Will, Autonomy, Heteronomy

Hume defines Self as 'a bundle of perceptions', to which Kant's best-known response is that Hume fails to explore the notion of 'bundle', thereby missing its origin in an 'I'. However, Kant also appreciates the Spinozistic criticism that the content of the Humean bundle is heteronomous, i. e. a collection only of affections with external sources, and, hence, is not at all an expression of Selfhood. So, his theory of Autonomy counters with a concept of Selfhood in which an 'I' gives itself the principle of pure practical reason. But, as Jaspers observes, in the locating of Selfhood in what amounts to an impersonal I, the details of one's own past experience become irrelevant to the Self. In contrast, Idionomy, as presented here, consists in the process of Will as introducing a novel variation on what one has previously become, thereby defining a Self that is neither heteronomous nor impersonal.