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.

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 fellowships and 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.

Editor's Introduction .................................................................................. 1

Saulius Geniusas

Part I: Possible, Impossible, and Fictional Self-Awareness

Chap. 1: Husserlian Shadows in Plato's Cave: Layers of Contingency and Fictional Variations on Self-Awareness ..................................................................23

Claudio Majolino

Chap. 2: Ghosts of Ourselves: Self-Responsibility in Georg Simmel's The View of Life ...................................................................................................65

Nicolas de Warren

Chap. 3: Daydreaming and Self-Awareness .................................................94

Saulius Geniusas

Part II: Embodied Self-Awareness: Incorporation, Kinesthesis, and Sexuality

Chap. 4: Varieties of Incorporation: Beyond the Blind Man's Cane ..................121

Giovanna Colombetti

Chap. 5: Kinesthesis and Self-Awareness ...................................................154

Gediminas Karoblis

Chap. 6: The Pre-Reflective Dimension of Self-awareness and the Bipolar Structure of Existence: Merleau-Ponty's Way from Body-Schema to Sexual Schema .........179

Kwok-ying Lau

Part III: Historical, Social, and Environmental Self-Awareness

Chap. 7: Historical Self-Awareness ..........................................................209

Chap. 8: Individuation and Self-Awareness in Wilhelm Dilthey .......................233

Eric Nelson

Chap. 9: Ecological Self-Awareness in the Anthropocene ...............................263

Mintautas Gutauskas

Part IV: Comparative Philosophy of Self-Awareness

Chap. 10: Self-Awareness in Nishida as Auto-Realization qua Determination of the Indeterminate ....................................................................................297

John W. M. Krummel

Chap. 11: How to Become Conscious of Consciousness: A Mediation-Based Approach ..........................................................................................332

Shigeru Taguchi

Chap. 12: Beyond Self-Representationalism: A Neo-Dignagian Theory of Consciousness ....................................................................................364

Zhihua Yao

Index