This study rereads the relationship between Avicenna’s theory of self-awareness (shuʿūr bi-l-dhāt, self-consciousness through the self itself) and the theory of experiential transparency developed in contemporary analytic philosophy by thinkers such as Fred Dretske, Jordi Fernández, and Alex Byrne, and examines the possibility of reconciling these two approaches. The paper begins by reconstructing the foundations of Avicenna’s account of self-awareness and the three principal versions of the transparency thesis proposed by Dretske, Fernández, and Byrne. It then employs six explanatory questions as a comparative framework: primordial presence, immediacy, continuity of self-presence, the relation between subject and object, independence from embodiment, and the ontological connection between self-awareness and the soul (nafs). A comparative analysis of the relevant texts demonstrates that transparency theories seek to explain a subject’s access to the content of mental states. According to these accounts, a subject comes to know his or her own mental states through attention to external reality; for example, one becomes aware of one’s belief about snow by directing attention to snow itself. Avicenna, by contrast, argues that self-awareness is realized prior to any attention to the external world and exists as an immediate, non-representational form of presence (ḥuḍūr). The comparative investigation further reveals that transparency theories, despite differences in their inferential and non-inferential mechanisms, primarily aim to explain the self-ascription of certain mental states. Avicenna’s theory of shuʿūr bi-l-dhāt, however, addresses the more fundamental problem of primordial self-awareness. The thought experiment of the Flying Man (al-insān al-muʿallaq) exposes the limitations of transparency theories in accounting for this foundational level of self-awareness, while not denying their explanatory value for reflective self-knowledge. By distinguishing between these two philosophical questions, this study proposes a three-tier analytical framework consisting of presence, transparency, and interpretation. These levels are explanatorily distinct, yet they may remain connected within a more comprehensive account of self-awareness.