Self-Consciousness

by Sebastian Rödl

The topic of this book is self-consciousness, which is a kind of knowledge, namely knowledge of oneself as oneself, or self-knowledge. Sebastian Rödl's thesis is that self-knowledge is not empirical; it does not spring from sensory affection. Rather, self-knowledge is knowledge from spontaneity; its object and its source are the subject's own activity, in the primary instance its acts of thinking, both theoretical and practical thinking, belief and action.

The chapters of this book cover action and belief, freedom and reason, receptive knowledge and the second person. Each of these topics deserves its own book. And yet they would all be books on self-consciousness, for self-consciousness is the principle of their respective subject matters. Contemporary theories have been badly served by failing to acknowledge this. Taking the full measure of this insight requires a major conceptual reorientation in action theory, the philosophy of mind, and epistemology, which is begun in this book. As it can be said to be the principal thought animating Kant and his Idealist successors that self-consciousness occupies this central position, the book can be read as an attempt to recover and rejuvenate the achievement of the German Idealist tradition.

Genres: Philosophy

222 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

Sebastian Rödl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leipzig.

Reviews

[Boris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rödl claims, basically, that self-consciousness is not knowledge of a special object, but another way of knowing. That is, it differs from knowledge by observation not in its content, but in its form. Rödl calls the kind of knowledge in question "spontaneous" and defines it as knowledge that is not distinct from its own object.
I am not sure how much I am buying of this. Consciousness certainly is something like practical knowledge, that is, knowledge that (in some sense) creates rather than receives its object. I am not sure whether I agree that this kind of knowledge also coincides with its object.

Anyway, I learned a lot more from this book than I couls list here; and I am going to learn more once I understand it bettter. I am still working on that.

[Lucas · Rating 4 out of 5]

In many ways indebted to McDowell's Mind and World, Rodl does a great job attacking similar problems from a new perspective. Very much a neo-Kantian, perhaps even an Aristotelian-Kantian approach; Rodl tries to, in a way, naturalize Kant by exorcizing the transcendental/noumenal from his philosophy while still maintaining the theoretical virtues of the Kantian approach. While there are many questions to be had and much work left to do, this is definitely a noble attempt and move the conversation forward.