Elisa Magrì

Abstract: This project is an exploration of Hegel’s account of self-awareness, cognition, and action based on the third volume of 1830 Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in Outline devoted to Geist (mind or spirit). While considerable attention has been paid in the secondary literature to Hegel’s theory of mind in terms of mental activity, the Philosophy of Subjective Spirit is often investigated as a subset of the system. An upshot of this is the tendency to isolate, and treat independently from each other, theoretical and practical activities of spirit. In contrast to this, Hegel’s Philosophy of Subjective Spirit offers a rich and extremely nuanced account of the nature of self-awareness that addresses metaphysical and epistemological issues connected to the puzzle of self-knowledge as well as to issues of moral responsibility. Among the issues addressed by the project are: How is self-awareness possible? What makes thinking different from feeling, willing, and acting? What sort of knowledge is self-knowledge? What do we owe to each other?