Many have read the story as the dawn of self-consciousness. The moment "their eyes were opened" is the moment a creature first sees itself, and with it come shame, choice and the knowledge of death.

Søren Kierkegaard, a Christian, argued in The Concept of Anxiety (1844) that innocence gives way to the "dizziness of freedom": once we can choose, we are anxious. Hegel read the Fall as a necessary step in the growth of spirit.

Carl Jung, writing as a psychologist rather than a believer, saw the story as an image of consciousness separating from the unconscious wholeness of the garden. For him the path forward was not back to innocence but on to wholeness.

Jordan Peterson, in his 2017 lecture series on Genesis, read the eating of the fruit as the moment humans became aware of their own vulnerability and mortality, and of their own capacity for evil. With that awareness comes work, sacrifice and the need to plan for the future.

Jonathan Pageau, an Orthodox Christian, reads Genesis through the symbolic language of the Church Fathers: the garden as a sacred centre ordered around the tree of life, the serpent coming from its edges, and the Fall as a turning away from that centre. He develops this in The Language of Creation (2018).