Abstract

Since the 1960s, Dieter Henrich published a series of groundbreaking papers on the genesis of the modern concept of self-consciousness and on Kant’s contribution to it. Henrich’s philosophical interest in the genesis of this concept rests on the assumption that self-consciousness is the clue for understanding what our “original self-being” (“ursprungliches Selbstsein”) is all about. With “original self-being”, Henrich intends to give an answer to Martin Heidegger’s critique of modern philosophy in general and the concept of self-consciousness in particular. In this paper, I argue that Henrich’s critique of Kant is in the end not convincing. Kant seems to have good arguments for disclaiming the possibility of being aware of one’s own “ursprungliches Selbstsein” as understood in Henrich’s work. Kant’s concept of “real” or “proper self“ (“eigentliches Selbst”) is not the object of a hermeneutics of our life but a core concept of moral philosophy. The meaning of this concept is expressed in the moral law.