My Thoughts: Self-Consciousness and Feeling

Abstract Self-consciousness was the central topic in German Idealism. Kant and Fichte conceived of self-consciousness as a special form of knowledge. Lotze opposed Kant’s and Fichte’s epistemic treatments of self-consciousness. According to Lotze, self-consciousness constitutively involves feeling. This chapter provides a reconstruction of Lotze’s under-researched affective theory of self-consciousness and addresses its main problems. Lotze’s original affective view faces several challenges. The chapter will propose answers to these challenges by connecting Lotze’s view to recent work on mental disorder, especially depersonalization. The revised affective view of self-consciousness in which the general feeling plays a central role works arounds the problems for Lotze’s original view and is superior to purely epistemic views of self-consciousness.