Self Consciousness And The Critique Of The Subject

Poststructuralists hold Hegel responsible for giving rise to many of modern philosophy's problematic concepts—the authority of reason, self-consciousness, the knowing subject. Yet, according to Simon Lumsden, this animosity is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of Hegel's thought, and resolving this tension can not only heal the rift between poststructuralism and German idealism but also point these traditions in exciting new directions. Revisiting the philosopher's key texts, Lumsden calls attention to Hegel's reformulation of liberal and Cartesian conceptions of subjectivity, identifying a critical though unrecognized continuity between poststructuralism and German idealism. Poststructuralism forged its identity in opposition to idealist subjectivity; however, Lumsden argues this model is not found in Hegel's texts but in an uncritical acceptance of Heidegger's characterization of Hegel and Fichte as "metaphysicians of subjectivity." Recasting Hegel as both post-Kantian and postmetaphysical, Lumsden sheds new light on this complex philosopher while revealing the surprising affinities between two supposedly antithetical modes of thought.

This work takes a basic phenomenological distinction (between the object and the process of consciousness) and examines it both from a historical perspective, and as it applies to the social and political realm. Self-consciousness not only has a cognitive meaning but also constitutes the human subject according to the specific way in which consciousness is grasped. Historically, the author shows that many of the problems that have appeared in the history of the study of human consciousness and self consciousness could either have been avoided altogether or greatly clarified if only both sides of the situation had been seen in conjunction with one another. The author shows how this conceptual clarification can be applied to specific problems concerning the nature of consciousness and to the social and political realm.

First Published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Contemporary thought often claims the "death of the subject," and postmodernists typically contend that the standpoint of human subjectivity has been surpassed as a foundation for philosophy. A proper appreciation of these influential claims requires an understanding of the main tradition in which the standpoint of subjectivity was articulated, namely the classical philosophy of German Idealism. This book provides such an understanding. The authors assess what is dead and what is alive today in the philosophy of subjectivity, and offer the most thorough study available on the background of the postmodern assault on the primacy of the subject. Tracing this assault back to reactions to Kant, they elucidate the historical and systematic details of the development of the concept of the self in Classical philosophy from Kant to Fichte and Hegel. Manfred Frank, one of Europe's most prominent and prolific writers on neo-structuralism, provides two major contributions--an account of the philosophical foundations of the reaction to Kant in early romanticism (especially Novalis), and a defense of the ineliminability of self-consciousness against its critics in current analytic philosophy. Essays by other contributors-including Henry Allison, Robert Pippin, Daniel Breazeale, Guenter Zoeller, Ludwig Siep, Veronique Zanetti, and Georg Mohr--relate the concept of the self to topics such as freedom, teleology, modernity, and intersubjectivity.

This book presents a theory of the self whose core principle is that the consciousness of the self is a process of self-representing that runs throughout our life. This process aims primarily at defending the self-conscious subject against the threat of its metaphysical inconsistence. In other words, the self is essentially a repertoire of psychological manoeuvres whose outcome is self-representation aimed at coping with the fundamental fragility of the human subject. This picture of the self differs from both the idealist and the eliminative approaches widely represented in contemporary discussion. Against the idealist approach, this book contends that rather than the self being primitive and logically prior, it is the result of a process of construction that originates in subpersonal unconscious processes. On the other hand, it also rejects the anti-realistic, eliminative argument that, from the non-primary, derivative nature of the self, infers its status as an illusory by-product of real neurobiological events, devoid of any explanatory role.

Karen Ng sheds new light on Hegel's famously impenetrable philosophy. She does so by offering a new interpretation of Hegel's idealism and by foregrounding Hegel's Science of Logic, revealing that Hegel's theory of reason revolves around the concept of organic life. Beginning with the influence of Kant's Critique of Judgment on Hegel, Ng argues that Hegel's key philosophical contributions concerning self-consciousness, freedom, and logic all develop around the idea of internal purposiveness, which appealed to Hegel deeply. She charts the development of the purposiveness theme in Kant's third Critique, and argues that the most important innovation from that text is the claim that the purposiveness of nature opens up and enables the operation of the power of judgment. This innovation is essential for understanding Hegel's philosophical method in the Differenzschrift (1801) and Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), where Hegel, developing lines of thought from Fichte and Schelling, argues against Kant that internal purposiveness constitutes cognition's activity, shaping its essential relation to both self and world. From there, Ng defends a new and detailed interpretation of Hegel's Science of Logic, arguing that Hegel's Subjective Logic can be understood as Hegel's version of a critique of judgment, in which life comes to be understood as opening up the possibility of intelligibility. She makes the case that Hegel's theory of judgment is modelled on reflective and teleological judgments, in which something's species or kind provides the objective context for predication. The Subjective Logic culminates in the argument that life is a primitive or original activity of judgment, one that is the necessary presupposition for the actualization of self-conscious cognition. Through bold and ambitious new arguments, Ng demonstrates the ongoing dialectic between life and self-conscious cognition, providing ground-breaking ways of understanding Hegel's philosophical system.

A comprehensive reference guide to the key themes, major writings, context and influence of Hegel, one of the most important figures in 19th Century thought.

Christopher Peacocke presents a new theory of subjects of consciousness, together with a theory of the nature of first person representation. He identifies three sorts of self-consciousness—perspectival, reflective, and interpersonal—and argues that they are key to explaining features of our knowledge, social relations, and emotional lives.