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Descartes on Selfhood, Conscientia, the First Person and Beyond

  • Andrea Christofidou

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.

  • Keywords:
  • René Descartes,
  • conscientia,
  • first person,
  • selfhood,
  • personhood,
  • freedom,
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Andrea Christofidou

University of Oxford, United Kingdom - ORCID: 0000-0002-4088-7318

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Chapter Information

Chapter Title

Descartes on Selfhood, Conscientia, the First Person and Beyond

Authors

Andrea Christofidou

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/979-12-215-0169-8.03

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Reading Descartes

Book Subtitle

Consciousness, Body, and Reasoning

Editors

Andrea Strazzoni, Marco Sgarbi

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

206

Publication Year

2023

Copyright Information

© 2023 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

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

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979-12-215-0170-4

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