Is Self-Awareness Linguistically Based? Ernst Tugendhat and the Heidelberg School
Abstract
Clarifying the structure of self-awareness is a key point in the controversy between supporters of the “linguistic turn” and followers of the “philosophy of consciousness”, because as far as self-awareness is a linguistic phenomenon, language gets to the root of subjectivity. in the light of this fundamental issue, this paper examines the debate between Ernst Tugendhat and the Heidelberg School (dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank) on self-awareness. Tugendhat understands self-awareness as an essentially linguistic phenomenon, while the Heidelberg School finds in Tugendhat’s theory the same problems that can be found in the classical reflexive theory of self-awareness. after considering both theories, this paper shows the unexpected symmetry between them and briefly points to two open issues an alternative approach should solve – namely, discriminating various levels in self-awareness and clarifying the relation between the pre-linguistic and the conceptual level.
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