I discuss Descartes’ metaphysics of selfhood, and relevant parts of contemporary philosophy regarding the first person. My two main concerns are the controversy that surrounds Descartes’ conception of conscientia, mistranslated as ‘consciousness’, and his conception of selfhood and its essential connection to conscientia. ‘I’-thoughts give rise to the most challenging philosophical questions. An answer to the questions concerning the peculiarities of the first person, self-identification and self-ascription, is to be found in Descartes’ notion of conscientia. His conception of selfhood insightfully informs his conception of personhood. I offer a unified account of selfhood, conscientia, the first person, and personhood anchored in the self’s authority of reason and autonomy of freedom.
University of Oxford, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0000-0002-4088-7318
Titolo del capitolo
Descartes on Selfhood, Conscientia, the First Person and Beyond
Autori
Andrea Christofidou
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8.03
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Reading Descartes
Sottotitolo del libro
Consciousness, Body, and Reasoning
Curatori
Andrea Strazzoni, Marco Sgarbi
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
206
Anno di pubblicazione
2023
Copyright
© 2023 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
Firenze University Press
DOI
10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8
ISBN Print
979-12-215-0168-1
eISBN (pdf)
979-12-215-0169-8
eISBN (epub)
979-12-215-0170-4
Collana
Knowledge and its Histories