Concept
Self-consciousness
Overview
Self-consciousness is a heightened sense of awareness of oneself. Historically, "self-consciousness" was synonymous with "self-awareness", referring to a state of awareness that one exists and that one has consciousness. While "self-conscious" and "self-aware" are still sometimes used interchangeably, particularly in philosophy, "self-consciousness" has commonly come to refer to a preoccupation with oneself, especially with how others might perceive one's appearance or one's actions. An unpleasant feeling of self-consciousness may occur when one realizes that one is being watched or observed, the feeling that "everyone is looking" at oneself. Some people are habitually more self-conscious than others. Unpleasant feelings of self-consciousness sometimes become associated with shyness or paranoia.
Notable opponents of self-consciousness include Thomas Carlyle.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Self-consciousness is discussed.
These ideas constitute, as we have learned, the essential content of the divine intelligence, and of ours so far as we have realized our identity with God's understanding. The highest form of knowledge, therefore, is self-consciousness. This bears the same relation to necessary truths that the latter bear to experience.
John Dewey, Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding
states what it is; names the idea
That representation which can be given previously to all thought is called intuition. All the diversity or manifold content of intuition, has, therefore, a necessary relation to the “I think,” in the subject in which this diversity is found. But this representation, “I think,” is an act of spontaneity; that is to say, it cannot be regarded as belonging to mere sensibility.
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
names the idea; states what it is
As the inseparability of the two sides has been indicated, it may be worth while to note the separation as it appears on the side of religion. It is primarily a point of form: the attitude which self-consciousness takes to the body of truth. So long as this body of truth is the very substance or indwelling spirit of self-consciousness in its actuality, then self-consciousness in this content has the certainty of…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
names the idea; states what it is
David, the Hebrew King, had fallen into sins enough; blackest crimes; there was no want of sins. And thereupon the unbelievers sneer and ask, Is this your man according to God's own heart? The sneer, I must say, seems to me but a shallow one.
Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, and
states what it is; author linked in the graph
III. Further, there is in living beings a power that preserves the purports (or thoughts and conceptions) of what the senses had perceived, such as, for instance, that the wolf is an enemy; the child, a darling next of kin. Wherefore, so much at least if not more is evident, that this power is other than the common-sense (or picturing), inasmuch as in the latter there are no forms but such as it has gained from the…
Avicenna, A Compendium on the Soul
states what it is; author linked in the graph
Philosophers who discussed Self-consciousness
- Max Stirner
- Avicenna
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Friedrich Schleiermacher
- Bruno Bauer
- Dan Zahavi
- The Last Messiah
- U. G. Krishnamurti
Related ideas
Place in the tradition
Part of Consciousness.