idea in his works by answering the question of what unifies perceptions and thus gives definition to the self. Through his explanations of the modes of time, Kant points out the manifold in which all perceptions happen and shows how the self holds that manifold together.As an empiricist, Hume believes that all knowledge comes only through experience. According to Hume, every idea can be traced back to a previously held impression, or lively perception. Upon reflection of ones life, all that can be found is a collection of impressions from past experiences. Hume points out that man cannot find a solid impression of the self but instead can only find impressions that happened to the self. When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception and never can observeanything but the perception (Hume 134)Hume posits that the self cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions or from any other that the idea of self is derived, and, consequently, there is no such idea (Hume, 134). Instead, the supposed self is nothing more than a bundle of perceptions, similarly to how all objects are bundles of matter. He supports this with the metaphors of Theseuss ship and the chariot, supporting the Buddhist view of identity. In both analogies, he explains that the identity of the ship or chariot is not contained within the matter of the object. This is true because, if any part of the ship or chariot was removed or replaced, they would no longer be the same object. Furthermore, all matter is in constant flux which would eliminate all identity if identity was tied solely to matter. It is understood that if you remove a wheel from a chariot or replace a sail on the ship, that that object retains its identity. They are able to do so by way of a two-fold truth: on a superficial level, all things do exist as is. The chariot and ship can retain their identity because their identity is superficially real and is not tied strictly to matter but to a concept. On the other hand, no true identity exists because all is changing and interconnected. This leads to a form of emptiness in objective identity and is the ground to much Buddhist philosophy. Hume makes the assumption that the self cannot exist because we cannot reflect on any unifying perception of the self. This only leaves a bundle of perceptions. Hume fails to explain how it is that all of mans perceptions are ordered and connected. If a self did not exist and there was no constant to unify the perceptions, then there would be no way to tell which perceptions came first, which persisted through time, or if any of them coexisted. It would be analogous to having all of lifes perceptions laid out as pictures, scattered across a table with no order or flow. This is not true of human experience; rather, humans perceptions are logically ordered in the way they happened in experience. This leaves the question of what it is that allows these perceptions to be ordered and in community with one another. This unifying thing is the first-person experience of man. It is similar to how a video camera works: a camera simply captures images, or perceptions, from the world around it. It can only do this through its lenses. The result is a flow of images which are chronologically ordered. It would be preposterous to claim that the camera does not exist simply because it is not an object in any of the pictures. The camera simply cant record itself because of its first-personhood. Furthermore, all of the single images that make up the video flow in the manner in which they happened rather than being random and scattered. The question remains how it is that these perceptions are unified within the self. This is where Emanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason brings light to the subject. In this work, Kant introduces the concept of synthetic apriori judgments. Here a predicate that does not exist in the subject is added to give further meaning to the subject. This is in contrast to analytic judgments which simply describe some part of the subject with one of its contained predicates. He then explains that the concepts of space and time are these synthetic Apriori truths, which are necessary yet not sufficient for human experience. They are the unifying truths that give order to human perceptions. Kant explains this through three modes of time: duration, succession, and coexistence. The first mode, duration, is proven through the dual concept of substance and accidence. For any perceivable change or characteristic of an object, there must be a basic framework or constant to which the change or characteristic can be compared. If no constant exists, all things would simply come into existence upon perception and then constantly be destroyed and remade for every subsequent instant. Kant takes objection to this idea, stating that In all change of appearances substance is permanent; its quantum in nature is neither increased nor diminished (401). Substance therefore is the constant, the backdrop that allows change to be perceived. It is what allows man to perceive the same object over time. It is this persistence of substance that is called duration. The second mode, succession, is proven through the dual concept of cause and effect. The General Causal Principle states that every effect had a cause. Kant uses the analogy of a ship passing to illustrate that some perceptions happen in an irreversible fashion. When a ship sails down a river, different parts of it are perceived at different times depending on where the eye focuses first. If someone looks first at the stern of the ship and then scans to the bow, it would be impossible for that same person to see the bow at the beginning of the river. Perceptions happen in a successive fashion due to the General Causal Principle. Giving structure to experience, Kant claims that All alterations take place in conformity with the law of the connection of cause and effect (403). This realization of succession is accomplished by the supersensory faculty of reason. This is what allows man to keep track of perceptions and unify them. The third mode, coexistence, is proven through reciprocal interaction. This final mode of time explains how one can trust that any objects or perceptions of objects are happening at the same time rather than popping into and out of existence. In contrast to the ship, Kant uses the analogy of a house to explain this concept. Here a house is perceived by a man. The man can scan the house left to right or any way he chooses. Regardless of where he starts, nothing is changed due to the reversibility of the perception. The man can scan one way, then another, yet all of the parts of the house exist at the same time and can be seen in any order. This is possible due to the dynamic community which all objects are in. They are all experiencing ongoing interaction which ties them together in a patient agent relationship. Kant drives this point home with the analogy of the moon and earths relationship: I can direct my perception first to the moon and subsequently to the earth, or conversely, first to the earth and then subsequently to the moon, and on this account, since the perceptions of these objects can follow each other reciprocally, I say that they exist simultaneously (316). This perfectly illustrates how there are necessary connections between objects in reality.Kant stresses that coexistence is objective and within the objects themselves and not a construct of the mind. This is also true of succession. This is important because it places the unification of perceptions within the real world. It also gives credence to succession and duration because if the community did not exist, then no object could affect another object and all objects could be constantly new and nothing would be effected by anything else. If this was true, then man would not be able to perceive any objects for they wouldnt have the power to be perceived. This all ties back into the self by giving a rational framework in which all experience happens. Hume could not find this framework or unifying perception and concluded that there was none to find as the result. The self does exist and is not simply a bundle of perceptions. The self is the first personhood of each person which allows our perceptions to be perceived and held in a logical order and unity. The self is more than just a camera that randomly collects light, but includes a supersensical faculty that allows mankind to reflect and compare perceptions. The self is fundamentally a point of reference in which all perceptions are collected from, and is what the manifold of experience is held together by.Some may take objection to Kants synthetic apriori truths because they are not purely apriori. This is to say that they do require some amount of experience. The idea of a cause is not contained in the concept of a happening or effect. Kant believes that the concept of a cause can be necessarily tied to an effect, but experience is needed to do so. Hume would argue that this synthesis is not strong enough and requires circular argumentation for any strength. Kants dual categories do support each other, but they are not begging any question. Kant is also not claiming anything about the totally objective world but merely pertains to human experience. This being said, he is not claiming that the self exists outside of experience. The self belongs to the self and is what allows for Kant to answer the question of how he knows any of the things that he knows on a metaphysical, not epistemological scale.In conclusion, the self was proven to exist through Kants Critique of Pure Reason. Here Kant picks up where Hume left off, diving deeper into metaphysics and explaining how it is that Humes bundle of perceptions exist in a perceivable unity. By explaining how it is that humans perceive things within time, Kant brings confidence back to the self and proves its necessity for all experience to take place.

Works CitedHume, David. "A Treatise of Human Nature ." Michael Johnson Philosophy. Clarendon Press, n.d. Web. 5 Dec 2013. . Kant, Immanuel. "Critique of Pure Reason." 2.hn.psu. N.p., 2013. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.