Fragments of a History of the Theory of Self-Consciousness from Kant to Kierkegaard

Datos Bibliográficos

ID12643149
AutoresManfred Frank (Department of PhilosophyUniversity of Tübingen, Bursagasse 1, D-72070, Germany, autor de correspondencia)
Año2004
Volumen5
Número1
Páginas53-136
Fecha de publicación2004-02-19
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCritical Horizons (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1440-9917 • E-ISSN: 1568-5160
EditorialTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1163/1568516042653567
OpenAlexW1977385745
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas10

In the development of modern philosophy self-consciousness was not generally or unanimously given important consideration. This was because philosophers such as Descartes, Kant and Fichte thought it served as the highest principle from which we can ‘deduce’ all propositions that rightly claimed validity. However, the Romantics thought that the consideration of self-consciousness was of the highest importance even when any claim to foundationalism was abandoned. In this respect, Hölderlin and his circle, as well as Novalis and Schleiermacher, thought that self-consciousness, itself, was not a principle but must be ranked on a minor or dependent level, and presupposed the Absolute as a superior but inaccessible condition or ground. This reservation did not hinder them from recognising that the foundationalist Fichte was the first to have shown conclusively that from Descartes, via German Rationalism and British Empiricism, up to Kant, self-consciousness was misconceived of as the result of an act of reflection by which a second-order act bent back upon a first-order act that is identical to itself. This conception entailed circular entanglements and infinite regresses, and was too high a price to pay. Whereas Fichte thought pre-reflexive self-awareness was a philosophical principle, the Romantics and their vehement critic Kierkegaard, abandoned the idea of self-consciousness as a foundational starting point of philosophy. Instead, they founded self-consciousness on transcendent Being, a prior non-conceptual consciousness (‘feeling’) and reproached Fichte for having fallen back into the repudiated reflection model of self-consciousness

Consciousness · Epistemology · Foundationalism · Self-consciousness · Transcendental number · Kierkegaardian Philosophy and Influence · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel · Philosophy · Philosophy and Historical Thought