This collection of chapters, written by prominent scholars in their respective fields, re-examines the nature of self-awareness in both Western and Eastern philosophy, inquires into its diverse and variable modes, and significantly broadens the framework of its analysis. The chapters collected focus on reflective and pre-reflective forms of self-awareness, as well as the relation between self-awareness and the awareness of things and the world. Included are examinations of the affective and embodied dimensions of self-awareness, the distinct forms of self-awareness in memory, phantasy, and dreams, as well as the temporal and spatial nature of self-awareness. This edited volume appeals to students and researchers working in phenomenology and on the philosophy of self-awareness.
Table of Content
Editor’s Introduction.- Part I: Possible, Impossible, and Fictional Self-Awareness.- 1: Husserlian Shadows in Plato’s Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations on Self-Awareness.- 2: Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel’s The View of Life.- 3: Daydreaming and Self-Awareness.- Part II: Embodied Self-Awareness: Incorporation, Kinesthesis, and Sexuality.- 4: Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man’s Cane.- 5: Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness.- 6: The Pre-Reflective Dimension of Self-awareness and the Bipolar Structure of Existence: Merleau-Ponty’s Way from Body-Schema to Sexual Schema.- Part III: Historical, Social, and Environmental Self-Awareness.- 7: Historical Self-Awareness.- 8: Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey.- 9: Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene.- Part IV: Comparative Philosophy of Self-Awareness.- 10: Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination of the Indeterminate.- 1: How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Based Approach.- 12: Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignāgian Theory of Consciousness.
About the author
Saulius Geniusas is professor of philosophy at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His main philosophical interests lie in 19th and 20th century Continental philosophy, especially in phenomenology and hermeneutics. Geniusas is the author of a number of books, including
The Origins of the Horizon in Husserl’s Phenomenology (Springer 2012),
The Phenomenology of Pain (Ohio University Press, 2020), and
Phenomenology of Productive Imagination (Ibidem Press, 2022). He is also an editor and co-editor of numerous volumes, including
Stretching the Limits of Productive Imagination: Studies in Kantianism, Phenomenology and Hermeneutics (Rowman & Littlefield 2018) and
Hermeneutics and Phenomenology: Figures and Themes (co-edited with Paul Fairfield, Bloombsbury 2018). He has also published more than sixty articles in various philosophy journals and anthologies. Geniusas has been awarded numerous research fellowshipsand grants, including the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers and on three occasions the General Research Fund (GRF) grant in Hong Kong. Some of his books have also been awarded international prizes.