Kant on the Experience of Passivity

This article reconstructs Kant’s thought on early human development and its effect throughout one’s life in his empirical, anthropological work. To do so, I examine Kant’s treatment of three aspects of the early human development chronologically. Kant’s argument concerns processes that one goes through before becoming an adult, which take place beyond one’s control, which form the basis for one’s adult self, and which affect one throughout one’s life. One’s experience of these three aspects can be called the experience of passivity. First, while an infant, one is subject to the drive and inability to coordinate and control one’s bodily motion, to the drive to communicate, and to the activity of imitation. Second, one is compelled to begin reasoning rather than actively beginning the exercise of reason. The initial activity of reason suddenly has already taken place in one beyond one’s control in such a way that one cannot choose whether to begin to exercise the faculty of reason in the first place. Third, one is affected by otherness in the formation and development of one’s self. Kant’s thought thus reconstructed proves to be consistent with what recent empirical research demonstrates. The present analysis ends with questions and implications for social science research

Wavelength dependency of the light-driven transcriptional activation of the cucumber CPD photolyase gene ( Conference Paper )

UVB radiation (280 nm ∼ 315 nm) is known to retard plant growth. DNA lesions are thought to be largely responsible for the growth inhibition due to UVB. Cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers (CPDs) constitute a major portion of UVB-induced DNA lesions. CPD-specific DNA photolyase (CPD photolyase) rapidly restores CPDs, rendering plants tolerant to UVB. We previously showed that the photolyase activity in cucumber leaves rises in the midst of the day when the solar UVB is intense, and that such diurnal fluctuation of the photolyase activity is attributable principally to light-dependent transcriptional activation of the CPD photolyase gene (CsPHR). In the present research, we examined the accumulation of the CsPHR transcripts under monochromatic light and showed that the CsPHR transcription is maximally induced by UVB with wavelengths around 310nm. It was surmised that the transcriptional activation is mediated by an unidentified UVB-specific photoreceptor