**Phenomenological and Existential Perspectives:** - **Consciousness as Intentional and Relational:** Several sources emphasize the intentional nature of consciousness, meaning it is always directed towards something. Sartre, in line with Husserl, takes consciousness as the starting point of philosophy. He argues that consciousness is fundamentally a "nothingness", a pure activity of relating to things, lacking an "inside" or substantiality. For Sartre, the being of consciousness is radically different from the being of the objects it is conscious of ("being-in-itself"). Consciousness ("being-for-itself") is defined by its being what it is not and not being what it is. - **Self as Presence to Itself:** Sartre posits that the self is not a fixed entity but rather a presence to itself. Pre-reflective consciousness is already a form of self-consciousness. The "self" represents an "ideal distance" within the subject's immanence to itself, a way of escaping perfect coincidence with itself. "Selfness" arises as a further step where our possibilities reflect on our consciousness. - **Being-for-Others and the Gaze:** Sartre highlights the crucial role of "the Other" in the constitution of the self. The gaze of the Other transforms "my" being-for-itself into a being-for-others. Shame is a key experience revealing this, as it is shame before someone, the recognition of oneself as the object the Other is looking at and judging. This "being seen" by the Other causes consciousness to turn back on itself, resulting in a "pure self-reference" to the objectified self. However, there remains a distance and noncoincidence between consciousness and its being-for-others. - **Husserl's Phenomenology:** Husserl's phenomenology, a key influence on existentialism, emphasizes describing the manifold ways things appear to us without judgment about the relation between being and appearance. He stresses intersubjectivity, accessed from a first-person point of view, where empathy involves adoption rather than projection. Consciousness is analyzed as a manifold of forms of intentionality. Husserl explores how we encounter others through concepts like passive synthesis, pairing, appresentation (bringing something to presence in addition to what is given), and empathy (feeling oneself "into" the other). The "primordinal sphere of ownness" includes all immediately accessible experiences. - **Marcel's Subjective Exploration of Existence:** Gabriel Marcel insists that the exploration of existence is only possible through subjective experience, focusing on the ontological specificities of the self, which has a history as an inner, subjective experience. - **Existential Psychology's Focus on Identity and Experience:** Existential psychology, influenced by philosophers like Heidegger and Jaspers, places a radical stress on the concept and experience of identity as essential to human nature. It emphasizes starting from experiential knowledge (phenomenology) rather than abstract concepts. This trend aims to clarify what it means to exist as human before considering scientific knowledge. - **Eigenwelt and Authenticity:** Existential Analysis highlights the concept of Eigenwelt (one's own world), related to identity and authenticity, involving questions of choice, freedom, and responsibility. The self is seen as the sum of its choices. **Other Philosophical Perspectives:** - **Descartes and the Cogito:** Descartes' famous "I think, therefore I am" established consciousness as a fundamental starting point for philosophy. He viewed the self as a "thinking thing" (res cogitans) distinct from the body. However, poststructuralism critiques this conflation of the self with what thinks. Descartes also believed that the power of imagination was not necessary to his essence. Foucault interprets Descartes' _Meditations_ as an "ascesis" transforming the subject and opening the scientific worldview. - **Indian Philosophy:** Indian philosophical traditions offer diverse views on the self (jīvātmā). Materialists (Cārvākas) identify the self with the living body and consciousness. Buddhists see it as a stream of thought. Advaita Vedānta views the self as one, unchanging, self-shining consciousness, while Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta considers it a conscious subject or ego. Other schools identify the self with the senses, mind, or as an unconscious substance that acquires consciousness. Some argue that consciousness is not dependent on objects, suggesting a different theory of knowledge where the self is self-revealing consciousness. - **Poststructuralism's Critique of the Subject:** Poststructuralism challenges the idea of a unified, independent self as the origin of meaning and choices. It posits that the subject is constructed by the "big Other" (social and linguistic structures), subjected to meanings outside its control, and inherently divided. Consciousness is seen as an effect of signification, influenced by unconscious processes. - **Bakhtin's Dialogism:** Dialogism argues that consciousness itself is based on otherness, not as a step towards unity but as an inherent differential relation between a center (relative, not absolute) and what is not that center. We make sense of existence by defining our place in relation to the other. - **Kant's Ethics and the Self:** Kant's ethics emphasizes the self as the most valuable thing, a subject that should never be treated as a mere object or means to an end. - **Foucault's Self-Formation and Parrhesia:** Foucault focuses on the historical construction of the self through power relations and "technologies of the self". He highlights "parrhesia" (courageous truth-telling) as a practice of self-concern and self-formation, where self-knowledge grants access to truth. He questions the Cartesian "I think, therefore I am" in modernity, noting the instability of "I". His ethics involves "refusing what we are" and inventing new forms of individuality. - **Jung's Psychology of the Ego:** Jung defines the ego as the center of the field of consciousness, the complex to which all conscious contents are related. Consciousness requires an ego for reference, constituted by awareness of the body and memory. **Scientific and Naturalistic Perspectives:** - **Cognitive Neuroscience:** Cognitive neuroscience proposes that consciousness functions as a "global workspace" where various computational modules share information. This allows for integrated processing and response to the world. Some naturalistic views might even dismiss consciousness as an illusion or argue that brain science finds no physical location for the self. - **Self-Knowledge in Cognitive Science:** Cognitive science views self-knowledge and mirror recognition as understandable processes involving mental databases and learning, not inherently mysterious. - **Critique of Naturalism:** Some argue that reductive naturalistic conceptions of the person, prioritizing brain science, fail to adequately account for the self. The "placement problem" arises from trying to fit subjective experiences like consciousness into a purely scientific worldview. **Other Notable Ideas:** - **Subjective Truth:** Kierkegaard, as highlighted in existential thought, emphasized "subjective truth," where the truth lies in the individual's relationship to something, even if objectively false. - **Qualia:** Philosophers of mind discuss "qualia," the irreducibly subjective "what it is like" of experience, posing a challenge to purely mechanistic explanations of consciousness. - **Self as Narrative:** The notion of the self as a constructed narrative has been influential, though some argue it doesn't fully capture the "true self". - **Interbeing and Connectedness:** Some perspectives emphasize the relational aspect of the self, suggesting an evolution of thought from individualistic views to recognizing the importance of relationships and connectedness in defining oneself.