Self Consciousness And The Critique Of The Subject

Poststructuralists hold Hegel responsible for giving rise to many of modern philosophy's problematic concepts—the authority of reason, self-consciousness, the knowing subject. Yet, according to Simon Lumsden, this animosity is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel's thought, and resolving this tension can not only heal the rift between poststructuralism and German idealism but also point these traditions in exciting new directions. Revisiting the philosopher's key texts, Lumsden calls attention to Hegel's reformulation of liberal and Cartesian conceptions of subjectivity, identifying a critical though unrecognized continuity between poststructuralism and German idealism. Poststructuralism forged its identity in opposition to idealist subjectivity; however, Lumsden argues this model is not found in Hegel's texts but in an uncritical acceptance of Heidegger's characterization of Hegel and Fichte as "metaphysicians of subjectivity." Recasting Hegel as both post-Kantian and postmetaphysical, Lumsden sheds new light on this complex philosopher while revealing the surprising affinities between two supposedly antithetical modes of thought.

Karen Ng sheds new light on Hegel's famously impenetrable philosophy. She does so by offering a new interpretation of Hegel's idealism and by foregrounding Hegel's Science of Logic, revealing that Hegel's theory of reason revolves around the concept of organic life. Beginning with the influence of Kant's Critique of Judgment on Hegel, Ng argues that Hegel's key philosophical contributions concerning self-consciousness, freedom, and logic all develop around the idea of internal purposiveness, which appealed to Hegel deeply. She charts the development of the purposiveness theme in Kant's third Critique, and argues that the most important innovation from that text is the claim that the purposiveness of nature opens up and enables the operation of the power of judgment. This innovation is essential for understanding Hegel's philosophical method in the Differenzschrift (1801) and Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), where Hegel, developing lines of thought from Fichte and Schelling, argues against Kant that internal purposiveness constitutes cognition's activity, shaping its essential relation to both self and world. From there, Ng defends a new and detailed interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, arguing that Hegel's Subjective Logic can be understood as Hegel's version of a critique of judgment, in which life comes to be understood as opening up the possibility of intelligibility. She makes the case that Hegel's theory of judgment is modelled on reflective and teleological judgments, in which something's species or kind provides the objective context for predication. The Subjective Logic culminates in the argument that life is a primitive or original activity of judgment, one that is the necessary presupposition for the actualization of self-conscious cognition. Through bold and ambitious new arguments, Ng demonstrates the ongoing dialectic between life and self-conscious cognition, providing ground-breaking ways of understanding Hegel's philosophical system.

Sebastian Rödl undermines a foundational dogma of contemporary philosophy: that knowledge, in order to be objective, must be knowledge of something that is as it is, independent of being known to be so. This profound work revives the thought that knowledge, precisely on account of being objective, is self-knowledge: knowledge knowing itself.

This work takes a basic phenomenological distinction (between the object and the process of consciousness) and examines it both from a historical perspective, and as it applies to the social and political realm. Self-consciousness not only has a cognitive meaning but also constitutes the human subject according to the specific way in which consciousness is grasped. Historically, the author shows that many of the problems that have appeared in the history of the study of human consciousness and self consciousness could either have been avoided altogether or greatly clarified if only both sides of the situation had been seen in conjunction with one another. The author shows how this conceptual clarification can be applied to specific problems concerning the nature of consciousness and to the social and political realm.

New essays connecting recent scientific studies with traditional issues about the self explored by Descartes, Locke and Hume. Leading philosophers offer contrasting perspectives on the relation between consciousness and self-awareness, and the notion of personhood. Essential reading for philosophers, neuroscientists, cognitive scientists and psychologists.

Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity in early modern philosophy. He explores over a century of European philosophical debate from Descartes to Hume, and argues that our interest in human subjectivity remains strongly influenced by the conceptual framework of early modern thought.

This book considers the conscious subject, the subject of experience, in particular the human subject-the self, the person. Galen Strawson examines the phenomenology of the self-he asks what is it like to have or be a self or to feel that one is or has a self-and the metaphysics of the self-Is there really such a thing as the self? If so, what is its nature? He develops a novel approach to the metaphysical questions out of the results of the phenomenological investigation, and argues, against those who say that the self is just the human being, that we can legitimately distinguish self and human being. At the same time he raises doubts about how long selves can be supposed to last, insofar as they are distinct from human beings. Moving on to the ethics and moral psychology of the self, Strawson asks whether we can really be said to lose anything in dying. He criticizes the popular notion of the narrative self, and emphasizes the differences between 'Endurers' or 'Diachronics'-people who feel that they are the same person when they consider their past and future-and 'Transients' or 'Episodics'-people who do not feel this. Strawson also considers the logic of the word T, the first-person pronoun, and the reflexive structure of conscious awareness, before examining Locke's, Humes and Kant's accounts of the mind and personal identity, and arguing that Locke and Hume have been badly mi sunder stood. The fourteen essays draw on literature and psychology as well as philosophy. Book jacket.

Kant's discussion of the relations between cognition and self-consciousness lie at the heart of the Critique of Pure Reason , in the celebrated transcendental deduction. Although this section of Kant's masterpiece is widely believed to contain important insights into cognition and self-consciousness, it has long been viewed as unusually obscure. Many philosophers have tried to avoid the transcendental psychology that Kant employed. By contrast, Patricia Kitcher follows Kant's careful delineation of the necessary conditions for knowledge and his intricate argument that knowledge requires self-consciousness. She argues that far from being an exercise in armchair psychology, the thesis that thinkers must be aware of the connections among their mental states offers an astute analysis of the requirements of rational thought.The book opens by situating Kant's theories in the then contemporary debates about 'apperception,' personal identity and the relations between object cognition and self-consciousness. After laying out Kant's argument that the distinctive kind of knowledge that humans have requires a unified self- consciousness, Kitcher considers the implications of his theory for current problems in the philosophy of mind. If Kant is right that rational cognition requires acts of thought that are at least implicitly conscious, then theories of consciousness face a second 'hard problem' beyond the familiar difficulties with the qualities of sensations. How is conscious reasoning to be understood? Kitcher shows that current accounts of the self-ascription of belief have great trouble in explaining the case where subjects know their reasons for the belief. She presents a 'new' Kantian approach to handling this problem. In this way, the book reveals Kant as a thinker of great relevance to contemporary philosophy, one whose allegedly obscure achievements provide solutions to problems that are still with us.

The Early Modern Subject explores the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity—two fundamental features of human subjectivity—as it developed in early modern philosophy. Udo Thiel presents a critical evaluation of these features as they were conceived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explains the arguments of thinkers such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume, as well as their early critics, followers, and other philosophical contemporaries, and situates them within their historical contexts. Interest in the issues of self-consciousness and personal identity is in many ways characteristic and even central to early modern thought, but Thiel argues here that this is an interest that continues to this day, in a form still strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks of early modern thought. In this book he attempts to broaden the scope of the treatment of these issues considerably, covering more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain, and Germany while remaining attentive to the details of the arguments under scrutiny and discussing alternative interpretations in many cases.