Representation, silence, theother : from objective self-knowledge to transcendental self-awareness in Franz Brentano’s descriptive psychology

In this paper I use the distinction between self-consciousness as an object of experience and self-consciousness as the subject of experience proposed in Peter-Rudolf Horstmann’s article "The Limited Significance of Self-Consciousness" in order to analyse Franz Brentano’s descriptive psychology. The result of this analysis can be expressed in three theses:

1. Every self-consciousness is the consciousness of another self-consciousness. If there is self-consciousness, we have the essential conditions for it to know another self-consciousness.
2. Every self-knowledge is knowledge about another self-knowledge. I cannot know anything about myself which could not lead to knowledge about another. Even if the self-knowledge is not propositional, it is not an exclusive and unique fact.
3. Every objective self-knowledge is also non-objective self-knowledge. Self-consciousness cannot be reduced to empirically tested features because it is always something more.