Thinking and Selfhood

People must lead their lives informed by knowledge about themselves. This self-consciousness, in an elementary sense, cannot be ascribed to any other fact. It is, however, connected to numerous intelligent capacities that are intertwined with one another in it lik ein a cantral point. That’s why philosophy can gain a perspective on many of its fundamental problems from that relation to self.

Dieter Henrich, who has made self-consciousness his leading theme both systematically and historically like no other contemporary philosopher, develops this fundamental problem in his Weimar Lectures, which generate a spectrum of the wide array of questions broached consisely and vividly. What he has created is a book that makes clear how self-consciousness opens up surprising perspectives on fundamental philosophical questions and that contains important themes of Dieter Henrich’s philosophy.