Published: 2026-08-26

Świadomość siebie, „ja” literatury

Adam Matysiak Profil ORCID autora Adam Matysiak

Abstract

This article serves as an introduction to a theoretical standpoint in the interpretation of Romanticism which is little-known in Poland, developed in the 20th and 21st centuries by philosophers Dieter Henrich and Manfred Frank (who sometimes call themselves the Heidelberg School). At the centre of their research lies a philosophy of subjectivity, especially the notion of „self-consciousness”. Henrich devotes an important analysis to this issue in his essay Fichte’s Original Insight. It presents the central notion of this text, self-consciousness, form the perspective of the function of „I” in literature. In the first part, the importance of self-consciousness and its explication in Fichte’s theory of knowledge are presented as important for early German romanticism. The author shows that the difficulty of making such consciousness explicit was a major cause for misunderstandings concerning Fichte’s philosophy. At the same time, this makes the theory of knowledge an interesting perspective on the problem of expressing subjectivity in language. Moreover, a cautious reading of romantic authors (Novalis, Friedrich Hölderlin), highlights the importance of self-consciousness in the formation of their poetics. In the second part issues connected to contemporary philosophy of mind are related to selected projects within literary theory on the grounds of inquiries concerning self-consciousness. The author argues that Henrich’s perspective envisions a sphere of subjectivity that makes for a valuable supplement or alternative for media theory, psychoanalysis, or deconstruction.

Keywords:

Heidelberg School, self-consciousness, early German Romanticism, Fichte, subjectivity, literary ‘I’, Novalis, Hölderlin, philosophy of mind

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Matysiak, A. (2026). Świadomość siebie, „ja” literatury. Colloquia Litteraria, 38(1/2025), 13–30. Retrieved from https://czasopisma.uksw.edu.pl/cl/article/view/17004

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