Selves and Their Affects

There exist many crucial relations between the self, self-awareness, and affect. While all three themes have been central subjects within contemporary philosophy of mind in their own right, comparatively little attention has been paid to the various relationships between them. The anthology is dedicated to these relations. This introductory chapter roughly outlines the theoretical territory we are about to enter. To this end, we will provide in the first two sections very short (and unsatisfying) answers to the following two questions: What is the relation between selves and self-consciousness? What is an affect? The question of what relations may hold between selves and their affective mental states will be addressed in the third section when we engage with the contributions to this volume. The chapters are loosely organized around different explanatory directions that an approach to the relations between the topics might want to examine. The first exploratory route is to ask whether a theory of self-awareness can contribute to a theory of emotion, that is to ask how different aspects and kinds of self-awareness are involved in different kinds of emotions. Another approach takes the opposite direction and investigates how central issues debated in emotion research help us to understand self-consciousness more appropriately. Finally, we will address questions concerning the nature and development of selves and how emotions are involved in these phenomena.