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Consciousness, self-consciousness, and the modern self

Department of Philosophy, Boston University, 745 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, MA 02215, USAbrinkman{at}bu.edu

The concept of the self is embedded in a web of relationships of other concepts and phenomena such as consciousness, self-consciousness, personal identity and the mind–body problem. The article follows the ontological and epistemological roles of the concept of selfconsciousness and the structural co-implication of consciousness and self-consciousness from Descartes and Locke to Kant and Sartre while delineating its subject matter from related inquiries into the relationship between the mind and the body, personal identity, and the question whether consciousness is an irreducible reality sui generis or essentially a neurobiological entity. Over the course of its history, the modern self turns out to become an ever more elusive phenomenon, while its roles as a bearer of individual responsibility and as a subject of reflective endorsement of the truth become ever more pronounced.

Key Words: consciousness • mind–body problem • personal identity • pre-reflective cogito • self-consciousness • transcendental apperception

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