Definition of "consciousness" []

• The state or condition of being conscious. (noun)
• A sense of one's personal or collective identity, including the attitudes, beliefs, and sensitivities held by or considered characteristic of an individual or group: Love of freedom runs deep in the national consciousness. (noun)
• Special awareness or sensitivity: class consciousness; race consciousness. (noun)
• Alertness to or concern for a particular issue or situation: a movement aimed at raising the general public's consciousness of social injustice. (noun)
• In psychoanalysis, the conscious. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Tribal consciousness is _revolutionary _consciousness: mutable and fluid and transforming."
• "“It introduced into the national consciousness, ” Henry James wrote in 1879, by the “national consciousness” undoubtedly meaning his own as well, “a certain sense of proportion and relation, of the world being a more complicated place than it had hitherto seemed, the future more treacherous, success more difficult …"
• "Yet, all the while, our consciousness, _so far as we are conscious of our consciousness_, was busy with other thoughts. ""