Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for (...) a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person.Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others. (shrink)

Is self-consciousness a condition of possibility for knowledge? Does Kant s theory of self-consciousness commit us to transcendental idealism? How convincing is Kant s theory of self-consciousness? How should we understand transcendental idealism? What is Hegel s alternative? How do Kant and Hegel conceive of the beautiful? How do their conceptions of beauty relate to their metaphysics? In this volume, some of the world s most renowned Kant and Hegel scholars seek to provide answers.".

: Although Eckart Förster’s work contains many advanced scholarly accounts, it also has weaknesses. As Förster’s central attempt to make Goethe a Spinozan unfortunately ended in failure, we must recur to previous research. The same holds for several of the interpretations of Kant.

Die Untersuchung setzt sich zum Ziel, die kantische Konzeption des "Ich" bzw. des Selbstbewusstseins in ihrer spezifisch erkenntnistheoretischen Bedeutung aufzuschließen. Diese umfassende Thematik, die zweifellos zum Fundament des kritischen Idealismus führt, entfaltet der Verfasser dadurch, dass er auf der Basis präziser Textanalysen die immanenten Entwicklungslinien der kantischen Subjekttheorie von deren Ursprung im 'stillen Jahrzehnt' der 1770er Jahre über die Paralogismus-Kritik bis hin zu den experimentellen Entwürfen der späten Reflexionen rekonstruiert. Im Fokus stehen dabei vor allem drei Grundprobleme: 1. die Frage (...) nach dem besonderen Selbst-Wissen des transzendentalen Subjektes, sofern dieses nicht mehr als eine Form von Selbstwahrnehmung aufgefasst werden kann, 2. die Frage nach der eigentümlichen Art der Existenz des transzendentalen Subjektes, wobei hier die Rede vom "Dasein" eine wesentlich veränderte und zugleich problematischere Bedeutung annimmt als im Kontext der Bestimmung des Daseins der empirischen Gegenstände in der Zeit, und schließlich 3. die Frage nach dem Weltbezug bzw. dem "In-der-Welt-Sein" des Subjektes, sofern sich dieses - nunmehr als empirisches Ich - selbst in der Welt verortet. (shrink)

I argue that Patricia Kitcher's Kant-inspired account of self-consciousness overintellectualizes the requirements for rational cognition. Kitcher claims that a person can only believe something on the ground of another belief if she is able to recognize the grounding belief as grounding the first belief and as one of her own. I criticize this claim by arguing that (i) someone can believe something for a certain reason without recognizing this reason as a reason (the possibility of unreflected reasons), and that (ii) (...) she can recognize something as a reason for something else without being able to self-ascribe either her original belief or the belief that grounds it (the possibility of reflected but not self-conscious reasons). (shrink)