ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 focuses on the fourth structural feature of human life: self-awareness. We classify the kinds of self-awareness that constitute well-being in relation to the past, present and future. Vis-à-vis, present experience, we examine the nature of reflexive self-consciousness and argue that the appreciation of it is experienced as the joy of being an I. Concerning the past, we propose that our evaluative self-awareness takes the form of personal narratives, and that these are constitutive (as opposed to being merely causally conducive) of well-being when one is reconciled or at peace with one’s past (among other conditions) as an expression of one’s perception of oneself as a being of value. Regarding the future, evaluative self-awareness is constitutive of well-being when it is an expression of one’s perception of oneself as a being of value, and this takes the form of the sense of one’s future being appropriately open (given certain caveats). We argue that the unity of the self through past, present and future consists in one’s identity, which should be understood in terms of what one non-derivatively identifies with. In this aspect, well-being is constituted by one’s awareness of oneself as a being that is non-instrumentally valuable.
