Abstract

The idea of presentation may also help as one attempts to conceive the nature of self-awareness. In considering self-awareness I want to simplify the discussion of presentation, for the sake of accessibility, by not investigating the nature of worldly presentations. I want to focus on the immediate presentation of those structures which present things to man pre-thematically. I am interested, for example, in the way that intentions present themselves in a conscious state and not in the way something else is presented intentionally. My suggestions are that there are some structures which are conditions of consciousness; that they are immediately presented; and that these conditions in their immediate givenness help to define the occurrence of self-awareness. I want to show in an initial way that the immediate self-presentation and consequent self-consciousness of what I am calling the general internal conditions of consciousness cannot be understood as intentional in nature. This suggestion is not meant to oppose the idea that objective awareness is intentional. It is meant to show that pre-thematic self-consciousness is a dimension of awareness that is non-objective and non-intentional.