ABSTRACT
In addition to the privileged moments, which stand out for the intensity of joy and the sense of certainty they provide, there are a few other occasions in the narrator's life on which his constant tension and anxiety subside and give way to a sense of harmony. The history of self-consciousness according to Schelling thus begins with the first act of intellectual intuition, an empty self-awareness of the self. This non-individualized self then undergoes a series of limitations of increasing degree, a process at the end of which the particular, finite entity of consciousness and will acquires shape: this is the birth of the empirical self. The full significance of the experience of awakening appears when considered in the light of the subject's entering into the state of sleep. It is logical to expect the process of waking to be the inverse of that of falling asleep — an immediate or gradual regaining of daytime consciousness.
